[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 166 (Tuesday, December 4, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H8827-H8833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page H8827]]
THE HISTORY OF NAFTA AND TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I was a little disappointed a moment
ago when my colleague, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), spoke
on this floor in support of the Trade Promotion Authority.
We all, including viewers of these proceedings, Members of Congress
in their offices, Members of Congress that stop by and watch these
proceedings, and others that tune into C-SPAN, see often Members of
Congress simply talking about issues. They tell their side for an hour
or 30 minutes, and the other side tells the other side, sometimes by
party, sometimes by issue.
It is too bad that we did not get a chance today, as I would have
liked to, to engage in a discussion as my colleague from Virginia began
on his side a discussion of NAFTA and what the North American Free
Trade Agreement has meant to this country.
There is so much to talk about with the North American Free Trade
Agreement. While that passed back in November of 1993, my first year in
this institution, and took effect in January of 1994, a couple of
months later, what has happened with the North American Free Trade
Agreement is very, very significant in this body today. That is because
on Thursday the issue my friend, the gentleman from Virginia, was just
talking about, the Trade Promotion Authority, which used to be called
Fast Track until Fast Track became so singularly unpopular a term,
after this body had defeated Fast Track not once but twice, in fact, in
the late nineties, nonetheless, President Bush is bringing back Fast
Track in a new cloak, only a new name, not much different, called Trade
Promotion Authority. Trade Promotion Authority mostly is simply about
taking NAFTA and all of its pluses and minuses and extending NAFTA to
the rest of Latin America. I think that most people in this country, if
NAFTA came to a vote, would say, I do not think we really want to
expand NAFTA to the rest of Latin America, the President's flowery
words notwithstanding and the flowery words of my friend, the gentleman
from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), notwithstanding.
Mr. Speaker, the issue of NAFTA can be encapsulated in a story that I
would like to tell. Back when Congress in the late nineties considered
expanding NAFTA to the rest of Latin America, considered what was then
called Fast Track, now granting Trade Promotion Authority to this
President, I, at my own expense, flew to McAllen, Texas, rented a car
with a couple of friends, and went to Reynosa, Mexico, to see what the
face of the free trade future looked like; how was NAFTA working, since
it had been 5 years or so; and how were people in Mexico doing under
NAFTA.
I went to the home of two people who worked at General Electric, one
of America's and one of the world's largest corporations. They were a
husband and wife, and lived in a shack not much bigger than 20 feet by
20 feet. This shack had no running water, no electricity, a dirt floor.
When it rained hard, this floor turned to mud.
Now, these were two people who worked at General Electric at 90 cents
an hour, they each made, 3 miles from the United States of America.
Behind their shack was a ditch about 3 feet wide. Across that ditch was
a 2-by-4 people could walk across to get to shacks on sort of the next
block, if you will.
This ditch, flowing through this ditch was some kind of effluent. It
could have been human waste, it could have been industrial waste, and
likely it was both. Children were playing in this ditch. The American
Medical Association, the Nation's doctors, called the border along the
United States-Mexican border a cesspool of infectious diseases. They
claimed that this area is perhaps probably the worst place for
infectious diseases in the western hemisphere.
{time} 2115
Now, when you visit the colonias where these Mexican workers, almost
all of whom work for major American corporations, where in this country
those workers are paid $15, $10, often $20 an hour working under
generally safe working conditions protected by government regulation
that keeps these workplaces safe, generally those companies dispose of
their industrial waste into the air or into the water properly, so it
does not pollute in the neighborhood very much. All of those companies
in Mexico tend not to follow these rules. They tend not to install
worker safety regulations and worker safety protections in the
workplace. They tend not to dispose of their waste properly for the
healthy well-being of their employees and the neighbors. Of course, the
wages are one-tenth, one-fifteenth, one-twentieth as much, 3 miles from
the United States.
As you walk through these neighborhoods, these colonias, you usually
can tell where the worker works because their homes are constructed,
the roofs and walls, the homes are constructed of packing materials
that come from the companies where they work. They unload equipment.
They unload supplies. They unload components from a supplier and they
take those boxes home. They might take boxes from General Electric or
General Motors, wherever these companies are, wherever these employees
work, they might take those boxes home. They might be wood crates,
whatever, and they construct their homes with these crates and boxes
and packing material.
As you walk through the colonias in these neighborhoods where the
husband and wife are both working 10 hours a day, 6 six days a week for
big American corporations, making 90 cents an hour, they live in shacks
with dirt floors, no electricity, with no running water, shacks made of
packing materials coming from the company where they work.
This is the picture of the free trade. This is the picture of the
future under NAFTA and a picture of the future under extension or
expansion of NAFTA to Latin America through the Trade Promotion
Authority proposal.
Food Safety
Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk a little bit about food safety
tonight, because one of the things I learned as Congress has passed
NAFTA in 1993, I think not a good reflection on this body, but
nonetheless Congress passed NAFTA in 1993, what I found interesting
about food safety is under NAFTA one of the things that has happened
with food safety and with trade law is that pesticides that we have
banned in this country, a chemical company might make something like
DDT; it is still legal to make the pesticide in our country, it is
simply illegal to apply those pesticides to fields in our country or to
gardens or to lawns or anything.
Certain pesticides that are banned are banned for use in this
country, but American companies still make pesticides and they export
some of them to Mexico. So when we buy strawberries and raspberries
from Mexico, in many cases those strawberries and raspberries would
have had applied to them pesticides that are illegal in this country to
use, but were made in this country and exported to those countries for
their farmers to use.
Many of those farms are owned by large companies where there is not
high regard for the workers' health, where there is not high regard,
frankly, for the end product in terms of its safety for consumers'
dining room, breakfast room tables.
So what happens, Mr. Speaker, is so often a pesticide will end up
sold to Mexico, made by an American company, applied by dirt-poor,
underpaid farmers, barely making a living, jeopardizing their health,
because putting these pesticides on the land is every bit as dangerous,
if not more so, because of the amounts they use, the volume they use,
perhaps more dangerous than the ultimate consumption of those fruits
and vegetables.
Mr. Speaker, after the pesticides are produced in the United States,
sold to Mexico, applied on food, to strawberries and raspberries in
Mexico, those fruits and vegetables are then sold back into the United
States. And, frankly, it is pretty certain that pesticide residues are
still on those vegetables or strawberries and raspberries and other
fruits. So rest assured, in some cases as these fruit and vegetables
come across the border, generally dismantled by the Gingrich years in
this congressional body, our food safety and food inspection measures
at the
[[Page H8828]]
border are so weakened or so unsubstantial, if you will, that this
creates some danger for American consumers.
In fact, it is three times more likely that fruits and vegetables in
the United States, imported fruits and vegetables are contaminated,
three times more likely contaminated than those grown in the United
States.
Instead of our passing trade laws that say we do not allow these
pesticides in our country, we will buy your fruits and vegetables but
you are not going to allow those pesticides to be used either, we do
not do that. We simply say come on in, bring them in.
Let me talk about food safety and what is happening. In 1993, 8
percent of fruits and vegetables coming into the United States were
inspected at the border. Today that figure has dropped to one-tenth
that amount. Seven-tenths of 1 percent of fruits and vegetables coming
into the United States are inspected at the border. That means, if my
math is right, that means for every 140 truckloads of broccoli, one
truckload is inspected. For every 140 crates of broccoli, 1 crate is
inspected. For every 140 bunches of broccoli, 1 bunch is inspected.
That does not bring a lot of confidence to the American public, the
consuming public, the eating public, if you will, as we eat the fruits
and vegetables coming from these countries.
When I went to the border, and I am joined by my friend, the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) who is one of the premier experts in
this Congress and in this country in agriculture. She is the ranking
Democrat on the agriculture Committee on Appropriations. She knows food
safety in and out.
Before I yield to her, I want to tell another story about that same
visit to Mexico where I stood at the border and watched the inspection
of broccoli. I mentioned broccoli earlier because it is so in my mind
from watching this inspection.
The FDA inspector who was doing his job, doing his best, he in those
days was inspecting 2 percent of vegetables coming in. Since then,
because of budget cuts that this Congress continues to do on public
health issues and public safety issues, and nothing is more important
to public health and public safety than a clean food supply, he was
inspecting 2 percent then, it is one-third that amount now, about .7
percent.
He took a crate of broccoli off a truck, put it down next to him,
took broccoli in his hand, took a bunch in each hand and slammed it
down on a steel grate and was looking for pests, for insects to fall
out of that broccoli, presumably dead or alive insects. If there had
been insects that were alive that fell out, he would have put the whole
truckload into a machine that would have sprayed the broccoli to make
sure any of the pests were dead. If the pests were already dead, I am
not sure what he would have done.
The FDA has only 750 inspectors, spends $260 million to scrutinize
60,000 food plants, inspect 4\1/2\ million imported food items each
year.
As I said, in 1993 when NAFTA was passed, 8 percent of fruits and
vegetables were inspected. Today that number is down to .7 percent,
seven-tenths of 1 percent of fruits and vegetables are inspected.
We do not have the equipment on the border to check for E. coli. We
do not have the equipment on the border to check for microbial
contaminants. We do not have the equipment on the border to check for
pesticide residues. You cannot hold broccoli and you cannot hold
strawberries at the border for 2 weeks until the lab tests come back.
So basically our food inspections at the border simply do not work
right.
Now, Mr. Speaker, today we had a news conference to discuss this, and
I want to mention one more thing before I yield to my friend, the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
The executive director, Mohammed Akhter, a physician, is the
executive director of the American Public Health Association. He said
in no uncertain words that fast track Trade Promotion Authority will
undoubtedly mean more fruits and vegetables into the United States and
a smaller and smaller and smaller percentage of those fruits and
vegetables inspected. There is no doubt, because we have passed NAFTA
on the cheap. We did nothing for truck safety, nothing for food safety,
nothing for drug interdiction when we passed NAFTA. As traffic and
congested increased 4 times, 400 percent along the border, we did
nothing to prepare. There is nothing to prepare in the Trade Promotion
Authority that the President is asking for to prepare for food safety
inspections. We still are not doing our job. Especially the director of
the American Public Health Association, the highest-ranking public
health official in the country is saying that passage of Trade
Promotion Authority, in his words, will mean more unsafe food in the
United States, more outbreaks of disease, more infectious disease in
the American people.
Last year 5,000 Americans died from food-borne illnesses, not all of
them from imports to be sure, but it is three times more likely imports
cause disease than locally grown produce. Not that we do not need to do
better in both; 5,000 people died of food-borne illnesses, 80,000
people went to the hospital from food-borne illnesses; 300,000 people
were sick from food-borne illnesses.
That is something we should not be proud of. Those numbers are going
up more every single year. Those numbers will keep going up. In the
words of the executive director of American Public Health Association,
those numbers will just sky rocket if we pass Trade Promotion
Authority, simply because we are not prepared at the border to do what
we need to do to preserve food safety for the American public.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Toledo, Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur), who has been to Mexico, who has seen all of these food safety
issues. She, I believe, will talk about some other things with Fast
Track also. I yield to my friend from Lucas County, Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Brown), the very able Member from the Lorain, Ohio region, for asking
me to join him in this Special Order this evening. I do not want to
consume an undue amount of his time, and want to say that we are a
better country and world because of his involvement and leadership on
this issue in the area of trade, jobs, the betterment of the working
conditions of America's workers and workers around the world. It is my
great pleasure to join him this evening.
I am reminded of the former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, who used
to always say, ``You can put lipstick on a pig and call it Monique, but
it is still a pig.''
In thinking about what is called Trade Promotion Authority, I am
reminded of the trade debates we have had here in the Congress where
the administration always changes the name. We know it is Fast Track.
They tried to do that to us before where they bring a trade measure
before the Congress and we have no opportunity to amend it. Through the
Committee on Rules, they take away the constitutional rights of this
Congress to amend and to involve itself in trade-making. It is right in
the Constitution. Pick up a copy of it and read it.
So Fast Track basically handcuffs the Congress of the United States
and takes away our constitutional power to make the trade laws for this
Nation, because it says any president can negotiate an agreement with
59 other countries and not have to negotiate with us. Just bring it up
here and try to fast track it through.
So when that ran into trouble, and the gentleman might recall this,
when we became involved with China, they could not call it Fast Track.
They had something called Most Favored Nation. They could not use Most
Favored Nation, so then they changed the name. They said we will call
it Normal Trade Relations with China. Well, no relations with China are
normal. We are not dealing with a country that even recognizes any
democratic rights, no worker rights, no religious rights, corruption at
every level, state-owned companies, prison labor. And they want to have
normal trade relations. So they changed the name.
Now we are back to, we had the North American Free Trade Agreement,
NAFTA; like a treaty, and we were not allowed to amend. It was either
up or down inside here, and I will talk about that in a second. Now
they are talking about this Fast Track agreement for all of Latin
America, not just Mexico, but adding Brazil and Argentina and a lot of
other countries; but they do not want to call it Fast
[[Page H8829]]
Track. No, we cannot call it what it really is. No amendment by
Congress to a trade agreement negotiated by the President. We are going
to call it Trade Promotion Authority. That sounds like homogenized
milk. Who can be against that?
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, it is interesting that they
have done that, because even though almost every newspaper editor, most
of the large newspapers have supported all of these free trade
agreements, because they are very conservative and very close to many
corporations, and all the reasons newspaper editors do. And even with
all of that and the President being for it and the business leaders
being for this trade agreement, even with all of that, the American
public clearly oppose NAFTA, clearly oppose Most Favored Nation status
with China, clearly oppose what we do in the World Trade Organization,
clearly oppose Fast Track.
Each one of these issues the public opposes. So as the public builds
its understanding of these issues, they always, as my friend from
Toledo points out, they always change the name. So Most Favored Nation
status became PNTR. What is that? Fast Track Authority became Trade
Promotion Authority. What is that? So they continue to try to confuse
the public, and the public always catches up and understands it. You
can bet 3 years from now when they are trying this again after we
defeat it on Thursday, they will try it next year and the year after.
They will come up with a new name because Trade Promotion Authority
will not be a very acceptable name to the public.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
{time} 2130
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, that is correct and the reason that the
public does not support any of these is because they have been hit
directly. That means they have lost their jobs.
In this country, ask the Brachs Candy workers in Chicago where their
jobs are moving, already to Argentina, because of the way in which
sugar is produced in Argentina, and Brachs uses a lot of sugar. So they
cannot have farmers producing sugar, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Brown) talked a lot about foreign policy in agriculture; but because
they can have plantation style sugar production, where workers earn
nothing, where there are no environmental standards, where one does not
have to dispose of field waste in an environmentally responsible way,
and then companies like Wal-Mart, the largest purchaser of Brachs
Candy, can set the price it wants.
That is what is going on in the world. Ask the workers at Phillip's
Electronics in Ottawa, Ohio, whose jobs are being moved to Mexico; ask
the workers at Fruit of the Loom in Mississippi. One can go State by
State, region by region; and one can see the outsourcing of
manufacturing and of agricultural jobs in this country, and it is the
reason that the census bureau and all the income statistics that have
just come out have shown that the wages of ordinary Americans for the
last 10 years have not risen. When one discounts for inflation, people
have been running in place and falling behind and losing their
benefits, as the workers at Enron just did as it went bankrupt this
week and they lost their 401(k) plans and lost everything that they had
worked for.
This trade regime that has been set in place, that disempowers this
Congress to represent our constituents has produced an economic policy
that is drumming down the middle class in this country and forcing
people around the world to work for almost nothing.
I would be pleased to yield.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. As my friend, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur), says, the biggest reason that wages have been stagnant in this
country, understand for the 10 or 20 percent on top, salaries have gone
up, but for most of the public, in the last 10 years, at a time of
supposed economic growth, wages have not risen; and one of the major
reasons for that is that company after company after company simply
threatens to go to Mexico or threatens to go to Haiti or threatens to
go to Honduras or threatens to go to China; and workers then are much
less likely to demand wage increases, and in many times, many cases
will give due wage give-backs so the company will stay there.
York Manufacturing in O'Leary, Ohio, was faced with threat after
threat after threat of moving production to Mexico. Their wages
stagnated for several years. Even then finally the company closed,
moved part of its production to another place in the United States and
most of its production to Mexico. So those wages were stagnant for
several years, then the factory was closed and the wages became zero.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I hope that every worker in America who has
lost their job because of one of these trade agreements will write the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) or myself, will tell us who they are
because we are going to keep a list of who they are because there are
now millions and millions of Americans who have been hurt by these
misguided trade agreements.
I heard some of the prior speakers saying how great this would be for
trade and it is going to create all these great exports and cheap
imports, and the truth of the matter is that is not happening either
way.
First of all, in terms of exports, take Argentina and beef. Argentina
now exports more beef before this authority even voted on, and wait
until after it is passed, than we export to them. We are already a net
importer of beef from Argentina.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. In China, during the PNTR, remember, the Most
Favored Nation Status that we talked about, they changed it to
Permanent Normal Trade Relations to confuse as many people as possible,
during that debate the administration promised, the supporters and the
Republican leadership and others here promised, that American farmers
would sell grain to China. They said China only had, if I recall, some
12 or 13 million metric tons of grain in their storage facilities in
China; they would be importing grain.
What happened? Well, they actually had 50-some million metric tons of
grain stored in China, and China since PNTR passed is now known to be a
grain exporter. So every time we have a trade agreement, the
agriculture community, family farmers like the Snyder family in
Richland County where I used to work as a kid on a family farm, family
farmers like that are promised that they are going to be able to export
more grain, they are going to be able to export more fruits and
vegetables all over the world because these trade agreements create all
kinds of new markets.
The fact is, rarely, if ever, does American agriculture benefit. Some
of the big American grain companies benefit, but almost never do family
farmers benefit, whether they are corn farmers, whether they are tomato
farmers, especially if they are tomato farmers, winter vegetable
farmers, fruit and vegetable farmers in Florida where the price of
tomatoes went up and Mexico has increased their tomato production
exports to the United States and American farmers have gone out of
business and Americans are paying more for tomatoes.
So we get it three ways: we lose jobs, prices often go up, and small
farmers, even in Mexico, are put out of business, also.
Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman raises an excellent point; and if there are
farmers listening to us this evening, this Member of Congress' opinion
is that the answer for increasing income to America's farmers does not
lie in the export market. Rather, it lies in recapturing the market
that we have lost here at home and moving our production to higher
value-added products, including the production of new fuels.
If one looks at what is going on in Minnesota, with the corn growers
in Minnesota, they have raised the price they are getting per bushel by
the production of ethanol in southeastern, southwestern Minnesota by
one dollar. In other words, they are at a low per bushel cost, about a
$1.65, which is lower than we have in Ohio. They have actually added a
dollar, not through exports, but through producing for the people in
their own State; and we have to look toward new uses of agricultural
product by our consumers here in this country; and we here at the
Federal level, including our Department of Agriculture, our Department
of Energy, have to help our farmer reposition in an international
marketplace in which they have been forced to become the low-price
producers, and they are not able to make ends meet.
[[Page H8830]]
They have got it backwards. We ought to be helping our farmers here
at home invest here in order to recapture new markets in value-added
markets here at home. And I wondered if I just might put some facts on
the record because they are so staggering they often get lost in the
debate, but they are important to talk about.
Let us talk about Mexico, and a lot of us were here and fought
against NAFTA. It actually broke my heart because I knew how many
people would be displaced here at home, and in Mexico; the wages had
been cut in half. They had been cut in half. So one can ask who is
making the money off a system where workers like Phillips workers in
Ohio, thousands of them, lose their jobs and those jobs are moved to
Mexico and the people down there, their wages have been cut in half. So
who is making the money off this? That is the real invisible hand. That
is the invisible hand that we need to identify.
If one looks at the U.S. trade balances with Mexico, prior to NAFTA's
passage, the black bars represent trade balances, we had a trade
surplus with Mexico. That means we sent them, sold them, more than they
sold us. The minute NAFTA was signed, our trade balance began to turn
into trade deficits. That means they are selling us more than we are
selling them. That is a negative on the international trade ledger; and
it is a very, very serious one.
I wanted to point out a couple of other points. It is not only a
deficit. It is a growing huge deficit. Prior to NAFTA's passage in
1993, we had a $51.7 billion surplus with Mexico. That has now turned
into a $24 billion annual record deficit. With Canada, which was also a
party to NAFTA, we had before NAFTA a problem already. We had a $10
billion trade deficit with Canada. Guess what, since NAFTA passed we
have a $50 billion trade deficit with Canada, the worst in the history
of this continent.
So NAFTA has really had a reversal of fortune for our country and in
one very important sector, and I just want to look at the automotive
industry for a second. They said this would be just terrific for jobs
in America; we would create all these jobs. What we are doing is parts
are being sent down to Mexico from this country, things are being done
to them, they are being stamped, they are being bent, they are being
this and that. They are put in cars that are sent then from Mexico to
the United States. So prior to NAFTA's passage, we already had a stream
of production where production was being relocated from our country not
to sell cars to Mexico's consumers, because they do not earn enough to
buy them, but they back-doored the production into Mexico in order to
pay the workers almost nothing and then send those cars up here.
In fact, the most popular car, the PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser costs about
$10,000 to make. Not a single one of those PT Cruisers is made in the
United States of America. Every single one of them is made in Mexico,
and when one goes down to Mexico, how many Mexicans do we see driving
PT Cruisers? We do not see any. Why? They cannot afford them. They are
sent up here, and the amount of automotive trade has just tripled
between Mexico and the United States. Those are jobs that used to be
here. They are now being made in Mexico, and our trade deficit in
automotive has just exploded.
What it is, it is the relocation of production. So that is NAFTA,
that is Mexico, and Trade Promotion Authority. We are going to see the
same with Brazil, the same with Argentina, any country simply because
they do not have systems of governance, and their economic systems are
not developed in a way that ordinary working people can benefit from
this kind of investment.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, would the gentlewoman yield about
autos for one second?
Ms. KAPTUR. I would be pleased to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I heard the gentlewoman say many
years ago, before I made my first trip to Mexico to look at sort of
what was happening in these industrial plants, that when one goes to
Mexico and went to an auto plant where Mexican workers are making 90
cents an hour, roughly, that when one visited a Mexican auto plant it
looked a lot like an American auto plant.
I remember the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) said this years
ago, that for the first time, that its technology was up to date; the
plant sometimes was even more modern than American plants, they are
newer; the workers were productive, they were working hard and the
floors were clean. Everything looked just like an American auto plant
except for one thing: the Mexican auto plant did not have a parking lot
because the workers could not afford to buy the cars.
One can go all the way around the world to Malaysia and go to the
Motorola plant, and the workers cannot afford to buy the cell phones.
One can come back to the New World, to Haiti and go to a Disney plant
and the workers cannot afford to buy the toys or one can go back to
China into a Nike plant and the workers cannot afford to buy the shoes.
The tragedy of these trade agreements is that workers are creating
wealth for large corporations, and they are not sharing in the wealth
they create. They are paid barely enough to live on. They will never be
in the middle class, and as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur)
said, they will never be able to buy American products. That is why the
arrow always goes one way.
We send industrial components to Mexico. As a friend of ours, Harley
Shaken, an economist in California, pointed out, they are industrial
tourists. These components go from the United States to Mexico, almost
like a San Diego teenager going to Tijuana for the weekend. The
components go to Mexico for a couple of days; they are industrial
tourists. They get assembled into cars and they come back into the
United States. Everybody except for the large company loses. American
workers lose their jobs; Mexican workers are paid subsistence wages and
can never get off the bottom.
Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman raises an excellent point because those are
not real exports. They are U-turn goods. The gentleman is right. They
are industrial tourists. They do not really create real wealth. They
are merely there to try to exploit cheap labor, and this is happening
all over the world, and the American people know it intuitively because
when they go shop, it does not matter what one buys, it is all made
someplace else.
In fact, trying to find something made in America is now an
exception, rather than the rule; and that is draining out of our
economy in a very invisible way to the ordinary person's experience the
money that should be there for health benefits, the money that should
be there for retirement benefits, the money that should be available in
local regions to support the construction of schools, all these tax
abatements that are being handed out left and right in all the 50
States to try to attract some of this investment that is moving to
other locales around the world. They are not paying their fair share of
property taxes and of taxes for education and all of the sudden
education is being Federalized simply because local regions do not have
the money to pay for the schools.
There are lots of costs for what we are seeing; and one of the
biggest costs is America's image abroad, and let me give one example.
Recently, I had a most compelling set of visitors in my district from
the nation of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, with
over a hundred million people; and these were women workers. They did
not speak English, but they came with a translator, and what did they
do? Every hour, each of them makes 320 hats, ball caps and T-shirts,
for places like Ohio State, the University of Michigan, all of our Big
10 schools, all these football teams and all around our country. For
each hat that these women make, they are paid one and a half cents.
When those hats land in the United States, according to U.S. customs
forms, the total cost of the material, the labor and the transportation
is $1.
{time} 2145
The average cost of one of those caps at any one of our universities
is over $17. So you ask yourself, who is making the money?
And what is going on with this kind of system is that the very big
investors around the world, and they have always been there, it was
true for women
[[Page H8831]]
in the textile industry from the time of the Lancashire Mills in
England, investment moves to an area where they can access cheap labor,
and it is up to those in political life to hold them accountable for
the communities in which they exist. They have no automatic right to be
here. We allow them in our system to be here, and they had best respect
the political system we have created because it is not continued by
magic. It is continued because of the set of values and beliefs that we
hold as a people.
With a nation like China with over $1.250 billion people, and we only
have 270 million people in this country, when there is this kind of
trade deficit, and that is what this chart represents, U.S. imports
from China exceed our exports there by 6 times, by 6 times, the amount
of trade deficit in any 1 year that we are amassing with China is over
$50 billion annually. That is $50 billion that is escaping communities
in this country, workers' paychecks, workers' benefit checks, the taxes
that would go into supporting our educational system, and it is getting
worse.
The trade agreement that was signed with China has not made our trade
accounts improve. They have only gotten worse every single year. So
whether it is Mexico, whether it is China, whether it is Bangladesh,
whether it is Argentina, it does not matter. The system is the same
system.
I hear President Bush talk a whole lot about evildoers. People can be
evildoers, but also economic systems and political systems can be
evildoers. They can do harm in a very, very real way. Those women from
Bangladesh came to my community and told me that they had to work 7
days a week, these young girls, 18, 19, and 20 years old. They would
work 12-15 hours a day, sometimes 20 hours a day, sometimes 48 hours
straight because they had to meet their production quota or their
company would lose its contract. They would literally curl up and sleep
under their sewing machine for 2 or 3 hours, and then they would get up
and sew again. None of them were beyond the age of 29, and one girl was
fired because she got a gray hair and they said, she is getting old,
get rid of her. They are treated like dirt.
This is not the image that I want our country to portray
internationally. And to most Americans, these are hidden activities
that they never get a chance to see. But I hope retailers, some of whom
are listening tonight, please, develop some conscience. Your actions
have consequence. There is a moral order here that we ought to uphold.
And the economic system that you are a party to does not treat people
with respect. It is not just commodities you are buying, you are buying
a chain of production, and there are people at every juncture along the
chain, and the invisible hand should not be invisible any more.
If I might, I wanted to share again a chart here that shows the long
history of our country and what has been happening with these trade
deficits year after year after year, lopping probably about 25 percent
off of our economic prowess in any given year because of the extent of
it, over $300 billion. And back in, oh, 1974, and then moving into the
1980s, we began to move into deficit cumulatively with all these
countries, and it has gotten worse and worse and worse every single
year.
Now, some people talk about the budget deficit, where the amount of
tax revenue that we take in as a country is not enough to pay for all
our bills, our defense expenditures, our Social Security, and all the
other things we have to pay for. Well, there is another deficit, and
that is the trade deficit. It is not talked about a whole lot, and
people often confuse the two, but the trade deficit is another number
that is terribly important. Because when we have this deficit, how do
we finance it? When other countries and companies make money off this
marketplace, where do they put those earnings? They have been buying
the U.S. Government debt.
When I first came to Congress, 12 percent of our debt was owned by
foreign interests. In other words, every year we would have to pay them
interest on the loans that they would make to us. Today, that has gone
up to 42 percent of our Federal debt is owned by foreign interests. And
every year we have to pay those interests, over $300 billion a year
now, to pay for their loans to us.
So for the younger generation, this is not a stable situation in
which to leave the Republic. If anything goes wrong in the
international marketplace, collapse in Japan, collapse in Germany,
whatever might happen in terms of the economy, the question becomes:
Where are other investors going to be putting their money? How secure
is the United States? Politically, yes, we are very secure; but
economically we have some pretty big gaping holes in our hull and we
best take care of it.
I think that people like my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Brown), and myself, those who will oppose us this week will say, well,
you are not for trade. That is absolutely wrong. That is not even the
issue. Those people who do not want to talk about the real issue will
say that against us. But, in fact, we represent the northern part of
Ohio. There is no part of America that trades more and is more
dependent on free enterprise and the free market than northern Ohio,
because we are heavily automotive, we are heavily agricultural, we have
major ports, seaports, we have 24-hour-a-day air service out of our
communities. We are the major spine of industrial America and also the
crossroads of the Midwest.
Seventy-four percent of the American population is within a day's
drive from my district alone. We are centrally located in our country.
We must trade. But we want to trade in a system that respects
democratic rights and freedom and the right of ordinary people to
better themselves by the work that they do.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank my friend from Toledo. What she said about
trading with democracies is so very important.
Last year, during the debate on Most Favored Nation status with
China, what was euphemistically relabeled PNTR, executives and CEOs who
normally do not bother with workaday Members of Congress, they normally
only go to the leaders in each party, the Speaker, the minority leader,
whatever; but CEOs were roaming the halls of Congress and repeating the
mantra, we want access to China's 1 billion consumers; we want to sell
our products to China's 1 billion consumers. But what they really cared
about was access to China's 1 billion workers, who could work and sew
those Ohio State baseball caps and those T-shirts from the University
of Toledo or from Oberlin College or wherever. They wanted access to
those workers who would work, had no choice really, would work for a
few cents an hour.
In the last 10 years, and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur)
mentioned buying products, trading with democracies, what has happened
in the last 10 years is western investors, investors from France and
England and Germany and the United States and Canada, they are not very
interested anymore in investing in democratic developing countries,
countries that are struggling but that are democratic and developing,
still pretty poor but democratic; they are interested in trading and
investing in developing authoritarian countries.
In other words, they are not all that interested in Taiwan anymore,
because Taiwan, again on Saturday, had a free election, perhaps the
third free election in Chinese history. So Taiwan is clearly a working
democracy. It is successful. They have done all kinds of great things.
One of the great success stories in the world in the last two decades.
They are not so interested in investing in Taiwan, but they are much
more interested in investing in Singapore because they have a
totalitarian government there.
They are not much interested in investing in India, but they are very
much interested in investing in China. Why? Because China's workforce
is docile, it does not talk back, it is an authoritarian country with
no democratic elections, with no ability to speak out, with no ability
to change jobs, and with no ability to organize a trade union.
And that is really why the World Trade Organization, which once met
in Seattle in 1999 and had all kinds of demonstrations and all kinds of
people speaking out in opposition to these policies, that is why they
went to a city called Doha, the capital of a country called Qatar. The
trade ministers decided enough of this openness, enough of this
freedom, enough of this
[[Page H8832]]
people assembling and protesting and speaking out and having elections.
They went to a country where they like to practice their business. They
went to a country with no free elections; a country without the freedom
of religion, unless you are publicly a Muslim, you are not allowed to
worship any other religion; with no freedom of assembly; with no
freedom of speech; with no free elections; with no freedoms at all that
we are used to.
That is really what our trade policy has turned into. Our investors
want to go to China where they have slave labor, where they have child
labor, where there are no elections, where their workers are docile and
do not talk back, rather than going to a free country where workers
organize, where the environment might be protected, where worker rights
are protected.
That is why many of these countries leave the United States to go to
China. In this country, they pay a Social Security tax. That money is
gone when they go to China. They pay into Medicare. That money is gone
when these jobs go to China. They have to keep the environment clean in
their businesses here. Do not have to do that in China. They have to
pay living wages in this country. They do not have to do that in China.
They have to have worker protections in the workplace. They do not have
to do that in China.
Why are companies investing in China rather than staying in the
United States? Why are they investing in China rather than India?
Because India is a democracy, China is not. Why not in Taiwan? Because
it is a democracy, Singapore is not. That is why it is so important
that we in fact support trade.
My colleague and I both support trade, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) and myself, and so do all of us that are against Trade
Promotion Authority. We promote trade, we support trade, we advocate
trade, but we want to see trade with democratic countries where workers
can share in the wealth they create. Not a place like China, where the
workers at Nike cannot afford to buy shoes; not a place like Haiti
where the workers at Disney cannot afford to buy the toys they make;
not a place like Malaysia, where the workers for Motorola cannot afford
to buy the cell phones they make.
We want workers to share in the wealth they create. They will then
join the middle class and buy American products, and we will see both
countries raise their living standards. That is what trade is all
about.
Ms. KAPTUR. While the gentleman was talking about democracy and about
trying to have a trade regime that uses the power of the democratic
republics of the world and the free enterprise systems with the rule of
law that have developed over two centuries, and then invite in the
nations that would wish to advance, to have a system that would use the
strength of the democratic republics and bring the others forward
rather than pit them against one another, which is what is happening
now, I could not help but think of one of the opponents who often comes
to the floor and speaks against the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and
myself, who usually says, well, we have got to trade because trade
brings freedom. Trade brings freedom.
They use that phony argument. And I say, yes, we can have free trade
among free people, but if we look at what is happening in the Middle
East right now, there is not any set of nations that we have traded
more with as a country than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab
Emirates. Why? Because we are totally and stupidly dependent on
imported petroleum.
Now, if trade had brought freedom, they would have the most lively
democracies in the world. But trillions and trillions of our oil
dollars, every time we go to the gas pump and we buy petroleum, we buy
gasoline, half of the money we spend goes offshore to places like Saudi
Arabia and Nigeria. And now they are drilling in Sudan.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Right. Trade and economic activity did not bring
freedom to Nazi Germany, to Fascist Italy. It has not brought freedom
in any way, all the trade and supposed prosperity, to Communist China.
And, as my colleague points out, it has not brought freedom to the
Middle East, where we have all kinds of economic exchanges back and
forth with Saudi Arabia.
Ms. KAPTUR. I have a story I want to put on the record. I know
President Bush is very high in the polls, and I suppose one would be
struck by lightning if they were to try to say anything that presents a
different truth, but I have to present that truth because I personally
experienced it.
As my colleague knows, a few months ago, before the terrorist attacks
here in our country, President Bush brought the President of Mexico to
my district, the Ninth District of Ohio. And one of the reasons he was
brought in there was because, I am sure, President Bush would like to
learn more about why people in our region, just like people in every
region of America, oppose these trade agreements. So he brought in
President Fox, and I had a chance to ride out there on Air Force One
with both Presidents and had a chance to talk to them.
I had asked the White House, and I presented President Bush with a
letter on the airplane confirming what I had called about, saying, you
know, Mr. President, you and I do not agree on NAFTA, and many, many,
millions of people have been hurt by NAFTA.
{time} 2200
But we have to figure out a way to improve it and to make it better.
I would be willing to travel with you from any point in America where
jobs have been lost to the places in Mexico where those jobs have been
transplanted, and to talk to the workers in both locations with both
Presidents and with Members of Congress and to try to figure out how do
we work together as a continent in order to treat workers with the
respect they deserve, whether in the industrial workplace or the
agriculture hinterlands.
When we got on the airplane and he talked to us, I said, Mr.
President, I proposed the trip and that we amend NAFTA to create an
organization on an inter-continental basis for working life in the
Americas. I said we could have a forum to deal with some of these
poignant and deeply difficult and complex labor and environmental
issues.
He said, no, he did not have a chance to read the letter I sent his
staff a week before. I said, Mr. President, here is another copy of the
letter. And I handed another copy to President Fox, and I had sent it
to the Mexican embassy. President Bush said, It looks kind of thick. Is
it single spaced? That is what he said to me.
I said it is single spaced, but the paper is folded. That may be why
it looks a little thick. I said, I would appreciate if you would read
it. He said it is single spaced, I have to use my glasses, and I cannot
do it now.
I said, Mr. President, I appreciate an answer because I do not think
anything that I am proposing is very radical. I did not get an answer
from the White House. I can say September 11 happened and the world
shifted, but I did receive a reply from President Fox.
Last night at the White House Christmas party, I occasioned to talk
to President Bush, wishing him and his wife and all those who are
involved in the war God's blessing.
I said, Mr. President, I do have to mention one item: you never did
answer me on the letter from the airplane; remember we talked about it?
He said oh, yes, and he kind of winked and smirked a little bit, and he
said it must have gotten lost in the shuffle. It was not even said with
seriousness, and it really hurt me because that is how workers are
being treated. They are being lost in the shuffle, in this country, in
Mexico, in places like Bangladesh. We are not fully conscious; we are
not paying attention. We do not want to pay attention to the economic
system that is hurting so many and not treating them with the human
dignity that they deserve.
So much of world history is related to economics. I would say most
wars, 74 percent, 75 percent of the reason we get in wars relates to
economics. The history of this country, the Civil War, the pains of
which and the scars of which we are still healing today, what did it
have to do with? It had to do with whether or not we would extend the
plantation system of the South to the West, and the plantation system
with the slave labor with the kind of indentured servitude that
characterized economic activity up until that point. It was about
economics.
Even now to a great extent, in my opinion, the unrest and the hatred
of so
[[Page H8833]]
many in the Middle East toward us is due to the fact that because we
have been trading with undemocratic systems that have not shared that
vast wealth with the ordinary people of those countries, figured out
some more representative system of government where all parts of the
country could have roads and hospitals and children would have the
ability to go to school, not just because you are the king's cousin or
because you are Sunni as opposed to a Shiite, that there are divisions
that do not get full representation, economics underpins so much of the
trouble in the world today.
Mr. Speaker, I guess that is the reason we fight so hard because we
know if we do not do it right in the first place, we are going to get a
reaction down the road that will be like a boomerang.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, one of the joys of this job, serving
as one of 435 Members of this body that we call the House of
Representatives, is that we are at an interesting time in our history.
We are clearly the wealthiest Nation on Earth, the most powerful
militarily. We clearly are a country that has the most opportunity to
do good in the world. One of the ways we do that is using our economic
prowess in trade agreements; we could do this, to lift up standards
around the world.
Mr. Speaker, that means when we trade with Mexico, for instance, and
I think we should trade with Mexico and do a lot of trading with
Mexico, rather than pulling our truck safety standards down to Mexico's
level or pulling our food safety standards down to Mexico's level, or
pulling our safe drinking water and clean air and anti-pollution
standards down to Mexico's level, that we can instead pull their
standards up. We have the ability to do that. We can write trade
agreements that say when an American company invests in Mexico, they
have to dispose of their waste in the same way there that the
Environmental Protection Agency makes them do in this country.
These companies, the chemical companies, the steel companies, the
automobile companies, they do not do the right things in the
environment in the United States because they are being kind, they are
doing the right things because it is Federal and State law, and local
public health department regulation that they dispose of their wastes
in a certain way that keeps the environment cleaner and healthier.
We could say to American companies in Mexico that they have to follow
the same environmental standards. Pesticides that we banned here are
not made and sold to other countries by American companies. We could
say in China, sure, we will trade with you in China. We will be glad to
buy and sell and trade with the People's Republic of China; but in
return no more slave labor, no more child labor, no more selling
nuclear technology to Pakistan, no more shooting missiles at Taiwan
because they are holding a free election.
We are a wealthy enough country to say if you want access to us, you
cannot behave certain ways. If China wants to sell their products into
the United States, and clearly they do because the U.S. buys 40 percent
of China's export, and they cannot say we will sell it somewhere else,
because they are already trying to sell as much as they can everywhere
else. If we say we are not going to buy your goods anymore if you keep
using child labor and if you exploit 15- and 16- and 17-year-old girls
and break their spirits and bodies and souls, and throw them out on the
streets when they are 22 and make them work in the sex trade and give
them no other choice, we could do that; and that is why it is so
disappointing that we pass trade agreements that do exactly the
opposite.
Instead of lifting up environmental standards around the world,
lifting up wages around the world and lifting up food and drug safety
and auto safety, instead of doing that we are bringing our own
standards down. As wages stagnate in this country because of threats to
move abroad, as jobs are lost, as we weaken public health laws in this
country closer to what they are in other countries, we are giving away
so much that we fought for in this country for 100 years.
I have a pin that I wear that is a depiction of a canary in a bird
cage. One hundred years ago mine workers used to take a canary down
into the mines and if the canary died, workers got out of the mines. In
those days, a baby boy born in the United States could live to be about
46; a girl could live to be about 48, the average life expectancy.
Those workers had no protection from the government. Their only
protection was the canary they took down in the mines.
But because of progressive government fighting against the gold
mining companies, the coal companies, against other wealthy, rich
advantaged interests in this country, we were able to pass minimum
wages laws, worker safety laws, pure food laws, automobile safety laws,
and all of the things that enabled people to live 30 years longer,
enabled people to live better, longer lives through Medicare, through
Social Security, all of the things that we in this body and in State
legislatures and public groups and citizens' organizations have done to
make the standard of living better in this country.
Mr. Speaker, I do not want to give that up as a Nation. That is why
we need to defeat Trade Promotion Authority and write trade agreements
that lift people up, not pull people down. That is the American way.
When U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick, appointed by the
President, when he says those of us like the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) and the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), when we oppose these trade promotion
authorities, we are not helping them in the war against terrorism,
implying that people like myself and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) are soft on terrorism, implying that people like the gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) are a
little less patriotic because we are not supporting the administration
on these agreements. The fact is the right side of American values is
to lift people up around the world, not pull people down.
Mr. Speaker, it is important, as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) and I discussed, that Members vote against trade promotion
authority.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to
join him this evening in our great efforts to defeat Trade Promotion
Authority and move toward more democratic trade agreements for the
world.
____________________