[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 19 (Thursday, February 28, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1338-S1340]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNFAIR TRADE
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Senator Daschle, the majority leader, was
in the Chamber today talking about a decision that will be made in the
coming days by the Bush administration on the subject of trade disputes
that exist with respect to the American steel industry.
What is all this about? It is that the steel industry, as with many
other American industries, has been under assault. It has been under
assault by unfair trade coming from abroad, products being dumped in
our country into our marketplace below their acquisition cost,
undercutting our domestic producers. This is unfair trade. It is trade
that violates our trade laws. In fact, an International Trade
Commission investigation has recently determined that the flood of
foreign steel has significantly hurt the U.S. steel industry.
The question the President will decide next week is: What will be the
remedy? What will be done about it? If our steel industry is being
threatened and assaulted by unfair trade and it is closing plants,
going into bankruptcy, laying off workers, what is the remedy? That is
the question this administration will answer next Wednesday.
My hope is they will answer this question in an aggressive way. My
hope is they will say, we intend to stand up for American steel. My
hope is they will say, we intend to stand up for all American producers
when confronted with unfair trade. How do you stand up for producers
when confronted with unfair trade? You take action against those
perpetrating that unfair trade against our producers.
We have something like 10,000 steelworkers in Washington, DC, today
who are here demonstrating the point that they are losing their jobs
and their companies are going bankrupt. This is about them and their
families and their future. They are saying: Give us some fairness in
international trade. Stand up for our interests.
It is not steelworkers saying, we want our country to be
protectionist. It is not them saying, we want to build a wall around
our country and prevent imports from coming in. It is a group of
workers who have come to Washington to say: When we are confronted with
unfair trade, we expect our Government to be in our corner. We expect
our Government to stand with us.
It is interesting that the steel dispute is very much like a dispute
we have with Canada on the issue of wheat. The North Dakota wheat
producers, with a 301 case, brought a trade case against Canada. That
case, after investigation, was recently resolved by the United States
Trade Representative saying, yes, the Canadian Wheat Board is a state-
sponsored monopoly that engages in unfair trade practices that harm
United States wheat growers.
If we have decided Canada is guilty of unfair trade with respect to
wheat, what have we done about it? USTR's answer was: We are not going
to have any remedies. If we provide relief at this moment, it will
violate NAFTA and it will violate our World Trade Organization
commitments. Therefore, even though we have decided Canada is guilty of
unfair trade practices that injure American farmers, we essentially
will do nothing at the moment; we will instead take this to the WTO.
That means that our great grandchildren, if we are lucky, may see
action by the WTO. Although they probably won't see it because the WTO
considers and takes action behind closed doors. And anyway, it is
likely not to take much action at all; if it does, it will be years in
the future.
I have talked about the steel dispute and the wheat dispute. In both
cases, our producers have been told that those who are competing
against us, foreign producers, are doing so unfairly, injuring our
workers and our farmers. Yet it is very hard to get relief, to get this
country to stand up for its producers.
There are some real storm clouds on the horizon. Our trade deficit
keeps rising year after year. The more trade agreements we have, the
higher the trade deficit.
This chart shows what has happened. We have the GATT Tokyo Round, and
then we have the Uruguay Round, the WTO agreement, and then the NAFTA.
We can see what has happened to the trade deficit--up, up, up, over a
long period of time.
The U.S. Constitution has something to say about international trade.
Article I, section 8, says: The Congress shall have the power to
regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States,
and with the Indian tribes.
That means the authority vested by the U.S. Constitution on matters
affecting international trade rests here--not at the White House, but
in the Congress, and only here. Yet to listen to Republican and
Democratic administrations over the last 30 or 40 years, you realize
that, by and large, they think they are the ones in control of trade.
Administrations empower negotiators to go out and work out trade
agreements that they bring back to the Congress under a provision
called fast track. Fast track allows administrations to tie the hands
of Members of Congress behind their backs and say: Here is the trade
agreement we negotiated--mostly in secret--and you have no right to
offer any amendment to change any of it at any time. That is fast
track.
Fast track is fundamentally undemocratic. I voted against it in the
past. I would not support giving it to President Clinton; I will not
support giving it to President Bush. Go negotiate treaties, if you
wish--but good ones. If you do, the Congress will approve them. If you
don't, they deserve to be changed or killed.
Let me talk for a bit about some of these treaties. We've had fast
track in the past; fast track was something given to previous
Presidents, including President Reagan and the first President Bush. We
negotiated an agreement with Canada, and the agreement with Canada went
through the House Ways and Means Committee. I was serving in the House
at the time. The vote for the United States-Canada trade agreement was
34 to 1. I cast the lone vote against it. There were 34 for it, 1
against.
I believed I was right at the time, and events certainly demonstrated
that was the case. We took a small deficit with Canada and doubled it
very quickly. They dumped grain into this country, injuring our
farmers, and we have had trouble ever since. Do you know why we could
not do anything about the provisions in that agreement that traded away
the interests of family farmers? Because you can't offer amendments to
trade agreements with fast track. So the administration said: Here it
is. We negotiated it and, by the way, we had secret side agreements we
will not tell you about. You accept it, yes or no. If you don't like
it, there can be no amendments because fast track ties your hands
behind your back. That is what happened with that trade agreement.
Not long after that, I drove up to Canada with a man named Earl in a
12-year-old, orange, 2-ton truck. The truck was carrying 150 bushels of
U.S. durum wheat. All the way to the Canadian border, we saw Canadian
18-wheelers coming into this country, hauling Canadian wheat into this
country.
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There was 18-wheeler after 18-wheeler. In fact, it was a windy day,
and even though they had tarps on their trucks, the grain kept spilling
off, and it was hitting our windshield all the way to the border. We
had that 12-year-old, little, 2-ton orange truck. We arrived at the
border having seen dozens of Canadian trucks hauling grain into this
country. We were stopped at the border and told: You can't take that
150 bushels of U.S. durum wheat into Canada. We asked: Why not? They
said: Because we won't let you in.
All the way to the border, we saw them coming into our country, but
we could not take the product of one little orange truck into Canada.
Is that fair trade? I don't think so.
The administration turned from Canada to Mexico and did a trade
agreement with Mexico called NAFTA. We wrapped Canada and Mexico
together. NAFTA sure didn't work. I voted against that as well. We had
a very small trade surplus before NAFTA, and we turned that into a very
big deficit. Now we are up to our neck in troubles with NAFTA. We have
troubles trying to get high-fructose corn syrup in, we have unfair
trade with potatoes--you name it.
After we negotiated to reduce tariffs from United States goods going
into Mexico, the Mexicans devalued their peso 50 percent, which meant
that all the work done to get rid of the 10- or 15-percent tariffs
didn't mean anything. They obliterated that by simply devaluing the
peso.
What else are we facing? I will give you some examples. Automobiles.
We don't make automobiles in North Dakota, but this is a national
issue. Let me show you this chart. Absurdities in trade. Last year, we
had automobiles coming into the United States from Korea. Last year, we
imported into the United States 570,000 automobiles from the country of
Korea--570,000 cars. Do you know how many cars the United States sent
to Korea? One thousand, seven hundred. I will say that again. We had
570,000 Korean cars driven off boats to be sold in the United States.
Going the other way, we had 1,700 United States cars into Korea. Do you
know why? If you try to sell an American car in Korea, they will find
all kinds of ways to stop you. Not just tariffs, but all kinds of non-
tariff barriers, like intimidation of potential buyers with the threat
of a tax audit. They want to just ship their cars to our country, and
make it one-way trade. If you are somebody working for a car company in
this country, you have a right to ask: Who on Earth is minding the
store if you let this go on? Is this fair trade? Clearly, no. Somebody
ought to stand up on behalf of workers in this country and say we are
not going to let that happen.
What about beef to Japan? Every pound of American beef going to Japan
has a 38.5-percent tariff on it, and that is 12 years after a beef
agreement with Japan. Every pound of T-bone steak going to Tokyo has a
38.5-percent tariff. That is absurd.
Right now, we are fighting and trying to get soybeans into China
because they are trying to squeeze the neck of the bottle, just after
we had a bilateral trade agreement with China. The list goes on and on
and on.
We have a trade agreement with Canada, as I mentioned. Do you know
what happens with Canada? They move sugar from Brazil into this
country, in contravention of American law, in what they call stuffed
molasses. Then they take the sugar out of the molasses and send the
molasses back, and they do it again and call it stuffed molasses. It is
done every day. That is fundamentally wrong. Yet nobody is willing to
stand up on behalf of producers.
Winston Churchill said that when he was a kid, he got into a debate
with Atlee in Parliament. As the story went--it was an aggressive
debate--he told Atlee: When I was a child, my parents took me to the
carnival, and they had a sideshow. At the sideshow, they had these
canvas flaps that described what wonderful, extraordinary, outrageous
things you were going to see in the sideshow. One of them advertised
the boneless wonder--a man apparently born without bones, if you can
imagine.
Churchill said: My parents felt I was far too tender in age to be
taken into a sideshow to see the boneless wonder. Then, standing on the
floor of the Parliament when he was in this debate with Atlee, he said:
It has taken 50 years, but I can finally put my eyes on another
boneless wonder.
When I think about the boneless wonder, I think about the people who
are supposed to be negotiating trade for us and enforcing it and
standing up for American interests. They should be working hard on
behalf of farmers, steelworkers, auto workers, and so many others in
this country, who are part now of a global economy, demanding on their
behalf that the rules of trade be fair.
We had a hearing in Congress in which we heard about conditions under
which carpets or rugs were made for export to this country. We heard
about warehouses where young children, 9, 10, 11, and 12 years old, are
using needles to make these carpets that will be sent to Pittsburgh,
Los Angeles, and Denver--into the American marketplace. Locked in these
warehouses, the children had gunpowder put on the tips of their
fingers, and it was lit with a match; their fingertips were burned so
they would scar, and these 10- and 12-year-old kids, with scarred
fingertips, could then use these needles with impunity, making these
carpets, and it would never hurt their fingers because they were now
scarred sufficiently to be able to resist the needle's sting. That is
how they got more productivity out of 10- and 12-year-old kids. They
were making carpets that were being sent to this country.
The question is: Is that something we ought to allow? Is that fair
trade? Is that a product we want on American markets? The answer is no,
it is not fair trade. We have the marketplace being flooded with
products--the products of forced child labor anywhere in the world. It
is not fair trade for someone to be paid 16 cents an hour to make shoes
in a factory somewhere, and ship it to Pittsburgh, and compete with
somebody working in a factory in this country who would be required to
be paid some sort of a living wage--and to work in a factory that will
not pollute the water and air.
We fought 75 years in this country for those basic conditions. Now we
have people saying, let's pole-vault over those issues, and we will go
to Bangladesh, or to Indonesia--we will go someplace where we don't
have to worry so much about those restrictions, and we will ship the
product back in to Toledo, or Buffalo, or Los Angeles.
The global economy needs to define fair trade. We in the U.S.
Government need to define for ourselves when and under what conditions
we will stand up for American producers. Or is there not a case at all
where our Government is willing to stand up for American producers and
demand fair trade?
This is an issue that is not going to go away. We will have the
debate over so-called trade protection authority. That is a euphemism.
You know, in this town, when something becomes controversial, you just
change the name.
Fast track became TPA, trade promotion authority. But a hog by any
other name is a hog. We are talking about fast track.
In the coming weeks, the President will ask for fast track. I keep
coming back to article I, section 8, which says that:
The Congress shall have Power To . . . regulate Commerce
with foreign Nations. . . .
I just ask all of those who are concerned about the decision being
made next Wednesday on steel, to ask whether the next group of trade
negotiators should go out, lock the door, keep the American public out,
negotiate a deal, and then come back to the Congress and say: you have
no business suggesting any change under any circumstance to the deal we
made.
My hope is we could just once find an administration, Democrat or
Republican--it does not matter to me--who would hire trade negotiators
and have the will and the backbone and the strength to stand up on
behalf of American producers and demand fair trade.
I am so tired of these mountains of Jell-O that serve in public
office and negotiate incompetent agreements, sell away the interests of
American producers, and then say to us: Oh, by the way, you are
correct; this trade is unfair, but we elect not to do anything about
it. That is just wrong. I guess on every occasion I have spoken about
this, I have suggested--mostly in jest--we ought to have jerseys for
our trade negotiators. We have them for the
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Olympians and they can look down and know they are for the USA. What
about jerseys for trade negotiators so that occasionally when they are
in meetings, behind those locked doors, they can look down and say: Oh,
yes, that's right, now I remember for whom I am negotiating.
Most of our trade policy has been negotiated as foreign policy. Most
of it has been eggheaded foreign policy now almost a quarter of a
century. For the first quarter century after the Second World War, it
was all foreign policy. We just granted trade concessions everywhere,
and it did not matter because we were bigger, tougher, and we could
compete with anybody around the world with one hand tied behind our
back. So our trade policy was almost exclusively foreign policy. Then
we had competitors who developed into shrewd, tough, international
competitors in the global economy, and we are still running around
giving away concessions, tying our hands behind our back, negotiating
agreements we will not enforce, and shame on us for doing that.
This country needs an economy with a manufacturing base. We cannot
remain a world-class economy unless we have a manufacturing base. We
need good jobs that pay well, that sustain a strong manufacturing base
in our country.
There are those in this town who divide the trade debate into two
thoughtless categories: You are either a smart, incisive person who can
see over the horizon and understand that global trade is benefitting
our country, or if you say anything at all on the other side of the
issue, you are some xenophobic stooge who does not get it, has never
gotten it, and wants to build walls around America to keep foreign
products out. Of course, that is a thoughtless way to describe relative
positions on trade. There is a much better way to describe this
country's trade interests, in my judgment, and that is to say this
country ought to be willing, ready, and able to compete anywhere in the
world with any product as long as the competition is fair.
The doctrine of comparative advantage is a fair doctrine, in my
judgment. If someone can make a product better than we can, then by all
means let's find a way to acquire that product from a country that has
a natural advantage. But the impediments to fair trade have very little
to do with comparative advantage; they have to do with political
advantage. They have to do with countries that decided they do not want
minimum wages; that think it is fine to have 16-year-old kids working
16 hours a day being paid 16 cents an hour; they think that is fine.
This country fought 75 years to say it is not fine, and the American
marketplace ought not be open to any and all schemes of production
around the globe, regardless of how inhumane and unjust they might be.
It is not acceptable to us as consumers and ought not be acceptable to
us as public officials who have an obligation to stand up for American
producers, for fair trade.
Mr. President, that is a long meandering road to describe the
decision next Wednesday that this administration has to make on the
subject of steel. My hope is that the administration will make the
right decision. I have not seen an administration in some 20 years that
has a record in international trade that I think benefits this country
and its producers in a way that is fair.
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