[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 49 (Friday, April 26, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3461-S3464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             ANDEAN TRADE PREFERENCE ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is a cloture motion has 
been filed on the motion to proceed on the Andean trade bill; is that 
correct?

[[Page S3462]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. DORGAN. And a cloture vote will occur on what date?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture vote will occur on the next day of 
session.
  Mr. DORGAN. I will spend a few moments today saying a few words about 
the trade bill. We are now going to segue into a big debate about 
international trade. It comes by way of the Andean trade initiative, 
which will be amended with the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, and 
then amended further, I understand, by something called Trade Promotion 
Authority, or TPA. TPA is a euphemism for what has traditionally been 
called fast-track trade authority. I am opposed to it, and I will 
describe why and what it has meant to our country in recent years.
  The Constitution of the United States has something to say about 
international trade, at article I, section 8: ``The Congress shall have 
Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations. . . .''
  It doesn't say ``the President''; it doesn't say ``the U.S. trade 
ambassador''; it doesn't say a bunch of trade negotiators on an 
airplane heading to a foreign land to negotiate a trade agreement. It 
says: ``The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce with 
foreign Nations. . . .''
  Congress has largely ceded its power on international trade issues to 
the executive branch. Fast-track trade authority is a mechanism in 
which Congress is told, after a trade agreement is negotiated and 
brought back here, you have no right to offer one amendment, not even 
one amendment. Up or down, yes or no, expedited procedures, but no 
amendments.
  That is fast track. It is the Congress saying: let's get together and 
handcuff ourselves. We have done it five times. Now we are prepared to 
do it again. I didn't support giving fast-track trade authority to 
President Clinton, I don't support giving it to President George W. 
Bush and I intend to explain why.
  Will Rogers once said that the United States of America has never 
lost a war and never won a conference. He surely must have been 
speaking about international trade. When we talk about recent trade 
agreements, in almost every circumstance, we have given away too much 
and gotten too little.
  Those who come to this floor of the Senate and talk about trade are 
always saying, the whole purpose of trade is to strike down the 
barriers in foreign markets that prevent American goods from getting 
into foreign markets. Were that the case, I would say good for us. I 
aspire to that goal. That is what we should be doing. We don't get 
enough pork into China. We don't get enough beef into Japan. We don't 
get enough cars into Korea. We don't get enough grain into Canada. We 
don't get enough high fructose sugar or sweetener into Mexico. We don't 
get enough wheat flour into Europe. I can talk about the barriers. They 
are chronicled in a book that is inches thick.
  What happens with international trade when we have another trade 
agreement? Our trade deficit goes up, up, up, and up, to the point that 
we now have a merchandise trade deficit that is well over $400 billion 
a year. Every single day in this country we experience a trade deficit 
of well over $1 billion more coming in than we export.
  Is that helpful to our country? It is the largest trade deficit in 
human history. Nobody seems to care much about it. Is it helpful to our 
country? No, it weakens our country.
  Let me describe one of the trade agreements we negotiated and see 
what happened with that trade agreement. We negotiated a trade 
agreement with Canada and Mexico. It was called NAFTA, North American 
Free Trade Agreement. We had all these economists telling us it would 
create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, what a wonderful thing it 
would be.
  When we negotiated it, we had a slight trade surplus with Mexico and 
a modest trade deficit with Canada. That was in 1993. Eight years 
later, we have a huge deficit with Mexico and a giant deficit with 
Canada. Has that trade agreement worked out? Has that been in our 
country's best interests? I don't think so.
  Incidentally, currency fluctuations immediately emasculated these 
trade agreements. The high U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar and 
the devaluation of the Mexican peso just emasculated NAFTA, as far as 
our trade with those countries is concerned. But that is an issue for 
another day.
  My point is this: When we negotiate bad trade agreements and then we 
have some difficulty, we do not have the backbone or nerve as a country 
to stand up and say: Wait, on behalf of our American companies and 
workers, we demand fair trade. We will compete with anybody at any 
time, but we demand fair trade.
  Let me give an example of how we behave.
  Europe is upset with us about a recent 201 case, so Europe threatens 
retaliation. Do you know what Europe says it is going to retaliate on? 
Steel, textiles, and citrus products. Europe is going to get tough, 
they say.
  So we have a trade dispute with Europe over beef exports, and it is 
our turn to threaten Europe with retaliation. Even the WTO says that we 
are authorized to retaliate, and we get to pick the products with which 
to retaliate. Do you know what our negotiators choose to retaliate on? 
Truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. The Europeans are still 
laughing over that one. And not surprisingly, our retaliation on 
truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese has not done anything to 
get the Europeans to open up their markets to U.S. beef.
  My point is we don't have the backbone and the will, as a country, to 
say to Europe, Japan, Korea, Canada, Mexico, China: We want to trade 
with you. Our country seeks free trade, open trade, and fair trade. Our 
market is open to your producers. God bless you; come in. Our consumers 
appreciate your goods. By all means, our markets are open to you. But 
your markets must be open to American producers as well--they must. If 
they are not, then you sell your goods in Kinshasa, in the Congo, and 
see how quickly they sell. The condition of access to the American 
marketplace must be fair trade; you must allow American goods into your 
marketplace.
  Let me give an example with respect to Korea. I have talked about 
this before, and recently I received a letter from an association of 
Korean auto manufacturers, who are upset with me.
  Last year, Korea sent 618,000 Korean automobiles to be sold in the 
United States of America. That is fine with me. Hyundais, Daewoos, I am 
sure they are fine cars--618,000 cars were manufactured in Korea and 
sent to the United States.
  Do you know how many automobiles the United States was able to sell 
in Korea last year? It was 2,800. For every 217 cars that the Koreans 
shipped to our country, we were able to sell just one in Korea. Why? 
The letters from the Korean automobile organization say: You are just 
not competitive here; you are making the wrong kind of cars. But that 
is not it. They just don't want American cars in Korea.

  Let me show you the market share. This chart shows the market share 
of automobiles in Korea. This will tell the story: 99.4 percent of the 
Korean marketplace for automobiles is for Korean automobiles. Why? 
Because that country says: We want only Korean automobiles sold inside 
our country.
  They are interested in creating jobs in Korea to ship their cars to 
us and access our marketplace, but not interested in allowing our car 
manufacturers and auto workers to access their marketplace. Fair trade? 
I don't think so. Is anybody running around here trying to figure out 
how to fix that? I don't see any progress where it counts.
  How about the issue of Brazilian sugar? Like many countries, we have 
limits on the importation of sugar, to make sure that our sugar 
producers are not undermined. But Brazilian sugar gets into our country 
through a loophole you can literally drive a truck through. Brazilian 
exporters send their sugar to Canada, where the sugar is loaded into 
molasses, so it becomes what is called stuffed molasses. The stuffed 
molasses are shipped to Michigan. The sugar is taken out of the 
molasses, and then the molasses are shipped back to Canada to get 
another load of sugar. That is how you move Brazilian sugar into the 
United States to undermine our sugar producers. Fair trade? No. Is 
anybody willing to do anything about it? Hardly.
  My point is, time after time after time, these trade agreements leave 
us

[[Page S3463]]

in a situation where the trade is unfair--unfair to our companies and 
unfair to our workers--and our trade officials shrug and say: Tough 
luck. They just want to go negotiate another new agreement with some 
other country.
  My message is very simple. How about fixing a few of the problems you 
have created? Just fix a few of the problems that have been created in 
the last 20 years in international trade for American companies and 
American workers before you go negotiate a new agreement. Just fix a 
few.
  If someone had demonstrated to me they wanted to fix a few of these 
problems, I would be here on the floor saying, God bless you, hooray 
for you. But you can't find anybody interested in fixing them. That is 
why I don't think we ought to give fast-track trade authority to 
anybody.
  What we ought to do is demand on behalf of our country, with respect 
to an exploding trade deficit that is going to burden every American 
citizen and every American child with future obligations that are 
outrageous--what we ought to do is demand some action on these trade 
problems.
  Our negotiators just want to negotiate new trade deals. It's what 
they enjoy. I would suggest that they wear jerseys, like they do in the 
Olympics, that say ``USA.'' I think our trade representatives would 
benefit by being able to look down, from time to time, and see whom 
they represent. Judging from the trade deals they have negotiated in 
the past, I am not hopeful.
  Let me tell you of my firsthand experience with that. I have 
mentioned many times previously my experience with Canada. I was 
serving in the House of Representatives, at the time that we negotiated 
a United States-Canada free trade agreement. A Trade Ambassador named 
Clayton Yeutter led the negotiations, and then other negotiators in 
USTR completed the deal. They came back and said what a terrific deal 
for America, what a wonderful thing this United States-Canada free 
trade agreement is.
  The deal was brought to the Congress under fast-track trading 
authority for a vote. The vote in the Ways and Means Committee was 34 
in favor and one against, and I cast the single vote against the deal. 
I was told by everybody that it was imperative to get a unanimous vote 
in this committee for this United States-Canada free trade agreement. 
But I still voted against it.
  Why? Because what these negotiators have done is to pull the rug out 
from under our family farmers. They have weakened the trade remedies 
for unfair trade. They have pulled the rug out from under us, and shame 
on them. I voted against it. But the agreement passed overwhelmingly.
  Almost immediately, an avalanche of unfairly subsidized Canadian 
grain came rushing across the border, sold to us by the Canadian Wheat 
Board, a monopoly which would be illegal in this country. The Canadian 
Wheat Board just flooded America with durum wheat.
  As I have explained many times on the floor of the Senate, one day I 
went to the border with a man named Earl Jenson in a 12-year-old little 
orange truck with 200 bushels of durum wheat, raised on his farm in 
North Dakota, to take it across the border into Canada. All the way to 
the border were all these 18-wheeler trucks going south, dumping this 
grain into our marketplace. I bet we saw 20 to 25 18-wheel trucks in a 
matter of a half-hour bringing Canadian grain south.
  But when we got to the border in that little 12-year-old orange 
truck, to try to take a small amount of durum into Canada, we were 
turned back. We could not do it.
  Unfair trade? You bet you life it is unfair. It has been hurting our 
family farmers for years. No one is willing to do much about it.
  Our trade ambassador just went through a long process investigating 
this, along with the International Trade Commission. USTR concluded 
that, yes, indeed, Canada is guilty of unfair trade--over a decade 
after we passed the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Yes, Canada is 
guilty of unfair trade; but what is the USTR doing about it? The USTR 
says that it will take Canada to the WTO. Which means that maybe your 
great grandchildren will see results--but maybe not--decades and 
decades into the future.
  The fact is, once again, our country lacks the will, the nerve, and 
the backbone to stand up for American producers. The question is, when 
can our country expect that our Government will stand up for its 
interests? When will we tell our trading partners, you had better treat 
our producers, our companies, and our workers fairly because we will 
treat you like you treat us. If your market is wide open to us, then 
our market is wide open to you; but if it is not, then this country is 
prepared to protect and support its companies and its workers.
  This country has fought for 75 and 100 years for some basic 
principles about fairness in the workplace. We have had people die on 
the streets in this country because of violence over the issue of the 
right to organize as a labor union. We have had a major battle over the 
question of child labor laws, major confrontations over the issues of 
whether a manufacturing plant can dump chemicals into the water and 
pollutants into the air. Big battles about issues such as the minimum 
wage.
  So after many decades of hard-fought labor struggles, we now have a 
country in which you can organize. Labor can organize a union in this 
country. We must have safe workplaces. We will not allow people to hire 
12-year-old children, pay them 12 cents an hour, and work them 12 hours 
a day in this country. We will not allow that. The question is, will we 
allow the importation of products that come from a country that has 12-
year-old kids, working 12 hours a day, paying them 12 cents an hour?
  A group of us, when we consider the trade issue next week, will offer 
a range of amendments dealing with those issues: labor issues, 
environmental issues.
  I am going to offer an amendment that deals with the issue of 
secrecy. The NAFTA tribunals that consider claims by foreign investors 
are still conducted secretly. This country should not be involved in 
secret tribunals. There is a responsibility to have those tribunals 
open, so people can see what is done in those dispute tribunals. I will 
have an amendment on that.
  I regret that so-called trade promotion authority--TPA, as they call 
it, which is a euphemism for fast track--is brought to this floor as an 
amendment to an Andean trade bill. This is a very big issue. Having the 
Congress tie its hands and be unable to offer an amendment, as I was 
unable to do with the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, is not in the 
Congress' interest or the country's interest, in my judgment.

  Had I been able to offer an amendment to the U.S.-Canada Free Trade 
Agreement some years ago, we probably would not have the kind of trade 
problems we now have, many with Canada in the area of agriculture.
  We have used so-called fast-track trade authority five times. But We 
have negotiated many trade agreements without fast-track trade 
authority. Those who say you must have this to negotiate a trade 
agreement are just wrong.
  We used fast track to negotiate, the Tokyo round of GATT, U.S.-
Israel, U.S.-Canada, NAFTA, and WTO. I must say that after the last 
three, and also the GATT Tokyo round, we have seen a much, much larger 
trade deficit. We are not gaining ground; we are losing ground.
  The question for this country and this Congress, as it confronts this 
issue in coming days, is, will we decide to handcuff ourselves and put 
us right back in the same position, where someone will negotiate an 
agreement in secret, bring it here, and say, ``Oh, by the way, you have 
no right to amend it''? I hope we do not do that.
  We have not used procedures that prevent amendments even on such 
things as nuclear arms agreements, which are very important, large 
issues. We have never had expedited procedures that prevent someone 
from offering an amendment, even on the most complicated nuclear arms 
control procedures and agreements we had with the old Soviet Union, and 
others.
  So I do not think that we ought to consider granting fast-track 
authority to this President. As I said, I did not support giving it to 
the last President. I don't support giving it to this President.
  What I would like to see, instead of fast track, is a demonstration 
on the

[[Page S3464]]

part of the administration and our trade authorities to decide they are 
going to fix some problems--just a few; I am not asking them to fix a 
lot of problems--demonstrate their interest in fixing some problems, 
and clean up the mess that was made, rather than running out to create 
a new mess.
  I feel as strongly as anybody in this Chamber, I want China's market 
to be open to us, I want Japan's market to be open to us, and I want 
the European and Korean markets to be open to us, and, yes, Canada and 
Mexico as well. The fact is, they are not open to us now, and they are 
restrictive on a range of our products. The negotiations that we engage 
in, by and large, have not forced those markets open. The negotiations 
have not been successful.
  I think it is time for our country to try something different. We 
ought to have, as I said, a little backbone to stand up to these 
countries and say: If you are not going to allow our products into your 
marketplace, then, my friends, your products are not coming into ours. 
It is that simple. It is not about being punitive or about building 
walls or about retarding expanded trade that most of us want. It is 
just about prying open foreign markets.
  You will not do that by being weak. You will only do it by being 
strong. And it is not being strong to send the same negotiators out to 
negotiate the same soft-headed kind of agreements we have had for 
decades, and then bring it back here and say: Oh, by the way, none of 
you men and women serving in Congress have a right to offer an 
amendment, not a single one. That is not being strong or thoughtful. 
That is being thoughtless in a way that, in my judgment, jeopardizes 
this country's long-term economic interest.
  So, we will have a lot more to say about this subject next week when 
we turn to the specific issue, first on a cloture vote on the motion to 
proceed to the Andean trade bill, and then on subsequent cloture votes. 
There will be a great deal of debate. But, in the end, my hope is that 
enough Senators will agree that it is time for this country to do 
something different in forcing open foreign markets and forcing the 
components of fair trade to be central to our trade relationships with 
other countries.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have completed our difficult week, but we 
were able to complete the energy bill. I remind everybody that last 
night I proffered, on behalf of the majority, efforts to move forward 
with hate crimes legislation. That was objected to: And also the 
terrorism legislation, which was objected to. We will renew the 
requests next week.
  We believe the time has long since passed that we should have hate 
crimes legislation that becomes law in this country. Certainly, with 
all we have heard from the insurance industry, the real estate 
industry, and the financial industry around this country, it is high 
time we did something with the terrorism insurance that they have 
indicated is so badly needed. So we would be ready next week to move 
forward on that. I am disappointed that we do not already have an 
agreement that would allow us to move on that next week. It is 
certainly something that should be done.
  The majority leader has, in the past month or so, been able to do 
dual-track legislation. As a result, we were able to get some action 
taken. During the time we were doing the energy bill, we passed the 
border security legislation. We also passed the election reform 
legislation while we were working on the energy bill. So the mere fact 
that we are going to the trade bill should not, in any way, stop us 
from beginning and completing work on hate crimes legislation and 
certainly the terrorism legislation.

                          ____________________