[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 60 (Monday, May 13, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4248-S4249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            TRADE AUTHORITY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak to the underlying 
legislation we will be on following the vote on the judgeship this 
afternoon. That is the trade bill. We are going to be discussing once 
again so-called fast-track trade authority. I am not going to support 
the bill, but I do have some amendments.
  I think fast track is fundamentally undemocratic. Our trade deficit 
is ballooning; it is now over $450 billion in merchandise trade 
deficits. And every time we have had a new agreement, we have been 
injured further.
  I am going to offer several amendments to fast track when it is 
before the Senate. One deals with wheat from Canada. The unfairly 
subsidized wheat coming in from Canada has injured our farmers in a 
dramatic way. The International Trade Commission says this wheat trade 
is unfair, and the trade ambassador, to his credit, says it is unfair. 
But there is no specific remedy. It is a five-point remedy in the sweet 
by-and-by; we will never quite get to it.
  My amendment will say we want specific remedies identified and 
reported to us within 6 months of what the trade ambassador is going to 
do to take specific action and remedy the unfair wheat trade that 
exists with Canada and the unfair trade that exists in other markets 
with respect to Canada. That is No. 1.
  No. 2, this administration is proposing on June 30 to allow long-haul 
Mexican trucks into this country. That is in contravention of 
everything Congress debated just months ago on this issue. I am going 
to offer an amendment that tries to stop that.
  Mr. President, you know and I know and everyone in this country knows 
Mexican truckdrivers are not driving with the same safety requirements 
imposed in Mexico that we impose in this country. They do not have the 
same safety inspections. They do not have the same requirements with 
respect to length of service or hours of service or logbooks. I ask 
everyone to read the newspaper accounts of people riding with Mexican 
long-haul truckers, and you will discover the truckers drove 
continuously for 24 hours or drove unsafe equipment.
  The fact is this administration on June 30 is going to allow those 
long-haul Mexican trucks to come into this country to do long hauls, 
and that is wrong, it is unsafe, and it ought not happen.
  The safety requirements the Senate would have imposed some months ago 
when we debated this issue are nowhere near in place. The inspection 
stations do not exist. The compliance and enforcement requirements in 
Mexico do not exist. The fact is, we are going to have American 
families driving up and down American streets and highways with long-
haul Mexican trucks and no one is going to know whether that driver has 
been driving 24 straight hours or driving a rig with faulty brakes 
because it has not been inspected. I am going to offer an amendment on 
that issue.
  In addition, I am going to offer an amendment dealing with Cuba, and 
that amendment will impose the same circumstances that were dropped out 
of the agriculture conference just last week. The amendment is very 
simple. It says when Cuba buys grain from our country, it ought not 
have to pay cash through a French bank; it ought to be able to buy 
grain with commercially accepted credit from our country.
  I am going to support the Dayton-Craig amendment which is very 
important. Our trade negotiators are prepared to negotiate away 
antidumping authority, the ability on behalf of our producers to remedy 
trade that is unfair because someone else is dumping into our 
marketplace. If we eliminate the antidumping remedies, we will put our 
producers in desperate trouble. Their amendment is right on point. I 
intend to ask to cosponsor that amendment, and I will be very 
supportive of it.

  I also will be supportive of an amendment to be offered by Senator 
Durbin and will ask to be a cosponsor of that. That amendment deals 
with labor and environmental standards with respect to trade. The issue 
for this country should continue to be this: We want people to access 
the American marketplace, to give the American consumer the widest 
range of goods from all around the world, but we want it, when those 
goods come in as a result of trade, to be fair trade.

[[Page S4249]]

  We do not want goods that come from prison labor in China. We do not 
want goods to come into our marketplace that are made by 12-year-old 
kids working 12 hours a day being paid 12 cents an hour. That is not 
fair trade. It is not what this country ought to support, and it is not 
what we ought to allow into our marketplace.
  Conditions of fair trade are very important, and as we discuss trade 
in this Chamber with the advent of the fast track debate, it is very 
important for us to say to the American people that there is an 
admission price to the American economy, and the admission price to 
other countries is that their markets must be open to us and their 
markets and laws must represent fair trade with this country. That is 
not a standard that now exists.
  I do not want to put a wall around our country. I believe in expanded 
trade. I believe in greater trade opportunity. But I believe also this 
country needs to have the spine and the backbone to stand up for its 
own economic interest and demand that trade be fair trade.
  That will represent the several amendments I will be offering and 
supporting, including the three I mentioned I will be offering soon.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
  The senior Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I commend my colleague from North Dakota for 
several comments he made. I particularly commend him for his comments 
about the issue regarding Cuba and how we might do a better job than we 
have over the past 40 years of bringing democracy to that country.
  After 40 years of failed policies, one might think a new approach 
would be in order. I take note as well that as we speak today, a former 
President of the United States, President Carter, is in Cuba speaking 
to dissidents and human rights activists, as well as members of the 
Government of Cuba. That kind of exposure, that kind of engagement is 
going to do more to bring about the change we want to see in Cuba than 
the insistence of a failed policy we have followed for the past four 
decades.
  I commend my colleague from North Dakota for his comments.

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