[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 60 (Monday, May 13, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4252-S4254]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       FAST TRACK TRADE AUTHORITY

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Bush administration continues its push 
for fast track trade authority under the fictitious term ``trade 
promotion authority.'' This is legislation that would enable the 
President to negotiate trade agreements without full congressional 
input. With fast track authority, there would be only limited Senate 
debate. With fast track authority the full Senate will have no 
opportunity to amend. Most Members of Congress will have no opportunity 
to protect the interests of the people, the communities, and the 
industries of their particular States, including ensuring the 
protection of the standard of living of our workers and their families 
within those States and communities.
  Although the Constitution clearly gives Congress the duty--and the 
power, it gives Congress the power--``to regulate commerce with foreign 
nations,'' with fast track authority the Congress will simply applaud a 
presidential trade-negotiating effort by approving a trade agreement, 
or boo the effort by disapproving it. That is pretty unlikely, that it 
would be disapproved.
  Members of Congress should never allow our options to be so 
restricted. We were sent here to promote and to protect the interests 
of our States as well as the national good, and those goals are best 
served by debate and amendment, particularly with regard to trade 
deals.
  The workers of this Nation are losing ground, in large part, due to 
poor trade agreements. For Congress to abdicate its constitutional 
authority here is to, in my view, turn its back on millions of American 
workers--the workers who are the backbone of this Nation, and who 
deserve more than a cursory, neglectful wink and nod.

[[Page S4253]]

  Let us focus for a moment on just one sector of our economy, 
manufacturing. There is no question that manufacturing has continued to 
grow during the past several decades. For example, real, inflation 
adjusted, manufacturing sales as a percentage of GDP continue to 
increase.
  And there is no question that certain manufacturing industries such 
as those involved in high-technology products--for example, electronic 
equipment, industrial machinery, and chemicals--have prospered.
  United States production of electronic equipment rose by nearly 400 
percent--to be precise, 393.5 percent--while industrial machinery 
increased by 155 percent. Even fabricated metal products and motor 
vehicles have experienced an increase in real output since 1990.
  There is also no question that in recent decades a number of our 
vital industries could be placed on an endangered species list. 
Beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s, for too many 
American industries the story of American manufacturing has been a 
tragic story of bankruptcies, consolidations, plant closings, plant 
shutdowns, and movement overseas. These industries missed the economic 
boom of the 1990s because they have been drowning in a flood of cheap 
imports.

  Since 1997, 33 steel companies have filed for bankruptcy, affecting 
73,000 workers.
  During the 1990s, 352 paper mills and paper converting plants 
permanently closed. Last year alone, 36 mills closed, and 15 more are 
slated for closing this year.
  The American textile industry is suffering its worst crisis since the 
Great Depression of the 1930s. During the past year, more than 10 
American textile mills have closed, and industrial giants such as 
Burlington Industries, Malden Mills, and Guilford Mills have sought 
bankruptcy protection.
  Between 1989 and 2000, the real dollar value of apparel industry 
output failed by nearly 20 percent--19.6 percent to be exact. There was 
a 27.9-percent decline in the instruments industry and a 3.7-percent 
decline in the real output of the paper products industry.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, at least 18 American 
industries experienced negative or slow output growth between the years 
1980 and 2000--so much so that each one could be added to the 
endangered industries list.
  The decline in these industries is reflected, to some extent, in the 
decline in employment in the manufacturing industries. In 1970, 
approximately one-third of the private sector workforce was engaged in 
manufacturing. By 2000, it had fallen to 17 percent.
  So from 1970 to 2000, employment in the manufacturing industries fell 
from one-third of the private sector workforce to 17 percent--half--
from 33 percent to 17 percent. Cut in half. That is like the wisest man 
of all time threatening to cut the baby in half.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, at least 19 
industries--nearly all in manufacturing--experienced the loss of one-
third or more jobs since 1980. There was a 52-percent decrease in 
machine tools, a 67-percent decrease in employment in blast furnaces 
and steel mills, and an 83-percent decrease in employment in nonrubber 
footwear. Read it and weep.
  I realize that a substantial portion of this decline in manufacturing 
employment is due to increased productivity. Millions of workers are 
losing their jobs because of technological progress, more efficient 
management of resources, and because productivity has grown faster than 
sales. Nevertheless, there is no question but that certain sectors of 
our economy--especially those in the industries I have mentioned--are 
being clobbered by imports.
  Between 1994 and 2000, the U.S. trade deficit of $182 billion 
increased 141.6 percent to $439 billion--inflation adjusted 2000 
dollars. This soaring trade deficit has taken an incredible toll on 
American jobs. Between 1994 and 2000, according to an analysis by the 
Economic Policy Institute, trade deficits eliminated a net total of 3 
million actual and potential jobs from the U.S. economy.
  The manufacturing sector has shouldered the burden of this increased 
deficit, as the manufacturing trade deficit rose by 158.5 percent. Of 
the 3 million trade-related job losses between 1994 and 2000, 1.9 
million were in manufacturing. This means that nearly two of every 
three lost jobs were in manufacturing. In other words, 1.9 million jobs 
out of 3 million jobs were in manufacturing. That is, manufacturing 
constituted 65 percent of all trade-related job losses.
  These trade-related job losses happened as increased globalization 
encouraged American industries to pack up and seek other lands where 
labor is cheaper and where industries do not have to comply with the 
environmental and safety standards in the United States. The 
International Trade Commission has reported that roughly half of the 
total productive capacity in the apparel industry has shifted from 
developed countries to less developed countries over the past three 
decades, where workers earn far less than their American counterparts.

  What are we doing? What are we doing in our trade agreements to 
protect American jobs? The answer has to be: Not enough.
  Globalization has also left our industries more vulnerable to the 
unfair predatory trade practices of foreign countries. Look at the 
American steel industry, which has been absolutely devastated by the 
dumping of cheap foreign steel and of government-subsidized, imported 
steel. Last October, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that 
imports of foreign steel have indeed caused serious injury to American 
steelmakers. The Commission reported that imported steel has seriously 
hurt domestic steelmakers in about half of 33 product lines examined, 
covering about 80 percent of what steel companies produce in America.
  ``Fifty years of foreign government intervention in the global steel 
market''--someone said last month in announcing tariffs on imported 
steel--``has resulted in bankruptcies, serious dislocation, and job 
loss.'' Who was that someone? The President of the United States, 
President Bush.
  NAFTA, which was enacted under fast-track authority, and which I 
voted against, was supposed to eliminate most of these causes of the 
American trade deficit and lessen the foreign assaults upon American 
industries. Instead, the increased globalization unleashed under NAFTA 
and the World Trade Organization has exacerbated the problem, not 
solved it. I have been on the right side in both instances; I have 
opposed both. Since 1994, when NAFTA created the free trade zone, North 
Carolina has lost more than 125,500 jobs in the textile and apparel 
industries, or 47 percent of the workforce.

  The Mississippi Business Journal reports that the garment industry in 
Mississippi has virtually disappeared in the post-NAFTA era. We gave it 
away.
  This decline in American manufacturing has meant a declining standard 
of living, not just for the affected workers and their families but for 
their communities and their States.
  Workers have been forced out of higher wage, industrial jobs into 
low-paying service jobs. In 1980, private-sector service employment 
constituted 65 percent of the American private sector workforce; by the 
year 2000, the percentage had soared to 77 percent.
  Service jobs are notoriously low-skill, low-paying jobs that offer 
limited opportunities for advancement because there are relatively few 
management positions. Look at South Carolina, a State that is near the 
top of the job creation list in the 1990s but it ranks 35th in average 
wages--$25,493. A study of a 5-year period, 1992 to 1997, in that State 
indicated the creation of 94,572 service jobs, a 40.6-percent increase 
in a sector that pays lower than the statewide average. The higher 
paying manufacturing sector, the traditional mainstay of South 
Carolina's economy, lost nearly 1,000 jobs during the 5-year period. In 
1997, the State's service employees earned an average $22,693, compared 
to the average of $29,820 for employees in the State's manufacturing 
jobs. Economists in the State of South Carolina point out that even 
with the growth in the service industries, South Carolina's per capita 
income is among the Nation's lowest.

  Unfortunately, the holders of these service jobs are often thought to 
be students looking for summer work, or marginal workers seeking 
spending money, or people simply in need of a quick stopover job while 
on their way

[[Page S4254]]

to a better paying career. In other words, service jobs are presented 
as great jobs for people who do not really need them, in many 
instances. The truth is, people do need these jobs, and many of the 
holders of these jobs are adults who depend on that paycheck to pay 
rent or child care. Many are former industrial workers simply trying to 
exist in the new economy.
  Studies of counties in Colorado, Missouri, and Mississippi found a 
declining standard of living for workers and their communities as they 
moved from manufacturing jobs to service jobs.
  Martha Burt of the Urban Institute found that the growth of 
homelessness in the United States in the 1980s was not, as commonly 
supposed, the result of drug addiction, or the deinstitutionalization 
of the mentally ill, nor the cutbacks in social programs during the 
Reagan administration, but the shift from an industrial economy to a 
service economy. With the decline in manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, 
she explains, huge numbers of former full-time factory workers earning 
union wages were replaced with part-time workers in retail stores, 
restaurants, and other service jobs, where wages are too low to enable 
them to afford the price of housing.
  The facts are, as the Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy 
at Northeastern University, Barry Bluestone, emphasizes, even workers 
who retain manufacturing jobs also face a bleak future, a future of a 
declining standard of living, if we do not revise our trade polices and 
insist upon effective labor and environmental standards in our trade 
agreements. This is because competition from countries which lack, or 
do not enforce, labor and environmental standards, continues to have a 
large, negative impact on employment in key sectors of our economy, and 
on American wages and living standards across the board.
  With the rise of international competition and the shift to lower 
wage service jobs in the United States, real wages have stagnated, 
making life much more difficult for all American workers. Real average 
weekly earnings peaked in 1972 at $315.44. Today, even with some 
recovery in real wages due to the rapid growth in the economy in the 
1990s, the average weekly wage is nearly 12 percent less than at its 
peak.
  This decline in real wages is forcing American workers to work longer 
hours than ever before in order to maintain their living standards. 
They are running in place--sweating on a treadmill operated by the 
hyper zealots of free trade regardless of consequences. In fact, the 
United States is the only major developed country that has experienced 
an increase in the average workweek and the average work year. Since 
1982, the average workweek among prime-age workers in the United States 
has increased from 39.6 hours to 41.3 in 2000.
  This means that the average work year has increased from around 1,840 
hours to over 2,020. Put simply, stagnating wages are forcing Americans 
to work longer and longer hours just to maintain their standard of 
living. They are not getting ahead. They are simply maintaining what 
they have worked so hard for, if, indeed, they are even maintaining 
that.
  This is why the Congress must protect and exercise its right to amend 
trade agreements. Why do we give away Congress' power to amend trade 
agreements?
  We must insist on establishing universal labor and environmental 
standards. We must insist on protecting American industries from even 
more devastation by unfair competition from firms operating abroad, 
exploiting cheap labor pools, and tolerating working conditions which 
are unacceptably harsh, and environmental standards which are 
nonexistent.
  These essential universal labor and environmental standards can be 
extracted only through our trade agreements.
  In the 1930s, the United States instituted a range of laws and 
regulations to protect workers and the environment. We did this at the 
Federal level so that individual States could not take unfair advantage 
of other States by lowering their minimum wages, permitting child and 
prison labor, ignoring occupational and safety provisions, eliminating 
or reducing unemployment benefits, or disregarding environmental 
standards. We leveled the playing field domestically. No one could 
manipulate for advantage.
  Now we must level the playing field in international competition, 
where American workers are too often forced to play by the rules in a 
rigged game. In our new, globalized economy, we run the risk of 
undermining our own hard won labor and environmental standards if other 
countries choose to have none of their own or refuse to enforce 
reasonable requirements. Congress, which has the constitutional power, 
and therefore the duty ``to regulate commerce with foreign nations,'' 
must have the means to insist on reasonable labor and environmental 
standards as part of any and all trade agreements. This is to the 
benefit not only of American workers, but also of workers, both 
children and adults, who are laboring under oppressive, unsafe, and 
unhealthy conditions in other lands.
  Over the years, I have seen administrations--Republican and 
Democratic--repeatedly negotiate trade agreements that reflected 
priorities other than those of the American people. I say that with a 
background of 50 years in Congress, the House of Representatives and 
the Senate, so let me say it again. I have seen administrations--
Republican and Democratic--repeatedly negotiate trade agreements that 
reflected priorities other than those of the American people. I have 
seen this Nation genuflect at the altar of big business interests. I 
have witnessed the holy battle cry of ``free trade'' become a club by 
which to beat into submission any voice that expressed an argument for 
balance and fairness. That is understandably the outcome of trade talks 
that ignore the constitutional role of the Congress in international 
commerce.

  While it is not surprising that Republican and Democratic 
administrations would attempt to enter into trade agreements that 
reflect their own priorities, it is absolutely distressing--it is 
extremely puzzling to this Senator--that the Members of Congress would 
willingly give up their right to shape trade agreements that reflect 
the priorities of the American people, and the best interests of the 
United States. It just demonstrates how cowed and how intimidating we 
in public life have become by the absolute terror of bumper sticker 
politics. Free trade is the battle cry. Don't complicate it with real 
world concerns.
  As a U.S. Senator from West Virginia, I am always--first, last, and 
all the time--for the protection of the interests of this country, of 
this Nation's workers, and this country's manufacturing industries and 
I am going to continue being that way by opposing the granting of 
blanket fast track authority for this or any other President.
  Call it trade promotion authority, if you will--it is still fast 
track--to give away American interests when it comes to trade.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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