[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 65 (Monday, May 20, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4561-S4563]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TUNA INDUSTRY IN MINDANAO

  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss a matter of grave 
national importance, the canned tuna industry in Mindanao. As I was 
listening to the debate last week, I heard my friend, the gentleman 
from Texas, advocating rejection of the Dodd amendment that sought to 
apply the same labor and environmental standards used in the Jordan 
Free Trade Agreement to trade agreements negotiated under Trade 
Promotion Authority.

[[Page S4562]]

  During the debate, the Senator from Texas attempted to distinguish 
between the Jordan Free Trade Agreement and future trade agreements by 
saying ``that free trade agreement was a foreign policy action, not a 
trade action.'' I would say to you that all trade actions are foreign 
policy actions.
  We are currently debating a multifaceted trade package that includes 
expansion of the Andean Trade Preference Act. The reasons given for 
expansion of the current ATPA include the need to expand the economies 
of the Andean region to provide alternatives to the illegal drug trade. 
The United States would like to provide alternatives to drug production 
in order to reduce the drug supply reaching our nation. This is the 
essence of foreign policy conducting relations with other nations in a 
manner intended to improve our Nation.
  An element of the expansion under consideration would provide limited 
duty-free access to the U.S. market for canned tuna from the Andean 
region. This provision, intended to complement our war on drugs, 
conflicts squarely with our Nation's efforts to fight international 
terrorism. This point is eloquently described in an article that 
recently appeared in the New York Times entitled, ``Drugs, Terror and 
Tuna: How Goals Clash.''
  The article describes the canned tuna industry in the Philippines, 
which is entirely based in Mindanao, where the Philippine Government is 
waging a war against Muslim terrorists and the poverty that breeds 
them. Damaging the Philippines' export of canned tuna to the United 
States would seriously harm many workers in Mindanao. Morever, American 
commitments made by the United States to President Gloria Macapagal-
Arroyo, and the common struggle against worldwide terrorism would be in 
jeopardy.
  At present, at the invitation of the Philippine government, we have 
American troops in Mindanao advising and training Philippine troops. 
Much of the success of our efforts depends on the outcome of the Andean 
Trade debate. Our trade policy must not undermine our foreign policy 
efforts to fight terrorism worldwide and protect our citizens.
  I have filed amendments that I will not call up today, but that I 
have submitted to ensure the continued cooperation of one of our most 
vital partners in the international war against terrorism, the 
Philippines.
  I urge my colleagues to read the article and to study this situation.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article be printed in the 
Congressional Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, May 16, 2002]

                Drugs, Terror and Tuna: How Goals Clash

                          (By Keith Bradsher)

       General Santos City, the Philippines, May 15.--This 
     industrial city on the southern coast of Mindanao Island 
     illustrates how America's various strategic aims in the wars 
     on drugs and terrorism can clash, alienating important allies 
     engaged in battling terrorism.
       Among leaders of the Philippines' important tuna industry 
     here, resentment is running high over trade legislation now 
     on the Senate floor in Washington. The bill includes a 
     provision to eliminate steep import taxes on canned tuna from 
     Andean nations while keeping taxes in place for other 
     countries like the Philippines.
       The provision has attracted Congressional support because 
     it is seen as bolstering America's war on drugs. The idea is 
     that the bill will help create well-paid jobs in Ecuador and 
     Colombia as an alternative to the drug trade.
       But in another war--the one against terrorism--the 
     legislation is causing anger in a country that has become an 
     important part of the administration's plans.
       It comes at a time when 600 American soldiers are helping 
     the Philippine Army track Abu Sayyaf Muslim insurgents in the 
     southernmost Philippines, and President Gloria Macapagal 
     Arroyo has staked much political capital on helping the 
     United States fight terrorism.
       Virtually all of the tuna industry of the Philippines is 
     located here and it employs thousands of migrant workers from 
     small Muslim fishing communities that used to be bastions of 
     various Muslim insurgencies. Local officials warn that the 
     legislation could wipe out the tuna industry.
       President Arroyo said that passage of the trade provision 
     would deal a severe blow to the economy here while handing a 
     propaganda victory to the Abu Sayyaf movement.
       The combination would create heavy domestic pressure for 
     the Philippines to retreat from its active support for the 
     American war on terrorism, she warned in a telephone 
     interview tonight.
       ``I will try very hard not to, but I will be under 
     tremendous pressure,'' she said.
       In much of the developing world, including Latin America 
     and Africa, trade restrictions or tariffs on products ranging 
     from steel to textiles are causing growing resentment toward 
     the United States. The perception that the Bush 
     administration is a protectionist one is growing.
       President Arroyo argued that General Santos, the main city 
     on the southern coast of Mindanao and home to most of the 
     Philippines' tuna fishing fleet and canneries, was central 
     both to the economic future of this region and to the fight 
     against terrorism.
       A powerful pipe bomb packed with nails exploded on a 
     crowded sidewalk outside a supermarket here on April 21, 
     killing 15 people and wounding dozens. A second pipe bomb was 
     safely defused before it exploded at another supermarket the 
     same day, and two shopping complexes have recently burned 
     down here in the middle of the night in separate, unexplained 
     incidents.
       Police detectives here say that they are still unsure 
     whether the attacks were terrorist incidents, criminal 
     attempts at extortion or some combination of the two. But 
     President Arroyo expresses no such doubts, saying tonight, 
     ``The Abu Sayyaf has been trying to get into General Santos 
     and it has been very difficult for us to justify our support 
     for the United States.''
       In a city where tunas festoon everything from billboards to 
     restaurant signs, and where even the golf tournament is the 
     Tuna Cup, the fishing industry's influence is impossible to 
     miss.
       Workers heave baskets of fish onto crude steel carts, which 
     they then pull by hand over a long open-sided shed. Women 
     wash and sort the fish on long tables, the concrete floor 
     beneath them dark and slippery with fish blood. A few larger 
     tuna, some the size of a man, are carried individually to 
     large, white boxes packed with half-melted ice, to be shipped 
     directly to Japan to be turned into sashimi.
       Renato Alonzo, 47, a fisherman in a ragged T-shirt and 
     flip-flops whose boat had just docked after two weeks at sea, 
     said that he had sold his tiny farm and joined a boat crew 10 
     years ago after learning he could nearly double his income, 
     to roughly $4,000 a year. Now he can afford to send his two 
     sons, aged 12 and 8, to school.
       The bustling fishing port here and the nearby row of tuna 
     canneries contrast sharply with most of Mindanao, where 
     peasants still toil on subsistence farms or on large 
     pineapple and coconut plantations. Years of drought, coupled 
     with inadequate irrigation, have crippled agriculture while 
     the global glut of low-priced steel has forced the closing of 
     a big steel mill in northern Mindanao.
       The tuna industry here barely existed until the late 1980's 
     when the United States led Japan, Italy and other donor 
     nations in an ambitious foreign aid program aimed at 
     rebuilding the Philippines after the fall of Ferdinand 
     Marcos.
       A full-scale guerrilla war was being waged in Mindanao 
     then, a far broader conflict than the handful of kidnappings 
     and possibly bombings linked to Abu Sayyaf now. General 
     Santos City was nearly surrounded by several very large 
     insurgencies that attracted poor youths from the island's 
     Muslim minority. The city had a small fishing fleet, but it 
     mostly caught fish for local consumption.
       But the world's richest tuna fishing grounds lay between 
     here and Indonesia, although boats from Thailand mainly 
     fished them then. Foreign donors built the fishing port here 
     as well as a large cargo airport, a container port, extensive 
     roads and a modern phone system, hiring security guards from 
     rebel forces and buying sand, gravel and other construction 
     materials from rebel leaders' businesses.
       With ready transportation to foreign markets, six big 
     canneries were built, each employing more than 1,000 workers. 
     The only two other tuna canneries in the Philippines are in 
     Zamboanga City in southwestern Mindanao, the staging area for 
     American troops pursuing Abu Sayyaf. Some 30,000 fishermen 
     now supply the canneries.
       The tuna boom has helped persuade all the rebel movements 
     except the Abu Sayyaf splinter group to lay down their arms 
     under armistices with the government. Many former rebel 
     commanders and foot soldiers have taken jobs at the 
     canneries, which have had no problem with the bombings that 
     have afflicted shopping centers.
       Abuhasan Jama is a former major in the Moro National 
     Liberation Front who studied guerrilla warfare in Malaysia in 
     1979 and 1980 and then spent 13 years fighting the Philippine 
     government in the jungles of Mindanao.
       Now he is the security chief at Ocean Canning here, his 
     eldest daughter is in college and he has found jobs at the 
     same cannery for three cousins who are also former 
     guerrillas. ``I like to work,'' said Mr. Jama, 41, recalling 
     that in the jungle ``sometimes you'd just eat leaves, the 
     roots.''
       Mariano M. Fernandez, the general manager of Ocean Canning, 
     said that he used to carry two Smith & Wesson handguns, one 
     strapped on each hip. ``It was like the Wild West here,'' he 
     said, adding that he carries only a cellphone now.
       Most of the tuna canned here is sold in the United States 
     under less famous brands like Geisha and Dagim. Bumble Bee 
     and Starkist used to buy large quantities of tuna here but 
     have recently begun relying on Ecuador instead, allowing that 
     country to edge past the

[[Page S4563]]

     Philippines last year to become the second-largest foreign 
     supplier of tuna to the United States, after Thailand 
     Starkist in particular is now pushing for the elimination of 
     import tariffs on canned tuna from Ecuador.

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