[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 4 (Friday, January 23, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S217-S219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS
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SENATE RESOLUTION 289--EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE SENATE WITH RESPECT
TO FREE TRADE NEGOTIATIONS THAT COULD ADVERSELY IMPACT THE SUGAR
INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES
Mr. DORGAN (for himself, Mr. Dayton, Mr. Coleman, Mr. Conrad, and Mr.
Enzi) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the
Committee on Finance:
S. Res. 289
Whereas the President has concluded negotiations with El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua to form a
Central American Free Trade Agreement (referred to in this
resolution as ``CAFTA''), and is seeking to incorporate Costa
Rica and the Dominican Republic into that agreement;
Whereas CAFTA seeks to provide those countries with
increased access to the United States sugar market;
Whereas, simultaneously, the Administration has embarked on
a multitude of free trade agreements with major sugar
producing nations such as Australia, members
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of the South Africa Customs Union, Thailand, nations of the
Western Hemisphere, and others, and has made it clear that
access to the United States sugar market is on the
negotiating table;
Whereas, the United States sugar market is already
oversupplied, with declining consumption forcing domestic
sugar producers to store extremely high quantities of sugar;
Whereas significant increases in sugar imports under CAFTA
and other trade agreements currently under negotiation could
render inoperable basic elements of the United States sugar
program enacted under the Farm Security and Rural Investment
Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-171);
Whereas effects on the United States sugar program would
wreak havoc in the United States sugar industry, and result
in the loss of thousands of jobs and farms involved in sugar
production in 19 States across the country; and
Whereas any constructive effort to address distortion in
the world sugar market should be handled multilaterally
through the World Trade Organization, in a manner that
addresses comprehensively and simultaneously the sugar
subsidy programs of all major world producers, and should not
be handled through bilateral or regional agreements: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the President should renegotiate provisions of CAFTA
relating to access to the United States sugar market, so as
to grant no greater access to the United States sugar market
than is currently enjoyed by the signatories to the
agreement; and
(2) the President should not include sugar as an element of
negotiations in any bilateral or regional free trade
agreement.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to, at the conclusion of my
remarks, offer a resolution on behalf of myself, Senators Dayton,
Coleman, and Conrad. This resolution deals with the issue of trade
negotiations that have been conducted with the Central American Free
Trade Agreement countries. It also relates to my concern about the
trade negotiations that are underway today, this morning, in
Washington, DC, with Australia to try to create a free trade agreement
with Australia.
I will explain the resolution. After the whereases, it says:
It is resolved that the sense of the Senate is that the
President should renegotiate provisions of the Central
American Free Trade Agreement relating to access to the
United States sugar markets so as to grant no greater access
to the U.S. sugar market than is currently enjoyed by the
signatories to this CAFTA agreement; 2, the President should
not include sugar as an element of negotiations in any
bilateral or regional free trade agreement.
I want to explain why we feel this way. I will also observe that this
is bipartisan in its offering. It is very important to our region of
the country. First, let me explain sugar. Sugar comes from sugar beets
and sugarcane produced by our growers. With sugar beets, it is in the
Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota. We have the
opportunity to plant beets and process the resulting crop into sugar,
and in this country we have a robust sugar industry with many growers
living out on the land and producing a crop and contributing to our
economy.
Most of the sugar internationally around the world is traded between
countries on a contract basis--country-to-country contracts. That is
the way most sugar is traded. But there is surplus sugar outside of
those contracts that represents dumped sugar; it is surplus dumped
sugar, priced at a nickel a pound, or 5, 6, 7 cents a pound, and then
thrown all over the world wherever it may rest, and it devastates local
markets.
Let me describe with this chart what we have in this country. Our
U.S. consumption of sugar is about 7.8 million metric tons, and we
import a little over a million metric tons. We are now engaged in trade
agreements with countries that produce a massive quantity of sugar,
much of it for export. This is the potential exports from countries
with whom we are engaged now in negotiations for free trade agreements.
You can see the CAFTA countries--Central American Free Trade Agreement
countries--which are Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica which has not yet
signed on, El Salvador, and so on. This is Australia, Thailand, the
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which includes Brazil. You can
see this is a giant amount of sugar.
The proposition is this. Our trade negotiator has put sugar on the
table in grade negotiations on these bilateral agreements. The result
of it is death by a thousand cuts to our domestic sugar producers. If
we end where I think we will end with the Central American Free Trade
Agreement, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and others, we
will end up as a country without a domestic sugar industry.
The sugar beet growers who live on the land and produce sugar beets
will not be there in the future because they cannot compete and should
not be expected to compete against dumped sugar. Yet that is where we
are heading.
This ought not be a part of the trade agreements the trade ambassador
is now negotiating. The larger question with respect to sugar trade
ought to be dealt with in the World Trade Organization, not individual
trade agreements, with the Central American Free Trade Agreement--the
free trade agreement with the Americas. That is the position we take,
Senator Conrad, Senator Dayton, Senator Coleman, myself, and others
here in the Senate.
Let me tell you what has happened. In the Central American Free Trade
Agreement, the U.S. Ambassador put sugar on the table and negotiated an
agreement that was going to allow incremental sugar to come into our
country. Will that quantity of sugar by itself destroy our industry?
No, it will not. But the precedent will. That is because that precedent
means sugar will be in the Australia agreement and the FTAA agreement
and the quantity of sugar that is going to come into this country at
dumped prices will inevitably destroy our sugar industry. That is why
we must stop it.
Let me tell you what happened yesterday. Yesterday, in Inside U.S.
Trade--that is the publication--and also in North Dakota newspapers was
a story: ``U.S. Withholds Sugar Offer in Australia Trade FTA
Negotiations.''
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has said the U.S.
position is not to provide Australia with any increased
market access for sugar, said a U.S. trade official.
Good for them. That is exactly the right position and one I support,
one I aspire to achieve, to stop having sugar as part of these
negotiations.
Let me read to you today's news.
A U.S. trade official is being quoted as saying Bush
administration trade negotiators have asked Australian
negotiators to settle for a free trade agreement which does
not open the U.S. market to any more Australian sugar.
But the official denied U.S. trade representative Robert
Zoellick had told a North Dakota radio station that sugar had
been taken off the table.
So they are saying a representative of the trade ambassador is quoted
as saying sugar will not be in the Australia agreement--yesterday. But
today, the official, a trade official from this administration, denied
that Ambassador Zoellick had told a North Dakota radio station sugar
had been taken off the table.
Mixed messages, I would say. But at least today's news from the USTR
is sugar is a part of this. It will be a part of it.
That is the concern we have with the Central American Free Trade
Agreement. When you put it in that agreement, they will want to put it
in Australia's and Brazil's agreement, and there you go, one step at a
time toward disaster for our growers, our farmers out there who are
trying to make a living. They can make a living by competing. I don't
mind asking them to compete and they don't mind competing. But they
can't compete against dumped sugar that represents a world price of a
nickel or 6 cents a pound, that has no relationship to the cost of
production. All that has is a relationship to dumped price. It will
destroy our industry.
We are offering a resolution today--my two colleagues from the State
of Minnesota, my colleague from North Dakota--a resolution that says to
the President: Renegotiate the provision of the Central American Free
Trade Agreement relating to access to the sugar market, No. 1. No. 2,
do not include sugar as an element of negotiations in any bilateral or
regional free trade agreement.
I hope the Senate will pass this sense-of-the-Senate resolution. I
hope we can get a vote on it. I hope the Senate will express itself to
the trade ambassador and the President: Don't do
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this. It is unfair to our growers, unfair to our farmers, unfair to an
industry that produces substantial numbers of jobs and economic
opportunity.
The sugar beet industry in the Red River Valley of North Dakota has
$1 to $2 billion of impact in our economy, and once again I say they
can compete and they will compete when asked to compete anywhere around
the world, but they cannot compete against unfair trade, and dumped
sugar is unfair trade, yet that is exactly what we are connecting to in
these trade agreements and that is why we want to stop it right now
before it goes further.
Australian representatives are in Washington, DC, now. The ambassador
for the United States who negotiates trade agreements says he wants to
finish this agreement by the end of January. If they finish this
agreement with Australia, my hope is the Senate will have expressed
itself by that time in a way that says: Do not do this with respect to
sugar. Do not take steps that potentially destroy the sugar industry in
this country, that potentially destroy the opportunity of beet growers
in the Red River Valley to make a living. That is not a step forward;
that is a step backward for this country.
I hope the trade ambassador hears this. I don't understand for the
life of me why we got a message yesterday saying, I am going to do the
right thing, I won't have sugar in the negotiations with Australia, and
then today--and this is on ABC, incidentally, Online, you can go to the
Internet and see it--today the United States trade official denied that
the trade ambassador said that. I don't understand this at all.
My hope is the Senate will do what it has done before on this issue
of sugar. The Senate has taken a position on this before. The sugar
program of ours works. It provides good prices, advantageous prices for
the American consumer, it provides assured quality of supply, and it
provides an opportunity, with fair trade, for our growers to make a
living in this country in the sugar industry, an industry that is
important to our country.
I am going to have this resolution introduced at the conclusion of my
remarks. My hope is my colleagues in Congress will support it. I know
there are many who are strong supporters of the position that it is
fine to negotiate trade agreements but it is not fine to undercut our
country's interests with trade agreements.
It is almost impossible for me to begin talking about trade without
describing the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We have the
largest trade deficit in human history right now, the largest deficit
ever after our trade negotiations and agreements have been put in
place--the largest deficits ever. We have an agreement with Canada and
take a modest trade deficit and turn it into a big one. We have an
agreement with Mexico and take a trade surplus and turn it into a big
deficit. The trade deficit with Japan just keeps growing. The deficit
with China is out of sight, well over $100 billion and will probably
reach $130 billion this year; almost a third of a billion dollars a day
in trade deficit with just China alone. With Europe? I can't even begin
to describe the problems we have with Europe in beef and other areas.
The fact is, we need to fix this.
Will Rogers said many years ago, the United States of America has
never lost a war and never won a conference. He must surely have been
thinking of our trade negotiators. It takes them no more than a week or
two to come back with a trade agreement that undercuts especially the
interests of American agriculture, but if you look at the trade
deficit, I would say undercuts this country's economic interests. It is
not in this country's economic interests to continue to see this trade
deficit grow and grow and grow.
That trade deficit, incidentally, is connected to the process by
which jobs stream out of this country, by companies that decide they
want to produce elsewhere and ship into this country, by companies that
decide they want to move jobs offshore. ``We want to create a new
mailbox someplace in the Bermudas or Bahamas or some other tax haven
country in order not to have to pay taxes to the U.S., and at the same
time close our factories and ship jobs overseas.''
That is what this measure is, that is the consequence of this, and
that is why this has to change, in my judgment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming would like
to be added as an original cosponsor of the resolution.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming. He has
been an assertive and strong voice on a number of these trade issues,
including specifically the sugar issue. I am proud to have him as a
cosponsor on this resolution.
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