[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 138 (Tuesday, December 7, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11870-S11871]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              TRADE ISSUES

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me mention a couple of other trade 
issues because I think they are critically important. I am going to 
spend a great deal of time on trade issues in this coming session of 
Congress. We have the largest trade deficit in the history of the 
country. That translates into lost jobs and lost opportunity for our 
country. This town is completely brain dead on trade issues.

  We can start with the Washington Post and the major news outlets. 
They do not cover trade or care about it, and if they cover it at all, 
they only cover one side, and that is the side of so-called free trade. 
Let me tell you where the so-called mantra of free trade has led: the 
largest trade deficit in the history of our country with massive 
outsourcing of jobs replaced with jobs that pay less with fewer 
benefits in our country.
  I have spoken at great length about the trade issues to a deafening 
silence; it could be because of my presentation. But this country, this 
Congress, this town, has to get serious about this issue because it is 
hollowing out the economic stability and opportunity for this country's 
future.
  We have a huge unprecedented trade deficit with China. We buy 
everything China has to manufacture--shoes, shirts, shorts, trinkets, 
toys, just name it. It is coming in an armada of ships every single 
day. We buy every single day nearly $2 billion more from other 
countries than we are able to export.
  Why do we do that? I have spoken about Huffy bicycles, and I will not 
go through the story today, but Ohio workers making Huffy bicycles, 
proud of their jobs, lost their jobs, and Huffy bicycles are now made 
in China. The little red wagon, American Flyer, made in America for 120 
years, but the employees lost their jobs to China.
  A new report, December 3rd in the Washington Post: ``A Rough Ride for 
Schwinn Bicycles.'' We know Schwinn bicycles. I rode a Schwinn when I 
was a kid. They are now made in China. This story describes the mistake 
of Schwinn bicycles. They decided as a company they needed to try to 
continue to stay in the United States and manufacture bicycles here. 
What a huge mistake, they decided later, because it drove them into 
bankruptcy. So there are no longer any Schwinn bicycles made in 
America.
  Let me give an example of why this is happening, whether it is Huffy 
or Schwinn bicycles or a thousand other items.
  This is a story about unrest in a Chinese manufacturing plant from 
the Washington Post. In the latest unrest, about 1,000 workers staged a 
walk out on November 7th at the Shanlin Technology appliance factory 
near Guangzhou, demanding higher overtime pay and more days off, 
according to the government-run New China News Agency. The workers 
returned to the assembly line a day later after receiving assurances 
that overtime pay would rise by 12 cents to 36 cents an hour and that 
they would get two days off a month.
  When the Huffy jobs went from Ohio to China, for example, the jobs 
changed in one respect. The U.S. workers had made $11 an hour plus 
benefits. The Chinese workers instead make 33 cents an hour and work 12 
to 13 hours a day 7 days a week. Some insist that is what America 
should compete with. I insist that is a race to the bottom of economic 
standards and one this country should not aspire to win.
  What has happened to our Yankee ingenuity when it comes to 
international trade? We used to be known as good traders. Instead, we 
now have a strange idea that if we can just open up all markets and 
have no admission standards or no admission price to the U.S. 
marketplace, and allow the production of most goods to migrate to 
countries in the world where you can hire 12-year-olds, pay them 33 
cents an hour, work them 12 hours a day, and ship the products to 
Toledo and Santa Fe, that America would be better off. And that is just 
not so. In fact, as the jobs migrate from a country that cannot 
continue to pay workers $11 or $20 an hour, when corporations will 
simply move the jobs to China where they are paid 33 cents or 50 cents 
an hour, this country begins to feel the economic pain and the 
shrinking of economic opportunity.
  It seems to me, that after decades of failed trade policy--whether it 
is GATT, WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA or any one of a number of trade agreements--
at some point those who predicted a good outcome for these trade 
agreements, and were so fundamentally wrong, should be discredited.

  NAFTA is an example. We were told with respect to NAFTA, This is a 
good thing for our country because what will happen if jobs migrate to 
Mexico, they will only be low-wage and low-

[[Page S11871]]

skill jobs. But since NAFTA has been in effect, the three largest 
exports from Mexico have been automobiles, automobile parts, and 
electronics, all the product of high-skilled labor. It is exactly the 
opposite of what the experts predicted.
  I am told that we now import more cars from Mexico than we export to 
the entire rest of the world. We now import more automobiles from 
Mexico than we export to the entire rest of the world. What that means 
is the migration of jobs in automobiles and automobile parts to Mexico 
after NAFTA. Why? Because of lower wages and fewer health, 
environmental, and safety regulations on manufacturing. That has meant 
those jobs have left our country. It results in part in this very 
significant trade deficit, which, in my judgment, injures this country 
and is a long-term serious problem.
  I intend to speak at much greater length about that, and repeatedly, 
because we must find legislative approaches to interrupt this failed 
trade policy. I am not saying I am opposed to free trade. I believe 
trade must be fair trade. There must be fair trade requirements. This 
free trade is a mantra that people chant. But chanting ``free trade'' 
at a time when we are up to our neck and choking on trade debt, with 
jobs moving from the country in wholesale quantity, it is time to stop 
that and decide it ought not be something to be ashamed of for anyone 
to say: My interest is in the economic well-being of the United States 
of America. I am so tired of people refusing to say: My interest is in 
protecting the economy of our country.
  Why are we afraid to stand up for American jobs? Why do we believe it 
is inappropriate for an employee to make $15 an hour in a manufacturing 
plant? Somehow large corporations have convinced most policymakers and 
editorial writers that it makes a lot of sense to hollow out our 
manufacturing business.
  I guarantee this: No country will long remain a world economic power 
if it does not have a strong manufacturing base. We are headed in the 
wrong direction. This country needs to make a U-turn. As I have said, 
we are completely brain dead in trade policy. We intend to have that 
discussion. I will force that discussion in the next session of 
Congress.

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