Congressional Record, Volume 151 Issue 77 (Monday, June 13, 2005)

[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 77 (Monday, June 13, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4377-H4384]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CAFTA

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, at a White House news conference 2
weeks ago, President Bush called on Congress to pass the Central
American Free Trade Agreement this summer. Last week in this Chamber,
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the most powerful Republican in
the House, promised a vote by July 4. Well, he actually promised a vote
last year, and then he promised a vote again in May, but this time he
means it, I think, and we are going to actually vote on this by July 4.
I am joined tonight by the gentleman from Niles, Trumbull County,
Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and the gentlewoman from Toledo, Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), two
of my colleagues from my State; and there will be the gentlewoman from
Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) and others coming along later.

[[Page H4378]]

Mr. Speaker, many of us who have been speaking out against the
Central American Free Trade Agreement have a message for the President,
and that is we should renegotiate CAFTA.
President Bush signed CAFTA more than a year ago. Every trade
agreement negotiated by this administration has been ratified by
Congress within 2 months of its signing. Australia, Singapore, Chile,
Morocco, each of those trade agreements the President signed was
passed, was ratified, was voted on by Congress within a couple of
months. CAFTA, however, has languished in Congress for more than a year
without a vote because this wrong-headed trade agreement offends both
Republicans and Democrats. It offends small manufacturers and labor. It
offends environmentalists and food safety advocates. It offends
religious organizations in Central America and in our country.
But most importantly, Mr. Speaker, look at what our trade policy has
brought us. In 1992 the United States trade deficit, in other words,
how much we import versus how much we export, our trade deficit was $38
billion, the year I first ran for Congress, in 1992. Last year this
trade deficit was $618 billion. It went from $38 billion to $618
billion in literally a dozen years. It is hard to argue our trade
policy is working when the deficit goes from $38 billion to $618
billion in just a dozen years.
Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to
take up CAFTA in what is called a mock markup. In tomorrow's mock
markup, 10 legislators from Central America will attempt to offer
statements on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans
who oppose this dysfunctional cousin of the North American Free Trade
Agreement. I say these legislators will ``attempt'' because they have
not been asked nor, the word we get, will they be allowed to offer any
official remarks at any hearings on CAFTA.
Instead, the administration and CAFTA supporters in Congress crafted
a one-sided plan to benefit multinational corporations at the expense
of U.S. workers and businesses, U.S. farmers and ranchers, and Central
American workers and businesses and Central America's farmers and
ranchers. Opponents to CAFTA know it is simply an extension of NAFTA,
which clearly, as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) has pointed
out on this floor for a dozen years, has not worked for our country.
It is the same old story, Mr. Speaker. Every time there is a trade
agreement, the President says it will mean more jobs for the U.S., it
will mean increased manufacturing in the U.S., increased exports of
American-produced goods to other countries, and better wages for
developing countries.
But look at this chart, Mr. Speaker. The States here in red are
States that in the last 5 years have lost 20 percent of their
manufacturing. Michigan, 210,000 jobs, more than 20 percent of their
manufacturing base; Illinois, 224,000; Ohio, 216,000; Pennsylvania,
200,000 jobs; North Carolina, 228,000; Mississippi and Alabama
combined, about 130,000 jobs. In State after State after State, we have
lost 20 percent of our manufacturing base. In many of the other States,
we have lost thousands of jobs also.
So they continue to promise more jobs, more manufacturing, more
exports, a higher standard of living in the developing world. But with
every trade agreement, their promises fall by the wayside in favor of
big business interests that send U.S. jobs overseas and exploit cheap
labor abroad. In the face of overwhelming bipartisan opposition, the
administration and Republican leadership have tried every trick in the
book to pass this CAFTA.
As I said earlier, we in this body could agree on a Central American
Free Trade Agreement, but not one that is tilted against American
workers, not one that is tilted against workers in Central America, not
one that is tilted for the drug industry and against the environment
and against worker rights.
But this year, because nothing else seems to be working in convincing
Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, the administration is
linking CAFTA to helping democracy in the developing world. Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Zoellick, both have said CAFTA
will help in the War on Terror. I am not sure how. They have never
really explained that. But that is what they claim.
Ten years of NAFTA, Mr. Speaker, has done nothing to improve border
security between Mexico and the United States; so that argument does
not wash. Then in May, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in one of their
famous junkets that we hear more and more about from some of our
friends in this body, flew the six presidents from Central America and
the Dominican Republic around our country, hoping they might be able to
sell CAFTA to newspaper editors, to our country's voters, to our
country's Congress. They flew to Albuquerque. The Chamber of Commerce
flew these six presidents to Albuquerque and to Los Angeles; to New
York; to Miami; to Cincinnati, my home State of Ohio.
Again they failed. And after the trip, the Costa Rican President
broke off from the group and announced that his country would not
ratify CAFTA unless an independent commission could determine the
agreement will not hurt the working poor.

{time} 2000

In addition, Mr. Speaker, we have seen demonstration after
demonstration in Central America, 45 demonstrations with more than
150,000 workers, opposing this agreement. Some of their Presidents
might be for it, some of them might be, but their workers certainly are
not. In this case, this was in Guatemala, when the police went up
against 8,000 workers, two of these workers were killed by their
country's security forces.
Now the administration is trying something different. They have
opened up the bank. Desperate after failing to gin up support for the
agreement based on its merits, CAFTA supporters now are attempting to
buy votes with fantastic promises. If history is any example, should
the promises fail, they will try and force votes their way with
outrageous threats.
Instead of wasting time with toothless side deals, U.S. Trade
Ambassador Portman should negotiate a CAFTA that will actually pass
Congress. Republicans and Democrats, small manufacturers and labor
groups, farmers, ranchers, faith-based groups in all seven countries,
religious leaders, environmental human rights organizations and workers
are all speaking with one voice: Renegotiate CAFTA; give us a CAFTA,
but one very different from this.
This CAFTA will not enable Central American workers to buy cars made
in the district of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) or the district
of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur.) They will not enable Central
American workers to buy software developed in Seattle, or prime beef in
Nebraska.
A Nicaraguan worker, Mr. Speaker, earns $2,800 a year. The combined
economic output of the Central American nations is equivalent to that
of Columbus, Ohio, or New Haven, Connecticut, or Orlando, Florida, or
Memphis, Tennessee. Workers in the United States make $38,000 a year on
average.
Workers in Costa Rica make $9,000; Dominican Republic, $6,000;
Nicaragua and Honduras, the average makes significantly less than
$3,000 a year. They are not going to buy the cars made in the district
of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) or the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur). They are not going to buy steel made in my district. They are
not going to buy apparel made in North Carolina. They are not going to
buy software from Seattle, or prime beef from Kansas. They simply
cannot afford to do this.
This CAFTA is not about exporting American products. It is about U.S.
companies moving plants to Honduras, paying $2,600 a year; outsourcing
jobs to El Salvador, where workers make less than $5,000; exporting
cheap labor in Guatemala where workers make $4,000 a year.
Mr. Speaker, when the world's poorest people can buy American
products and not just make them, then we will know that our trade
policies are working.
Mr. Speaker, we should renegotiate; defeat this Central American Free
Trade Agreement, start again and renegotiate a CAFTA that will lift up
workers and environmental standards in all the involved countries.
I would like to yield to my friend from Toledo, the gentlewoman from

[[Page H4379]]

Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), and thank her for her terrific work for years on
trade issues.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the able Member the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for spearheading this Special Order
this evening and for the great work he always does, and the gentleman
from Youngstown, Ohio, and the surrounding areas, for being so much a
part of our efforts to change America's trade policy so it again works
for America's communities, America's workers and America's farmers.
If you loved NAFTA, you are going to love CAFTA, and I cannot think
of a single American that really loves NAFTA, because we have lost so
many jobs, nearly 1 million jobs, since that agreement was passed in
1993.
It is really amazing to me to think about everything that is needed
in this country and what the Bush administration is trying to push
through this Congress. Just look at rising gas prices. Is this
administration and Congress really trying to do anything to help
America become energy-independent again? No, not really. We continue to
become more dependent on imported petroleum than before this
administration took office.
All of our pension funds are underfunded. The Pension Benefit
Guarantee Corporation, which is supposed to undergird all of our
Nation's pension funds in private industry, needs over $23 billion to
try to restore just the current needs in that bill. Are we getting a
bill to fully fund the Nation's pension guarantee fund? No. The bill is
not coming up here on that.
What about Social Security? Well, their answer is privatize it. Try
to divert money from the regular trust fund, rather than finding a way
to make sure that Social Security is healthy long term.
Health care, is anything really being done to insure America's
families and to try to take care of all those in our nursing homes who
do not have enough nurses at bedside? No, that bill is not coming up
here.
Or veterans, to make sure we have enough money in the accounts of
this country to take care of all the disabled veterans returning home?
We see our Family Assistance Centers having to raise money to buy
special access ramps to people's houses and to try to take care of
families because we lack TRICARE when our veterans come home. No, we
are not getting a bill to do anything about that.
What we are getting is we are getting a bill that would expand NAFTA
to include five more countries, actually six more countries if you
count the Dominican Republic. What it would do is add over 50 million
more people into this NAFTA union, people who have hands to do work,
but who through that work cannot really increase their own standard of
living, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) has said, who could buy
the goods that are made in this country, because they do not earn
enough to afford them. But it would add 50 million more people to this
trade effort.
That means that our jobs, as happened with NAFTA, would continue to
be outsourced, shipped out, even in greater quantity than they already
are, to Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, all these places so very far from home, and more
of our agricultural production as well.
So we are literally being asked in this agreement to add a State the
size of California, 50 million people, or four States the size of Ohio,
actually five Ohios, if you look at the population of the countries
that they are trying to add to this DR-CAFTA agreement, add that many
more people to our union and then say it is all going to work.
This is an example of what has happened since NAFTA was passed back
in the early 1990s and what has happened to our trade deficit, if you
add NAFTA, if you add the special agreement with China and all these
other trade agreements. We have fallen every year into deeper and
deeper and deeper deficit. We are now over half a trillion dollars a
year more goods coming into this country than exports going out.
I just wanted to place the record as I begin my comments this evening
that in the last official count in March-April of this year, the
overall U.S. trade deficit in goods and services rose another 6.34
percent from March to April, climbing from $53.6 billion to $57 billion
overall, on top of all of the deficit we already had from last year,
and this represents the fourth highest combined monthly deficit on
record for our whole country.

The deficit with Mexico in that period of time rose to $4.4 billion,
up another 3.29 percent, and the deficit with Canada rose to $5.4
billion, just for that month, another 8.9 percent increase.
If I could just demonstrate these other two charts as I begin this
evening, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) referenced the trade
deficits in various countries.
With Canada, since NAFTA was signed, the proponents said, just like
they are saying now, if we sign this agreement, we are going to have
all the trade. Except it is modeled after the NAFTA accord. And after
we signed NAFTA with Canada, though we already had a deficit with
NAFTA, after the signing of NAFTA it just went deeper and deeper to
where it doubled and tripled, more production in Canada than here in
the United States. With Mexico, the very same pattern.
This type of accord provides America with lost jobs, lost income,
more imports coming in here than exports going out. With Mexico when
NAFTA was signed, we actually had a little trade surplus with Mexico.
We have fallen into heavy, heavy deficit, now nearly $50 billion a year
in the hole with Mexico.
Finally, before I yield back the time the gentleman was kind enough
to give me, we already have today a $1.9 billion deficit in goods with
these nations already. All CAFTA is going to do is push those numbers
further down, which means more lost jobs in Ohio, more workers who
cannot afford to own their home, these increasing bankruptcies we see
across our country, and the same-old-same-old being thrust upon the
American people voted on here in this Congress by some of the most
powerful economic interests on the face of the globe.
So I am very thankful that the gentlewoman from California (Ms.
Solis) was speaking earlier this evening, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Gene Green), now the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), to talk about, you know what, it is time to draw
a line in the sand and say if an agreement has been out of whack,
seriously in deficit for more than 3 years, it ought to be
renegotiated, and we should not add any more pain to the American
economy than we already have.
I want to thank the gentleman for allowing me to speak this evening.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank my friend
for her terrific work representing American workers.
I yield to my friend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Brown) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for their leadership
on this issue. For years and years you guys have been at the forefront
of this issue, and now it is becoming a little more trendy, a little
more popular, to be against some of these trade agreements. I would
like to thank you as a new Member, second term. I am a lucky guy to
have two Members in the Ohio delegation with such strong leadership on
this issue.
As we talked about the trade deficits, whether they are with one
country or the overall trade deficit, I think it is important, and this
is the real disconnect that I think the administration and many of the
people who are supporting CAFTA are missing. The disconnect is with
those people who are in our district, those people who lose
manufacturing jobs, those people who lose textile jobs, whether in the
Southern States, those are the people we are here to represent.
If the trade agreements that we have been signing, whether it was
NAFTA or PNTR or Most Favored Nation with China over years and years
and years, if they are not working for everyone, then they are not good
trade agreements for the United States of America.
I am sure both of you represent counties that probably have the same
kind of situations that the counties in my districts have. They cannot
pass a sales tax; they cannot pass police and fire levies, library
levies, school levies. I think two-thirds of the school levies that
were on the ballot in Ohio last year failed, two-thirds.

[[Page H4380]]

So years ago we were promised when we had the debate, we are going to
pass NAFTA, but we are going to invest in education. We are going to
trade with the Chinese, but we are going to make sure that our workers
are the most skilled, educated and healthiest workers on the planet. We
failed to do that on this end, and at the same time we sign agreements
that do not have the labor standards, do not have the environmental
standards to help lift these people up.
As the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) pointed out earlier, with the
average wage of a Nicaraguan worker, what are they going to buy here?
What are they going to buy that comes out of the United States? Not a
Jeep from Toledo, not a Cobalt from Lordstown, Ohio. They cannot afford
it. It would take them 10, 15, 20 years to come up with the kind of
money that they would need to just buy a car coming out of the United
States of America.
I think it is important, because it is not just about CAFTA. If we
take a step back and we try to look at how the world is going to look
in the next 10 or 20 years, we have high-tech jobs making their way to
India and China, and we have a lot of our manufacturing going to China
that has come from Mexico, first it went down to Mexico and then over
to China, and everyone keeps talking about this new economy and what is
it going to be.
Well, we do not really know what it is going to be. Nobody seems to
know what this new economy is going to be like. We are going to have
the high-tech jobs, and our people are going to work, and it is going
to be great. It will be like America is going to be one big country
club. Everybody is white collar, everybody gets to golf and go to the
swimming pool, and it is going to be great. That was the idea they were
trying to pitch to us in the 1990s, and it did not work out that way.
So it is important for us, I think, not only those of us against the
trade agreements, but as Democrats, to say this train is so far down
the track, we do not even know how much we are going to be able to stop
it. I think it starts with CAFTA would be a good place for putting our
stake in the ground and trying to go in another direction.
But at the same time, we have got to invest in education, we have got
to make sure we have healthy citizens. Eighty-five percent of the
students that go to Youngstown city schools qualify for free and
reduced lunch. That is probably the same, if not higher, in Cleveland
and Toledo. Fifty or sixty percent of those kids live in poverty.
So even if we just, for the sake of argument, say these trade
agreements are great, let us all compete; let us educate our kids; let
us do what we have to do to compete with them, free markets, which we
do not always buy, but let us for the sake of argument say that. How
are we going to have the kids in Youngstown able to compete against
these workers in the other countries if we are not investing in
education and not making sure they are healthy, lifted out of poverty
and on the playing field?
I will say this before I yield back: We are going on the global field
of competition with less than half a team because these kids are not
getting the kind of education, the kind of health care that they need.

{time} 2015

So here we are trying to compete with the Chinese, now we want to do
it with some other countries, and we just are not making the proper
investments to even come to the point where we are going to be able to
lift all of our citizens up to compete with over a billion Indians and
1.3 billion Chinese. And until we do that, fix these trade agreements
and make those investments, we are going to see these trade deficits
continue, we are going to see other countries like the Chinese and the
Indians outpace us with engineers, computer scientists, and all of
these other high-tech workers and, eventually, every community is going
to be like some of the communities we represent, struggling to fund
their schools, struggling to fund basic police and fire, libraries, the
basic services that government needs to provide.
So I am happy to join my colleagues here tonight, and I thank the
gentleman again for his leadership, and I yield back.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Ryan). One of the things that the gentleman pointed out is
talking about school kids in Youngstown or talking about police and
fire in his community, and we do a lot of talking about statistics and
numbers and the trade deficit going from $13 billion to $618 billion in
a dozen years, but then we think about what this means. When President
Bush, Senior, said for every billion dollars in trade surplus or trade
deficit, that translated into 12,000 jobs; for every billion-dollar
trade surplus, it is 12,000 more jobs for our country; for every 12
billion-dollar trade deficit, it is 12,000 fewer jobs, many of those
manufacturing jobs.
So when we have this kind of trade deficit of $618 billion, you
multiply that times 12,000 jobs, according to President Bush, Senior,
however you do the math, these are a lot of people that lose jobs,
communities that experience plant closings, a lot of police and fire
who protect our communities who get laid off when these plants close.
These are a lot of cuts to public education. As the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Ryan) says, you then need to pass school levies and it is so hard
to pass school levies when people have lost their homes and lost their
jobs and are barely able to make ends meet, and have taken a job where
they were making $35,000 a year and are now making $17,000 a year, and
they cannot afford a property tax increase, so schools lose out and
kids lose out, and it is just a downward spiral.
So when you see these numbers, you think about people in our
communities, it does not matter if they are Democrats or Republicans,
because these job losses, as we have pointed out, these job losses in
manufacturing alone, particularly throughout the Midwest and the south,
North and South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and States
from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, up into
Wisconsin, think of these 200,000 per State manufacturing job losses is
a whole lot of people, a whole lot of bread winners and families that
come home to their kids and cannot do what they were able to do before
they lost their jobs. Their schools are hurting, their public safety is
hurting, they are not able to send their kids on to school, all the
kinds of things that go with lost jobs. That is why this is so
important.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman makes a great point. The
whole idea of us representing the whole country is that these
agreements are benefiting the very few people who are doing really
well, and they are the same people who are qualified for the tax cut
that goes to the top one percent. So there is a philosophical debate
here: is the legislation and the trade deals that come out of this
Chamber going to represent everyone, going to be good for everyone, or
are they going to be good for the very few.
That is the kind of philosophy. It has been divide and conquer down
here for the last few years, and hey, if you get screwed out of your
job, then so be it, that is where you are; my friends are doing good
and they get to donate to my campaign, so we are just going to ignore
you.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I would point out that the States in
white, and there are two of them, actually had manufacturing job
growth. In these two States, total population is about 2 million people
out of a country of 280 million, so these two States represent less
than one percent of our country. Not that they are not important if you
live in those two States, but they are the only States that have had
manufacturing job growth.
All of the States in red have lost 20 percent of their manufacturing,
20 percent, hundreds of thousands of jobs in many of these States. The
States in blue have lost up to 20 percent, 15 to 20, so it is State
after State after State has just been hurt badly by this. And as we
have all talked, it clearly translates into people's lives.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, people in our country intuitively know
something is wrong. They go to the store and they try to buy something
and they see ``made in China,'' or they see ``assembled in Mexico.''
And they also know that the quality of production is going down, that
the metals that are used are not as good as they used to be;

[[Page H4381]]

that the clothing is comprised of fabrics that do not breath as well
and they do not wear as well. People know this.
Shoes. They know that the shoes, most of which are imported now, they
are not good quality. There is not rubber on the bottoms anymore on
good leather. Now we have these combination fabrics and your feet hurt.
We think about, and at least I, of the three this evening who are
talking, am old enough to remember when America made American-made,
quality goods. We used to even make American flags. And when they had
that rally over here, the Speaker handed out flags made in China.
Mr. Speaker, I can remember an America where there really was an
America here, where we really made things, and we were proud of what we
made. When you have these kinds of trade deficits that are massive,
over a half a trillion dollars a year in deficit, more imports coming
in here than exports going out, you are displacing production.
I had an experience this past week in my district where I went
through an old power plant, and the innards are being taken out because
it is passe, its technology is passe. I said, well, now, where are we
sending the copper to be reprocessed and used? They said oh, the copper
was bought up by China. I said, oh. Well, what about the turbines?
Well, the turbines are going down to Argentina. I said, you mean there
is nobody in America that even wants to use the scrap metal?
We look at the prices of steel and, in terms of coking, there are no
coking operations here. The Chinese have us around the neck because
they have been charging $43 a ton for coke and making steel production
so expensive in our country. We are seeing parts of us being dismantled
and sent somewhere else.
I was down in North Carolina talking with some of the producers of
hogs and turkeys and chickens down there, and the grains, rather than
coming from the Midwest, is coming from Argentina delivered at the Port
of Wilmington. The farmers in North Carolina and South Carolina want to
buy grain from the Midwest, but yet it is coming from Argentina. It is
very interesting to think what is happening to our country.
Then, on the side of some of these nations, take the Dominican
Republic. We had a couple of young people come to Toledo from the
Dominican Republic a couple of years ago from one of our church groups,
and they actually worked in a company making apparel; it was a South
Korean contractor on contract to the government of the Dominican
Republic, and these young women were making T shirts that were to be
sold in the United States, all of their production came here. They were
paid 12 cents a T-shirt. They worked 14 to 18 hour days, 7 days a week;
they had absolutely no say in their company, nothing, forget it. They
were just bonded workers. If they spoke up, they were fired. They
worked behind barbed wire fences and gates, the plant was inside, it
was like a reservation, actually.
When they came to Toledo, we took them to a couple of shopping
centers to try to find the shirt that they had made and, sure enough,
we did. We found the T shirts hanging on a rack. This young woman, she
just went up to it, she pulled it off and then we looked at the price
tag. It was $20. I cannot forget her face. She just stood there. She
said, you mean in America it is sold for $20 and I earn 12 cents? She
could not even, she could not even fathom it.
I said, yes, and let us think about who made the money off the sweat
of your brow. This was actually sweat shop goods coming into the United
States from the Dominican Republic by way of a special contract signed
with the South Korean manufacturer who is doing business and, really,
whose practices cannot be monitored well, and these young women were
earning nothing.
Now, is that the kind of world that we want to create? We are.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we hear the word ``freedom'' come out
of this Chamber a lot. Is that young girl free? She is trapped. She is
an indentured servant just like there has been throughout the history
of, many times in this country, and many others. She is not free.
So we use freedom when it is convenient for us, but in the instance
where it may hurt some corporation to reduce their profits, freedom
does not mean anything.
Ms. KAPTUR. As the gentleman says, it ought to be called not free
trade, because it is not free trade. It is not good trade, we know
that. It certainly is not positive trade, because all we are yielding
are deficits. Maybe we should call it sweat shop trade or indentured
trade. There is some other word that should go here.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan)
mentions freedom. Another word or phrase that is thrown around here a
lot is Christian values and fair play and morality. And when we pass a
trade agreement that throws American workers in these numbers out of
jobs and then exploits a worker that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) talked about making 12 cents that makes a product that sells in
the United States for $20, what kind of exploitation, what kind of
family values, what kind of morality that does describe our actions?
Yet, it is pretty clear to an awful lot of people in this body, I
think, and it is pretty clear to a whole lot of Americans that the
values that we hold dear, no matter what your religion or your faith,
if your religion or your faith is based on our country doing the right
thing, it simply does not fit, to pass a trade agreement that costs
people these kinds of jobs, that exploits the most defenseless people
in the developing world, the people that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Ryan) says are trapped, the women that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) describes, and then go home and talk about practicing our faith
and family values and morality. It just does not work.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we may have developed a new word or
new phrase. We are advocating for value-centered trade, trade that
represents our values and, hopefully, what we are trying to spread
around the world, value-centered trade.
Ms. KAPTUR. And part of that I think is the development and
sustenance of the middle class.
We know that the workers in these other countries, because of the way
the countries operate, are not creating a middle class. They are
endowing the very top. In fact, they have a word for this, they call it
oligarchies or plutocracies, they are endowing the wealthy, and the
vast majority of people are poor. In Mexico, post-NAFTA, more people
are poor today than before NAFTA was passed, and many of their small
businesses were drummed out of existence, and many of their independent
farmers are wandering across North America trying to find even enough
to eat.
In our country, we have been druming down the middle class. These
other countries do not have a chance to build a middle class. Who is
really benefiting off of the pain that is felt by the workers of our
country and these other countries? It is very clear. There are a few
extraordinarily powerful corporations that are trading workers off
against one another.
And we as a Congress have a responsibility to stand for the
development of the middle class and trade agreements that sustain the
middle class in our country and help these other countries develop
economies where their wealth comes from demand-led growth inside their
own countries, not exporting everything they make to other places,
paying their workers nothing, and then charging us high prices for
those goods here in this country.
We do not have that kind of trade regimen. That is why we need to
stop CAFTA and go back and renegotiate NAFTA, and any other trade
agreement where we have sustained massive deficits over the last 3
years. That ought to be the priority of the President of the United
States and of this Congress.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, CAFTA specifically protects, if you
look at the text of CAFTA, it specifically protects the prescription
drug companies, but offers no real protection to workers. It
specifically protects and supports Hollywood films and CD-ROMs, but
does not have protection for the environment and for food safety. I
mean, if that does not tell us something about values; we will write a

[[Page H4382]]

trade agreement that will help the most privileged, wealthiest people
in both our country and the six CAFTA countries, but we will not
protect the workers, we will not protect and help and enhance the
environment, food safety, safe drinking water, clean air, all of that.
We are joined by my friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak)
who also has been in this Chamber, came with me in 1992 and has been a
part of these discussions on trade for many, many years, and I thank
the gentleman for joining us.

{time} 2030

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown)
for asking me to come down and speak with him and speak out against the
Central America Free Trade Agreement called CAFTA. I am pleased to be
here with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), all from the great State of Ohio. As we continue to
look at just your map there, the job loss is 216,000 in Ohio, 210 in
Michigan.
Just one slight correction, if I may, on your map. The Upper
Peninsula of Michigan still belongs to Michigan, not to Wisconsin. But
anyone saw me down here arguing this from my district and knowing that
I live in the Upper Peninsula, they would say, whoa, what happened
here?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) would
yield, we left Ann Arbor in Michigan.
Mr. STUPAK. But, you know, if CAFTA passes, there might as well not
be an Upper Peninsula of Michigan just because we have lost so much. In
fact, Michigan, right now our unemployment remains the highest in the
State at about 7 percent. The small and the medium-sized manufacturing
jobs are gone. We just have great difficulty with it.
One industry we still have left in Michigan, and a little bit that it
is, but it is vitally important, a new part of my district down there
by the thumb area, as we call it, is the sugar industry. And CAFTA will
just really wipe out the sugar industry in Michigan.
We recently just have been declared a disaster area because of higher
than normal temperatures in the region, where we lost 200,000 tons of
sugar. That cost $33 million to our farmers. But now if we pass this
trade agreement, and if it goes into effect, U.S. markets will be
flooded with sugar imports, striking an even greater blow to our
Michigan economy, especially our agriculture and sugar. And sugar
actually ranks fourth in the country in production, Michigan sugar
does. So we have a vital stake in the sugar industry in this Nation,
being fourth in the country in production.
And our sugar comes from sugar beet. And the sugar beet economy in
Michigan, if you will, is about 2000 farms, employs thousands of
people, and annually it is a $300 million product to agriculture in
Michigan. Michigan farmers know how damaging CAFTA would be to them. We
will also endanger many of the thousands of jobs at the mid-Michigan-
based Michigan Sugar Company. That is a cooperative, and they have
worked very hard to maintain their jobs. And if CAFTA goes through, we
think the Michigan Sugar Company would be history.
We in Congress we need to send a strong signal to the Bush
administration that this is one instance where sugar, if you will, does
not belong on the table, so to speak.
What can we expect from CAFTA? And I know all my colleagues here
joined me in that fight in NAFTA about some 10 years ago. A significant
job loss. Over the past 10 years we have 766,000 jobs lost here in the
United States. And where did they go? They went to Mexico and other
places for lower wages and labor standards that are appealing to big
corporations.
How many more American jobs can we afford to lose as a result of
CAFTA? Why would CAFTA, under the same labor and environmental
framework as NAFTA, be anything better for our manufacturing industry,
our sugar industry or the American worker?
CAFTA would allow foreign corporations to challenge U.S.
environmental laws once again by establishing a three-member panel of
international judges who meet behind closed doors with the power to
award billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayers to multinational
corporations.
CAFTA's environmental provision is a sham. The agreement says that
nations would simply enforce existing environmental laws, even though
many of those laws are inadequate. Even that provision, the
environmental provision, even that one fails to have a meaningful
enforcement mechanism. CAFTA does not ask other nations to better
preserve or protect their environments. It just says whatever laws you
have is fine.
In the U.S. we have many environmental laws to protect our food,
other residents, our natural resources. Yet if CAFTA passes, we will
import goods from countries that do not have the same safety standards.
We all know about the food. I know the gentleman from Ohio (Mr.
Brown) has helped on the Energy and Commerce Committee where we both
sit on food safety issues, whether it is tomatoes out of Mexico versus
Florida tomatoes. In this country we still, we pass every year a
labeling law to label our food. So we could say, okay, these tomatoes
are from Florida. We know what standards they are grown by. These are
from Mexico. We do not know what standards they are grown by. We pass
it, but yet it is never implemented by the current administration.
People are willing to pay a few extra pennies, if you will, on their
fruits or vegetables or beets or seafood just to know where it comes
from, because our standards, our environmental standards, our consumer
standards, our health standards, our safety standards are so much
greater in this country than elsewhere.
So CAFTA, in a way, wipes out all these protections for the American
worker, for the American homeowner, for our American family. CAFTA also
fails to protect Americans workers. It fails to offer protections to
Central American workers who fall victim to their country's own
diminishing standards.
CAFTA does have its benefits. The only benefits I can find are to
companies that would leave the U.S. to exploit cheap labor in countries
with minimal protections. We need to be promoting business development
and jobs in the U.S., not sending more of them overseas.
Michigan, as I said, has lost, and on the gentleman from Ohio's chart
there, 210,000 manufacturing jobs. Just since NAFTA alone, we can draw
a direct line between NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
and 130,000 manufacturing jobs, just manufacturing jobs in Michigan.
Companies are practically crawling all over one another to leave the
U.S. for cheap labor in countries with little protection for their
workers or the environment.
Now I want to be clear, and I am sure all of us here tonight, we
support fair trade agreements; however, CAFTA is unfair at its worst.
It is unfair to workers both at home and in Central America. It is
unfair to small businesses. It is unfair to our communities, unfair to
our environment. So I would urge the administration and this Congress
to stop the exodus of jobs from the U.S., stop the challenges to our
environmental protection laws.
And when I came down here tonight to join you, you were talking a
little bit about what about a faith base or a moral basis for some of
these agreements, especially here in the United States. When you take a
look at the United States Catholic Conference and the United States
Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Relief Services have all come out
opposing this trade agreement on basic fundamental human rights issues.
Trade is all about people, their livelihood and how they live their
lives. And they found CAFTA, you know, Catholics for Faithful
Citizenship, they found that CAFTA is a trade investment agreement
negotiated between the United States and six countries, and they are,
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Dominican
Republic. And the President wants us to pass this trade agreement. But
before we go ahead and do it, just from a moral and faith-based
perspective, we have to ask questions like how will CAFTA address the
needs of small and medium-sized manufacturing and farms here in the
United States and Central America?

How will CAFTA protect the rights of worker and the environment?
How will CAFTA impact the lives of people throughout this hemisphere,
be it U.S. and Central America?

[[Page H4383]]

What is the intellectual property provisions for protection of your
intellectual property? What does CAFTA have? Very little.
What is CAFTA's purpose, or how does CAFTA promote really human
development and human rights, especially amongst poor people in Central
America?
If you start asking these questions, it is very clear this trade
agreement is not negotiated in the best interests of the American
people. It is not negotiated in the best interests of faith-based
people. It is not negotiated in the best interests of people who come
to this floor or go to work every day with a moral purpose of what they
do.
I have always been taught you work hard, you play by the rules, and
good things will happen. Unfortunately, with these trade agreements,
you work hard, you play by the rules, not only do you lose your job,
but your job is shipped overseas, and it is sort of a race to the
bottom, because the job you had before, now you earn so much less when
you try to pick up a new job because there is just not the jobs there.
I mentioned Michigan at about 7 percent unemployment. A month or two
ago it was 7.5 percent. The tourism industry is starting to take off,
so we are starting to see a little bit of an improvement in our
economy, but still at 7 percent. We just cannot. The auto industry is
hurting terribly in this Nation, and as we ship more and more jobs
south to produce more and more cars, to produce our sugar, to produce
our meats, our vegetables, our fruits, what is left for the farmers?
And you cannot tell me these farmers in Central America are making
the money. They really are going to be squeezed. The small and medium-
sized farmers will be squeezed out in these countries as the big
international conglomerates will take over, and they will reap the
profits, and these people will continue to live in poverty and in
misery.
So when the United States Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Relief
Services come out against a trade agreement because they do not believe
it will do anything to lift the workers, the farmers, the peasants out
of poverty in Central America, at the expense of U.S. jobs, that is a
strong statement.
So I would hope people would take a very close look at CAFTA. Take a
look at it from just your own job in our own district. Take a look what
is does to the United States. But take a look at it from a moral and
ethical perspective and say, is this the kind of trade agreement I can
honestly vote for and go to church this Sunday and say, you know, I did
the right thing?
I think when we examine the questions put forth by all of you here
tonight, I think the American people would agree that this CAFTA is
just a bad deal not just for U.S. sugar, but for all of the United
States and all of our manufacturing, and does nothing to help the
people it professes to help in the Central America region of this
hemisphere.
So I would hope that people would not support this agreement. There
is a lot of pressure being applied by the White House right now. There
are meetings going on all the time. There is actually a picnic this
Wednesday at the White House. I am sure they will be asking Members
there in between their enjoyment to vote for this trade agreement. The
President has sort of staked part of his administration upon it, and I
hope we would see through all this and see what is done to our Nation,
all these trade agreements that are really unfair. Again, not against
trade agreements, but they have to be fair to both countries, to all
the countries involved, and they have to be enforceable, and we are
just not enforcing it.
I mentioned the intellectual property rights. We have had hearings in
our committee on China where they just openly are manufacturing these
games that we see that young people play, whether it is their Gameboy
or all of these video games, openly doing it in front of the Chinese
officials. And they say, yeah, but they will not crack down on it. The
intellectual property rights. The movies. The intellectual property
rights is one of the last few industries we have left in this country
where we have world supremacy on it, but yet we cannot get countries
like China to enforce it, to protect it, even though it is part of all
these trade agreements. It is just amazing. It is just simply amazing
that we have these trade agreements we know are being violated, nothing
is being done.
Let us not do another trade agreement, this one being the Central
America Free Trade Agreement, that is going to harm us not just from an
agricultural point of view and manufacturing point of view, but even
our intellectual property rights. If they cannot protect something like
a video game, how are they going to protect your best interest when it
comes down to these trade agreements? So I would hope that this House
would reject this CAFTA. And remember, it is an agreement, and when it
comes to the floor we cannot amend it, we cannot change it, we cannot
alter it. It is either a yes or no vote.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak).
And before calling the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), I
would like to reiterate a couple of things that the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Stupak) said, talking about people playing by the rules, and
American workers who played by the rules and were involved in their
community and raised their kids and worked their jobs and put their
time in, that they lose their jobs; people who have played by the rules
in Central America, who have been exploited in these jobs that have
been outsourced; and all the groups, all the religious leaders and all
six of these, the six Central American countries and including the
Dominican Republic; and the United States religious leaders that oppose
these because they know that people that have played straight and
played by the rules have been hurt by these trade agreements in the
past.
And I want to mention one thing before turning to the gentlewoman
from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) because of what the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Stupak) said and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), and
the opposition to these agreements from the public. People know they
are getting hurt by these agreements, people in Niles, Ohio, that work
at Lordstown, people in Lorain or in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or
in Chicago that have been hurt by these agreements, people in Central
America that have been hurt by these agreements. Because of that it is
clear if this vote were to come to the House today, there is no doubt
that we would defeat this trade agreement by 30 or 40 votes. But that
is today. And the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stupak) pointed out the
White House is beginning all kinds of ways to convince this Congress to
do something to vote for the agreement.
Just a couple of days ago Tom Donahue with the Chamber of Commerce
told a bunch of Members of Congress, if you vote against CAFTA, it will
cost you. Those kinds of threats. At the same time the President and
his people are now putting out carrots, not just sticks. They are, in a
sense, bribing Members of Congress with everything from promising
highways and bridges and other kinds of pork to now saying that they
are going to put $20 million in labor enforcement assistance into
something called the Department of Labor's Bureau of International
Affairs.
Now the administration cut the ILAB from $148 million in 2001 down to
$12 million, from 148- to $12 million. Now they are saying they are
going to add 20 million to it, as if that is helping something, when
they have no interest, they have written a trade agreement that does
not enforce labor standards or provide labor standards. Now they are
saying they are putting a little money in even after they have cut it.
At the same time something called the International Labor Organization,
which is a multinational group that sets labor standards, were one of,
I believe, two countries out of 80 that said we are going to vote
against the funding for that international body.
So it is pretty clear all the promises they want to make about
enforcing labor standards, they wrote weak standards, they cut funding
on enforcement. Now they are trying to buy off a few Members' votes by
promising to put a little money in enforcing labor standards.
I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), who has
been a stellar outspoken advocate for workers' rights and the
environment, both internationally and in the gentlewoman's Illinois
district and around this country.

[[Page H4384]]

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Well, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) so
much for the opportunity to join the gentleman tonight, and thank the
gentleman for his leadership. As I have said, I have learned a lot from
the gentleman. Actually wrote the book on trade agreements called the
Myths of Free Trade. You can get it at a book store. If they do not
have it, order it. It is a good read and educational.
What we are seeing right now is a growing bipartisan consensus that
CAFTA is not a good idea.

{time} 2045

I realize there are all kinds of pressures going on on the side to
get Members to vote for it, and I think the reason is very simple.
Why do we have trade agreements? Well, of course, we have now an
increasing global economy. That is inevitable. It is going to happen as
the world gets smaller, because of technology, because of our capacity
to trade with each other across borders, and that is a good thing. But
we are at a point now where we have to decide what are the
beneficiaries, who are going to be the winners and the losers of this
international trade.
Clearly, we are talking about businesses being able to sell their
products and import products and to set a level playing field, but we
want to make sure that it is not just multinational corporations, the
huge companies that benefit from this global marketplace, but that it
is consumers, that it is workers, and that at the same time we are not
damaging our environment. The thing about trade agreements is that it
is possible to craft trade agreements that are not only good for
business, but they are also good for workers and that they do take into
consideration the environmental impact.
We had a trade agreement with Jordan that, if we used it as kind of a
template for how we write these agreements, could have been a model for
how we do it around the world, but instead, this trade agreement speeds
up or at least contributes to what we call the race to the bottom; that
is, the kind of agreement that does nothing to lift the wages or the
living standards of people in the Central American countries and the
Dominican Republic, and makes it easier to actually lower the standards
of workers here in the United States. It starts pushing down wages,
pushing down working conditions, and that is not the kind of
globalization we want, where the whole world is diminished in terms of
its workers by these trade agreements.
I went to Cuidad Juarez right across from El Paso at the 10th
anniversary of NAFTA, and it was a trip that was organized in large
part by the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). When I went there, what
I saw were workers living in the packing crates of the products that
they were manufacturing, often American companies, who had crossed the
border and set up shop there so that they could pay very low wages to
Mexican workers who were benefiting hardly at all.
I mean, yes, they wanted some kind of a job, but their standard of
living was to live in packing crates without health care, without
certainly any kind of a living wage. In fact, we saw children who
looked pretty sick, but they could not afford to take them to the
doctor or even to send their children to school.
Is this the kind of world that we want to help create with these
trade agreements? Is this good for the people in Mexico? Is this good
for Americans? Because then those jobs go to places where there are low
wages and where it is dangerous to try and organize for higher wages
and higher benefits. It is dangerous to talk about unions. In our
country, every 23 minutes a worker gets fired for trying to organize a
union. In some of those places, you can get killed if you try to
organize a union. It can be very, very dangerous.
So the United States is the richest country in the history of the
world. It could be a leader in saying we want to establish rules that
lift all people, that make it possible for our workers to have a living
wage here at home, to have our consumers be able to buy products from
other countries where the people who produce them are not living in
slave or near slave labor conditions. I feel bad because often it is
posed, you are either for trade agreements or you are not; you are an
isolationist; you do not want to.
It is not that at all. We could craft an agreement. We could go back
to the drawing board, and we could craft an agreement that would work
for workers here and workers there, too.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois
(Ms. Schakowsky). She is exactly right. I think the point she made is
so important.
First of all, at the beginning of her comments, she said there is a
growing bipartisan group, and it is clearly way larger than a majority
of this Congress, large numbers of people in both parties, who do not
like our trade policy, who see that we have seen this incredible growth
in the deficit from $38 billion to $618 billion in 12 years. It is
clear our policies are not working.
We have seen the kind of job loss that the gentleman from Michigan
(Mr. Stupak) and others have talked about, particularly in these red
States, with losing 200,000 jobs.
She talked about that we are not against trade agreements; we are
against this Central American Free Trade Agreement. We are against this
trade agreement because we know who the winners and losers are. The
winners have been the drug companies, the largest most powerful
corporations. The losers are small manufacturers that are from my
district and in Chicago or in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The
losers are workers all over the country.
When these workers lose, it is not just 216,000 Ohioans who lost
their jobs. It is the families. It is the children. It is the school
districts, the police and fire protection, and the safety of these
communities.
It is clear, Mr. Speaker, that we can simply do better, that we
should reject the Central American Free Trade Agreement as presented to
us for this vote; renegotiate CAFTA; come back here and pass a trade
agreement that lifts standards up, that lifts workers' standards up in
our country and Central America; that protects and preserves the
environment; that speaks to food safety and all the things that matter
in our lives.
In closing, I would add both comments from the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Stupak) and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms.
Schakowsky) about what do we stand for as a Nation, what kind of
values, and when I look at the fact that religious leaders in all seven
of these countries, the six countries south of us and our country,
religious leaders have spoken out saying they are not against trade
either, but they can do better, they believe we can do better and come
up with a negotiated trade agreement so that working families and the
poor in these countries, the environment benefits, food safety
benefits. We do better with all of those things that we care about.
So I thank my friends for joining us tonight, the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Ryan), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Stupak), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky),
and just again saying we should renegotiate CAFTA, start again. It has
been a year and a month since this agreement was signed by the
President. We can do better. Let us start again and do it right this
time.

____________________