[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 78 (Friday, May 11, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6006-S6007]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          INTERNATIONAL TRADE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this has been a very disappointing week 
from the standpoint of a discussion about international trade. 
Yesterday morning, at about 8:30 in the morning, we learned the trade 
deficit for the previous month has once again spiked up to a $63.9 
billion trade deficit in 1 month. And yet, most of this town continues 
to say how successful it is, this strategy of free trade.
  This what has happened with our trade strategy. This chart represents 
an ocean of red ink. You can see, going back to 1995, we have had 
nothing but trouble, increasing deficits year after year. We are deep 
in debt with respect to our combined trade deficits. This is not a 
trade strategy that is working.
  At about the same time that I learned that our trade deficit spiked 
up once again to $63.9 billion in 1 month, I also learned that one of 
the largest employers in North Dakota, Imation, is leaving our State. 
They announced they are going to be closing their plant in Wahpeton, 
ND.
  They have actually announced it well ahead of time, and they are not 
going to be completely gone until the year 2009. It is helpful that we 
received some advanced notice.
  But this is a company that has 390 employees. It produces high-tech 
products in data storage and so on. Mr. President, 390 workers who are 
paid well, who have good jobs with good pay and good benefits, facing 
the prospect of all that disappearing.
  I was on the phone yesterday with the CEO of this company, Imation, 
and asked questions. The company has said to its employees and to me 
that they are closing down this factory in North Dakota because it 
produces floppy disks, and that is yesterday's technology. Floppy disks 
are on the way out, not on the way in. The market has moved and that is 
just the fact. So supposedly that has required them to make a decision 
to close this plant.
  Come to find out, though, that only 55 people in a plant of 390 
people are making floppy disks. The rest of the employees, of course, 
are not. They are involved in the production of other things. So it 
doesn't really make sense that they are closing the plant because of 
floppy disks.
  Yesterday, in a conversation with the president of the company, after 
a lot of probing, I found out that 168 of the jobs in this plant are in 
fact going to moved to Juarez, Mexico. Why? Undoubtedly because of low 
wages paid in Juarez, Mexico. You can produce things less expensively 
if you are paying people 50 cents an hour, I suppose. But at its root 
it is exactly what is wrong with what is happening in international 
trade and our participation in it.
  Instead of lifting others up, our entire trade strategy has been a 
strategy that says it is all right to push the standards in this 
country down. No, the workers in Wahpeton can't compete with Mexican 
workers, nor should they be expected to. And by the way, I will bet 
some others of these jobs will be migrating to China and some other 
places in Asia.
  I am not here to trash a corporation; that is not my point. This 
company has been a good employer in our State for a long time. But I am 
very disappointed and very troubled they have announced they are 
leaving. In the last 5 to 7 years we worked hard to get them Federal 
Government grants, almost $3 million in Federal grants, plus a 
guaranteed Federal loan to expand their plant in Wahpeton, ND. Then, 
just a few short years later, there is a U-turn in the corporate board 
room that says they have decided not only are they not going to want to 
proceed here, they are going to leave.
  What about the millions of dollars of grants that we worked to get 
because we want to support those jobs? This, in a microcosm, is exactly 
what is going on all across this country. It is Wahpeton this week, but 
I could name almost any city and you will have the same thing.
  I have been on the floor of the Senate many times talking about who 
is leaving and when and where and why and how. Levis--gone. They don't 
make any Levis in America. There is not one pair of Levis made in 
America. Fruit of the Loom underwear--all gone; no underwear made in 
America by Fruit of the Loom. Fig Newton cookies, they, too, went to 
Mexico. If you want to eat Mexican food, buy Fig Newton cookies. Radio 
Flier, Little Red Wagon--gone to China; Huffy bicycles, gone to China.
  I could go on forever talking about things. But what happened in 
Wahpeton, ND, brings it home in a stark way to the people who dressed 
up in the morning to go to work, appreciating those jobs, believing 
those jobs were important in their lives, just to find out that one day 
they are gone. And at least part of the reason they are gone is they 
can't compete with people who will work for a whole lot less money in 
other parts of the world. Should they be required to? Is our strategy 
to say, after we have built a set of standards for a century in this 
country, that those standards don't matter because you have to compete 
against a different standard? And the different standard is what they 
pay in China, what they pay in Mexico? We can't live on that in this 
country and that ought not be the standard.
  I showed a chart with the red ink in terms of international trade 
deficits that we have. Our trade deficit last year was $832 billion. 
You can make a case with the budget deficit, where the Congress spends 
more than it takes in--you can make the case from an economics 
perspective that is money we owe to ourselves. You can't make that case 
with the trade deficit. That is money we owe to foreigners, and we are 
going to repay it someday with a lower standard of living in this 
country. That is a fact.
  I wake up and read there is apparently some sort of fiesta at the 
White House. It is probably appropriately following the Cinco de Mayo 
period. They gathered together, Republicans and Democrats, and said: We 
have reached a deal on trade.
  So now we have a couple of trade agreements coming up--Peru, Panama, 
maybe also Colombia and Korea. And we have some folks who got together 
and said: We reached a deal on trade.
  No one I know of in this Chamber has reached a deal on trade. I think 
there are plenty of voices in this Chamber that will rise in the coming 
week to say, no, the trade debate has to involve people in this Chamber 
who know that the current trade strategy doesn't work for this country.
  It is not because we don't want to be engaged in trade. We believe in 
trade, and plenty of it. We support international trade. But we support 
international trade that is mutually beneficial to us and others. What 
has happened in recent trade agreements? I come back now to the issue 
of Mexico. We do a trade agreement with Mexico, and you turn a $2 
billion surplus into an annualized trade deficit now with Mexico--in 
the first 3 months of this year it is going to be $70 billion a year, 
with Mexico. Think of that. We turned a trade surplus with Mexico, a $2 
billion surplus, into a $70 billion deficit. You talk about 
incompetence? You talk about bad trade deals? This is the cherry on top 
of the sundae in bad trade deals.
  Among the things they discussed yesterday is Korea. They made brief 
mention of that today in the paper. You have a couple of problems with 
Korea, aside from the fact that the agreement was generally negotiated 
incompetently.

[[Page S6007]]

  Here is an example of what is wrong with Korea. Mr. President, 99 
percent of the automobiles in Korea driven on the streets are made in 
Korea. Is that an accident? Why is that the case? Because that is the 
way Korea wants it. They don't want imported vehicles. They want the 
people of Korea to buy Koreans cars that produce Koreans jobs in the 
manufacturing marketplace.
  Here is what has happened with Korea. Last year we sent Korea 4,200 
American cars. That is our export market to Korea. Last year, Korea 
sent us 730,000 Korean cars to be sold in our marketplace. So Korea 
said: Load all these cars on ships, send them to America, sell them to 
American consumers and, by the way, while we send you 730,000 Korean 
cars, we will limit you to 4,200 American cars coming our way.
  You say maybe there is not a market for American cars in Korea. Talk 
to the folks who try to sell Dodge Dakota pickups and learn that story, 
and then you will learn what happens with respect to American vehicles 
that are attempted to be sold in Korea.
  Now, in the discussion this morning, I read of the celebration at the 
White House by Members of the House and the White House, making some 
sort of deal with respect to Panama, Peru, Colombia, I guess. They 
talked about labor standards, which I think is very important. In fact, 
the only trade agreement that has ever had labor standards is the 
Jordan agreement. The Clinton administration agreed that the free-trade 
agreement with Jordan would have labor standards.
  Well, guess what. Last year there were findings of sweatshops 
operating underneath the umbrella of a free-trade agreement with 
supposedly strong labor standards is in Jordan. Laborers were brought 
over from Bangladesh to sweatshops in Jordan, to turn Chinese materials 
into garments for sale in the U.S. market. The workers were forced to 
endure 20-hour days; yes, 20-hour days in sweatshop conditions in a 
country with whom we have a trade agreement where there are labor 
standards. These standards mean virtually nothing unless you have 
enforcement. All of these are just words unless you have enforcement. 
And this Administration has certainly demonstrated that it has no 
interest in enforcing labor standards.
  The Government of Jordan has taken some steps to try to fix some of 
these problems. Is that because our U.S. trade officials tried to 
enforce the labor provisions in the trade agreement? No. It's because a 
labor rights group called the National Labor Committee exposed these 
problems, and because the New York Times wrote a front page story about 
them. So it's not the labor standards in the trade agreement that got 
the Jordan government to start to do the right thing, because this 
Administration never tried to enforce those standards. It was the fact 
that these abuses were independently exposed and held to the light.
  These failed trade policies are undermining our country. This is 
pulling the rug out from under our country.
  But this is kind of a Rip Van Winkle moment again. We have an 
announcement of surging trade deficits, and the Congress just sleeps 
through it, the White House sleeps through it. Instead of deciding 
there is a crisis we ought to deal with, we now see a bunch of people 
going to the White House and embracing, saying: We have got a new 
agreement between House leaders and the President with respect to how 
we are going to proceed on certain trade agreements.
  Well, let me say to them there is another voice in this Congress, a 
voice that will come from the Senate. There are some of us that will 
insist we stand up for the economic interests of this country.
  I am not suggesting we are against trade. That is not the case. But 
we will insist there will be a new day in trade agreements that stand 
up for our economic interests. That has not been the case to date.
  Now, let met finish by going back to the issue of what has happened 
this week in Wahpeton, ND.
  Those workers in Wahpeton, ND, appreciated those jobs; good jobs that 
paid well with good benefits. I appreciated the company that was there 
that made those jobs possible. But I do not appreciate the circumstance 
where we are told one day: It is over. Just a few years after we worked 
to get substantial Federal grants and guaranteed Federal loans to 
expand the manufacturing plant, the very plant we are now told is 
obsolete, or at least the very plant we are now told houses the 
production that will be moved elsewhere; production that will be moved 
to Mexico because of lower labor costs.
  We did not strive for a century to raise standards in this country 
just to find them undermined day after day, by 30-cent or 20-cent-an-
hour labor in China, or 50-cent-an-hour labor in Mexico. That is not 
the right approach. It is not an approach that strengthens, it is an 
approach that weakens our country.
  We expanded the middle class in this country over a century by 
lifting people up. I will not go into great detail about it, but I have 
told this story 100 times about James Fyler, who died of lead 
poisoning. He was shot 54 times. That is lead poisoning, I guess. He 
was shot 54 times. The reason he was shot was because in the early part 
of the last century, he insisted that people who went into a coal mine 
to work ought to be able to be paid a fair wage and expected to be 
working in a safe coal mine; for that he was killed.
  Over a century, so many men and women worked to raise standards, to 
say: People ought to have the right to organize, they ought to have the 
right to a minimum wage, a safe workplace. Over a century we lifted 
those standards. It did something important to expand the middle class 
of this country. But this is being undermined by the massive trade 
deficits we are running, the $836 billion annual deficit we had in 
2006, and the nearly $64 billion trade deficit we ran in March 2007.
  I hope one day there will be enough of us in the Congress who will 
say: Stop. Enough. We are not going to put up with it. We are going to 
insist and demand that our trade agreements represent the best economic 
interests of our country. Yes, we want to help others. But most 
importantly, we want to preserve a standard of living in this country 
that gives us opportunity for the future.
  Let me end by saying, again, I believe in trade. I believe in plenty 
of trade. I believe we can compete and compete successfully, but the 
rules have to be fair, and those who negotiate trade agreements have to 
do so with one eye on how it is going to affect this country.
  Regrettably, most of the trade negotiations in the last two and a 
half decades have been incompetent and I think have pulled the rug out 
from under America's workers and dumbed down the standards that many 
have given their lives to create in this country.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk to proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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