[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 60 (Wednesday, April 16, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3067-S3068]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              TRADE POLICY

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, there has been a lot of controversy in 
the last couple of weeks about the President's sending the Colombia so-
called free trade agreement to the House of Representatives. Under this 
unusual law, there is something called fast track procedure. Fast track 
procedure--this is a lot of inside baseball--changes the way we do 
business in the House and Senate. Trade law is the only issue that 
changes the way that we do business. On no other issue that comes in 
front of the House and Senate, except the budget, are there limits on 
amendments, are there limits on required up-or-down votes, timetables--
all of that. The Senate rules do not apply on that legislation. It is 
the only time--in part because of who has written trade policy in this 
country in the last 20 years.
  We have seen trade agreements that always look out for the interests 
of the drug industry, look out for the interests of the insurance 
industry, of banking interests, of energy interests. But we have not 
seen trade policy written in this country, negotiated by the President 
of the United States, the U.S. Trade Representative, that has shown any 
of the same concern for workers, for the environment, for food safety, 
for the safety of consumer products. That is why we have seen what 
happened with all the toys that came into this country from China. It 
should not have been a surprise to us that at Eastertime, that at 
Christmas, that at Halloween last year, that consumer products, 
especially toys for small children, came into this country that were 
dangerous. It should not have surprised us because it was somewhat 
inevitable because of the way we do trade policy in this country.
  Professor Jeff Weidenheimer, a professor of chemistry at Ashland 
University, about 10 miles from where I grew up in north central Ohio, 
took his class to test children's toys last fall at Halloween and then 
did it again at Christmas and did it again at Easter. In case after 
case, they would go to a toy store

[[Page S3068]]

or a discount store and they would buy a bunch of toys, very 
inexpensive toys, and they would test them for lead. Every one of these 
batches of toys had significant numbers of toys that had lead content--
lead in the paint that covered these toys--lead content way above on 
average what is considered safe. What is considered safe is about 600 
parts per million. These were, in some cases, thousands of parts per 
million.
  What should not surprise us about that is the way we set up trade 
policy in this country. We don't write trade policy to protect our 
children or to protect our communities or to protect our workers. We 
don't write trade policy to protect our food supply. We write long 
trade agreements--this isn't one, but I have to gather these papers to 
show how long they are. We pass trade policies that are this long. If 
we wanted to eliminate tariffs, we would pass trade policies that are 
this long. You could write a schedule of eliminating tariffs in the 
Colombian free trade agreement of 2 or 3 pages. Instead, we write 
agreements that are hundreds, if not in some cases over a thousand 
pages, because they are full of protections--not for workers, not for 
communities, not for children, not for our kitchen tables, our 
families--but these are trade policies that are chock-full of 
protections for the drug industry, the insurance industry, the oil 
companies, the banks. That is what our trade policy is all about. That 
is why.
  Go back to Jeff Weidenheimer's class at Ashland University and look 
what happened. American companies decide they are going to shut down in 
this country because they would rather pay Chinese workers low wages 
and not have environmental laws and not have worker safety laws and not 
have to worry about consumer protection laws, so they shut down plants 
such as Huffy Bicycle in Sidney, OH, and they move to China where it is 
a whole lot cheaper. You don't have to worry about treating Chinese 
workers well because they are disposable. They did have to worry about 
treating American workers well, frankly, because many of them were 
union, and even if they were not, we have consumer protection laws, 
safe drinking water, clean air, environmental laws--all of those kinds 
of things. So these companies in Ohio and in the State of Washington 
where the Presiding Officer is from, all over our country, these 
companies shut down and they move to China.
  A company such as Hasbro, a toy manufacturer, moves their production 
to China. Hasbro then subcontracts with a Chinese company, they 
subcontract their work. They go to a country, China, that does not have 
the same environmental safety, worker safety, consumer safety, and 
wages we have in this country, and then they deal with Chinese 
contractors and they push those Chinese contractors to cut costs: You 
have to cut costs; you have to cut costs. Every year they cut costs 
over the year before, because that is good business. These American 
companies, when they outsource their jobs to China, force those Chinese 
contractors to cut costs.
  Do you know what happens? They use lead-based paints. Do you know 
why? Because lead-based paint is cheaper to apply, it is cheaper to 
buy, it dries faster. These toys, then, all of a sudden, instead of 
having a coating that is safe for little children instead now have a 
coating that has lead base in them, making them dangerous to children. 
But they do that because these American companies are pushing these 
subcontractors to cut costs.

  Forgetting for a moment--because these American companies don't seem 
much to care and the Chinese contractors don't seem to care much--
forgetting for a moment these people in China are working in these 
factories and are probably ingesting all kinds of toxic lead 
themselves--forget that for a moment, as bad as that is. These toys 
then come back to the United States. Do you know what the Bush 
administration did? The Bush administration has weakened consumer 
protection laws and cut the number of inspectors so these products come 
through the American regulatory system that used to be the best 
regulatory system, the best consumer product safety system in the 
world, the best Food and Drug Administration system in the world--
agencies that protected consumer products, about toys, especially--and 
agencies that protected food products that came into this country. And 
what do we end up with? We end up with toxic toys coming to our 
children's bedrooms, we end up with contaminated vitamins and other 
contaminated food coming into our kitchens. That is the result of 
American trade policy. It doesn't look out for our families, it doesn't 
look out for our children, it doesn't look out for our workers, it 
doesn't look out for our communities. Instead, it looks out for the 
drug companies, it looks out for the big toy manufacturers, it looks 
out for the big insurance companies, it looks out for the banks, it 
looks out for the oil industry. That is what is wrong with our trade 
policy.
  President Bush's answer is let's send another free trade agreement to 
the Senate, to the House of Representatives, the Colombia free trade 
agreement. It is more of the same. It will not work.
  The last point, Madam President, and I think we are pretty ready to 
adjourn for the night. When I came to Congress--I was elected the same 
year the Presiding Officer was elected, 1992--we had a $38 billion 
trade deficit. That means our country bought $38 billion more than our 
country sold to other countries around the world. Today, that trade 
deficit exceeds $800 billion--from $38 billion to $800 billion in a 
decade and a half. President Bush the First said for every $1 billion 
trade surplus or trade deficit, it amounted to 13,000 jobs. That means 
if we had a $1 billion trade surplus, if we were selling more than we 
were bringing in, it meant 13,000 net gain of jobs in country. If we 
had a $1 billion trade deficit, it meant we bought $1 billion more than 
we sold, we had a 13,000 jobs net loss. We have an $800 billion plus 
trade deficit. Do the math. Think about that.
  As we adjourn for the evening, think about what this trade policy is 
doing. It continues to fail the American people, continues to fail our 
communities, and it kind of begs the issue about which Albert Einstein 
once said: The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and 
over and expect a different result.
  We are getting the same result. It hurts our communities, it doesn't 
protect our families--consumer protection and food safety and all of 
that. These trade agreements are a bad idea. We can fix them. I, like 
Senator Dorgan, who has spoken on the floor many times about this, want 
more trade. We want plenty of trade. We just want it under a very 
different set of rules, rules that protect our families, protect our 
communities, that protect our workers--not just protecting the drug 
industry and the oil industry and the energy companies and those toy 
manufacturers that sort of forget about the safety of our children.

                          ____________________