[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 62 (Monday, April 27, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4743-S4745]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              TRADE POLICY

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I actually approve of the Senator's 
comments. In this case I want to express that.
  In the last few weeks, there has been a good bit of discussion in the 
media

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and in Washington, not much around the country, but in the media and in 
Washington, about continuing the Bush trade policy by promoting the 
trade pacts he negotiated before leaving office.
  We know President Bush pushed the Central American Free Trade 
Agreement through the Congress after his father and President Clinton 
had pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement. And we know 
that continuing the Bush trade policy would be a mistake.
  Look at what has happened in States such as Ohio and New Hampshire. 
Look all over this country. You can see not simply the incredible job 
loss middle-class families have suffered, not just their own job loss, 
what that means to a neighborhood, what that means to a community, what 
it means to police and fire protection and the layoffs of city workers 
and the general malaise that surrounds those in the community with 
major layoffs, but it has also meant years of stagnant wages. We have 
seen, since this huge loss of manufacturing jobs, since this exploding 
of our trade deficit, years of stagnant wages where most of America 
simply has not gotten a pay raise in real dollars.
  A combination of the current recession and manufacturing jobs lost as 
a result of wrong-headed trade policies have taken their toll on 
community after community in Ohio. From the North American Free Trade 
Agreement to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, from Permanent 
Normal Trade Relations with China, to failing to enforce our trade 
laws, our Nation's trade policy in the last decade, pure and simple, 
has betrayed America's middle class.
  Last year alone our trade deficit topped $700 billion. We have every 
day, yesterday--Saturday, Friday, tomorrow, the next day, all week, 
every day--a trade deficit of $2 billion, a $2 billion a day trade 
deficit. If you spent a dollar every second of every minute of every 
hour of every day, it would take you 63 years to spend $2 billion.
  We have a $2 billion trade deficit every day. The first President 
Bush said a billion dollar trade surplus or a billion dollar trade 
deficit translates into some 13,000 jobs gained or lost. A $1 billion 
trade surplus means you are manufacturing and selling $1 billion more 
out of the country than you are importing. That is a 13,000 job gain. A 
$1 billion trade deficit is the reverse, is a 13,000 job loss. That is 
according to President Bush the first.
  So you can do the math. A $700 billion trade deficit is a lot of lost 
jobs. This is a net trade deficit. This is imports minus exports or 
exports minus imports. Our trade deficit has resulted in our Nation not 
only importing goods and services and building that trade deficit and 
seeing the kinds of numbers of lost jobs, it is also importing the 
dangerous safety standards of our trading partners.
  In Toledo, OH, several patients died after taking contaminated 
heparin for their heart conditions. The manufacturers of heparin had 
outsourced the making of the drug. As a result, they did not know where 
the contaminated ingredients came from. It has also happened in 
vitamins; it has also happened in other pharmaceuticals. It has 
happened in dog food, where the manufacturers of these dog foods or, in 
the case of the dog food, or the manufacturer of the pharmaceuticals, 
the companies have moved offshore, have bought ingredients--outsourced 
these ingredients--have bought them from all kinds of subcontractors, 
whom they generally cannot trace very well.

  They have come back into the United States and caused significant 
damage, sometimes to the point of death for too many Americans.
  The same with toys. Professor Jeffrey Weidenhamer, a professor at 
Ashland University, not far from where I grew up in Ohio, took his 
freshman chemistry class and went out and bought very inexpensive toys 
at Halloween and Christmas last year and then tested these toys for 
lead-based paint and found a significant number of them had far too 
high levels, dangerously high levels for children.
  These were products made by an American company but outsourced. The 
production was outsourced to China. These companies then subcontracted 
with all kinds of small Chinese operations and at the same time pushed 
them every year to cut costs. So what happened? These companies used 
the cheapest, the easiest to apply paint, which happened to be lead-
based paint, which is put on these products, which then make their way 
back into the United States and show up in the homes of children in 
Avon Lake and Bucyrus, OH.
  Whether it is patients in Toledo, whether it is children who are 
using these toys in Zanesville, or whether it is workers who have lost 
their jobs because of trade agreements, it is clear our trade direction 
is not working. It is clear the trade agenda given us by the Bush 
administration, inherited by the Bush administration, should not be 
continued.
  Make no mistake about it: I want trade, I want more of it. I want it 
under a different set of rules. That is why I will be asking the 
Government Accountability Office to conduct a comprehensive study on 
our current trade agreements. A GAO report on trade would provide a 
nonideological, nonpartisan analysis of what is working, and what is 
not working in our trade policy. It is an important step toward 
redirecting U.S. trade policy that will provide critical solutions for 
our Nation's recovery strategy.
  The basic premise of redirecting U.S. trade policy is that we must 
see evidence that our trade model is working before we pass new trade 
agreements. Why should we pass a trade agreement negotiated by the Bush 
administration with Panama or with Colombia or with South Korea, when 
those trade agreements are based on the NAFTA, CAFTA trade model, the 
same kind of trade agreement that surely has cost us jobs? If you do 
not believe it has cost us jobs, first, you are not looking at the 
statistics, but even if you do not believe it, let's go back and have 
that dispassionate analysis, nonideological, nonpartisan principled 
analysis of NAFTA, of CAFTA, of our trade policy with China before we 
move on and pass further trade agreements.
  At the same time, during the last 8 years, the Bush administration 
never accepted a 301 petition to help us with trade enforcement, 
including a petition for an investigation of Chinese currency 
practices, and a petition of Chinese workers' rights. Are the Chinese 
using slave labor, child labor? The Bush administration would not even 
examine it. They dismissed those 301 petitions in a matter of, in one 
case, less than a day. The Bush administration also never acted on 421 
cases even when the International Trade Commission found injury.
  The nonenforcement has left struggling companies in my State, small 
manufacturing companies in New Hampshire, the Presiding Officer's 
State, unable to compete against unfair trade practices.
  I am encouraged by the Obama administration's emphasis on trade 
enforcement. I want to see Congress work with the President to ensure 
the trade enforcement is a governmentwide practice.
  Finally, I believe Congress should give President Obama the authority 
to negotiate better trade deals. But I do not believe we can give 
President Obama or any President a blank check on these trade 
agreements. Congress needs a stronger role in the process. That means 
Congress must review, must renegotiate, must revitalize trade. That is 
why Congress should enact the Trade Reform Accountability Development 
and Employment Act I introduced in the last Congress and plan to 
introduce soon in this Congress.
  The trade act is forward looking. It is a pro-trade piece of 
legislation that requires a review of existing trade agreements and 
then provides a process to renegotiate existing trade agreements, when 
necessary. It outlines principles on labor standards, on the 
environment, on investment, on food safety, on consumer product safety, 
such as children's toys, to be included in future trade agreements, 
something that has never been included. Any consequential provisions, 
none of them have ever been included in any of these trade agreements 
on labor, on investment, on environment, on food safety, on consumer 
product safety.
  With any delegation of its authority to negotiate better trade deals, 
Congress must ensure negotiating objectives are binding and that there 
is a

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congressional vote on a trade agreement before it is signed by the 
President.
  From on high, the President cuts all the special interest deals. We 
saw that in the Bush years and, frankly, we saw it too often in the 
Clinton years, the first Bush and the Reagan years also. The trade 
negotiators would cut their special interest deals, send the agreement 
to Congress, and Congress had to vote, after the President had signed 
on, either up or down. Reasserting congressional authority must also 
ensure Congress's public policy prerogatives are respected by 
international trade organizations such as the World Trade Organization. 
We must not find our public policy subject to corporate rights of 
action at the WTO or NAFTA that outweighs the Government's 
responsibility to preserve the public welfare.
  What has happened is the corporate rights have been respected but not 
rights of workers, not rules to protect the environment or consumer 
safety and food safety.
  A global system such as the WTO that doesn't give countries policy 
space risks the very legitimacy of global institutions. Countries 
should have sovereignty. If Canada wants to pass a strong environmental 
rule, if Mexico wants to pass a strong food safety law, who are we, in 
a world trade body or as another government, or who is someone in a 
corporation to tell those countries they can't pass a strong 
environmental law or a strong food safety law.
  I recognize the framework I have outlined is only one strategy, but 
we can all agree our current trade model has not been working. When we 
change the process for writing trade deals, we can make trade deals 
work for more people in our country and for people living in the 
countries who are our trading partners. We have seen demonstrations in 
Central America against trade agreements, understanding that these 
trade agreements have so often overridden consumer protection rules in 
their countries. We see people in our country complain of trade 
agreements because workers lose jobs, because safe drinking water is 
not protected under these agreements. It is time these trade agreements 
are written for communities, for workers, and for small businesses. 
They have not been in the past. This is our chance to set out a new 
direction on trade.

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