[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 5, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6147-S6149]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  JOBS

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, our country has endured a 9-percent 
unemployment rate for a longer period of time than at any other time 
since

[[Page S6148]]

the Great Depression. Yet, unfortunately, the Democratic leader is 
reluctant to address this problem of joblessness in a serious way.
  One way to address it would have been to take the three trade 
agreements, which were negotiated 4 and 5 years ago--one with Colombia, 
one with South Korea, one with Panama--and send them up to the Senate 
and House and let us ratify them and let us move ahead to avoid losing 
350,000 jobs--that is an estimate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--or 
create as many as a quarter of a million jobs--that is the estimate of 
the White House. Yet those three trade agreements had been sitting on 
the President's desk since the day he took office nearly 3 years ago. 
They arrived yesterday--or Monday, I suppose it was--and they are here 
waiting for us to act on them.
  Every day we do not act on them delays the day when we avoid losing 
350,000 jobs or create 250,000 jobs. That has been the case every day 
for the last nearly 1,000 days. That would be a good way to address the 
jobs issue, but we have not. Instead, we had the President going around 
the country during the summer blaming Republicans for not acting on the 
three trade agreements when, in fact, the President had not sent them 
to us. There is no way the Congress can act on them until the President 
forwards them, which he now has. And if he has, why are we not debating 
them today? That would be a good way to deal with the jobs issue.
  Here is another example. On September 8, the President came before 
the Congress and proposed his jobs bill. He said, if I counted 
correctly, and I was sitting respectfully in the second row, almost in 
the front row--I think he said as many as 17 times: Pass this jobs bill 
now. And if that were not enough, he has said it almost every day since 
then. The Republican leader mentioned it a few times. He was in Dallas 
yesterday. Pass this jobs bill now; I am ready to enact it, said the 
President of the United States. Well, it has been sitting there on the 
Democratic leader's desk for the last couple of weeks, ever since the 
President sent it up here. He spoke about it on September 8.
  The person in this body whose job it is to set the agenda is the 
Democratic leader, a member of the President's own Democratic Party. 
Why doesn't he bring it up? So yesterday the Republican leader said: I 
will show courtesy to the President. I will ask the Senate to do what 
the President has asked that we do, which is pass this jobs bill now, 
and the Democratic leader objected.
  So here for the second time we have the President running around the 
country saying one thing, and then we try to do it, and his leader in 
the Senate objects. What are we doing instead? Well, a couple weeks ago 
the Democrats manufactured a crisis over disaster aid when we could 
have been debating the trade bill, the jobs bill, and we could have 
been offering the Republican proposals we have to encourage trade, to 
give this President and future Presidents new trade authority, to 
reform the tax law, and to have a timeout on regulations that are 
throwing a big, wet blanket, making it more expensive and harder to 
create new jobs in America. That would have been the kind of debate we 
could have had on the Republican proposals we believe would make a 
difference in this urgent jobs situation which has given us 9-percent 
unemployment for a longer period of time than at any other time since 
the Great Depression.
  So now this week, what are we doing? Well, we are debating a piece of 
legislation. The Democratic leader has decided this is the important 
piece of legislation to deal with jobs this week. And what will it do? 
It will give a punch in the nose to China, our second largest trading 
partner, our third largest export market, our fastest growing export 
market, and the second largest economy in the world. History teaches us 
what will happen. We saw that during the Great Depression. Perhaps it 
was the cause of the Great Depression. We remember the Smoot-Hawley 
tariff, the trade war that developed, the reciprocal punches in the 
nose that countries gave to themselves over trade, plunging the world 
into a depression.
  So here we are in a fragile moment, when headlines are saying we may 
be about to dip into a second recession, and what do we do? The 
Democratic majority says their best idea about creating jobs is to 
punch in the nose our second largest trade partner, our third largest 
export market, and our fastest growing export market, even though we 
know exactly what they will do to us. History teaches us they will 
punch us right back in the nose, and the result will be a trade war, 
which destroys jobs rather than creates jobs.
  Such legislation as that now pending on this floor is not how the 
world's strongest economy, the United States of America, should conduct 
itself. Such legislation is a sign of weakness or lack of self-
confidence or defeatism that is not worthy of the United States of 
America.
  In Tennessee, we see the advantages of trading with the world, 
including with China. China is our third largest export market, after 
Canada and Mexico. Our leading exports are chemicals and agricultural 
products. Tennessee exports to China totaled $1.85 billion, a 43-
percent increase over 2009. A little over 7 percent of all of our 
exports went to China. In Tennessee, 116,000 jobs are related to the 
export of manufactured goods; 5.3 million jobs in America. At a time of 
joblessness, why should we be punching in the nose someone to whom we 
might sell goods and that would create jobs in the United States?
  What should we do instead? Of course, there is legitimate concern 
about the way China values its currency. The administration should work 
with China to change that. China should accelerate the appreciation of 
its currency. But what else should the United States of America do? We 
might take a lesson from history.
  I remember 30 years ago, when I was just beginning my time as 
Governor of Tennessee, China was not the country in the news. It was 
Japan. There were books written: Japan, No. 1. The United States was, 
as it is today, the world's largest economy, but everybody was 
predicting: Watch out for Japan. Japan is becoming No. 1. The United 
States cannot keep up with Japan, it was said. Their autos, their 
computers, their electronic goods, their other sophisticated goods were 
going to overwhelm our markets, and we would quickly fall behind.
  There was in the early 1980s a $46 billion trade deficit with Japan. 
What did we do? Well, we did not act defeatist. We did not play games. 
We did not act as if we were the fifteenth largest economy in the world 
instead of the first. We asserted ourselves. We went to Japan and said 
to them: Make in the United States what you sell in the United States 
and take down your trade barriers so we can sell in your country what 
we make in ours.
  I went there myself. I remember vividly going to Tokyo in 1979, in 
November. I met with the Nissan officials. They were considering 
locating a manufacturing plant in the United States. At that time, they 
were making all of the Nissan cars and all the Nissan trucks in Japan 
that they sold in the United States. But they wanted to be in this 
market, which was and is the most profitable automobile market in the 
world. So we said to them: Make here what you sell here. And they did. 
They came to the United States. And where are we 30 years later? Nissan 
is saying to us that they have operated for 25 years now the most 
efficient automobile and truck plant in North America, and they are 
going to be making 85 percent of what they sell in the United States 
here in the United States.
  Nothing has done more to create higher incomes and better jobs in 
Tennessee than the arrival of Nissan and the Japanese industry, 
followed by the American auto industry, in our State over the last 30 
years. That is how a strong and confident country asserts itself in 
world competition. That is not just true with automobiles, it is true 
with many other manufacturing companies that have come to our State 
from Japan and from other places. That is exactly the way we ought to 
deal with China.
  Our administration can assert itself in a variety of ways about the 
currency issue. But we should not act as though we are afraid of China 
anymore than we were afraid of Japan 30 years ago. We should seize this 
as a moment of opportunity. We should not escalate a trade war that no 
one will win. We should grow trade in sales and investment in China and 
urge them to make

[[Page S6149]]

in the United States what they sell in the United States. If they 
should do that, that will create jobs here rather than destroy jobs, as 
history teaches us a trade war will do.
  I hope the Senate will decisively reject the legislation that is 
being proposed to initiate a trade war with China.

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