[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 42 (Thursday, March 12, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1486-S1489]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TRADE TRANSPARENCY

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am joined on the floor this evening by 
Senator Casey. Just 2 weeks ago, he and I and a half dozen other 
Senators came to the floor in an unusual configuration. It is not 
something Senators do all that often. We came as a group, but each 
spoke individually about our concerns with trade promotion authority 
and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both the so-called fast track and 
the trade agreement that is being negotiated among the United States, 
Canada, Mexico, some Pacific nations, and Peru, I believe, too, as well 
as nations in Asia.
  The concerns we have and the concerns an increasing number of 
Senators have about trade promotion authority, about fast track--they 
changed the name because they knew the public did not like fast track, 
so they tried to obscure it by coming up with some technical-sounding 
name--trade promotion authority. We have increasingly seen the public 
rising up against these trade agreements because we have watched them 
for some 20 years, and we have seen the damage the North American Free 
Trade Agreement did to the United States, to our economy, and to 
workers around the world. We have seen that has been sort of a 
prototype for the next generation of CAFTA and other agreements in 
Colombia and Peru and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
  I want to discuss this, in part, because we know so little about the 
U.S. Trade Representative's upcoming trade agenda and specifically the 
Trans-Pacific Partnership. The way we pass trade agreements, and it is 
important for colleagues to understand this, stands in a class by 
itself. No other legislation we do is as hidden not only from public 
view but even those in this body whose constitutional duty it is to 
approve or reject them.
  Senator Casey and I stood here in the well of the Senate, we raised 
our right hands--Senator Casey and I were honored to come in at the 
same time, as of January 2007 and then again in January 2013. We raised 
our right hands and took an oath understanding our constitutional duty 
to approve or reject trade agreements.
  Article I, section 8 of the Constitution entrusts in Congress the 
authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations, but the current 
TPP language is

[[Page S1487]]

being guarded as though it were a State secret. Members of this body 
were permitted to view the language only with U.S. Trade Representative 
staff there, not with their personal staff.
  Nora Todd, in my office, who has great skills and expertise and has 
worked on trade issues for years, because she is not committee staff is 
not able to view this. The USTR refuses to put down in writing their 
policy for restricting access. So the access is restricted, but we 
can't even find out from the U.S. Trade Rep what this actually means, 
except we know access is restricted. It means few Senators and fewer of 
our staff--and damn the public who have worked on this issue--have ever 
seen the text at all.
  Trade agreements such as this affect our entire economy. Forty 
percent of world GDP is included in this Trans-Pacific Partnership, 
with countries as big as Japan, the United States, and economies as big 
as Canada's and Mexico's. This will affect the entire economy and cause 
ripple effects for decades.
  We know what CAFTA did, and that was only three countries--the United 
States, Canada, and Mexico. This is four times that many countries. 
They should be debated in a transparent process. The public should 
know, Senators and Members of Congress should know. We don't know 
enough. Yet the Finance Committee fairly soon is going to push this 
trade agreement out of fast track and the agreement out onto the Senate 
Floor, when we simply don't have access to information.
  Let me give an example. Last year, the U.S. Trade Rep developed a 
proposal on something called the rules of origin for automobiles. That 
really matters in my State. It matters in Senator Casey's State because 
they are such a major part of the steel and other supply chain items 
for autos. I have been trying to work with the USTR to better 
understand this proposal since last October. I personally spoke again 
last week with Ambassador Froman to understand it better.
  Rules of origin are very important provisions in a trade agreement. 
They determine how much of a product's components need to come from TPP 
countries in order to qualify under the agreement. What that means is 
we know as American consumers it is hard to find a suit, it is hard to 
find much of anything made in the U.S.A., but we also know many 
American consumers would like to buy products that are 40 or 50 or 80 
percent from the United States--made by workers in Kansas or workers in 
Pennsylvania or workers in Ohio. But we aren't able to tell under the 
rules of origin what that number is and where those components come 
from.
  So if there is going to be a trade advantage to Japan--and they have 
had plenty of trade advantages when it comes to autos--we don't know if 
those automobile components come 70 or 80 percent from Japan and maybe 
20 percent from China or 60 percent from China. We don't know that 
because the U.S. Trade Rep will not tell us. So what we are concerned 
about--and China is not in TPP--is that the People's Republic of China 
will manufacture so much of the supply chain, so many of these 
components, backdoor it into China, so people in China are hired 
instead of people in the United States or the people in these countries 
we are trading with.
  These provisions are critical for the auto supply chain in our 
country because they are already facing fierce competition with China. 
We need to make sure we have strong rules of origin so cars are made 
and assembled in TPP countries, not China. The auto supply chain 
employs 120,000 people in Ohio. It will be affected by the auto rules 
of origin in TPP.
  To understand how important that is, our country, from 2000 to 2010, 
the end of the Clinton administration until 2 years into the Obama 
administration--mostly the 8 Bush years--we lost 5 million 
manufacturing jobs, 60,000 plants in places such as Pennsylvania and 
Ohio. We know that. Our economy has been growing, however, since two 
things: the Recovery Act of 2009 and the auto rescue of 2010. We have 
seen 58, 59, 60 months of economic growth, consecutive months, since 
then. That underscores how important auto is in my State, where, as I 
said, 120,000 people are in the auto supply chain.
  But we continue to face roadblocks just to getting the basic 
information on a plan that would have a major effect on Ohio's auto 
supply chain. What I don't understand is why would this body, why would 
the 100 people who took that oath, as Senator Casey and I did in 2013 
and 2007 in this Chamber, vote for something we can't get information 
about? Why would anybody who took an oath of office do that?
  We worked with the administration to rescue the auto manufacturing 
sector, and it helped save our auto industry--tens of thousands of jobs 
in that supply chain--so I want to make sure the TPP rules of origin 
for autos will not benefit China. I want it to benefit American 
companies, and I want it to benefit American workers.
  I grew up in Mansfield, OH. I have seen what globalization has done 
for jobs, and I have seen what globalization has done to wages. 
Mansfield, OH, is a city of 50,000. We have a lot of Mansfields in my 
State: Zanesville, Chillicothe, Ravenna, Lima, Springfield. These are 
cities that used to be prosperous manufacturing hubs that have lost so 
many jobs. Not all jobs were lost due to globalization, but a big part 
of that is globalization. That is why, when USTR will not share the 
information we need to understand this proposal, it is particularly 
troubling.

  We can see what has happened. This trade agreement--corporate 
handout, worker sellout--look what has happened since 1980. These are 
the average salaries, the blue line, of the richest 1 percent in 
America. Look what has happened to the richest 1 percent starting in 
the early days of the Reagan administration. Look what has happened to 
everyone else. We have the richest 1 percent who have seen their 
incomes go up about 130 percent. We have everybody else's incomes that 
have gone up around 10, 12 or 15 percent--and that is not for here, 
that is for overall.
  Again, globalization is not the entire reason, but when they will not 
share, when USTR will not tell us what is going on, it is particularly 
troubling when we look at this chart. We know our workers--we know Ohio 
workers and manufacturers can compete with anyone in the world, but 
they need fair rules and they need a level playing field. They do not 
have that here. It is clear. The rules of origin aren't the only part 
of the deal being developed in the dark. News reports yesterday 
revealed the USTR may be negotiating side letters on intellectual 
property provisions. The same report indicates the side letters might 
cover other issues as well.
  We remember the NAFTA side letters on labor and the environment and 
we know how effective they were. They weren't. Clearly, they were sort 
of the Bush administration, the first, negotiating and then the Clinton 
administration, trying to get support in the Senate and the House, 
adding these side agreements that amounted to nothing. It was to 
placate workers and to placate the environmentalists, but it did very 
little. We can't make the same mistake with the TPP.
  Will the side letters be covered by the agreement's dispute 
settlement? When will Members of Congress be able to see these letters? 
What impact will they have on the overall agreement? These are 
questions Members of Congress are asking and we are not getting answers 
from Ambassador Froman or the U.S. Trade Rep's office. It is time the 
USTR provided some real answers.
  It is our job to scrutinize every trade proposal to ensure it creates 
a level playing field. It isn't just another corporate handout that 
shifts jobs overseas.
  This lack of transparency isn't limited to TPP. I have asked the USTR 
to make the United States-European Union--the so-called TTIP 
agreement--proposal public. Once again, these requests for more 
transparency have been met with nothing but secrecy. Meanwhile, the EU 
makes their proposals public.
  This isn't about protecting the privileges of Senator Casey and me--
the privilege of Senators, this is about protecting our small 
companies, our manufacturing companies that get obliterated when large 
companies move offshore. This is about protecting the workers in places 
such as Toledo and Akron, OH. This is about protecting these 
communities. When plants close in Jackson, OH, and plants close in 
Waverly and Portsmouth and St.

[[Page S1488]]

Clairsville and Lisbon, school districts lay off teachers, police 
departments lay off cops, and cities lay off firefighters.
  We have been down this road too many times in this country. It has 
been more than 20 years since NAFTA. Too many plants shut down in Ohio, 
too many shut down in Pennsylvania, and too many shut down in the State 
of Louisiana--the State of the Presiding Officer. Too many good jobs 
were shipped abroad, and if they were replaced at all it is with low-
wage jobs with little benefits.
  Bad trade deals exacerbate the rise in inequality, corporate profits 
go up, and middle-class families struggle to get by. These trade 
agreements are all about corporate handouts and worker sellouts. Over 
the past four decades, worker productivity rose 75 percent, wages rose 
9 percent. What that says, since 1946 into the Reagan years, 
productivity went like this, workers were this much more productive, 
and wages stayed parallel to that. But since the Reagan years, as 
productivity went up workers wages have been flat, except for the 
richest 1 percent, who saw their salaries explode. Everybody else has 
lived in an economy where things just don't get better.
  The report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, cochaired by 
Larry Summers, concluded that ``powerful forces of globalization . . . 
must be navigated or inequalities will continue to widen, and for many, 
precarious low-skill work will increasingly become the norm.''
  Fast-tracking--that is what TPA is--fast-tracking proposals such as 
TPP, without congressional input, without congressional knowledge, let 
alone public knowledge of this--without congressional input, without 
oversight, even the bare facts of the deal--reduces our ability to 
navigate the forces of globalization and to advocate for the workers, 
which is what Senator Casey and I spend most of our time doing here. It 
perpetuates the USTR's approach to trade negotiations. I am in the 
middle of reading a book, ``The House of Morgan,'' about J.P. Morgan, 
Sr., and J.P. Morgan, Jr. I can't help thinking, that attitude, the 
public be damned, is what the USTR is doing to us right now. They don't 
care to share information with Senator Casey and me and the rest of 
this body, supporters of the USTR and opponents of the USTR, and they 
sure don't care about the public learning more about this. All of this 
will only lead to more inequality.

  I want trade; I support trade; I want more trade. Ohio workers want 
access to new markets for our products. But we need trade that works. 
The way we get trade that works is not by rushing into more corporate-
sponsored trade agreements without even knowing what we are signing. 
The USTR needs to open up the process; otherwise, the public is 
convinced they are going to see more corporate handouts and more worker 
sellouts.
  I yield the floor to my friend, Senator Casey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to address the same issue Senator 
Brown raised, the issue of trade, and I thank him and commend him for 
not only his leadership on this issue for many years, his time in the 
U.S. House of Representatives and now in the Senate for the last 8 
years, but especially his work and his focus on this issue most 
recently because we are moving into a period now of great debate about 
trade promotion authority and trade agreements that will be debated 
here in the Senate and throughout the country. So I commend him for 
that.
  What Senator Brown spoke to was a basic economic insecurity that so 
many Americans feel. It didn't just arise in the last couple of years. 
This is a long-standing problem and a long-standing threat to people's 
economic insecurity. Trade agreements play a role in it.
  I spoke the last time when the Senator and I were here about the 
concerns I had about these trade agreements, but also the specific 
concern about jobs or the adverse impact on jobs since the North 
American Free Trade Agreement and then subsequent trade agreements in 
the intervening years. Today I rise to talk about a related but very 
urgent issue, and that is the issue of wages. Senator Brown spoke to 
this as well.
  We know that middle-class spending power is the main driver of our 
economic growth and the foundation of the American dream. If people 
have money in their pockets because they have reasonable and fair 
wages, they are going to drive the economy in a much more substantial 
way. But in recent years this spending power that I speak of, of most 
Americans, has fallen dramatically.
  According to the Federal Reserve, the average worker's weekly 
earnings were 15 percent lower in 2012 than in 1972, when adjusted for 
inflation. So just in that roughly 40-year time period, wages were down 
in real dollars by 15 percent.
  Senator Brown referred to a disconnect between productivity and wage 
growth, and there was a recent chart that was developed by the Economic 
Policy Institute. The source for this is the Economic Policy Institute 
analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis. 
I hold it up. It is not big enough for people to see, but there is a 
big line in the middle of this chart. Because it is a chart, I won't 
enter it into the Record, but I will refer to it.
  The basic conclusion is, when we look at the question of productivity 
growth and wage growth from 1948 to 2013, here is what we find. It is a 
two-chapter book. Chapter 1 is a positive chapter; chapter 2 is really 
disturbing. It is one of the most significant charts I have ever seen 
of what has happened to the wages of working Americans.
  Here is what it says. From 1948 to 1973, productivity up 96.7 
percent, hourly compensation up 91.3. So the difference between 
productivity increase and wage increase basically from World War II to 
1973 was a differential of about 6 percentage points.
  As Senator Brown mentioned, an alignment over that time period 
between wages and productivity makes sense. When workers are producing 
more, when the economy is, as it was after World War II, producing so 
much more, wages should go up in a commensurate manner. Unfortunately, 
that is chapter 1. Chapter 2 of this book starts in 1973 and it ends on 
this chart in 2013. In that 40-year time period, productivity was up 
again. It wasn't up 96.7 percent, but it was up 74.4 percent, so still 
a strong productivity increase between 1973 and 2013.
  What, we might ask, happened to wages? Was it still a line? Was there 
a gap? Was it exactly the same? Unfortunately, the story is a terribly 
sad story. Hourly compensation, 1973 to 2013, was up a grand total of 
9.2 percent.
  So in the first period, wages were up 91.3 percent. In the second 
period, 1973 to 2013, wages were only up 9.2 percent. No one in this 
body, no one in the other body in Congress--no one who represents the 
American people in Congress or any State legislature, no one who 
represents our country, can be satisfied with a 9.2-percent wage growth 
over 40 years when we are still having robust productivity increases.
  There are a lot of reasons for it. There are a lot of causes we could 
make that we could attribute to that terrible diminution, but we have 
to do something about it. Part of that is having an agenda that will 
speak to wages and the middle class, and not to the issues that are in 
front of us, including these trade agreements.
  I would argue without a doubt that our trade agreements have made 
this problem significantly worse over the last 20 or 25 years, and I am 
afraid we are headed down that path were trade promotion authority, the 
so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership, enacted into law.
  Here is what the wage diminution meant in Pennsylvania in a shorter 
period of time, about 15 years. Pennsylvania median household income 
fell by 3 percent in the years between 1998 and 2013, according to the 
Census Bureau.
  But this trend we are talking about continues today. Even as our 
economy recovers and stock markets reach a record high, the average 
American's paycheck is barely keeping up with the rising cost of 
living. So this problem of a lack of wage growth is nowhere near being 
solved.
  The decline in middle-class workers' purchasing power--another way of 
saying wages--is not just unfair, but economic analysis also shows it 
is a drag on our economy, which is primarily driven by consumption. So 
this isn't just a story of a worker and his or her

[[Page S1489]]

family being pulled down by very powerful forces, only having their 
wages go up 9 percent in 40 years, it is also about the wider economy. 
If folks don't have fair wages, it is going to drag down the economy, 
and we are seeing evidence of that over those 40 years.
  But instead of enacting policies that help the middle class and focus 
on this issue of wages or the lack of growth of wages, like policies 
such as increasing the minimum wage--that would be one of the right 
things to do to go at this problem--or facilitating access to high-
quality childcare, for a lot of families the second highest cost they 
have other than housing and maybe some other expense, usually housing 
or some other expense--No. 2 is usually the cost of childcare. It is a 
barrier to work. If you can't afford childcare, you can't go to work or 
you have to accept a job that pays less.
  Extended relief to workers displaced by foreign competition. I would 
put the word ``unfair'' foreign competition. That is something else we 
should work on.
  So if we are working on raising the minimum wage, growing the middle 
class, helping families pay for childcare, helping families pay for the 
terribly high cost of higher education, maybe no other number is more 
disturbing than this ``wage, 9 percent in 40 years'' number that I 
mentioned. Maybe the only other number more disturbing is the cost of 
college education going up higher than anything in our lives the last 
couple of decades.
  Middle-class workers know this type of policy that some are pursuing 
is headed in the wrong direction. Instead of them seeing us working on 
policies that will advance and support the middle class, they see 
Congress considering a massive trade agreement with 11 Asia Pacific 
countries. So these same middle-class families who look to us for 
progress and action and results for the middle class and for their 
wages are seeing a lot of folks in Washington focus on trade agreements 
that will make the problem worse.
  A recent Pew poll of the Nation found that 83 percent of Americans 
said free trade does not raise their wages and 45 percent said so-
called free trade lowers American wages. For many years, many 
economists have argued that trade was a net positive for Americans and 
did not have a noticeable impact on wages. However, recently I think 
other economists are having a different perspective.
  A 2009 paper by three economists, one from the University of 
Pennsylvania, found that when workers are displaced by trade and switch 
jobs, they suffer real wage loss of between 12 and 17 percent. So in 
light of this data by economists that says when you have a job switch 
or a job change because of trade and your wages are going to go down 12 
to 17 percent, and all the other data that we have about what has 
happened in States such as Pennsylvania, or Ohio, which Senator Brown 
represents--what has happened to those communities and those people--
why would we go down the same path of ratifying agreements which will 
do the same over time? I don't think we should, and that is why this 
debate is very important.
  Another analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a standard 
economic model shows that American workers without a college degree 
earn $1,800 less each year as a result of expanded trade. Again, 
further exacerbation of the same problem that trade agreements lead to.
  I know people in my home State of Pennsylvania--and I am sure this is 
true in Ohio and a number of other States--are skeptical of these trade 
deals because they have experienced these pressures firsthand. This is 
real life for them. So before we cut another deal, we should work to 
level the playing field for our own companies and workers, including 
ensuring workers and companies get real relief from unfair trade 
practices.
  Pennsylvanians and, I think, Americans want Congress and the 
administration to focus on policies that lead to both good jobs and 
good wages. Fundamentally, I argue that these agreements cause major 
concerns on both fronts, the jobs front as well as the wage front.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________