[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 12, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H2823-H2824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Speaker, as I rise on the floor of the House, the 
Senate is about to begin debate on trade promotion authority, which is 
Congress ceding all authority to the President to negotiate agreements 
secretly, bring them before these bodies, and to say take it or leave 
it, an ``up-or-down'' vote, no amendments--ceding our constitutional 
authority. I hope the Senate turns him down.
  Now, the President went to Oregon last week, to Nike, who originated 
the idea of chasing cheap labor around the world and outsourcing U.S. 
production. He gave a speech. I wasn't invited. That was fine with me. 
He went there to make fun of people like me who have fought these trade 
agreements for more than 20 years and have been more

[[Page H2824]]

right than wrong about the impacts of these trade agreements.
  He talked about labor, saying: Don't worry. This is going to put 
enforceable labor provisions on Vietnam, where you can't have a union, 
where you have child labor, prison labor, and you get paid 60 cents an 
hour. He says: We are going to fix all that.
  Well, I have read that chapter. I can't talk about it. It is 
classified. But I can say this. It will be as effective in dealing with 
the abuses--and, Brunei is even worse than Vietnam--in Brunei or 
Vietnam, in terms of their labor and working conditions, as the recent 
U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Guess what? In Colombia, they still 
kill people who try and form unions, and we have no recourse against 
them. So it is not going to fix that problem.
  He says: Well, I was in law school when NAFTA passed, and these 
people are just living in the past. Well, unfortunately, you are 
bringing the past to the future.
  This agreement has been vetted by 500 corporations in real time. They 
can put it on a big screen in their boardroom, bring in all their 
lawyers and staff, and say: Let's change these words. Let's make it 
look like the labor stuff is enforceable, but then we put this here, 
and it isn't.
  I can read it, too. I can go to the basement of this building and I 
can read it in secret, and I can't talk about it.
  So this is an agreement that is for labor, for the environment, for 
consumers, when it is being written in corporate boardrooms and then 
submitted to the Special Trade Representative who then puts that text 
into a special agreement we can't see? No, the President is very, very 
wrong about that.
  He says we are wrong because we are making things up about 
undermining regulation, food safety, worker safety, and even financial 
regulations. Well, we are not. This has something called investor-state 
dispute resolution, which means anyone can challenge any U.S. law. Any 
foreign corporation, Japanese corporation, or Bruneian corporation can 
challenge a U.S. law in a secret tribunal staffed by lawyers who have 
no conflict of interest, no legal body underlying their decisions, and 
who one day represents corporations and the next day sit as judges.
  And he is right, they can't make us repeal our laws. He is absolutely 
right. But they can make us pay to keep them. We had to pay hundreds of 
millions of dollars to Brazil to keep subsidizing cotton in this 
country.
  Now, I wasn't into subsidizing the cotton, but it really irks me that 
we were subsidizing it here, and because of the power of the farm 
lobby, we paid Brazil hundreds of millions of dollars to keep that 
subsidy.
  The Japanese were killing dolphins to catch tuna, and we passed a law 
to just label dolphin-safe tuna so consumers could decide, too. We had 
a big campaign with friendly dolphins.
  The Mexicans won in the same process. They won a judgment against the 
United States of America--that it was an unfair trade barrier--and we 
had to pay the Mexicans to not fish for dolphins. And then they 
appealed yet to another place and actually made us eliminate dolphin-
safe altogether.
  Yes, it can undermine our labor laws, it can undermine our 
environmental laws, and it can undermine our consumer protection laws 
when they are challenged by a foreign corporation. So the President is 
yet wrong again. We are not making stuff up.
  Currency manipulation, the Japanese wall--every U.S. auto 
manufacturer knows about this. They manipulate currency. Therefore, 
their vehicles are $8,000 cheaper than they would be if their currency 
was fairly traded--$8,000--and we are going to compete on a level 
playing field?
  This agreement gives them full access, with no tariffs, to our pickup 
truck market, which means the end of pickup truck manufacturing in 
America. The iconic Fords and Chevys, forget about it. They are gone 
with an $8,000 advance.
  We couldn't put currency manipulation into this and say that is not 
fair, because the Japanese didn't want it. But they are giving us a big 
concession. They are going to buy some American rice. Well, isn't that 
great? We are trading tens of thousands of auto jobs for a few jobs 
working in the rice fields in California. And that will only last until 
the Japanese challenge the rice farmers. Because they get subsidized 
Federal water, they will ultimately be barred from the Japanese market 
because they will lose in a secret tribunal under this ISDS provision.
  Finally, I have just got to wonder what the President is talking 
about when he says we are speculating and it is made up.
  Oh, Mexican trucks. I predicted when we had the agreement with Mexico 
that they would force us to let Mexican trucks drive freely in America. 
Guess what? We lost that, and they put tariffs on our goods because 
they couldn't drive their trucks all around our country.
  There is great precedence here. He hasn't fixed a darned thing. He 
probably hasn't even read the agreement.

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