[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 93 (Thursday, June 11, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H4164-H4165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               WORST TRADE AGREEMENT IN A 20-YEAR HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, the House of Representatives will 
be asked to grease the skids for the last and worst trade agreement in 
a 20-year history of job-killing trade agreements. I say ``last'' 
because this is a new concept. It is a living trade agreement. Anybody 
can access to it in the future. All they have to do is say: We 
pretend--or will pretend--to follow the very weak rules of this trade 
agreement.
  When the President began the negotiations, China was concerned 
because he talked about the pivot to Asia, confronting China. Now China 
is saying: Hey, we want in. This is great. We know how to game it. We 
can take away the last of your manufacturing, and we are not going to 
let it just go to Japan who is already in the agreement.
  The worst, for many reasons, but among them is something called the 
investor-state dispute resolution process. What is that? It means there 
will be a special private court set up for corporations to challenge 
our domestic laws, any and all domestic laws, that they find to be 
trade restrictive.
  Now, the President came to Oregon and said those of us who are 
critical of this are making things up because we said they can repeal 
otherwise. Now, the President danced on the head of a rhetorical pin 
there, a bit duplicitously. He is right. They can't make us repeal our 
laws. We can pay to keep them.
  Yes, you heard that right. We can pay to keep our laws that protect 
consumers, and we can pay to protect our laws that protect the 
environment or labor or Buy America or anything else. We can keep them 
if we want to pay.
  Here are four examples:
  Yesterday, the House of Representatives repealed requirements that 
meat, poultry be labeled as to country of origin. American consumers 
would kind of like to know. We have got enough problems in our own 
industry here. We would like to know if this stuff is coming overseas 
from someplace where maybe the sanitary conditions aren't quite so 
good. Well, we lost a trade dispute on that issue.
  Now, we could keep the law if we wanted to pay billions of dollars 
or, no, a Republican rush to repeal the law. It makes a few giant 
agribusiness companies happy. Of course, it kind of sticks it to the 
domestic producers who know they are producing a good product. That is 
one loss.
  Brazilian cotton, now, this is a funny one. We provide these bizarre 
subsidies through our foreign program, and one of them goes to cotton.

                              {time}  1015

  We were found to be subsidizing, therefore, putting Brazil at a 
disadvantage. For years, we paid Brazil $147 million a year so we could 
keep subsidizing our cotton producers. Isn't that great?
  Yeah, we kept our law; we just cost us $147 million to subsidize the 
cotton

[[Page H4165]]

producers. Last year, we got a settlement out of them. They are going 
to give us a 3-year grace. We gave them a one-time $300 million 
penalty, and they won't challenge it again until 2018.
  Now, Mexican trucks--personally involved in this one--they don't have 
meaningful driver's licenses; they don't have hours of service 
standards; they don't have drug testing; they don't have alcohol 
testing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, so we didn't want them 
ranging around the United States of America. We passed a bill almost 
unanimously in the House to prevent that.
  Mexico went to one of these secret tribunals; they won. The Obama 
administration caved under threats of billions of dollars of punitive 
tariffs against the U.S. to allow those Mexican trucks free and 
permanent access to the highways of the United States of America.
  You are right, we can't. You are right, Mr. President--no, you are 
not right, Mr. President; actually, you are wrong on that one.
  One last one, dolphin-safe tuna--now, we just wanted to say the 
Mexicans go out and slaughter dolphins to catch tuna. They cast the 
nets over the dolphins who swim on top of the tuna. There are some 
people who thought: well, hey, it would be good marketing for StarKist 
and others if we had dolphin-safe tuna, where people don't slaughter 
dolphins to get the tuna.
  Well, Mexico won a trade dispute saying: no, you can't do that, that 
is trade restricted; you can pay us not to slaughter dolphins, or we 
can slaughter dolphins, and you can't label those cans as dolphin-safe 
tuna.
  Yeah, the President is sort of, kind of technically right. They can't 
force us to repeal our laws. They can just blackmail us to repeal our 
laws in secret tribunals.
  Now, the ones I mentioned are under a state-to-state resolution. The 
TPP that this trade promotion authority facilitates allows corporations 
special standing to go to a special private secret tribunal, only 
available to corporations, to challenge our laws.
  Just think of the mischief in the future. One will certainly be 
pharmaceuticals. Most certainly, they will challenge the requirement 
that we negotiate lower drug prices for our veterans and people on 
Medicaid, and they will win.
  The President is right; we won't have to repeal the subsidies for 
those drugs or the reduced price. We can just pay the pharmaceutical 
industry tens of billions of dollars to keep providing affordable drugs 
to veterans and seniors.
  This is a great day for America.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

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