[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 102 (Wednesday, June 24, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4608-S4610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about what just
happened on the floor, which was passing in the Senate the trade
promotion authority for the President of the United States and for our
good country to be able to get out there and expand markets for our
exporters and for our farmers, our workers, and our service providers.
This is a significant change because for the last 8 years the United
States of America has not been engaged in opening up these markets.
While other countries have completed these trade agreements, we have
not been able to. So this gives us as a country the ability to be able
to open up markets. That is a good thing, and it is significant and
will have an impact on our economy that is positive because exports
mean not only more jobs but better jobs. So we will see more jobs that
are, on average, 15 to 18 percent higher pay and have better benefits,
and we will be able to compete more globally. This is important to get
America off the sidelines.
There is also a benefit of getting us back involved in trade because
it enables America to be able to set some of the rules of trade rather
than other countries. And while we have not had this ability to be able
to open up new markets, what has happened? Other countries have been
completing agreements, shutting us out--our farmers, our workers, our
service providers--but they also have been setting the rules of
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trade. We want to be able to set them because we are a country that
believes we ought to have a rules-based system, that it ought to be
fair, that there ought to be the rule of law, and that the standards we
have--which are high standards in terms of getting tariffs down but
also not being able to unfairly send imports to another country--that
those are upheld. So this is a positive step.
What I am also really happy about is that after we passed the trade
promotion authority for the first time in 8 years, sending it for
signature to the President, which he has indicated he will sign, we
then passed legislation with regard to trade adjustment assistance,
which is extending benefits to people who are displaced. So if someone
in any particular trade agreement loses a job or a company gets hurt,
they have the ability to get the worker retraining they need, get the
help they need to be able to get the skills they need to find a job and
to get themselves back on their feet. So trade adjustment assistance is
important.
But within trade adjustment assistance there is something even more
interesting. We included an amendment which Senator Brown--my colleague
from Ohio--and I had promoted previously. This is to help all of our
workers all around America because it enables us to have the ability to
go after countries that send their products to us unfairly, meaning
that they subsidize them, which is not fair under the rules of trade,
or that they dump them, meaning they sell them at below their cost,
which is also unfair.
So this is a very important amendment. We call it the leveling the
playing field amendment because as we are expanding exports--which we,
of course, should do because that creates more good jobs in my home
State of Ohio and around the country--we should also be sure that we
are more aggressively enforcing the trade laws that are in place, the
international rules and our domestic rules. This amendment that just
passed the Senate tonight enables us to do that.
I am excited about it because it gives us the chance to be able to
compete. It gives the steelworker in Ohio who is playing by the rules
and doing all the right things--being more efficient, being more
productive--and companies that are using technology to our advantage
the chance to be productive, not to be undercut when other countries
dump their products--say, their steel products, their tubes, and other
products, structural steel--into the United States of America because
they want to get market share. We are going to be able to stop that
with this amendment because it enables us to be able to not just file
lawsuits against these countries but actually get them resolved more
quickly.
Right now, my concern is that too often with these trade laws, by the
time you bring a case and are successful at it, you have lost so many
jobs that, in effect, although you get a remedy that is winning a trade
case and getting higher tariffs on that product, it is too late. This
is a really important amendment, the leveling the playing field
amendment.
I want to thank my colleagues for supporting it. I know there were
some concerns and questions about it. We spent the last couple of
months talking about it. Tonight it actually passed. I am told that
legislation is now going to go to the House and that it will be passed
in the House. I am told that Speaker Pelosi has said today that she is
going to support that legislation. This is the trade adjustment
assistance legislation with the leveling the playing field amendment as
a part of it.
Finally, as part of the TAA, there is another really important
measure that I appreciate my colleagues supporting. It is one that I
offered in committee, and I have offered it over the years in
committee. It is to help workers who were left behind. Back when it was
necessary for the U.S. Government to intervene and help our auto
companies, there were some people who weren't helped.
This provides a health care tax credit to those individuals who
through no fault of their own lost health care and lost pensions. This
is when their plans went into the PBGC. This includes Delphi workers in
my home State of Ohio. There are several thousand of them. It includes
some United Steelworkers. It includes some other employees who were
left behind when other workers were given their pensions and given
their health care.
Every year we have fought for this. We have now been able to put in
place an extension of the health care tax credit they desperately need.
For most of these people, it is to provide them the ability between the
age they are now--say, in their late 50s--and when they get on
Medicare. It is a critical time for them to be able to have this bridge
and to be able to provide health care for themselves and for their
families.
The health care tax credit is part of this broader TAA, or trade
adjustment assistance, legislation that was passed here on the floor of
the Senate this afternoon. I thank my colleagues for working with me on
this over the past several years but also over the past several weeks
with regard to this specific provision. Again, that will go to the
House now, and we are told that will pass the House as it is. In other
words, the House will take up this exact bill and pass it and send it
to President for signature.
This is also a really important opportunity for us to reach out to
people who are hurting today through no fault of their own and to
provide them the health care tax credit they deserve.
In the legislation that we passed this afternoon, we also did
something else really important that we have never done before, and
that is to help protect Israel from discrimination. We included
language in the trade bill itself that Senator Cardin and I had
championed in the committee. It is the part of the bill that says that
countries that engage in boycotts or sanctions or divestment of Israel
in a trade agreement with the United States of America would not be
able to get the benefits of trade with us.
We think this is incredibly important leverage to help protect Israel
from what, unfortunately, is happening around the world too often now,
which is a double standard--telling the State of Israel that somehow it
is going to be treated differently than other countries are treated.
I think it is part of a larger effort to try to delegitimize the
State of Israel, and it is one where the United States ought to stand
up. Why is this being done in the context of trade? Because it works.
It is an area where we do have leverage.
When I was U.S. Trade Representative, I had the honor to be able to
negotiate agreements with various countries. One was Oman, one was
Bahrain, and one was Saudi Arabia. In all three cases, we were able to
make great progress in the case of boycotts of Israel by telling those
countries: If you want to do business with the United States and have a
free-trade agreement with us, then you have to treat all countries
fairly. You have to follow the MFN, or most favored nation status,
which means you treat countries fairly and you don't discriminate
against countries.
Initially, they would say: No, gosh, politically that is too hard for
us. But after discussions and after the United States stood tall with
Israel, we were able to succeed in all three cases: Bahrain and Oman
with trade agreements and Saudi Arabia with regard to their accession
agreement to the World Trade Organization. I know it works. I have seen
it.
Again, that is in the legislation that was passed today here on the
floor of this Senate. I am proud of us because we are actually doing
some of this work on a bipartisan basis to help our country, to help
our workers, to help our service providers, our farmers but also to
ensure that these rules of trade are fair globally.
Finally, I will say that we are not done. There is another bill that
we were told would be part of this whole package. It is currently being
negotiated in conference after this afternoon because we named
conferees between the House and Senate. It is the Customs bill.
In that legislation, there are additional provisions that I think are
very important that we passed, including one called the ENFORCE Act.
This is to avoid the situation where a country is told: You are dumping
products in the United States or you are subsidizing your product in
the United States, and you can't do that anymore. Instead, they figure
out a way to divert their product to another country and
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still send it to the United States using the same unfair trade
practices.
We need to be sure that we are putting in place provisions that allow
us to stop that diversion as well. That is what the ENFORCE Act does.
That is in the Customs bill, as one example. There are other important
provisions in the Customs bill, as well.
I would urge my colleagues to work with us to get that conference
done as quickly as possible because the House and Senate versions are a
little bit different and to be sure that we can come up with a way to
resolve those differences and bring that back to the floor as part of
this package.
The final one in that package is something that is very important to
manufacturers in my State. This is to enable us to bring products in
from overseas that were not made anywhere in America under what is
called miscellaneous tariff bill. This is something that we have not
had the opportunity to do in several years because there are concerns
about earmarks. I agree with those concerns. We should not have
earmarks, whether it is in trade or whether it is in appropriations or
elsewhere.
We have resolved that issue by not having it be earmarked under the
definition we have in the House and Senate but rather have it go
through the International Trade Commission and have them be the ones
that determine whether a particular product fits within a miscellaneous
tariff bill or not.
This will help in terms of adding employment in America, reducing the
cost to consumers, making our economy more productive and more
efficient, and adding economic growth. It is another example that when
once we complete this package, it includes expanding exports, which was
very important. We had to do that today because America has been
sitting on the sidelines for too long. We were losing market share for
our farmers, our workers, our service providers. We needed to get back
in the game and send more products stamped ``Made in America'' around
the world. That creates jobs here. That is good.
Second, we need to be sure that we have a level playing field, that
we work on this issue of currency manipulation, which has some
unprecedented language, and also on these other issues we talked about
today with the level the playing field amendment to ensure that
products are not being sold unfairly and that we do provide workers
with trade adjustment assistance.
Then finally, we move forward with this final bill called the Customs
bill to ensure that we include all these provisions which are so
important as a package and to make sure that yes, we are expanding
exports at the same time and we are letting people know that they are
going to get a fair shake. When they work hard and play by the rules
here in America, our workers are going to be told: You are in the
global marketplace; we are going to watch your back. That is important.
It is important to me. It is important to my State. It is important to
the people who send us here, who expect us to set the conditions in
place for more exports but also to ensure that is more fairly done.
Again, I thank my colleagues for the work that has been done today,
and I also urge my colleagues to move quickly, passing trade adjustment
assistance in the House and then passing the conference report on the
Customs bill so we can keep this package together and actually give our
economy a shot in the arm and give American workers the chance to
compete.
If they are given that chance, we have the best work force in the
world. We will be able not just to compete but to win the global
competition.
I yield back my time.
Mr. President, I have been asked to do the closing script, and then
the Senator from Massachusetts will be recognized.
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