[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 99 (Tuesday, June 21, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4379-S4381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FOREIGN SOVEREIGN IMMUNITIES ACT
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I rise to speak about the changing
nature of globalization. Everyone is aware globalization has changed
how economies work. Some people have embraced globalization while
others are fighting to slow its effects. In America, most people are
familiar with the modern, multinational corporation. These corporations
are privately owned by shareholders and operate in countries around the
world. However, there is a new trend that is becoming increasingly
evident in commerce today. We are now seeing entities that are owned by
governments competing with private companies in the automotive, food,
and airline industries that represent more traditional commerce.
Over the last several decades, governments, through entities called
state-owned enterprises, have become highly involved in international
commerce. We have seen state-owned companies and enterprises buy the
assets of private companies, such as Smithfield Foods, and start up
completely new
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companies, such as the new airlines in the Middle East. There is
nothing inherently wrong with state-owned enterprises paying a premium
on market value to purchase a company. However, the actions of the
company and its legal obligations after the transaction is complete are
what I intend to focus on today.
In a 2014 report, the United Nations estimated there are over 550
state-owned transnational companies with cumulative assets of over $2
trillion. Many would argue the estimate of $2 trillion in assets under
management is a conservative number. There are many differences between
state-owned companies and companies that are publicly traded.
First, state-owned companies are not subject to the same transparency
requirements as publicly traded companies. Publicly traded companies
must adhere to GAAP accounting standards and file quarterly and annual
reports, such as 10-Qs and 10-Ks, with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Second, state-owned enterprises have the implicit backing of the
various governments, giving them access to credit oftentimes at cheaper
rates than individual private companies could hope to find. The most
valuable companies in America, based on market capitalization, are
worth between $500 and $600 billion on any given day. While Fortune 100
companies are large, their resources then pale in comparison to
government wealth.
Finally, state-owned enterprises report their strategies, profits,
and losses to governments. They are not accountable to shareholders in
the way publicly traded companies are. Therefore, it is prudent we take
time to consider how foreign, state-owned enterprises are participating
in this American economy.
In agriculture, state-owned enterprises have started to buy publicly
traded American companies. Smithfield Foods was sold to China's
Shuanghui in 2013 for $4.7 billion in cash. ChemChina is currently
trying to buy the Swiss-based seed and chemical company Syngenta for
$43 billion. About one-third of Syngenta's $12 billion in revenue comes
from North America, which is what makes this transaction very
concerning for me. While some could argue these investments are similar
to foreign direct investment, what these foreign, state-owned
enterprises are really buying are our resources and expertise in food
production, including the intellectual property that fuels development
and growth of the agricultural sector. Even if these transactions
function seamlessly for the first 10 or 15 years, there are strategic
questions we need to consider before approving the sale of any more of
our agricultural assets to another government. For that reason, Senator
Stabenow and I asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United
States, commonly referred to as CFIUS, to thoroughly review the
proposed Sengenta acquisition with the help of the Department of
Agriculture. CFIUS is responsible for reviewing the national security
implications of transactions that result in foreign control of U.S.
businesses and critical infrastructure. There is a shared sentiment
among lawmakers, military officials, and everyday Americans that
protecting the safety and resiliency of our food system is core to
American national security. The food security of our country is not
something we can take for granted, and as I have said before, at any
given time we are only nine meals away from revolution.
As I mentioned, I also have concerns about the legal obligations and
accountability of foreign, state-owned companies, particularly as they
relate to those companies' interactions with American companies and
consumers.
Now, I have heard several recent reports noting cases where companies
owned by foreign governments have claimed that they are immune to
lawsuits by American companies or American consumers in our very own
courts.
They have made this claim even when a foreign, state-owned company or
one of its corporate affiliates has been engaged in normal commerce
with American consumers or other American companies.
In making this argument, these foreign, state-owned companies would
try both to take advantage of our market and to avoid the rules and
potential liability that every other market actor must face. Of course,
that doesn't seem right to me, and it is not the way our laws are set
up to work.
It is an age-old rule of international law that one sovereign nation
should not subject another country acting in its sovereign capacity to
the authority of domestic courts.
Our courts recognized this principle long before Congress wrote it
into statute.
The theory developed at a time when personal sovereigns ruled foreign
powers rather than democracies. The sovereign was the same as the
State. Chief Justice John Marshall acknowledged it in an 1812 Supreme
Court opinion when he explained that our courts had no jurisdiction to
hear America's claim against France to recover a ship seized by order
of Napoleon.
But there have long been important exceptions to the doctrine of
foreign sovereign immunity. One of those is the so-called ``commercial
activity'' exception. Just 12 years after his opinion about Napoleon's
ship, Chief Justice Marshall explained that ``[w]hen a government
becomes a partner in any trading company, it divests itself . . . of
its sovereign character, and takes that of a private citizen.''
For that reason, over the last several decades, both the State
Department and the Supreme Court have recognized that the original
purposes of foreign sovereign immunity--respect for the person and
governmental acts of a foreign sovereign--are not served when the
doctrine is invoked to protect a sovereign's private acts.
This development resulted from the need to ensure stability and
predictability in international commerce after state monopolization in
industries like transportation and communication.
It is based on the notion that when a sovereign nation enters the
competitive marketplace, it no longer acts as a sovereign at all, and
it must follow the very same rules as every other market participant.
So in 1976 we codified those principles in statutory law by enacting
the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, referred to as FSIA. Under the
FSIA, foreign sovereign immunity extends not only to foreign sovereigns
but also to political subdivisions and even corporate entities owned by
foreign sovereigns.
But, importantly, the FSIA also codifies exceptions to the foreign
sovereign immunity principle, including--very importantly--the
commercial activity exception.
As I said, I have seen reports noting cases where companies owned by
foreign governments have claimed that they are immune to suits by
American companies or American consumers in our very own courts when
they are suspected of doing something wrong. Sometimes, their arguments
have succeeded, which raises concerns that the exception may not be
working as designed.
Let me give one example. America bought much of the drywall used to
rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina from Chinese manufacturers.
Thousands of homes built with that drywall turned out to be
uninhabitable because residents said the drywall made them sick.
So these Americans tried to sue the Chinese manufacturers, including
a manufacturer's parent company, China National Building Materials
Group, or CNBM.
The problem for the consumers is that the Chinese Government is
heavily invested in these manufacturers, among many other commercial
enterprises.
Under the general principle of foreign sovereign immunity, a foreign
government selling Americans a product is not acting as a sovereign but
as a market competitor. One would assume that the ``commercial
activity'' exception to foreign sovereign immunity applies, but the
state-owned manufacturer argued otherwise.
Here is how it works under statute. Foreign companies are sued in our
courts all the time. Commonly, these lawsuits, like the drywall case,
involve claims of American consumers or companies that the foreign
company engaged in some behavior that harmed them.
When a foreign company is sued in one of our courts, it has a chance
to show at the beginning of the case that a foreign government owns a
majority
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of its shares. If the foreign company makes that showing, it then
enjoys a presumption of immunity under the FSIA, meaning that the
plaintiffs' lawsuit will be dismissed.
But before that happens, the plaintiffs have one more chance to save
their case from early dismissal. This is where the ``commercial
activity'' exception comes into play. The plaintiffs can defeat the
presumption of immunity by showing that the foreign state-owned company
was acting as a market participant--that is, engaging in commercial
activity that takes place in or affects the United States--when it
caused the harm the plaintiffs complained about.
This principle--the ``commercial activity'' exception--saves a case
from early dismissal and gives plaintiffs a chance to move forward and
try to prove their claims against a foreign, state-owned corporation
behaving like a market actor.
But as it turns out, that can be a complicated showing for plaintiffs
to make at such an early stage in the case. Here is why. Companies
owned by foreign states are often governed through very complicated
corporate structure.
Take, for example, the large Chinese insurance company backed by the
Chinese state bank in its recent attempt to purchase an American hotel
chain. In describing the attempted takeover, the Wall Street Journal
described the Chinese company's ownership structure as ``opaque.''
Yet in implementing the FSIA, courts require plaintiffs to meet the
commercial activity exception at every level of corporate organization
or they must show that various levels of organization acted only as
corporate pass-throughs and, therefore, can be ignored.
Here is why I think that may be a problem. Corporate parents can
exercise an extraordinary level of control over subsidiaries without
concluding that the subsidiary is a mere pass-through.
Requiring plaintiffs to show commercial activity at every level of
corporate organization--at such an early stage in the lawsuit--runs the
risk of ignoring high-level involvement in the conduct that allegedly
hurt the plaintiffs. If plaintiffs don't satisfy this showing against a
parent company at an early stage in their case, they may lose the
chance to establish their claims.
Now, what this means, as a practical matter, is that this mechanism
puts foreign companies that happen to be owned by sovereign states at a
distinct advantage over private foreign companies. A private foreign
company has no mechanism for early dismissal of a lawsuit on these
grounds. A private foreign company would be required to respond to the
plaintiffs' allegations, and it would have to produce evidence during
the course of the lawsuit relating both to its control over other parts
of the conglomerate and also to its involvement in the activities
alleged.
As a result of this early dismissal mechanism, the plaintiffs' case
in New Orleans could only proceed against one subsidiary, and that
happens to be CNBM. The case against CNBM itself was dismissed.
Now, it may be that these plaintiffs still wouldn't have been able to
establish liability on the part of CNBM in the end, but they didn't
even have that opportunity.
This is something that I want to consider carefully. If a foreign,
state-owned company is able to shield parts of its organization behind
the FSIA to avoid having to answer a lawsuit entirely in a way that the
FSIA doesn't contemplate, when a privately owned foreign company
wouldn't enjoy the same luxury, then a fix may be in order.
The point of the commercial activity exception to foreign sovereign
immunity is to treat foreign governments like any other market actor
when they enter into commerce. Nothing about the principles of foreign
sovereign immunity or the FSIA is designed to afford extra early
defenses to foreign companies' commercial actions just because the
companies happened to be owned by foreign states.
But, currently, foreign, state-owned companies will argue that many
of their affiliates don't have to answer the claims of American
companies and American consumers, even when it is clear that at some
level the company engaged in market activity that may have harmed
Americans. Sometimes, like in the New Orleans case, the companies are
succeeding.
So I think that may be a problem. That is why I took the time to
speak now on the floor of the Senate, and I intend to look at it very
carefully and possibly seek legislative remedy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
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