[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S185-S186]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              UNITED STATES-MEXICO-CANADA TRADE AGREEMENT

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week, the Senate Finance Committee 
voted on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It is called USMCA. I did 
something I have never done. I voted for it. I have never voted for a 
trade agreement in my time in the House of Representatives and my time 
in the Senate. In fact, I helped to lead the opposition to the original 
NAFTA among freshmen Members of Congress because I recognized that 
every single one of these trade agreements basically had the template 
of corporate interests at the center of them. In other words, these 
trade agreements--whether it was NAFTA, or the North American Free 
Trade Agreement, whether a half generation later it was the Central 
America Free Trade Agreement, whether it was the free trade agreement 
with South Korea, or whether it was the Permanent Normal Trade 
Relations with China--all of them were written by corporate interests 
serving the profitability of the executives and

[[Page S186]]

the major stockholders of these companies.
  They all tended to precipitate this under these trade agreements in 
this Congress, under Presidents of both parties, I might add. I 
disagreed with the first President Bush, then President Clinton, then 
the second President Bush, and then President Obama. All of them would 
submit trade agreements that were written for corporate interests, I 
believe, at the expense of workers.
  What happened, typically, was that companies that lobbied Congress to 
pass these trade agreements would shut down production in Provo, UT, in 
the Presiding Officer's State, or Cleveland or Dayton, in my State. 
They would shut down production there, move their production overseas, 
get their tax breaks, and get their low-wage labor, often worked on 
by--almost always--nonunion workers, sometimes underage workers who 
were very inexpensive. The products would be manufactured and then sold 
back into the United States. That became the business model for company 
after company after company since the North American Free Trade 
Agreement, where corporations outsourced jobs in order to save money, 
always at the expense of communities, particularly in the industrial 
Midwest, always at the expense of workers, and always at the expense of 
the middle class.
  It was welcome news to me when Candidate Trump, with whom I agree 
with on almost nothing, said he would renegotiate the North American 
Free Trade Agreement. So I tried to work with him. I told him that I 
supported his renegotiation.
  I worked with Ambassador Lighthizer, the Trade Representative, the 
Ambassador for President Trump--the so-called U.S. Trade 
Representative. I said to them that we want workers to be the 
centerpiece of this trade agreement.
  Well, what happened? A year into his Presidency, President Trump 
proposed the same kind of trade agreement that we had seen all along--a 
trade agreement where corporations were at the center of the agreement 
and workers were betrayed.
  This is a President who has betrayed workers day after day after day. 
He refused to raise the minimum wage. He cut overtime pay for 50,000 
Ohio workers. He put people in the courts who put a thumb on the scales 
of justice, choosing corporations over workers and choosing Wall Street 
over consumers. It is a White House that looks like a retreat for Wall 
Street executives except on Tuesdays and Fridays, when it looks like a 
retreat for a drug company executive. That is what the President 
proposed.
  Speaker Pelosi, Senator Wyden and I, and worker representatives--the 
AFL-CIO, the UAW, the CWA, the machinists, and the steelworkers--all 
said: No, we are not going to support another trade agreement that 
sends jobs overseas. We want a trade agreement written for workers.
  We said to the President and the President's Trade Representative: We 
are not going to support this unless you include strong labor 
enforcement standards for workers.
  They basically ignored us. We had tried to work with them. They 
basically ignored us. They insisted we pass their bill.
  Finally, after a year--more than a year--the administration came 
along kicking and screaming and agreed with us only because they knew 
they couldn't pass a trade agreement without it.
  It took the language that Senator Wyden and I submitted for workers. 
It works in this way: For the first time, a worker is empowered to 
challenge the violation of labor law. So a Mexican worker, where the 
company has broken the law by paying them a sub-minimum wage, where the 
company has broken the law by refusing them to organize or to allow 
unions to attempt to organize, where a company breaks the law on worker 
safety--a worker at that company, anonymously, at that worksite, can 
file a complaint and set off the clock of the process so we can 
actually challenge when they break the law.
  We know why companies close factories in Ohio and in the State of my 
friend from Rhode Island, in Cranston, RI. They close factories and 
open them in Mexico because they can pay lower wages, and they can take 
advantage of workers who don't have rights. American workers can't 
compete with that. We know that, and we get a race to the bottom on 
wages.
  What this agreement does is that it puts workers at the center. It 
allows for real labor enforcement, real enforcement of labor standards. 
So I voted for this agreement. It passed with only three ``no'' votes 
in the Senate committee. It will likely pass on the floor either this 
week or next week.
  But I want to be straight with American workers. This isn't a perfect 
agreement. It is one trade deal that Democrats fixed. Democrats and 
labor fixed it. Republicans opposed the fix but are now voting for it 
because they still want USMCA, but it will not fix the rest of 
President Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers.
  Let me give you an example. If you are a company in Dayton, OH, you 
pay a 21-percent corporate tax rate. If you move to Mexico or you move 
to France or you move to China, you pay only a 10.5-percent corporate 
tax rate. So our government continues this because of President Trump's 
tax bill, the tax bill that caused us now to have a trillion-dollar-a-
year deficit--the largest deficit we have had, except in times of 
recession. That tax bill still will make it attractive for companies to 
shut down and move overseas. This helps with that.
  As I said, I voted yes for the first time on a trade agreement 
because by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement, 
for the first time, pro-worker. We set an important precedent that, 
from now on, every trade agreement we negotiate--and, I believe, 
negotiated by Presidents in either party--will include language like 
Brown-Wyden, making sure that workers are at the table and that trade 
agreements look out for workers, unlike trade agreements in the past.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
up to 20 minutes in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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