[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S220-S234]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

        UNITED STATES-MEXICO-CANADA AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ACT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 406, 
H.R. 5430.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 406, H.R. 5430, a bill to 
     implement the Agreement between the United States of America, 
     the United Mexican States, and Canada attached as an Annex to 
     the Protocol Replacing the North American Free Trade 
     Agreement.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is not debatable.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the title of the bill.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 5430) to implement the Agreement between the 
     United States of America, the United Mexican States, and 
     Canada attached as an Annex to the Protocol Replacing the 
     North American Free Trade Agreement.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. In accordance with section 151 of the Trade 
Act, there will now be 20 hours of debate equally divided between the 
two leaders or their designees.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Puerto Rico

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, a lot is happening right now across our 
country and in Washington, DC, and in the House and the Senate--and 
across the globe, for that matter. There are a lot of issues. There is 
one that has not received the attention it should, which is about a 
group of Americans who have suffered enormous calamity in the last few 
days who deserve our attention and our focus.
  I am speaking, of course, about the devastation in Puerto Rico. 
Seismologists report that over 1,200 tremors, earthquakes, and 
aftershocks have struck the island since January 1. More

[[Page S221]]

than 70 of these were of a magnitude 3.5 or greater. Residents on the 
island have felt at least 100 of these earthquakes. The largest of the 
quakes, a magnitude 6.4, struck last Tuesday, taking one life and 
injuring many others.
  More than 2 weeks after the Earth started shaking, these quakes and 
aftershocks are still going on. In fact, this last weekend, the island 
was struck by an earthquake with a 5.9 magnitude. Yesterday morning, a 
4.6-magnitude tremor could be felt. This morning, there was a 5.1-
magnitude quake.
  The damage from these quakes is so severe, it can be seen from space. 
According to NASA, the satellite shows the land in parts of Southern 
Puerto Rico, near the epicenter of the quake, has moved 5\1/2\ inches. 
That is a very dramatic change in the landscape.
  You don't have to be in space; you don't have to have those images or 
be orbiting the planet and looking down to see the damage because the 
damage is everywhere. There is $110 million in damages estimated by the 
Governor's office. Other estimates from the Geological Survey now have 
the damage approaching $1 billion.
  Power has been restored to most of the island, but periodic outages 
are still happening in different parts of the island, and severe energy 
conservation is in place.
  The Costa Sur plant in the town of Guayanilla was so severely 
damaged, they are telling us that it will take over a year to get it up 
and running. That island needs 500 megawatts of emergency generation 
until that plant is fixed.
  As of last Thursday, hundreds of thousands were without water. The 
world-renowned chef Jose Andres' relief organization World Central 
Kitchen has served tens of thousands of meals in just the last few 
days. Buildings and homes have collapsed and been destroyed. Thousands 
are living outside of their homes, both with the damage done and the 
damage feared.
  It is reported that a total of 559 structures are affected. Look at 
this picture. Look at this pile of rubble lined up and crossing the 
street of collapsed buildings, hundreds of piles like that where 
building, or parts of buildings, once stood. There are 4,000 to 6,000 
residents in shelters, thousands sleeping in hammocks or inflatable 
mattresses and in tents because they are afraid to sleep in their 
homes.
  My heart goes out to the people of Puerto Rico who are enduring yet 
another natural disaster, while they still have been fighting to 
rebuild their homes and their lives after the destruction of Hurricane 
Maria 3 years ago. The truth is, we haven't done nearly enough to help 
them. Not nearly enough from the last disaster has made it to the 
island to help them repair all of that damage done. The aid that has 
come has not come quickly enough.
  Indeed, just today, we are hearing that the aid that was supposed to 
be released no later than last September--$8 billion related to 
Hurricane Maria--is being released, or at least put in the Federal 
Register so it can be prepared to be released years after the disaster, 
when that aid was needed immediately after the disaster to rebuild.
  The citizens of Puerto Rico are American citizens. They don't have a 
vote in this Chamber, and that is a problem we should remedy. What we 
see is, when citizens don't have a Senator who represents them, there 
is no one to stand up and advocate with the same ferocity and 
determination and passion as somebody who is elected by those 
individuals, so the rest of us need to stand in--Democrats and 
Republicans, Senators from the South and the North and the East and 
West--we need to stand in together on behalf of our fellow Americans in 
this devastated landscape of Puerto Rico.
  This neglect of the citizens of Puerto Rico, of this island that is 
part of America, is staggering. That is why I have joined with Senator 
Schumer and 31 of my Democratic colleagues in a letter to President 
Trump supporting the Governor of Puerto Rico's request for a major 
disaster declaration, but this shouldn't be a partisan letter. Let's 
all join together--Democrats and Republicans together--to fight for the 
aid that is needed by our fellow citizens.
  President Trump signed a declaration that provides only $5 million 
for immediate emergency services. Five million dollars isn't close to 
addressing what the Geological Survey says is close to $1 billion in 
damage. That $5 million is useful, but far more is going to be needed--
far more--for removing debris, building temporary shelters, providing 
electric generators, distributing food and water, providing immediate 
emergency lifesaving medical care. They are going to need a lot of 
help, in addition, for long-term rebuilding. A major disaster 
declaration can help in that. That has not happened. It has been 
sitting on the desk in the Oval Office since last Saturday.
  Let's join together--Democrats and Republicans together--and say: Mr. 
President, sign that declaration that brings along with it crisis 
counseling, help rebuilding homes, help repairing roads, help restoring 
bridges, water control, water supply. Clean water supply is so 
important to health. Water treatment, which is so important in 
preventing cholera, job training, aid for businesses--that is the type 
of thorough, significant assistance the people of Puerto Rico need, and 
they need it right now, not tomorrow and not a month from now, not 
years from now. They need it now. I say, let's join together and call 
on President Trump to sign that major disaster declaration that 
unleashes this help.
  There is a lot going on in the world, a lot here in Washington. We 
prepare for one of the rare moments in American history where we will 
be conducting a trial related to Articles of Impeachment. Just a week 
ago Tuesday, 8 days ago, I was sitting in front of a television very 
worried about escalation to major war with Iran. There are big issues 
going on, absolutely, but don't let these big issues prevent us from 
addressing the plight of our fellow Americans. Let's pay attention. 
Let's make sure the people of Puerto Rico are neither ignored nor 
neglected. Swift action is needed. Let's join together and make it 
happen.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                        Remembering Chris Allen

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week, the Senate Finance Committee 
and the entire Senate lost a dedicated public servant--and, by the way, 
an all-around wonderful man--with the unexpected passing of Chris 
Allen.
  Chris had been a member of the Finance Committee tax team since 2018. 
I was fortunate that he was willing to continue in that role when I 
reclaimed the gavel last year after the retirement of my friend, and 
former chairman, Orrin Hatch.
  As Members, we are blessed with dedicated people like Chris, who come 
to Capitol Hill to perform public service. They come here to make a 
difference, no matter what their party or ideology. They come from all 
walks of life, religious backgrounds, and from all over the country. 
They work long hours, and sometimes their work is stymied by the 
political headwinds we know about in the Congress of the United States. 
But when an idea is a good one and the people pursuing it do so with a 
full heart and focused mind, it will eventually become law.
  Last year proved to be a year when a number of good ideas finally 
became law in the area of retirement security, in no small part because 
of Chris' hard work and dedication.
  After more than 3 years, we were finally able to pass the Finance 
Committee's Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act. We use acronyms 
around here, and that is RESA. RESA became law after it was 
incorporated into the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement 
Enhancement Act, and that acronym is the SECURE Act.
  Chris was very instrumental in helping navigate the long and, at 
times, very contentious process that culminated in this important 
package of retirement provisions being enacted just before last 
Christmas.
  Possibly even more important, Chris brought a very deep knowledge of 
multiemployer pensions to bear over the past several years to help us 
move forward on important reforms.
  In the last Congress, Chris served as the staff director of the Joint 
Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans. Congress 
formed this committee for the very important job of addressing the 
impending insolvency of a number of multiemployer plans and the 
projected insolvency of the multiemployer fund of the Pension Benefit 
Guaranty Corporation.

[[Page S222]]

  With Chris' steady hand and his tireless efforts, the Joint Select 
Committee laid a critical foundation in 2018 for addressing the 
multiemployer pension crisis.
  Throughout 2019, Chris carried that work forward as a member of my 
Finance Committee staff. Through months of work with Finance Committee 
member offices, and also working with the HELP Committee, working with 
the PBGC, and, most importantly, stakeholder groups that are affected 
by any reform we do, Chris was the one leading the effort to build on 
the Joint Select Committee's work of the previous year. That effort led 
to the development of the Multiemployer Pension Recapitalization and 
Reform Plan that Chairman Alexander and I released in 
November. Resolving the multiemployer pension crisis remains a top 
priority, and now there is another important reason to see it done in 
Chris' memory because he put so much effort into where we are at this 
point.

  While Chris has been a key asset to the Finance Committee on 
retirement and pension policy, his depth of knowledge was much deeper 
than just that issue. Prior to joining the committee, Chris served as 
Senator Roberts' senior tax policy adviser for 7 years. Chris played a 
key role in helping us develop and pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 
2017. In that effort, he focused heavily on the tax rules affecting 
farmers and ranchers across the Nation. Farmers and ranchers are a key 
interest of Senator Roberts and the State of Kansas.
  A close look at Chris' resume shows that he was very successful in 
working for the National Association of State Treasurers and then with 
another organization, the Financial Accounting Foundation. He also 
worked at other firms linked to his expertise in financial services, 
regulation, and legislation.
  What stands out about Chris is his ability to bring folks with very 
different views together in the classic legislative process. And boy, I 
watched him in meetings on the multiemployer pension issues and how he 
navigated all that, and I thought to myself: Without Chris, this 
couldn't be done.
  He had great ability with numbers and great dedication to public 
policy. That is what made Chris stand out. I am confident that had the 
Good Lord not taken Chris last week, he would have remained a fixture 
on the Finance Committee staff for many years to come. Public service 
was very simply at the core of Chris' identity as a professional.
  A key to Chris' success was his genial nature. You might not know it 
by looking at him, but he had a very quick wit. It seems like everybody 
felt comfortable with Chris, and Chris was comfortable with them. He 
had a lot of contentious meetings. I had a chance to observe some of 
them and his working with the stakeholders on multiemployer pensions. I 
saw the comfort they had with him, even when he was trying to go in 
just a little different direction than certain interest groups might 
have wanted to go because Chris knew that to get anything done in this 
body, you have to compromise. As you can tell, policy work was fun for 
Chris. Policy work was important, and he saw policy work as sustaining 
over a long period of time.
  I hope I am pointing out that this type of goodwill and dedication 
was infectious. Every day was meaningful. Every day was a source of 
joy.
  As I said in my statement on Friday night after I learned of Chris' 
passing, Chris was a public servant who brought a deep well of 
knowledge to his work. We all know he is going to leave behind a legacy 
of impact on so many lives that he was able to improve with his 
expertise, with his confidence, and the example he set with his hard 
work. But he never let that keep him from living life to the fullest, 
especially where his family was concerned.
  You learn these things about a staff member's family with the crisis 
of a passing, but Chris was a devoted father to two wonderful 
daughters, Lucie and Sophie. Chris was a loving husband for nearly 30 
years to his wife, Lynda-Marie. Chris was a thoughtful and 
compassionate son and brother. Chris was a fierce friend to so many who 
came to know him during his 58 years. Chris knew how to live life.
  Losing Chris is extremely difficult for all of us. At times, the 
finger of God reaches down and takes a person who we know and love. It 
is not for us to know why that happened. What we know is we all got to 
know Chris and got to know him well. He was part of our lives, and we 
all benefited from the time that we had with him. We are all blessed to 
have that.
  For his family and the countless others who had the good fortune to 
know and work with Chris Allen, a piece of him will live on with each 
of us in every memory of him. Whether it was of Chris' positivity and 
sincerity, or the endless way he could inject humor into a very 
difficult situation, Chris was a blessing to those who were fortunate 
enough to know him.
  Rest in peace, my friend, Chris Allen.
  God bless Chris' family and may He show them His grace as they take 
these next steps in their own life's path.
  Chris will be greatly missed.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                              Impeachment

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor after Speaker Pelosi 
has ended her delay of the Senate impeachment trial today.
  For the past month, the American people have watched the Speaker, I 
believe, make a spectacle of herself. They talked about the need to 
pass this in a way that was rushed, that was partisan, that was sloppy, 
but they had to get it done. Their key word from the Speaker and from 
so many in the House was ``urgency.'' We have to get this done, they 
said--urgency, urgency, urgency. So they took the vote in the House 
before Christmas. Then the Speaker decided to sit on this for 4 long 
weeks. She blocked the moving of the articles from the House to the 
Senate by refusing to send over the necessary papers.
  In the end, the American people, including key Members of the 
Democrats in the Senate, realized that this was just a political stunt. 
Even the Senate Democrats lost patience with her cynical scheming. The 
American people saw what this was. A Harvard-Harris poll cites that 56 
percent of Americans say that what she was doing was just a political 
stunt. We are talking about the impeachment of the President of the 
United States, but it was just a political stunt. She should have done 
her job. She should have delivered the articles in a timely manner.
  Nevertheless, the Senate Republicans are ready to move forward today. 
We have the majority's support to adopt the rules that were used in the 
impeachment trial of President Clinton. President Trump deserves the 
same treatment. In 1999, all 100 Senators--all 100--including the 
Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, voted for these rules, and 77 
percent of the American public says: Hey, if it is good enough for 
Clinton, we ought to do the same thing today. So, after making his own, 
unreasonable demands for weeks, Senator Schumer now says he is ready to 
begin the trial.
  The truth is that the Democrats have already made a mockery of 
impeachment. What they really want is a show trial, not a fair trial, 
and that is what happened in the House of Representatives. It was all 
for show. What do I mean by that? Let's take a look at what happened in 
the House.
  First of all, their hearings were in secret, behind closed doors, in 
the basement of the Capitol. Then they selectively released misleading 
information. They denied the President due process, and they denied the 
President the opportunity to face his accusers and to face the 
whistleblower. Even though there was immediate interest and, at first, 
they said ``Oh, the whistleblower will testify,'' they then said ``No, 
no, no. We don't want you to even know who the whistleblower is or what 
reason or personal issues related to the whistleblower may have brought 
forth the reason for that person to come forward. We don't want you to 
know where the whistleblower's alliances may lie.''
  The Democrats have always known they cannot remove this President.

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Their real agenda is the 2020 Presidential election and the Senate 
elections. Thankfully, the Democrats' 3-year-long partisan impeachment 
effort--their goal being to impeach from day No. 1--is finally nearing 
an end. It was from day No. 1. We saw Elizabeth Warren, candidate for 
President, on the debate stage last night. Yet, in December of 2016, 
after Donald Trump had been elected but before he had even been sworn 
in, she had held a press conference and had talked about impeaching 
him.
  On the day the President took the oath of office, there was a 
headline in the Washington Post that read: ``The campaign to impeach 
President Trump has begun.''
  Here we are now, over 3 years since election day of 2016, and we are 
getting ready to have votes in Iowa in less than 3 weeks. So this isn't 
really about trying to remove President Trump from office; it is about 
trying to influence the vote of 2020. With voting in Iowa being 3 weeks 
away and the general election's not being far away--November 3--voters, 
not Congress, are going to decide whether to keep President Trump in 
office.
  The President has a terrific record to stand on. There have been 7 
million new jobs created since he has been elected. The President has 
cut taxes and gutted regulations that have been punishing to the 
economy. There have been trade deals. He is signing one with China 
today, and there are additional trade deals. We are going to pass the 
USMCA tomorrow. There is a new trade deal with Japan. Unemployment is 
at an all-time low. There is a 50-year low in unemployment in this 
country, and wages are going up.
  It is time for the Democrats to stop wasting the time of the American 
people. There are jobs that need to be done. Congress needs to get its 
job done, which is to focus on the issues that the American public care 
about--roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, infrastructure. There is key 
legislation we need to be advancing, like lowering the costs of 
prescription drugs--helping people get insulin that is cheaper for 
them. We need to help those families. We need to secure the border. 
That is what is going on.
  To think that we are going to spend the amount of time that we are 
going to spend on impeachment as a result of what the House has been 
doing and the Democrats have been doing since day No. 1 is a misuse of 
taxpayer money and is a misuse of Congress's time to do the job that we 
were elected to do--to help the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         War Powers Resolution

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I rise in support of S.J. Res. 68, to 
prevent an unnecessary and unauthorized war against Iran.
  I thank my friend from Virginia, Senator Kaine, as well as Senators 
Dick Durbin, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, for standing up for our laws and 
for the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress, not the President, the 
power to make war and to authorize the use of military force.
  The assassination of Iranian General Soleimani was a massive, 
deliberate, and dangerous escalation of conflict with Iran by Donald 
Trump. Rather than deterring new attacks on American interests, as the 
administration insists, Soleimani's assassination invited them, and 
they came in the form of airstrikes on U.S. air bases in Iraq.
  But instead of sharing with Congress and the American people 
information and intelligence that justify the Soleimani attack, 
President Trump and his counselors have deflected, fabricated, and just 
plain refused to tell the truth about the so-called imminent threat 
that was prevented.
  We now have press reports confirming that President Trump authorized 
the killing of General Soleimani 7 months ago. The administration 
doesn't just look to be misrepresenting the imminent threat of 
Soleimani, it appears to be fabricating information intended to bypass 
Congress's constitutional role to authorize war.
  Last week, President Trump revealed more information on the killing 
to a FOX News personality, and he gave more information to that 
personality on FOX than he did in a 75-minute briefing to the entire 
U.S. Senate. That is completely and totally unacceptable. FOX News 
should not know more about our national security interests than the 100 
Senators who sit here and have the responsibility to ensure that we are 
a check and balance on the executive branch.
  No evidence has yet been presented to support President Trump's 
outlandish claim that Iran would ``probably'' target four U.S. 
Embassies--an assertion that was contradicted days later by his own 
Secretary of Defense. Perhaps that is why President Trump's latest 
defense is just to simply throw up his hands and say: I am sorry; I am 
not giving you the information that you need. He tweets that the 
imminence test ``doesn't really matter because of [Soleimani's] 
horrible past.'' So it is no longer imminent threat, from his 
perspective, because he says it really doesn't matter. He decides, and 
he decides without consultation with the Congress.
  Here is the lesson Donald Trump seems unwilling or unable to learn: 
The truth does matter. In matters of war and peace, the truth is 
nonnegotiable.
  Trump's reckless actions have put tens of thousands of American Armed 
Forces, diplomats, and civilians at greater risk, and his continued 
fabrications about intelligence threaten to draw the United States into 
an illegal war with the country of Iran.
  Look at what has happened as a result of Trump's escalation: Our 
Iraqi strategic partners are demanding that U.S. troops leave bases in 
Iraq prematurely, increasing the chance that ISIS will reconstitute 
itself in the region. The truth matters.
  Iran has announced that it is no longer bound by enrichment 
restrictions under the deal. This only makes it more likely that Iran 
will hasten its quest for a nuclear bomb. The truth matters.
  Despite Donald Trump's best efforts, the United States is a country 
that abides by the rule of law. Our laws say Congress has the sole 
authority to make and to authorize war. Neither the 2001 nor the 2002 
authorizations for the use of military force can be used to provide 
legal cover for a war with Iran, and we owe it to the American people 
to repeal these obsolete authorizations, which Presidents of both 
political parties have abused to justify military campaigns in far-
flung parts of the planet.
  To guard against another quagmire as we experienced in Vietnam, 
Congress acted, through the War Powers Resolution of 1973, to rein in 
Presidential overreach when it came to war. That resolution, which 
informs our debate on the Senate floor today, makes it clear that the 
President cannot put our brave men and women in harm's way without a 
vote by Congress or if there is an armed attack on the United States.
  Neither the 2001 nor the 2002 authorization for the use of military 
force provides legal cover for the killing of Soleimani or any other 
future attacks against the country of Iran.
  It bears repeating that a possible war with Iran did not begin with 
Iran's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, nor did it begin with the 
President's decision to select the extreme option of assassinating 
Soleimani. The uptick in Iran's attacks in the region and that of its 
proxies can be traced to President Trump's unilateral and irresponsible 
exit from the Iran nuclear deal--the deal to put inspectors in every 
one of the Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iran deal was working. It 
was the best tool we have to ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear 
weapon--that was until Trump's capricious decision to pull out of the 
deal and crush Iran by ratcheting up American sanctions.
  Trump is now doubling down on his failed approach by ratcheting up 
sanctions on new sectors of the Iranian economy. This escalation will 
make the Trump deal that he says he wants all the more elusive.
  Before the United States backed out of the Iran deal, the President's 
own CIA Director, Director of National Intelligence, and the United 
Nation's international watchdog agency all said Iran was upholding its 
end of the deal. Iran was upholding its end of the nuclear deal. Since 
then, however, Iran

[[Page S224]]

has moved away from its nuclear-related commitments in phases. Most 
worrisome was Iran's announcement last week that it was no longer bound 
by enrichment restrictions under the deal.
  But we can still salvage a diplomatic outcome. All of Iran's steps 
are reversible. For one, Iran remains party to the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to foreswear acquisition of a 
nuclear bomb. Additionally, international inspectors from the 
International Atomic Energy Agency maintain access to Iranian nuclear 
sites to detect and deter any ramp-up in enrichment or reprocessing.
  But pulling the United States back into a position where we are not 
going to war will require a change in strategy by the President of the 
United States. It means a commitment from the President to, one, cease 
any further military action, as today's resolution calls for; two, 
engage in talks with Iranian President Hasan Ruhani or other senior 
leaders to defuse the crisis and to support our allies as they work in 
good faith to preserve the Iran nuclear deal; three, make clear that 
the United States does not seek to impose regime change in Iran--the 
future of Iran must be decided by the Iranian people alone; and four, 
cease any and all threats against Iranian cultural sites and civilians. 
These would be war crimes. Destroying cultural sites is what ISIS does. 
It is what the Taliban does. It is what the Chinese Government does. 
That is not who we are in the United States of America. Finally, we 
must repeal the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military 
force immediately.
  Americans strongly reject President Trump's deliberate and escalatory 
action against Iran. They do so not just because it is wrong, but they 
do not want to get embroiled into another costly war in the Middle East 
without end. A poll last week shows that Americans by more than 2 to 1 
say that the killing of General Soleimani has made the United States 
less safe. Sadly, they are right.
  In passing Senator Kaine's resolution, this body has a chance to 
reclaim our Founders' vision for the proper role of Congress. We are 
the direct representatives of the people. Congress must express the 
will of the people to determine when, where, and against whom our 
country decides to go to war.
  We cannot and must not get pulled into war with Iran, and we cannot 
allow Trump to start a war all on his own.
  I thank Senator Kaine for his leadership on this resolution that I 
call upon all of my colleagues here on the Senate floor to support.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, what is the business now before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is H.R. 5430, the USMCA 
bill.


                               H.R. 5430

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this afternoon, the Finance Committee is 
kicking off this debate. I will have some remarks, and then the 
distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Grassley, will have 
some remarks, and Senator Brown, who has played such a key role in the 
enforcement issues, will follow.
  I am glad we are getting on this debate. There is a lot to say about 
this topic, and I want to talk first about how the new NAFTA got to 
this point.
  In the 2016 Presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump said he was 
going to pull the United States out of NAFTA. He said it was ``the 
worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed 
in this country.''
  As President, Donald Trump went in a different direction. After 
negotiating with Canada and Mexico, the Trump administration announced 
a deal in 2018 that actually doubled down on several key mistakes of 
the original NAFTA. The new NAFTA the Trump administration came up with 
was way, way too weak on enforcement of the trade laws. Here in the 
Senate, we Democrats said it wasn't good enough--not even close--to get 
through the Congress. So we got down to work and we fixed it.
  The bill we will be considering is the end product of all that work. 
This legislation is now the first real measure of certainty and 
predictability on the crucial issue of trade which American workers, 
our businesses, and families have. It is the first real measure of 
certainty and predictability since the beginning of the Trump 
administration.
  It now has the strongest trade enforcement system ever written into a 
trade agreement. There are significant new resources put into 
protecting American workers. Unfortunately, there has been an effort by 
a few on the other side to strip the crucial enforcement resources for 
enforcing the rights of workers and protecting the environment. It is 
masquerading under a whole lot of procedural lingo, but it is really a 
trojan horse to go back to business as usual with weak enforcement of 
trade laws that doesn't get the job done.
  Over the last week--and I see the distinguished chairman of the 
committee here--these procedural gimmicks have been opposed by the 
chairman and myself. I want to thank the chairman this afternoon for 
doing so. For decades, there has been a lot of happy talk in Washington 
about enforcing trade laws, but the government just moved too slowly 
and did too little to protect American workers when trade cheats came 
after their jobs. Workers and businesses were forced to wait for years 
for the government to crack down on the rip-off artists, and so often 
it was too late. Workers were laid off, factories were shuttered, and 
communities were left without a beating economic heart.
  The original NAFTA was a part of the problem. It made strong 
enforcement almost impossible and was particularly a problem with labor 
rights in Mexico. The same government that allowed corporations to 
undercut American jobs by paying rock bottom wages and abusing rights 
in Mexico had the power to actually block our country from fighting 
back for the workers. So it was a head-scratcher when the Trump 
administration proposed essentially a new NAFTA that kept the old NAFTA 
enforcement system. It ought to have been the first part of the 
original NAFTA that they threw in the trash can, but, sure enough, in 
2018, the Trump administration agreed to language on trade enforcement 
that really did not enforce anything.
  So Senator Brown, who has fought for years for tough trade law 
enforcement, said: We are going to get together, and we are going to 
change this. We put together a proposal that makes the U.S. enforcement 
system faster, tougher, and directly responsive to American workers and 
businesses that are targeted by the trade cheats. Our approach puts 
trade enforcement boots on the ground to identify when factories in 
Mexico break the labor standards we should insist on. It will be a lot 
easier to penalize the violators and protect the jobs they threaten to 
undercut. Senator Brown and I worked with our colleagues, Democratic 
colleagues on the Finance Committee, but we talked to plenty of 
Republicans as well. We took our ideas to the House leadership. We got 
their input and support. We told the Trump administration that tough 
enforcement with what has come to be known as the Brown-Wyden proposal 
was going to be a prerequisite to getting the new NAFTA through 
Congress. As I said, I think this is the toughest labor enforcement 
measure that our country has seen, and that is a big reason why the 
AFL-CIO has endorsed the bill.
  When you combine this all-in approach to enforcement with significant 
new standards on labor and environmental protection, you also get the 
benefit of beginning to stop the race to the bottom. You raise other 
countries to the standards set by our country instead of forcing 
American workers to compete in a game that is rigged against them.
  These have been core Democratic trade policies for a long time. 
Commitments on labor and the environment weren't a part of the original 
NAFTA. Those issues were just pushed aside into what was essentially 
called a side letter. They were the trade policy equivalent of a pinky 
swear and about as easy to enforce. Now they are going to be at the 
heart of the agreement. The United States will have more power than 
ever to hold Mexico and Canada to the commitments made in this 
legislation.
  On technology and digital trade, something that I put an enormous 
amount of my time into, the new NAFTA redefines what trade policy will 
be about. Digital trade wasn't even

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a part of the original NAFTA because, by and large, it didn't exist. 
Smartphones were science fiction. The internet was still years away.
  Senator Grassley has heard me say this many times. The internet was 
years away from becoming the shipping lane of the 21st century. The 
problem has been that our trade laws were still stuck in the Betamax 
mindset.
  Technology and digital trade are obviously at the core of a modern 
economy. They account for millions of good-paying jobs. They are woven 
into every major American industry you can think of--healthcare, 
education, manufacturing, agriculture, and the list goes on. So when 
the United States fights for strong rules on digital trade, it is 
fighting to protect ``red, white, and blue'' jobs.
  That is why the new NAFTA helps to protect our intellectual property 
and prevent shakedowns of American businesses for their valuable ideas. 
It also includes something that I felt very strongly about, and that is 
it established U.S. law that protects small technology entrepreneurs 
that want to build successful lasting businesses in a field that is now 
dominated by just a few Goliaths.
  It is long past time for the United States to bring its trade policy 
into the modern digital world. Getting smart digital trade laws on the 
books is not just about boosting exports. What the internet looks like 
in 10, 20, or 50 years is going to be an open question. Will it be an 
open venue for communication among people around the world or will more 
governments follow the lead of China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, because 
what they are talking about could fracture the internet around national 
borders. Will the internet be a platform for free speech or will 
Chinese officials and corporations find new ways to reach across the 
ocean and trample on the rights of the American people?
  These are just a few of the important questions the United States 
will have to confront when it comes to technology.
  In my view, locking in digital trade rules that protect our jobs and 
promote free speech and commerce online is a good place to start. Labor 
rights, environmental protection, rules on technology and digital 
trade, and aggressive enforcement to protect American workers are all 
areas where there has been significant improvement in the new NAFTA. I 
call this ``trade done right.''
  My State, along with Senator Grassley's State, is so dependent on 
trade. One out of four jobs in Oregon revolves around international 
trade. They often pay better than do the non-trade jobs because they 
have a higher value-added component. Most of them are small businesses, 
and they export. Agriculture is a big part of our economy. The new 
NAFTA will put more of our wine on shelves outside the United States. 
It will increase dairy exports. It will end unfair practices that 
discriminate against American-grown wheat.
  Oregon companies that sell services like apps and engineering plans 
to customers overseas will have new protections under the digital trade 
rules. It will help our manufacturers because the new NAFTA raises the 
bar and includes those protections on labor rights I have described.
  There are a lot of Members to thank who pitched in. We are going to 
hear from a number of them on the floor, and I am going to thank them 
before we wrap up.
  I will close with this. The last few years have delivered one trade 
gut punch after another to our farmers, our shippers, our 
manufacturers, and our exporters. The administration has driven away 
traditional economic allies. A lot of manufacturers are hurting. Farm 
bankruptcies have surged. Foreign markets are more closed off--many of 
them to American exports--than they were before the Trump 
administration began. With this legislation we have an opportunity to 
begin--and I want to underline that, to begin--to change that.
  I particularly want to thank Senator Brown for his laser focus and 
leadership on the issue of enforcement. I think Senator Cantwell, who 
will speak on this issue soon, has done a particularly good job about 
trying to build an infrastructure for enforcing our trade laws. I think 
it is only appropriate to have a special Senate shout-out for 
Ambassador Lighthizer, who has been straight with members of our 
committee. I know the chairman will speak on that next. I call him the 
hardest working man in the trade agreement debate.
  I support this bill. I hope my colleagues will do it. I know the 
chairman will have remarks, and Senator Brown will be here. Other 
colleagues will be here. I know Chairman Grassley is glad we are 
getting at this. I share his views.
  We have plenty to do on healthcare and other issues, and we look 
forward to working with him.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The President pro tempore is recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, before I start my remarks, I think it is 
important for all Senators to know that when there were negotiations 
going on between the White House and the Democrats in the House of 
Representatives, one of the real sticking points was enforcement. I 
think everybody expects a trade agreement to be enforced, but a lot 
more had to be done than what was originally agreed to when the 
agreement was signed.
  I want to recognize Senator Wyden and Senator Brown because months 
before, maybe even years before--I don't want to take away from how 
hard they were working on some ways of improving enforcement--but at 
least they had an idea out there that was salable to both sides. I 
don't know whether it was 100 percent or 90 percent or 80 percent that 
was incorporated in this bill, but their laying the groundwork was the 
basis for getting an agreement between the White House and the House of 
Representatives so we could move this to the point where the Senate is 
going to pass it tomorrow, I hope. So I thank Senator Wyden and Senator 
Brown, who is not here, but maybe you can tell him I said thank you.
  Mr. WYDEN. I will.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. It is said that good things come to those who wait. 
Others say it is better late than never. Either way, we can agree that 
this day has been a long time coming.
  With the passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement by what 
will be an overwhelming margin here in the U.S. Senate, America's 
economy will continue to thrive and drive prosperity for hard-working 
American farmers, workers, and taxpayers all across our economy.
  You have heard the old saying: ``A rising tide lifts all boats.'' The 
new NAFTA, the bill that we are working on, puts a bigger oar in the 
water for our trilateral trade relationship with our northern and 
southern neighbors. It is important to point out that we wouldn't be 
here without the bold leadership and the determination of President 
Trump. The President is doing exactly what he said he would do.
  So many people running for President run on a platform, but they 
don't stand on that platform. He ran on a platform of doing something 
about what he considered were bad trade agreements, and, of course, he 
is standing on that platform.
  Undaunted by those who set to throw him out of office since day one, 
President Trump forged ahead for the good of the American people. He 
forged ahead to update and improve NAFTA for Americans. We heard, 
during the campaign, that it was the President's opinion that it is the 
worst agreement that has ever been made. I might not agree with the 
extreme of that, but I do know, as Senator Wyden has pointed out, that 
there were a lot of things that weren't even negotiable 30 years ago 
when we first sought NAFTA, and at least an updating needed to be done.
  The President has done more than update. As the President promised 
during his campaign, at the end of the day, President Trump 
successfully steered that final trade pact into the 21st century. He 
did so with a tireless and tenacious team of advisers, especially the 
leadership of the U.S. Trade Representative, Bob Lighthizer. Senator 
Wyden just gave more adjectives to Bob Lighthizer's work, and I 
associate myself with the remarks and the description that Senator 
Wyden gave to Bob Lighthizer's heavy lift to get this job done because 
Bob Lighthizer worked in good faith to broker and fine-tune the USMCA.
  Mr. Lighthizer built a strong and sweeping coalition to strengthen 
and

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expand markets for U.S. agriculture, manufacturing, and service 
exports. Mr. Lighthizer built a broad and sweeping coalition to improve 
labor and environmental protections in a balanced fashion, and Mr. 
Lighthizer built a broad and sweeping coalition that will end up 
growing wages for our workers. He ensured that all of this would be 
subject to strong enforcement, which is the bedrock of any good trade 
agreement, and it is in that enforcement that he took good ideas from 
Wyden and Brown.
  Unfortunately, these efforts that I just described to you became 
entangled in a time-wasting partisan roadblock from the House of 
Representatives. It is unfortunate for the American people, especially 
our farmers, ranchers, and workers, that public policymaking took a 
back seat to a partisan obsession of impeaching the 45th President. 
That is a shame.
  The President is upholding his promise to put America and Americans 
first. His message resonates with tens of millions of Americans who 
want to restore the American dream for their children and 
grandchildren. These Americans want the next generation to have the 
same opportunity to lay claim to the American dream that nine 
generations before, going back to the Colonies, have built upon so that 
each generation can live better than the preceding generation.
  That American dream is that if you work hard and play by the rules, 
you can earn a good living, get ahead, and stay ahead. A big plank in 
President Trump's platform is fixing broken trade agreements. USMCA is 
not the first of it because he has worked with Japan, and he has worked 
with Korea, and today we saw the signing of phase one of the Chinese 
agreement, so he is making great progress.
  The President is determined to stop America's farmers and 
manufacturers and workers and consumers from being taken for a ride. 
When it comes to unfair trade agreements, we are finding out now that 
the buck stops with President Trump. I am not sure, 3 years ago, I 
would have said that, but I think after 3 years and USMCA, the Chinese 
agreement, the Korean agreement, the Japanese agreement, and some other 
things he has done in trade, he ought to wake everybody up that what he 
ran on in his platform he has carried out.
  With NAFTA, when it took effect 26 years ago this month, the digital 
economy and the commercialization of the internet didn't even exist. 
The USMCA creates the first U.S. free trade agreement with a digital 
trade chapter. These important measures will help the $1.3 trillion 
U.S. digital economy to flourish and grow faster. It improves efforts 
to stop importers of counterfeit goods from ripping off consumers, 
producers, and content creators. It provides for copyright and patent 
protections to uphold trade secrets and to secure data rights so that 
American ingenuity and innovation will drive economic growth, create 
jobs, drive up consumer choices, and drive down prices for goods and 
services our consumers need.
  The USMCA levels the playing field for the U.S. auto industry by 
encouraging companies to use more North American content and higher 
wage labor. USMCA also fixes enforcement flaws that hog-tied NAFTA from 
keeping everyone accountable to their commitments.
  Speaking of hogs, the new NAFTA is good news for American farmers and 
ranchers. My State of Iowa happens to benefit from this to a great 
extent because my State is the Nation's No. 1 pork producer. In 2018, 
Canada and Mexico bought more than 40 percent of U.S. pork exports. 
These exports support 16,000 U.S. jobs.
  USMCA preserves critical, duty-free access to Mexico and Canada. It 
removes unfair restrictions on U.S. farm and food products. For the 
first time ever, U.S. eggs and dairy exports will be sold in Canada. 
This is very good news. It means an additional $227 million for dairy 
exports to Canada and $50.6 million of exports into Mexico. My home 
State of Iowa also is the No. 1 egg producer in the country. USMCA will 
increase U.S. exports of poultry and eggs to Canada by $207 million. It 
also addresses restrictions that kept U.S. wheat and wine out of 
Canada.
  I thank the former Iowa Governor and previous Agriculture Secretary, 
Tom Vilsack, because, as the leading Democrat in the State of Iowa, he 
set aside partisan motives embraced by other Members of his party to 
work together with Senator Ernst, Governor Kim Reynolds, and me to 
champion USMCA.
  According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, the USMCA will 
raise real GDP by more than $68 billion, and USMCA will create nearly 
176,000 jobs. So, all told, the trade pact is forecast to boost farm 
and food exports by at least $2.2 billion. Considering the slump in the 
farm economy, it is really shameful that passage of the USMCA was 
stalled for over a year and nearly derailed by a partisan agenda, 
including the impeachment.
  Under the Trump economy, the United States is enjoying the longest 
economic expansion in U.S. history. Ratification of the USMCA will help 
America's economic engine fire on all cylinders and refuel prosperity 
in rural America.
  If you remember, I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that 
passage of the USMCA is better late than never, and while I am looking 
forward, I also take this opportunity to call on Canada to quickly 
ratify the agreement. Now that Mexico has ratified and the United 
States will soon be done with our ratification, all eyes will be on 
Canada to get the job done quickly so that we can all work together to 
implement this agreement. I don't have any doubt that Canada is going 
to do that because I had opportunities earlier last year, several 
times, to visit with the Canadian Foreign Minister, and she was very 
certain that they would be passing this.
  Let's not delay the people's business on other important matters 
before us, such as drug pricing and retirement and pension legislation 
that would provide peace of mind for Americans for their healthcare and 
financial security.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, tomorrow I will do something I have never 
done in my time in the House and Senate. I will vote for a trade 
agreement for the first time in my career. I am voting for that trade 
agreement because of the work my colleague from Oregon Senator Wyden 
and I did to fix President Trump's deal and secure new protections for 
American workers for the first time ever, in spite of the President's 
intransigence, in spite of the President's lining up, as he always 
does, with corporate interests.
  Our trade agreement, for the first time ever--ever--put workers at 
the center of this agreement. Every trade agreement I have seen in my 
time in Congress--the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Central 
America Free Trade Agreement, the trade agreements with Colombia, South 
Korea, and Panama, the permanent normal trade relation with China--one 
after another, every one of these trade agreements, every one of these 
trade actions were written fundamentally in secret by corporate 
interests to serve corporate interests. Workers were never at the 
center of these trade agreements.
  One of my proudest votes in the House was against the North American 
Free Trade Agreement. I have voted no ever since. Again, it is because 
all of these trade agreements were written by corporations to maximize 
profits and compensation for executives and to enrich stockholders, 
always at the expense of workers and at the expense of communities like 
Mansfield, Portsmouth, Toledo, and Youngstown, OH.
  I was talking to a friend of mine in Trumbull County, former Senator 
Cafaro. She knows what has happened with these trade agreements. We all 
know how they undermine communities and hurt workers, always, again, 
because these trade agreements were written by corporations in secret.
  We have watched the spread of the corporate business model because of 
NAFTA and these trade agreements and because of the Trump tax policies, 
where you pay a lower tax rate if you

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move overseas than you pay in the United States, and in spite of, in 
those days, Ranking Member Wyden's efforts to stop those kinds of tax 
breaks that go to the richest people in the country.
  With those business models, you shut down production in Lima or in 
Zanesville or in Cleveland, OH. You get a tax break, you move overseas, 
and then you sell your products back in the United States. That has 
been the business model based on our trade policy for years.
  Candidate Trump promised something different. He promised to 
renegotiate NAFTA. The problem is, when he put his agreement in front 
of us, it was the same old, same old. They were the same old economic 
policies that, again, put corporate interests in the center of this 
trade agreement. It was a trade policy that was like all of our trade 
policies in the past.
  Over and over again, this President has betrayed workers, from tax 
giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the 
scale, always supporting corporate interests and putting corporations 
over workers and always supporting Wall Street over consumers.
  As we know, down the hall, where Senator McConnell's office is--
almost every day he walks down here to try to confirm far-right 
extremist judges, always young judges who do that same thing: put their 
thumb on the scales of justice, always supporting corporations over 
workers.
  As I said, last year, we got an initial draft of President Trump's 
agreement. It was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere 
near the good deal that the President promised. He had negotiated, pure 
and simple, another corporate trade deal. It meant nothing for workers, 
and it was a sellout to drug companies. In fact, the White House looks 
like a retreat for Wall Street executives, except on Tuesdays and 
Fridays, when the White House looks like a retreat for drug company 
executives.
  It took us--Senator Wyden and Speaker Pelosi and unions--months and 
months and months working together to improve this deal. The President 
resisted and resisted and resisted, but we finally approved a deal to 
put workers at the center of our trade policy.
  We have a provision that Senator Wyden and I will talk about that 
says violence against workers is a violation of the agreement. It might 
sound obvious, but it has never been in a trade deal before. For the 
first time ever, we spell out workers' right to strike. Again, it 
should be obvious, but it was never included before.
  If the workers don't have that right to strike--not something workers 
want to do very often, if ever. My wife, whose dad was a utility worker 
in the union for 35 years, talks about growing up. They went on strike 
twice when she was a kid. Workers never really recover from a strike, 
but sometimes they have to. It needs to be in trade agreements to make 
sure workers' rights are protected.
  We have improved some of the legalese that, since the beginning, has 
been included in our trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to 
win a case when a country violates its labor commitments.
  Most importantly, we secured our Brown-Wyden provision that amounts 
to the strongest ever labor enforcement--ever--in a U.S. trade deal. 
The provision Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first 
improvement to enforcing the labor standards in our trade agreements 
since we have been negotiating them.
  We know why companies close factories in Ohio, in Oregon, and open 
them in Mexico. They pay lower wages, and they take advantage of 
workers who don't have rights. They have weaker and nonexistent 
environmental laws.
  American workers can't compete when companies move overseas and 
exploit low-wage workers. We essentially get a race to the bottom on 
wages. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every 
country we buy and sell to and in every country with which we trade and 
export and import, raising labor standards, making sure those standards 
are actually enforced.
  If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat 
them with dignity and really honor the dignity of work no matter where 
those workers are located, then we take away the incentives to move 
jobs overseas.
  Think about this. The missions of companies in the United States 
state--it is sort of the business practice of shutting down production 
in Niles, OH, and moving it overseas. They will be less likely to do 
that if the workers overseas are paid decent wages. Then those workers 
will be able to buy our products because they are more likely to be in 
the middle class.
  That is what Brown-Wyden is all about. It is a completely new way of 
holding corporations accountable. A worker in Mexico will be able to 
report if a company violated their rights. Within months, we can 
determine whether workers' rights have been violated, and we take 
action against that company.
  We apply punitive damages when companies cheat, break the law, stop 
workers from organizing, and if they keep doing it, the final strong 
enforcement is we stop their goods from coming into the United States. 
In essence, we say: OK. You are cheating. You are breaking the law. You 
are violating your workers' rights. You are not going to have access to 
the U.S. market. That is enforcement.
  When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate 
for higher wages, it helps our workers. Mexican workers right now can 
be paid as little as $6.50 a day. The minimum wage per hour in our 
country--in Tennessee, Oregon, and Ohio--is higher than that. This is 
$6.50 a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that.
  We have already heard some critics say Brown-Wyden will force Mexican 
wages to rise. I know a lot of CEOs who make $7 million, $8 million 
year who want to keep wages low in other countries. They accuse us of 
forcing Mexican wages to rise. That is kind of the point. That is what 
we want to do because it takes away incentives for those CEOs--those $7 
million, $8 million, $9 million-a-year CEOs in America--from looking 
abroad to hire cheap labor and to exploit workers and make more money 
for themselves.
  I want to especially thank Senator Wyden and his staff. Without his 
endorsing the proposal and without his pushing aggressively, we would 
not be here.
  I want to be clear, though. We will be straight with American 
workers. It is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that the 
Democrats fixed, over the President's opposition, is not going to bring 
back auto plants like the President promises.

  I have real concerns that the auto rules of origin are much weaker 
than the administration says they are. We know the administration 
always exaggerates its successes and doesn't tell the truth about many 
of the things it does.
  We know that this trade agreement was a corporate trade agreement and 
not a worker trade agreement. Now workers are at the center. We will be 
watching the President. He needs to ensure companies actually comply 
with these rules. I will demand we strengthen them if we need to.
  One trade deal the Democrats fixed also will not undo the rest of 
President Trump's economic policies. It is a policy that, as I said, 
put corporations over workers. We haven't raised the minimum wage 
because the President is opposed. The President took overtime pay away 
from 50,000 Ohioans by changing the rule on how overtime is paid. This 
deal is not going to fix all that.
  This USMCA is not going to stop outsourcing when we have President 
Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send jobs 
overseas.
  I am going to keep fighting President Trump's corporate trade 
policies and tax policy, just as we did with this agreement. We have 
more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker.
  I will vote yes. As I said at the outset, I will vote yes for the 
first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, 
Democrats have taken another corporate trade deal brought to us by 
President Trump and Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-
worker. As the Senator from Oregon knows, we have set an important 
precedent that Brown-Wyden will be included--must

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be included--in every future trade agreement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to pose some 
questions to my colleague from Ohio.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. He has done so much work on these issues--not just in the 
last few months but for years and years. I want to thank him for his 
extraordinary commitment to the rights of workers and to all these 
communities that, he has pointed out, essentially lose their economic 
heartbeat by trade policies that cheat workers.
  I want to ask the gentleman about this. I have heard this, and I have 
heard this in lots of places. People have said: These ideas seem good, 
but are they really that consequential?
  Mr. Brown has been at this for more than a quarter of a century. We 
have watched him out on the floor year after year after year. Let me 
give my calculation of what this package which we have worked on and 
which he deserves so much credit for consists of.
  As far as I can tell--and we have worked on it with the staff--this 
is the fastest enforcement process by more than 300 percent because of 
what the Senator has done to speed up the timeline for protecting 
workers. It is the toughest because for the first time it allows our 
country to hit the worst actor the hardest by stopping rip-off artists 
at the individual factory level. It is the strongest because it allows 
us to hit companies that repeatedly violate the law. We are able to 
stop the products of exploitive labor at the border.
  I want to ask the Senator a couple of questions, but I wanted to give 
this overview first. Having been at this for more than a quarter of a 
century, is there any trade enforcement regime that, in terms of those 
specifics, comes close to what that new regime would consist of?
  Mr. BROWN. I thank Senator Wyden. I thank him for his help in putting 
this all together.
  Not even close. We have seen trade agreement after trade agreement 
that simply is not--even when labor standards look fairly strong, they 
are not ever really enforceable. Part of what we recognized--we went 
back and looked at what happened after NAFTA was passed, and not just 
what people promised but what happened with NAFTA and what happened 
with CAFTA. We have seen that, with any attempts at labor enforcement, 
the companies or the governments that don't want to enforce labor laws 
find a way, as lawyers are very good at doing, of just taking forever. 
They slow-walk. So whenever you push them to do something, they end up 
staying in court.
  There was a Central American case in Guatemala, I believe, that went 
on for 7 or 8 years. You know the old saying: Justice delayed is 
justice denied. You can't really get enforcement if the people who have 
done the violation, who have committed the violation, take forever.
  So speed is one of the things. Mr. Wyden mentioned at the outset how 
important that is. Another part of it is and one of the things we knew 
would speed it up, No. 1, and would mean that enforcement would work 
was that the workers would have an ability to kick off the 
investigation, to literally call a toll-free number. They can register 
that they have seen child labor violations; that they have seen workers 
attacked, violence aimed against workers; that they have seen wages 
denied for all kinds of illegal reasons. So workers can speak out and 
band together and go to a panel and get quick action.
  If a company keeps doing it--we found cases where a company would get 
a little slap on the wrist. They would do it again and get a slap on 
the wrist and then do it again. So what we did was we increased the 
penalties. The first time, they get fined. The fine is proportional to 
the violation, so it is not a huge penalty. The second time, it is 
more. The third time, we can deny that company NAFTA benefits if they 
sell in the United States.
  Essentially, if you break the law, if you attack workers, if you keep 
out the union illegally, if you deny pay to workers who have earned it, 
you are going to see your market dry up in the United States. That is 
the best incentive to stop. We literally keep the product out of the 
market, out of the United States, if you are a serial cheater and a 
company that does that to its workers.

  Mr. WYDEN. I appreciate Mr. Brown's taking us through this. It is 
faster. It is tougher because it gets at the individual factory level. 
It is stronger because it stops those repeat offenders who come up with 
products using exploitive labor.
  I want people to know and have it highlighted in the Record that my 
take is that this, given what we have seen over the last 25 years, is 
far better than anything we have seen before.
  Look, the Senator and I have worked on a lot of enforcement efforts 
over the years. He will recall that at one point I chaired the Trade 
Subcommittee, and we found people tripping over themselves to cheat 
because they were merchandise laundering. It was a little bit different 
from this. We set up a dummy website just to try to keep tabs on all 
the people who were cheating. We would remember--and we didn't know 
whether to laugh or cry--that all over the world, people were coming 
forward to cheat. That was useful. It didn't come close to the breadth 
of what has been done here.
  Let me just ask a couple more specific questions because I have heard 
lots of people in all the campaigns and the like talking about whether 
this was modest or really a bold set of changes. Now we have just 
walked through how much stronger this is than anything we have seen in 
the last quarter-century.
  The gentleman mentioned how workers can use this hotline to enforce 
their rights. If a worker reports violations of their rights at a call 
center and the government believes the complaint has merit, my 
understanding is that the government is obligated under the law to send 
labor inspectors to that facility. Is that correct?
  Mr. BROWN. Yes. Whether it is a call center or an auto factory, if 
the violations occur and there is evidence that there are violations--
and in many cases, we know about them because workers have spoken out--
then inspectors can go into those factories.
  One of the outcomes of this: We know corporations don't want that 
kind of punishment. We know corporations don't want to see inspectors 
there looking at their businesses because there have been legitimate, 
reasonable accusations of lawbreaking. So that is going to mean that 
corporations will probably quit breaking the law.
  Those corporations that have decided to move to Mexico because it is 
easy to evade labor laws and they can pay low wages, when they see we 
mean business, when they see the USMCA--Senator Wyden and I took an 
agreement that was another corporate trade agreement handed down by 
President Trump and fixed it, so it has these strong labor provisions. 
When they see that we mean business, that we are going to enforce these 
labor laws, and that we are going to pass an agreement that works for 
workers, some companies are going to think twice about shutting down 
production in Youngstown, Marietta, Toledo, or Dayton and moving 
overseas. That is part of the goal of this enforcement too.
  Mr. WYDEN. If you would, Senator Brown, take us through what kinds of 
actions can be taken against a facility. In other words, my 
understanding is, if the labor inspectors find violations when they 
inspect it, they have a host of remedies. The gentleman touched on this 
in the committee, but what kinds of actions can be taken against that 
particular facility?
  Mr. BROWN. First let me talk for a second about a sector that is very 
important in my part of the country: the auto sector. If a company 
cheats in an auto facility in a Mexican community and we find labor 
violations and we take action against that company, the action is not 
against just that company's facility in that community. If a company 
cheats its workers and has broken the law on any number of labor 
violations, that applies to any product that company ultimately sends 
in from any one of its factories in Mexico. It addresses sort of the 
Whac-A-Mole kind of attempts companies might have: Well, they cheat 
there, but they bring in products from somewhere else.
  We look at that in a pretty broad way. Fundamentally, it works this

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way: If we find a violation, first, there is a fine, and the fine is 
essentially proportionate to the violation, meaning that it is not as 
punitive. The first offense is not especially punitive. The second and 
the third offense get more serious. For the second offense, the fine is 
much greater--beyond proportionality, if you will. The third offense is 
when we step in and deny them NAFTA benefits, deny them access to our 
markets, and deny them the breaks they get under NAFTA at the border on 
the tariffs. So if it is a violation of labor law, by the third 
violation, the enforcement and the penalties are such that the 
companies are going to quit doing it.
  I mean, that is the whole point. I don't want to levy these fines. I 
want companies to obey the labor law that the Mexican Government has 
passed in their new labor law and that are under the NAFTA agreement.
  Mr. WYDEN. So would Senator Brown be saying that if it is found that 
there were labor violations at a car factory, the penalties could apply 
to any car that might come into the United States from that factory 
throughout the investigation, not just going forward?
  Mr. BROWN. Correct, from that factory and also from other factories 
owned by the same automaker, so that you can't cheat one place and 
expect to get all your autos into the United States without tariffs.
  We thought a lot about this. Over the last 20 years, we looked at 
what has happened. We looked back over the last couple of decades, 
working with the very good Democratic staff of the Finance Committee 
and with our office, and found every possible example we could on how 
violations occur and how you stop those violations. So we built in a 
process. It is pretty complicated, and it took a while.
  As I said, the President handed down another corporate trade 
agreement that helps corporations at the expense of workers, and we 
weren't going to let that happen this time. That is why the Trump USMCA 
took a long time to pass--because for a whole year, they were resistant 
to good labor enforcement. They wanted to help their corporate buddies.
  Senator Wyden will remember that there was a provision in there to 
help the drug companies, a big giveaway to the drug companies. We said 
no to that. Speaker Pelosi said no to that. We stripped that out of the 
agreement. We wanted this agreement to center on workers--not to help 
the drug companies, not to help Wall Street, not to help and encourage 
those companies that outsource jobs.
  Mr. WYDEN. I have appreciated this colloquy with Senator Brown.
  I have a couple of town meetings at home this weekend, working-class 
neighborhoods, where trade has been really important. One out of four 
jobs in my State revolves around trade, and those jobs often pay better 
than do the nontrade jobs. If anybody says ``Well, Ron, do you think 
anything is really going to be accomplished with what you and Senator 
Brown are talking about?'' I am going to say that I went through the 
entire enforcement process in terms of the key provisions, and we laid 
out for the country and the Senate that you have led an effort to speed 
up by more than 300 percent the timeline for an enforcement action. I 
mean, it used to take years and years sometimes. You have shortened 
that by literally more than 300 percent. You have been part of an 
effort that is tougher because you can go after the individual 
factories.
  Then, finally, I think this enforcement proposal gets to the heart of 
what we need to be doing because it means if you rip off workers, we 
are going to stop products those workers have produced at the border.
  My guess is, there will be a lot more discussion. I see we have 
another valuable colleague from the Finance Committee who has been 
heavily involved in these issues for a lot of years. But I want to say 
again that this didn't happen by osmosis, because when we got that 
flawed bill, I think everybody said: Well, they will probably have some 
discussions about it, and that will be pretty much it.
  Mr. BROWN. I saw this when Senator Wyden and I announced the success 
of getting Brown-Wyden into the bill. I heard from a lot of--shall we 
say--pro-Trump, pro-corporate lawmakers in this body, mostly on that 
side of the aisle but all over. They were pretty angry because they 
thought this was going to be another trade agreement--USMCA was going 
to be another trade agreement written by corporations, mostly written 
in secret, that will serve corporate interests, that will pad the 
bottom line, that will help million-dollar-a-year executives make 
multimillion dollars a year, that will help their major stockholders 
and will ignore workers.
  They were fine with that because that is too often what this body 
does. They found that--oh, my gosh--this trade agreement actually puts 
workers at the center. That was, I know, your goal and my goal. That is 
why people at your town meetings in Eugene and Portland and Bend and 
all over Oregon are going to hear from you about how this will help the 
middle class, fundamentally.
  I appreciate the time.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I think this has been central to what we 
will be debating and we will be voting on tomorrow morning.
  I want to thank Senator Brown. This bill would not have happened 
without tough trade enforcement led by Senator Brown. This bill would 
not have happened, period, full stop.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, before the senior Democrat, the ranking 
member of the Finance Committee, leaves the floor and before the 
Senator, my colleague from Ohio, leaves the floor, I want to thank them 
both. We would not be here on this day without them and without their 
leadership--both of them.
  When Sherrod Brown says that he has never met a trade agreement he 
wanted to even think about supporting--thank you for making this one 
that virtually all of us can support. My highest regards.


              United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement

  Madam President, I have a speech here that starts off with ``Mr. 
President'' over and over again, but I am going to say ``Madam 
President.'' I rise today to discuss the new treaty to replace the 
North American Free Trade Agreement, affectionately known as NAFTA.
  Last week, those of us who serve on the Finance Committee had an 
opportunity to evaluate the new NAFTA. In fact, about a half dozen or 
so committees have been given different jurisdictions to do that, with 
respect to this trade agreement.
  As you know, trade deals are often dense agreements that have 
hundreds of provisions relating to any number of issues. Ultimately, 
trade agreements and trade legislation move through the Senate Finance 
Committee. We just heard from two of our senior members.
  As another senior member of that committee for many years now, I have 
considered many trade bills and looked at what impact those bills would 
have on American consumers, producers, manufacturers, farmers, and 
businesses--citizens. After all, our economy depends on making sure 
that other countries can sell to us and that we can sell to other 
countries, especially close allies like Canada to our north and Mexico 
to our south.
  Following years of uncertainty, thanks to the President's haphazard 
trade wars, I believe this agreement will provide a measure of 
certainty for those who help drive our economy. Provisions included in 
the new NAFTA will help in our State, on the Delmarva Peninsula, our 
poultry producers gain better access to Canadian markets. It is not 
just important to Delaware; it is important to Delaware, Maryland, 
Virginia, and other places where they raise chickens.
  Further, the new trade deal increases market access for dairy farmers 
in Delaware, and those across the country, to sell their milk 
products--products like powdered milk--to Canada. The International 
Trade Commission estimates that this will allow for an additional $315 
million in exports annually. That is a $315 million increase in exports 
just under the milk side, the dairy side, in sales to Canada every 
year.
  When we evaluate the new NAFTA as what it is--a trade deal--I believe 
that it makes significant improvements on past trade agreements, 
including the

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original NAFTA. New NAFTA adds stronger language to ensure that the 
obligations to all three counties under multilateral environmental 
agreements, including the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, 
can be fully enforced. I will come back and talk more about that in a 
short while.
  Thanks primarily to Democrats, though, it is no longer the case that 
the failure of one NAFTA country to ratify an environmental agreement 
can be used to prevent the others from being held accountable for 
failing to honor their obligations. New NAFTA also includes new 
provisions that have never been included in trade agreements before.
  Environmental violations will now be treated as trade violations, so 
when the United States does bring cases under the new NAFTA's 
environmental obligations, those cases will be easier to win going 
forward.
  This agreement also includes significant new wins for coastal States, 
including binding provisions around overfishing, around conservation of 
marine species, and marine debris. When we talk about marine debris, 
just keep this in mind: There is, floating out in the oceans of the 
world, something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is largely 
plastics. It is twice the size of Texas--not twice the size of 
Delaware, not twice the size of Maryland; it is twice the size of 
Texas.
  In addition to the $88 million for environmental monitoring, 
cooperation and enforcement, the new NAFTA creates an enforcement 
mechanism that gives environmental stakeholders an expanded role in 
enforcement matters. This will go a long way toward ensuring that 
environmental violations can be investigated and remedied in a 
substantive and timely manner.
  My colleagues have heard me say before that I have a friend who, when 
you ask him how he is doing, he replies: Compared to what?
  Well, compared to all the previous trade agreements that this body 
has considered, new NAFTA and its implementing legislation have the 
strongest environmental enforcement provisions we have seen to date, 
period. That is good news, especially for a trade deal put forth under 
this administration.
  Does the new NAFTA include everything that my Democratic colleagues 
and I--and some Republican colleagues--would have liked to see with 
regard to environmental protection? No, it does not.
  This new NAFTA fails to recommit the United States, for example, to 
the Paris accord. It fails to ratify the Kigali amendment that I 
mentioned earlier to the Montreal protocol, which could bring the 
global community together to reduce the use of something called HFCs, 
hydrofluorocarbons, found in products like air conditioners and 
freezers, and prevent, by the use of those follow-on products to HFCs, 
up to a half-degree Celsius increase in global warming by the end of 
this century, just for doing this one thing--one thing.

  Like so many of the Trump administration's proposals, the new NAFTA 
fails to even mention the words ``climate change.'' This trade 
agreement does add important tools and resources that were primarily 
negotiated by Democrats to strengthen the deal, hold the administration 
accountable to enforce NAFTA countries' obligations, and help ensure 
that those who break the rules are actually held accountable.
  As the senior top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works 
Committee in the Senate, I am especially aware of the extreme and 
destructive environmental policies put forth by the current 
administration.
  Week after week, I have helped to lead the fight against some 
reckless rollbacks, too many unbelievably unqualified candidates, and 
their relentless attempts to chip away at our Nation's bedrock 
environmental protections. We know what to expect from this 
administration when it comes to environmental policies.
  As a result, I know that the environmental provisions in new NAFTA--
thanks to the hard work from Democrats in both the House and the 
Senate, and some Republicans too--are far stronger than where we 
started. It is certainly not perfect, and we can, and we must, do more 
going forward. But it is better than we have ever done before, and that 
must be recognized.
  I want to pause for a moment to thank Ambassador Robert Lighthizer 
and his staff--the Trade Ambassador, Trade Rep's office--for their hard 
work and their willingness to engage with my colleagues and with me. It 
has been an extraordinary outreach, great responsiveness. I just want 
to say thank you to the Ambassador and to his team. It reminds me of 
what we had with Michael Froman when he was the Trade Rep in the last 
administration.
  Let me end it with this, if I could: While it is good news that we 
were able to reach an agreement on the new NAFTA, I want to caution my 
colleagues that the uncertainty caused by President Trump's haphazard 
approach to trade is far from over. President Trump's multifront trade 
war with our allies and our trading partners is approaching 2 years 
now. That is 2 years of American farmers, American manufacturers, 
retailers, and small businesses experiencing increased costs from 
President Trump's tariffs while simultaneously being locked out of 
overseas markets due to retaliatory tariffs.
  That is 2 years of uncertainty and disruption for American business 
that have had to put investments and hiring decisions on hold and 2 
years of uncertainty for the American workers who are not sure if their 
jobs will continue to exist as trade wars drag on.
  Where has that gotten us? A limited trade agreement with Japan, which 
may be better than nothing, but it is largely an attempt to cover up 
some of the negative effects that withdrawal from the transpacific 
trade partnership, TPP, has had on our economy and our global 
competitors.
  For those who don't remember, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, as you 
will recall, negotiated in the last administration, was a 12-nation 
trading bloc, negotiated primarily by the U.S. Trade Representative, 
Michael Froman, and his staff. That included 40 percent of the world's 
economy in one trading bloc, 12 nations. Guess who led it: We did. 
Guess who was excluded: China, for the bad behavior they sometimes 
follow. On the outside, they were looking in. And somehow we walked 
away from that. What we have come up with in its place is something 
that is, in my view, not nearly as bold and, unfortunately, not the 
path we have taken.
  I am still reviewing the text of the ``phase one''--I will put that 
in quotes--China trade deal that was signed, I think, today. But from 
what I have seen, the agreement falls far short of the structural 
reforms to China's planned economy that President Trump has 
``trumpeted'' for some time. As best as I can tell, the structural 
reforms in China's economy did not make the final cut.
  As we enter this new year and a new decade, I sincerely hope our 
President will rethink what many believe are senseless approaches to 
trade and return to a multilateral approach--much as we had on the 
Trans-Pacific Partnership--where the United States works with our 
allies and trading partners to constructively write the global rules of 
trade.
  With that, I see one of my colleagues, also from Ohio, rising to 
address a welcoming audience.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I appreciate my colleague from Delaware 
and his comments on trade.
  I ask unanimous consent that my colleague from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, 
be permitted to address the Chamber for a brief tribute following my 
remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I am on the floor today to talk about international 
trade. What a week it has been. In the same few days, we are seeing the 
culmination of nearly 3 years of effort by this administration to 
deliver wins for American workers, for businesses, for farmers, and for 
consumers with regard to our three biggest trading partners, China, 
Canada, and Mexico.
  This is a big week. While the media is focused on impeachment--and I 
can say that because as I walked in that is all the reporters wanted to 
talk about--here we are on the floor talking about something that 
directly affects the constituents we represent. I think it is very 
positive in all three areas--China, Canada, and Mexico. In a way, it is 
like

[[Page S231]]

the World Series and the Super Bowl of trade all in the same week 
because these are big agreements that make a big difference.
  The U.S.-Mexico agreement is being finalized, and it will be voted on 
tomorrow.
  Second today is the signing of phase one of the China agreement, 
something many of us have been focused on over the past few years and 
wondered whether we would get here, and here we are.
  As a former trade lawyer and as a former U.S. Trade Representative 
under George W. Bush and as someone on the Trade Committee, which is 
the Finance Committee here, I follow these issues closely. Most 
significantly, I come from Ohio, which is a State that depends on trade 
and depends on that trade being fair to our workers, our farmers, our 
service providers, and our small businesses. We have a lot of 
manufacturing and a lot of agriculture. In fact, 25 percent of our 
State's factory workers have export jobs. One out of every three acres 
planted in Ohio is planted for export. Think about that. When you drive 
through our beautiful State and you see the corn and the soybeans out 
there in the field, one out of every three acres is being planted to be 
exported somewhere else. That is great for our farmers. It gives them 
markets, and it raises prices for their product at a time when they 
really need it. By the way, these trade jobs are good jobs too. Jobs 
dependent on trade pay, on average, about 16 percent more than other 
jobs, and they have better benefits. We like to be able to send more to 
the rest of the world.
  We have about 5 percent of the world's population in this country. We 
have to be sure that with 25 percent of the world's economy here and 5 
percent of the people, that we are selling stuff overseas to the other 
95 percent. It is always in our interest to open up overseas markets 
for our workers, our farmers, our services, and our service providers. 
While promoting those exports, we need to ensure that we are protecting 
American jobs from unfair trade and from imports that would unfairly 
undercut our workers and our farmers.
  Simply put, we want a level playing field. With that level playing 
field, where you get fair and reciprocal treatment from other 
countries, we will do just fine.
  American workers and businesses can compete, and they can win if it 
is fair. That is all we are asking for. To me, the sweet spot is 
balanced trade, where we are able to send our exports overseas without 
high tariffs and other barriers, and we are able to see imports coming 
in fairly traded into the United States. If we do that, we will be 
fine.
  The good thing about this week is that both of these agreements--the 
new USMCA, which replaces NAFTA, and this phase one of the China 
agreement--are exactly focused on how to have balanced trade. At times, 
recently, other countries have been wondering whether the United States 
was going to make progress on trade, to be frank, so this week is also 
important because the world is watching. What the world is seeing is 
that we can fulfill our stated interest in renegotiating and improving 
trade agreements and trade relationships.
  Concluding these two agreements proves that the United States can get 
to ``yes'' on these very big issues. We are able to work through our 
partisan differences here at home. We just saw this on the floor this 
afternoon where Democrats and Republicans alike are talking about their 
support for USMCA. In tough negotiations with our trading partners--we 
had some tough negotiations with Canada, Mexico, and China--we can 
reach outcomes that benefit our country and help to create that more 
effective balance for American workers.
  There is, perhaps, no better example of this balance than USMCA. 
Without it, by the way, we go back to the status quo, which would be 
NAFTA. That is a 25-year-old agreement that had to be updated. It just 
doesn't reflect the realities of a modern economy. Thanks to important 
measures designed to strengthen our economy, create jobs, and increase 
market access for American exports, this new USMCA will help level that 
playing field we talked about.
  First of all, USMCA means American jobs and economic growth. The 
independent International Trade Commission has studied it. They have 
said this new agreement will create at least 176,000 new jobs and will 
grow our economy. It also says that with regard to the auto industry, 
it will create tens of thousands of jobs. That is, again, very 
important to Ohio. We are a big State for auto production. These jobs 
are going to mean a lot to workers in my State.
  Part of the way it is going to create jobs is by leveling the playing 
field with enforceable labor standards. We just heard about this from 
the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Ohio, about how this 
agreement has new enforceable standards with regard to labor.
  It also, though, has higher content requirements for U.S.-made steel 
and auto parts. This is important. I will give you an example. USMCA 
requires that 70 percent of the steel and 75 percent of overall content 
in USMCA-compliant vehicles come from USMCA countries. In other words, 
other countries can't come in and take advantage of the lower tariffs 
that we are providing under USMCA by adding too much to the content of 
those vehicles. The 75-percent overall content requirement is up from 
62.5 percent in NAFTA. That makes that 75 percent the highest 
percentage of any trade agreement we have. It means more jobs in the 
United States, in particular, and fewer imports from countries like 
China, countries like Germany, countries like Japan that otherwise 
would come in and take advantage of this.
  Some have criticized these content provisions as being somehow 
protectionist. I disagree. We are saying to these countries that if you 
want freer trade with us, enter into a trade agreement, lower your 
barriers, and give us access to your markets as we are giving Mexico 
and Canada access to our markets. That is what a trade agreement is all 
about. If you don't want to do that, you shouldn't be able to free ride 
on our USMCA. I think this makes sense. Why should Japan or China or 
Germany be a free rider on our agreement with Canada and Mexico?
  This will incentivize good jobs in America, but it also incentivizes 
these other countries to enter into trade agreements with us. They can 
see that if you do an agreement with the United States, it is balanced 
and fair. You will have some benefit as well. The International Trade 
Commission expects that USMC will grow our economy by double the gross 
domestic product of that projected to be increased under what is called 
the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I tell you that because TPP, Trans-
Pacific Partnership, is one that Members on the other side of the aisle 
have talked about as being such a great agreement. This grows the 
economy by more than double based on the ITPF estimate. Again, this is 
a big deal.

  USMCA also means important new rules of the road for online sales. So 
much of our commerce today takes place over the internet, but there is 
nothing to protect it or promote it in NAFTA. Because it was done 25 
years ago when there was hardly any internet business, it doesn't have 
any protection.
  This USMCA was written to fix that. It does. It prohibits data 
localization requirements by banning tariffs on data online and by 
raising the de minimis level on customs duties for sales to Mexico and 
Canada. This means they can't require the servers to be in Canada or 
Mexico, as an example, for our digital economy here in the United 
States, which is one of our great advantages. For a lot of small 
companies in Ohio and around the country and for startups that do 
business online and rely on smaller shipments, this is very important. 
The relief from the customs burdens and also the data localization 
requirements and the inability for other countries to put tariffs on 
data is really important. This is great for us as a country.
  The third thing I want to mention is that American farmers are going 
to see unprecedented levels of access to new markets in Canada and 
Mexico under USMCA. Between bad weather, low prices even going into the 
bad weather, and the tariffs that were in place to get to this 
agreement with China, in particular, farmers have been hit pretty hard. 
So this is the light at the end of the tunnel. This gives them a 
chance, under USMCA, to get some new markets. That is why nearly 1,000 
farm

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groups around the country have announced publicly that they strongly 
support this agreement.
  A lot of politicians and pundits have their views on who won the 
negotiations over USMCA that we will vote on here tomorrow on the 
floor. You can go back and forth on that, but in my view, thanks to the 
hard work of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and thanks to 
President Trump pushing on this, the winner here is the American 
people. That is who I think benefits the most. They are going to 
benefit from a new, more modernized trade agreement that will replace 
an agreement that has shown its age with unenforceable labor and 
environmental standards, nonexistent digital economy provisions, and 
outdated rules of origin provisions that allow more automobiles and 
more auto parts to be manufactured overseas rather than being 
manufactured here in the United States.
  I think the American people benefit. We all benefit. I am glad we are 
going to finally have a chance to vote on this landmark trade 
agreement. I urge that tomorrow we pass it on a bipartisan basis, and I 
think we will. Getting this to the finish line is a significant 
achievement but to also do it signing onto the phase one agreement with 
China today is really incredible.
  Again, it has been a strong week. I want to congratulate Bob 
Lighthizer, the Trade Rep, President Trump, and others who worked to 
bring this win to the finish line.
  When I was U.S. Trade Rep for George W. Bush, we conducted the first-
ever economic relationship review with China. We issued a report, and 
it concluded that our trade relationship with China lacked equity, 
durability, and balance. Well, 13 years later, China still doesn't play 
by the rules. So much of that continues. One reason the trade deficit 
with China is going to be the largest in the world is because of that. 
In 2018, we sent China about $180 billion in exports, and they sent us 
about $560 billion in exports. That means we had a resulting trade 
deficit of about $380 billion--the biggest trade deficit in the history 
of the world. That is a problem, but it is more than just the trade 
deficit. That isn't the only way to measure trade.
  Beijing routinely uses subsidies, state-owned enterprises, and a lack 
of transparency by government control on their own economy in order to 
surpass the United States as the world's economic and innovation 
leader. China's current policies undercut critical commitments China 
made, both to the WTO, the World Trade Organization, and to us and 
other countries--agreements that they would open up their market, 
protect intellectual property rights, adhere to international 
recognized labor rights, and meet its WTO commitments on unfair trade 
practices such as subsidies, which they provide.
  I encourage you to read the U.S. Trade Representative's section 301 
report on China. That is its basis for this phase one agreement and the 
basis for the administration putting those higher tariffs in place on 
Chinese products over the past couple of years. The report notes that 
in 2016, the multilateral Organization for Economic Cooperation and 
Development, OECD, ranked China the fourth most restrictive investment 
climate in the world, despite them being the second largest economy in 
the world. Based on this OECD report, China's investment climate is 
nearly four times more restrictive than that of the United States. That 
is why we needed to take some action and have a negotiation with China 
to come up with something that was mutually beneficial.
  I have supported these 301 actions by President Trump to create this 
more level playing field for American workers, farmers, and business 
owners. The only significant leverage we had to be able to do that, by 
the way, was by controlling access to our own market by raising 
tariffs. Higher tariffs had collateral consequences, and we have seen 
that for our consumers and other countries. They have been a necessary 
evil to hold China's feet to the fire and force them to the negotiating 
table and to get the result we have seen today.
  These tough measures are now paying off. Think about it in terms of 
what I said before--equity, durability, and balance. In the interests 
of a more balanced relationship, phase one directly addresses that $380 
billion trade deficit we talked about. China has agreed to increase its 
purchases of American products by at least $200 billion over the next 2 
years, with additional increases likely in the future. That is going to 
help reduce our trade deficit and provide some relief, particularly in 
the agricultural, manufacturing, and energy sectors.
  The agreement includes provisions to make our relationship more 
equitable. That includes new commitments on intellectual property 
protection, new obligations on tech transfer, and a discipline on 
currency manipulation, similar to that which is in the U.S.-Mexico-
Canada Agreement. Specifically, Beijing committed to eliminate pressure 
on U.S. companies to transfer their intellectual property to Chinese 
firms as a condition of doing business in China. This is a big deal, 
and it is a critical step in addressing the IP theft China has used to 
fuel its economic rise. Chinese companies aren't forced to hand over 
their patents as a condition of doing business here in America and 
American companies shouldn't be forced to do the same in China.
  We will also be able to keep a closer eye on China's currency 
manipulation. When the Treasury Department found evidence of 
manipulation to boost Chinese exports, they labeled Chinese a currency 
manipulator for the first time since 1994. That designation was just 
lifted because of phase 1. This new agreement contains new transparency 
and accountability commitments to ensure that American trade enforcers 
can better monitor future manipulation.

  The phase 1 agreement is a first good step toward creating a more 
balanced and equitable relationship between our two countries, but our 
trade relationship will remain durable only if we enforce these 
agreements. That is why it is also very significant that this agreement 
includes the option to reimpose tariffs should China fail to live up to 
the commitments it has made.
  Enforcement is critical. Just as the rest of the world is watching 
our success at getting to ``yes'' on these trade agreements, it is also 
watching how aggressively we are going to enforce these commitments. 
That is why it is imperative that the United States utilize this 
enforcement process assertively and swiftly should we find evidence 
that China has violated its commitments. Congress is watching.
  With such a big day for trade, especially only a couple of weeks into 
the new year, it would be easy to ask if anything else is left for the 
rest of the year. My answer is, yes, there is a lot. We should 
celebrate our accomplishments tonight, but tomorrow continues to bring 
a host of challenges and opportunities to advance a bold trade agenda.
  Most importantly, the next step is to negotiate the phase 2 agreement 
with China that will address the additional structural issues I 
mentioned earlier--the subsidies, the state-owned enterprises, and the 
lack of transparency--that make doing business in China an uphill 
battle. Resolving these issues will be critical to ensuring that our 
two economies are playing by the same set of rules, not different sets 
of rules.
  Between the USMCA and this phase 1 agreement, 2020 has already been a 
significant year for trade, but there is even more progress we are set 
to make. I look forward to phase 2 negotiations with Japan this spring, 
especially regarding new market access for ``Made in America'' 
automobiles. I look forward to potential FTA talks with Switzerland and 
with the United Kingdom post-Brexit--new trade agreements to open up 
more market access. We also want to ensure that the extension of the 
WTO moratorium of tariffs on data continues, and I hope we will see 
renewed efforts at WTO reform. We need to address America's 
longstanding fundamental concerns about the appellate body, special and 
differential status, and the decline of the WTO's negotiating function. 
We have lots to do.
  I hope Congress will consider new legislation to toughen our anti-
dumping and countervailing duty laws this year to crack down on trade 
cheats, and I hope we will pass the Trade Security Act to return 
section 232 to its original purpose of protecting genuine national 
security threats.
  Clearly, there is a lot of work we can do in 2020, and I look forward 
to it. Yet we should pause today and congratulate the Trump 
administration on these two successes we have talked

[[Page S233]]

about. I have long advocated for balanced trade that prioritizes market 
opening and tough enforcement, and I believe that both the USMCA and 
the China agreement embody this philosophy of balanced trade. Most 
importantly, I believe our country is better off because of it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Ohio.


                        Remembering Chris Allen

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to honor a dedicated public servant 
whom we tragically lost last week, Chris Allen.
  Chris served in the Senate for nearly a decade, most recently on 
Senator Grassley's staff. I appreciate that Senator Grassley happens to 
be presiding right now as the President pro tem of the Senate. Chris 
was a leader in our efforts to solve the pension crisis that threatens 
the retirement security of more than a million Americans, including a 
number of people in the Galleries today.
  My staff and I got to know him well while working together to find a 
bipartisan solution. He was part of what we consider to be a sort of 
pensions family in the Senate. We didn't always agree, but Chris always 
understood the stakes. He took this crisis seriously. He knew it 
affected people's lives in the most central way. He understood what 
collective bargaining was about--meaning, you give money up today in 
wages to protect your future. He was committed to finding a solution. 
Most importantly, as Senator Grassley knows, he always treated the 
retirees with dignity, and he respected their work. He understood what 
this retirement crisis meant to those families and the pressures they 
were under.
  In 2018, when we worked together with him and Senator Grassley's 
staff and Chairman Hatch and Senator Portman on our bipartisan pensions 
committee, we held a field hearing in Columbus in order to hear 
directly from current workers, retirees, and small businesses. Chris 
came to Ohio for the entire field hearing. He didn't have to, and a lot 
of staff members didn't. Yet he understood how important it was to talk 
to the people whose livelihoods were at stake in this crisis.
  Workers and retirees came from all over Ohio. Companies that had 
often been in business for 100 years came from all over the region for 
that hearing. We had a 25,000-person rally outside the Ohio State 
Capitol. I would add again that a number of people in the Galleries 
today were at that rally. Our staff was a little nervous about how 
Chris might react when he saw that, for his boss had had some 
disagreements with these folks in the best way to find a solution. Yet 
Chris just looked at that sea of people and said: ``That's cool.''
  That empathy was a part of who he was. He was responsive. He was kind 
and thoughtful. He embodied the decorum of what the Senate should be. 
He wasn't interested in partisan warfare. At a time when too many 
people retreat to their partisan corners, that was not Chris Allen. 
That spirit of cooperation and of mutual respect will be missed more 
than ever. He was dedicated to his work. He was dedicated to the people 
whom our work affects.
  He would meet for hours and do whatever it took to work toward a 
solution. The only thing he stopped for was his family. Chris was a 
devoted father to his two daughters, Lucie and Sophie. Connie's and my 
hearts go out to them and to Lynda, Chris' wife. I know nothing we can 
say could erase the pain of the sudden death of a father and a husband 
so young. I hope they take some comfort in knowing how many lives, 
starting with Senator Grassley's, Chris touched. We miss him. We will 
continue to fight for a bipartisan solution that honors Chris' memory 
and protects the pensions that American workers have earned over a 
lifetime of work.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Washington State.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for mentioning and 
honoring Chris Allen, and our sympathies to the Grassley family. Thank 
you so much for talking about the hard work that so many of our staff 
do around the Capitol that people don't realize. While we have lost 
some on our side, too, it is important to remember those who give so 
much of their time and energy to make our country better.


                               H.R. 5430

  Mr. President, I rise to support the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement we 
are going to be voting on tomorrow, and I want to thank all the people 
who worked on it, including Senator Grassley, Senator Wyden, Senator 
Brown, Speaker Pelosi, and many other people to get us a final product 
that I think we all believe should move forward.
  It is very important to me, coming from one of the most trade-
dependent States, that we continue to open up trade markets, but I hope 
my colleagues will also realize that the world economy has reached a 
tipping point. Over half of the world is now either middle class or 
wealthier. So that means that we have more people to sell more U.S. 
products to. That means bigger market opportunities for U.S. 
manufactured goods, for agriculture products, and a way for us to 
continue to compete in some of our most important industries. That is 
why I have always supported making sure that we continue to open up 
trade markets in a fair way. And for us in Washington State, the North 
American Free Trade Agreement was a positive move. In the context, 
prior to the NAFTA agreement for Washington, in Mexico, there was $300 
million of Washington exports. Now there is more than $2 billion, and 
they are our largest export market for Washington apples.
  Today, Canada, you can see a similar story. Prior to the North 
American Free Trade Agreement, our products into that country were 
roughly about $2 billion; today, they are more than $9 billion. So 
continuing to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement is an 
important step for Washington and for our economy. The important 
aspects of this deal help us open and get a fair playing field for 
wheat, for making sure that digital trade continues in a fair way, and 
that dairy products are accessed into Canada in a fair way and that our 
wine industry--believe it or not, Canadians drink a lot of wine, 
particularly in British Columbia, and they have not always given us 
fair access to that market. So it is very important that it will 
increase access to Washington wines into Canada, which is the largest 
market for Washington wines, buying about $10 million in exports a 
year. But as I mentioned, USMCA will maintain a duty-free access for 
our dairy products to Mexico; it will certainly make sure that our 
wheat products are on a level playing field and continue the access to 
digital trade.
  I want to thank my colleagues Senator Brown and Senator Wyden and 
Speaker Pelosi and all those in the labor movement who worked hard with 
getting an enforcement and capacity-building provision in this 
legislation. But what we are doing here that I know of for the first 
time is business and labor coming together and saying ``we need to 
build the capacity within a country so that they can enforce trade 
agreements.'' This is a positive step, not just for Mexico, but a 
positive step for what we need to do around the globe. I wish we could 
just say to every country, ``Yes, put up the regime to enforce these 
laws, and make it happen tomorrow, and we can help you and your 
economy.'' But it just doesn't work like that. And when you retreat 
from trade--and, trust me, I believe this administration has retreated 
from trade when it starts with a tariff-first approach. You cannot 
start the discussion with throwing out tariffs and then penalizing our 
farmers and then thinking that we are going to get the door open. So I 
am all ears to hear how we are going to get a real agreement with 
China.
  But I thank my colleagues who did the hard work on this USMCA 
agreement to make enforcement and capacity building real for the first 
time. Why? Because as we look at that world economy outside the United 
States, it is one of the biggest economic opportunities we will see. 
That is, we know how to grow things. We know how to make things. We 
should make sure we are opening up markets in a fair trade regime to 
those products. So I will continue to work with our colleagues here to 
make sure that that is achieved. I hope the President will stop the 
tariff-first approach, stop the continuation of the tariffs and the 
impacts that we are seeing now, and get down to continuing to 
negotiations with our being a leader for opening up markets.

[[Page S234]]

  The United States can't lose shelf space to very, very competitive 
markets and then come back years later and try to regain it. Let's be a 
world leader in establishing the rules for fair trade and pushing for 
provisions like we see in the USMCA agreement so we can move forward, 
making sure Washington products, U.S. Products, American-made products, 
get delivered to a growing, wealthier world.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         China Trade Agreement

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the NAFTA 2.0 
trade agreement negotiated by President Trump.
  This agreement is opposed by labor unions like the International 
Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, as well as by the 
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. It is opposed 
by numerous environmental organizations, including the Sunrise 
Movement, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the League of 
Conservation Voters, and virtually every major environmental 
organization in the country. Further, it is opposed by the National 
Family Farm Coalition, which believes it will lock in rules that have 
devastated family-based agriculture and expand corporate control over 
agriculture in North America.
  I am proud to stand with these labor unions, with the environmental 
groups, and family farmers against President Trump's NAFTA 2.0.
  I not only voted against NAFTA in 1993, but I marched against it. In 
2000 I voted against permanent normal trade relations with China. I 
opposed the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and other trade agreements.
  The bottom line is that we need trade agreements in this country that 
work for workers, that work for farmers, and not just the CEOs of large 
multinational corporations.
  There is no doubt in my mind that we need to fundamentally rewrite 
our disastrous trade agreements and create and protect good-paying 
American jobs, and that we need trade agreements that will improve the 
environment and combat climate change, and we need trade agreements 
that end the destructive race to the bottom, where workers are forced 
to work for lower, lower wages.
  Unfortunately, this revised trade agreement with Mexico and Canada 
does none of these things. It must be rewritten.
  While NAFTA has led to the loss of nearly 1 million American jobs, 
this agreement does virtually nothing to stop the outsourcing of jobs 
to Mexico. Under this agreement, large multinational corporations will 
still be able to shut down factories in America, where workers are paid 
some $28 an hour, and move to Mexico, where workers there are paid less 
than $2 an hour.
  When Donald Trump was a candidate for President, he promised that he 
would stop the outsourcing of American jobs to Mexico, China, and other 
low-wage countries. That has not happened.
  The truth is, since Trump took office, over 170,000 American jobs 
have been shipped overseas. In 2018, we had a recordbreaking $891 
billion trade deficit in goods, a $419 billion trade deficit with 
China, and an $81 billion trade deficit with Mexico.
  In 2018, for the first time in our history, manufacturing workers 
began getting paid less than workers overall. It used to be that 
manufacturing workers made really good wages compared to the rest of 
the workforce. It is not the case anymore.
  Today, manufacturing workers get $28.15 an hour, while the average 
worker makes 15 cents an hour more. Last month we lost 12,000 factory 
jobs, and despite Trump's rhetoric, we are in a manufacturing 
recession.
  There is a reason why virtually every major environmental group is 
opposed to Trump's NAFTA 2.0. This agreement does nothing to stop 
fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron from dumping their 
waste and pollution into Mexico and destroying the environment. In 
fact, it makes it easier for fossil fuel companies to bring tar sands 
oil into the United States through dangerous pipelines like the 
Keystone XL.
  This proposal does not even mention the word ``climate change.'' 
Imagine in the year 2020 that we have a major trade agreement that does 
not even mention the words ``climate change,'' the existential threat 
facing not only our country but the entire planet.
  This deal preserves the disastrous investor-state dispute settlement 
system for oil and gas companies, allowing them to continue to put 
corporate profits ahead of our air, water, climate, and health.
  At this pivotal moment in American history, it is not good enough to 
tinker around the edges. The scientific community has been very clear. 
If we do not act boldly and aggressively to transform our energy system 
away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable 
energy, the future of this planet is in doubt, and there is no question 
but that the Nation and planet we leave to our children and to our 
grandchildren will be increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable.
  We have a major climate crisis and no trade deal should be passed 
that does not address that issue.
  In my view, we need to rewrite this trade agreement to stop the 
outsourcing of American jobs, to combat climate change, to protect the 
environment, and to stop the destructive race to the bottom.
  We have to stop large, profitable corporations that are outsourcing 
American jobs overseas from receiving lucrative Federal contracts. It 
makes no sense to me that you have large corporations shut down in 
America, go to cheap labor countries abroad, and then they get online 
and receive very large Federal contacts. We have to stop that.
  Further, we have to repeal Trump's tax giveaways to the wealthy, 
which have provided huge tax breaks to companies that shut down 
manufacturing plants in the United States and move abroad.
  Trade is a good thing done well, but this trade agreement does not 
accomplish that end.

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