[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 212 (Wednesday, December 8, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9010-S9011]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 China

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, 20 years ago this week, the People's 
Republic of China became a member of the World Trade Organization. 
There was great rejoicing across Washington by lobbyists and 
politicians and bureaucrats and, for that matter, among corporate CEOs 
and Wall Street bankers and perhaps most of all, the Communists in 
Beijing. But for Americans out in the heartland, in places like 
Arkansas, China's entrance into the WTO was nothing to celebrate. That 
was the moment their leaders left them exposed to the predations of the 
Chinese Communist Party.
  Millions of Americans lost good-paying blue-collar jobs to the China 
trade shock in the years that followed. Countless small towns, Main 
Streets, and working-class neighborhoods were gutted and boarded up. 
Michigan lost 24 percent of its manufacturing jobs. Ohio lost 27 
percent of its manufacturing jobs. My home State has lost 26 percent of 
all of our manufacturing jobs since China joined the World Trade 
Organization. Families were shattered and communities crumbled. The 
opioid crisis killed thousands of those who were left behind.
  Twenty years ago was nothing less than the beginning of the great 
hollowing of our Nation's industrial base, economy, and working class. 
It is worth recalling what our leaders said and what they promised as 
they unleashed this disaster.
  During the yearslong lobbying campaign for China, then-President Bill 
Clinton said it was ``ironic . . . that so many Americans are concerned 
about the impact on the world of a strong China.'' From an economic 
standpoint, he said, ``this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way 
street.'' In other words, it was all upside for America if only all 
those knuckle-draggers who opposed the Chinese Communist Party entering 
the World Trade Organization would get out of the way.
  Now, that attitude was the conventional wisdom in Washington for 
years, and it was in both parties, to be sure. Four years after China 
joined the WTO, Republican U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick 
reflected that ``our policy has succeeded remarkably well: the dragon 
emerged and joined the world.''
  Well, it turns out--not surprisingly--that this dragon has fangs and 
claws, and now it is sitting on top of a vast pile of looted wealth. It 
is clear that our leaders and their naivete have created a monster by 
admitting China to the WTO. Let's just review some of the numbers.
  Since 2001, China's economy has grown by nearly 1,200 percent, 
transforming a third-world backwater into the second largest economy, 
largest exporter, and dominant industrial power in the world. The PRC 
today makes one out of every four automobiles in the world--more than 
the United States, Japan, and South Korea combined. Combined. It makes 
one out of every three merchant ships. In the United States, we make 
basically none. In addition, China produces 40 percent of mobile 
phones, 70 percent of televisions, and 96 percent of shipping 
containers on which global commerce moves.
  Equally worrisome, China has gained a stranglehold over the 
production of essential materials. China produces more than half of the 
world's steel, two-thirds of its active ingredients in our generic 
drugs, and processes 85 percent of rare earth elements, 85 percent 
which are used in everything from the smartphone in your pocket to 
advanced fighter jets.
  China is also making strides in advanced technology. A few years ago, 
China's space agency sent the world's first quantum communications 
satellite into orbit. It already possesses 200 of the world's 500 
fastest supercomputers. And Chairman Xi Jinping has pledged an 
astounding $1.4 trillion over 6 years to help China take the lead in 
cutting-edge fields like semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
  The stark fact is that China controls nearly a quarter of global 
trade. A stunning 70 percent--70 percent, 7 out of 10 countries--in the 
world trade more with China than with the United States.
  Now, it would be one thing if China had gotten rich and powerful the 
honest way, through fair competition and trade with other countries.
  Instead, China has gotten rich through a criminal spree of 
intellectual property theft, industrial espionage, strong-arm trade 
agreements, and illegal subsidies and protection or as the office of 
U.S. Trade Representative wrote:

       China has continued to embrace a state-led, non-market and 
     mercantilist approach to the economy and trade, despite WTO 
     members' expectations--and China's own representations--that 
     China would transform its economy and pursue the open, 
     market-oriented policies endorsed by the WTO.

  ``Despite WTO's members' expectations.'' WTO members are stupid if 
they expected China to change its ways.
  But in other words, China lied, and the rest of the world has paid 
the price. China is the world's most prolific IP thief, stealing the 
equivalent of Arkansas' economy two times over every year, year after 
year. And that is just the beginning.
  The Chinese Government recruits its citizens working and studying in 
our

[[Page S9011]]

country to act as spies, infiltrating our research laboratories and 
companies and college campuses to steal valuable secrets. Chinese 
nationals are the subject of nearly half--half--of all FBI 
counterintelligence cases involving economic espionage.
  The Chinese Communist Party also uses illegal subsidies and trade 
practices like dumping to help its ``national champions'' offload their 
stolen goods below-market prices. The Chinese Government has poured 
tens of billions of dollars into its steel industry, encouraging 
overcapacity to flood foreign markets with cheap Chinese steel. As a 
result, China's production of crude steel rose from 15 percent of the 
world's total to 50 percent between 2000 and 2017, while 64 percent of 
America's raw steel producers were totally wiped out, two-thirds of it 
gone.
  Of course, the World Trade Organization exists--supposedly, 
allegedly--to curb these kinds of abuses, but it has utterly failed to 
get China to change its ways and live up to its promises. If anything, 
under Chairman Xi, China has dropped even the pretense that it is on 
the path to freeing its economy and society.
  Twenty years after China entered the WTO, it is clear that China has 
betrayed our trust and is waging an economic war against us. We didn't 
seek out this conflict, but now that it has started, we have no choice 
but to finish it.
  Congress can start by passing my bill, the China Trade Relations Act, 
to terminate China's permanent normal trade relations status. We ought 
to acknowledge there is nothing normal about our trading relationship 
with China, and we cannot afford the state of affairs to be permanent. 
We should return to the pre-WTO status quo that recognized China as a 
nonmarket, communist country, to which I would add now, committing 
genocide against its own people. If we do this, we can begin to correct 
the historic mistake our leaders made 20 years ago when they welcomed 
China into the WTO with open arms and open wallets and unleashed that 
dragon on the world.
  I yield the floor.
  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. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.


                              S.J. Res. 29

  Mr. MARKEY. I rise today in opposition to the latest effort by 
Republicans to undermine Americans' health and safety. COVID-19 remains 
a grave danger. We have lost more than 775,000 Americans to this virus, 
and cases are rising yet again.
  Despite this clear and present danger, millions of workers across 
this country have been showing up to their jobs every day since this 
pandemic began. Essential workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, security 
guards, retail employees, and countless more were never able to work 
remotely. They can't Zoom to the cash register, checkout, or the 
driver's seat of a bus. But these workers faced and continue to face 
on-the-job exposures and the hazards those exposures entail.
  We are lucky to have tools to mitigate these dangers for workers. 
Testing works. Vaccines work. Booster shots work. Masks work. And as 
these new variants begin circulating around the globe and as vaccine 
effectiveness begins to wane, for those who were among the first 
vaccinated, especially for older Americans and the immune compromised, 
it is incredibly important that everyone get their boosters now.
  Let me just say that again: If you are eligible, don't wait. Get your 
booster shot now. If you have two shots already and you got them 6 
months ago, you are not fully vaccinated. If you don't have your third 
shot right now, you are not fully vaccinated. If you have two shots 
already, and it is more than 6 months after you got those first two 
shots, just understand that, when you say ``I am vaccinated,'' it is 
not accurate. You need the third shot.
  Not only do the vaccines work, but vaccine requirements work. They 
increase vaccination rates and improve worker safety. We have seen in 
Massachusetts that, as the State government implemented vaccine 
requirements, vaccination rates approached 95 percent of State 
employees.
  We aren't just the Bay State; we are also the ``Brain State.'' We 
listened to what scientists and medical experts are telling us.
  So to protect workers, the Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration, or OSHA, at the Department of Labor, published a rule 
known as an emergency temporary standard--an emergency temporary 
standard, or ETS. That emergency temporary standard will keep employees 
safe by requiring large companies to ensure that each of their workers 
is fully vaccinated.
  And if employees cannot or will not be vaccinated, they simply must 
test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week before coming into 
work. It is as simple as that: Get vaccinated or get tested.
  The ETS also requires that employees protect their coworkers by 
wearing a mask in the workplace. This requirement is not onerous. In 
fact, it is flexible for all workers to require employees to provide 
paid time off to workers to get vaccinated and ensures that paid leave 
is provided for recovery from any side effects of the vaccinations that 
keep employees from being able to work.
  These are simple, commonsense rules that will save lives--testing, 
masks, vaccines, boosters. OSHA estimates that its emergency temporary 
standard will prevent 6,500 people from dying and 250,000 people from 
having to go to become hospitalized over just a 6-month period.
  But while Democrats and the Biden Administration are doing everything 
possible to maintain an economic and health recovery, Republicans are 
doing everything they can to undercut science and confidence in this 
administration. This latest attempt--trying to overturn the OSHA 
emergency temporary standard and threatening to undermine the health 
and safety of millions of workers--is outrageous and the worst kind of 
political stunt.
  We mandate vaccinations for our children so that they can be healthy 
and go to school. We mandate vaccinations so our servicemembers are 
protected in the line of duty. Let us protect our workers in our 
workplaces so that they can stay healthy and stay on the job.
  But there is a terrible irony here from my Republican colleagues. At 
the exact same time that the Grand Old Party is bemoaning this OSHA 
worker protection effort as a so-called mandate, they are celebrating 
mandating government control over women's reproductive freedom at the 
Supreme Court. They would rather mandate government control over a 
woman's body than mandate worker safety.

  If we want to end this pandemic, we need to get as many people 
vaccinated as we can. Unfortunately, Republicans see a political 
benefit to prolonging the pain and the suffering from the virus and 
preventing vaccinations where possible.
  This is wrong. This is immoral. And I urge my colleagues to support 
the OSHA emergency temporary standard. I urge my colleagues to support 
that emergency temporary standard and oppose this effort by Republicans 
to overturn this critical, life-protecting regulation, which is on the 
books, if we can keep it there.
  So we need to ensure that we are saying to every family: We have your 
back. We are going to be protecting you. We are going to make sure 
those safeguards are in place.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.