[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 26755-26757]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 26755]]

    AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I had a chance to speak this morning 
and I don't really want to repeat what I said, except to mention one 
point which is both an argument I want to make to my colleagues here 
and an argument I want to also make to the administration.
  We have a WTO meeting coming up next month in Seattle. There will be 
many rank-and-file labor people and labor leaders attending, farm 
organizations, nongovernment organizations, environmentalists. We have 
been told by the administration that maybe within WTO we can have some 
enforceable labor standards, some enforceable environmental standards, 
so we are raising everything up rather than racing to the bottom.
  This is important because with NAFTA, in spite of what was said, the 
truth is, the environmental standards and labor standards were an 
afterthought and not enforceable. What kind of message are we sending 
to people when, on the one hand, we have the administration and others 
saying with WTO we will try to have enforceable standards, and then we 
have a bilateral agreement, several trade agreements, without 
enforceable labor standards, without enforceable environmental 
standards?
  As a Senator my bottom line is that I am in favor of the right of 
people to organize and bargain collectively in our country and in other 
countries. I am in favor of the rights of ordinary citizens to be able 
to bargain collectively and have the right to organize so they can make 
a decent wage and support their families. That is what is sorely 
lacking in this legislation.
  I will mention one amendment. I mentioned several this morning. If we 
go forward with this legislation tomorrow, I certainly want to have the 
right to introduce amendments. I talked about a number of amendments. 
One dealt with campaign finance reform and for the right to apply for 
clean money, clean elections for Federal offices. I don't think we 
should abandon this debate or issue.
  The amendment I want to introduce tomorrow, if that is the direction 
in which we are heading, deals with this economic convulsion that is 
taking place in agriculture. On October 25, Bird Island Elevator, 
Renville, MN, crop prices: Wheat, $2.89 a bushel; corn, $1.43 a bushel; 
soybeans, $4.04 a bushel. This has nothing to do with what our 
livestock producers are getting.
  Let me say to those who don't know agriculture, this is way below 
what it costs farmers to produce a bushel of wheat or corn.
  Let me say to my colleagues, in my State of Minnesota, farm income 
has decreased 43 percent since 1996, and more than 25 percent--a 
quarter of our farmers--may not be able to cover expenses for 1999.
  At the same time, you have these conglomerates that have muscled 
their way to the dinner table, exercising their power over family 
farmers. They will do it over consumers, and they are driving our 
family farmers out.
  According to a recent study at the University of Missouri, five firms 
now control over 80 percent of beef packing; six firms, 75 percent of 
the pork packing, and the list, frankly, goes on and on.
  I want to give a few more figures, then mention the amendment and 
finish up. The top four pork packers have increased their market share 
from 36 percent to 57 percent. That is what has been occurring. 
Smithfield is buying up Murphy, and now they are about to buy part of 
Tyson Foods that deals with pork production. Our pork producers are 
facing extinction and these packers are in hog heaven.
  The top four beef packers have expanded their market share from 32 
percent to 80 percent just in recent years. The top four flour millers 
have increased their market share from 40 percent to 62 percent. The 
top four turkey processors now control 42 percent. The list goes on and 
on.
  What we have is a food industry where we are looking for the 
competition. So here is the amendment I will introduce with Senator 
Dorgan. I think we may get a majority of votes. I hope so. This will be 
an amendment to address the market concentration in agriculture. What 
we would call for is a moratorium that would apply to these mergers and 
acquisitions over the next 18 months, during which time there are a 
couple of things that will happen. This would deal with companies that 
had assets of over $100 million and the second party had more than $10 
million. This is the threshold test right now under which these firms 
would have to apply to the Justice Department and FTC.
  The moratorium would last for 18 months or until Congress passes 
comprehensive antitrust legislation to deal with this problem of the 
concentration in agriculture, whichever comes first. Moreover, our 
amendment will establish an antitrust review division to look at this 
concentration in agriculture and to make recommendations as to what 
kind of regulations are necessary and what kind of action we should 
take.
  I finish this way. We will be talking about this legislation today. I 
spoke about it earlier. If we move forward tomorrow, as a Senator from 
Minnesota I want to have the opportunity to introduce this amendment 
with Senator Dorgan that calls for a moratorium on these acquisitions 
and mergers. I want to do it because these big conglomerates are 
pushing our family farmers off the land. I want to do it because there 
is a direct correlation between their concentrated market power and the 
record low prices that our producers are receiving. I want to do it 
because if we do not have a moratorium over the way in which these huge 
conglomerates are taking over agriculture, then our rural communities 
will be devastated and more and more family farmers will be driven off 
the land. Someone will own the land, someone will own the livestock, 
but it will be the few.
  I think that kind of concentration of power is frightening. It is 
frightening for our family farmers. It is driving them off the land. It 
is frightening for our rural communities that depend upon the number of 
family farmers who live in the communities and buy there. Do you know 
what else? It is frightening for America. Food is a very precious 
commodity. We ought not have just a few conglomerates that control all 
phases of this food industry from seed all the way to grocery shelf. 
This is wrong. It is not acceptable.
  As a Senator from Minnesota, I hope my colleagues will excuse me for 
saying that for 4 weeks I have asked the majority leader for an 
opportunity to introduce the amendment. Tomorrow morning, if we go 
forward with this legislation, I will be here first thing and this is 
the first amendment I am going to introduce to this legislation. Then 
we can have an up-or-down vote, and I am hoping we will get a majority 
vote.
  I see my colleague from North Carolina. I gather he wants to spend 
some time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. President, on the Africa-Caribbean trade bill, let 
me say first I believe in free trade. This country and my State of 
North Carolina are part of a global economy. To put our heads in the 
sand and pretend that is not true is completely unproductive and 
accomplishes nothing.
  My concern is that the bills we are addressing this week, the 
African-Caribbean trade bills, put us in a position of playing with 
fire. The Senate version of those bills is marginally acceptable but 
they are significantly different, from my perspective, than the House 
version of those bills. The Senate version specifically contains 
provisions for what is called yarn forward and fabric forward, which I 
will talk about in a few minutes. But both bills are dramatically 
deficient in one respect; that is, they make it almost impossible, in 
my judgment, to enforce provisions against transshipment.
  Transshipment, as my colleagues know, means a country such as China 
can ship goods to Africa that they otherwise could not ship directly to 
the United States because of quotas, have a

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button sewn onto a garment or a piece of apparel, and then have it 
shipped to the United States and otherwise circumvent existing tariffs 
and quota requirements. The problem is the enforcement mechanisms 
against transshipment. In the House bill, in my judgment, they are 
virtually nonexistent. In the Senate bill, while somewhat better, still 
we rely heavily on African countries to develop and enforce rules 
against transshipment. That is simply not a bet worth taking. 
Unfortunately, transshipment has the potential of putting an enormous 
number of folks out of work in North Carolina and having a dramatic 
impact on the textile and apparel industry in my State of North 
Carolina.
  The second problem with these bills is the issue of yarn and fabric 
forward. The Senate bill provides for yarn and fabric forward, which 
essentially means African countries operating under the Senate bill, if 
it were passed, would be required to use American yarn, American 
fabric, which theoretically would help protect American manufacturers 
in those two areas. The problem is those provisions are not in the 
African trade bill on the House side. Unfortunately, if this bill 
passes the Senate, once it gets to conference, there would be enormous 
pressure to drop out the fabric forward and yarn forward provisions. 
Without those provisions, the textile and apparel industry in the 
United States and in my State of North Carolina would be dramatically 
affected.
  I said when I began that I believe in free trade, and I do believe in 
free trade. But I think there are certain fundamental principles with 
which every free trade agreement should comply.
  First, the agreements must be negotiated and must be multilateral. 
The countries with which we are entering into these agreements have to 
give something up. As I will discuss in a few minutes, that is not true 
with respect to this bill.
  All the trade laws have to be fair and enforceable. As I indicated a 
few minutes ago, there is at least one major area, transshipment, that 
in my judgment is not enforceable in this bill.
  Third, the trade bill must have adequate labor and environmental 
protections overseas.
  That is common sense. If our businesses and workers in this country 
are going to compete, as they should, with businesses and workers 
overseas, these bills must have adequate labor and environmental 
protections.
  Finally, the trade bills must have tangible and provable benefits for 
U.S. companies and U.S. workers.
  Those four criteria must be present for a free trade bill to make 
sense for our country and for my State of North Carolina.
  I am going to talk about some of these principles and how they apply 
to this specific bill.
  First, I just mentioned tangible benefits for U.S. workers. Let me 
tell you a little bit about what is happening with textile and apparel 
industry jobs in this country and specifically in my State of North 
Carolina.
  We have 177,000 textile jobs in North Carolina. We have 45,000 
apparel jobs, 222,000 jobs in total. Almost a quarter of a million 
workers in my State of North Carolina are dependent on the textile and 
apparel industry to put food on the table for their families; a quarter 
of a million families who are going to be impacted if this bill passes 
and is signed by the President and becomes law.
  Let's look at what has happened to folks who have worked in that area 
in North Carolina over the last several years. In the last 5 years, 
from 1993 to 1998, North Carolina has lost 62,000 jobs in the area of 
textile and apparel manufacturing. That is 62,000 families who had a 
breadwinner working in that industry who lost their jobs. I believe the 
studies have shown that those folks have had a terrible time finding 
other employment. The reality is that the people who work in these jobs 
need these jobs. They are critically important to provide them and 
their families with a livelihood. Oftentimes, there is nowhere else for 
them to go.
  I want my colleagues to recognize that when we do pass the kind of 
legislation we are talking about in these trade bills, it is not just 
an economic issue. This has real and human consequences on families in 
my State of North Carolina.
  We have lost during that same 5-year period in the textile apparel 
industry almost 300,000 jobs nationally, which means 300,000 families 
in this country have lost their source of income during that same 5-
year period.
  What has happened during the 10-year period from 1989 to 1999? In 
North Carolina, we have gone from 220,000 to 177,000 textile jobs, 
almost 43,000 jobs lost, a 20-percent drop in 10 years. We have gone 
from 83,000 to 45,000 in the apparel industry, which means they have 
almost been cut in half; half the people in North Carolina who were 
dependent on the apparel industry to provide income and livelihood for 
their families have been put out of work; a 45-percent drop, almost 
half. The reality is, these families have been devastated by the loss 
of these jobs.
  The bill we are talking about today, the African-Caribbean trade 
bill, could very easily have exactly the same impact because it ensures 
these jobs we are trying to hold on to in the United States are very 
likely to be exported to the Caribbean and to African countries.
  The average apparel wage in the United States is $8 an hour. Let's 
see how that compares with these other countries. In Mexico, the 
average wage is 85 cents an hour. In the Dominican Republic, it is 69 
cents an hour; El Salvador, 59 cents an hour; Guatemala, 65 cents an 
hour; and Honduras, 43 cents an hour--$8 an hour to, in all these 
countries, well under $1 an hour that companies will have to pay in 
wages. It does not take a mathematical wizard to figure out what is 
going to happen to these jobs and to all these folks in my State who 
are completely dependent on the textile and apparel industry to provide 
for their families, many of whom have been working in this industry for 
many years.
  On a personal note, I grew up in the textile business. My dad worked 
in the textile business for 37 years before his retirement from that 
business. I have seen firsthand, having worked in mills in North 
Carolina when I was in high school and in college, how heavily folks 
depend on these jobs. They have nowhere else to go.
  The bottom line is, it is all they know, and it is all well and good 
to talk abstractly about retraining, but when you are talking about 
retraining somebody who does not have a high school education and who 
has spent the last 30 or 40 years of their life working in a cotton 
mill, they have no idea what to do and they have no realistic prospect 
of going to some other field of employment. These people need these 
jobs. This is a human tragedy that is created oftentimes by these trade 
bills. I want folks to realize this is real, and it has a real and 
devastating effect on people's lives in my State of North Carolina and 
all over this country.
  Let me talk briefly about the jobs we know have been lost and the 
plants that have been closed over the last few years in North Carolina. 
In September of this year, Pluma Inc. closed a plant in Eden, NC, a 
small community in North Carolina, 500 jobs lost; 500 families lost 
their breadwinner. The company of Jasper closed a plant in Whiteville, 
NC, in September of this year; 191 jobs lost. Whiteville Apparel in 
Whiteville, NC, in eastern North Carolina, closed a plant in August of 
this year; 396 jobs lost. Stonecutter Mills in Rutherford and Polk in 
western North Carolina closed a plant in June of this year; 800 jobs 
lost. Dyersburg, in Hamilton, NC, closed a plant in May of this year; 
422 jobs lost. Unifi in Raeford and Sanford closed a plant in March of 
this year; 257 jobs lost. Levi Strauss closed a plant in Murphy; 382 
jobs lost. Burlington Industries in January of this year closed plants 
in Cramerton, Forest City, Mooresville, Raeford, Oxford, and 
Statesville; 2,600 jobs lost. Cone Mills at the end of last year, in 
December, closed a plant in Salisbury; 625 jobs lost.
  In a period of less than a year, 6,173 jobs have been lost in my home 
State of North Carolina. Just imagine what

[[Page 26757]]

impact the passage of this piece of legislation will have. It will 
accelerate those numbers. It will not retard them. It will accelerate 
them, so more and more workers who have spent their lives working in 
textiles will have nowhere to go, no way to feed their families, and 
their families are just out of luck.
  I want to read from a news story that appeared in the Arizona 
Republic. It appeared on October 23 of this year--just recently. It is 
entitled ``Textile Industry Unravels Workers Idled By Cheap Labor.'' It 
does a terrific job of telling the story of what is happening to 
workers and families all over North Carolina who are being impacted by 
these trade bills:

       It was the only work she'd ever done, the only work she'd 
     ever wanted to do. And a contented Lorie Coleman spent a 
     decade and a half inspecting stitch lines, examining cloth 
     and making sure everything that came out of the Ithaca 
     Industries textile mill here met her ``high standards''--
     never mind the company's. A $6-an-hour job it may have been, 
     but it was hers.
       Then it was gone.
       ``To think you could work somewhere,'' Coleman . . . said 
     recently, her voice still tinged with disbelief . . .'' and 
     the next thing you know, you're gone, just like that.''
       Just like that, a livelihood for the Lorie Colemans of 
     North Carolina and thousands of others in the Piedmont area 
     is disappearing.
       Since 1995, according to state labor statistics, more than 
     160 textile and apparel mills have closed in North Carolina, 
     leaving nearly--

  Listen to this, Mr. President--

     leaving nearly 30,000 people out of work [since 1995].
       Those losses are reflected throughout the Southeast, which, 
     according to federal figures, lost more than 85,000 such 
     jobs, even as the country was experiencing its fabled 
     economic expansion.

  During a period of booming prosperity for this Nation's economy, when 
everyone else is taking advantage of investment in Wall Street, great 
earnings on Wall Street, companies are doing terrifically well, 85,000 
people in the Southeast lost their jobs, 30,000 in my State of North 
Carolina.

       To be sure, North Carolina is still the leading state in 
     the leading region for U.S. production of textiles and 
     apparel. Nevertheless, the State is hemorrhaging.
       Few places in the State have felt the sting of such losses 
     as much as Lorie Coleman's native Columbus County. Home to 
     nine mills just three years ago, the county now has 3 mills, 
     and two of those are scheduled to close this fall.

  They will have one mill left.

       It's a corner of North Carolina that was spared from the 
     worst of Hurricane Floyd's floods last month, but it is 
     bearing the brunt of an industry's decline. After Jasper 
     Textiles and Whiteville Apparel close their gates, the number 
     of textile jobs in this county [Columbus County in eastern 
     North Carolina] will have fallen to 50 from 2,100.

  In other words, they have gone from 2,100 jobs to 50. There is 
nowhere for these people to go to work. They have no comparable jobs. 
There is nowhere else for them to go.

       Those figures also bear witness to the decline of a 
     distinctly Southern way of life.

  Lorie Coleman said it best. She spent her life working in this mill 
and all of a sudden it was gone. Everything she spent her life learning 
to do has disappeared.
  There is another fundamental problem with this bill. These bills are 
unilateral. They are not multilateral. Every Member of the Senate 
should require, in order to vote for a trade bill, that it be 
multilateral.
  What does that mean? First, in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic 
charges a 30 to 35 percent tariff on apparel imports. Honduras charges 
25 percent. Nicaragua charges 20 percent. We are lowering our tariffs 
in this bill. Do we have a corresponding lowering of tariffs in those 
countries? The answer is no. We are unilaterally lowering our tariffs 
and expecting nothing from the countries that are part of this trade 
agreement. Their tariffs remain exactly the same. Where is the fairness 
in this agreement?
  In Africa, the average tariff on apparel is 27 percent. Exactly the 
same tariff is charged on home textiles. This simply makes no sense. 
Why should we as a nation unilaterally lower our tariffs and have our 
companies in this country subjected to tariffs in the countries we are 
entering into contracts or agreements with, where they can charge any 
tariff they want? That is exactly what is happening in this agreement. 
There is no lowering of trade barriers in Africa, no lowering of trade 
barriers in the Caribbean. Instead, we have decided unilaterally we 
will lower trade barriers.
  I have heard a lot of my colleagues talk about the poverty that 
reigns in Africa and in the Caribbean. My heart goes out to those 
people. They are suffering; they are struggling. The fact that they are 
working for anywhere from 35 to 85 cents an hour bears witness to the 
terrible lives with which they and their families are confronted. But 
we, in my State of North Carolina, have an awful lot of people who are 
struggling to make ends meet, too. We have an awful lot of people and 
families who have spent their lives going into those mills every day, 
5, sometimes 6 days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day, to learn to do a job, 
to build up seniority, to provide for their families.
  When we enter into these kind of trade agreements, particularly when 
we can't enforce provisions against transshipment, where there is a 
real likelihood that yarn and fabric forward will go out when this bill 
goes to conference and, as a result, there is a devastating economic 
impact on North Carolina's textile business and on North Carolina's 
textile workers, those people lose everything. This is not just an 
abstract economic proposition we are debating. We are talking about 
human lives. We are talking about an enormous impact on the families I 
represent in North Carolina.
  I want my colleagues, when they come to vote, either on cloture or on 
the passage of this bill ultimately, if we reach that stage, to 
understand every single one of them has a dramatic effect on real human 
beings' lives across this country and in my home State of North 
Carolina.

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