[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19588-19591]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FREE TRADE IMBALANCES

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho has described 
accurately the provision in the free-trade agreement dealing with 
immigration.
  But I must say, and he will agree with me, I am sure, that a sense-
of-the-Senate resolution that says, in effect, you better watch it, is 
the equivalent of hitting someone on the forehead with a feather.
  The reason there has to be a sense-of-the-Senate resolution at the 
moment, if we are to express displeasure, is because we cannot offer 
any amendments to a free-trade agreement. It is brought to the floor 
under fast track. This Senate, in its wisdom--or in its lack of 
wisdom--said we agree to put our arms in a straitjacket so whatever the 
trade ambassador negotiates anywhere in the world, he can bring it back 
here and we agree to prevent ourselves from offering amendments. That 
is fast track.
  I do not have any big issues with Chile or Singapore. The free-trade 
agreement coming to the Senate floor is not even a very big deal with 
respect to Chile and Singapore, the two countries with whom the 
agreements are made. The big deal to me is that we have made agreement 
after agreement in international trade. In each case, this country has 
lost, and lost big time.
  We have lost jobs. We have lost economic strength. We have massive 
problems in previous trade agreements. None of them are being fixed. 
None of them get solved. What gets done? Well, new trade agreements 
seem to emerge on the Senate floor. Rather than fixing old trade 
agreements and beginning to support this country's interests, what we 
want to do, according to the trade ambassador, is bring new trade 
agreements so we can debate and vote on those.
  What I want to do this morning is talk a little bit about some of 
those old trade agreements and talk about what ought to be done rather 
than debating new trade agreements at this point.
  First, it is worth noting what our trade deficit is at this point. 
This is an article from the Washington Post. It shows the trade deficit 
the end of last year. It is the highest trade deficit in history. The 
trade deficit soared to $435 billion on an annual basis in 2002, and it 
is worse now, of course.

       Nearly one-fourth of the year's deficit in goods trade was 
     with China, which sold $103 billion more goods to the United 
     States than it bought here.

  I will talk about China. It is a story in itself. They ship us all 
their trinkets, trousers, shirts, and shoes, and they come into our K-
Marts and our WalMarts and our grocery stores and we buy all of these 
things from China. Guess what. China's market is not very open to the 
products our employees and our businesses produce. They are not buying 
very much from us.
  What does it mean to us? It means we do not have jobs. It means we 
have people today looking for work who cannot find a job in this 
country.
  Now, it is interesting, there was a story recently about this being a 
jobless recovery. Of course, we do not have much of a recovery. It is 
pretty anemic at this point. We have very slow economic growth. So this 
economy is just sort of bumping along, just hiccuping from day to day, 
week to week, and month to month without much strength at all. So they 
say, this is a recovery that is jobless.
  Well, they miss the point on that. Oh, there are jobs created by 
American enterprise. There are jobs created by ingenuity that comes 
from U.S. firms. It is just that the jobs that are being created are 
not being created in this country. This is a recovery, all right, an 
anemic recovery with jobs, but the jobs are not here. The jobs are 
overseas. More and more, we see jobs in factories that are moved 
overseas that used to be good American jobs.
  So if in fact this is a jobless recovery, it is jobless only to the 
extent that it is jobless in the United States. We have millions of 
Americans who desperately want a job, they want to go to work, but 
there are not enough jobs available. Two-and-a-half million people who 
were working a couple of years ago now are not working because this 
economy is not producing the jobs here. Too many American corporations 
are producing the jobs in Asia and elsewhere. I want to talk a little 
about that.
  Ambassador Zoellick is a perfectly nice person. He is our U.S. trade 
ambassador. Most people would not recognize his name from a cord of 
wood, but he serves in a pretty important role. He is the trade 
ambassador. He goes overseas with his staff and they negotiate trade 
agreements. These are the agreements by which we trade with other 
countries. They negotiate behind closed doors. We are not there. Our 
constituents are not there. These are trade negotiations behind closed 
doors in which they decide what kind of trade relationship we will have 
in the future. Then they come back to us with a trade agreement and 
they say, here is our agreement between our country and China, our 
country and Japan, our country and European countries.
  Then they say to the Congress, because the Congress previously 
agreed: you cannot change the agreement. We negotiated it in secret, 
but you have a responsibility to vote on it, up or down, yes or no, 
with no changes, no amendments. And the Congress was foolish enough to 
agree.
  Here we are. This morning we are talking about a sense-of-the-Senate 
resolution to say to the trade ambassador: Better watch it. Why? 
Because he went off to Singapore and negotiated a free-trade agreement 
with Singapore that said: By the way, in this free-trade agreement 
having nothing to do with trade, we will insist that a provision will 
allow 5,400 immigrants from Singapore into the United States under 1-
year visas that will be renewed indefinitely.
  What are they going to come here for? To work. Will they come to see 
movies, drive around on Sundays? No, they are coming here for a job, to 
work. We have millions and millions of Americans who need a job, who 
are out of work, who are struggling every single day. And this trade 
agreement says: What we would like to do, in addition to creating the 
trade circumstances that exist by this agreement with us and with 
Singapore, we agree 5,400 people from Singapore will come here to work.
  Usually, if one disagrees with that--and I certainly do--we would 
offer an amendment to strip this from the trade agreement. But we 
cannot in this instance, because of the fast track authority we handed 
to the executive branch.
  If ever you want a description of why it is ``dumb'' for the Congress 
to decide to put itself in a straitjacket, this is it. We are going to 
vote, probably Monday or Tuesday, on a free-trade agreement with 
Singapore. That free-trade agreement has a provision in it that will 
have 5,400 people from Singapore coming to this country to take jobs in 
this country, when we have 8 to 10 million Americans out of work; and 
we cannot do a thing about it--not a thing.
  Frustrated? Sure, as I am sure are many others. Can you do anything? 
No, what we can do is say to Mr. Zoellick, the ambassador, with the 
sense-of-a-senate resolution: You better watch it.
  I will vote for it, but it is like beating someone over the head with 
a feather. It does not mean anything.
  Let me talk about what they should be doing instead of creating new 
fast-track agreements. Instead of rushing off to create new trade 
agreements, let me make a couple of suggestions.
  I will vote against these trade agreements because we ought to be 
fixing old problems before we create new ones. That is not a judgment 
about Singapore or Chile. It is a judgment about what I think the 
obligation of our trade ambassador is. Under Republican and Democrat 
administrations, they have systematically failed in the obligation to 
correct trade problems. Let me mention a couple.
  Japan has a very large trade surplus with us. We have a very large 
trade deficit with Japan. Each year, we have a $50, $60, $70 billion 
trade deficit. One of the products that we would like to export more of 
to Japan is beef. Fifteen years ago we reached a new beef agreement 
with Japan. We had negotiators

[[Page 19589]]

over there negotiating, and they finally reached an agreement. It was 
front-page headlines in the American newspapers. You would have thought 
they won the Olympics. They were celebrating and rejoicing and 
feasting. Big beef agreement with Japan.
  It is 15 years later. Where are we 15 years after a beef agreement 
with Japan, a country with whom we have a very large deficit? Every 
single pound of American beef going to Japan has a 38.5 percent tariff 
on it 15 years after the agreement. And that is set to snap back to a 
50-percent tariff on every single pound of beef we send to Japan.
  Does Japan need more T-bones? Of course. More hamburger? Of course. 
But every single pound has this extraordinary tariff on it. Why? 
Because the Japanese are trying to keep it out. They do not want as 
much as we should be sending at a time when we have a huge trade 
deficit with Japan.
  It is unforgivable. Do you hear complaints from our country about it? 
No, no one is talking much about it. It is fine with most people around 
here to run a huge yearly trade deficit with Japan. It is not fine with 
me. The trade ambassador, it is fine with him. They are so busy 
negotiating new agreements with new countries that they cannot seem to 
resolve these issues. A country with whom we have a $60 to $70 billion 
trade deficit ought not apply 38.5 percent tariffs on the products our 
ranchers want to send to the dinner table in Tokyo.
  What about wheat with China? We just did a trade agreement with the 
country of China, in order for China to join the WTO. China has a $103 
billion trade deficit with us. They send us everything. They send us 
their trousers, trinkets, shirts, and shoes. They send us everything. 
Our marketplace absorbs it all. But the fact is, their marketplace is 
not open to us. What does that mean? It means jobs move from this 
country to China. People here are unemployed, out of work, and we are 
running up this huge trade deficit with China.
  Let me mention the agricultural side of trade with China because I 
care a lot about that. I come from a wheat-producing State. And our 
trade officials dealing in agriculture on our side recently stated that 
China has failed miserably to live up to the promises it made when it 
joined the WTO in 2001. In fact, before he resigned, the top U.S. trade 
official dealing with agriculture in China said we should file a trade 
complaint against China, but we are not doing so. Despite a 
recommendation that we should, we are not doing so for foreign policy 
reasons. We do not want to upset the Chinese. God forbid we should 
upset the Chinese.
  So we have a $103 billion trade deficit with China and our jobs are 
evaporating in this country, moving to China for lower wages. And we do 
not want to upset them. We do not want to demand their market be open 
to our products.
  Instead of having a trade ambassador working on that problem, we have 
new trade agreements. I do not understand that at all.
  Automobiles and China has always been interesting. Our trade 
negotiators, a couple years ago, went to China regarding the bilateral 
trade agreement under a Democratic administration--all the Democrats 
and Republicans in the White House have the same trade view. But let me 
give you a description of the bilateral trade agreement on automobiles. 
China is a country of 1.3 billion people who want substantial 
additional growth. Our trade negotiators said we agree, after a phase-
in, China can have a 25-percent tariff on any automobiles we send into 
China, and we will have a 2.5 percent tariff on any Chinese automobiles 
sent to our marketplace. Our negotiators said they agree to a tariff 
that is 10 times higher on U.S. cars being shipped to China than we 
would impose on a Chinese car coming to the United States.
  Why on Earth, on a bilateral agreement in this sector, would our 
negotiators ever agree to something like that with a country with which 
we have a $100 billion trade deficit? I don't have the foggiest idea.
  This is a 1.3 billion person country that will need automobiles at 
some point in the future, and we say: We will give you a deal. You have 
a huge surplus with us, or we have a big deficit with you. We will give 
you a deal. On automobile trade, we will agree you can have a tariff 10 
times higher than ours to keep our cars out.
  Unforgivably incompetent, I must say. I am not talking about people, 
I am talking about the policy.
  Something also of interest to me--again, I mention China, but I will 
get to a couple of other countries--is movies. Our country is pretty 
good at making movies, the best in the world. Do you know that before 
China entered the WTO, China allowed 10 movies into the Chinese 
marketplace a year--just 10? Not 11, not 12--but 10. That was the 
limit.
  But when they joined the WTO in 2001 there was this giant 
liberalization of trade by China. Do you know what they do now? They 
allow 20 movies into the Chinese marketplace. I guess that is all right 
with us. In fact, I had people in that industry say we have really made 
progress here, big advantages, double the movies into China--10 to 20. 
We have such low expectations of our trading partners it is 
incomprehensible to me.
  Let me talk about beef with Europe, turning to Europe for just a 
moment. The occasions in which I have traveled to Europe and opened the 
pages of the European newspapers, I hear the concerns of the Europeans 
about growth hormones in American beef. Here is the way they picture 
American beef: Two-headed cow. Right? Growth hormones, God forbid you 
raise two-headed cows and you can't eat them because it will ruin your 
health.
  Of course, none of that is true. But nonetheless they have 
effectively kept U.S. beef out of Europe.
  So we filed a trade complaint and our trade complaint on European 
beef was upheld. And Europe is supposed to let our beef in. But they 
have not.
  So we said: All right, Europe, you are not letting our beef into your 
marketplace and you should, the WTO says you must, we won the case, and 
since you are not going to abide by the decision, we will play 
hardball.
  Do you know what we did? We said: All right, we are really going to 
whip you into shape, we are going to take tough, no-nonsense 
enforcement against you. We said: We are going to impose tariffs on 
your truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. That will scare the 
devil out of a country, won't it? Take action against truffles, goose 
liver, and Roquefort cheese. Is there a reason people think we are 
wimps in international trade? I think so. It is bizarre.
  When the Europeans want to get tough with us, they pick sectors like 
steel and textiles. That sounds robust, doesn't it? But we are going to 
go at them on goose liver.
  Shame on us. We ought as a country to decide we are going to protect 
our marketplace, not against competition, but against unfair 
competition, that we are going to demand of other countries, if our 
marketplace is open to them, their marketplace be open to us. I am not 
a protectionist. I don't believe we ought to put walls around our 
country. I believe our consumers are advantaged by expanded trade. But 
by the same token I believe very strongly that trade ought to be fair.
  It is not fair trade with respect to the Chinese and the 
circumstances I mentioned. Let me mention Korea, just for a moment. I 
talked about China and Europe. Let me talk about automobiles in Korea.
  Do you know in the last year we sent automobiles to Korea, about 
680,000 Korean automobiles came into this country--Daiwoos, Hyundais--
Korean automobiles. They are probably wonderful cars. I don't know, I 
have not driven them. But 680,000 Korean cars came into the United 
States.
  Do you know how many U.S. cars we got to Korea? We sold 2,800 cars to 
Korea. They shipped us 680,000; we sent them 2,800. Do you know why? 
Because Korea doesn't want American cars in its marketplace and they 
put up barriers and impediments to keep them out.
  What are we doing about that? Nothing. We don't do anything about 
anything. All we do is go negotiate a new

[[Page 19590]]

agreement and bring it to the Senate and say, Oh, by the way, we have 
stuck some extraneous things in and if you don't like it, tough luck, 
because you can't offer amendments.
  Does anyone care about the imbalance in Korean automobile trade? They 
sent us 680,000 cars and we only get 2,800 to Korea. Does anybody care 
about that?
  There is an interesting example about the Dodge Dakota pickup, just 
recently. In February of this year, DaimlerChrysler started to sell the 
Dodge Dakota pickup in Korea. The pickup is made in Detroit, by the 
way. Korea doesn't manufacture pickups like the Dakota, so 
DaimlerChrysler thought it had pretty good potential in Korea and the 
company started marketing to small business owners. It was initially 
quite successful. It got orders for 60 pickup trucks in February and 
another 60 in March.
  Guess what happened? In March an official with the Korean Ministry of 
Construction and Transportation decided Dodge Dakota pickup trucks 
represented a hazard. He said some people were even putting optional 
cargo covers on the vehicle and that might be dangerous if passengers 
rode in the back, so he announced that cargo covers on pickups on Dodge 
Dakotas were illegal, and drivers of the pickups would be fined if they 
put on a cargo cover. And the Korean newspapers had huge headlines: 
``Government Ministry Finds Dodge Dakota Covers Illegal.'' Guess what 
happened. Korean consumers got the message. They canceled 55 out of the 
60 orders they had placed for March.
  The Korean Government has done this time and time and time again, to 
shut down our exports of automobiles to Korea.
  On the subject of trade with Korea, I could tell you if you try to 
send potato flakes to Korea from this country you will find there is a 
300 percent tariff on potato flakes used to make confection food.
  I could go on for some length at the barriers we face sending 
America's products overseas into markets that ought to be open to us 
because our markets are open to them. But we as a country don't seem to 
think too much about that, we are so busy doing new agreements.
  I have a chart here that shows where we are with trade deficits. With 
almost every country in the world, we have very significant trade 
deficits. And ironically, the U.S. trade ambassador has been 
negotiating with the very few countries with which we have surpluses, 
like Singapore and Australia. I expect those will soon turn to 
deficits, given our proclivity to negotiate trade agreements that don't 
work for our country.
  Let me talk just for a moment about Canada. We face wheat coming into 
this country from Canada, sold by an entity that would be illegal in 
this country, called the Canadian Wheat Board. It is a state-controlled 
monopoly that would be illegal in the United States. Yet every day we 
have Canadian wheat shipped into our country at what we allege are 
prices below the cost of acquisition, dumping in our country. It is 
unfair trade. It has been going on for a decade and you can't stop it. 
You just can't stop it. It is enormously frustrating for our farmers 
because it takes money right out of their pockets.
  One day some while ago I went to the Canadian border with a man named 
Earl in a 12-year-old orange truck.
  He and I went to the Canadian border with about 200 bushels of durum 
wheat. All the way to the Canadian border we met 18-wheel semi-trucks 
loaded with Canadian wheat being shipped into this country. When we got 
to the Canadian border, we couldn't take a small amount of durum wheat 
in a 12-year-old orange truck into Canada. They stopped us cold. We 
couldn't move. At the same time, we had all of these semi-trucks coming 
into this country loaded with wheat. Unfair? You are darned right it 
is. In fact, Canadian wheat is dumped into our country below the cost 
of production. Yet we are not able to get satisfaction.
  Regrettably, the same is true in almost every circumstance. Instead 
of trying to resolve these issues for our producers, for our employers, 
and for our employees in this country, we have this free trade fever to 
negotiate all of these new agreements, and we are correcting none of 
the problems in previous agreements.
  Those who speak as I do, we are often referred to as 
``protectionists.'' The papers will not print op-ed pieces by someone 
like me on this subject. They will print reams extolling the virtues of 
this trade policy that comes from Republican and Democratic 
administrations, but they will never print an op-ed piece by someone 
who speaks as I do about the need to enforce trade laws.
  The view of most around here is that there is a globalization going 
on and that there are some of us don't get it; we are the xenophobic, 
isolationist stooges who simply can't see over the horizon; that they 
know better; and, if we understood all of this, we wouldn't be critical 
of it.
  But the question that is fundamental to me is this, Should we not 
require that trade be fair?
  Let me give an example of what I mean by ``fair.''
  Our trade relations are unfair in so many different ways. Is it fair, 
for example, for a worker in a manufacturing plant in the State of 
Georgia to compete against a 14-year-old young man or a 14-year-old 
young woman working 14 hours a day, being paid 14 cents an hour in a 
manufacturing plant in Bangladesh or Indonesia to produce a product 
that is then sent to our marketplace to sit on a store shelf in a small 
town in Georgia? Is that fair competition for the company in Georgia 
that makes the same product, that pays the minimum wage, that prevents 
the dumping of chemicals and sewage into the water and air, that makes 
sure they have a safe workplace because they understand those are 
requirements in this country, because there are prohibitions against 
child labor and prohibitions against working people 100 hours a week?
  Is it fair competition to allow into that store and onto that store 
shelf for the consumer a product made by somebody who works 14 hours a 
day and is being paid 14 cents an hour?
  This is a true story. A worker in Bangladesh is paid 1.6 cents for 
every baseball cap she sews, which is then sent to a store in this 
country to sit on the shelf and is sold for $17.
  Is there a company in this country that can compete with that? I 
don't think so. Is it fair trade?
  Let me give you an example, if I might. The story is entitled 
``Worked Till They Drop.'' It tells of a woman named Li Chunmei. 
Unfortunately, it is not a very unusual story.
  Li Chunmei was 19 years old. She worked in a toy factory in China. 
They made stuffed animals for the U.S. marketplace. Let me read from 
the article.

       On the night she died, Li Chunmei must have been exhausted. 
     Co-workers said she had been on her feet for nearly 16 hours, 
     running back and forth inside the Bainan Toy Factory, 
     carrying toy parts from machine to machine.
       Long hours were mandatory, and at least two months had 
     passed since Li and the other workers had enjoyed even a 
     Sunday off.

  It had been two months since she and other workers had a Sunday off.

       The factory food was so bad, she said, she felt as if she 
     had not eaten at all.
       ``I want to quit,'' one of her roommates, Huang Jiaqun, 
     remembered her saying. ``I want to go home.''
       Her roommates had already fallen asleep when Li started 
     coughing up blood. They found her in the bathroom a few hours 
     later, curled up on the floor, moaning softly in the dark, 
     bleeding from her nose and mouth. Someone called an 
     ambulance, but she died before it arrived.
       The exact cause of Li's death remains unknown. But what 
     happened to her last November in this industrial town in 
     southeastern Guangdong province is described by family, 
     friends and co-workers as an example of what China's more 
     daring newspapers call guolaosi.
       The phrase means ``over-work death,'' and usually applies 
     to young workers who suddenly collapse and die after working 
     exceedingly long hours, day after day.

  Li worked for 16 hours, running back and forth on the factory floor, 
and had not had a Sunday off for 2 months--not even a Sunday off. I 
don't know the wages Li made, but I can tell you that

[[Page 19591]]

I have gone to some of those places in the world. There are 
circumstances in which 12-year-old kids are working 16 hours a day and 
are being paid 14 cents an hour. It is not, in my judgment, fair trade. 
If they take the product of their work, send it to our store shelves, 
and tell American workers and businesses, Compete with this, it is not 
a standard with which we ought to aspire to compete.
  We ought not be racing to the bottom on the question of workers' 
standards, on the question of child labor, and on the question of basic 
fairness and wages. We ought not be racing to the bottom. Yet that is 
what we are being set up to do with some of these trade agreements.
  Let me say again that this trade ambassador and others have a 
responsibility to be solving trade problems created by past trade 
agreements and not presenting us with new trade problems in new 
agreements.
  My main interest today is not Chile or Singapore. My interest is that 
this country has the largest trade deficit in human history, and this 
country is suffering a mass exodus of jobs that used to be held by 
Americans, which are now moved to plants and factories where they can 
pay pennies on the dollar for an hour's wages. My concern is that the 
rules of trade have not kept up with the galloping globalization of 
trade.
  The winners are not, as some would have us believe, poor people in 
other countries who now have jobs. There are plenty of studies and 
evidence showing that in the last 20 years of glob-
alization, the poor have not improved their lot in life.
  These trade agreements are about raw profits. These profits have 
increased because those who produce those toys--in this case, from a 
toy factory in China--don't have to pay a decent wage. But it has not 
improved the lot and life of those who work 16 hours a day--teenage 
kids--and don't have a Sunday off for 2 months.
  My question is very simple to this trade ambassador and others: Why 
will you not begin to solve some problems, demanding on behalf of the 
workers of this country and demanding on behalf of the businesses of 
this country--yes, from Japan, from China, from Korea, from Europe, and 
others--demanding fair trade rules and understanding there is an 
admission price to the American marketplace?
  This marketplace of ours we fought for, for 100 years. When I say 
``fought for,'' there were men and women who died in the streets of 
this country fighting for the right to organize as workers. We have had 
major battles in this Chamber on the issue of child labor, on the issue 
of minimum wage, and on the issue of safe workplaces and polluting 
streams and the air shed. We fought those battles, and this country has 
come to grips with the understanding that you shouldn't put 12-year-old 
kids in factories and work them 16 hours a day and pay them 12 cents an 
hour. We don't do that because it is not right. It is not right either 
to ask American workers to compete with unfair trade practices.
  Unless this country starts to stand up for its interests, we will not 
soon have a manufacturing base left and we will not have family farmers 
available in the future.
  I know when I speak this way, there are those who take a look at it 
and say: Oh, again, another protectionist.
  Again, I believe expanding trade is beneficial to this country, but 
only if it is done under circumstances in which the rules are fair to 
those of us in this country.
  We ought never, ever be concerned about standing up for our 
interests. If we have trade agreements, trade ought to be mutually 
beneficial. Too often in the past our trade agreements, with country 
after country after country, have not been mutually beneficial.
  We had a trade surplus with Mexico; did an agreement with Mexico, and 
turned it into a big deficit. We had a modest deficit with Canada; did 
an agreement with Canada, and turned it into a huge deficit. It has 
been the same with Europe, the same with the GATT legislation. All of 
it has been a colossal failure, in my judgment. The biggest trade 
deficit in human history: $1.5 billion every single day, 7 days a week. 
That is what we purchase from abroad more than we ship abroad. And it 
means we are moving America's jobs overseas at an accelerated rate.
  The question is, who will be the consumers in the future? If 
Americans do not have access to good jobs, who will be the consumers in 
the future for these cheap imports into this country?
  We better come to grips with these trade issues, and soon. I am going 
to come to the Chamber on Monday and speak more about trade when we 
have the vote on the Free Trade Agreement.
  But let me again say, as I conclude, the reason we are having this 
vote this way is because this Congress, imprudently, in my judgment, 
decided to tie its hands with something called fast track. It says: Oh, 
yes, let's offer up our hands, put handcuffs on them so we cannot offer 
any amendments.
  So now Ambassador Zoellick brings us the Singapore Free Trade 
Agreement, which says we will allow 5,400 citizens from Singapore to 
come to this country to take jobs. We have some folks who don't like 
that, so they are going to do a sense of the Senate resolution. Oh, my 
God, that is going to make Ambassador Zoellick shake in his boots. It 
is like hitting him in the forehead with a feather. Sense of Senate: 
You better not do that again.
  The fact is, nobody in this Chamber can do a thing about it because 
this Chamber decided long ago it would not allow itself to offer an 
amendment. It is fundamentally at odds with our constitutional 
responsibilities, in my judgment. But enough Members of this Senate 
decided to embrace that foolishness and we are now stuck with a 
circumstance where this agreement will say 5,400 folks from Singapore 
can come here and take 5,400 American jobs, at a time when we have 8 to 
10 million people who are looking for work. Boy, that doesn't add up, 
where I come from.
  I intend to speak at greater length on Monday and try to get some of 
this trade frustration off of my chest, at least, and see if we can't 
try to push people--if not pull them--into beginning to stand up for 
this country's economic interests. No, we don't want an advantage, we 
just want to stand up for our economic interests and demand fair trade 
on behalf of American workers and American businesses.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chambliss). The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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