[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 19955-19960]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      THE BILL SCHERLE POST OFFICE

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Senate and the 
House of Representatives have passed S. 1399, legislation that names 
the Glenwood, IA Post Office for former Iowa Congressman William J. 
Scherle. I understand that the President will soon sign that measure--I 
hope this week.
  Congressman Bill Scherle--or Bill, as his friends call him--and his 
wife Jane live on their family farm just outside of Henderson, IA, in 
Mills County. Glenwood is the county seat of Mills County. Bill served 
4 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning with 3 terms in 
1967 in what was then Iowa's 7th Congressional District, and a term in 
the redistricted 5th Congressional District. I think it is appropriate 
that Glenwood's Post Office will soon permanently bear Congressman 
Scherle's name.
  Bill long served this Nation. He started with military service in the 
navy and Coast Guard during World War II, then afterward served in the 
Naval Reserve. He chaired the Mills County Republican Party for almost 
a decade starting in 1956. He served in the Iowa legislature from 1960 
through 1966. He then was elected to the U.S. Congress and served 
through 1974, including service on the Education and Labor Committee as 
well as on the Appropriations Committee. His public service continued 
in 1975 and 1976, when he was appointed to a senior position at the 
Department of Agriculture.
  In January 1968, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, imprisoning and 
torturing the crew. Congressman Scherle led the effort in Congress to 
free the crew of the Pueblo. I have always admired Bill's tenacity in 
never letting the Pueblo crew be forgotten. Bill was the only member of 
Congress invited to attend Pueblo reunions, and, as their health has 
allowed, Bill and Jane always have attended.
  Bill and I are at different places on the political spectrum, and I 
ran against him for Congress twice. He won the first time, and I won 
the rematch. We disagreed on many issues, but I always understood that 
he acted on the basis of strongly held views about what he considered 
were the best interests of those he represented and of the Nation.
  Long after we ran as opponents, I got to know Bill and visited on his 
farm. He is a good person who cares deeply about his community and 
rural America. Politics has always had a certain amount of rough and 
tumble.

[[Page 19956]]

  But while Bill was certainly a good Republican who wanted to see 
consistent victories for the GOP, he also could see the good in all 
people.
  One area of our mutual interest was the Iowa School for the Deaf in 
Council Bluffs. Bill always did what he could for the school my brother 
attended years ago, and for deaf people in general.
  Congressman Scherle always cared about children and their welfare. He 
wrote a children's book, ``The Happy Barn.'' He gave away thousands of 
copies to schools, hospitals and individual families in Southwest Iowa 
and the Omaha area, reading to young children time after time. He had 
lots of fun reading to children, and I believe that there are few more 
valuable things we can do as adults than to read to children and get 
them started on that most important activity.
  Bill was a businessman and farmer, proud of both professions. He 
received the Alegent Health Mercy Hospital Heritage Award for his 
contributions to business in Southwest Iowa.
  Bill Scherle remains a good father to his two sons, and a good 
husband to his wife of 55 years, Jane. He is blessed with six 
grandchildren--five girls and a boy. Bill has lived a dedicated life, 
full of patriotism, family and public service. I am please that my 
colleague, Senator Grassley, joins me in sponsoring this legislation. 
Congressman King introduced the companion legislation in the House of 
Representatives, which was cosponsored by the entire Iowa delegation.
  I thank my colleagues for helping us all to honor Congressman Bill 
Scherle, and I look forward to hearing that the President has signed 
this bill--hopefully this week.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senate will be asked to approve two 
free-trade agreements with respect to Singapore and Chile. I expect the 
Senate will approve both trade agreements by very wide margins. I 
intend to oppose both and wanted to explain why. It is not the case 
that I believe a free-trade agreement with Singapore is inappropriate. 
It is not the case that I believe a free-trade agreement with Chile is 
inappropriate. It is the case, however, that this country has a trade 
regime that is in total chaos and it is a significant mess.
  For 20 years, under Republican and Democratic administrations, we 
have seen our trade deficit ratchet way up. We now have the largest 
trade deficit in human history that has occurred anywhere on the globe. 
It has been rising very rapidly. Instead of fixing the problems that 
exist in international trade and demanding fair trade and demanding 
from our allies fair trade treatment and doing something to prevent the 
erosion of American jobs which, incidentally, are now moving overseas 
at a rapid pace, we have trade negotiators rushing across the world 
trying to do new agreements.
  I say fix the old agreements before we start running around doing new 
agreements. The reason we are going to consider new agreements today 
under something called fast track is that Congress decided to handcuff 
itself and agree to a procedure by which no amendments will be able to 
be offered to either free-trade agreement.
  Singapore is a tiny nation of 3 million people a half a world away. 
We already have a very favorable trade relationship with Singapore. It 
has little manufacturing and little agriculture. It is wide open to 
imported goods. Singapore is not an example of a trade problem for us. 
So it does not matter much to me whether we have a free-trade agreement 
with Singapore.
  The trade ambassador has brought us an 800-page free-trade agreement 
with Singapore. But demonstrative of the problem we have created for 
ourselves is a small provision in the free-trade agreement with 
Singapore that provides an authorization for the opportunity for 
Singapore to send to our country 5,400 people under a visa program to 
take jobs in this country.
  Normally that would be a circumstance that would be dealt with by 
other committees in Congress, in which we evaluate how many people do 
we want to come in under a visa to work in this country, but instead 
this has been negotiated in a foreign-trade agreement negotiation 
somewhere, perhaps most of it overseas, certainly behind closed doors, 
inevitably in secret, and they put an immigration provision in this 
proposal. The immigration provision would allow 5,400 immigrants to 
come from Singapore to the United States to take jobs in the United 
States.
  Think of this for a second. We have 8 to 10 million people out of 
work, desperate for jobs, needing to go to work, who cannot find a job 
in this country. We read a story every day in the major newspapers 
about someone who has hundreds of resumes out, they spend all day 
desperately trying to find a job because we have lost 2\1/2\ million 
jobs in the last couple of years.
  It is not as if our economy is growing by creating new jobs. To the 
extent there is any growth at all, it is jobless growth in this 
country. Some have made the point that, no, there are jobs attached to 
this growth, it is just that jobs do not exist in the United States. 
The growth occurs here in terms of profits and economic expansion of 
sales and profits, but the jobs attached to that growth are in 
Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, and elsewhere.
  So if we have a jobless expansion, which we have, having lost 2\1/2\ 
million jobs in the last couple of years, and we have people 
desperately searching for jobs, and then we get a free-trade agreement 
brought to the Senate floor our trade ambassador negotiated with 
Singapore, and deep in the bowels of that agreement is a provision that 
says 5,400 people from Singapore will come to this country to take jobs 
in this country and we ask the question: Why? Why would we do that?
  So then the immediate instinct is, if there is a provision in this 
free-trade agreement with Singapore that is that odious, then let's get 
rid of it by offering an amendment. Dump it. The problem is, fast track 
means trade agreements brought to the Senate floor prevent any Member 
of the Senate from offering any amendment under any circumstance.
  This Congress foolishly decided that it would straitjacket itself and 
whatever is negotiated anywhere by our trade ambassador and brought 
back in the form of a trade agreement, we will agree that we will be 
prevented from offering an amendment.
  So we will vote on this. The majority of the Senate will vote yes to 
free trade with Singapore, and yes to 5,400 immigrants from Singapore 
to come to this country to take American jobs. I am not going to vote 
for that. Once again, the lesson is, those who believe fast-track trade 
procedures make sense ought to think again.
  Also, this trade agreement with Singapore provides for transshipment. 
It provides for transshipment of high-tech products from anywhere, 
China, Burma, Indonesia, if they are transshipped through Singapore to 
the United States to get the full benefit of the Singapore free-trade 
agreement.
  Singapore is already one of the largest transshipping points in the 
world. Should we be negotiating trade agreements that encourage 
transshipment so we do not know the origin of shipments to this country 
of high-tech products or others? I do not think so.
  I understand, interestingly enough, that a bipartisan group of my 
colleagues will offer a resolution on the immigration piece that is in 
the free-trade agreement. The resolution is going to be a sense-of-the-
Senate amendment. I think I was asked if I put my name on it. I am 
happy to put my name on it, but it does not mean anything. It is 
beating someone over the head with a feather.
  It is a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that says: You better watch 
it; you should not have done this. But it cannot be more than a sense 
of the Senate because we cannot take out this provision. This provision 
is stuck in the trade bill and we cannot get it out. This Senate has 
already agreed we will not allow amendments.
  I didn't vote for that; I voted against it. But the majority of this 
Senate says: Let us line up so we can be subservient to the trade 
ambassador--whoever it is, Republican or Democrat--and agree whatever 
they negotiate in secret overseas that affects American

[[Page 19957]]

jobs, count us out. We will not be able to offer amendments. That is 
just fine with us.
  Apparently, these are colleagues who have forgotten what is written 
in the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution clearly says 
that trade is the Senate's responsibility, not anyone else's; not the 
President but the Senate.
  Fast track trade agreements have been disastrous for this country. 
This chart shows the runaway deficits we have experienced.
  It does not matter which administration is in office. A person could 
be blindfolded and listen and cannot tell if it is a Republican or 
Democratic administration. They all say the same thing: all we care 
about is getting another trade agreement. Meanwhile, we had $470 
billion in the year 2002 in merchandise trade deficits. Is that 
alarming to some? One cannot detect it in the Senate. No one seems to 
care much about it. There are only two or three Members who talk about 
this, and we are considered the xenophobic isolationist stooges that do 
not get it.
  What I get is this country fought for a century for a series of 
things that make life better in our country. There are people who died 
in the streets of America for the right to organize in labor unions. We 
fought about child labor laws, saying you should not work 12-year-old 
kids 12 hours a day in a coal mine or manufacturing plant. We fought 
about prohibiting companies from dumping chemicals into the air and the 
water. We fought about safe workplaces, believing the American workers 
have a right to work in safe workplaces. We fought about all those 
issues for a century.
  Now some have decided you can pole-vault over all of that by 
producing what you want to produce elsewhere, where you do not have to 
worry about hiring children, where you do not have to worry about clean 
air and clean water. You do not have to worry about safe workplaces. 
You could prohibit all workers from organizing any bargaining unit. We 
have decided that is OK, let companies do that. They pole-vault to 
China or Indonesia or Bangladesh, produce there but sell here.
  The problem is, in the long term, it does not work because the very 
people who earned the income in the manufacturing plants in this 
country are the people who were able to purchase the products off the 
store shelves. Without the incomes from those jobs--and our 
manufacturing sector is shrinking badly--from that manufacturing 
sector, who will buy these products?
  This morning in the Wall Street Journal an article reads, ``U.S.-
Chinese Trade Becomes a Delicate Issue of Turf.'' It is talking about 
the debate within the National Association of Manufacturers between the 
big manufacturers that are international in scope that want to move 
their manufacturing to other countries where they can pay pennies on 
the dollar for labor, and the other businesses, medium and small 
businesses, that rely on the business from the larger companies to 
spill over to them. It is a fascinating article. I commend the reading 
to people who are interested in the subject.
  Jim Schollaert, a lobbyist with the American Manufacturing Trade 
Action Coalition, says simply: The big companies are following a new 
business model--pay Chinese wages but charge U.S. prices.
  That is the question these days for us. Is there a price of admission 
to the American marketplace? We understand we have a globalization of 
the international economy, and it will not stop. But have the rules for 
this new global economy kept pace with globalization itself? The 
answer, clearly, is no. If a large international company has a choice 
to decide where it wants to produce, and it flies its jet around the 
world and looks down at the landscape and sees different kinds of 
governance, different philosophies, different local politics, and 
different labor forces and decides to choose where to produce, does it 
not all too often these days decide to produce where it can hire a 12-
year-old, work them 12 hours a day and pay them 12 cents an hour?
  You think it does not happen? Of course it does. We can describe it 
and use names in the Senate, names of workers and names of companies. 
Not only can they settle on a site in the world where they can put a 
manufacturing plant, hire kids and adults and pay them pennies on the 
dollar and pollute the air and water and decide they shall not be 
allowed to organize as a bargaining unit and they do not have to have 
safe workplaces in which the workers conduct their daily activities, 
and then produce there, but they also ship it back to Toledo, 
Anchorage, Fargo, or Los Angeles and sell it on the store shelves in 
this country. That is the global marketplace.
  Let me talk about a series of specific countries. First, I will talk 
about China. China has the largest trade deficit with us. It is $103 
billion a year. They ship us their trinkets, trousers, shirts, shoes. 
We are a huge sponge for Chinese production.
  One reason we have a very large trade deficit with China, which hurts 
us and strengthens them, is because the Chinese do not want certain 
things from us. They are not buying our grain in any significant way. 
They do not want our wheat. They do not want to buy airplanes. They 
need airplanes, but do not want to buy our airplanes off the shelf 
where we manufacture them and send our airplanes to China. They say 
they want some of our technology, but they want us to build our 
airplane plant in China and hire Chinese workers. That is the way they 
would like to buy American airplanes.
  The problem is, it does not work that way. That is not what 
international trade is about. We buy that which we can best use from 
China, they ought to buy what they can best use from us. That is the 
doctrine of comparative advantage. It is as old as the study of 
economics itself.
  Our negotiators, our U.S. official negotiators negotiate with other 
countries and typically underserve American interests.
  About 2\1/2\ years ago we had a bilateral trade agreement done with 
China. It was a prelude to China joining the WTO. At the end of the 
agreement, there was once again celebration by negotiators because 
negotiators judge their success by whether or not they got a negotiated 
agreement. It is a terrible agreement, I might say. They decided, for 
example, that if there is automobile trade between the United States 
and China in the future, after a long phase-in, the following will 
exist: China will be allowed a 25-percent tariff on United States 
automobiles sold in China, and we would have a 2.5-percent tariff on 
any Chinese automobiles sold in the United States.
  Our negotiators went to China and said: All right, we agree if there 
is automobile trade, vehicle trade between the United States and China. 
We will agree that you shall have a tariff that is 10 times higher than 
what we will impose on your products. Who negotiated this on our 
behalf? Did they forget who they were working for?
  Do you know how many movies we get into China? Before the trade 
agreement, only 10 imported movies could be shipped to China in a year. 
Just 10. So after the agreement, we get to ship 20 movies. People say, 
Look at that; what a great thing that is, to double it to 20. Our 
expectations on fair trade are pathetic.
  The Chinese, by and large, keep their market reasonably closed to us, 
prevent us from accessing opportunities in their marketplace but expect 
our marketplace to be wide open to Chinese goods.
  We have become a cash cow for the hard currency needs for China, and 
it is hurting our country. The imbalance in the trade relationship that 
exists between the United States and China is almost unforgivable. Is 
anybody doing anything about it? Not a thing. Nothing. Just nothing. 
All you get, when you talk to the trade ambassador's office, again 
under Democratic and Republican administrations--all you get from them 
are a few grunts and groans about we would like to do better and then 
they rush off and do a new agreement with some other country.
  This is what we have with Korea. I mentioned the absurd situation 
with automobile trade with China. Well, in 2001, 618,000 cars were 
shipped from Korea to the United States. I believe last year it was 
680,000 but use this as

[[Page 19958]]

a working number; 618,000 cars were shipped from Korea to the United 
States to U.S. consumers--Hyundais, Daewoos. Probably they are 
wonderful automobiles. I have not driven one but I am sure they are 
fine automobiles.
  They sent us 618,000 into our marketplace. Can anyone guess how many 
U.S. automobiles were sold in Korea? It was 2,800; 618,000 coming into 
our marketplace; we got 2,800 into the Korean market. Korea ships us as 
many cars as they can get into our marketplace and the Korean 
Government will keep out as many U.S. cars as they can.
  A recent example of that is the Dodge Dakota pickup, which showed 
great promise in the Korean marketplace. The Dodge Dakota pickup, after 
2 months, started penetrating the Korean marketplace. The Korean 
Government cracked down on it, big headlines in the newspapers, and 
immediately most of the orders were canceled.
  My State produces potatoes in the Red River Valley, great potato 
country. We produce potatoes and we ship potato flakes to Korea for use 
in confection food--potato flakes. Do you know what the tariff on 
potato flakes is to Korea? It is 300 percent. Why do we allow that? I 
don't know. Our country doesn't seem to be interested in standing up 
for its economic interests.
  Perhaps we should say to the Koreans, these great cars you are 
shipping into the marketplace, if you don't allow our cars into your 
marketplace and fair access to your consumers, then you ought to take 
your cars and sell them in Zaire. Try to sell them in Zaire. If you 
don't like it, then open your marketplace. Until your marketplace is 
open, we are not going to absorb more than a half a million of your 
vehicles. That is simple enough.
  But we will not do that because our country is unwilling to stand up 
for its economic interests. In fact, that which I am presenting today 
on the floor of the Senate, I can't even present in an op-ed piece in 
the Washington Post. The Washington Post wouldn't run an op-ed piece in 
a million years talking about this because they are for one thing: free 
trade, free trade, free trade. It is as if they were wearing a robe, 
standing on a street corner chanting, and they only want one view 
expressed in their op-ed pages. Those of us who raise questions about 
the requirement for fair trade to stand up for the interests of 
American jobs are called protectionists.
  My goal is not to put a wall around this country. I want to expand 
trade. I think expanded trade will be good for everyone, provided the 
rules are fair. When the rules are not fair, it is time for this 
country to stand up for itself and stand up for its jobs and stand up 
for its businesses.
  I will give some other examples. I have mentioned Korea and I 
mentioned China. Now let me discuss Europe. I am using some 
agricultural examples simply because I come from a farm State. There 
are so many other examples.
  If you take a look at what is happening in beef with Europe, the 
Europeans do not want U.S. beef in their marketplace because they say 
it is produced with growth hormones and is therefore harmful to their 
health. There is no scientific evidence of that. In fact, all the 
evidence is on the other side. But Europe says, We are not going to 
allow American beef into the European marketplace. In fact, they 
portray our beef as two-headed cows, some sort of obscene animal that 
would be terribly harmful to the marketplace, so they say, Keep it out.
  So we go to the World Trade Organization and file a complaint against 
Europe and we win. It doesn't matter to Europe that we win. They are 
still not going to allow American beef into Europe. So what do we do? 
We are going to get tough. This is symbolic of the lack of backbone we 
have in this country when it comes to trade. How do we get tough? We 
decide to slap some retaliation on Europe. We hit them with some 
tariffs on truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese.
  God bless us, we are really getting tough with Europe. We are going 
to sock them around with truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. 
So what is Europe's idea to retaliate against us? Tariffs on U.S. steel 
and textiles.
  Can you just see the difference? We simply do not have the backbone, 
the nerve, or the will to stand up for this country's economic 
interests.
  I am mentioning Europe. There are plenty of problems with Europe in 
terms of our trade agreements. We continue to see country after 
country--with respect to Europe, we see the entire continent--with 
large, abiding, yearly trade deficits that relate to jobs lost in this 
country.
  If we were losing those jobs just because we couldn't compete, that 
is one thing. That is fine. I wouldn't like it but I would understand 
it and I would say we better figure out how to compete in the 
international marketplace. But if we are losing those jobs because the 
basis of competition is fundamentally unfair to America, then I say 
there is something wrong with the trade agreements.
  We connect to other countries in a way that says to other countries: 
All right. We will trade and this is the circumstance. We will just tie 
one or two hands behind our back and then we will start. You can hire 
kids, you can put them in plants that are unsafe, dump your chemicals 
into the streams and the air, and you can prohibit them from organizing 
by law. You can do all those things and it is fine. Make your product 
as cheap as you can make it and ship it to the marketplace in Bismarck, 
ND, or Boise, ID, or Fairbanks, AK, or Los Angeles, and we would love 
to purchase that.
  How absurd is that? Is there not any basic standard at all? Are the 
standards we fought for in this country for so long so old-fashioned? 
Is it not a timeless truth that workers ought to be able to organize, 
they ought to be able to expect a fair wage, and that you ought not be 
able to work 12-year-olds 12 hours a day 7 days a week?
  If you wonder about that, let me give an example of a story. This 
story is entitled ``Worked Till They Drop.'' This happens to be about a 
19-year-old girl but it is happening way too often in parts of the 
world where they do not care about the conditions of production that we 
have cared about for a long while and that we fought over for many 
decades. This is a story about Li Chunmei, May 13 of last year. She had 
been on her feet for 16 hours, her coworkers said:

       . . . running back and forth inside the Bainan Toy Factory, 
     [in China] carrying toy parts from machine to machine.

  Let me read a bit from the piece.

       This was the busy season, before Christmas, when orders 
     peaked from Japan and the United States for the factory's 
     stuffed animals. Long hours were mandatory, and at least 2 
     months had passed since Li and the other workers had enjoyed 
     even a Sunday off.

  Sixteen hours a day, 7 days a week.

       Lying on her bed in the night, staring at the bunk above 
     her, the slight 19-year-old complained she felt worn out.

  She was massaging her aching legs, coughing, and she told them she 
was hungry.

       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 . . . 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. . . .

  She was dead.
  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 coworkers 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.

  This is the sort of thing that is happening in some factories around 
the world, producing, in this case, stuffed toys. They could have been 
producing baseball caps. A prominent Ivy League college buys baseball 
caps from similar factories. They pay \1/5\ cent labor for each cap 
produced and each cap is sold at $17 on the campus of the Ivy League 
university. Fair trade?
  The question is, What did we fight about all these years? It seems to 
me we fought about having an economy that gave American businesses a

[[Page 19959]]

chance to compete fairly and provide good-paying jobs to American 
workers. On issue after issue in international trade, we have trade 
agreements being brought to the floor of the Senate that have been 
negotiated with other countries in a way that is fundamentally 
incompetent.
  One other example I have spent 10 years working on is the aftermatch 
of a free-trade agreement with Canada. The free-trade agreement with 
Canada is one I voted against. Incidentally, it was a vote when I was 
serving in the United States House Ways and Means Committee. It was 34-
1. I was the one who voted against it. I was told by my colleagues we 
really need to make this a unanimous consent vote, that Canada was our 
good neighbor to the north and we share a common border. I said no. 
What you are proposing here is wrong. It is going to dramatically 
injure family farmers in this country.
  But the deal was passed under fast track and no one could offer 
amendments. Oh, we had an assurance in writing from Trade Ambassador 
Yeutter that it would not represent a change or a significant change in 
the quantity of grain going back and forth across the border. The 
minute it was passed, we began to see a flood--a virtual avalanche--of 
Canadian wheat coming into this country sold by the Canadian Wheat 
Board, a state-sanctioned monopoly that would be illegal in this 
country. Our farmers were badly undercut by this unfair competition. We 
haven't been able to do a thing about it--nothing.
  I had the GAO go to the Canadian Wheat Board because we think they 
are dumping in our marketplace. The Canadian Wheat Board simply thumbed 
its nose at the General Accounting Office, saying we don't intend to 
open our records to you at all. We intend to show you no information.
  Year after year, we face this unfair grain trade from Canada. In 
fact, one day I went to the Canadian border--I have mentioned this many 
times--with a man named Earl Jensen in a 12-year-old orange truck with 
a couple hundred bushels of durum wheat. We drove to the Canadian 
border. All the way to the Canadian border we saw 18-wheelers coming 
south full of Canadian grain being dumped on our marketplace injuring 
our farmers. We saw semi load after semi load. I bet we met 20 semi 
loads of Canadian grain. When we got to the border in the 12-year-old 
little orange truck, guess what. We were stopped dead in place and we 
could not get that truck across the border because you couldn't take 
200 bushels of durum wheat into Canada. The Canadian market was closed 
to us, but our market was wide open to unfair Canadian trade in this 
country. This has gone on for 10 years and we have not been able to do 
a thing about it.
  Today we have a trade ambassador who has been scurrying around the 
world doing new trade agreements. So we have two new agreements to vote 
on, one of which has a 5,400 immigrant quota of people coming into our 
country from Singapore to take American jobs. Everyone knows that is 
wrong. Everybody in this Chamber knows that is foolish. That is not the 
way you do immigration policy--behind closed doors in secret on a trade 
bill. And yet no one in this Chamber will be able to get rid of that 
provision. That provision will be ratified by this Congress either this 
afternoon or tomorrow. Not with my vote.
  At some point, somehow, somebody will have to wake up on trade. It is 
not the case that I believe we ought to shut down trade or that we 
ought to build walls and prevent trade. It is the case that this 
country needs to have a backbone and some nerve and some will--yes, 
dealing with China, Japan, Europe, Korea, Canada, and Mexico. And until 
we get that will and are willing to protect American jobs with the 
requirement for fair trade, this country is going to continue to lose 
economic strength.
  After the Second World War, for a quarter of a century our trade 
policy was almost exclusively foreign policy. It wasn't trade. It 
wasn't economics. It was all foreign policy coming out of the State 
Department. It didn't matter because we were the biggest, the best, and 
the strongest country in the world by far and we could tie one hand 
behind our backs and out-compete anybody under any circumstance. So it 
was just fine. We could have mushy-headed foreign policy masquerading 
as trade policy. It didn't matter. We just would win.
  But in the second 25 years after the Second World War, we saw the 
development of some pretty tough and canny competitors--Japan, Europe, 
now China, and others. Still much of our trade policy is fuzzy-headed 
foreign policy. Now you tie one hand behind your back with moves that 
are fairer and this country loses. Again, what do we lose? We lose 
jobs, economic expansion, opportunity for businesses, opportunity for 
workers, and some say it doesn't matter; it is just irrelevant.
  I do not for the life of me understand that. It makes no sense that 
this country does not any longer understand that international trade is 
a significant foundation for this country's economic future. That 
foundation is either a foundation of cement with strength or quicksand 
that washes away quickly.
  I have a chart which I believe shows a graph of where we have been 
with all these trade agreements. One after another of these trade 
agreements has traded away this country's economic interests. You can 
see the line. It describes when the Tokyo round of GATT was approved. 
It describes the Uruguay round of GATT. It describes where we are with 
WTO, and with NAFTA.
  It seems to me when something isn't working, you ought to change it. 
Yet we see no proposal here for change at all. It is just let's have a 
couple more helpings from the same menu, and the menu isn't working for 
our country.
  There are so many issues related to this. I talked about jobs 
because, in my judgment, that is central to this. First, you have 
currency issues and the fact that China, for example, dramatically 
undervalues its currency against the U.S. dollar. They have a terrific 
advantage in our marketplace in trade.
  There are so many different facets of trade that it is almost hard to 
describe. You have the political issues. Some countries as a matter of 
governance decide here is the way we will compete. For example, I have 
mentioned on a couple of occasions today that some countries will 
prohibit workers from organizing. We are proud that our country 
protects those rights. We understand it has strengthened this country 
and it is good for our country. In fact, the way we have developed a 
strong middle class in our country is with the development of a 
manufacturing sector in which workers are organized and have been able 
through their strength to collect a reasonable share of the national 
income from manufacturing. But some countries say we will prohibit as a 
matter of political choice workers from organizing.
  Then there are some others who say it doesn't matter that our 
manufacturing base is eroding; if that is what happens as a result of 
some natural function of trade, that is all right for our country. 
Well, it is not all right. There is no country that will long remain a 
world power--none--without a strong manufacturing base. You cannot be a 
world economic power without a strong manufacturing base. Those who 
think this country will remain a strong, vibrant, growing, economic 
superpower are dead wrong if they allow this manufacturing base to be 
dissipated. Too many of my colleagues seem to think it is just fine; 
whatever happens, happens.
  It is not fine with me. All you have to do is look at where this 
country is headed in international trade. Look at what has happened to 
our manufacturing base. Look at how good jobs have shrunk in this 
country. I am talking about those people who worked in the coal mines, 
those who worked in the steel mills, those who worked in our 
manufacturing plants who used to earn a good wage with good benefits 
and good job security, and who now discover we are racing toward the 
bottom to figure out how we can compete with other countries that pay a 
dime an hour or 20 cents an hour.
  How can we compete with other countries that have no laws that 
prevent them from abusing the environment with chemicals going into the 
airshed and into the water? If you wonder about that, just travel a 
bit. Go to

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those countries--I have--and take a look at what happens. Then ask 
yourself, Is that the level of competition? Is there an admission price 
to the American marketplace that says it is almost free? That you don't 
have to reach any threshold? And any trade--using circumstances I have 
previously described--is fair trade to which we ought to subject our 
workers and our employers?
  I have explained at great length why I intend to vote no on these two 
trades agreements. It is not about Chile. It is not about Singapore. It 
is about a process that is fundamentally bankrupt. It is about trade 
negotiators who ought to be ashamed of themselves. It is about past 
trade agreements that are incompetent, whose repercussions we are 
dealing with today.
  I have, from time to time, threatened to offer legislation that would 
require all U.S. trade negotiators to wear a jersey. When you are 
representing the United States of America in the Olympics, you wear a 
jersey that says ``USA.'' It seems to me that perhaps our trade 
negotiators--more than almost anyone--need to have a jersey to be able 
to look down at and understand who they represent.
  Will Rogers used to say: The United States of America has never lost 
a war and never won a conference. He surely must have been thinking 
about trade negotiators. This country had better develop a backbone and 
some will and some nerve to stand up for its economy and stand up for 
its workers and stand up for its employers--no, not in a way that is 
unfair to any other country but in a way that says to any other 
country: We are open for business, we are ready for competition, and we 
will compete anywhere and with anyone in the world, but we, by God, 
demand that the rules be fair. And if the rules are not fair, then we 
intend to change them to create rules that are fair to our country.
  I yield the floor.

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