[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1547-1548]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              TRADE POLICY

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, the United States should not be playing 
Russian roulette with our Nation's economy and our Nation's future. We 
need to craft trade policies that deliver the long-term results we 
need, not just the short-term profits which a few multinational 
corporations want and which those multinational corporations 
incessantly lobby this institution to get.
  In his State of the Union Address, the President advocated signing 
more free-trade deals. Given where past trade deals have led this 
country, the President's dogged pursuit of outdated trade deals would 
be perplexing if it weren't simply more of the same and par for the 
course. When it comes to trade, it is often the case that ideology 
trumps outcomes, and it is always the case that special interests trump 
American interests. Looking at where our Nation is headed, advocating 
common sense is a luxury we can no longer afford. We need to confront 
the problems our lax trade policies have engendered, and we need to do 
it now.
  We are running a huge trade deficit. When I was elected to the House 
of Representatives in 1992, our trade deficit was $38 billion. In 2007, 
it exceeded $800 billion. The first President Bush said that a billion-
dollar trade deficit translated into 13,000 jobs. Do the math and see 
what damage these trade deficits--from $38 billion a decade and a half 
ago to over $800 billion today--have caused us. We are bleeding jobs, 
and we are letting dangerous products cross our borders and land in the 
hands of our families and children.
  When we write trade deals that favor gains for multinational 
corporations over evenhanded competition for both trading partners, we 
shouldn't be surprised when U.S.-based companies are crippled. Our 
current trade policy betrays our Nation's middle class, it cripples 
America's small business--especially manufacturing--and it destroys 
communities across the country.
  I was recently in Tiffin, OH--a community of about 20,000 people 
about an hour from Toledo in northwest Ohio--talking with workers from 
American Standard. American Standard is a company that makes plumbing 
fixtures and that most Americans are familiar with. These workers' jobs 
have recently gone to Mexico and China. A venture capitalist--in this 
case, Bain Capital out of Boston, MA--came in and bought the company, 
shut it down, and moved the production overseas. Many workers lost much 
of their pension and their health care that they had worked for decade 
after decade. Many of these workers are in their fifties and won't be 
able to find jobs in Tiffin that pay anything close to the money they 
had earned. Many of them lost their pensions, their health care, while 
enriching Bain Capital to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
  These are not trivial matters. These are workers in Ohio and across 
the country, workers who are often in small towns and don't have the 
option of finding comparable jobs anyplace nearby to support their 
families and ultimately to benefit from the pension and the health care 
they have earned--they have earned.
  Free trade is a dangerous myth--a false idol. Trade has never been 
free. Even the most basic of barter systems have been guided by rules. 
Today's free-trade agreements are ripe with rules, rules that are 
clearly producing the wrong results for our Nation--deficits, job loss, 
dangerous imports, and compromised manufacturing capabilities.
  Again, there are rules. The North American Free Trade Agreement was 
sold to us a decade and a half ago simply by saying this will reduce 
tariffs and open markets in Mexico and in Canada for U.S. goods. But it 
was 2,000 pages. So it wasn't simply a free-trade agreement; it was a 
trade agreement replete with rules that supported and helped those 
special interests--special interest investors and companies that wanted 
to privatize, that wanted to outsource, that wanted to use these rules 
to make more money for the companies at the expense of workers in 
Mexico, in Canada, and in Gallipolis, Portsmouth, and Cleveland, OH.
  I am proud to join with Senator Dorgan of North Dakota, who has been 
a leader on trade policy. He even wrote a book called ``Take This Job 
and Ship It'' about trade and is proposing that we take a far more 
pragmatic approach to U.S. trade policy, one based on achieving 
positive results and on accountability. Thanks to his leadership, we 
have legislation that would focus trade policy away from the blind 
adherence to outdated trade agreements and toward policies that 
increase U.S. trade, that bolster U.S. jobs, that lift our communities, 
and that will reinforce U.S. manufacturing in the days and years ahead, 
and toward a trade policy that builds our Nation's middle class.
  His bill establishes concrete benchmarks for trade bills. It is a 
commonsense idea, a prescription for U.S. success in a global trade 
arena that will help us bring back the manufacturing base in this 
country. We should pass this bill and also take immediate steps to 
address the dysfunction that has infiltrated virtually every aspect of 
our trade relationship with China.
  China is manipulating its currency, it is low-balling the price of 
its exports through Government subsidies, it is sending our Nation 
dangerous toys and contaminated food, it is generating unheard of 
levels of pollution, and the list goes on and on.
  Last month, New Page, a paper manufacturing company based in 
Miamisburg, a town in southwest Ohio, announced it was shutting down 
plants in Wisconsin, in Maine, and in my State of Ohio, in the city of 
Chillicothe, once the State capital.
  Heavily Government-subsidized Chinese paper producers account for 50 
percent of the world's market. Fifty percent of the world's paper 
producing is in China and is heavily Government subsidized in China. It 
has meant the loss of jobs in places such as Chillicothe and Dayton and 
all over my State and this country. It is not free trade. The Chinese 
have benefited. And when I say the Chinese, I don't mean Chinese 
workers, I mean the Communist Party of China, the Government, the 
People's Liberation Army, and too often U.S. investors who are so often 
complicit with the Communist Party and the People's Liberation

[[Page 1548]]

Army and the Chinese Government. Think about that. It is not free trade 
with China; it is a wreck.
  These factors, in addition to low wages, in addition to unsafe 
working conditions, and the absence of worker rights have contributed 
to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and our country's 
reliance on imports.
  What does that mean for the future? When I look around this Chamber, 
I see seven young pages, high school students who work here--and 
several on the other side, too, whom I can't see; I apologize--and I 
think about what their world is going to look like in 20 years. Are we 
going to look back and say: Why did we give away our country? Why did 
we sacrifice our national security and our economic security and 
outsource all these jobs and outsource all this wealth and watch a 
middle class decline? Is that what we are going to look back on in 20 
years and say? Why did we let this happen? How did we let this happen?
  Madam President, restoring sanity to our trade relationship with 
China should be an immediate, No. 1 domestic and international priority 
for this Nation.
  Last week I was joined by seven freshmen colleagues affirming that 
our trade policy should focus on China; that is, our trade priority. We 
need to imagine 20 years from now, as I said, what is manufacturing in 
our country going to look like? This country's wealth--much of it--has 
been dependent on manufacturing, on making everything from newsprint to 
airplanes, being able to manufacture and create wealth in small towns 
and large cities alike.
  Instead of littering our Nation's path with more flawed trade 
agreements, we should say: Time out. No more trade agreements. Look 
back, establish this commission we have discussed that will look at 
both parties, both houses, look back at what our trade policy--what 
NAFTA, what CAFTA, PNTR with China, what our other bilateral smaller 
trade agreements have done, what they have done to our country, what 
have they done for our country, make that analysis and then fix those 
trade agreements and move forward.
  It is not in the Nation's best interests to rely on other nations for 
our defense infrastructure, for our transportation infrastructure, for 
our industrial infrastructure, for creating the wealth in our 
communities that manufacturing does. In this country, we do the best 
research and development in the world. Yet multinational corporations 
often take that research and development and do the production in other 
countries.
  Sure, there are great jobs in research and development. It is good 
for our country. We should continue to give tax incentives for that 
research and development, but it is more than that. It is also what do 
you do afterwards, in commercializing, in producing and manufacturing 
those products the research and development has generated? That is the 
larger number of jobs, that is the greater part of the wealth creation, 
that is what is essential to providing the goods and services in our 
communities for police and fire and education and all of what that 
means.
  We cannot simply continue to do the R&D and then farm out the 
production to exploit low-wage workers, exploit the consumer product 
and food safety net. Because that is what happens. When this research 
and development is done in the United States, and the production is 
moved to China, it is moved there to exploit low-wage labor, and it is 
moved there as a way, frankly, in many cases, or at least it becomes 
that, that we end up with inferior, less safe, less high-quality 
products back into our country.
  We need to take responsibility for the consequences of our inaction 
when it comes to trade policy and take responsibility for the mistake 
we have made in formulating trade policy. We need to do it now.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Salazar.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCASKILL). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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