[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14586-14588]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    CURRENCY EXCHANGE RATE OVERSIGHT REFORM ACT OF 2011--MOTION TO 
                           PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Tennessee wish to be 
heard on the motion to proceed?
  Mr. CORKER. I do.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized under the motion to 
proceed.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the bill that is 
about to come before us--the China currency manipulation bill, as many 
are calling it. I want to speak about this bill because I think it is 
poor public policy.
  I know back home in all of our States people are concerned about the 
future; I am concerned about the future. People are concerned about 
manufacturing jobs; I am concerned about manufacturing jobs. But it 
seems to me what we ought to focus on are those things that will take 
us to the place we want to be.
  I know a lot of times when we are having these types of economic 
situations, the country turns inward. The country tries to look for 
other things to blame for the cause of where we are, and I think that 
is exactly what this bill is doing. Here we have a situation where our 
economy is slow, we have a financial crisis in Europe that has created 
tremendous fear in every country in the world. Yet what we are looking 
at doing in the Senate is creating a trade war with the second largest 
economy in the world--an economy that is growing rapidly and where our 
exports to this country grew twice as fast in the year 2010 as it did, 
on average, with the rest of the world.
  To me, Mr. President, this is one of those bills where we cut our 
nose off to spite our face. It is one of those bills where we try to 
make it look back home as though we are doing something constructive 
when what we are really doing is hurting the U.S. economy.
  We have three free-trade bills that are coming to the floor--that 
have been held up now for over 900 days--and that I think are going to 
pass. I believe this body is going to embrace them because we know this 
country is losing market share in the three countries we are reaching 
an agreement with. We are losing market share in South Korea, we are 
losing market share in Colombia, and we are losing market share in 
Panama. In other words, the manufacturers in Tennessee and Virginia and 
all across this country have a lesser ability to sell their goods into 
these three countries because these three free-trade agreements are not 
in place. But it is my sense we are getting ready to do something 
constructive, in a bipartisan way, and approve these bills.
  So what is stunning to me is that we would be actually taking up 
another bill that would likely hurt trade with the fastest growing 
other economy and the biggest other economy in the world. By the way, 
China does manipulate its currency. It does do that. It has something 
called a managed float. Their financial system is antiquated. It is 
being liberalized. They understand what they are doing with their 
currency has to change.
  Over the last 5 years, the Chinese currency has actually appreciated 
relative to our dollar by 30 percent. China knows it has to do even 
more of that. The fact is, as the standard of living in China improves, 
people are going to want even greater access to American goods. So what 
we ought to be doing, instead of trying to create a trade war with a 
country we want to create better relationships with, is focus on the 
real problems that exist in China.
  There is no question the Chinese Government--the Chinese Government--
needs to open procurement policies. As a government, they are a large 
purchaser of goods. Right now they have laws in place that cause them 
to purchase those goods from companies that exist in China. We need to 
cause them to open. The Secretary General, or the person we believe to 
be the next leader of China, is going to be here in January. This is 
something our President ought to talk with him about when he comes to 
visit and create an opportunity for success for our companies in 
America to be able to sell goods to China.

[[Page 14587]]

  Secondly, we should focus on intellectual property rights. There is 
no question Chinese companies take advantage of U.S. companies by 
stealing intellectual property rights. It exists in almost every area. 
That is something we certainly should be talking to China about.
  Thirdly, we ought to be talking about China investing in this 
country. The fact is, we would like to see more plants created in this 
country. We would like to see more manufacturing occur. So, yes, we 
should be talking to China about making investments in this country.
  Lastly, we should certainly be creating avenues for Chinese consumers 
to have greater access to American goods. Those are the types of 
solutions we ought to be talking about, and they can certainly be dealt 
with at the executive branch level. There are WTO violations we ought 
to be bringing to the WTO's attention.
  This bill, in my opinion, is great in optics. It allows Senators to 
go back home--by the way, the Senate is supposed to be the cooler 
place. It is interesting the leadership in the House, where we might 
expect a bill like this to move out quickly--a hot piece of 
legislation--has already talked about what bad policy this is. So, 
hopefully, this bill will not gain traction if it passes the Senate and 
goes to the House of Representatives. The fact is, this is not the kind 
of thing the Senate ought to be taking up, and certainly not something 
the Senate ought to be passing.
  We are now in a situation where we have an economic slowdown, the 
markets are continually getting worse--and have been, especially since 
August 2--and we have a financial crisis in Europe where contagion with 
those financial institutions is potentially spreading around the world. 
Yet the Senate, in its wisdom, is considering a trade war to add to all 
of that. This is exactly the kind of reaction and behavior that took 
place in the 1930s. Again, it is almost as if we cannot learn from the 
past.
  Mr. President, I understand that numbers of Senators voted to proceed 
to this bill, and I understand we ought to have debate on this kind of 
bill. That is what the Senate is for. But I would encourage all of my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle not to have an investment in this 
bill.
  Again, I realize there are numbers of cosponsors, but I would 
encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand up and 
to realize this is terrible policy. I know back home it may sound good, 
but I hope when Americans understand what we are doing is pursuing the 
wrong issues in the name of trying to make ourselves look good back 
home, this bill will not see the light of day. Hopefully, we will not 
have the 60 votes to have cloture on this bill.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I hear this over and over and over 
in this body and in the House of Representatives; that whenever the 
President of the United States talks about increasing taxes on 
millionaires--just making their tax rate the same as middle-class 
taxpayers--the other side yells ``class warfare, class warfare, class 
warfare'' against the rich. Yet we know class warfare in this country 
is being aimed right at the middle class and has cost so many jobs and 
caused so many people in the middle class to see their incomes remain 
flat for the last 10 years.
  When I hear discussions about trade, I always hear characterizations 
of protectionism or trade war; we are in a trade war. Look at the 
number of jobs we have lost to China in the last 10 years. We don't 
have to look very far to know every time we go to the store and buy 
something, it seems darned near everything is made in China. It wasn't 
that way 10 years ago. It sure wasn't that way 20 years ago.
  Ten years ago this body made a mistake--many of us opposed it, and I 
was in the House of Representatives then--with something called 
permanent normal trade relations with China--letting China join the 
World Trade Organization. In those days, there was a relatively small 
trade deficit with China. A trade deficit means we buy more from them 
than we sell to them. Today that trade deficit with China is about $750 
million every single day. Every day we buy $750 million more in 
products from China than we sell to China.
  If we are buying that much more than we sell day after day after 
day--7 days a week, 52 weeks a year--we end up losing jobs because 
these are the things we were making in this country.
  Never in our history do I remember--and I am not a professional 
historian, but I have never heard anybody say otherwise on this--that 
companies in one country would shut their production down--stop 
producing steel in Steubenville or stop producing chemicals in 
Cleveland or stop producing cars in Dayton or stop producing glass in 
Toledo--shut down a plant, move it to another country--often China--and 
then sell the product back into the home country, back to the United 
States of America. That is not a ticket for anyone in America to gain 
middle-class status, and it is not good economic policy. It doesn't put 
us in the place we need to be.
  So when I hear the opponents to this whole idea of leveling the 
playing field say: Oh, my gosh, the Senate, which is supposed to cool 
the saucer--whatever that George Washington/Thomas Jefferson saying 
was--cool the hot tea in the saucer, or however he said that, and then 
say this is a trade war, that our attempt to simply level the playing 
field is a trade war, that is just unilateral disarmament. The Chinese 
understand what a trade war is about.
  Let me cite one example real quickly. I was talking to a gentleman 
who works for paper companies in the United States, including paper 
manufacturers we still have in Ohio, in Chillicothe and West 
Carrollton, sort of the Dayton area, and down into Butler County near 
Cincinnati and other places around the State, and he said the Chinese 
didn't even have a coated paper industry 15 years ago. That is the kind 
of paper that is the glossy magazine-type paper. The Chinese started 
this industry 15 years ago. They buy their wood pulp in Brazil, then 
ship it to China, and then it is milled in China. Paper is expensive to 
transport. It is heavy, for the cost of it, and it is bulky, for the 
cost of it. But the Chinese take wood pulp from Brazil, and then it is 
shipped and milled in China and then sold back here.
  The labor cost of making paper is only 10 percent of the cost. Yet 
they can undercut prices here. Why is that? Well, we assume they 
subsidize water and capital and land and energy. We also know they get 
a 25-percent additional subsidy because of currency because the Chinese 
game the currency system. They devalue their currency. They 
underappreciate, if you will, their currency, meaning they, in a sense, 
get a bonus.
  When they sell anything to the United States, they get a 25-percent 
discount. So they can undercut American manufacturers that could be 
even more efficient than they are or, if the United States sells into 
China, our sellers, our producers, get a 25-percent penalty.
  But look at the job loss. This is the whole story. This really is the 
whole story. We have 10 cosponsors. We have five Democrats--Senator 
Schumer and I and Senators Hagan, Stabenow, and Casey--and five 
Republicans--Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine and Senators Sessions 
of Alabama, Burr of North Carolina, and Graham of South Carolina. This 
is a bipartisan effort that got 79 votes out of 98 yesterday.
  So when I hear the other side say we are starting a trade war, look 
at this chart. This is California, in the last 10 years, since PNTR--
since we set up this relationship with China and allowed China into the 
World Trade Organization. Look at the job loss. California lost almost 
a half million jobs. Most of these are manufacturers. Texas lost 
232,000. My State lost 103,000 jobs.
  These are 103,000 people that saw their plants close. We have lost 
50,000 manufacturing plants in this country in the last decade or so. 
These are 103,596 people, our people. If they lose their job, $16-an-
hour manufacturing, they often lose their health insurance; they often 
lose their home.

[[Page 14588]]

  It is easy for us to talk numbers and easy for us, dressed like this 
and getting paid well to do these jobs, to forget what an individual 
suffering from this kind of job loss is all about. Imagine a family in 
Richmond or a family in Columbus, where they lost their job, then they 
lost their health care, and then they lost their home. They have to go 
to their 12-year-old daughter and say: Honey, we are going to have to 
move. We are losing our house. We can't live here anymore.
  These are terrible human problems. To dismiss our efforts to try to 
come to an even, level playing field so we can compete is what we need 
to do, not using names such as trade war and protectionism and class 
warfare and all that.
  I will conclude my remarks. There will be much more in the next 2 
days' debate on these issues.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, all postcloture time is yielded back and 
the motion to proceed to S. 1619 is agreed to.

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