[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7384-7385]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the near hysteria over trade promotion 
authority and the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership, the so-called TPP, 
is unfortunate because it is so misguided. The stakes are too high to 
get it wrong, and the negative arguments are unfortunate because they 
are so wrong.
  Being against TPP, which has yet to be finished, is premature, at 
best. Being against the TPA is misguided because those provisions 
guarantee people will actually know the details and have stronger tools 
to evaluate whether it is worthy of support.
  The trade agenda and the role of America in the global economy has 
been front and center in Congress over the last few weeks, and well it 
should be. The United States has an opportunity to make further inroads 
in 95 percent of the markets that are outside our borders and to be 
able to gain that access under more favorable terms.
  Businesses large and small that want to sell their products overseas 
run into much more difficult barriers, procedures, and costs than 
people who sell their goods to America, which has one of the most open 
markets in the world.
  In Oregon, there are two competing narratives: those who are opposed 
to further competition for American goods in American markets, fearing 
a loss of business and jobs; and those who see significant opportunity 
selling goods and services abroad, creating more family-wage jobs at 
home.
  The people I talk to in Oregon who are in business overwhelmingly 
support that access. They feel they have far more to gain than they 
have to lose, selling more wine, bicycles, agricultural products, and 
small tools. They think they can compete overseas, creating family-wage 
jobs at home, if that playing field is level.
  There are others who are deeply concerned that this perceived 
leveling of the playing field will not be achieved. They are concerned 
about a lack of labor and environmental standards overseas.
  Having spent time with the people who are negotiating the agreements, 
having reviewed documents myself, and working to reflect Oregon values 
and interests, these agreements, I am confident, hold promise for 
Oregon. But it is too soon to tell for sure because the agreement is 
still being negotiated, and people like me are still trying to 
influence it to make it stronger still. For instance, I have provisions 
I am working on in both the House and the Senate to provide an 
enforcement mechanism.
  As the agreement potentially enters its final stages, where there are 
some of the more difficult concessions with decisions yet to be made, 
the United States and other countries are reluctant to show their full 
hand while things are in flux.
  That is why the trade promotion authority that is working its way 
through the Senate--and may be in front of the House early in June--is 
so important.
  This trade promotion authority is a significant enhancement over any 
similar provision in the past. It guarantees that the entire country--
not

[[Page 7385]]

just Congress--will be able to examine all of the provisions 2 months 
before the President even signs the agreement and for months after 
that, before Congress votes. The authority also sets out provisions 
that speak to the concerns I have heard about for years about the 
weaknesses in NAFTA, not having enforceable, strong provisions for 
environment and labor.
  That is why I thought it was important to vote to establish these 
rules which were significantly strengthened and made more transparent 
as a result of the tremendous efforts on behalf of my friend and 
colleague from Oregon, Senator Ron Wyden, in the Senate.
  If an agreement is reached under these new rules, we will have the 
strongest standards ever to evaluate a trade agreement, and everyone in 
America will be able to evaluate for themselves, not conjure up some 
sort of speculation. They will have months to do what I am going to do: 
see if this agreement is in the best interest of the people in Oregon 
who I represent. If it is, then they, like I, will support it. If it is 
not, then I will do, as I have sometimes done in the past, and vote 
``no'' on things I don't think measure up.
  The time to draw the lines in the sand ``yes'' or ``no'' is after an 
agreement is reached, not before. And thanks to the new trade promotion 
authority, everyone will have an opportunity to make that judgment for 
themselves well in advance of any decision that Congress makes.

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