[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10430-10432]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about what just 
happened on the floor, which was passing in the Senate the trade 
promotion authority for the President of the United States and for our 
good country to be able to get out there and expand markets for our 
exporters and for our farmers, our workers, and our service providers.
  This is a significant change because for the last 8 years the United 
States of America has not been engaged in opening up these markets. 
While other countries have completed these trade agreements, we have 
not been able to. So this gives us as a country the ability to be able 
to open up markets. That is a good thing, and it is significant and 
will have an impact on our economy that is positive because exports 
mean not only more jobs but better jobs. So we will see more jobs that 
are, on average, 15 to 18 percent higher pay and have better benefits, 
and we will be able to compete more globally. This is important to get 
America off the sidelines.
  There is also a benefit of getting us back involved in trade because 
it enables America to be able to set some of the rules of trade rather 
than other countries. And while we have not had this ability to be able 
to open up new markets, what has happened? Other countries have been 
completing agreements, shutting us out--our farmers, our workers, our 
service providers--but they also have been setting the rules of trade. 
We want to be able to set them because we are a country that believes 
we ought to have a rules-based system, that it ought to be fair, that 
there ought to be the rule of law, and that the standards we have--
which are high standards in terms of getting tariffs down but also not 
being able to unfairly send imports to another country--that those are 
upheld. So this is a positive step.
  What I am also really happy about is that after we passed the trade 
promotion authority for the first time in 8 years, sending it for 
signature to the President, which he has indicated he will sign, we 
then passed legislation with regard to trade adjustment assistance, 
which is extending benefits to people who are displaced. So if someone 
in any particular trade agreement loses a job or a company gets hurt, 
they have the ability to get the worker retraining they need, get the 
help they need to be able to get the skills they need to find a job and 
to get themselves back on their feet. So trade adjustment assistance is 
important.
  But within trade adjustment assistance there is something even more 
interesting. We included an amendment which Senator Brown--my colleague 
from Ohio--and I had promoted previously. This is to help all of our 
workers all around America because it enables us to have the ability to 
go after countries that send their products to us unfairly, meaning 
that they subsidize them, which is not fair under the rules of trade, 
or that they dump them, meaning they sell them at below their cost, 
which is also unfair.
  So this is a very important amendment. We call it the leveling the 
playing field amendment because as we are expanding exports--which we, 
of course, should do because that creates more good jobs in my home 
State of Ohio and around the country--we should also be sure that we 
are more aggressively enforcing the trade laws that are in place, the 
international rules and our domestic rules. This amendment that just 
passed the Senate tonight enables us to do that.
  I am excited about it because it gives us the chance to be able to 
compete. It gives the steelworker in Ohio who is playing by the rules 
and doing all the

[[Page 10431]]

right things--being more efficient, being more productive--and 
companies that are using technology to our advantage the chance to be 
productive, not to be undercut when other countries dump their 
products--say, their steel products, their tubes, and other products, 
structural steel--into the United States of America because they want 
to get market share. We are going to be able to stop that with this 
amendment because it enables us to be able to not just file lawsuits 
against these countries but actually get them resolved more quickly.
  Right now, my concern is that too often with these trade laws, by the 
time you bring a case and are successful at it, you have lost so many 
jobs that, in effect, although you get a remedy that is winning a trade 
case and getting higher tariffs on that product, it is too late. This 
is a really important amendment, the leveling the playing field 
amendment.
  I want to thank my colleagues for supporting it. I know there were 
some concerns and questions about it. We spent the last couple of 
months talking about it. Tonight it actually passed. I am told that 
legislation is now going to go to the House and that it will be passed 
in the House. I am told that Speaker Pelosi has said today that she is 
going to support that legislation. This is the trade adjustment 
assistance legislation with the leveling the playing field amendment as 
a part of it.
  Finally, as part of the TAA, there is another really important 
measure that I appreciate my colleagues supporting. It is one that I 
offered in committee, and I have offered it over the years in 
committee. It is to help workers who were left behind. Back when it was 
necessary for the U.S. Government to intervene and help our auto 
companies, there were some people who weren't helped.
  This provides a health care tax credit to those individuals who 
through no fault of their own lost health care and lost pensions. This 
is when their plans went into the PBGC. This includes Delphi workers in 
my home State of Ohio. There are several thousand of them. It includes 
some United Steelworkers. It includes some other employees who were 
left behind when other workers were given their pensions and given 
their health care.
  Every year we have fought for this. We have now been able to put in 
place an extension of the health care tax credit they desperately need. 
For most of these people, it is to provide them the ability between the 
age they are now--say, in their late 50s--and when they get on 
Medicare. It is a critical time for them to be able to have this bridge 
and to be able to provide health care for themselves and for their 
families.
  The health care tax credit is part of this broader TAA, or trade 
adjustment assistance, legislation that was passed here on the floor of 
the Senate this afternoon. I thank my colleagues for working with me on 
this over the past several years but also over the past several weeks 
with regard to this specific provision. Again, that will go to the 
House now, and we are told that will pass the House as it is. In other 
words, the House will take up this exact bill and pass it and send it 
to President for signature.
  This is also a really important opportunity for us to reach out to 
people who are hurting today through no fault of their own and to 
provide them the health care tax credit they deserve.
  In the legislation that we passed this afternoon, we also did 
something else really important that we have never done before, and 
that is to help protect Israel from discrimination. We included 
language in the trade bill itself that Senator Cardin and I had 
championed in the committee. It is the part of the bill that says that 
countries that engage in boycotts or sanctions or divestment of Israel 
in a trade agreement with the United States of America would not be 
able to get the benefits of trade with us.
  We think this is incredibly important leverage to help protect Israel 
from what, unfortunately, is happening around the world too often now, 
which is a double standard--telling the State of Israel that somehow it 
is going to be treated differently than other countries are treated.
  I think it is part of a larger effort to try to delegitimize the 
State of Israel, and it is one where the United States ought to stand 
up. Why is this being done in the context of trade? Because it works. 
It is an area where we do have leverage.
  When I was U.S. Trade Representative, I had the honor to be able to 
negotiate agreements with various countries. One was Oman, one was 
Bahrain, and one was Saudi Arabia. In all three cases, we were able to 
make great progress in the case of boycotts of Israel by telling those 
countries: If you want to do business with the United States and have a 
free-trade agreement with us, then you have to treat all countries 
fairly. You have to follow the MFN, or most favored nation status, 
which means you treat countries fairly and you don't discriminate 
against countries.
  Initially, they would say: No, gosh, politically that is too hard for 
us. But after discussions and after the United States stood tall with 
Israel, we were able to succeed in all three cases: Bahrain and Oman 
with trade agreements and Saudi Arabia with regard to their accession 
agreement to the World Trade Organization. I know it works. I have seen 
it.
  Again, that is in the legislation that was passed today here on the 
floor of this Senate. I am proud of us because we are actually doing 
some of this work on a bipartisan basis to help our country, to help 
our workers, to help our service providers, our farmers but also to 
ensure that these rules of trade are fair globally.
  Finally, I will say that we are not done. There is another bill that 
we were told would be part of this whole package. It is currently being 
negotiated in conference after this afternoon because we named 
conferees between the House and Senate. It is the Customs bill.
  In that legislation, there are additional provisions that I think are 
very important that we passed, including one called the ENFORCE Act. 
This is to avoid the situation where a country is told: You are dumping 
products in the United States or you are subsidizing your product in 
the United States, and you can't do that anymore. Instead, they figure 
out a way to divert their product to another country and still send it 
to the United States using the same unfair trade practices.
  We need to be sure that we are putting in place provisions that allow 
us to stop that diversion as well. That is what the ENFORCE Act does. 
That is in the Customs bill, as one example. There are other important 
provisions in the Customs bill, as well.
  I would urge my colleagues to work with us to get that conference 
done as quickly as possible because the House and Senate versions are a 
little bit different and to be sure that we can come up with a way to 
resolve those differences and bring that back to the floor as part of 
this package.
  The final one in that package is something that is very important to 
manufacturers in my State. This is to enable us to bring products in 
from overseas that were not made anywhere in America under what is 
called miscellaneous tariff bill. This is something that we have not 
had the opportunity to do in several years because there are concerns 
about earmarks. I agree with those concerns. We should not have 
earmarks, whether it is in trade or whether it is in appropriations or 
elsewhere.
  We have resolved that issue by not having it be earmarked under the 
definition we have in the House and Senate but rather have it go 
through the International Trade Commission and have them be the ones 
that determine whether a particular product fits within a miscellaneous 
tariff bill or not.
  This will help in terms of adding employment in America, reducing the 
cost to consumers, making our economy more productive and more 
efficient, and adding economic growth. It is another example that when 
once we complete this package, it includes expanding exports, which was 
very important. We had to do that today because America has been 
sitting on the sidelines for too long. We were losing

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market share for our farmers, our workers, our service providers. We 
needed to get back in the game and send more products stamped ``Made in 
America'' around the world. That creates jobs here. That is good.
  Second, we need to be sure that we have a level playing field, that 
we work on this issue of currency manipulation, which has some 
unprecedented language, and also on these other issues we talked about 
today with the level the playing field amendment to ensure that 
products are not being sold unfairly and that we do provide workers 
with trade adjustment assistance.
  Then finally, we move forward with this final bill called the Customs 
bill to ensure that we include all these provisions which are so 
important as a package and to make sure that yes, we are expanding 
exports at the same time and we are letting people know that they are 
going to get a fair shake. When they work hard and play by the rules 
here in America, our workers are going to be told: You are in the 
global marketplace; we are going to watch your back. That is important. 
It is important to me. It is important to my State. It is important to 
the people who send us here, who expect us to set the conditions in 
place for more exports but also to ensure that is more fairly done.
  Again, I thank my colleagues for the work that has been done today, 
and I also urge my colleagues to move quickly, passing trade adjustment 
assistance in the House and then passing the conference report on the 
Customs bill so we can keep this package together and actually give our 
economy a shot in the arm and give American workers the chance to 
compete.
  If they are given that chance, we have the best work force in the 
world. We will be able not just to compete but to win the global 
competition.
  I yield back my time.
  Mr. President, I have been asked to do the closing script, and then 
the Senator from Massachusetts will be recognized.

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