Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009
Floor Speech
SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2009 -- (Senate - May 21, 2009)
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TRADE POLICIES
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, our economy, as we know so well, struggles with massive job losses, a shrinking middle class, and an economic crisis that undermines the pursuit for far too many Americans and the American dream.
In 2006, voters in my State of Ohio, from Marietta to Cleveland, from Van Wert to Youngstown, spoke out with one voice demanding a change in our Nation's trade policy. In 2008, they reaffirmed that call with good reason, as Senator Obama, again, pointed out the problems with Bush trade policy that our trade deficit was literally $2 billion a day during the last 2 years in the Bush administration.
Ohio has suffered more than 200,000 manufacturing job losses since 2001. The first President Bush pointed out that a billion dollars in trade deficit translates into 13,000 lost jobs. Do the math. For too long we have been without a coherent trade strategy with no real manufacturing policy.
Most of our trade deficit is due to a manufacturing deficit. Current policies have failed to deliver on good jobs and on stability.
Today, in committee, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the
Panama Free Trade Agreement. I do not think the American people are demanding a trade agreement with Panama. What I hear people in Ohio demanding is a new direction. I hear people demanding change on trade, change on our economic policy, change on our Nation's economic strategy. I hear people asking lots of questions about the economic course we are on.
I hear people worried about our manufacturing base. I hear Ohioans say that for every day not spent enforcing trade law and not reforming our trade policy, there are manufacturers eliminating jobs.
Since 2000, the United States has lost 4 million manufacturing jobs, not all because of trade but for a lot of reasons--but much because of trade. In the last decade, some 40,000 factories have closed nationwide, 40,000 factories have shut down.
A continuing loss of U.S. manufacturing means more unsafe imports, a greater dependence on foreign factories to produce both our everyday consumer goods and for our national security and military hardware.
A 2008 EPI study found the United States has lost more than 2.3 million jobs since 2001 just as a result of our trade deficit with China. Again, our trade deficit with China is over $200 billion. The first President Bush said that a billion-dollar trade deficit was 13,000 lost jobs.
China uses illegal trade practices, such as dumping, such as subsidies, such as currency manipulation, to undercut U.S. manufacturers.
When Congress approved China's PNTR, Permanent Normal Trade Relations--when Congress approved the legislation to start the ball rolling on China's inclusion into the World Trade Organization, then it made commitments, China made commitments to gain greater access to U.S. markets. They got the access to the U.S. markets, but, unfortunately, China has not been held to those commitments.
Think about toxic toys, think about the toys with lead-based paint on them that came into the United States, think about the ingredients made in China put in Heparin, the blood thinner that killed several people in Toledo, OH, and others around the Nation.
These are the trade issues people want action on, on jobs, on safety, on consumer protection. These are the trade issues I hope the Obama administration is focused on, not the trade agreement with Panama.
Let's talk for a moment about the Panama agreement. It is, of course, an agreement negotiated under the Bush administration's fast-track negotiating. This is not an Obama trade agreement, this is a Bush trade agreement. As we remember, Senator Obama in his campaign was very critical of the Bush administration's trade policy.
The Presiding Officer was in the House of Representatives in those days, as I was, in 2002, when fast track--the negotiating authority extended to President Bush to give him more power to negotiate trade agreements--passed the House by three votes in the middle of the night, and the rollcall was kept open for over 2 hours in the last week before the August recess.
The Panama agreement was one of the last deals negotiated and signed by President Bush. Under the fast-track authority given to him that night in 2007, there were important improvements to the labor and the environment chapters of the Panama agreement. This reflected the work of many in Congress, including the Finance Committee in the Senate, the Ways and Means Committee in the House.
Yet there remains serious concerns about this agreement. Many in Congress have expressed concerns about the safe haven Panama affords to companies looking to skip out on their taxes. What does that mean? It means there is a way to evade taxes by moving business activity offshore.
Yesterday, Congressman Sander Levin and Congressman Lloyd Doggett wrote the Panama's serious tax evasion issues require a serious remedy before Congress can even consider the Panama trade agreement.
The issues about tax evasion are even more serious when the Panama Free Trade Agreement includes rules on corporate investor protections. These are rules that shift more power to corporations and away from the democratic process. In other words, these trade agreements have loaded up in them all kinds of protection for the drug companies, the insurance companies, the energy companies, not so many protections for workers, for the environment, for consumer protection, for food safety.
It is part of the old model that gives protections to the large companies, protections to large corporations, protections to Wall Street, while not ensuring protections for workers and food and product safety.
Panama and the free-trade agreement, as it is written, means more of the same failed trade policies rejected by working families across the Nation. For too long we have seen the pattern: the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA; the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA;
China PNTR, the Panama Free Trade Agreement.
We need to stop the pattern where the only protectionism in free-trade agreements are protecting the drug companies, protecting the oil industry, protecting the financial services companies, many that have created the economic turmoil we now face.
Let me explain it another way. This is not actually the Panama Free Trade Agreement, but it is about this length. It looks about that much. If we were concerned with tariffs, which is what they always say when they talk about the Panama trade agreement, this trade agreement, to eliminate tariffs on American products in Panama, this trade agreement would only need to be about three or four pages.
But it is much longer. You know why? You have to have this section for protection for oil companies. You have to have this section for the protections for the insurance companies. You have to have this section for the protection for the banks. You have to have this section for the protection for the drug companies.
But there is nothing left protecting consumers, protecting food safety, protecting workers, protecting the environment. These are protectionist trade agreements, all right, but they are protecting again the drug companies, the insurance companies and other financial institutions and others.
If this trade agreement were solely about trade and tariffs, literally, it would be only this long. It would simply be a schedule of how you eliminate these tariffs, just repeal the tariffs that apply to American goods that are sold in Panama.
When people say Panama has access to the U.S. market, all we are asking is to eliminate the tariffs so we have access to the Panama market. People who tell you that are the same lobbyists around here who represent the drug companies and the insurance companies and the banks and the oil companies. Remember that.
For too long we have seen the status quo in trade policy that gives protections to big oil and big business. That is not acceptable.
A status quo trade policy that suppresses the standards of living for American workers, and I would also say suppresses the standard of living of what we should do in the developing nations for workers, that is not acceptable. A status quo trade policy that fails to effect real change on how we do business in China is not acceptable.
For 8 years, the Bush trade policies were, in fact, protectionist--protecting the oil industry, protecting the insurance companies and the banks and the drug companies. They were protectionist and they were wrong-headed.
We should not continue these Bush trade policies. That is what is disturbing about this body. Even considering the Panama Free Trade Agreement, we know the Bush economic policies did not work and look at the damage to our economy. Look at our trade deficit. Look at our budget deficit. Why would we adopt a Bush trade agreement when we know its trade policies failed us abysmally?
In November 2008, voters from Toledo to Athens, from Lorain all the way down south to Ironton demanded real change, not symbolic change. We need agreements to be reshaped by the Obama administration, not just tinkered with around the edges and then stamped ``approved.'' Make no mistake, as Senator Dorgan from North Dakota says, we want trade, and we want plenty of it. But we don't want trade under rules that protect insurance companies, drug companies, financial institutions, and the oil industry. We want agreements that work for workers and consumers, for children, with safer toys. It is not a question of if we trade but how we trade and who benefits from trade. We must create a trade policy that helps workers and businesses thrive, especially small businesses and manufacturing, that will raise standards abroad, increase exports, and rebuild middle-class families in Ohio communities.
Our new trade policy must provide critical solutions to the Nation's economic recovery strategy. Reforming trade policy starts with a comprehensive review of the overall trade framework. We need a review of trade negotiating objectives. That is what I am bringing to the floor in legislation. We need a review of the programs responsible for enforcing trade rules and promoting exports. I am asking the GAO to look at many of these questions as we prepare for the trade act and other legislation we will consider. It is only one step.
We have a responsibility to deliver on the demand to change trade strategy. Recycling of Bush-negotiated trade agreements such as that with Panama is not a first step. It is the wrong step. The Obama administration, I hope, will join with Congress in review and reform of our trade strategy. The days of turning away from our responsibility are over.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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