Andean Trade Preference Extension Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman and I thank him for his leadership.

I certainly support more trade--where it most stands to benefit American consumers and to spur economic development in some of the world's least developed countries. During the last 2 years, there has been considerable talk about crafting a 21st century American trade policy that ensures we are not encouraging trade that depends upon degrading our environment and lowering labor standards. Unfortunately, talk is often about all that we've had. Upholding labor and environmental standards has been much more rhetoric than reality. Today's renewal of this GSP legislation does nothing to encourage participating countries to even enforce their own minimal environmental laws or to honor the multilateral environmental agreements that they have joined.

This is in significant contrast with the European Union. There, in order to enjoy the benefits of its GSP Plus program, beneficiary countries must fully implement major multilateral environmental agreements. There's no reason why we should not be doing the same and more. We should have led the European Union on the environment, but we can now at least follow its lead.

There are GSP labor standards, but under the Bush administration, naturally, there was very little interest in seeing them enforced. Why, for example, should the thuggish government of Uzbekistan enjoy any trade preferences? In addition to being one of the world's leading violators of human rights across the board, we have ample evidence of widespread labor abuses within Uzbekistan, including compulsory child labor. For over 2 years, the USTR has failed to act on a related petition about child labor, even after the Uzbeks failed to appear at a hearing to defend or explain their egregious child labor record.

This raises troubling questions about the integrity and effectiveness of the USTR review process. The Uzbek case is but one example of the significant problems with that enforcement mechanism of labor provisions in the GSP. Surely our trade policies here in the 21st century can aspire to do more than to bless practices that come right out of a 19th century Charles Dickens novel.

In the promised GSP review for this next year, as described by Chairman Levin, I think we have considerable work to do if we are to give full and complete meaning to the promises of President Barack Obama that our trade policy will reflect not only our desire for more commerce but our commitment to uphold our environment and our workers.

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