Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013--Continued--
Floor Speech
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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, today new U.S.-China trade deficit figures from April show a 34-percent increase since March. Last month our trade deficit with the world's second largest economy was more than $24 billion. I remember about a dozen years ago when the Senate and the House approved PNTR--permanent normal trade relations--with China. Around that time the bilateral yearly trade deficit with China was barely $10 billion. Today, just for last month, it was $24 billion. It has persistently and consistently been over $200 billion a year in recent history.
This kind of trade deficit keeps our domestic companies on the defensive. It means workers in Ohio, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, throughout the Midwest, and across America are prevented from unlocking their potential. Our manufacturers are still the most productive in the world. Our workers are the most skilled and the most productive in the world. Their productivity continues to go up and up and up, in part because of globalization; however, their wages have been stagnant. That is part of the price our country has paid for globalization.
Our workers can't compete when China cheats. How can we win the future when our manufacturers can't win contracts because China doesn't play fair? In many ways China and so many of our trading partners practice trade according to their national interest. Yet we in the United States practice trade according to some economics textbook that has been out of print for the last 20 years.
Despite universal agreement that China continues to manipulate its currency to gain an artificial advantage over American-made goods, no action has been taken down the hall by the House of Representatives and no action has been taken down the street at the White House. No action has been taken by the House despite widespread support for legislation this Chamber passed in October 2011. That legislation, worked on by many of my colleagues, would establish new criteria for the Treasury Department to identify countries that misalign their currency. The bill would trigger tough consequences for those countries which engage in such unfair trade practices. It would allow for industries harmed by currency manipulation to seek relief, the way they do for other export subsidies, which several industries in my State have sought, such as steel pipe producers in Lorain, where I visited last week, in Youngstown.
We can solve this problem. The major reason there have been new investments in the Lorain U.S. Steel plant, at V&M Star in Youngstown, at Wheatland Tube, also in the Mahoning Valley, stabilization in jobs, and growth in jobs is because we have enforced trade laws. We can solve this problem further with currency reform. That is why Senator Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, and I will join our colleagues, including Senators Schumer, Collins, Stabenow, and Burr, tomorrow when we reintroduce this bill. Why? Because more nations are engaged in this practice, and it is clear we don't have the tools to address it.
It is no longer just China manipulating its currency. There are a number of other countries--especially in East Asia--that are engaging in this practice, and, as I said, we don't have the tools to address it.
In 2009, as nations were seeking to restore stability to financial markets and respond to the global financial crisis, G-20 leaders met in Pittsburgh to set a framework that would better promote more evenly balanced trade. Among the steps to be taken would be a more market-oriented exchange rate--something China obviously isn't familiar with--and a move away from the practice of adopting artificial, manipulated exchange rates not based on market forces.
While this appeared to be a step in the right direction, there has been too little to show for the good intentions stated back in 2009. Here is what we know. Workers and manufacturers still face an unfair advantage from currency manipulation. By keeping the value of the RMB--the Chinese currency--artificially low, China drives foreign corporations to shift production there because it makes exports to China more expensive and it makes Chinese exports back into the United States cheaper.
It has only been in recent history that business after business after business, as we have seen in the United States, has developed a business plan that involves shutting down production in Lima, OH, move that production to Beijing, and then sell back to the United States of America. Never really in history has that been a widely adopted business plan in a country--shut down production in Springfield, MA, or Springfield, OH, move that production to Shihan, China, or Wuhan, China, get tax breaks for doing it, and then sell those products back into the United States. Part of the reason for that is currency manipulation.
This continued undervaluation has caused serious harm for this economy. It has cost American jobs. The first President Bush said in the 1980s that $1 billion in trade surplus or trade deficit could translate into some 12,000 jobs--meaning that if there is a trade deficit with a country, it costs this country 12,000 jobs. Multiply that by a $500 billion, $600 billion, or $700 billion trade deficit, and see what we get.
A December 2012 report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that currency manipulation by foreign governments had cost the U.S. from 1 to 5 million jobs and increased the U.S. trade deficit by $200 billion to $500 billion per year.
Think of that. By addressing currency manipulation now, we could create up to 5 million jobs and reduce our trade deficit by tens of billions of dollars, and doing so wouldn't cost taxpayers a cent.
But let's look for a moment beyond the numbers. Workers in my home State who work hard and play by the rules at Titan Tire in Bryan, OH, American Aluminum Extrusions in Stark County, Wheatland Tube in Trumbull County, the people who make coated paper and lightweight thermal paper in southern Ohio, the Ohioans who forge steel into products we all use--these women and men deserve a chance to earn a living without companies in other countries illegally dumping goods--or legally if we don't do anything about currency--on our markets. We can't afford to sit idly by while our trade deficit grows and our domestic manufacturing base erodes.
By addressing currency manipulation and other unfair trade practices, we create American jobs and position ourselves to meet the challenges and opportunities of globalization.
I look forward to continued debate and action on finally penalizing the countries that cheat on trade.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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