Trade Transparency

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am joined on the floor this evening by
Senator Casey. Just 2 weeks ago, he and I and a half dozen other
Senators came to the floor in an unusual configuration. It is not
something Senators do all that often. We came as a group, but each
spoke individually about our concerns with trade promotion authority
and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both the so-called fast track and
the trade agreement that is being negotiated among the United States,
Canada, Mexico, some Pacific nations, and Peru, I believe, too, as well
as nations in Asia.

The concerns we have and the concerns an increasing number of
Senators have about trade promotion authority, about fast track--they
changed the name because they knew the public did not like fast track,
so they tried to obscure it by coming up with some technical-sounding
name--trade promotion authority. We have increasingly seen the public
rising up against these trade agreements because we have watched them
for some 20 years, and we have seen the damage the North American Free
Trade Agreement did to the United States, to our economy, and to
workers around the world. We have seen that has been sort of a
prototype for the next generation of CAFTA and other agreements in
Colombia and Peru and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

I want to discuss this, in part, because we know so little about the
U.S. Trade Representative's upcoming trade agenda and specifically the
Trans-Pacific Partnership. The way we pass trade agreements, and it is
important for colleagues to understand this, stands in a class by
itself. No other legislation we do is as hidden not only from public
view but even those in this body whose constitutional duty it is to
approve or reject them.

Senator Casey and I stood here in the well of the Senate, we raised
our right hands--Senator Casey and I were honored to come in at the
same time, as of January 2007 and then again in January 2013. We raised
our right hands and took an oath understanding our constitutional duty
to approve or reject trade agreements.

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution entrusts in Congress the
authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations, but the current
TPP language is being guarded as though it were a State secret. Members of this body were permitted to view the language only with U.S. Trade Representative staff there, not with their personal staff.

Nora Todd, in my office, who has great skills and expertise and has
worked on trade issues for years, because she is not committee staff is
not able to view this. The USTR refuses to put down in writing their
policy for restricting access. So the access is restricted, but we
can't even find out from the U.S. Trade Rep what this actually means,
except we know access is restricted. It means few Senators and fewer of
our staff--and damn the public who have worked on this issue--have ever
seen the text at all.

Trade agreements such as this affect our entire economy. Forty
percent of world GDP is included in this Trans-Pacific Partnership,
with countries as big as Japan, the United States, and economies as big
as Canada's and Mexico's. This will affect the entire economy and cause
ripple effects for decades.

We know what CAFTA did, and that was only three countries--the United
States, Canada, and Mexico. This is four times that many countries.
They should be debated in a transparent process. The public should
know, Senators and Members of Congress should know. We don't know
enough. Yet the Finance Committee fairly soon is going to push this
trade agreement out of fast track and the agreement out onto the Senate
Floor, when we simply don't have access to information.

Let me give an example. Last year, the U.S. Trade Rep developed a
proposal on something called the rules of origin for automobiles. That
really matters in my State. It matters in Senator Casey's State because
they are such a major part of the steel and other supply chain items
for autos. I have been trying to work with the USTR to better
understand this proposal since last October. I personally spoke again
last week with Ambassador Froman to understand it better.

Rules of origin are very important provisions in a trade agreement.
They determine how much of a product's components need to come from TPP countries in order to qualify under the agreement. What that means is
we know as American consumers it is hard to find a suit, it is hard to
find much of anything made in the U.S.A., but we also know many
American consumers would like to buy products that are 40 or 50 or 80
percent from the United States--made by workers in Kansas or workers in
Pennsylvania or workers in Ohio. But we aren't able to tell under the
rules of origin what that number is and where those components come
from.

So if there is going to be a trade advantage to Japan--and they have
had plenty of trade advantages when it comes to autos--we don't know if
those automobile components come 70 or 80 percent from Japan and maybe 20 percent from China or 60 percent from China. We don't know that
because the U.S. Trade Rep will not tell us. So what we are concerned
about--and China is not in TPP--is that the People's Republic of China
will manufacture so much of the supply chain, so many of these
components, backdoor it into China, so people in China are hired
instead of people in the United States or the people in these countries
we are trading with.

These provisions are critical for the auto supply chain in our
country because they are already facing fierce competition with China.
We need to make sure we have strong rules of origin so cars are made
and assembled in TPP countries, not China. The auto supply chain
employs 120,000 people in Ohio. It will be affected by the auto rules
of origin in TPP.

To understand how important that is, our country, from 2000 to 2010,
the end of the Clinton administration until 2 years into the Obama
administration--mostly the 8 Bush years--we lost 5 million
manufacturing jobs, 60,000 plants in places such as Pennsylvania and
Ohio. We know that. Our economy has been growing, however, since two
things: the Recovery Act of 2009 and the auto rescue of 2010. We have
seen 58, 59, 60 months of economic growth, consecutive months, since
then. That underscores how important auto is in my State, where, as I
said, 120,000 people are in the auto supply chain.

But we continue to face roadblocks just to getting the basic
information on a plan that would have a major effect on Ohio's auto
supply chain. What I don't understand is why would this body, why would
the 100 people who took that oath, as Senator Casey and I did in 2013
and 2007 in this Chamber, vote for something we can't get information
about? Why would anybody who took an oath of office do that?

We worked with the administration to rescue the auto manufacturing
sector, and it helped save our auto industry--tens of thousands of jobs
in that supply chain--so I want to make sure the TPP rules of origin
for autos will not benefit China. I want it to benefit American
companies, and I want it to benefit American workers.

I grew up in Mansfield, OH. I have seen what globalization has done
for jobs, and I have seen what globalization has done to wages.
Mansfield, OH, is a city of 50,000. We have a lot of Mansfields in my
State: Zanesville, Chillicothe, Ravenna, Lima, Springfield. These are
cities that used to be prosperous manufacturing hubs that have lost so
many jobs. Not all jobs were lost due to globalization, but a big part
of that is globalization. That is why, when USTR will not share the
information we need to understand this proposal, it is particularly
troubling.

We can see what has happened. This trade agreement--corporate
handout, worker sellout--look what has happened since 1980. These are
the average salaries, the blue line, of the richest 1 percent in
America. Look what has happened to the richest 1 percent starting in
the early days of the Reagan administration. Look what has happened to
everyone else. We have the richest 1 percent who have seen their
incomes go up about 130 percent. We have everybody else's incomes that
have gone up around 10, 12 or 15 percent--and that is not for here,
that is for overall.

Again, globalization is not the entire reason, but when they will not
share, when USTR will not tell us what is going on, it is particularly
troubling when we look at this chart. We know our workers--we know Ohio
workers and manufacturers can compete with anyone in the world, but
they need fair rules and they need a level playing field. They do not
have that here. It is clear. The rules of origin aren't the only part
of the deal being developed in the dark. News reports yesterday
revealed the USTR may be negotiating side letters on intellectual
property provisions. The same report indicates the side letters might
cover other issues as well.

We remember the NAFTA side letters on labor and the environment and
we know how effective they were. They weren't. Clearly, they were sort
of the Bush administration, the first, negotiating and then the Clinton
administration, trying to get support in the Senate and the House,
adding these side agreements that amounted to nothing. It was to
placate workers and to placate the environmentalists, but it did very
little. We can't make the same mistake with the TPP.

Will the side letters be covered by the agreement's dispute
settlement? When will Members of Congress be able to see these letters?
What impact will they have on the overall agreement? These are
questions Members of Congress are asking and we are not getting answers
from Ambassador Froman or the U.S. Trade Rep's office. It is time the
USTR provided some real answers.

It is our job to scrutinize every trade proposal to ensure it creates
a level playing field. It isn't just another corporate handout that
shifts jobs overseas.

This lack of transparency isn't limited to TPP. I have asked the USTR
to make the United States-European Union--the so-called TTIP
agreement--proposal public. Once again, these requests for more
transparency have been met with nothing but secrecy. Meanwhile, the EU
makes their proposals public.

This isn't about protecting the privileges of Senator Casey and me--
the privilege of Senators, this is about protecting our small
companies, our manufacturing companies that get obliterated when large
companies move offshore. This is about protecting the workers in places
such as Toledo and Akron, OH. This is about protecting these
communities. When plants close in Jackson, OH, and plants close in
Waverly and Portsmouth and St. Clairsville and Lisbon, school districts lay off teachers, police departments lay off cops, and cities lay off firefighters.

We have been down this road too many times in this country. It has
been more than 20 years since NAFTA. Too many plants shut down in Ohio,
too many shut down in Pennsylvania, and too many shut down in the State
of Louisiana--the State of the Presiding Officer. Too many good jobs
were shipped abroad, and if they were replaced at all it is with low-
wage jobs with little benefits.

Bad trade deals exacerbate the rise in inequality, corporate profits
go up, and middle-class families struggle to get by. These trade
agreements are all about corporate handouts and worker sellouts. Over
the past four decades, worker productivity rose 75 percent, wages rose
9 percent. What that says, since 1946 into the Reagan years,
productivity went like this, workers were this much more productive,
and wages stayed parallel to that. But since the Reagan years, as
productivity went up workers wages have been flat, except for the
richest 1 percent, who saw their salaries explode. Everybody else has
lived in an economy where things just don't get better.

The report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, cochaired by
Larry Summers, concluded that ``powerful forces of globalization . . .
must be navigated or inequalities will continue to widen, and for many,
precarious low-skill work will increasingly become the norm.''

Fast-tracking--that is what TPA is--fast-tracking proposals such as
TPP, without congressional input, without congressional knowledge, let
alone public knowledge of this--without congressional input, without
oversight, even the bare facts of the deal--reduces our ability to
navigate the forces of globalization and to advocate for the workers,
which is what Senator Casey and I spend most of our time doing here. It
perpetuates the USTR's approach to trade negotiations. I am in the
middle of reading a book, ``The House of Morgan,'' about J.P. Morgan,
Sr., and J.P. Morgan, Jr. I can't help thinking, that attitude, the
public be damned, is what the USTR is doing to us right now. They don't
care to share information with Senator Casey and me and the rest of
this body, supporters of the USTR and opponents of the USTR, and they
sure don't care about the public learning more about this. All of this
will only lead to more inequality.

I want trade; I support trade; I want more trade. Ohio workers want
access to new markets for our products. But we need trade that works.
The way we get trade that works is not by rushing into more corporate-
sponsored trade agreements without even knowing what we are signing.
The USTR needs to open up the process; otherwise, the public is
convinced they are going to see more corporate handouts and more worker
sellouts.

I yield the floor to my friend, Senator Casey.

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