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Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I rise today to speak about a subject matter I touched on about a month ago regarding current trade negotiations.
I don't blame elected officials for pushing legislation, policy proposals, or ideas that further their home State's interests. In fact, I think that is one of the first things we should do here, that is, to make sure the folks who elected us know we are standing up for them.
But I also think there comes a time when we need to recognize that the long-term interests of our collective constituents are at risk, even when we are doing short term things that put us at risk.
This is why I have decided that I wish to speak a little bit about the current status of the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP negotiations.
I learned overnight and this morning that the American team of the TPP negotiators has tabled language which would carve certain American-grown commodities out of the protections of the trade deal's investor-state dispute settlement--or ISDS--mechanism.
By carving out tobacco from the TPP, the President and his administration are discriminating against an entire agriculture commodity, setting a dangerous precedent for future trade agreements.
I rise today to defend the farmers, the manufacturers, and the exporters from the discriminatory treatment in this proposed trade agreement. What they have decided to do right now relates to tobacco. Today it happens to be about tobacco, but I will do this for any crop now and for any agriculture commodity for any State going forward in the future. This is not just about tobacco. This is about American values and fairness.
In July I stood on this same floor and I discussed this same issue. I went out of my way to emphasize that I believe free trade is good. That is why I voted for trade promotion authority. A balanced trade agreement will benefit all of us.
I also recognize that the United States over the years has tried to do more with these agreements than merely haggle for market access or tariff reductions. Over the past 30 years, the United States has consistently imported certain components of our American system into these agreements, including due process protections, dispute settlement procedures, and the protection of private property rights.
These are now standard terms that those who engage with the United States at the bargaining table know are not negotiable.
They never have been--that is, until yesterday.
Our negotiators have now concluded that while some investors are entitled to equal treatment under the law, others aren't. What our negotiators have proposed sets the stage for the remainder of this negotiation and for those deals which will be negotiated in the future, such as the agreement with Europe and future agreements with African nations.
Our trade agreements are now apparently nothing more than laboratories for setting partisan policies and picking winners and losers. If we condone this kind of behavior, how can we be assured it will ever end?
As I stated in July, once we allow an entire sector to be treated unfairly, the question is, who is next? Is it the beef industry in Nebraska? Is it the pork industry in States such as Iowa and North Carolina? Is it the poultry industry in Delaware, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Georgia?
We need not look far to find protracted, heated policy debates about any number of issues that affect trade--the consumption of coal, energy exploration practices, the use of pesticides, the use of biotechnology. The right place for those debates is in bodies like this one, not in trade agreements. The wrong place is what is going on right now with our trade negotiators and the members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
I hold a sincere belief that unfair treatment for one agricultural commodity significantly heightens the risk that more unfair treatment for another commodity lurks around the corner.
I have no choice but to use this forum to make two very important points and make it very clear to the negotiators as we reach the final stages of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.
First, I would like to speak to process concerns. A failure to abide by the process and the terms governing the process as established by the TPA is unacceptable. When I state that I have no choice but to use the Senate floor to make these points, I mean it.
A full 8 weeks ago, I wrote to our Trade Ambassador cautioning him about this course of action and requesting that he consult with me as he was statutorily obligated in the TPA to do.
To explain to those in the Gallery, we passed a bill that said we wanted to provide the President with trade promotion authority. We wanted to empower representatives of the United States to negotiate with trading partners who are in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We wanted to support that, over the objections of many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
We also set certain ground rules for being able to do that. They had to review with Congress some of the proposed items of the agreement that may be the most contentious about intellectual property, about the carve-out. But to date I have had absolutely no additional communication from the Ambassador or his designees. In other words, it has been lights out.
In fact, I would ask any Member of the Senate whether they honestly know what currently is in the TPP agreement that is being, in my mind, pushed forward and pushed to a point where we will just have a simple up-or-down vote. I think this abuse of the process is in violation of the letter and the spirit of the TPA.
The last time anybody spoke to me regarding this particular provision that has to do with the carve-out, I was told it is something our partners were insisting on. The actions of the last 24 hours--namely, that the United States actually tabled the language in question--really raises serious doubts about that assertion.
Second, I want to speak to the growing view that the TPP is not being negotiated in accordance with the substance of the TPA. The failure to abide by the substance of the provisions of TPA puts the privileged status of the proposed treaty at risk, and it is something I am going to spend a lot of time focusing on.
I would remind this body that we have already, in a bipartisan fashion, disavowed language that treats some products differently. In the TPA, Congress said that opportunities for U.S. agriculture exports must be ``substantially equivalent to opportunities afforded foreign exports in U.S. markets.'' Congress has stated that dispute settlement mechanisms must be available across the board, not selectively.
I voted to give the President trade promotion authority to allow trade agreements such as the TPP to move through Congress in a quick, orderly, and responsible fashion. Congress granted the President trade promotion authority with the mutual understanding that his administration would negotiate deals in good faith. I did not vote to give the President and the administration the freedom to indiscriminately choose when fairness should be applied and when it should be ignored.
If the President chooses to arbitrarily ignore TPA provisions he doesn't like, then Congress is not obliged to honor the fast-track status. If any carve-out is ultimately included in the TPP, I will work hard to defeat it.
I might add that our own majority leader has expressed concerns over this and has expressed the same sentiment to the trade negotiation team.
In closing, I wish to offer this to anyone who believes my sticking up for tobacco or this particular provision or for equal treatment and American values is shortsighted: I want you to know that I would do it for beef in Nebraska, for pork in Iowa, for poultry in Delaware, for any farmer who is being unfairly carved out as a result of the administration's desire to put provisions in a trade agreement that simply shouldn't be there, and which have not been there historically.
So to the Members of the Senate and to the American people and the farmers out there, I want you to know I am going to continue this fight. I am going to continue this fight not because it satisfies a home constituency, but because I intend to protect the free trade ideals that have made the United States the most desirable trading partner in the world.
Thank you, Madam President.
I also want you to know that I think there is a growing sense of concern--whether it is Senator Hatch, Senator McConnell, or a number of other Senators--that regardless of how they feel about this particular issue with tobacco, the provision in such a trade agreement is unacceptable. I hope our trade negotiators recognize that we are focusing a lot of attention on this, and they risk putting together a good trade agreement that we would all like to get behind as a result.
Thank you, Madam President.
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