International Trade Agreements

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I have a strong belief in the power of international trade agreements to make a profound difference. It is not just because 95 percent of the global economy is outside the United States. These agreements are necessary to raise standards, protect the environment, and to avoid the tragedy of the commons.

I have seen the global economy raise living standards in China, Africa, and India, Singapore being the most powerful example. However, there were decidedly mixed results with Mexico. The gap between theory and practice showed that the promise of NAFTA was overblown and that the critics were right.

Poor Mexican farmers could not compete against massively subsidized American corn, and U.S. workers could not compete against $3 an hour Mexican factory workers.

Too much of American business was focused on financial and tax engineering, not actually engineering better products. They were gaming the tax system and extending patent protection, not winning new patents. The worst example was GE's downward spiral under Jack Welch's ruthless capitalism. However, I have been encouraged with the Biden administration's worker-centered trade policy.

I am proud of my work as the lead Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee dealing with international trade, working to level the playing field, fighting to improve trade agreements.

We made major advances, for example, reducing illegal logging by more than 40 percent and providing legislation that was a model for other countries to help stem this damaging practice. Our May 10th Agreement provided enforceable labor and environmental standards.

I was pleased to help lead the effort to revise NAFTA to strengthen its environmental protections, worker protections, and the enforcement of agreements to protect these advances. I hope these NAFTA revisions will start a new era of trade policy, but it is time to push back against the Chinese.

I am tired of their two-tiered system where they claim to be a developing country when it works to their advantage while being an economic powerhouse, one of the largest and most powerful in the world.

We must fight to protect and strengthen the WTO. There is no substitute for our being engaged in Geneva along with 163 other countries. It is hard work, but it is worth it.

Finally, we must battle to have China honor their WTO commitments made three decades ago. I have a special concern about the de minimis loophole, a provision in our tax code that allows China to ship directly to American consumers $800 or less in terms of product value. It is going to allow a billion packages into the United States economy untaxed, uninspected. We have 15 Republican attorneys general who have raised the alarm about this provision. We are seeing shoddy products made with slave labor. They are shipping fentanyl precursors directly to American drug dealers. It is time to stop that practice.

I have legislation that would close the de minimis loophole. I strongly urge my colleagues to cosponsor my Import Security and Fairness Act, which would stop these products flowing from a nonmarket economy on the watch list. Currently, that is just China, but they are the source of 60 percent of these 1 billion de minimis products. Doing so will protect American business, American consumers, public safety, and human rights. We can usher in a new era of worker-centered sustainable trade. The world is depending on us.

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