Fast Track Trade
Floor Speech
FAST TRACK TRADE -- (House of Representatives - June 18, 2007)
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Ms. LINDA T. SÁNCHEZ of California. Thank you, Congressman Michaud, and I also thank Betty Sutton for being here this evening to talk about the President's Trade Promotion Authority and its effect on working families. Mr. Michaud and I cochair the House working group, and we have been working very hard this year to emphasize the impact that our current failed policy has on average households.
We are here because we believe that our trade policies should ensure a fair shake for American working families, not just for those who sit in corporate board rooms. We have already spoken many times in this House about the flaws in the new trade deal recently announced by the administration. This new deal, which applies to the Bush negotiated Free Trade Agreements with Peru and Panama, is an improvement over past FTAs, but it still doesn't give American families much to be excited about, quite honestly.
Despite additional labor and environmental provisions, these agreements are based on the NAFTA trade model, the same failed NAFTA model that has hurt the American family for the past decade, the same NAFTA trade model that didn't bring about the jobs or the prosperity that we were promised, the same NAFTA model that didn't stop the immigration flow from Mexico, the same NAFTA model that hasn't been able to assure that our trading partners uphold the strong labor and environmental standards that we do here in the United States, thus putting our workers at a competitive disadvantage.
If the long-sought-after labor and environmental protections the administration promises to include in the Peru and Panama FTAs are no stronger than those that we were promised in NAFTA or its cousin CAFTA, they are little more than hollow promises. Yet the Free-Trade-At-All-Costs lobby asks the American people to have faith that the administration has really turned over a new leaf. They are asking us to trust that enforceable labor and environmental standards will be included in the text of the Peru and Panama agreements. But even if these agreements are the best written, fairest trade agreements possible, so long as they rely on this administration to enforce the labor and environmental standards they contain, they are not worth the paper that they are written on.
This administration has failed to protect workers here in the U.S. The BP Texas City explosion, the Sago mine disaster and the 9/11 first responders and cleanup workers who have developed serious breathing ailments, these are just the most notorious examples of this administration's lack of dedication to provide even the most basic protection to workers: the right to work in a safe environment. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says these new worker and environmental protections can't be enforced.
Now, if that isn't telling, I don't know what it is. They flatly came out and said they are not enforceable. This President has lost our trust, and with it any argument that he has to renew his trade promotion authority. The administration's track record does not demonstrate a commitment to the working families of America.
Free trade was supposed to create economic opportunity for everyone, for big businesses, as well as small businesses, working families at home and abroad, but that, quite frankly, hasn't been the case. The truth of the matter is that the NAFTA free trade model favors the wealthiest at the expense of small businesses, workers, families, and ultimately communities, like the communities Mr. Michaud was talking about that are dependent upon millwork for their life blood.
More than a decade after NAFTA and NAFTA-styled replicas, it's clear that the promise of economic prosperity has yet to arrive. Our trade deficit has ballooned into the tens of millions of dollars. Real wages for American families are down, and our manufacturing base is falling apart.
We need an administration committed to protecting the rights of workers, and until we get one we cannot grant this administration an extension of Fast Track authority. The American people deserve better. They deserve a commitment to trade that expands their opportunities rather than diminishes them.
I urge all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to help our working families get back on track to economic prosperity.
I urge them to oppose the Fast Track renewal, and I want to thank, again, my two colleagues for their leadership on this issue, because they have been trying to carry this message to those who have been unwilling to hear it.
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Ms. LINDA T. SÁNCHEZ of California. Sure. About 2 weeks ago I returned from Colombia, and it was my second visit in just 7 months. Colombia is one of the countries that President Bush negotiated a free trade agreement with without really seeking the advice of those Members of Congress who have been vocal opponents to the NAFTA trade model which he based this agreement on.
And I have to say at the outset, Colombia is a beautiful country. It's people are a warm people. We were well received there. And so I want to be very clear that I am for expanding trade with countries around the world, but in a way that is fair and balanced to both our workers here in the United States and also the workers in the countries that we seek to engage in trade with.
Just for the record, Colombia has a horrible record on human rights and labor rights violations. In Colombia, more trade labor unionists were killed there last year than in all the countries of the world combined. So it has an abysmal record with respect to violence towards people who try to organize workers to help lift them out of poverty. And nobody really wants to talk about that dirty little secret of Colombia's, because they want to talk about how much better things are in the first 6 months of this year.
The statistics do show that there is an improvement. I will grant them that, and I applaud that. But it still means that about 99 percent of the murders that happened last year have gone unsolved, and nobody has been brought to justice for that.
And the reason why trade labor unionists are targeted is because they speak out on behalf of people who are living in poverty, who are earning wages that don't allow them to support themselves or a family. They're working in dangerous working conditions.
And I have to say, on the trip that I just most recently returned from, we really weren't given a lot of time to go and actually talk to the workers themselves about their experience. We were basically told by the government that things are getting better and things were improving.
Interestingly enough, the first trip that I took to Colombia last November, I met with labor organizations, civil rights groups and advocates, and I met with the workers themselves who told me, ``don't be fooled by the rosy picture that our government has painted. It's very dangerous here in Colombia to speak up if you are working in dangerous working conditions. It's very dangerous in Colombia to speak up if you'd like to see your wages rise so that you can support yourself.''
And, in fact, there is a very big informal labor sector in Colombia which isn't even subject to basic standards like a minimum wage. There's no minimum wage for these folks. There are no contributions made on behalf of them for the hours that they work into any kind of Social Security or pension system. And there are no workplace safety standards. A lot of these workers work in some of the biggest industries that they're pushing the free trade agreement because they say that they need to expand these industries, one of which being the textile industry, which is notorious for their workers that are part of the informal sector that don't have contracts, that don't have any basic rights.
And basically, in Colombia, when I bring up the point that there's this promise made to lift all these people out of poverty, but when they have to compete against U.S. goods, some of which will be subsidized, like many of our agricultural products, who is going to suffer the most? Who's going to bear the cost? Because they tell me, oh, yes, there are some transitional costs associated with moving towards this new free trade agreement, but they're transitional costs; they won't be forever, and not everybody's going to be affected.
But let me tell you who will be affected by those transitional costs: rural, poor, indigenous people and largely women who are heads of households. They are the ones that will suffer the most, not to mention American workers who will have to compete in industry with Colombia, where they have no minimum wage, no minimum work day, so they can work workers 16 hours a day if they want, and no safe working conditions.
And there's just, quite frankly, no way that American workers, who demand a certain level of respect and dignity at the workplace, are going to be able to compete in industries where those are the conditions that Colombian workers are working in.
Knowing all of this, did President Bush negotiate with Colombia a free trade agreement that would try to address those very basic labor standards? No. He based the Colombian free trade on the NAFTA model. They didn't even put in basic rights that are respected around the world as international standards for human and labor rights. He just said, hey, the marketplace is going to take care of it. We're going to move forward. This is the trade agreement, and Congress, because of Fast Track authority, you can't change it; you can't make it better; you can't amend it. It's either yes or no; you vote in favor of this. And if that's the choice that I'm given, my vote is no because it doesn't even try to address the problem with the labor standards and the violence in Colombia.
I say, hey, I'm willing to give Colombia the benefit of the doubt. If you can show to me over a certain length of time, minimum of 2 years, that, yeah, you've gone after these people that have targeted labor unionists, and yeah, you've moved people out of the informal sector into the formal sector where people have basic standards, I'm willing to give Colombia an opportunity. But I'm not willing to enter into a trade agreement with them based on empty promises of how much better things are going to be.
All we heard when we were there, 90 percent of what we heard was how much better Colombia was at human rights and how much better they were at trying to find those responsible for killing trade labor unionists. But while we were there, one of the biggest scandals that has hit Colombia in recent months is the scandal of paramilitary groups that are linked to elected members of their congress, elected governors, some of whom were hand picked, and cabinet members, some of whom were handpicked by President Uribe himself. And these paramilitary groups have been responsible for killing people, for massacres of villages of people. And currently, 14 elected officials sit in jail because they've been tied to these paramilitary groups. And there are as many as two dozen more that are under investigation.
But we're supposed to trust President Uribe that they're going to bring these people to justice and that labor rights and human rights are going to be better in Colombia. I say, show me, and then we'll sit down and negotiate. But I thought it might be interesting to just inform you guys a little bit about what the flavor of that trip was.
And like I said, I think the Colombian people are wonderful people. I think we need to open up new markets. But we need to do it in a way that's fair and balanced for our workers here, so we don't continue to hemorrhage manufacturing jobs, and for the workers in these countries, which corporations will exploit.
And with that, I will yield back to Mr. Michaud.
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