Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing a piece of legislation aimed at changing the course of our international trade policy.
Part of the problem with our current trade agenda is that there is no mechanism to gauge whether the trade agreements we enter into are successful--and there is no mechanism to withdraw from agreements that have not been successful.
So I am joining with Senators Brown and Casey in introducing the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act, which aims to fix that.
This is how the bill would work.
The legislation would create a point of order in the Senate against any future bill implementing a new trade agreement unless it included benchmarks to gauge the success or failure of the agreement.
The benchmarks would include, at a minimum, the trade agreement's impact in four respects.
First, the number of U.S. jobs created and lost.
Second, the impact on U.S. wages.
Third, the extent to which U.S. exports gain foreign market access in key sectors.
Fourth, the extent to which labor and environmental laws are followed and enforced.
The U.S. Trade Representative's office could include additional benchmarks in the implementing legislation, at their discretion.
Every 5 years, the U.S. International Trade Commission, ITC, would assess whether the benchmarks in the implementing legislation had been met.
If the ITC determined that any of the benchmarks were not met, there would be an expedited process under which the House and the Senate would consider a privileged resolution to pull the United States out of the trade agreement.
The resolution would be considered under expedited rules. The resolution would first be referred to the Ways and Means and Finance committees. If those committees failed to report out the resolution within a set period of time, either favorably or unfavorably, the resolution would be automatically discharged to the full House and Senate.
The resolution would not be amendable, and a floor vote in the House and the Senate on whether to approve the resolution would be mandatory.
Let me explain why something like this is necessary.
When NAFTA was sent to Congress for a vote in 1993, its advocates said that there would be 200,000 new jobs created annually as a result.
The proponents relied on a study by economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott. Hufbauer and Schott actually predicted that NAFTA would create 170,000 new jobs by 1995. But proponents of the deal in the administration and the Senate rounded this number up to 200,000 jobs.
Well, we now know that NAFTA has resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses. About 412,000 U.S. jobs have been certified as lost to NAFTA, under just one program at the U.S. Labor Department.
In 2003, 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service, which identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA, between 1994 and 2002.
To come up with its data, CRS turned to the Department of Labor, which has a ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' program that gives temporary benefits to workers laid off due to NAFTA.
This program requires companies to certify that they intended to eliminate U.S. jobs specifically because of NAFTA. This means that we can directly attribute these job losses to NAFTA.
These 100 companies accounted for 201,414 U.S. jobs lost specifically due to NAFTA. In every instance, the companies doing the layoffs certified that the jobs were being cut directly because of NAFTA.
If you look at all U.S. companies that participated in the Department of Labor program, the total number of U.S. jobs lost due to NAFTA is 412,177--and that is just under this one program alone.
There are some very familiar products, which many people consider all-American, now being produced in Mexico.
Levi Strauss laid off 15,676 U.S. workers due to NAFTA, and now makes its jeans in Mexico.
In March 2003, Kraft Foods closed the Nabisco plant in Fair Lawn, NJ, that made Fig Newtons. About 240 jobs were lost right there. Those jobs are now in Monterrey, Mexico. Kraft Foods has cut about 955 jobs due to NAFTA.
Fruit of the Loom laid off 5,352 U.S. workers in Texas alone, and thousands more in Louisiana. I have often said that it is one thing to lose your shirt, quite another to lose your shorts.
In March 2001, Mattel closed its last factory in the U.S.--a western Kentucky plant that produced toys such as Barbie playhouses and battery-powered pickups for nearly 30 years. The company shifted production at the 980-employee Kentucky plant to factories in Mexico.
John Deere has laid off about 1,150 workers, who made lawn mowers and chainsaws, and moved the jobs to Mexico.
By the way, in addition to this CRS study, a separate study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the overall net effect of NAFTA had been the loss of nearly 800,000 American jobs.
Today, the administration and the U.S. Trade Representative are careful to avoid promising that new trade agreements will create more U.S. jobs than the agreements will destroy.
But the administration has no problem figuring out how great trade deals will be for other countries.
One month before the administration signed a trade agreement with Korea last year, our principal negotiator in Korea, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler, was already touting the benefits that the agreement would offer Korea:
An FTA with the United States is predicted to produce significant economic benefits for the Korean economy, increasing Korea's real GDP by as much as 2%, establishing a foundation for Korea to achieve per capita income to as high as $30,000, boosting exports to the United States by 15%, and creating 100,000 new jobs.
Remarkably, Ms. Cutler had no difficulty predicting a specific level of job creation in Korea. But she made no similar projection with respect to the United States.
Well, we need accountability in trade agreements. And the best way to do that is with benchmarks.
This is a forward-looking strategy for a successful trade policy that is in America's national interest.
Our bill would apply only to future trade agreements. It would not apply retroactively to NAFTA.
I should say, however, that I think it is important that we gauge the impact of NAFTA on U.S. jobs. And I was able to include language in the omnibus conference report that will require the Department of Labor, by the end of 2008, to calculate the net impact of NAFTA on U.S. jobs, industry by industry.
In any event, we think that this piece of legislation should be embraced by the U.S. Congress, because the American people are beginning to demand accountability in trade.
On October 4, the Wall Street Journal provided fresh evidence that the American people don't believe that free trade deals are creating jobs.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story with the headline ``Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade.''
The story described a poll, which found that by a two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade deals have been bad for the U.S. economy.
It turns out that dissatisfaction with our current trade policy is a bipartisan sentiment.
The poll found that 59 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement:
Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy, because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products.
Only 32 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement:
Foreign trade has been good for the US. economy, because demand for U.S. products abroad has resulted in economic growth and jobs for Americans here at home and provided more choices for consumers.
This poll suggests a dramatic change in the way Americans view free trade agreements.
In December 1999, the Wall Street Journal did a poll that found that only 31 percent of Republican voters thought free trade agreements had hurt our country.
But in this month's poll, the Wall Street Journal found that the number of Republican voters opposing free trade agreements had risen from 31 percent to 59 percent.
Clearly, the American people have seen the results of free trade deals, and they don't like what they see. They demand accountability. And the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act would give them precisely that.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 2611
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act''.
SEC. 2. LIMITATIONS ON BILLS IMPLEMENTING TRADE AGREEMENTS.
(a) In General.--Notwithstanding section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2191) or any other provision of law, any bill implementing a trade agreement between the United States and another country shall be subject to a point of order pursuant to subsection (c) unless the bill--
(1) is accompanied by a statement of the benchmarks described in subsection (b)(1) and that statement is approved as part of the implementing bill; and
(2) contains the reporting provisions described in subsection (b)(2).
(b) Benchmarks and Reporting Provisions.--
(1) BENCHMARKS.--
(A) IN GENERAL.--Each bill implementing a trade agreement shall be accompanied by a statement that contains benchmarks described in subparagraph (B) and predictions made by the International Trade Commission, the United States Trade Representative, and other Federal agencies, of the impact the implementation of the agreement will have on the United States economy.
(B) DESCRIPTION OF BENCHMARKS.--The benchmarks described in this subparagraph are as follows:
(i) An estimate of the number of new jobs that will be created, the number of existing jobs that will be lost, and the expected net effect on job creation in the United States as a result of the agreement. The estimate shall include the number and type of the new jobs that will be created and lost.
(ii) An assessment and quantitative analysis of the extent to which the agreement will result in an improvement in wages for workers in the United States.
(iii) An assessment and quantitative analysis of how each country that is a party to the agreement is implementing and enforcing the labor and environmental standards that are part of the agreement.
(iv) A quantitative analysis of the extent to which the agreement will result in an increase in the access by United States businesses to the market of each country that is a party to the agreement, particularly those sectors identified by the United States Trade Representative as of special importance with respect to the agreement.
(2) REPORTING PROVISIONS.--The reporting provisions described in this subsection are that each bill implementing a trade agreement shall contain a requirement that not later than 5 years after the date the agreement enters into force with respect to the United States, and every 5 years thereafter, the International Trade Commission shall submit to Congress a report that provides an assessment and quantitative analysis of how the trade agreement has resulted in meeting the benchmarks described in paragraph (1).
(3) CONTENTS AND CONCLUSIONS OF REPORT.--The International Trade Commission shall determine in any report required by this section regarding an agreement whether the benchmarks and predictions described in paragraph (1)(B) (i) and (ii) have been met with respect to that agreement.
(c) Point of Order in Senate.--The Senate shall cease consideration of a bill to implement a trade agreement, if--
(1) a point of order is made by any Senator against any bill implementing a trade agreement that is not accompanied by statement regarding the benchmarks to be achieved by the agreement or does not contain the reporting provisions regarding the benchmarks described in subsection (b); and
(2) the point of order is sustained by the Presiding Officer.
(d) Withdrawal of Approval.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--The approval of Congress, provided in a bill to implement a trade agreement, shall cease to be effective if, and only if, a report described in subsection (b) indicates that the benchmarks and predictions made in connection with the agreement are not being met and a joint resolution described in subsection (e) is enacted into law pursuant to the provisions of subsection (e) and paragraph (2).
(2) PROCEDURAL PROVISIONS.--
(A) IN GENERAL.--The requirements of this paragraph are met if the joint resolution is enacted under subsection (e), and--
(i) Congress adopts and transmits the joint resolution to the President before the end of the 1-year period (excluding any day described in section 154(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2194(b)), beginning on the date on which Congress receives a report described in subsection (b); and
(ii) if the President vetoes the joint resolution, each House of Congress votes to override that veto on or before the later of the last day of the 1-year period referred to in clause (i) or the last day of the 15-day period (excluding any day described in section 154(b) of the Trade Act of 1974) beginning on the date on which Congress receives the veto message from the President.
(B) INTRODUCTION.--A joint resolution to which this section applies may be introduced at any time on or after the date on which the International Trade Commission transmits to Congress a report described in subsection (b), and before the end of the 1-year period referred to in subparagraph (A)(i).
(e) Joint Resolutions.--
(1) JOINT RESOLUTIONS.--For purposes of this section, the term ``joint resolution'' means only a joint resolution of the 2 Houses of Congress, the matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows: ``That Congress withdraws its approval, provided under section __ of the __XXXXXXXXX, of the __XXXX Agreement.'', with the first blank space being filled with the section of the Act implementing and approving the applicable agreement, the second blank space being filled with the name of the Act implementing and approving the agreement, and the third blank space being filled with the title of the agreement.
(2) PROCEDURES.--
(A) INTRODUCTION AND REFERRAL.--
(i) HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.--Joint Resolutions in the House of Representatives--
(I) may be introduced by any Member of the House;
(II) shall be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means and, in addition, to the Committee on Rules; and
(III) may not be amended by either Committee.
(ii) SENATE.--Joint Resolutions in the Senate--
(I) may be introduced by any Member of the Senate;
(II) shall be referred to the Committee on Finance; and
(III) may not be amended.
(B) CONSIDERATION BY COMMITTEES.--
(i) HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.--It is not in order for the House of Representatives to consider any resolution that is not reported by the Committee on Ways and Means and, in addition, by the Committee on Rules.
(ii) SENATE.--It is not in order for the Senate to consider any resolution that is not reported by the Committee on Finance.
(C) APPLICATION OF OTHER PROVISIONS.--The provisions of section 152 (c), (d), and (e) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2192 (c), (d), and (e)) (relating to discharge of committees and floor consideration of certain resolutions in the House and Senate) shall apply to joint resolutions under this section to the same extent as such provisions apply to resolutions under such section.
(3) RULES OF HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATE.--This subsection is enacted by Congress--
(A) as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively, and as such is deemed a part of the rules of each House, respectively, and such procedures supersede other rules only to the extent that they are inconsistent with such other rules; and
(B) with the full recognition of the constitutional right of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedures of that House) at any time, in the same manner and to the same extent as any other rule of that House.
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