Free Flow of Information Act of 2007--Motion to Proceed--Continued
Floor Speech
FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued -- (Senate - July 30, 2008)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
DOHA ROUND OF WTO TALKS
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the Doha Round of World Trade Organization--the WTO--talks broke down yesterday. Given the tremendous problem with this Nation's trade policy, I don't know of many Ohioans who are going to be very upset, and I don't know of many of my colleagues who will be too troubled about World Trade Organization trade talks breaking down either.
The impasse at the WTO is no different from the pause we are in right now when it comes to trade. Americans are rightly skeptical about the course we are on when it comes to trade policy, and Congress reflects that skepticism. In the 2006 elections, voters all across the country told those of us in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, that they wanted a timeout on trade; that they wanted to see us go back and look at the success and failures of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Central American Free Trade Agreement--so-called CAFTA and NAFTA--and they want us to look at what PNTR--Permanent Normal Trade Relations--with China has meant. They want us to look at Colombia, and Peru, and Panama, and South Korea, and what those agreements might mean to our country.
It is pretty clear that Americans are not satisfied with the status quo of NAFTA, CAFTA, and WTO-modeled policies. One reason is our severely unbalanced trade relationship with the People's Republic of China. When it comes to competing with China, Ohio workers and manufacturers are playing with one hand tied behind their back. We shouldn't be playing under these rules.
Athletes at next week's Olympics will not be playing by these rules. Maybe there is a lesson there for the Chinese Government, for the United States Government, and for our trade policy. Workers, like athletes, can compete with anyone--good athletes and certainly American workers can compete with anyone where there is a level playing field and the rules are not rigged. But manufacturers and workers in Ohio are struggling to compete while our Government too often stands idly by while China games the system over and over and over.
This problem is urgent, as a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows. This report finds that the United States is hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs at an alarming pace. Nothing new there. More than 366,000 jobs were lost last year alone because of our trade deficit with China--366,000 jobs in 1 year because of our trade relationship with one country. In all, EPI counts 2.3 million jobs lost to the China trade deficit since China joined the World Trade Organization less than a decade ago.
Unless China raises the real value of its currency--the yuan--by at least an additional 30 percent, and lets it float on the international currency exchanges, as most countries do, the United States trade deficit and job losses will continue to grow.
Labor rights are also a factor. The AFL-CIO estimates that repression of labor rights by the Chinese Government has lowered manufacturing rates by as much as 80 percent. To put it in perspective, my office receives at least two or three TAA certifications a week--trade adjustments from the Trade Adjustment Act on workers losing their jobs because of international trade. We receive from the Labor Department at least two or three TAA certifications a week for Ohio manufacturers. Each of these certifications represents, in most cases, hundreds of workers and their families.
What happens to a community when there is job loss? Think about a community. I was speaking to a gentleman from Tiffin in the last hour. Think about the town of Tiffin, or Chillicothe or Wilmington or Finley or Mansfield--towns of 15,000, 20,000, 30,000, or 50,000 people. When they lose a plant, a manufacturing installation--or what is happening with DHL in Wilmington, which is way beyond that--even if they lose a plant with 300 or 400 workers, think about what it does, not just to a worker and his or her family, but what it does to the community at large, with the layoffs of police officers and teachers and firefighters, because there are significantly fewer jobs in a community of that size.
Last week, it was Ceva Logistics in Miamisburg that we got a TAA certification about--near Dayton; Acuity Lighting in Newark, and more Delphi workers. The same old story with Delphi and what has happened in the last year in Moraine, OH--again, near Dayton.
Yesterday, we got a TAA notice about Acklin Stamping Company in Toledo. The Labor Department certified that an increase in imports caused Acklin to lay off workers.
That was last week and yesterday. But how about today and how about tomorrow? Probably more TAA notices, because we get two or three almost every week. Probably more today, tomorrow, and next week, again because of a failed trade policy.
On my desk, I have a stack of auction notices from small tool and die manufacturers going out of business in my State and across the country. These notices are going-out-of-business sales. They are notices offering the sale of equipment from machine shops not just in my State but all over the country.
This week, I spoke with the CEO and the family owners of Norwalk Furniture in Norwalk, OH, a community between Cleveland and Toledo. We are trying to keep this 105-year-old company in business. Norwalk workers are represented by the Teamsters and United Steelworkers. It is a company playing by the rules, paying good wages in a small town in Ohio, with good benefits, trying to stay competitive despite having the deck stacked against it because of our trade policy with China.
Again, American companies are playing with one hand tied behind their back. China's undervalued currency and weak safety and environmental standards put American furniture manufacturers such as Norwalk at a huge disadvantage. Like many Ohio businesses, Norwalk Furniture can compete with China. It can and has competed with foreign competition. That is not the complaint. The reason manufacturers such as Norwalk Furniture are struggling and pleading for a change in trade policy is that they can't compete while the U.S. Government--the Bush Commerce Department, the Bush U.S. Trade Representative--stands by and allows China to game the system.
We see what these plant closings do to communities, which is why not only Norwalk Furniture is fighting back, but Mayor Lesch and others in Norwalk are joining them in this struggle. The trade deficit with China costs manufacturing jobs, and not just low-skilled jobs, as is commonly thought.
One very salient point from the EPI report is that it is not only apparel jobs we are talking about, and not only relatively low-wage jobs. We are getting into high-tech products, many integral to our defense industrial base. The report finds that more than a quarter of last year's record trade deficit with China was due to advanced technology products.
Last year, a $68 billion deficit in advanced technology products was responsible for more than 25 percent of the total United States-China trade deficit. Since 2001, the flood of advanced technology imports from China eliminated 561,000 United States jobs in computer and electronic products. So we are not just talking about textile and apparel jobs.
EPI also counts more than $8,000 in lost income for displaced workers. People who support U.S. trade policy--President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the Republican leadership in this body--say: Well, yes, prices are low as a result of U.S. trade policy, but when companies such as shoe manufacturers move out of the United States or a steel manufacturer moves out of the United States, I don't see steel or shoe prices dropping necessarily. So I don't know if that argument holds water.
Even if you concede it might affect prices some, EPI counts more than $8,000 in lost income per displaced worker. So what does that mean? It means someone working at American Standard in Tiffin, OH, or someone at the old Westinghouse plant in Mansfield, where I grew up, or a GM worker in Dayton or a DHL worker or ABX or ASTAR in Wilmington, when they lose a good-paying job making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, or $60,000 a year, the next job they have on the average makes $8,000--if they can find a job--makes $8,000 less than they were used to making. And lower prices don't give you much of a break when you have a new job at $8,000 less than your old job.
Proponents of China PNTR or NAFTA like to say that the jobs displaced from China are replaced with export-oriented jobs that pay better, or jobs in the service sector that pay better. Again, not true. The truth is that wages earned in United States export heavy industry paid 4 percent less than the jobs displaced by Chinese imports. So when we lose these jobs to Chinese imports, it is costing our workers that $8,000 we were talking about. Even if we are exporting some to China, the amount we are exporting to China versus the amount we are bringing in obviously is a huge chasm. It is the better paying jobs that are moving offshore or closing because of a flood of Chinese imports.
The failure of the WTO talks could, in fact, be a blessing. The DOHA talks long ago became more of a threat than an opportunity to American farmers and to American workers and long ago represented more of a threat than an opportunity for sustainable development abroad for our trading partners.
We have an opportunity now, because of the failure of DOHA, to step away, to evaluate what is working and what is not working and start again with a new trade model--for New Jersey, the State of the Presiding Officer, and for my State. I have introduced legislation, S. 3083, the TRADE Act, which evaluates our Trade Agreements Program, which allows for renegotiation and which sets forth principles for future trade deals.
In my State, in the last year and a half, I have held about 110 roundtables in 75 of Ohio's 88 counties where I gather a group of 20 or 25 people, a cross-section of the community, and listen to them talk about their hopes and dreams and what they wish and hope for in their community and what they are fighting for, for their families and their communities. Few issues in these roundtables get workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans--and I don't know people's party affiliations at these roundtables--few issues get them as worked up as our unfair trading relationship with China in deals such as NAFTA and CAFTA that protect Wall Street investors but don't protect labor, don't protect safety, don't protect the environment.
We have an opportunity, in the coming months and especially next year with the new President, to renew a consensus on trade. I look forward to working in my caucus and across the aisle on a better approach to trade policy for our workers, for their families, for our communities, and for our country.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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