Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, before speaking specifically to our amendment, I wish also to indicate that there are a number of very important amendments coming before us in this open debate process. I am pleased we have a number of amendments pending that, hopefully, will be offered and voted on that relate to other very important topics.

One of those topics is an amendment currently pending offered by Senator Brown. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of that amendment. It will clarify the process for new countries to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to ensure that additional countries, including China, cannot join the agreement without congressional approval. So I hope we will get a vote on that amendment, which is certainly part of this whole discussion on currency manipulation when we look at Asia, when we look at Japan now, and when we look at China. This is an important amendment.

I also wish to indicate that I have terrific respect for the chairman of the Finance Committee. I wish to address an amendment that I believe will be offered as a side-by-side to the Portman-Stabenow amendment. I urge colleagues to reject what is essentially nothing more than a rewrite of pretty much the same weak language that exists in the underlying bill. It changes some words around. It basically would not put us on record as 60 Members of the Senate to make sure we have enforceable currency provisions in this trade agreement moving forward.

At this point in time, when we look at currency manipulation, it is the most significant 21st century trade barrier there is. To quote the vice president of international government affairs for Ford Motor Company in the Wall Street Journal:

Currency manipulation is the mother of all trade barriers. We can compete with any car manufacturer in the world, but we can't compete with the Bank of Japan.

We want our businesses and we want our workers to have a level playing field in a global economy. When we are giving instructions--when we are giving up the right to amend the Trans-Pacific Partnership through this fast-track process involving 40 percent of the global economy--we have the right and obligation to make sure we have a negotiating principle in there. We are not mandating exactly what it looks like. We are just applying a negotiating principle that addresses the No. 1 trade barrier right now to American businesses, which is currency manipulation. By some estimates, it has cost the United States 5 million jobs. If we don't address it in this reasonable way, it will cost us millions more.

Our people, our workers, and our businesses are the best in the world. We know that, but they have to have a level playing field. Currency manipulation is cheating--plain and simple. A strong U.S. dollar against a weak foreign currency, particularly one that is artificially weak due to government manipulation, means that foreign products are cheaper here and U.S. products are more expensive there.

One U.S. automaker estimates the weak yen gives Japanese competitors an advantage of anywhere from $6,000 to $11,000 in the price of a car, not because of anything they are doing other than cheating by manipulating their currency. It is hard to compete with those kinds of numbers: $6,000 to $11,000 difference in the price of an automobile. At one point it was calculated that one of the Japanese company's entire profit on a vehicle was coming from currency manipulation.

Frankly, this is not about competing between--the U.S. going into Japan--that has also been a red herring. It is about the United States and Japan competing against each other in a global economy for the business of the developing countries. For instance, we are talking about Brazil having 200 million people. We are competing for that business. India has a population of 1.2 billion people. We are competing--Japan and the United States--for everything in between, everything else. That is what this is about, and it is about whether they are going to continue to be able to cheat.

Also, it is not just the auto industry. It is other manufacturers, as well. This is also about companies that are making washing machines or all kinds of equipment or refrigerators and all of the other products that we make and create using good middle-class jobs here in America.

It also affects agriculture. Anything that impacts the distortions in the economy affects agriculture and every other part of the economy.

So what we are asking for is something very simple and straightforward--very simple--which is that just as we have negotiating objectives in the TPA fast-track for the environment, for labor standards, and for intellectual property rights, we should have a negotiating objective that is enforceable regarding currency manipulation. We are not suggesting what that would look like in a trade agreement, any more than we are specifying exactly what the other provisions would look like. We are saying it is important enough that if we are giving up our right to amend a trade agreement--we are giving fast-track authority--currency manipulation is the No. 1 trade distortion, trade barrier right now in terms of the global marketplace, so we should make sure there is a negotiating principle there. We also say that it is consistent with existing International Monetary Fund commitments and it does not affect domestic monetary policy.

I have heard over and over that somehow what we do through the Fed is impacted. That is not accurate. We are looking, in fact, at over 180 countries that signed up under the International Monetary Fund, saying: We won't manipulate our currency. Yet, even though that has happened--we have seen, in fact, in the case of Japan, for the last 25 years, they have manipulated their currency 376 times. We should say enough is enough.

Now, I also understand we are hearing from the administration. By the way, I am very supportive of their efforts, this current administration's time on trade enforcement efforts. They have won a lot of excellent cases. I wish to commend them for that. I disagree with them on this one position, because they are saying, first of all, that Japan is no longer manipulating their currency--the Bank of Japan. OK, fine. The administration says if we put a negotiating objective into fast-track authority, Japan will walk away. Why would they walk away if they are not doing it anymore? Maybe they want to do it again right after we sign the TPP. Maybe they will do it again, and it will be 377 times. If they aren't doing it anymore, why should they care? It makes no sense.

Either we can trust them and they are no longer manipulating their currency or we can't trust them and we need this provision. It can't be both. Right now, what they are talking about makes no sense. Again, we are not talking about domestic policy; we are talking about direct intervention in foreign currency markets, and that if there is direct intervention in foreign currency markets, we would like to see meaningful consequences that fit with the IMF definitions that countries have all signed up for saying they will not manipulate their currency and that it should comply with WTO enforcement, as we do for every other trade distorting policy, every other trade barrier.

This is actually very straightforward. I am very surpUnknownrised that it has not been accepted. Frankly, I would have gone further. In the Finance Committee I had an amendment I would love to do which says that TPP doesn't get fast-track authority unless it is clear that there are strong, enforceable provisions on currency in the agreement. This doesn't say that. This is a reasonable middle ground to say, for the first time, that currency manipulation is important, it is a negotiating principle, and we leave flexibility in terms of how that is designed, just as we do with other provisions.

We have strong bipartisan support for this amendment. I wish to thank Senators Brown and Warren, Senators Burr and Casey and Schumer, Senators Graham, Shaheen, Manchin, Klobuchar, Collins, Baldwin, Hirono, Franken, Menendez, and Heitkamp for understanding and supporting this amendment. We have other support as well. I wish to thank Senator Graham. He made a comment, because we care deeply--we were so pleased to get the Schumer-Graham-Brown-Stabenow and others' efforts in the Customs bill related to China and currency, which is so important and which we also need to get all the way to the President's desk. But we know that if we don't put language in the negotiating document we give to the White House, then we are not really serious. Senator Graham said: This amendment is the real deal. That is firing with real bullets.

So if we are serious, if the 60 people who signed the letter are serious--and I hope and believe we are--then we need to make sure the negotiating position we take is to ask--and to direct--the administration to put this in the final negotiations on TPP.

We have, as I mentioned before, enforceable standards language on labor and environment and intellectual property rights. This is not complicated. We need to make sure we are clear on currency manipulation. The IMF has rules about what is and what is not direct currency manipulation. They are clear rules. There are 187 countries, in addition to Japan, that have already signed up saying they will abide by that definition. We just don't enforce it, and we have lost millions of jobs. Again, Japan, after signing, has intervened--the Bank of Japan has intervened 376 times in the last 25 years. We are being asked to rely on a handshake and good-faith assurances that there won't be 377 times. But we are being told if we even put language requiring a negotiating principle into this document, that somehow Japan will walk away. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. We have a responsibility, if we are giving up our rights to amend a document, to amend a trade agreement. If we are giving up our rights to require a supermajority vote in Congress, if we are doing that, we have a responsibility to the people we represent to make sure we have given the clearest possible negotiating objectives to the administration as to what we can expect to be in a trade agreement. That is what TPA is all about. If, in fact, currency manipulation is the mother of all trade barriers, why in the world would we not make it clear that currency manipulation should be a clear negotiating objective for the United States of America?

Let me just say again that we can compete with anybody and win. Our workers, our businesses, our innovation can compete with anybody and win. But it is up to us in Congress, working with the White House, to make sure the rules are fair. I hope colleagues will join us in passing the Portman-Stabenow amendment to make it clear we understand in a global economy what is at stake and that we are going to vote on the side of American businesses and American workers.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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