Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act -- Motion to Reconsider Cloture Vote on Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I think that as we consider these trade
agreements, it is appropriate that we recognize the importance of free
trade, how it helps the world and helps the economy, and it is
something I certainly support and have supported on a number of
occasions in the past, including the last big trade bill, the Korean
trade bill. I generally support--I actually do support the idea of
comparative advantage, the gist of which is that if a nation can
produce a product and sell it cheaper in another country, people over
time will benefit from allowing that country's product to enter the
country and being able to buy it at a lower price. That is comparative
advantage, and I think it is sound in principle and generally sound in
practice.

But the American workers are not doing well now. Wages have not
increased since 2000--15 years. We have been down $3,000 in median
family income since 2009 and still down $3,000. We have the lowest
percentage of Americans in working years actually working today since
the 1970s. So this is not a healthy environment for Americans. The
market has done pretty well. Revenues and profits are holding pretty
well, but the average American working person is not doing so well.

So what has happened? Is there a problem with currency manipulation,
state-owned enterprises, subsidized foreign industries, people who dump
products here below market cost or right at market cost being
subsidized and supported by foreign countries? Do those alter the
situation? Do they make it impossible for American businesses to
compete, and if they go out of business, will our government bail them
out in any way? We had one bailout after the financial collapse, but
businesses are closing every day and they are not being bailed out
today. We have seen substantial reductions in manufacturing around the
country.

The Wall Street Journal just this week published an article, ``The
Case of the Vanishing Worker.'' That was in Monday's Wall Street
Journal. It talked about the city of Decatur, IL, and detailed how
their unemployment rate had gotten as high as 14 percent and it had
dropped to almost half of that. It dropped down to almost half of that,
so that looked pretty good, but when they looked at the numbers, they
weren't so good.

What did they find? Even though the unemployment rate had fallen to
almost half, how many people were actually working? Well, the answer
was 8 percent fewer. So how can the unemployment rate fall and the
number of people actually working fall at the same time? The answer is,
as the article said, that people are moving away; they are dropping out
of the workforce entirely; they are taking early retirement. That is
what is happening too often in America.

So I think it is important for us to ask, how are these trade
agreements benefiting the nation? How are they impacting American
people? Let's ask some questions about it.

I asked the President questions on that. I sent him a letter, and I
asked him a series of questions relating to wages. Will this trade
agreement improve job prospects? Will it improve or make worse our
trade deficits? Well, he hasn't answered those questions.

So I ask my colleagues: Has anybody demanded the Commerce Department,
the Treasury Department, the administration to produce data to show
that if we enter into another agreement involving 40 percent of the
world's economy, involving some of our most capable and rigorous and
toughest mercantilist competitors, what will it do to the American
workers' prospects? Is that a fair question to ask? We haven't seen any
discussion of it, so far as I can tell. And let me tell you what the
reason is.

Well, first, I will say this: I believe unfair trade competition is
real. We talk to people out there every day, and they tell us about it.
Dan DiMicco, former CEO of Nucor Steel, has one of his plants in
Alabama. They have plants all over the country. He said that these
trade agreements are in effect unilateral American trade disarmament
and they enable foreign mercantilism. In other words, what he is saying
is that we have acquiesced to the mercantilist nationalism emphasis of
our trading partners. And why is that? Well, I figured it out. It has
taken me a while to understand exactly what the theory is behind these
trade agreements, and I don't believe I am in error when I discuss
this.

Ross Kaminsky, writing in the American Spectator--a fine magazine--
wrote a fine piece arguing for this TPA and the trade agreement. He was
overwhelmingly saying it must be passed virtually regardless of what is
in it.

I have to say his position is consistent with the position of the
editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and many other economists,
and we have to understand what it is. And I am losing confidence in
this position. I am not sure it is a good position. As a matter of
fact, I don't think it is. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think it is.

This is what he says on trade:

It bears repeating--and repeating and repeating and
repeating--that the benefit to American consumers of free
trade is so large that it must trump any parochial interest
of a particular industry or labor union or politician.
Because they lower the prices of imports, and even
understanding that there will be a few losers, free trade
agreements are almost always worth supporting regardless of
what is offered to American exporters by the foreign trade
partner.

Let me repeat that. He said they are almost always worthy of being
entered into regardless of what is offered to the American exporters by
the foreign trade partner.

I remember, as a skilled businessman, when I first came to the
Senate, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, was before
me. I was kind of nervous about it--a big maestro of the economy.

I asked him a simple question: Mr. Greenspan, what if a country wants
to trade with us, wants to sell products to us but will buy zero
products from us? They just want to sell to us but will buy nothing in
return. Should we enter into a trade agreement with them?

What do you think he answered? I used to ask people in townhalls
about this on occasion, and they would say he said no. But, but he said
yes.

I am telling you, this is the movement--the mentality of the current
trade agreement supporters, at least in the intellectual, corporate
world and the newspaper world and many within universities, certainly not all.

So is this a valid position? Are we subjecting our American people
unfairly to competition that could cost jobs and so forth?

Well, I am losing confidence in those views. That is all I am saying,
colleagues. And I think it is time for us to analyze what it means.

I would say that the steel industry of the United States is not a
little bitty matter. Right now, U.S. Steel closed a big plant I think
in Indiana or Ohio. They just laid off a thousand or so workers in
Alabama. SSAB Steel in Alabama says they are facing ferocious dumping,
it is threatening their market share and their ability to make the most
modern plant in the world competitive, and they don't think it is fair.

How long do you have to sustain this to have dealt substantial damage
to the American steel industry? Don't we need a steel industry? Where
would steelworkers get jobs? They say: Well, they can take service
jobs. Well, maybe so. Maybe they can work at the plumbing company.
Maybe they can work at a hospital. Maybe they can work in a nursing
home. Maybe there is other work that can be found. But at some point,
do we not need a manufacturing capability that provides a lot more than
a service job--manufacturing capabilities, for example, that provide
demand for products, demand for supplies, demand for workers who supply
those plants and have ripple effects much larger than a person just
repairing faucets. I think we have to ask that question in a very
serious way.

I said earlier I voted for the Korean trade pact. I did not have a
lot of trouble voting for that at the time. I thought it was going to
be fine. Maybe it is OK. Maybe the pact is going to be, sometime in the
future, positive for the United States.

The Koreans, like the Japanese, are good trading people. They are
allies around the world on security agreements. I am not putting the
Koreans down. The Koreans are tough trade negotiators. They have a
mercantilist philosophy.

What happened before that agreement was passed? President Obama
promised that the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement would increase U.S.
goods exports to Korea by $10 billion to $11 billion. However, since
the deal was ratified in 2012, I believe it was, our exports rose only
$0.8 billion--less than $1 billion, not $10 billion. Does that make any
difference?

We just bring in from abroad and our trading partners don't allow
exports abroad? What about the Korean imports to the United States?
They rose more than $12 billion, widening our trade gap, almost
doubling our trade.

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Mr. SESSIONS. I will wrap up, Mr. President.

What about the Census Department's report on the U.S. trade deficit
of South Korea? They found it has almost doubled since the passage of
the agreement. In 2011, the United States had a $13.2 billion trade
deficit with South Korea--not a healthy relationship there--but in
2014, it was $25 billion.

Furthermore, the deficit is currently 66 percent higher so far this
year than it was at the same point last year. March was the largest
trade deficit we have had in a very long time. The first quarter, we
had a huge deficit. I believe the March trade deficit was the largest
worldwide that we have had in over 6 years. It was almost the highest
ever.

I am going to support moving forward to discuss this trade bill.
There will be some amendments that I would seek to offer. If that is
the will of the Congress, those will pass; if not, they will not pass.
But fundamentally I do believe it is time for the American people to
expect their political leaders to give them some real analysis about
what the results of these trade agreements are going to be. Will it
help raise wages? Will it create increasing job prospects? Would it
increase or reduce our trade deficit? Trade deficits represent a drain
and a negative pull on the American economy. Some say they do not make
much difference, but they do. It does impact adversely GDP. With regard
to those questions, I think we need some answers. I will be asking
those as we go forward.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share a few more thoughts with
my colleagues.

In 2014, net exports--net exports subtracted 1.5 percent from fourth-
quarter GDP. That is a lot. GDP growth in the fourth quarter was
subtracted by--excuse me, 1.15 percent. That is more than $500 billion.
That is enough to fund a highway reauthorization program for a long
time.

The problem is that in the short run, Americans tend to be losing
jobs as a result of trade agreements; whereas, long-term unemployed
people have a difficult time finding work. I would say I believe in
trade, but it is not a religion with me. I believe it is a religion
when somebody says that you should enter into a trade agreement with
anybody, opening your markets totally without demanding anything in
return for that.

I have to tell you, as I just read from others--it is clearly the
policy of the Wall Street Journal--that is good policy, that you should
enter into a trade agreement whether or not your partner will allow you
to sell anything at all to them. I say good negotiations in a contract
are, which a trade negotiation is, if we open our markets, our
competitors ought to open theirs sufficiently. Too often we have the
problems that arise from nontariff barriers that are impacting the
ability of American businesses to sell products in their country. So
even if they reduce their tariff, their ability to sell products is
blocked by other nontariff matters, all of which I think we can discuss
in the weeks to come.

Let's be sure we understand where this trade agreement is taking us,
what the philosophy and approach behind it is, and let's be sure it
serves the interests of the American people first.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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