Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, President Trump's instincts on China are correct, but his execution is poor. He should stick with those instincts and not those who label anything we do to protect America against China's rapacious policies as protectionist. At the same time, he should fix his plan so it really does what he intends it to do or wants it to do.

I have been one of the chief critics of the status quo on trade. Americans--and I share this view--resent all those academics who any time we try to do anything with China say: protectionist, trade war.

The bottom line is simple. China is eating our lunch. China is rapacious. China, day by day, gnaws away at our economy by manipulating currency. They sometimes do it, they sometimes don't, but they will again when they can.

By having no reciprocity, they don't let good American industries in, but they want to come here--and do, easily--buying our family jewels, our intellectual property, our leading companies in robotics, artificial intelligence, chips, and pharmaceuticals.

China has a plan to take advantage of America, to surpass us economically by not being fair. They keep their huge market protected, steal our stuff, learn how to do it, then try to come sell it here and gain an advantage when they can by manipulating currency.

The President should not be deterred by all of those business interests that are only interested in their profits, not in what is good for America. That is their job, their shareholders--I get it--but he should not be deterred by them. At the same time, he has to back off this plan which doesn't do what it is supposed to do. Major harm is done to allies like Canada and Europe, not to China.

That is the tightrope we need to walk on. If the President walks on that tightrope carefully and well, we will support him.

The President's instincts to go after China are correct, but the policy he proposes doesn't fit the bill. It is not well targeted, it is not precise and, as a result, it could cause a mess of collateral damage that hurts America more than it helps.

The sweeping nature of the tariffs has already justifiably angered key allies in Canada and Europe and could draw reciprocal tariffs on American goods, raising costs on average consumers from coast-to-coast. A country such as Canada, with which we have a trade surplus, could retaliate.

Mr. President, focus on China. Go after China and do it in a smart, focused but sharp-edged way. Don't create a policy that hurts our allies more than it hurts China and causes China to sort of giggle at our ineffectiveness.

A trade war is not what we want. Making China play by the rules is what all Americans want, except for a handful of businesses that just see their interests and raising their profits no matter where the jobs go or where they sell goods.

China dumps counterfeit and artificially cheap goods into our market, denies productive U.S. companies fair access to their markets, and steals the intellectual property of American companies. I am pained, actually pained, because I love this country, and I want to see us stay economically No. 1. I am pained when I go over in my mind the statement of retired four-star GEN Keith Alexander, who is in charge of cyber security in America. He called China's theft of our intellectual property the ``greatest transfer of wealth in history.'' American wealth is actually being stolen by China, and we sit here and shrug our shoulders or do things that are not effective.

The Trump administration should rethink its approach to sweeping tariffs while there is still time and focus attention on China. China is our No. 1 trade problem--not Canada, not Europe. President Trump could do a much better job of tailoring his trade policy to address the real problems instead of creating new ones. Infrastructure

Mr. President, on infrastructure, a year ago last January, guided by what President Trump had said, wanting to work with Democrats on infrastructure, Senate Democrats unveiled our $1 trillion infrastructure plan. It was an outline.

We sent it to the President. We said it was one of the areas where we could work with the President to get something done. Then we waited and we waited and we waited. A full year after we made our proposal, the Trump administration finally released one of its own. Frankly, President Trump's plan on infrastructure, to put it kindly, was underwhelming. It is going over like a lead balloon, and it is very simple why. After a year of bold promises about trillion-dollar infrastructure, a plan to build ``gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways, and waterways all across our land,'' President Trump's infrastructure plan proposes no new net increase in infrastructure funding. He put in $200 billion and then took it away by cutting the existing programs on infrastructure. It will not get the job done. Robbing Peter to pay Paul a pittance will not do nearly enough to rebuild our infrastructure.

Because so much of the funding is not from the Federal Government, which has traditionally funded the lion's share of infrastructure-- highways, water and sewer--the money is going to have to come from two places, neither of which is a good option: localities, which are starved for cash already--they are not going to build much--or the private sector, which will, of course, quite naturally want a payback. That is how the private sector works. They are not going to put money up unless they are paid back. They are not going to lend money without being paid back. We know what that will mean--tolls, tolls, and more tolls. Trump tolls from one end of the Nation to the other. That is not what America wants. Trump's plan is already a huge flop. Hardly anyone is paying attention to it.

We Democrats have a better deal to offer the American people. Rather than cutting existing infrastructure projects to pay for a paltry program that will not work, we want to roll back the Republican tax giveaways to big corporations and the very wealthy and invest that money instead in job-creating infrastructure. The overwhelming majority of Americans would say, they would rather see millions of jobs created than give tax breaks to the wealthiest. Our plan could create up to 15 million good-paying jobs for the middle class.

We have already seen, by the way, that those tax breaks are not creating many jobs. Instead, they are going to stock buybacks, which is a way for corporate executives to take that money, raise their own salaries and raise the salaries of shareholders, the vast majority of whom are in the top 10 percent of America.

We are proposing something new and different. We propose to put the top rate back to 39.6 percent. The wealthy are doing great in America; they didn't need a tax cut. It is the middle class that needed more of one.

We propose restoring the AMT. That AMT prevented the wealthiest of Americans from evading taxes. It is a tax expert's way of restoring the Buffet rule, which says that a rich corporate executive shouldn't pay a lower rate of taxes than his or her secretary.

We restore the estate tax. After all, that benefits 5,000 wealthy families. We also close the carried interest loophole.

We raise the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, which is what the Business Roundtable called for. But our Republican friends and President Trump were in a mania to just cut, cut, cut corporate taxes-- even at a time that corporations are doing well--and moved it to 21 percent. We go back up to the 25 percent that the Business Roundtable suggested.

With all that money, what do we invest it in? A modern infrastructure plan that would build everything from roads and bridges to schools and airports, to high-speed internet and more, with a focus, by the way, on rural internet because one-third of rural America doesn't have it.

In addition to the traditional types of projects we have long built in this country, we are building 21st century infrastructure--as I mentioned, rural internet, high speed. In the thirties, Franklin Roosevelt said that every home in America should have electricity. It was aimed at rural homes that didn't have it. Today, we Democrats believe that every home should have high-speed internet, and that, too, is aimed at rural America--where close to one-third of the homes don't have high-speed internet--and at our inner cities as well.

Only with real, direct investment of Federal dollars will we build the kinds of transformational projects that need to be built. Only with real investment will rural America see the projects it needs built. Only with real investment will we create millions of good-paying jobs.

You say: Where is the money going to come from? We don't want to increase our deficit. The tax bill has done that enough.

We say: Take some of those tax breaks from the wealthiest of Americans and put them into middle-class jobs, plain and simple.

Americans are realizing now where that money is going. The tax bill, before it came out, was unpopular. It had an initial splurge of popularity, and now, as Americans learn what it is actually doing, it is becoming less popular again. It will go back to where it was, I believe. More Americans will dislike it than like it, but when they hear we can take some of that money and put it into infrastructure and create millions of middle-class jobs, I think Americans of all stripes will embrace that policy.

We Democrats want to work with the President and our Republican colleagues on infrastructure, but we want to do it in a way that produces real results, not the chimerical proposal the President made that will produce very little infrastructure, almost no jobs, and put Trump tolls all across America. We hope the President will move away from his plan and come much further in our direction so that we can get something done for the American people, particularly the American working and middle classes.

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