Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. President.

I appreciate the points that have been made by my colleagues from Ohio and Pennsylvania and the remarks yet to be made by my colleague from Rhode Island.

We are here on the floor together to raise fundamental issues that should be part of the discussion about a proposed trade deal or a fast track to a trade deal.

I love the concept of trade, the idea that our particular economy, based on our natural resources and based on our skills, can do certain things very well, and we would like to be able to sell those products to the world. Other nations do other things very well, and we can benefit from their expertise and their products. That is a win-win on a level playing field between nations that have roughly the same structure of environmental laws, roughly the same structure of labor laws, and roughly the same level of wages. That is a win-win for nations involved in agreements.

Indeed, our trade agreements after World War II were very much along those lines as we expanded to the economies of Europe. We saw substantial prosperity that affected people throughout our economy.

My parents couldn't believe the difference between their experience as children and their experience during the 1950s and 1960s as they started to raise children in terms of going from extraordinarily humble means--lack of electricity, running water, insulation, and all the things that became a part of the basic housing structure in post-World War II when they were raising their children. That prosperity came from a nation producing things and sharing the wealth throughout its economy. My father was a working man, a blue-collar mechanic. He brought those mechanical skills to the mill and became a millwright. He loved that job keeping the machinery in the mill running and loved other jobs. He was able to live the American dream.

Our recent trade deals have created something quite different. They have been based on an unequal relationship. They have been based on a relationship between our Nation with strong environmental and labor laws and good wages and high enforcement and countries with the exact opposite--such as China, for example. Indeed, the result in the period since NAFTA--and my colleagues spoke to it, but let me reemphasize it--there has been a loss of 50,000 factories, a loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs. That is logical. If you are a manufacturing company making products, you will move that manufacturing to the places where it is cheapest to make them.

This is how the vision works out. There is a conversation about reducing barriers, and companies say: Look at all the additional products we can sell to that emerging economy in China. We can make a lot more in the United States and sell to China.

That is stage one.

Stage two: Hey, now we can move our manufacturing overseas and produce things at a much lower price and not only sell them to the foreign nation but also sell them back to the customers in the United States.

That is exactly what we have seen, and that is why we have lost these 5 million jobs.

So the initial publicity campaign is all about creating jobs through increasing American manufacturing, but the reality in an unequal relationship is the opposite.

Let's make sure we create a standard for the consideration of future trade deals, a standard that will evaluate whether this deal will create good-paying jobs here in America, will expand prosperity to the middle class in America or will do the opposite. This is the standard we should apply. I would like to evaluate the provisions of the proposed deal in that light, but I can't because the negotiations are secret. The draft text is secret. We need to demand that there not be secrecy about something as important as creating jobs or destroying jobs in America--my standard for evaluating what is to come.

Let's talk for a minute about these eroding promises of enforcement. A couple of years ago a group of 10 U.S. Senators took a trip to China to meet with the Ambassador. We asked how the Ambassador felt about enforcement against China and their currency manipulation. He basically said: Here is the deal. We have broad strategic concerns that involve China, and we don't want to put ripples in the water.

So can you really have a level playing field in a situation where you are not willing to enforce even the provisions that are on the books? Can you really have a fair deal for America?

During the conversations a couple years ago, I proposed legislation that would require China to actually honor what it was responsible for doing under the WTO. Under the WTO, it was to notify Americans about all the subsidies it provided for items of export, deductions and credits. But China had not honored that responsibility. So I proposed that we exercise another part of WTO, which was counter-notifications by our Trade Representative. Within 2 weeks of putting this idea forward, guess what. Our Trade Representative put forward a list of 200 subsidies through the counter-notification process.

Looking at those notifications carefully revealed a vast strategy in renewable energy to subsidize exports--not allowed under the WTO; to subsidize paper--not allowed to subsidize exports of paper under the WTO. The result is that paper plants are going out of business in the United States of America. The Blue Heron plant most recently has gone out of business on the Willamette River at a place where paper has been made for a very long period of time. In fact, the energy from the water wheel that was first there provided some of the first electricity in America. Longtime industrial production, but those jobs are gone. So that is a real concern.

My colleague mentioned the interstate dispute settlement and the fact that it gives a foreign investor rights that a domestic investor does not have. It puts constraints on consumer protections that can be overrun--consumer protections done by a State can be overrun by an investor from a foreign nation.

For example, you have a bill in America to stop producing toxic flame retardants and putting them into our carpet. Well, the foreign investor says: We built a plant to produce that chemical. Sorry, you can't have that consumer protection even though the result would be a lot more cancer for American citizens. That is an example of the concerns about handing over the sovereignty of our Nation, of our consumer law, our environmental law, to an independent board that operates outside of our constitutional framework. That is a legitimate concern which needs to be addressed in this conversation.

So on issues of enforcement and issues of secrecy, issues of whether we are creating jobs or destroying jobs, I encourage Americans to become as familiar as possible with the provisions that have been leaked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to think carefully and give concerns to us here in Congress that we will work to address. When we have the legitimate text before us, then we can engage in a more detailed debate. But right now we need to push to end this secrecy on an issue that is so important to the future prosperity of our Nation and of our families.

Thank you, Mr. President. It is my pleasure to yield the floor in anticipation of remarks from my colleague.

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