IRS Bureaucracy Reduction and Judicial Review Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today the Senate is formally kicking off the trade debate here in the Senate. What I intend to do, starting today and in the days ahead, is to come back to what I think needs to be the central statement of this discussion; that is, the NAFTA playbook. The playbook for trade in the 1990s is gone. It is a new day in trade policy.
So I have summarized why the trade promotion act is not the trade policy of the 1990s and is not the North American Free Trade Agreement. What we are going to do today is essentially start with the question of how vigorous trade enforcement ought to be at the forefront of America's trade policy in 2015 and beyond, and how our new approach on enforcement is different than the policy of the 1990s.
The reality is, we can pass trade agreements full of lofty goals and principles. You can amass all of the enforcement ideas you might want, but it does not do any good if you do not have real enforcement tools and you make sure that they are not locked in a shed.
In my view, that has been happening for way, way too long. The status quo on trade enforcement simply no longer does the job. As I have listened for many months to Senators on both sides of the aisle, I believe there is widespread recognition that our approach to trade, particularly trade enforcement, has to change, because without that change, we are not going to have the best possible path to creating more good-paying jobs for our people in a modern and globally competitive economy.
The bottom line is that those trade policies in the 1990s did very little--really nothing--to ensure strong enforcement of our trade laws to protect the American worker from the misdeeds of trade cheats. This bill is designed to take on the universe of aggressive tactics that our competitors have used. It upgrades trade enforcement laws to meet today's challenges.
What we have seen in recent years is that there are some overseas who play cat-and-mouse games with our Customs agents, using shell companies, fraudulent records, and sophisticated schemes. Then they bully--bully--American businesses into relocating factories and jobs or surrendering valuable intellectual property. Too often our companies are spied on, and trade enforcers may, in effect, be victimized by those who steal secrets and dodge accountability.
Our competitors often mask their activities by obscuring paper trails and perpetrating outright fraud. Now, our challenge--and I know my colleague the Presiding Officer has seen this as a member of the Finance Committee--is to get out in front of these schemes that I have just described. The enforcement legislation before the Senate is about guaranteeing that the United States has a queen on the chess board, no matter what competitive tactic it faces.
That starts with a proposal I first offered years ago called the ENFORCE Act. Now, the North American Free Trade Agreement did nothing to stop foreign companies that cheat and evade duties by concealing their identities and shipping their products on untraceable routes.
That is the way it used to be. That is why this legislation is not the North American Free Trade Agreement. The ENFORCE Act is going to give our Customs agents more tools aimed at cracking down on the behavior I have just outlined. Another major upgrade, something else that did not exist during those NAFTA days, is what I call an unfair trade alert. The new alert system would set off the warning bells long before the damage is done, when American jobs and exports come under threat.
One of the big fears we hear today is that our enforcers are incapable of stopping the trade cheats before it is too late. By the time somebody in Washington catches on to the newest unfair threat to undercut an American business, the plant has been shuttered, the factory lights are out, and the workers' lives have been turned upside down. In a lot of cases, if you are talking about the small towns that dot the landscape of Oregon and elsewhere, that abandoned facility might have been the beating heart of an entire community.
The slow pace of action in Washington, DC, should never be the reason Americans lose their jobs. The unfair trade alert--that was not part of the 1990s; that was not part of NAFTA. It is going to be part of our current policy today, helping our companies, helping our workers get there before it is too late.
Next, the Congress is going to lay down clear priorities for our trade enforcers, priorities that are centered on jobs and economic growth. There is going to be more accountability and follow-through baked into our enforcement system. In years past, trade debate in the Congress used to come down to a simple transaction of trade promotion authority for trade adjustment assistance.
What I said in developing this package of bills and what more than a dozen protrade Democrats said on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week was that the Senate needed to aim higher. The status quo was not good enough. In particular, it was not good enough in terms of enforcing the laws that are on the books. My guess is that in Pennsylvania and everywhere else--because I certainly hear it in Oregon--people say--particularly those of us who are protrade and want to tap these global markets: I hear you are talking about new trade agreements. How about enforcing the laws that are on the books?
What I started this morning--and I will be back again and again between now and the end of this debate--is to talk about why this is a very different approach than the approach taken in the 1990s. Tough, robust, effective enforcement of our trade laws is right at the core of a new and modern trade policy.
It is a major part of what I call trade done right. It is how you guarantee that trade gives everybody in America a chance to get ahead.
Those are propositions, in my view, that deserve strong, bipartisan support in the Senate, and I strongly urge my colleagues to support this trade enforcement law package.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Democratic side have 20 minutes of the debate time remaining prior to noon.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I wish to also note that Senator Schumer has provided leadership on another very important enforcement issue. He introduced the committee to something a number of years ago known as honey laundering. What this involved was, in effect, we set up a sting operation. In particular, with respect to Senator Schumer's constituents and his interest in tough enforcement of the trade laws, the Chinese, as my colleagues will recall, were found guilty of unfair trading practices. In effect, they would just ship honey through other countries, such as Indonesia.
I want my colleague to know I am going to continue to work with him on a variety of issues.
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Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator.
I am going to wrap up as we move to this first vote in a few minutes and come back to what this debate is all about. We are starting, of course, with the issue of trade enforcement, but the big challenge is to show this country that we are putting in place a modern trade policy, a trade policy that sets aside once and for all the NAFTA playbook of the 1990s. This overall package will usher in a new and modern American trade policy. It must start with a tough, robust, effective trade enforcement package, many of the details of which I have outlined here this morning.
It is time also--and this will be part of our early work--to upgrade and renew our trade preference programs. The businesses and workers who rely on these programs are waiting for this Congress to act.
The first of these proposals enhances and extends the African Growth and Opportunity Act, referred to as AGOA. This has been the core of a close economic partnership between our country and a host of African nations for more than a decade. The proposal before the Senate will update that partnership in a way that is positive for all involved.
Back in the 1990s--once again returning to this theme, the NAFTA era--the United States had no meaningful trade policies to help African nations facing profound economic hardship climb back from the brink. This renewal of the AGOA law takes the program to the next level. AGOA will be simpler for businesses to use. There will be less redtape to worry about. African countries will be encouraged to zero in on strategies that can make the program more effective. It will be easier for the United States to crack down on the bad actors and verify that countries stay strictly in line with the criteria for eligibility. Most importantly, the proposal gives all concerned--workers, businesses, countries, and investors--a decade of certainty.
I am a real fan of this program. I believe it works for our country, for Sub-Saharan Africa, and it ought to be a cornerstone of our economic policy in the region.
The second part of this package of programs renews the program known as the generalized system of preferences. This is an economic win-win because it is a shot in the arm for developing countries, and it is a major boost for American manufacturers, including hundreds of them in my home State. One of those businesses in Oregon is Stackhouse Athletic in Salem, which will not only be able to create new jobs, they will be able to offer health benefits to their workers.
The extension of GSP will save American businesses an estimated $2 million a day by reducing tariffs. The GSP program expired nearly 2 years ago. As a result, businesses in my home State of Oregon paid an extra $4.9 million in tariffs. Renewing GSP would correct that issue and support as many as 80,000 jobs with manufacturers, ports, farmers, and retail stores. That program would be extended by this legislation through 2017.
Finally, the Senate has an opportunity with this legislation to reaffirm our economic commitment to Haiti, one of our closest and most disadvantaged neighbors in the world. In my view, Senator Nelson of Florida has done very important work in this area. He has been our leader on this issue, and there is bipartisan understanding that now is the right time to extend the Haiti trade preferences to line them up with AGOA. These Haiti preferences also did not exist in the NAFTA era. Together, they support as many as 30,000 jobs in that country, and they help to drive investment and lift Haiti's economy in the long term.
I am confident the Senate will come together to extend this package of preference programs because they make economic sense for America, and they strengthen our ties with the developing countries around the world.
I urge my colleagues to support this legislation with our first vote.
I will close by saying that today we begin to turn the corner on a fresh, modern trade policy for the times, a policy very different from the trade policy of the 1990s, the NAFTA era. Let's begin this effort--begin this effort--for a new 21st-century trade policy by passing the legislation we will be considering shortly, both parts.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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