[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5] [Senate] [Pages 6125-6126] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]TRADE POLICY Mr. BROWN. Madam President, there has been a lot of controversy in the last couple of weeks about the President's sending the Colombia so- called free trade agreement to the House of Representatives. Under this unusual law, there is something called fast track procedure. Fast track procedure--this is a lot of inside baseball--changes the way we do business in the House and Senate. Trade law is the only issue that changes the way that we do business. On no other issue that comes in front of the House and Senate, except the budget, are there limits on amendments, are there limits on required up-or-down votes, timetables-- all of that. The Senate rules do not apply on that legislation. It is the only time--in part because of who has written trade policy in this country in the last 20 years. We have seen trade agreements that always look out for the interests of the drug industry, look out for the interests of the insurance industry, of banking interests, of energy interests. But we have not seen trade policy written in this country, negotiated by the President of the United States, the U.S. Trade Representative, that has shown any of the same concern for workers, for the environment, for food safety, for the safety of consumer products. That is why we have seen what happened with all the toys that came into this country from China. It should not have been a surprise to us that at Eastertime, that at Christmas, that at Halloween last year, that consumer products, especially toys for small children, came into this country that were dangerous. It should not have surprised us because it was somewhat inevitable because of the way we do trade policy in this country. Professor Jeff Weidenheimer, a professor of chemistry at Ashland University, about 10 miles from where I grew up in north central Ohio, took his class to test children's toys last fall at Halloween and then did it again at Christmas and did it again at Easter. In case after case, they would go to a toy store or a discount store and they would buy a bunch of toys, very inexpensive toys, and they would test them for lead. Every one of these batches of toys had significant numbers of toys that had lead content--lead in the paint that covered these toys-- lead content way above on average what is considered safe. What is considered safe is about 600 parts per million. These were, in some cases, thousands of parts per million. What should not surprise us about that is the way we set up trade policy in this country. We don't write trade policy to protect our children or to protect our communities or to protect our workers. We don't write trade policy to protect our food supply. We write long trade agreements--this isn't [[Page 6126]] one, but I have to gather these papers to show how long they are. We pass trade policies that are this long. If we wanted to eliminate tariffs, we would pass trade policies that are this long. You could write a schedule of eliminating tariffs in the Colombian free trade agreement of 2 or 3 pages. Instead, we write agreements that are hundreds, if not in some cases over a thousand pages, because they are full of protections--not for workers, not for communities, not for children, not for our kitchen tables, our families--but these are trade policies that are chock-full of protections for the drug industry, the insurance industry, the oil companies, the banks. That is what our trade policy is all about. That is why. Go back to Jeff Weidenheimer's class at Ashland University and look what happened. American companies decide they are going to shut down in this country because they would rather pay Chinese workers low wages and not have environmental laws and not have worker safety laws and not have to worry about consumer protection laws, so they shut down plants such as Huffy Bicycle in Sidney, OH, and they move to China where it is a whole lot cheaper. You don't have to worry about treating Chinese workers well because they are disposable. They did have to worry about treating American workers well, frankly, because many of them were union, and even if they were not, we have consumer protection laws, safe drinking water, clean air, environmental laws--all of those kinds of things. So these companies in Ohio and in the State of Washington where the Presiding Officer is from, all over our country, these companies shut down and they move to China. A company such as Hasbro, a toy manufacturer, moves their production to China. Hasbro then subcontracts with a Chinese company, they subcontract their work. They go to a country, China, that does not have the same environmental safety, worker safety, consumer safety, and wages we have in this country, and then they deal with Chinese contractors and they push those Chinese contractors to cut costs: You have to cut costs; you have to cut costs. Every year they cut costs over the year before, because that is good business. These American companies, when they outsource their jobs to China, force those Chinese contractors to cut costs. Do you know what happens? They use lead-based paints. Do you know why? Because lead-based paint is cheaper to apply, it is cheaper to buy, it dries faster. These toys, then, all of a sudden, instead of having a coating that is safe for little children instead now have a coating that has lead base in them, making them dangerous to children. But they do that because these American companies are pushing these subcontractors to cut costs. Forgetting for a moment--because these American companies don't seem much to care and the Chinese contractors don't seem to care much-- forgetting for a moment these people in China are working in these factories and are probably ingesting all kinds of toxic lead themselves--forget that for a moment, as bad as that is. These toys then come back to the United States. Do you know what the Bush administration did? The Bush administration has weakened consumer protection laws and cut the number of inspectors so these products come through the American regulatory system that used to be the best regulatory system, the best consumer product safety system in the world, the best Food and Drug Administration system in the world-- agencies that protected consumer products, about toys, especially--and agencies that protected food products that came into this country. And what do we end up with? We end up with toxic toys coming to our children's bedrooms, we end up with contaminated vitamins and other contaminated food coming into our kitchens. That is the result of American trade policy. It doesn't look out for our families, it doesn't look out for our children, it doesn't look out for our workers, it doesn't look out for our communities. Instead, it looks out for the drug companies, it looks out for the big toy manufacturers, it looks out for the big insurance companies, it looks out for the banks, it looks out for the oil industry. That is what is wrong with our trade policy. President Bush's answer is let's send another free trade agreement to the Senate, to the House of Representatives, the Colombia free trade agreement. It is more of the same. It will not work. The last point, Madam President, and I think we are pretty ready to adjourn for the night. When I came to Congress--I was elected the same year the Presiding Officer was elected, 1992--we had a $38 billion trade deficit. That means our country bought $38 billion more than our country sold to other countries around the world. Today, that trade deficit exceeds $800 billion--from $38 billion to $800 billion in a decade and a half. President Bush the First said for every $1 billion trade surplus or trade deficit, it amounted to 13,000 jobs. That means if we had a $1 billion trade surplus, if we were selling more than we were bringing in, it meant 13,000 net gain of jobs in country. If we had a $1 billion trade deficit, it meant we bought $1 billion more than we sold, we had a 13,000 jobs net loss. We have an $800 billion plus trade deficit. Do the math. Think about that. As we adjourn for the evening, think about what this trade policy is doing. It continues to fail the American people, continues to fail our communities, and it kind of begs the issue about which Albert Einstein once said: The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. We are getting the same result. It hurts our communities, it doesn't protect our families--consumer protection and food safety and all of that. These trade agreements are a bad idea. We can fix them. I, like Senator Dorgan, who has spoken on the floor many times about this, want more trade. We want plenty of trade. We just want it under a very different set of rules, rules that protect our families, protect our communities, that protect our workers--not just protecting the drug industry and the oil industry and the energy companies and those toy manufacturers that sort of forget about the safety of our children. ____________________