January 6, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 2 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
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UNITED STATES-MEXICO-CANADA TRADE AGREEMENT; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 2
(Senate - January 06, 2020)
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[Pages S22-S23] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] UNITED STATES-MEXICO-CANADA TRADE AGREEMENT Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an issue that the Senate may address on the floor this week. Tomorrow in the Senate Finance Committee, we are going to take up the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. One of my proudest votes as a Member of the House a long time ago was to vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement, to vote against NAFTA. I have voted no on every trade agreement since then because every trade agreement that has come in front of this body was written by corporate interests for their corporate executives and stockholders. They maximize profits always--every one of these trade agreements--CAFTA, NAFTA, PNTR with China, which is not technically a trade agreement, but it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck. Every one of these trade agreements, in every case, has looked out for corporate interests and jettisoned the interests of workers. We see the consequences. Corporate profits soar every time. Executive compensation explodes upward every time. Workers continue to produce more than ever before. Even though corporate profits are up and executive compensation is up, workers' wages are flat. Often, they can't join a union, and the middle class continues to shrink. I know what that has meant in the Presiding Officer's State of Arkansas. I know what it has meant in Ohio. I know what it has done to my hometown of Mansfield. I know what these trade agreements do to Dayton and Cleveland and Cincinnati and Canton and Youngstown and Toledo. Then-Candidate Trump said that he was going to renegotiate NAFTA. Well, that was his promise. He did, but he gave us the same thing. His economic policies overall have been that, but his renegotiated NAFTA, which he brought to this Congress originally--the negotiation that he made with Mexico and Canada--was another corporate trade agreement written for corporate interests. Again, this President betrays workers with his tax giveaways to corporations, to his judges who put their thumbs on the scale, choosing corporations over workers, choosing Wall Street over consumers. Then, last year, as he has done one betrayal of workers after another, squeezing the middle class even more--last year, when we got the initial draft of this agreement from the administration, the renegotiated NAFTA was another betrayal. His first NAFTA draft was nowhere near the good deal for workers that President Trump promised. He had fundamentally negotiated another corporate trade deal--a deal that helps corporate executives, that helps stockholders, that betrays workers again and again, another trade deal just like that. It meant nothing for workers. It meant a sellout to drug companies. It took us months of fighting alongside Speaker Pelosi and Senator Wyden and trade unions to improve this deal and take the real and important steps toward putting workers at the center of our trade policies. These trade policies should be written for workers so that they increase their income and expand the middle class, not written for corporations in trickle-down economics. We know what happens on every tax bill that comes before this Congress, written by the administration and Senator McConnell. We know it is the same thing. Instead of building the economy from the middle out so that the middle class grows and America overwhelmingly prospers, just like the tax cuts--the tax cuts for the rich that may, they tell us, trickle down and help the middle class--that is the way this trade agreement was written. That is the way these tax bills in this Congress were written. It took months of fighting alongside Senator Wyden and organized labor and Speaker Pelosi. We now have a provision in the labor chapter, and the President has finally agreed to this provision. He knew he wasn't going to get a renegotiated NAFTA unless he followed what we said on workers. For the first time, we have a provision in the labor chapter. For instance, it says that violence against workers is always a violation of the agreement. The language the President gave us said: Well, the first time you commit violence against workers, we might fine you. The second time, we might fine you. Only if you do it over and over is it a violation. Really? If there is violence against workers, the people who committed that violence ought to pay for it. So we fixed that in this agreement. We have improved some of the legalese that since the beginning has been included in trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to successfully win a case when a country violates its labor commitments. We secured the Wyden provision, which amounts to, by far, the strongest ever labor enforcement in the U.S. trade deal. This provision that Senator Wyden and I wrote and fought for is the first improvement to enforcing labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies closed factories in Ohio and opened them in Mexico. They can pay lower wages. They can take advantage of workers who don't have rights. They can keep unions from organizing. American workers can't compete with that kind of low-wage lack of enforcement of labor laws. What happens? There is a race to the bottom on wages. So if a company threatens to move to Mexico and they tell their workforce ``We are going to move unless you do some wage givebacks,'' they either move and the American workers lose their jobs or they use that as a way to put downward pressure on wages for American workers. I know what that has done to Mansfield, OH. I know what it has done to Gallipolis, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Dayton, Huber Heights, and every other community. The only way to stop this is by raising labor standards in every country we trade with and, most importantly, making sure those standards are actually enforced. If corporations are forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity no matter where the workers are, we take away the incentive for those companies to move jobs abroad. That is what the Brown-Wyden provision does. A worker in Mexico now, under this agreement--the reason I am supporting this, the first-ever trade agreement that I am supporting-- workers in Mexico will be able to report a company that is violating their rights. They can actually call a toll-free number and report violations against the workers. A [[Page S23]] worker can actually make that request. They have never had that right in Mexico. They, often enough, don't have it here. We can then determine whether worker rights have been violated and then take action against the company that did it. We have never done it that way. We haven't had good results because of that. We can apply punitive damages when companies stop workers from organizing. If they keep doing it, we stop their goods from coming into the United States. You enforce it at the factory level by saying: If you keep violating this trade agreement, you are not sending your products into the United States. That will make them behave. When Mexican workers have the power to form real unions and negotiate for higher wages, it helps our workers. Right now, Mexican workers can be paid as little as $6.50--not an hour but a day. We have been asking American workers to compete with that. We have already heard some critics say that Brown-Wyden will force Mexican wages to rise. I plead guilty. That is the entire point--to take away the incentive. If Mexican wages go up, it makes U.S. companies less likely to shut down production in Steubenville or Lisbon or in Bryan, OH, and move overseas. It takes away the incentive for those companies to relocate. I want to be clear. I will always be straight with American workers. This is not a perfect agreement. One trade deal that Democrats fixed will not undo the rest of Trump's economic policies that put corporations over workers. This deal will not stop outsourcing when we have President Trump's tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send American jobs to Mexico. Here is how the President's tax bill that was rammed through this Senate a year or so ago works: If you are in Springfield, OH, your corporate tax rate is 21 percent. If you move--pull up stakes and move to Mexico or anywhere else--your tax rate is 10.5 percent. Even with this good trade agreement, we cannot stop that kind of outsourcing because the President insists on helping his corporate buddies. I will keep fighting his corporate trade policies and tax policies just as we did in this agreement. We have a lot more work to do to make our trade agreements more pro-worker. I will vote yes for the first time ever on a trade agreement because, by including Brown-Wyden, Democrats have made this agreement much more pro-worker. We set an important precedent for the future that Brown- Wyden must now be included in every trade agreement in the years ahead. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________
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