Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the fast-track bill the Finance Committee approved last night, and that I think will be on the floor next week or the following week, on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

I think the most important aspect of this debate is that what we are discussing with the TPP is not a new concept. It is not as though somebody came and said, I have a great idea; let's try this trade agreement, and it is going to be really good for the American worker and the American middle class and the American people. The truth is that we have seen this movie time and time and time again. Let me tell my colleagues that the ending of this movie is not very good. It is a pretty bad ending. I think most Americans understand that our past trade agreements have failed our American workers and have led to the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs.

What I simply don't understand--if we were going forward in the first place, with a new idea, maybe we should give it a shot. But when we went forward with NAFTA, when we went forward with CAFTA, when we went forward with Normal Permanent Trade Relations and there were all of these folks telling us how great these agreements were going to be and it turned out that virtually everything they said was inaccurate--not true--why in God's Name would we go forward with another trade agreement which is, in fact, larger than previous trade agreements?

Let me give an example of what I mean. On September 19, 1993, President Bill Clinton said the following:

I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect. ..... I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its effect.

So President Clinton was pushing the NAFTA agreement very hard, and that is what he said.

In 1993, the same year, the Heritage Foundation, which is one of the most conservative think tanks in the country--so here we have a liberal President, Bill Clinton, and we have a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation--this is what they said: ``Virtually all economists agree that NAFTA will produce a net increase of U.S. jobs over the next decade.''

In 1993, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, who is now our majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said: ``American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages.'' Mitch McConnell: ``American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages.''

Well, was President Clinton right? Was the Heritage Foundation right? Was Senator McConnell right? No. I think the evidence is pretty clear they were all wrong.

According to a well-respected economist at the Economic Policy Institute--and their facts usually hold up pretty well--NAFTA has led to the loss of more than 680,000 American jobs. What President Clinton said was wrong, what the Heritage Foundation said was wrong. We lost substantial numbers of jobs.

In 1993, the year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of more than $1.6 billion. Last year, the trade deficit with Mexico was $53 billion. We had a trade surplus of $1.6 billion; last year we had a deficit of $53 billion. Now, how is that a success? I don't know.

In other words, NAFTA has been a disaster for American workers.

What about the Chinese trade agreement? I remember hearing all of the discussions about how great it would be if we had a trade agreement with a huge country such as China; thinking about all of the American products they would be buying, manufactured here in the United States. Here is what President Bill Clinton said about PNTR with China back in 1999. It is important to remember what people said because they are saying the same thing about this trade agreement. But this is back in 1999, Bill Clinton, President, PNTR with China:

In opening the economy of China, the agreement will create unprecedented opportunities for American farmers, workers and companies to compete successfully in China's market. ..... This is a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences.

Once again, that is a liberal President.

Now, we have the conservative think tanks that love unfettered free trade. In 1999, discussing PNTR with China, the conservative economists at the Cato Institute--these are really conservative guys and this is what they said:

The silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry. In fact, American workers are far more productive than their Chinese counterparts. ..... PNTR would create far more export opportunities for America than the Chinese.

Well, what can we say about that? The Cato Institute wrote in 1999: ``The silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry.''

Sure. Right.

If we go out to any department store in America and we buy products, where are those products made?
Guess what. They are made in China. It appears that, in fact, Chinese imports did overwhelm U.S. industry. The Cato Institute was dead wrong.

Again, nobody is really surprised at this. There is no more debate about this. Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, that trade agreement, was a disaster.

The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that trade agreement with China has led to the loss of 2.7 million American jobs. The trade deficit with China has increased from $83 billion in 2001 to $342 billion in 2014.

Now, in terms of China, I don't know that the American people have any doubt about it. Every time we go shopping, the products overwhelmingly are made in China. People look in their own towns and in their own States--my State--and see losses of more and more manufacturing jobs. Since 2001, we have lost 60,000 manufacturing facilities in America. Not all of it is attributable to trade; there are other reasons, but a lot of it is attributable to trade. Millions of decent-paying jobs are gone; people thrown out on the street as companies move to China, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries. There is not a debate about it. That is exactly what has happened. Corporation after corporation has said, Why do I want to pay an American worker $15, $20 an hour? Why do I want to deal with the union? Why do I have to obey environmental regulations? I can move to China, I can move to Vietnam, I can move to Malaysia or Mexico and I can pay people pennies an hour and bring the product back into the United States. That is what they said, and that is what they have done.

Major corporation after major corporation has reduced employment in America at the same time as they have increased employment in other countries.

Not only is it the loss of jobs, it is the race to the bottom. It is employers saying to workers, Look, I am cutting your health care, I am not giving you a raise, and if you don't like it, I am moving to China because there are people all over the world who are prepared to work for wages a lot lower than you are receiving. You can take it or leave it. That is one of the reasons why today the typical American worker is working longer hours for lower wages than he or she used to and why wages have gone down in America. That is what the global economy has done. That is what these horrendous unfettered free-trade agreements have pushed on American workers. That is the Chinese trade agreement: an estimated 2.7 million American jobs lost.

Then we have the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which has led to a loss of some 60,000 jobs. Our trade deficit with that country has gone up from $16.6 billion in 2012 to $25 billion in 2014.

So we have a history of failed trade agreement after failed trade agreement after failed trade agreement and people say, Hey, we failed, we failed, we failed; let's do the same thing again and this time we are really, really, really going to succeed. I don't think anybody really believes that.

I do understand that Wall Street loves this trade agreement and they are staying up nights worrying about ordinary Americans; and I understand that the major corporations in this country love this agreement and the truck companies love this agreement, which gives us enough reason to hold this agreement in doubt.

Now, the Obama administration says, Well, trust us. Forget about the other trade agreements. This TPP is something different. It is a better agreement. This time will be different. This time it will support about 650,000 American jobs. Well, supporters of unfettered free trade were wrong about NAFTA, they were wrong about CAFTA, they were wrong about PNTR with China, and they were wrong about the Korea Free Trade Agreement and--surprise of all surprises--they are wrong again.

If the fast-track is approved, it would pave the way for the passage of the TPP--the Trans-Pacific Partnership--trade agreement. As my colleagues know, this trade agreement is poised to be the largest free-trade agreement in history, encompassing 12 nations that account for roughly 40 percent of the global economy. This is a very big deal.

Let me speak about two of those countries that are involved in the TPP; those are Vietnam and Malaysia. We are fighting here--and I understand there are differences of opinion--we are fighting here in the U.S. Congress to raise the minimum wage. I happen to believe a $7.25 minimum wage, which is what it is federally, is a starvation wage. I would like to see it go up over a period of years to $15 an hour. The Presiding Officer may disagree, and there are others who disagree.

Let me tell my colleagues what the minimum wage is in Vietnam. The minimum wage in Vietnam is 56 cents an hour--56 cents an hour. So we have American workers being forced to compete against people who make 56 cents an hour. And we have a situation, just as one example of many, where the Nike company--a company which produces over 365 million pairs of athletic shoes each year--goes all over the world.

Do you know how many of those athletic shoes are manufactured in the United States of America? Fifty million? Twenty million? Ten million? One million? Zero. On the other hand, they employ 330,000 workers in Vietnam--mostly young women--and while they refuse to tell us, give us the detailed information, our supposition is that most of those women make very low wages.

Let's be clear about what is going on. According to a November 11, 2014, article in the Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien News: ``Analysts acknowledge that Vietnam's abundance of cheap labor has played an increasingly pivotal role in wooing foreign firms looking to set up overseas manufacturing operations in a country with a population of 90 million.''

In other words, that is what this is all about. Wages are very low in Vietnam. Companies from the United States and all over the world will go to that country. Allowing the TPP to pass will make it easier for multinational companies to shut down in America and move to Vietnam. That is wrong.

When we talk about free trade, it is important to understand what is involved. Whom are we competing against? Are we competing against Canadian workers whose standard of living is as high or higher than ours? Are we competing against workers in Germany whose standard of living may be higher than ours? No. We are competing against people who are struggling to stay alive, earning the lowest possible wages that keep a human being alive.

Last year, the Human Rights Watch published a report on Vietnam. Here are some of the quotes from that report:

The human rights situation in Vietnam deteriorated significantly in 2013, worsening a trend evident for several years. The year was marked by a severe and intensifying crackdown on critics, including long prison terms for many peaceful activists whose ``crime'' was calling for political change.

In other words, in Vietnam, if you speak up, you want political change, there is a likelihood you will end up in jail.

Vietnam bans all political parties, labor unions and human rights organizations independent of the government. ..... The authorities require official approval for public gatherings and refuse to grant permission for meetings, marches, or protests they deem politically or otherwise unacceptable.

It is not my point to beat up on Vietnam. They are a struggling country--a poor country that went through a terrible war with the United States that caused them incredible harm. But when we look at a trade agreement, when we say to American workers: This is your competition, people who are making 56 cents an hour in some cases, people who can't form an independent trade union, people who politically can't stand up and speak up for their rights, is that really appropriate and fair to the American worker? I don't think it is. I don't think it is.

Let me say a word not just on Vietnam but another country in that consortium of partners in the TPP; that is, the country of Malaysia.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a New York Times article, dated September 17, 2014.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, what the New York Times article talks about is that today there are nearly 200 electronics factories in Malaysia where high-tech products from Apple, Dell, Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments are manufactured and brought back into the United States. It turns out Malaysia is a major center for the manufacturing of electronics, and some of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world are centered or have plants in Malaysia. If the TPP is approved, that number will go up substantially. Now, what is wrong with that?

Well, let's talk about what is going on in Malaysia, where American companies in this country and American workers will have to compete as part of the TPP. Well, it turns out that many of the workers at the electronics plants in Malaysia are immigrants to that country and are forced to work there under subhuman working conditions.

According to Verite, which conducted a 2-year investigation into labor abuses in Malaysia, which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor--this report was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor.

This report tells us that 32 percent of the electronics industries' nearly 200,000 migrant workers in Malaysia were employed in forced situations because their passports had been taken away or because they were straining to pay back illegally high recruitment fees.

According to the New York Times article commenting on the study, 92 percent of the migrant workers in Malaysia's electronics industries had paid recruitment fees, and 92 percent of that group had paid fees that exceeded legal or industry standards defined as more than one month's wages.

Ninety-four percent of the migrants did not have their passports when Verite's investigators interviewed them. Let me repeat that. The passports were taken away from 94 percent of the people whom these investigators interviewed. Now, if you are a migrant in a foreign country and your passport is taken away, you have no rights at all. You can't leave. You may not be able to travel. You have no rights at all. In other words, many of these workers who wanted to leave Malaysia were unable to do so. They were forced to stay and continue to work under these subhuman conditions.

Mr. President, 30 percent of foreign workers--this is again in the report from Verite, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor--30 percent of foreign workers said they slept in a room with more than eight people, and 43 percent said there was no place where they could safely store their belongings.

Well, when we talk about competition and a competitive global economy, I do not believe the American worker should be forced to compete against workers who are literally held in slave-like conditions, unable to leave the country, having their passports taken away, working for pennies an hour.

Let me conclude simply by saying this: This trade agreement is being pushed on the Congress by the largest corporations in the United States of America. They love unfettered free trade because it enables them to shut down in America and move to low-wage countries where they can employ workers at pennies an hour. This trade agreement is pushed on us by Wall Street, that wants to make sure that around the world they will have financial regulations that make it easier for them to do what they do, rather than serve the economies of countries around the world.

This legislation is strongly supported by the pharmaceutical industry that will have the opportunity to prevent poor countries around the world from moving to generic drugs and make medicine affordable to the poor people in these countries. So all of the billionaire class, all of the powerful corporate world is supporting this trade agreement.

Who is opposing this trade agreement? Well, virtually every trade union in America whose job it is to stand up for American workers. They are in opposition. I was just at a rally with them the other day. They are united. They are in opposition. You have many environmental groups that understand this is a bad agreement. You have medical groups that understand this is a bad agreement for poor people in developing countries, and you have millions of workers in this country who do not want to compete. They are not afraid of competition. We are a productive country. They do not want to compete against people making 56 cents an hour or against forced labor in Malaysia. That is where we are today.

Where we are today is, Do we go forward with a failed trade policy or do we take a deep breath and say enough is enough? Let us rethink trade policy. Let us figure out a way we can grow the American economy, create decent jobs in the United States, and, by the way, help poor people around the world. All of us want to see wages go up in poor countries around the world, but that does not mean wages have got to go down in the United States of America. We need a trade agreement that works for our people, works for people around the world but is not a trade agreement that only works for the Big Money interests in the United States.

I hope very much the Senate will take a real hard look at this trade agreement, take a hard look at what people have been saying for years about previous trade agreements and say we are not going down this failed path anymore.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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