Progressive Caucus: TPP

Floor Speech

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Mr. POCAN. Madam Speaker, I am here on behalf of the Progressive Caucus, which is in charge of this hour. We are here today to talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and trade.

The people in the Progressive Caucus have been some of the leaders in the movement to make sure that we have trade deals that protect American jobs and lift our wages here in the United States.

We want to make sure that there are environmental protections across the globe. We want to make sure our food is safe and our prescription drugs are affordable. We want to make sure there are human rights in countries that do trade with the United States. And we want to make sure we are addressing issues like currency manipulation. All of those issues are important when you want to advance trade.

No one in this room is against trade. We are all for increasing our ability to have more exports and to have imports into this country, but you have to have trade deals that work on behalf of the American worker. And all too often, past trade deals have cost us jobs here in the United States. They have made our wages continue to be depressed.

That is not a good trade deal, in the minds of the members of the Progressive Caucus. That is why we are here at this hour to talk specifically about what is good trade, why we are skeptical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and why we especially don't want to see a vote during the lameduck session after the election in November. With people who are no longer going to be serving in Congress, taking that vote at that time would be an especially bad idea.

Today is a national call-in day of action on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There are over 90 public interest groups that have been calling our offices. I heard my staff picking up the phone over and over again, responding to people who want to make sure that we have trade deals that take care of all those things that we talked about, all the things that members of the Progressive Caucus have been leaders in this Congress and trying to advocate for.

In conjunction with the tens of thousands of people who have called Congress today to urge their Members not only to not support the Trans- Pacific Partnership, because it is really not a trade deal, there are parts about a trade--this is a rewriting of corporate rules that could have huge ramifications.

Forty percent of the world's gross domestic product is involved in this one large deal. We want to make sure we get it right, not just fast. That is why we are joining with these groups today to make sure that people know what is in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and why it is vitally important that we don't take this up during a lameduck session.

As I said, not only do we have Members who will no longer be serving here who might even be looking for jobs with some of the very industries advocating for the Trans-Pacific Partnership because it will benefit their bottom line, but also we have two Presidential candidates in the main two parties who both oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

This should be something that, with as much enormous respect I have for President Obama, we should allow the next President to be able to address trade, especially when a deal like this has so much controversy and so many questions about it.

So we are here. During the next hour we are going to hear from various members of the Progressive Caucus. It is my honor to yield to one of my colleagues from the great State of California. The 17th District of California is very lucky to have a representative who has been such an outspoken advocate for middle-class families not just in California, but across the country.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), my colleague from the 17th District of California.

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Mr. POCAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from the 17th District of California for his words. As he mentioned, there are a number of provisions that you can start to drill down to. In the giant volumes that make up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there are provisions that I think the American people have no idea about. In fact, I would argue there are some people in Congress who have no idea what is in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Just one of those provisions that Representative Honda mentioned is the investor-State dispute settlement process, the ISDS provisions, where you have a three-person tribunal of unelected, unaccountable people, people who are corporate lawyers one day and then fair arbitrators of the law another day, that set up this separate legal process from the American judicial system that international companies, multinational companies, can access if they want to sue a local government for a law that they have passed that they think affects their future profits.

Think about it. Everyone else in the country has to follow the court system we have in the United States, but if a multinational company, because of the provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, decides that they want to go around that system and go to three corporate lawyers who form a tribunal under this ISDS provision and they want to challenge that law, they can sue for monetary damages. Think about it.

For example, if the State of Wisconsin, where I come from, were to pass a higher minimum wage than the Federal minimum wage and it would be challenged, potentially, by a multinational corporation saying that is going to affect their future profits, they could sue the taxpayers of Wisconsin over that law.

This isn't just something that we are dreaming up. Over and over again, we have seen countries in trade deals be sued by multinational corporations because of environmental law and other laws that they have passed that they have said affect their future profits, and it doesn't happen in the American legal system.

Now, as bad as this sounds, to skirt the American legal system, a special system for multinational corporations, let me tell you what is even worse about that provision. It is only a tribunal for those corporations. But the parts of the trade agreement that affect labor law or environmental law don't have access to the same provisions. They have to go through the normal legal court system.

Recently, there was a labor dispute with the country of Honduras with a company, and it took us 6 years to get that resolved. So for environmental law, for labor law, for things that are going to affect most people, we still have to follow the court system, which is the way it should be. But for multinational corporations, they have a special, streamlined process with, basically, their own arbitrators making the decisions, allowing you to sue taxpayers within a local government or a State government that may pass a law. Clearly, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. That is just one of those provisions that is a real problem.

Another thing that Mike Honda from the great State of California said, he talked about some of the human rights violations. There are explicit human rights violations with some of the countries that don't respect things like single mothers, who don't respect the LGBT community, and those are things that we absolutely can't allow.

Our country has done so much to work with other countries to raise human rights standards, and yet, in this bill, this trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it does not have those things in place to make sure that we have got those protections for so many different people and so many different provisions. So what he mentioned are just a couple of the provisions.

Let me mention something I think that people don't know about. As I mentioned at the very beginning, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is made up of countries that are going to make up for 40 percent of the world's gross domestic product.

Now, it is one thing to have a trade agreement with a country that is very similar, like Canada, or a country like Japan that also has a lot of similar goods that they are producing; but we also have countries in here like Vietnam, where they don't allow trade unions, where people make, on average, 65 cents an hour.

As you can tell, there is going to be a huge difference in a trade agreement that you have with a country like Canada and a country like Vietnam. But in this trade agreement everyone is lumped together, and there is a long lead time that Vietnam would have to try to get their act together, especially just around issues like having a trade union, much less around those wage issues.

But you can just imagine that if you open that door to have trade preferences for a country like Vietnam, at 65 cents an hour, yes, I will contend that we will lift their wages ever so slightly; but I will also tell you, based on evidence we have seen from past trade deals, that you will further depress our wages here. You will keep the wages flat because that is what happens with these trade agreements, and more jobs that are done here in the U.S. will go overseas.

I say this from someone who grew up in a very industrial town. I grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We made autos for the entire time I grew up in that town. When I was growing up, it was American Motors Company. We made Pacers and Gremlins and some cars that people actually bought. But thousands of thousands of people worked at those auto plants and supported their families with good family-supporting, middle class wages. That is the type of jobs that we need here in this country, but those jobs aren't going to happen under these trade agreements.

I have watched in my hometown of Kenosha after American Motors sold to Renault, and then Renault sold to Chrysler. Chrysler made engines for Jeeps. At some point, finally, they went away, and we lost what was over 5,000 jobs at one time in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the ripple effects of the industries that fed into that company because, all too often, we watched those jobs go to Mexico, to Canada, to other countries because of wages.

Another thing, for almost three decades of my life, I have had a specialty printing business. One of the things that we do is screen print T- shirts. So I have been buying T-shirts and goods like that for nearly 30 years. Over the years, I have watched the U.S. mills go away, and more and more of those jobs have gone to countries, literally, that are paying wages that are subpoverty.

I have gone to El Salvador and met with people who work in the sweatshops where people make $3 a day; and because that sweatshop area is in a special free trade zone that is not near where people live, they spend a dollar of that to get there. Now, this is, granted, a couple of decades ago, but the wages are still severely depressed.

Those jobs that were in America now are going to countries--in fact, one of the things we are hearing out of this trade agreement is Central American countries are afraid they are now going to lose jobs to places like Vietnam because they can have even lower wages. None of those things are going to help the American worker.

So there is a reason why this fall, when you talk and hear from candidates who are running for office--we have two Presidential candidates in the major parties both opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership as it is currently written.

We have candidates across the country, for Congress and the Senate, running ads talking about a better vision for what trade should be. With all of that going on, it makes no sense whatsoever that we would take this up after the November elections, between that little period of time between November 8 and the end of the year, when we are going to have a new Congress sworn in in January. To take that up with a Congress of people that may not be serving here and may be looking for jobs from the very companies that advocate for these sweetheart multinational deals is a huge, huge mistake.

So that is why the 90 organizations today are having a day of action; tens of thousands of calls coming into Washington, D.C., to try to make sure that Congress does the right thing around trade. That means making sure that we have trade deals that protect American jobs and, hopefully, grow American jobs; ones that protect our wages and hopefully grow our wages; ones that protect us when it comes to things like food safety; ones that protect us on things like pharmaceutical prices.

We want trade agreements that make sure that you don't have a country--you can have the best language in a trade deal, but if you still allow currency manipulation, you can make that language virtually meaningless. And there is nothing in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that addresses currency manipulation, which is a huge, huge problem.

So those are some of the things that we are trying to get done, much less international human rights provisions that should be in any meaningful trade agreement. So many of us are going to be talking about this over the next few months.

But tonight I would like to yield to another one of my colleagues who has been one of the leaders in Congress on this issue. He represents New York State's 20th District.

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Mr. POCAN. This is my second term in Congress. You have been here a little longer. One of the questions I have is when I was elected 4 years ago I remember New Year's Eve when you were all voting during a lameduck session on things. Tell me more about this lameduck session portion. I think that is the real question. Some people might be amenable to what is in the TPP which we still have arguments about, but to do that in a lameduck session certainly sets up problems.

Could you explain a little more about why that is a problem? I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. POCAN. You mentioned there are a lot of areas that we clearly need to make changes on. There are areas of concern around labor rights, environmental rights, consumer protections, the ISDS provisions, and other things. Why not simply amend the trade agreement to fix those things? I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. POCAN. Again, I thank you so much for all your work on this.

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Mr. POCAN. Again, I thank the gentleman so much. I appreciate it.

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Mr. POCAN. I think the point that the gentleman brought up, especially around why we can't amend it, is a real significant one. Congress gave up its ability when it passed trade promotion authority to allow the President to do the final negotiations. We gave up our ability to have any amendments, and we have limited debate. So when there are so many concerns with this trade agreement, unfortunately, there is very little other than an up-or-down vote that we can do. This is exactly why when you have two major party Presidential candidates and scores of candidates for Federal office across the country in both parties opposing this agreement to allow people who could be kicked out of office, essentially by the voters, to make that decision in a lameduck is certainly undemocratic, with a small D. That is one of the real problems we are facing on this.

The other issue you brought up, gentleman, and I want to talk about too is the accompanying job loss. Other trade agreements we have had in the past, we have seen that we have had a net job loss both, I believe, from the Korea Free Trade Agreement where we were made one promise and a different result happened from NAFTA.

I just last year had a company leave Lafayette County, Wisconsin. Lafayette County is one of the most rural counties in the State of Wisconsin. The largest city is 2,400 people, Darlington. It is one of two counties in the State of Wisconsin that doesn't have a stop-and-go light. This is a rural, rural area.

A company just last year, with about 32 jobs that did auto parts, left to go to Mexico. Now, there is some trade adjustment assistance that can help in the short term to help the workers. But think about it: 32 jobs in a community of 2,400.

I also have Madison, Wisconsin, in my district, with about 240,000 people. That would be like losing 3,000-plus jobs in the city of Madison, Wisconsin. That is the effect that happened to that city, Darlington, because of previous past trade deals. That is why it is so important we get it right and we get it right the first time. In this case, I think there are many people in both parties who don't think we have it quite right, and that is why we need to address it.

Another thing I want to raise that we talked about, and I think it is so important because this is new news from this week, is the provisions around the investor-state dispute settlement, the provisions that allow, essentially, the multinational corporations to sue government if they think something affects their future profits.

Just this week there was a group of academics who have traditionally embraced free trade but are alarmed by the inclusion of the ISDS provisions in the deal who just sent a letter to Congress warning of this system. It is 223-strong, led by Harvard law professor, Laurence Tribe. He warned that the U.S. will be subject to a flurry of suits by profit-seeking actors with no interest in working through a democratic or constitutional process.

Let me read the quote in the letter: ``Unfortunately the final TPP text simply replicates nearly word for word many of the problematic provisions from past agreements, and indeed would vastly expand the U.S. government's potential liability under the ISDS system.''

This is about our sovereignty.

I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. POCAN. The net effect by suing for financial gain will do exactly that if someone is going to have to pay damages.

There is an ISDS provision that happened in Peru over an environmental law change by a company that had toxic contamination. That company is now, because of that change to environmental law in Peru, demanding $800 million from the country--$800 million because they are saying that that is somehow going to affect their future profits and because of a violation of a trade agreement.

These are real. This is just one of many, many examples. Canada and other countries have been sued through these provisions. But now we have the experts in the United States telling us not to do that.

So this is something that clearly is one of the biggest problems that is in there. As we said, you can't amend it out. We are not allowed. As Congress, we gave up our ability to amend that section out.

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Mr. POCAN. I thank the gentleman.

As much as this is the Progressive Caucus Special Order hour, and many of us are working against this, I see Republicans in the room. I know Republicans are just as concerned about the sovereignty of this country. When you have the ISDS provisions that you have, you take away that sovereignty. So I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, you want to make sure that if we have a legal system here it is a legal system for everyone and there is not a special system set up for a few multinational corporations that no one else can access with their own players arbitrating these decisions. That is the real problem.

Mr. Speaker, I will close our hour just by repeating a few of the things that I think are really important for our people who are watching to understand. This is a day of action, and 90 organizations have had calls coming into Congress throughout the day. Tens of thousands of calls have come into Washington, D.C., to ask people not to support TPP, but especially not to support a vote on the Trans- Pacific Partnership in a lameduck Congress.

Don't let people who have just been rejected by the voters make a decision that could impact this country for decades in the future. Don't allow a vote that is going to take away more American jobs and further depress our wages here. That is what people have been calling us all day about.

I think that an important question for anyone who wants to serve in this body is: are we going to give up those sorts of sovereignty issues? Are we going to give up the very concerns we have around things like food safety and prescription drug prices; around labor standards and environmental standards?

Are we going to give all of that up through one giant trade deal that has 40 percent of the world's gross domestic product wrapped into it and think that any agreement we have with Canada and Vietnam are identical?

I don't think anyone really believes that is in the best interest of America. That is why we had this Special Order tonight. That is why so many people called in today. We thank those people for watching, and we hope that they will get active on this issue as well. It is important that we have trade, but we need fair trade, not just free trade.

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