Congressional Progressive Caucus
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. I want to say thank you to my colleague from Wisconsin and thank you for all of your efforts and what you have been doing. It is an honor for me to serve with you.
At the heart of soul of what your interests are all about is what that chart reflects. It is about people who are making the minimum wage. What is their life about? What are we doing in terms of the policies that we create in this institution, which is an institution which historically has been about providing opportunity? A drop in the minimum wage is not an opportunity for future success. Your characterization of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in creating this kind of an effort is absolutely on target.
In terms of this agreement, next week, as you know, the trade ministers from 12 nations are going to meet in Singapore. As U.S. trade negotiators continue to push for this partnership, the TPP agreement, they want to push to move it so that we can do something by the end of this year.
You made a point before that this could have been a new opportunity. It represented an effort to create something that was new, a sustainable model that promoted economic development with shared prosperity. But, as you know, unfortunately the talks have gone down the same road as previous trade agreements: export of more jobs, not more goods; unsafe imports; and threats to the public health, among other things. You made that clear.
The country lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs, millions of service sector jobs since the North American Free Trade Agreement, which I will tell my colleague that I was proud to vote against when that came before this body, and the World Trade Organization. Both of those went into effect, and we have seen the loss of more than 5 million jobs.
Again, your point is well stated. Wages in the United States have decreased and economic inequality is something that is talked about a lot today. It is not an abstract concept. It is not an abstract construct. It is the result of public policy that has fostered economic inequality in the United States, and that has increased as a result of these past trade agreements.
The recent trade agreement with Korea reinforced why we cannot continue to do more of the same. In its first year, U.S. exports to Korea dropped 10 percent as imports from Korea increased. The trade deficit with Korea exploded by 37 percent in just 1 year, which equates to a net loss of approximately 40,000 more U.S. jobs. Why in an economy that is so difficult for people today are we embarking on public policy initiatives that increase lost jobs, lost wages, more economic uncertainty, and insecurity for families in the United States? It is wrongheaded. There is no reason to believe that the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal will not be the same kind of a raw deal for U.S. workers and more as this agreement would be unprecedented in scope.
The President himself has commented that the pact would establish rules that extend far beyond traditional trade matters to include ``a whole range of new trade issues that are going to be coming up in the future: innovation, regulatory convergence, how we are thinking about the Internet and intellectual property.''
The agreement will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas to include those that are related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, state-owned enterprises, and government procurement policies, as well as financial, health care, energy, telecommunications, and other service sector regulations. This is a treaty that goes beyond tariffs. The scope is, as I have outlined, unbelievable.
We also know that the lack of transparency on this treaty is unbelievable. It is interesting to note that industry has had great access to the process and what is going on. Members of Congress, both sides of the aisle, have not had that same access to the information in this trade agreement, and it is our constitutional authority as Members of Congress to approve trade agreements. We cannot be frozen out any longer. We are not going to tolerate that.
We know, for example, that the agreement will likely lead to increases in U.S. imports of shrimp and other seafood from Vietnam and Malaysia. Here is something I believe my colleague knows but others need to know:
In 2012, imported seafood products from Vietnam were refused entry 206 times because of contamination concerns while some exporters in Malaysia have acted as a conduit to transit Chinese shrimp to the United States in order to circumvent both FDA import alerts and antidumping duties.
When I said they had been stopped, why have they been stopped? Filthy product, contaminated product, antibiotic-laced product putting in jeopardy the public health of people in the United States. And rather than improving food safety enforcement and regulations in partner nations, the agreement may lead to a drain of resources needed to ensure that food safety at agencies like the FDA are called in to resolve these disputes with other countries. The agreement may even undermine critical U.S. food safety regulations.
We also know from the recently leaked text that U.S. trade negotiators--I say ``recently leaked'' because we don't have access to the information. We are not able to come in and have people lay it out for us.
We now know from the leaked text that U.S. trade negotiators are proposing unbalanced intellectual property provisions that are going to hinder our trading partners' access to safe and more affordable drugs. This is not only going to raise the price of medicines overseas, preventing millions from getting the medical care that they need, but it limits the ability of United States companies exporting these drugs to grow internationally and to generate more jobs at home.
Incredibly, even as the administration is proposing to lower drug costs for consumers here in the United States by proposing in its budget to modify the length of exclusivity on brand name biologics from 12 to 7 years, our trade negotiators are demanding 12 years of data exclusivity from our trading partners, denying their people quicker access to more affordable drugs.
How can the United States be in that business? It is morally unacceptable that people overseas will have less access to lifesaving drugs. That is not who we are as a Nation. That is not where our values lie.
These and other critical areas are being negotiated without sufficient congressional consultation, even though, as I mentioned, under the Constitution, the Congress, not the Executive, has the exclusive constitutional authority to ``regulate commerce with foreign nations'' and write the Nation's laws. Over the last few decades, Presidents have increasingly taken over both of those powers through a mechanism known as ``fast track.'' What it does is erode Congress' ability to shape the content of the free trade agreement, which today, as I said again earlier, clearly goes well beyond tariff issues of the shaping of the trade agreement, but it then becomes--if you provide for fast track authority, then
that means it comes to this body. My colleague from Wisconsin knows this. He served in legislative bodies. We will have no ability to amend, and you just come and you rubber-stamp it. No more. No more.
Under the recent iteration of fast track--which expired, by the way, in 2007--U.S. trade negotiations required various stages of congressional consultation before and during the negotiations. But even that minimal level of congressional consultation has not occurred with regard to the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, which is why myself and so many of my other colleagues from both sides of the aisle, including my colleague from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan), have made it clear that the 20th century fast track and its lack of any meaningful input from Congress in the formative stages of an agreement is not appropriate for the 21st century trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. More fast track is a nonstarter.
What we need to do is to create a 21st century mechanism to negotiate approved trade agreements that ensure that they benefit more Americans. Don't decrease their wages. Don't decrease the minimum wage. Give them a fighting chance to help themselves and their families. We cannot approve a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that continues to follow the same failed trade template that has hurt working families for so long, that jeopardizes our public health here and abroad, and that creates binding policies on future Congresses that we had no input in creating.
If we are to uphold the trust of our constituents, for them, for this economy, for our country, we need to do better, and the content and the process of the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not allow us to do better by our constituents or the great people of the United States. This is a treaty that needs to be restarted. Instead of being brought up and finished by the end of the year, we need to restart the effort, have congressional input, and do something that will help to make a difference in the lives of the people that we serve.
I thank the gentleman for having this Special Order to focus on this issue. I know that he will, as I will, continue to try to make clear to the public what we are talking about, what is in this legislation, which is not going to benefit themselves and their families. That is something that I know that you are committed to and I am committed to, as well. And we are going to continue this battle. As far as I am concerned--I won't speak for you--we are not going to make that end-of-the-year treaty. There are going to be many roadblocks before that occurs.
I thank the gentleman for allowing me to participate in this Special Order tonight.
Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative DeLauro, not only for your long history of standing up for the American worker and trying to get fair trade and not just free trade, but also for really giving a strong explanation about the problem with food coming into our country.
Ms. DeLAURO. The food issue is supreme, and this usually stays under the radar. We are bringing it to the fore.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I think it is important to note that there is bipartisan support in opposition to a fast track authority unless it gets changed to include congressional input, as well as bipartisan support in opposition to this trade agreement for what it does, because people being hurt don't have a party label.
The minimum wage, the drop in the minimum wage, affects Democrats, Republicans, Independents. I don't care where you are and who you are, it is affecting your life and the life of your family.
So I thank the gentleman again and look forward to our continuing efforts.
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