Fast-Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Thank you so much. I want to thank my colleague from New
York for leading this effort tonight and for being shoulder-to-shoulder
with so many of us, both inside the House of Representatives and in the
large, vast coalition that is outside of the House of Representatives
that says ``no'' to fast track; we are not going to do this.

So I applaud you and all of your efforts, and for standing up here on
the floor most nights and talking about this issue so that the American
public knows what is going on here because it is our responsibility to
let them know.

They are not following fast-track Trade Promotion Authority or the
Trans-Pacific Partnership every single day the way we are. But it is
our responsibility to know how, in fact, it is going to affect their
lives.

I would also say to you that I know you and I know so many of our
other colleagues, we are not opposed to trade. We are not. We are in
favor of fair trade. That is what we are about.

I believe you are--and I am--a strong proponent of the Export-Import
Bank. It helped American business to compete around the world for 70
years. That is the kind of trade policy that we need. Reauthorize the
Ex-Im Bank for another 7 years before its charter expires in June.

What we must not do is to sign up to yet another bad free trade
agreement, a deal that subjects American workers to competition that is
neither free nor fair. And far too many of these trade agreements--
particularly, as you pointed out, in the last 20 years--have done
nothing but deepen our trade deficit, lower our wages, and send
American jobs overseas.

An example: 3 years ago, we signed the U.S.-Korea free trade
agreement with the bells and ruffles, the ruffle of drums and all of
this effort that we are going to create jobs, increase wages. Yes, we
are going to have more exports.

Well, you have got to know how to add and you have to know how to
subtract. We have got exports, but look at the flow of imports which is
hurting American workers.

Since this trade agreement 3 years ago, our trade deficit with South
Korea has gone up 71 percent; and given the administration and the way
they calculate the job loss, using their metrics, we are talking about
74,000 American jobs. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is built on that
template of the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, so it follows the same
failed model, but it is on a much, much larger scale. It forces our
manufacturing and technology base into unfair and unequal competition
with other nations throughout the Asia Pacific region.

There are 11 countries. So as you pointed out, it pits good-paying
American jobs against Vietnamese workers who make 56 cents an hour. It
asks American exporters to compete against Japanese producers who are
propped up by currency manipulation, an abuse that has cost our economy
almost 6 million jobs in 2013 alone.

What happened? These countries--Japan, Singapore, and China--
devaluate their currency. Their goods become cheaper; ours are more
expensive. It puts us at a serious disadvantage. As you know, my
colleague, this trade agreement contains nothing that would disallow
currency manipulation. We have been told by the administration that
there will not be a currency chapter in this bill. So we are going to
go down the road where these countries can continue to put our workers
and our products at a disadvantage.

You have a predictable pattern here: cheap, foreign products flow in,
American jobs flow out, and our wages are on a downward spiral. The ill
effects don't stop there. Most of the TPP's 29 chapters are not about
trade at all. They are about rolling back laws in a way that plays
directly into the hands of Big Business.

The former director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers,
has highlighted corporate efforts to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership
to ``change health and safety regulations, extend and strengthen patent
protections, and deregulate financial services.'' We know that Larry
Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury, National Economic Council,
is no leftwing radical. That is the way they would like to portray
those of us who oppose TPP. He is a thoughtful individual. That is the
conclusion he comes to: it changes health and safety regulations,
extends and strengthens patent protections, and deregulates financial
services.

A Nobel-Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, points out:

The overall thrust of the intellectual property section of
the TPP is for less competition and higher drug prices.

TPP can weaken our environmental protection. It opens the door to
unsafe food. It could raise the cost of medicines. It can make it
harder to defend against financial risks.

The truth is proponents of the TPP know that their economic case has
failed, and lately we have heard them try another tack. They tell us
that TPP is going to help America counter the rise of Chinese power in
the Asia Pacific region, and if we pass TPP, we will be able to set the
rules. It is absurd. It really is absurd. Quite frankly, if you want to
do something about China, do something about currency manipulation and
what China has been doing as regular policy in buying up our reserves.
Currency manipulation is their policy.

Rules that encourage offshoring, gut our manufacturing and our
technology base, and compromise the health and safety of our consumers
are not American rules, but rules that favor big corporations at the
expense of everyone else.

You know as well as I do, Congressman Tonko, who is in the room and
who is out of the room, who is in the negotiations and who is out of
the negotiations. There is room at the table for a long list of
multinational corporations: Walmart, Verizon, Halliburton, Dow, General
Electric, Caterpillar, Hershey, Boeing, AdvaMed, DuPont, Intel,
Lockheed Martin, and many others. But do you know who is not at the
table? The American workers are not at the table who are going to be
forced to pay the price in lost jobs and low wages. And there is no
room for Members of Congress. We have been systematically frozen out of
the process.

For months, I pressed to get a copy of the negotiating draft, and I
was told it was classified, but now I have seen pieces of the text.
When I got into the room with a small part of the text, I discovered
that it was not classified at all, that they said it was classified,
but it is classified as a confidential document. It is not secret. It
doesn't have a top-secret classification. They just don't want us to
see it. They have placed every single restriction on our ability to
read this agreement front to back, to ask questions, to know who said
what, what country said what, and what the U.S. position is about all
of this.

They have been working at this for 4\1/2\ years, and now they have
come because they know that fast track is in jeopardy. They know that
this treaty is in jeopardy, and they say: Oh, we would like to have you
read the text but it is classified, and you can't have any staff there
except for someone who has a security clearance. They are holding us to
a standard that the treaty does not impose.

Let's stop playing the games. Jobs are at stake. Workers have a right
to know what is being done in their name. We Representatives in
Congress are their representatives. We have that responsibility to
ensure that TPP either protects jobs or does not happen at all.

Now, you talked about Trade Promotion Authority fast track. What is
it? It is a rubber stamp. It says: Okay, trust us. You can't see the
document. You can only see bits and pieces of it. It is classified, but
give us fast track where there is no public scrutiny of the document, limited
congressional debate, and no ability to amend the document at all. Just
vote for us, and we will take care of your interests.

President Reagan said trust, but verify. We are trying to verify. To
give them that fast track authority, in my view, your view, this
coalition's view, would be a big mistake. The potential consequences of
the TPP are simply too great. We cannot surrender our constitutional
authority, our ability to scrutinize this agreement and to amend it.

Working Americans are in trouble today. Their paychecks have been
stagnant or in decline for over 30 years. They are struggling to put
food on the table and to heat their homes, let alone take a vacation or
send their kids to college. Bad trade deals have played a leading role
in creating this situation, bad public policy, and these trade
agreements have been bad public policy.

Good, stable manufacturing jobs used to be a bridge to the middle
class until they were sent overseas to places where labor is cheap,
only to be replaced with poorly paid service sector jobs. Workers who
are laid off face an uphill battle to get rehired. If they find new
jobs, three out of five are forced to work for lower wages. That is the
reality of what happens when we sign these ill-considered free trade
agreements.

Why would we volunteer America and American workers for yet more
punishment? Why would we do that? If we want to help the middle class,
if we are for middle class economics, why would we do this? Why would
we make it easier for Big Business to send their jobs overseas?

The time has come. Enough is enough. No more low wages. No more lost
jobs. No more bad trade deals. And that is where we are now. The
Congress, the House of Representatives, has woken up. They are stirred
up. They believe this is a bad deal. They haven't been allowed to
investigate it, to read it, to read the bill as the public asked us to
do with the Affordable Care Act those years ago, and then they want us
to put our imprimatur on this effort. That is why there is so much
consternation. That is why the Members of Congress, the Members of the
House of Representatives, are saying no.

I believe we will defeat fast track because the American public
doesn't want this treaty. The American public doesn't want to see their
representatives unable to talk to them about it, and the Members of
Congress are reasserting their responsibility and saying, unless we see
it, unless we read it, unless we ask the questions, unless we know who
the negotiating partners are, and unless we say yes, then our answer to
the administration is no.

I thank you for organizing this.

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Ms. DeLAURO. Let me make one more point. Ms. Kaptur is here, and she
has really been in the forefront of these debates and these issues for
so many years, because the other side tries to portray us as, well, if
you don't want this fast track authority, what would you want? Over the
years, and particularly over the last several months, the last year and
a half, Democratic Members of the House of Representatives have written
to the administration, to the USTR, that is the U.S. Trade
Representative, and we have made suggestions of how we could increase
congressional input into this process by looking at who the negotiating
partners are, what the objectives are, the enforcement of those
objectives, and how we have a chance to certify that the objectives
have been met and say yes, and then we move forward, the administration
moves forward.

We have been said no to over and over and over again. So, in fact,
there has been no congressional input, though we have tried for a very,
very long time to do that. The public needs to know that, because we
just cannot have our head in the sand and just say no.

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