United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, international trade has always been controversial. That has been true since the days of the Smoot-Hawley effort--Hawley, by the way, was an Oregon Congressman--and it continues to be true today. It is important to our country and important to my home State that I made a special priority, when I was given the honor of serving on the Senate Finance Committee, to queue up to be able to chair the Subcommittee on International Trade and Global Competitiveness, because I think it important that we continue our work here in the Senate to keep pushing to keep our trade policy on the right track.

I wish to describe today three aspects of this debate that are indisputable. In other words, we have lots of differences of opinion with respect to past agreements--did they create jobs, did they not create jobs, and how did they affect various parts of the country--and suffice it to say reasonable people can differ with respect to these analyses. But I have been able, as the chair of this subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee--the Subcommittee on International Trade and Global Competitiveness--to dig deeply into this issue.

I believe there are three indisputable positions with respect to the agreements we will be voting on tonight that the Senate ought to take into consideration that are at the core of why I will be voting later this evening in favor of the agreements.

The first position is there is a huge appetite all around the world for American goods and services. We are the gold standard. People around the world want to buy Brand USA. They want to display it. They want to feature it. There is no question that we have an opportunity to feed this huge demand for American goods and services. I think we ought to go forward and tap this opportunity. The bottom line is if we don't take this opportunity to burnish this Brand America and get our goods and services around the world, we can be very sure that somebody else will be right there, and it is most likely to be China. That is point No. 1. I think it is indisputable.

Point No. 2 is the challenge today in global markets is to capture the entire supply chain. That means everything from raw materials to component parts to the finished good. When I talk about this opportunity to capture the global supply chain, what it means to me in Oregon, and I think it means the same thing in North Carolina or South Dakota--I see my friend and colleague, who is the ranking member on the trade subcommittee, and it has been a pleasure for me to work with him--and I think all over the United States, capturing this supply chain in the global economy means the same thing, and that is what we ought to do--what I say at home in Oregon and I am sure my friend in South Dakota says exactly the same thing, let us grow it in Oregon, let us make it in Oregon, let us add value to it in Oregon, and then let us ship it somewhere. It is a huge opportunity we have in front of us to tap this global supply chain where, once again, if we walk away from this kind of opportunity, we can be very certain that China will be right there to fill the void.

The third issue involves the question of tariffs. I have heard people say, well, these agreements have lots of other things in them, lots of other provisions that are unrelated to tariffs. There is no question that is accurate. But at the end of the day, if American import tariffs are in low and American goods are faced with very high tariffs when they arrive into foreign markets, that is a very substantial advantage for our trading partners. As I highlighted yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee, when we want to send our beef, Oregon beef, to Korea, we sometimes face a 40-percent tariff. When Korea sends their beef to us here in the United States, it can be as low as 4 percent. That is a tenfold difference.

I could go through a whole host of other products.

Oregon wine faces a tariff in Korea that is fifteen times higher than wine that is imported into the U.S.

Value-added wood products. I know the Presiding Officer, the Senator from North Carolina, cares an awful lot about wood products. Well, the fact of the matter is, if we want to send finished wood into Korea--not the raw materials. We all know what we want to do, again, is add value to wood products, a key component of the Pacific northwest's economy, of the southern economy. We want to add value to it. Well, the fact is, the tariffs are four times as high for finished wood products in Korea as they are here in the United States.

These are indisputable facts: the question of the tariffs, the question of the global supply chain, and the Brand USA opportunity I have described as this huge appetite for American goods and services that exists around the world that I think we will be making a grave mistake to pass up an opportunity to level the playing field by dismantling foreign trade barriers to U.S. goods and services, whether they are tariffs or otherwise. The free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama provide us an opportunity to level the playing field for U.S. producers who would like to feed the appetite for American goods and services in Korea, Colombia, and Panama.

There are a lot of other issues associated with the votes we are going to have to cast. I feel very strongly about the trade adjustment assistance program because I want to make sure, in an economy that is constantly changing, our workers have a trampoline, in effect, to get the training and the skills they need to succeed, which may mean moving into new careers. People think the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program is just about workers. This is a crucial program for employers, and that is why it has so much support among employers. Employers need workers with the types of skills that enable them to be competitive in global markets, and trade adjustment assistance helps in this regard.

By the way, one of the concerns business is continually citing, and increasingly so, is the mismatch they often face where they need workers who have one sort of skill but the workers in their community do not have what they need. So, with the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, we can close that skills gap, we can do more to ensure businesses can get the type of workers they can rely on to be efficient and competitive. So, the idea that trade adjustment assistance is just for workers is a mistake. It is a major plus to our employers. Oversight over trade adjustment assistance is going to be one of the things that the subcommittee on trade, which I chair, is going to zero in on.

Worker issues: Another one we will be looking at on the subcommittee involves issues relating to workers rights under the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. There, our concern is violence--demonstrable, serious violence against Colombian union members and the impunity the perpetrators of such violence have enjoyed.

This situation does seem to be getting a bit better. The Santos administration understands the concern. There is an agreement with Colombia on an action plan on labor that sets in motion a series of steps the Colombian Government is taking to provide workers with more adequate labor rights and protection from violence. But there is a lot more to do, and I intend to conduct meaningful oversight over the labor situation in Colombia and Colombia's adherence to its commitments to the Obama administration. As far as I am concerned, that is going to start as soon as these agreements have been voted on. Senator Stabenow, Senator Cardin, and Senator Menendez will be joining me, and we are all going to be doing more to make sure the Obama administration provides the Congress with annual reports on the labor situation in Colombia and the impact of the labor action plan that was reached by the Obama administration and the Santos administration.

I have mentioned trade adjustment assistance. I have mentioned labor rights. I want to close in terms of future work that is related to this topic by talking about China because certainly these trade agreements and the ability to tap the opportunity, particularly in our country, for family wage employment through more exports is going to require tougher enforcement of our trade laws and, particularly, the Obama administration getting serious about enforcing the laws on the books.

We have had a series of investigations looking at cheating--cheating, Madam President. I use that word specifically. I guess you could call it merchandise laundering because some foreign producers, when they are faced with U.S. trade remedy laws, like anti dumping and countervailing duties, instead of doing the right thing and coming into compliance, decide to ship their U.S.-bound merchandise through another country in order to falsify the country of origin import documents. This is going to be an even more important challenge when the trade agreement with Korea goes into force. Fortunately, we have bipartisan legislation in order to stop this type cheating, to strengthen the enforcement of our trade laws. It is going to be even more important to pass that effort to eliminate this kind of cheating because with respect to the agreement and Korea, Chinese suppliers have a long history of laundering their goods through Korea in order to avoid U.S. trade laws by suggesting the Chinese merchandise is from Korea.

On the question of cheating, we have documented the problem in our hearings of the Finance Subcommittee on International Trade. And we have a bipartisan bill with, I believe, four Democratic Senators and four Republican Senators. It's called the Enforce Act and we are ready to move it forward. I was very pleased, in the discussion in the Finance Committee, Chairman Baucus and Senator Hatch, the ranking minority member, said this effort to fight these practices, this kind of cheating--which potentially could get worse unless you strengthen enforcement--Chairman Baucus and Senator Hatch said it was going to be a priority for them, and they wanted to make our anticheating legislation a must-pass effort before the end of this year, that they would attach it to a must-pass piece of legislation.

I could go on.

Even today, the administration is going forward with the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, or ACTA, without doing it with the approval of the Congress. I think that is a mistake. I think that may be misreading of the law that the executive branch can do it of its own accord, and many legal scholars agree. We are going to tackle that in the days ahead because those issues are important now. They will be even more important, given the expansions of trade and commerce when these agreements are approved.

So there is a lot to do to keep the country's trade agenda on track. Level the playing field for U.S. producers. Ensure we have a competitive workforce. Advance labor rights, and enforce the trade laws to combat unfair trade. At the end of the day, if we miss one opportunity to do more to market our brand around the world in order to enable Americans to make things here and grow things here and continually add value to them, dominate that supply chain--which I think is going to be the overriding issue for global competitiveness in the days ahead--if we walk away from those issues, and enabling U.S. producers to export--to feed the foreign appetite for our goods and services--we are walking away from the opportunity for American workers to get the good-paying jobs in the private sector that they need.

In my home State, international trade is a very significant barometer of our economy, with estimates even being that one out of six jobs in Oregon depends on international trade, and the trade jobs pay better than do the nontrade jobs. I want America to be the leader in seizing the opportunities that exist to sell goods and services in foreign markets. I want Oregon producers of high-value goods and services to benefit from our efforts here in the Senate to level the playing field in global markets. These trade related jobs that we can help create--I call them red, white, and blue jobs--these are the kinds of jobs I want for this country that I know the Presiding Officer wants, where we do allow American productivity and American ingenuity to continually innovate and compete.

There are other issues. I know the Presiding Officer cares a great deal about tax policy, global tax policy. Senator Coats and I have a bipartisan tax reform proposal. We look forward to working with the Presiding Officer on that issue.

But today is a chance to expand our opportunity to get

the American brand, the USA brand for goods and services, in markets that are growing, in markets that you can bet China wants.

I know this is controversial. Trade policy always is. But I think, for our workers to get the chance to get our goods and services into growing markets--growing markets that China wants--that my colleagues support the trade agreements that are before us today.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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