U.S. Dept. of State - IIP: The United States and China

Excerpts: Senator Wellstone to Introduce Amendments to PNTR Bill
(Amendments to deal with religious freedom, human rights)

Supporters of granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status will face some painful votes on religious freedom, human rights and labor rights in China, says Senator Paul Wellstone (Democrat of Minnesota).

Wellstone gave that warning in a September 6 speech on the Senate floor during a debate on a motion to proceed with consideration of H.R. 4444, the bill that would grant China PNTR status.

"As we debate this piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate," the Minnesota Democrat said, "I will have an amendment that will deal with religious freedom, an amendment that deals with human rights; I will have an amendment that deals with exports from China from forced prison labor; I will have an amendment that deals with a right to organize in China; and I will have an amendment that deals with the right to organize in our own country."

The bilateral agreement between China and the United States on the terms for China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) contains "page after page of protections for U.S. investors," Wellstone said.

Wellstone called the agreement "a virtual wish list for multinational corporations operating in China and for those who wish to relocate their production there," and said "it contains not a word about human rights, nothing about religious freedom, nothing on labor rights, and nothing on the environment."

Wellstone said American firms are not interested in PNTR as a means of opening the Chinese market to U.S. products. Rather, he suggested, American firms want to be able to move production facilities to China where workers are not well-paid and do not have the rights and protections U.S. workers have.

Wellstone also suggested a link between the ability of American companies to move manufacturing operations to China and an increasingly hostile attitude toward the rights of American workers to organize.

Taking aim at America's trade deficit with China, Wellstone said the deficit cost more than 683,000 U.S. jobs between 1992 and 1999.

Granting China PNTR "will cost even more -- over 870,000 jobs" in the immediate future, he warned.

Citing China's human rights record, Wellstone argued that Americans "can never be indifferent to the circumstances of exploited and abused people in the far reaches of the globe."

"When the most basic human rights and freedoms of others are infringed upon or endangered," he said, "we are diminished by our failure to speak out for human rights."

If the Senate passes any of Wellstone's amendments to H.R. 4444, the Senate and the House of Representatives would have to submit their respective versions of the bill to a panel of Senators and Representatives for reconciliation. If the panel members reach agreement on the language, the bill would then return to the House of Representatives and the Senate for approval. Given the short time left in the legislative calendar, a successful effort to amend H.R. 4444 could derail efforts to pass PNTR for China in the 106th Congress.

Following are excerpts from Senator Wellstone's September 6 speech from the Congressional Record:

TO AUTHORIZE EXTENSION OF NONDISCRIMINATORY
TREATMENT TO THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
MOTION TO PROCEED
(Senate - September 06, 2000)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate now resumes postcloture debate on H.R. 4444, which the clerk will report.

A motion to proceed to the bill (H.R. 4444) to authorize extension of nondiscriminatory treatment (normal trade relations treatment) to the People's Republic of China, and to establish a framework for relations with the United States and the People's Republic of China.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Montana for his remarks. We are not in agreement on this question, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for his work in the Senate.

Let me, first of all, state at the beginning of this debate that it is commonly assumed the Senate is going to pass PNTR. For most, this is a foregone conclusion, but I think this is an extremely important debate and, as a matter of fact, one of the reasons I am very proud to be a Senator from Minnesota is that, unlike the House of Representatives where it was really difficult to have an extensive debate, we will have that debate in the Senate. I will have a number of amendments I will bring to the floor. They will be substantive. I think my colleagues will believe they are thoughtful, and we will have up-or-down votes.

I also echo the remarks of my colleague from Montana when he says we should be very clear about what this debate is about and what it is not about. This debate is not about whether or not we have trade with China. We do have trade with China. We will have trade with China. It is not about whether or not we communicate with China. We most definitely will. It is not about whether we isolate China. We are not going to do that. It is not about whether we should have an embargo of China, as we do with Cuba. That is not even on the radar screen.

Nobody is talking about any of that. The question before us is whether or not we in the Congress give up our right to have annual review of normal trade relations with China--we used to call it most-favored-nation status--whether or not we give up what has been our only leverage to promote noncommercial values--I emphasize that, I say to my colleagues--noncommercial values in our trading relationships, such as human rights, labor rights, and environmental protection. Do we put human rights, labor rights, environmental protection, religious rights, the right not to be persecuted for practicing one's religious beliefs or exercising one's religious beliefs in parentheses, of no interest or concern to us, or do we maintain some leverage as a country to speak out on this?

The larger question is not whether China is integrated into the world economy. China is a part of the world economy. The questions are: Under what terms will China be integrated? what will the rules be? who will decide those rules? who will benefit from these decisions? and who will be harmed by them?

The trade agreement negotiated by the United States and China last November and the PNTR legislation currently before the Senate provide very discouraging answers to these questions as to who will decide, who will benefit, and exactly who is going to be asked to sacrifice.

Our bilateral agreement contains page after page of protections for U.S. investors. It is a virtual wish list for multinational corporations operating in China and for those who wish to relocate their production there, but it contains not a word about human rights, nothing about religious freedom, nothing on labor rights, and nothing on the environment.

It has been said that the United States could not demand such things because we have conceded nothing in our deal with China. That is far from the truth. With PNTR, the United States gives up our annual review of China most-favored-nation trading privileges, as well as our bilateral trade remedies.

MFN review has not been used as effectively as it should be, I grant that, but it is about the only leverage we have left to speak up for human rights, and when we as a nation do not speak up for human rights in other countries, we diminish ourselves. Just ask Wei Jingsheng, who I hope will receive the Nobel Prize for his courageous speaking out for democracy in China. Ask him the difference it made when every year normal trade relations with China came up for review here while he was in prison. The treatment was better. The Government was worried about what we would do. Now we give up that leverage.

It is also true that our bilateral trade remedies have not been used as effectively as they should, but section 301 remains our only explicit remedy against China's violation of core labor standards.

The United States right now absorbs 40 percent of China's exports. The argument that we could not have done better by way of some concessions on these basic issues falls on its face. In exchange for the concessions we have made to China, could we not have at least exacted some concessions with regard to human rights? We did not. Yet this year's annual report by the State Department says China's human rights performance continued to worsen in 1999. . . .

We have had more relations, more trade, and this vote is coming up this year, and when it comes to the question of whether people can exercise the right to practice their own religion, there is more persecution.

I will have an amendment that will deal with the whole question of religious freedom. It will mirror the conclusions of a commission we set up to look at religious freedom throughout the world, to look at religious freedom in China, a commission which recommended to the Congress that we not grant automatic trade relations with China unless the Chinese Government meets essential minimum decency requirements when it comes to not persecuting people because of their religious practice.

The government's poor human rights record deteriorated markedly throughout the year as the government intensified efforts to suppress dissent, particularly organized dissent. Abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings, torture, mistreatment of prisoners, and denial of due process.

We are talking about hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in China sentenced to long prison terms where they have been beaten, tortured, and denied medical care.

According to Amnesty International, throughout China, mass summary executions continue to be carried out. At least 6,000 death sentences and 3,500 executions were officially recorded last year. The real figures are believed to be much higher. Nor did we obtain any concessions on religious freedom in our negotiations with China. Scores of Roman Catholics and Protestants--I speak as a Jew--have been arrested. A crackdown on Tibet was carried out during the `strike hard' campaign. Authorities ordered the closure of monasteries in Tibet and banned the Dalai Lama's image. At one monastery which was closed, over 90 monks and novices were detained or `disappeared.' That is why the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended delaying PNTR until China makes `substantial improvement in allowing people the freedom to worship.'

I say to my colleagues, do you just want to turn your gaze away from this question?

We obtained no concessions from China on complying with their existing commitments on forced prison labor which they have not lived up to. Harry Wu, a man of extraordinary courage and character, has documented China's extensive forced labor system. His research has identified more than 1,100 labor camps across China, many of which produce products for export to dozens of countries around the world, including the United States.

We demanded no concessions from the Chinese on their persecution of labor organizers. If you try to form an independent union, if you should want to make more than 3 cents an hour, or 14 cents an hour, if you should not want to work 16 and 18 hours a day, if you should want to be treated with some dignity, and you try to organize a union, then you are faced with 3 to 8 years in a hard labor camp. We pay no attention to this question at all, I say to Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Absent any minimum standards for human rights, for labor, or for the environment, the most likely scenario is for China to become an export platform, attracting foreign manufacturers, with lax regulations, and wages as low as 3 cents an hour.

Unfortunately, many of the concessions that we chose to demand from China will only make it easier for the United States, for multinational corporations to relocate there, paying people 10 cents an hour, 3 cents an hour, 13 cents an hour--I am going to give examples in my opening statement in just a few minutes--in competition with American workers and ordinary people in our country, who, by the way, if they oppose our trade agreements, are accused of being backward, are accused of not being sophisticated, are accused of not understanding this new global economy in which we live.

Please forgive ordinary citizens and wage earners for their skepticism that without some basic standards, what you are going to see is China becoming a magnet for more and more companies to go there and pay people deplorable wages, with deplorable working conditions, while we lose our jobs.

I believe the time has come for a different approach in negotiating our trade agreements and for reforming the rules of the global economy. I want to make it very clear at the beginning of my opening statement, I say to my colleagues, I am an internationalist. I am a fierce internationalist. I am the son of a Jewish immigrant who fled persecution from the Ukraine, who was born in the Ukraine, and then lived in Russia, who spoke 10 languages fluently. I am not an isolationist.

But I will say today on the floor of the Senate that we should be looking forward, and we should be looking to how we participate in this new global economy, and how we can have some rules, some edifice, some kind of framework so this new global economy works for working people and the environment and human rights. Too many of my colleagues want to put all of these concerns in parenthesis.

I think we need to be clear about what is at stake. My colleague from Montana, Senator Baucus, said that as well. That is why so many people in this country are concerned about passage of this legislation.

The PNTR is being sold as an agreement to increase U.S. exports. I have heard this said a million times: If we pass PNTR, we will dramatically increase U.S. exports to China, and it will be a win-win--a win-win for agriculture, a win-win for business, a win-win for labor.

This legislation and trade deal with China is much more about investment than it is about exports. It is much more about making it easier for U.S. firms to relocate jobs in China than it is about exports.

First of all, the argument that this debate is all about exports and reducing our trade deficit falls on its face. I say to my colleagues, last August the U.S. International Trade Commission, the ITC, completed a study on the effects of the China deal on our trade balance. The ITC found that the China deal will increase our trade deficit with China, not lower it.

Second of all, it is not at all true that we need PNTR to be able to have trade with China. China is already obligated, under the 1979 bilateral trade agreement, according to our own General Accounting Office, the GAO, to give us all of the benefits by way of tariff reductions that it gives any of the other WTO countries. Even the administration concedes this point.

Third of all, PNTR will lead to more imports from China by encouraging multinationals to invest in China manufacturing to export to the U.S. market. That is what this is all about. Big companies could go to China--I will give many examples--they would not have to worry any longer about annual reviews, about normal trade relations. They could go there.

People can't organize a union. They are thrown in prison. There is no respect for human rights. There is no respect for people to practice their religion. As a result, they could go there and pay people deplorable wages, under deplorable conditions, and then export back to our country.

Let me just be real clear about it. Before the House vote on PNTR--and I hope colleagues will listen--few noticed that the ITC had predicted that the trade deal with China would significantly increase investment of multinational corporations in China. But after the House vote, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal all carried articles laying out what this legislation is really about. . . .

Then finally, after the House vote, the U.S. Business and Industrial Council surveyed the web sites of dozens of U.S. multinationals who have been lobbying for PNTR, and they reached similar conclusions:

In contrast to the focus in their congressional lobbying and their advertisements, American multinationals say almost nothing about exports when they describe their China business on their web sites. There, the overwhelming emphasis is on supplying the China market--and often other markets, like the U.S. market--from factories they build or acquire or work with in China. . . .

Mr. President, this should come as no surprise to colleagues. According to the Economic Policy Institute, U.S. investment in Chinese manufacturing--I am talking about before this vote--shot up from $123 million in 1988 to $4 billion in 1998.

The number of U.S. affiliates manufacturing in China rose from 64 in 1989 to 350 in 1997, and the value of their sales rose from $121 million in 1989 to $8 billion in 1997. That is before we pass normal trade relations with China. U.S. agribusiness conglomerates that have been promoting U.S. exports to China as much as anyone are also investing in production facilities there in China. . . .

I urge farmers in Minnesota to listen to that. Cargill says: We set up operations in China; we are a major exporter of corn. Steel workers in the Iron Range, listen to that. They don't have to worry about environmental rules and regulations. They don't have to worry about fair labor standards. They don't have to worry about human rights standards that the Chinese Government will impose. They can produce corn well below the cost of production of corn growers in Minnesota, and they themselves brag about the fact that they are a major exporter of Chinese corn.

Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, and ConAgra, which have operated in China for years, lobbied hard for a provision in the China trade deal that will let them set up distribution networks that can be used for exports as well as imports. And John Deere has a joint venture with one of China's state-owned companies that sells tractors.

If we look at our trade deficit with China, it tells the story. Our trade deficit with China rose 256 percent from 1992 to 1999. Imports from China more than tripled in real terms, while exports grew only 69 percent. Our trade deficit with China jumped $11 billion last year to $68 billion. In 1999, we had a 6-to-1 ratio of imports to exports.

We do trade with China. There is a huge trade imbalance. And as U.S. investment in China goes up, that is what is going to happen. As our trade deficit gets worse, China is developing into an export platform for foreign firms that seek the world's cheapest labor and access to the world's largest consumer market--not China but ours. People in China are, by and large, very poor. The market is not China. The market is in this country. The U.S. today absorbs about 40 percent of China's exports, and about 40 percent of China's exports, more than $200 billion in 1998, came from multinational firms operating in China.

If this debate is really about investment and not exports, then the question is, Why are so many U.S. corporations so eager to invest in China? The answer that many of these corporations will give is that they want access to China's huge internal market. But as we have seen, most of the production they are investing in is for export to the United States and other foreign markets. There is a good reason for that. This was the same argument made about NAFTA--we want to have this market in Mexico. But the problem is, the wages are so low in these countries, the poverty is so great, we don't have the market.

So why are U.S. corporations so interested in relocating production in China? Why are they so interested that we no longer reserve for ourselves the right to annually review normal trade relations with China? The most important reason is they are interested in low cost, and that is a euphemism. What I really mean to say is, they are interested in low wages and the repression of worker rights. That is what is so attractive about investment in China.

The year 1994 is the last data we have. I am trying to bring to the floor of the Senate in this debate as much empirical data as I can. Chinese production workers who worked in the factories of the U.S. multinationals earned on average of 83 cents an hour. That is the last year for which the data is available. By way of comparison, the average manufacturing worker today in our country makes $16.87.

The State Department human rights report last year confirms the appalling state of labor rights in China. I will quote a few sections.

Independent trade unions are illegal. . . The government has not approved the establishment of any independent unions to date.

The government continues its effort to stamp out union activity, including through detention or arrest of labor activists.

The State Department then goes on to list a number of labor activists who have been imprisoned because they did nothing more than demand the right to be able to form a union so they could bargain collectively and get better wages. They are in prison, and we pay no attention to that.

I cite a recent report by the National Labor Committee which should dispel any doubts whether there are irresponsible U.S. corporations taking advantage of these appalling labor conditions. By the way, there are responsible U.S. corporations as well. However, the shame of it is, without any kind of standards, it is what the irresponsible U.S. corporations get away with.

Recent in-depth investigations of 16 factories in China producing car-stereos, brakes, shoes, sneakers, clothing, TVs, hats, and bags for some of the largest U.S. companies clearly demonstrate that [these corporations] and their contractors in China continue to systematically violate the most fundamental human and worker rights while paying below subsistence wages. The U.S. companies and their contractors operate with impunity in China, often in collaboration with repressive and corrupt local government authorities.

NLC investigators found brand name--Kathie Lee/Wal-Mart--handbags being made in a factory `where 1,000 workers were held under conditions of indentured servitude, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with only one day off a month, while earning an average of 3 cents an hour.'

I hope my colleagues are not going to vote against an amendment that I am going to bring to the floor that is going to deal with basic human rights and another amendment I will bring to the floor dealing with the problem of religious persecution.

However, after months of work, 46 percent of the workers surveyed earned nothing at all--

They didn't even make 3 cents an hour, in fact, they owed money to the company. The workers were allowed out of the factory for just an hour and a half a day. The workers were fed two dismal meals a day and housed 16 people to one small, crammed dorm room. Many of the workers did not even have enough money to pay for bus fare to leave the factory to look for other work. When the workers protested being forced to work from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. seven days a week, for literally pennies an hour, 800 workers were fired.

Do Members not think in this trade agreement we might not want to have some conditions calling on the Chinese Government to live up to basic standards of decency?

One factory producing brand name sneakers for the U.S. market hires only females between the ages of 18 and 25--another U.S. company in China.

The base wage at the factory is 18 cents an hour, and workers need permission to leave the factory grounds. Factory and dorms--where 20 women share one small dorm room, sleeping on triple-level bunk beds--are locked down at 9:00 p.m. every night. When workers in the polishing section could no longer stand the grueling overtime hours and low pay and went on strike, they were all fired. Factory management then lectured the remaining workers that they would not tolerate unions, strikes, bad behavior, or the raising of grievances.

I will have an amendment that will say we should condition automatic normal trade relations with China on their living up to the basic standard that people should be able to form an independent union if that is what they believe they should do without being imprisoned.

At a plant making brand name--Nike--clothing for American consumers, young workers worked from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., 7 days a week. They made 22 cents an hour. Wal-Mart, by the way, is in China. I think they are paying 14 cents an hour. And another factory manufacturing for export to the U.S. market does not hire anyone older than 25; workers are paid 20 cents an hour and work 11- to 12-hour shifts.

I have no doubt that some of our companies--I hope many--want to be responsible employers. But when we don't have any standards and we sign onto trade agreements without any standards whatsoever, we create economic incentives that push in the wrong direction, where the companies wanting to do well by workers are at a competitive disadvantage and it becomes a race to the bottom.

In our country--I am proud to say as a former college teacher--among young people is the best organizing of justice, idealism, and activism I have seen in many years. But how can you support the anti-sweatshop campaign, denounce the rapid proliferation of sweatshops all over the world, and denounce the resurgence of sweatshops here in the U.S. and then turn around and promote unregulated investment in China without any conditions whatsoever?

I simply say that I seriously question, on the basis of some pretty solid empirical evidence, whether this China deal is going to lift living standards overseas to our levels or whether this China deal and some of our other trade policy is going to lower living standards down to theirs. It is not very hard to figure out what this deal is about. It is going to encourage more investment in China under the conditions I have described. . . .

Many leading United States companies are like Zebco. They face competitive pressure to save money by producing in China -- often exporting back to the United States -- rather than making goods here to sell in China.

The workers as Zebco are not alone. Warren Davis is a courageous, outspoken United Auto Workers leader. He is their regional director for Ohio and Pennsylvania. In a recent letter, he told me about 90 workers at a plant he represents who are all going to lose their jobs because of the conditions that I have described. He writes:

Nestaway Corporation has been under contract with the Rubbermaid Corporation of Wooster, Ohio. It is losing its critical contract because Rubbermaid claims it can no longer afford to buy Nestaway's sink strainers. . . .

The victims are the workers at Nestaway Corporation in Garfield Heights, Ohio. They are mainly single parents with poor prospects for finding any other job that pay a wage comparable to the $9 an hour they had been paid. . . .

Basically, it is the same thing. They can't compete. I continue to quote from him:

My question to you is, for whom does the bell toll? Because this is not just about the jobs of Region 2 members of the United Auto Workers. This is about all of American manufacturing. And it is about the debate in the Senate.

The stories of workers at Zebco and Nestaway tell a larger story. We have an exploding trade deficit with China, and it is only going to get worse because without any kind of conditions, without any kind of human rights standards, without any kind of fair labor standards, without any kind of minimal standards for human rights, what we are going to see is more and more companies not exporting but investing in China, going to China, paying low wages. This becomes the export platform, and then the products are exported back to our country. According to the EPI, our exploding trade deficit with China cost over 683,000 jobs between 1992 and 1999. This trade deal with China will cost even more--over 870,000 jobs, just looking into the immediate future.

Well, let me now make two final points in my opening statement. It is commonly argued that everybody benefits, that it is exports, and I have tried to take that on. We get the arguments of the trade agreement, and I have tried to take that on. It is argued that, in fact, this is a policy that will help people in China. I have tried to take that argument on. Let me simply talk about the inequality in our country. Even free trade economists have now concluded that existing trade policy is the single largest cause of growing inequality since 1979. We have a booming economy, but we have the widest gap between the rich and the poor of any industrialized nation in the world. Inequality, both within countries and between countries, has dramatically increased.

When we went through the debate on NAFTA, the argument was there will be winners and losers, but we will be better off as a country, and we certainly will be there to compensate the losers; we will have job training and education programs and all of the rest. But do you know what? That was fine sentiment expressed on the floor of the Senate, but after NAFTA was passed and we lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, support for the training and assistance suddenly dried up. All of the Senators and all of the Representatives who I hear say, `Yes, there will be losers and we are certainly going to have to do better'--I would like to hear those Senators and Representatives talk about health security for people in this country, affordable child care, good education for their children, increasing the minimum wage. But quite often you find just the opposite.

I wish to talk about an amendment I am going to bring to the floor of the Senate, which I think is terribly important. Part of what is going on, unfortunately, with our trade policy--and given the size of China, this will sharply widen the inequality. This will exacerbate this, I think, most serious question of all.

The message is, if you organize, we are gone; we will go to these other countries. The message is that if you want to work for more than 3 cents an hour, you don't get our investment.

But if this is all about workers, and if this is all about coming through for working people in our country--making sure that the jobs we have in our country are good jobs, and there are decent health care benefits for people, and they can support their families--I think we will have to look at the very strong correlation between unionization and good jobs and good working benefits--and that is a well established correlation--and, therefore, the need to give people the right to organize.

Right now in the country during an organizing drive, in 91 percent of the cases employers require employees to listen to the companies but deny the employees any opportunity to listen to both sides. I am going to introduce a right-to-organize amendment. That should no longer be the case. Employees should be allowed to hear from both sides.

In 31 percent of all the organizing campaigns, employers illegally fire union sympathizers with virtual impunity. Ten thousand workers are fired illegally every year. It is profitable to do so. In this amendment, I say if a company breaks the law and illegally fires that worker, that company is going to be faced with stiff financial penalties.

In one-third of the cases, even after the employees say they want to join a union so they can make better wages, the companies refuse to negotiate. This amendment will call, therefore, for mediation to be followed by binding arbitration.

I think the way our country is going is that people and families are more concerned about the right to be able to organize and bargain collectively, earn a decent living, and support their families.

I say especially to the Democrats that you ought to support this amendment. You ought to support this amendment because this is all about the basic right of people to be able to organize and to do better for themselves and their families. This is all about being on the side of working people. Do I not hear that the Democratic Party is on the side of working people? I have an amendment that will give Democrats, and I hope Republicans, an opportunity to be on the side of working people.

In conclusion, we have a choice. I think the choice is really clear. We are in a global economy. We are in an international economy. The question is, Are there going to be any new rules?

We live in a democracy. My father taught me more than anything else to love my country, and I love my country because we live in a democracy. I get to speak on the floor of the Senate. Citizens get to speak up. We have a voice.

On the one hand, we have the current model of a business trade policy designed to serve mainly the interests of multinational corporations, Wall Street financial institutions, and global business conglomerates. This is the model of globalization that has generated such outrage and certainly skepticism on the part of most ordinary citizens in the country. Good for them.

I think there is a 2-to-1 margin--as I remember the recent polling data--of people who say they don't believe these trading agreements are going to lead to good job prospects but are going to more likely take away good jobs for Americans.

Just think about it for a moment. We passed not too long ago the CBI initiative. That is all about, as my colleague said, helping poor working people in the Caribbean countries. How do you help poor working people in the Caribbean countries where they don't even have the right to work? They can't join a union. The Caribbean countries with the fastest growing exports have experienced--are you ready for this?--the steepest decline in wages.

So often I hear from my colleagues: Well, Paul, we know you support working people but do not seem to be supporting the poor in these developing nations. I say to my colleagues that every time I go to a trade conference, I look for the poor. I never see the poor at these trade conferences. I see the elites from these countries. I don't see the poor represented.

In any case, with the Caribbean countries, let me cite one very interesting correlation. Those countries with the fastest growing exports and that have the lowest wages have seen the steepest decline in wages.

The question is, Who benefits from expanding trade benefits without any enforceable labor standards? Who benefits from trade and investment policies that discourage rather than encourage the right to organize? Not American workers; not workers in the other countries; not the poor in other countries. This is not win-win; this is lose-lose.

I will not cite a lot of statistics about the global economy, but for a moment I want to cite a few to point out to colleagues that many foreign countries have not fared so well under this `Washington consensus trade and investment policy' of recent decades.

More than 80 countries have per capita income lower than they did in 1970, lower in 1999 than in 1978 by 200 million poor people living in abject poverty.

Only 33 countries have achieved and sustained 3-percent growth between 1980 and 1996, and in 59 countries the per capita GNP actually declined.

There are 100 million people in industrialized countries living below the poverty line, and 35 million of them are unemployed.

There are 1.3 billion people in the developing world earning less than $1 per day and who have no access to clean water for themselves or their children.

You are coming out here on the floor of the Senate and trying to argue that trade policy has been a great benefit for the poor in the world. I don't think the empirical data support that.

I am an internationalist. I hear all this discussion about how this debate and this vote is all about whether or not you believe we live and work in a global economy. I take seriously those words that we live and work in a global economy. It certainly is true. But may I point out to my colleagues the implications of this point of view.

If we live in a global economy and if we are truly concerned about human rights, then we can no longer concern ourselves only with human rights at home.

If we live in a global economy and we truly care about religious freedom, then we can no longer concern ourselves only with religious freedom at home.

If we live in a global economy and work in a global economy and we care about the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively and earn a better standard of living for themselves and their children, then we can no longer concern ourselves with labor rates only at home.

If we truly care about the environment and we live in a global economy, then we can no longer concern ourselves with environmental protection only at home.

Raising living standards is not only the right thing to do, it is necessary if we are to maintain our own living standard. We need to ensure that prosperity is shared more broadly so that the world economy is stabilized and that healthy and sustainable products are created for our exporters. When people make 3 cents an hour and are poor, they cannot buy what we produce in our country.

I am proud to associate myself with those who have been engaged in human rights work. I think I care more about human rights issues than almost any other set of issues in my family background. They have understood a basic truth; it is this: That Americans can never be indifferent to the circumstances of exploited and abused people in the far reaches of the globe. When the most basic human rights and freedoms of others are infringed upon or endangered, we are diminished by our failure to speak out for human rights.

When we embrace the cause of human rights, we reaffirm one of the greatest traditions of American democracy, but we are not embracing the cause of human rights with this trade bill.

There is another truth, and it is reaching a larger and larger public. The well-being of our families, the well-being of ordinary wage earners in the United States of America, depends to a considerable degree on the welfare of people who we have never met, people who live halfway across the planet. Our fates are intertwined.

Some of my colleagues say the global markets will take care of themselves; they cannot be tamed; there is nothing we should do; this is laissez faire economics at its best.

I point my colleagues to the lessons of our own economic history. As we debate this piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate--and I will have an amendment that will deal with religious freedom, an amendment that deals with human rights; I will have an amendment that deals with exports from China from forced prison labor; I will have an amendment that deals with a right to organize in China; and I will have an amendment that deals with the right to organize in our own country--let Members for a moment think about this debate in an historic context. I heard my colleague, Senator Baucus, for whom I have great respect, say this is a very important debate. Senator Moynihan, who will retire--and the Senate and our country will miss him--believes this is one of the most important votes we will cast. I agree. I think this is one of the most important debates that has taken place in the Senate.

I deal with a sense of history. One-hundred years ago, our country moved from an economy of local economic units to an industrialized economy. It was a wrenching economic transformation, a major seismic change in our economy. We were moving toward a national, industrialized economy 100 years ago, at the beginning of the last century.

As that happened, there was a coalition--some of them were evangelical, some were populist, some were farmers, some were women, some were working people--that made a set of demands. The farmers said: We want antitrust action because these big conglomerates are pushing us off the land or they were exploiting the consumers. They want a 40-hour workweek. We want the right to organize. We want some protections against exploiting children, child labor. Women said: We want the right to vote. We want direct election of the U.S. Senators. They made those demands, and nobody thought they had a chance.

The Pinkertons killed anyone trying to organize a union. All too often that happened. The media was hostile to this set of demands, by and large. Journalists followed this debate. I am not bashing all journalists, but in general the media was not supportive. And believe it or not, money probably dominated politics even more than it does today.

However, those women and men felt, as citizens of a democracy, they had the right to demand for themselves and their families all they thought was right and all they had the courage to demand. They didn't win everything, but a lot of their demands became the law of the land and their collective efforts made our country better. Their efforts amounted to an effort to civilize a new national economy.

So it is today, 100 years later. These amendments I will bring to the floor of the Senate reflect an effort on the part of people in the United States of America and others throughout the world to say, yes, we live in a new global economy, but just as 100 years ago men and women organized and had the courage to make that new national economy work for them, we make a set of demands. We bring a set of issues before the Senate. We call for votes on amendments which basically say that we need to make sure that this new global economy works for working people, works for family farmers, works for the environment, works for human rights.

Mr. President, we want to make sure we can civilize this new global economy so that it works for most of the people.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)