Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) spoke on the Senate floor today in opposition to Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation – also known as “fast track” – which would allow the Administration to negotiate and pass trade deals like the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) without the chance for Congress to amend the agreements to protect American workers, the environment and public health.
“The last major deal Congress approved cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs, lowered the wages of American workers, and increased income inequality. And we are still dealing with the legacy of NAFTA,” Senator Boxer said. “They say timing is everything in life. Well, if that’s true, the timing of this free-trade agreement could not be worse for the middle-class families who we are supposed to be fighting for. We should immediately put this legislation aside and take up legislation that will help the middle class.”
Instead of moving forward with a new trade agreement, Senator Boxer urged her colleagues to pursue an agenda to help the middle class by raising the minimum wage, passing comprehensive immigration reform, investing in our infrastructure, making college more affordable, and ensuring equal pay for women and currency fairness for American businesses and workers.
Senator Boxer also warned that a provision included in the Trans Pacific Partnership would create a new legal framework – called Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS – that would allow corporations to sue for unlimited damages if they don’t like federal or state labor laws or environmental laws.
“Just think of what this could mean for our country,” Senator Boxer said. “Polluters could use it to try to undo the incredible work my home state of California has done on climate change by passing AB 32, which has put the state on track to cut carbon pollution by 80 percent by 2050. Polluters could seek to undermine the President’s Clean Power Plan, which would reduce air pollution from our biggest source power plants.”
A video of Senator Boxer’s speech is available here. The text of her prepared remarks is below.
If there is one unifying principle about the economics of today it is that the middle class is having a terribly hard time – perhaps the worst time in modern history.
A new UC Berkeley study released last week made clear how our middle class is being hollowed out. It found that the lowest paid 20 percent of California workers have seen their real wages decline 12 percent since 1979. At the same time, the highest-earning 10 percent of California’s workers have seen their wages grow 35 percent.
We must do more to help the middle class, and there is a straight-forward agenda we can pursue to lift up our hard-working middle-class families.
It should include: An increase in the minimum wage; Comprehensive immigration reform that brings workers out of the shadows: A large infrastructure program for highways, transit, water, sewers and clean energy; A program to make college more affordable for students, both now and into the future; Equal pay for equal work; And currency fairness.
Each one of these steps would help ensure that we have a vibrant middle class and a growing economy:
Increasing the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020 would give 38 million Americans a pay raise, and help our businesses and our economy as these workers go out and spend money in their communities.
Enacting comprehensive immigration reform would increase our GDP by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and create as many as 900,000 new jobs.
Investing in a large-scale infrastructure program would boost our economy and support millions of jobs for American workers rebuilding our nation’s highways, bridges, water systems.
Easing the burden of student loan debt would not only help more Americans afford college, it would free them to invest more in their communities – including buying a new home.
Passing equal pay for equal work legislation would help end the wage gap that costs the average woman and her family $443,000 over the course of her career.
And ensuring currency fairness would strengthen our economy and help workers by making sure American businesses have a level playing field when they sell their products, both at home and abroad.
So where are we on this middle-class agenda? Nowhere. Worse than nowhere!
So on top of this lack of action on an agenda to help struggling middle-class families comes a trade agreement that is actually a threat to the middle class we still have.
I know there are some who disagree, who will say the opposite, who will insist that it will create jobs, will protect our workers, will protect the environment. Let’s see, where did I hear that before? I heard the very same arguments – almost the same language – when NAFTA came up for a vote almost 25 years ago.
Back then, in 1988, I voted for fast track authority to allow the Administration to negotiate NAFTA. Five years later, when I actually saw the deal, I voted against it. But it was too late.
And now we have seen the results of NAFTA.
Instead of the million new jobs that were promised, by 2010, the United State had lost nearly 700,000 jobs. Out of those 700,000 lost jobs, 86,500 were from my home state of California.
Instead of improving pay for our workers, NAFTA has pushed down American wages. It empowered employers in the U.S. to say to their workers, “Either accept lower wages and benefits, or we will move to Mexico.”
Instead of strengthening our economy, it increased our trade deficit with Mexico. This year that deficit hit $50 billion.
And instead of lifting up our entire country, it has devastated too many communities and too many workers, who have seen their jobs shipped across the border.
Take Santa Ana, California. The city had worked hard to keep a Mitsubishi plant that assembled big-screen televisions – securing tax credits to help the plant stay competitive. And even after NAFTA passed, company officials promised that the Santa Ana plant would stay open.
But three years later, Mitsubishi closed the plant. Company officials said they had to cut costs – especially labor costs – so they were moving their operation to Mexico. In an instant, nearly 400 good-paying American jobs were lost.
Now I fear we will see this pattern once again. And this time, the impact could be even bigger.
We now have about 12.3 million manufacturing jobs in this country. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be the largest trade deal in history – covering nearly 40 percent of the world’s economy.
Of the 12 countries in the TPP, three have minimum wages that are higher than ours: Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. But most of the countries have far lower wages – including Chile with a minimum wage of $2.14, Peru with a minimum wage of $1.38, and Vietnam with a minimum wage of 70 cents. Brunei and Singapore do not even have minimum wages.
If the legacy of NAFTA isn’t enough to convince me, there is an entire new legal framework that would allow corporations to sue if they don’t like our national and state labor laws or environmental laws.
Here’s how it works: If a big polluter fears its interests or its profits are at risk because of a law or regulation, it could use this separate legal system – called Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS – to sue for unlimited money damages.
Just think of what this could mean for our country:
- Polluters could use it to try to undo the incredible work my home state of California has done on climate change by passing AB 32, which has put the state on track to cut carbon pollution by 80 percent by 2050.
- Polluters could seek to undermine the President’s Clean Power Plan, which would reduce air pollution from our biggest source power plants.
- Polluters could undercut efforts to provide new protections to ensure the safety of our drinking water supplies.
- Polluters could put pressure to scale back efforts to reduce toxic mercury pollution under the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.
How do we know this could happen? Because we’ve seen special interests do it in the past.
- S.D. Myers, a U.S. waste treatment company, challenged a Canadian ban on exports of PCBs. The claim was upheld and the tribunal order Canada to pay the company $5.6 million.
- Lone Pine Resources, a U.S.-based oil and gas exploration and production company, launched a $241 million challenge against Canada for Quebec’s suspension of oil and gas exploration permits while the province conducted further environmental assessments on fracking. The case is pending.
- The Renco Group, a private corporation headquartered in New York, notified Peru in 2010 that it intended to launch an $800 million investor-state claim against the government. Renco has argues that Peru had violated the U.S.-Peru FTA by not granting the company a third extension on its overdue commitment to install pollution abatement equipment in a metal smelter it owned in La Oroya, Peru – one of the world’s most polluted sites. The case is still pending.
The very threat of such polluter lawsuits could chill efforts to reduce the threat of toxic chemicals or cut air and water pollution. And it could turn our longstanding environmental principle of “Polluter Pays” into “Polluters Get Paid.”
As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has warned, the consequences could be disastrous. That’s why he called this new agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership, “a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits.”
We need to heed the lessons of history.
The last major deal Congress approved cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs, lowered the wages of American workers, and increased income inequality. And we are still dealing with the legacy of NAFTA.
They say timing is everything in life. Well, if that’s true, the timing of this free-trade agreement could not be worse for the middle-class families who we are supposed to be fighting for.
We should immediately put this legislation aside and take up legislation that will help the middle class.
We should raise the minimum wage, reform our immigration system, invest in our infrastructure, make college more affordable, ensure equal pay for equal work and fight for currency fairness.
We should stop this effort in TPP to give multi-national corporations veto power over our landmark environment and labor laws.
Let’s put middle-class families first and let’s vote down this fast track legislation.
All official press releases from Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
