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“TRADE DEFICITS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S5925 on June 24, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRADE DEFICITS
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, last Wednesday the Commerce Department reported that the monthly trade deficit for April 2002 was $35.5 billion. That deficit is for both goods and services. The deficit in goods alone was $39.9 billion.
Every single day, 7 days a week, we import $1 billion more in goods than we export, and we charge the difference. What does that mean on an annual basis? Deficits on the order of $400 billion dollars, and climbing.
As you can see in this chart, the trade deficit is totally out of control. In fact, when we try to put in the 2002 numbers, we will be somewhere off the chart, around $480 billion.
These trade deficits are to a large extent the result of bad trade agreements, particularly those entered into under fast-track authority. This Senate, without my vote, just embraced fast-track trade authority so that the President can negotiate another trade agreement. I didn't believe President Clinton should have that trade authority, and I don't believe this President should either.
This next chart shows the increases in trade deficits as we entered into one bad trade agreement after another. You see what has happened since 1976. The deficit line goes up, up, up, and up--the highest trade deficits in human history.
Nobody seems to think much of it. You didn't hear one whisper last Wednesday when it was announced we had the largest monthly trade deficit in the history of this country.
Where are all the exports that we were promised as a result of fast-
track trade agreements? Do you know what our number one export item has become? American jobs. That is the biggest export as a result of the trade agreements. You can see from the trade deficits we have that these trade agreements simply aren't working.
Who pays these deficits? The American people have to pay for these deficits at some point. You can make the case with respect to budget deficits that it is money we owe to ourselves. You can't make that case with the trade deficit. The trade deficit we owe to others, to people living in other countries. We will pay trade deficits with a lower standard of living. That is why it is so dangerous.
Today, as I speak, the financial markets are very unsettled. Day after day after day, we see a further collapse of the stock market, the financial markets.
Why is that the case? Because there is a sense that our fundamentals don't work. We are deep in red ink, drowning in trade deficits, and nobody here seems to give a darn at all. It is dangerous for our country.
Our negotiators go overseas and negotiate a trade deal, and in an instant they lose. I have said it 100 times, but it is worth saying again, in the words of Will Rogers: the United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference. He must surely have been thinking about our trade negotiators.
We have bad agreements in 100 different ways: Bad agreements with China, with Japan, South Korea, Europe, and others. With Europe we have a dispute over market access for U.S. beef. The EU does not let in our beef when the cattle have been fed hormones, even though there is no evidence to support this ban. So we take the EU to the WTO, and we argue that we are entitled to sell our beef in Europe. The WTO agrees, and tells the EU to let our beef into their market. And the EU just thumbs its nose, and says forget it.
So we say: All right, we are going to get tough, and retaliate against you. And how does the United States get tough? We say: We will slap you with penalties on truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. That is enough to put the fear of God into almost any country.
Well, when Europe wants to retaliate against our country over a trade dispute, as they did in the case of U.S. tariffs against European steel, Europe goes after hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. steel, textiles, and citrus products. We, on the other hand, are retaliating by saying: We will nail you on truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese.
I am sorry, but where is our backbone? Does this country have any guts to stand up for its producers and its workers?
So last month, we had the largest monthly trade deficit in human history. Does anybody here care? I think eventually we will have to reconcile for this failure in policy. It is not just a failure with this administration--although this administration certainly has played a part--it is a failure of past administrations and every administration going back 20, 30 years. They have embraced policies that have us in a situation where we have long-term, relentless deficits with the Japanese, $60 billion, $70 billion a year every single year with Japan. And 14 years after we had a beef agreement with Japan, there is a 38.5 percent tariff on every pound of beef going into Japan.
I mentioned the Japanese beef agreement, which was described as a big success by those who negotiated. Yet, 12 and 14 years later, we have this huge tariff on every pound of American beef going into Japan. Nobody says much about it. We have a large trade deficit with Japan.
We have 630,000 cars coming here from Korea every year. We are able to ship them only 2,800. When you raise that issue, and point out that they are shipping us 630,000 Korean cars into the American marketplace and allowing only 2,800 American cars into Korea, they say: yes, but your exports used to be 1,300 cars and now they have doubled. So if you hear trade negotiators talk and they say ``we doubled the amount of American cars we shipped to Korea''--well, yes, from 1,300 to 2,800. But the Koreans send us 630,000 in a year.
Our trade policies are failing badly. Nobody seems to care much about it. There is not a whisper about this huge trade deficit on the floor of the Senate--just following the Senate agreeing to extend fast track trade authority to the President.
Because the time is limited, and we are going to the defense authorization bill, I will defer a longer speech on international trade to a later time. But Mr. President, it is fascinating to me that last Thursday we heard the announcement of the largest trade deficit in history, and you could not hear a voice in this town raise a point that this is a serious problem for this country's economy. It is long past the time to have a real debate about our country's trade policies and about these growing, relentless trade deficits that cause great danger to the American economy.
I yield the floor.
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