WASHINGTON, DC - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today issued the following remarks on the House Floor ahead of a vote on the conference report to accompany H.R. 644, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015:
“I strongly oppose this conference report and am disappointed that we passed up an important opportunity for truly bipartisan action on customs in trade legislation.
“The Senate took that opportunity over the summer. It passed a customs bill by a vote of 78 to 20 that was truly about customs and trade enforcement. It included a strong provision to address currency manipulation - the most significant trade enforcement failure over the past decade. And the Senate bill very importantly avoided including wrongful provisions that had nothing to do whatsoever with customs or trade enforcement.
“The House bill did just the opposite. It passed a bill that seeks to prevent our trade agreements from addressing climate change and weakens current law on human trafficking. And it failed to include anything meaningful on currency manipulation, even though just a few years ago this House passed a currency bill very similar to what was in the Senate customs bill by a vote of 348 to 79.
“Because of the partisan and flawed nature of the House customs bill, just 12 Democrats voted for it.
“This conference report is far more like the fundamentally flawed House bill than the Senate bill.
“The conference committee rejected the Senate currency provision - as I said, one that had the support of 348 House Members just a few years ago. There is much talk about how this bill will create jobs and about economic growth. But make no mistake, over the past decade or so, currency manipulation has cost the U.S. and our workers and our industry between two and five million jobs.
“Instead, this conference bill includes a meaningless provision that simply calls for more talk, more deference to the Treasury Department, and no real action.
“The climate change language in the conference report sends just the wrong message as our diplomats are working in Paris with over 150 nations to find an agreement on this threat to our environment. The language in this conference report on climate change is far more than confusing, as some people like to say. It would prevent, for example, from negotiating provisions like common fuel efficiency standards - a very real possibility in our negotiations with Europe.
“As reported today from Paris, the Republican Party of the United States may be the only political party anywhere in denial about climate change. That denial is why this provision in this conference report on climate is before us.
“Now as to human trafficking - this provision weakens current law by allowing for a trade agreement with a Tier 3 country to be ‘fast-tracked,’ so long as that country “has taken concrete actions" to implement recommended changes, no matter how egregious the conditions still in place.
“Countries on Tier 3 are the worst actors: countries that the State Department has concluded “do not fully comply with the minimum standards [under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act]." We need to get these countries to meet minimum standards on trafficking - certainly well before we enter into a trade and investment relationship with them. Unfortunately, this conference report does not get us there.
“These and other fundamental flaws outweigh the enforcement provisions that were included in the conference report. Most of the enforcement provisions are weak and I think they’re being oversold. For example:
* The bill establishes an Interagency Enforcement Center - but that has already existed for several years.
* It renews “Super 301," which requires USTR to report regularly on its trade enforcement priorities. But this is something an Administration can already do on its own, just as the Clinton Administration did.
* The bill establishes also a new trade enforcement trust fund. But those funds still need to be appropriated and paid for, just as they did in the past.
* It requires the ITC to make information related to imports available on its website, information that already exists in other forms on the same website.
“All of this is very disappointing because there are positive aspects of this bill, such as the ENFORCE Act that my colleague, Linda Sánchez has spearheaded, which will help to address the circumvention of antidumping and countervailing duties to address unfair trade. All of the deep flaws in this conference report far overshadow this provision and the real customs provisions that have long had bipartisan support.
“Going further, the bill includes an Internet tax provision added by the conferees that has absolutely no place in this customs bill. It was in neither the House nor the Senate customs bill. Not only is it not a customs measure - it’s not even a trade measure. Dropping this provision into a conference report at the last minute, and with no warning, is no way to legislate. It is the opposite of regular order.
“Indeed, this conference report does not tell it straight.
“As I said, it deletes the only provision that reflects meaningful legislation on currency, which has devastated U.S. jobs and economic growth, legislation that overwhelmingly passed the House previously.
“It keeps provisions inserted by the House to encourage Republicans who oppose action on climate change - as I said, at the same time the world is meeting in Paris - thwarting further possible action on climate change in trade negotiations, including with Europe.
“It tones down a provision which had teeth on human sex and labor trafficking.
“It sneaks in another provision totally unrelated to customs, as I said, never being discussed at the only meeting of the conference committee, relating to taxation of Internet access. It leaves in the dust the issue of trying to even out the taxation of sales on the Internet with sales at hardworking brick and mortar stores.
“For all of these reasons, all of them, I strongly urge a no vote."
