Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added as cosponsors to the Brown amendment: Stabenow, Klobuchar, Baldwin, Schumer, Blumenthal, Whitehouse, Udall, Sanders, Warren, Manchin, Markey, Reed, Franken, and Heinrich.

Mr. BROWN. The support for this amendment is broad and deep. The support for this funding level reached 300-some House Members 4 years ago and 70 Senators--including, obviously, a number in each party--4 years ago when we decided to support this number. So this funding level of $575 million is bipartisan. It was established 4 years ago. Some say that $450 million--the amount included in the underlying bill--is enough to operate the program and that we should not bring the funding level back to the $575 million. The fact is that we do not really know. What we do know is that TAA--the trade adjustment assistance, the money we provide to workers to be retrained after they have lost a job because of a decision President Obama and the Congress made to pass a trade agreement, which always produces winners and losers--free trade supporters and free trade opponents all agree and even cheerleaders as passionate as the Wall Street Journal, as strongly supportive as they are of these free-trade agreements, even they acknowledge there are winners and there are losers. The losers are those people who lost their jobs in Indiana, Ohio, Utah, and all over the country because of decisions we made in this body. They are not decisions they made to not show up to work, not decisions they made to not do their work well; they are decisions we made in this Congress and President Obama made at the White House to push these trade agreements, resulting in dislocation, so some workers lose their jobs. That is why it is a moral issue that we provide adequate funding for training for these workers. I mentioned the years 2009, 2010--it cost $685 million each year. Of course, those are years during the great recession. But if you take the average of funding levels for the 3 years when program eligibility was nearly the same as it is now, TAA expenditures were about $571 million a year. That is roughly the figure we are choosing for our amendment, the number the President asked for in his budget originally. TAA works. Seventy-six percent of participants who completed training in fiscal year 2013 received a degree or an industry-recognized credential. Seventy-five percent of workers who exited the program found employment within 6 months. Of those workers who became employed, over 90 percent were still employed at the end of the year. So we know trade adjustment assistance works. This reduction of $125 million a year, in other words, is simply cuts for the sake of cuts. It helps workers retrain for new jobs so they can compete in the global economy. We know that even though the economy is better today than when President Obama took office or it is better today then it was in 2010 before we did the RECOVERY Act or it is better today than it was that year when we did the auto rescue that helped the Presiding Officer's State of Indiana and my State of Ohio and the whole national economy so much--we do know that since that time, we have had the South Korea trade agreement, and the President and supporters of that promised 70,000 increased jobs. We have actually lost 70,000 jobs instead because of a swelling trade deficit with South Korea. We have the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Even its supporters acknowledge there will be workers who lose their jobs--they believe a net gain, but nonetheless numbers of workers will lose their jobs and will need retraining. So that conservative number of only $450 million, when it is clear we need the larger number of $575 million--the same level President Obama included in his budget; the same level that 70 Senators--a number in each party--and 300-plus Members of the House supported. I ask my colleagues to support it again today. Again, it was not the choice of these workers to lose their jobs; it was the choice of this institution to pass a trade agreement that results in some workers losing their jobs. We all acknowledge that on both sides. That is why this amendment is so important to adopt. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1251.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, very briefly, in 30 seconds, I will explain the amendment. There are 12 countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If at some point the President of the United States would like to add another country or two, this amendment simply says that Congress must approve; there must be a vote of the U.S. House of Representatives and a vote of the Senate in order to admit a new country. There is some concern that the People's Republic of China, which is now the second largest economy in the world, would come in through the backdoor without congressional approval. We want to make sure that neither the President who is in the White House today nor the next President nor the President after that can admit China or any other country with any other large economy or small economy in the TPP without congressional approval. We will discuss and debate this amendment more tomorrow. I thank Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch for moving this process forward and bringing up many amendments to debate.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, today, at this moment, we begin the debate on one of the most important bills to come in front of the Senate this year, to guarantee that Americans can find a more level playing field as we compete in the world economy to show that Americans should not be patsies for other countries that are cheating and altering records and information they submit to trade authorities. This is an opportunity to close an 85-year-old loophole that has allowed us to import products produced by slave labor and child labor and to fix our currency system so countries and their companies, especially in East Asia and South Asia--mostly East Asia--cannot continue to cheat and sell into our country with a bonus and penalize us when we try to sell our products to their countries. This body delivered one strong message this week which was unprecedented. I can't think of the last time the Senate spoke with such an emphatic voice on a trade issue. The simple message: We cannot have trade promotion without trade enforcement. We should not be passing new agreements while doing nothing, which the Senate tried to do on Tuesday, but the Senate stood up and said no. We should not be passing new agreements while doing nothing to enforce existing laws and support American companies dealing with unfair competition. We need to stand up particularly for our small businesses, which are always hurt to a much greater degree than large businesses. When a large company in Cleveland, Toledo or Lima shuts down production and moves overseas to Xi'an, Beijing or Wuhan, China, so they can get a tax break from our government--amazingly enough, this body will not close that tax loophole--and sell products back to our country, that company's bottom line may be a bit better, but the supply chain for those large companies--the companies in our communities in Lima, Toledo, Mansfield, and Wooster--that sell to those big companies have lost their biggest customers in far too many cases. Those businesses go out of business, those workers get laid off, those plants close, and we know what happens. That is why we especially need to stand up for those small businesses that play by the rules and are drowning from a set of imports from countries that manipulate their currency and practice illegal dumping. Dumping is when companies subsidize water, capital, land, labor costs or other inputs, such as energy, and sell under the real cost of production into the United States--that kind of illegal dumping. It is one thing to talk about statistics, but I want to stop and think about the costs of imports to our companies, communities, and families. In the State of Pennsylvania, as the Presiding Officer knows, especially between Pittsburgh and Philly or Western Pennsylvania, the area I am more familiar with because I represent the adjoining State, we see time after time companies in small towns--when a company shuts down in a place like Jackson, OH, or Chillicothe, OH, so often because of the size of the town, both the husband and wife each lose their jobs because they both work at that company, their entire family income is wiped out, and they are likely to lose their home to foreclosure. We know all of those problems that happen because we don't enforce our trade rules. That is why I want us to stop and think about the real costs to families, communities, and companies. In Ohio, we have seen how dumping by Korean companies has hurt our steel industry. Neither President Bush nor President Obama has stepped up on trade the way each had promised in their campaigns, and neither has stepped up the way that they should to preserve our workers, our businesses, and our livelihoods. We both promised, on Korea, thousands--that there would be tens of thousands of new jobs, billions in increased exports for our companies. Yet the reality of the Korea trade agreement was absolutely the opposite of that. We had major job loss and a major loss in the import-export ratio because of that South Korea trade agreement they pushed on the U.S. Congress, and the people here too willingly passed. Natural gas production has increased demand. I will explain Korea for a moment. Natural gas production has increased demand for the world- class tubular steel made in plants such as U.S. Steel in Lorain, Youngstown, and Trumbull County. Tubular steel is the steel piping that is particularly strong and durable. It is subjected to great pressure and great heat as they drill for natural gas--in so-called fracking--or they drill for oil. Mr. President, 8,000 workers in 22 States make these Oil Country Tubular Goods. Each one of those jobs supports another seven positions in the supply chain. We know when we talk about manufacturing, it is never just the manufacturing jobs, as important as they are, it is the jobs in the entire supply that go into the assembly of the airplane or the automobile or the steel production of Oil Country Tubular Goods. These producers increasingly lose business to foreign competitors that are not playing by the rules. Imports for OCTG, Oil Country Tubular Goods, have doubled since 2008. By some measures, imports account for somewhat more than 50 percent of the pipes being used by companies drilling for oil and gas in the United States. Korea has one of the world's largest steel industries, but get this, not one of these pipes that Korea now dumps in the United States-- illegally subsidized--is ever used in Korea for drilling because Korea has no domestic oil or gas production. In other words, Korea has created this industry only for exports and has been successful because they are not playing fair. So their producers are exporting large volumes to the United States, the most open and attractive market in the world, at below-market prices. That is clear evidence that our workers and manufacturers are being cheated, and it should be unacceptable to the Members of this body. It hurts our workers, our communities, and our country. It is time to stop it. I toured Lorain's best U.S. Steel plant in 2013 and saw the No. 6 quench and temper finishing line, which was part of a $100 million expansion project. The naysayers who talk about our country, workers, and businesses say we cannot compete because we are not up-to-date or our workers are not producing--all the whining from these naysayers who support these trade policies is insulting to our workers, insulting to our communities, and insulting to our small businesses. They say we are not modern enough. Well, look at the investment. I have seen the $100 million investment in Lorain, for instance, and what that means. The first time in the history of steel production in this world, ArcelorMittal workers created about 1 ton about 5 years ago. When they passed this threshold, 1 person-hour created 1 ton of steel. They are the most productive steelworkers in the world, working in the most productive steel company in the world. The expansion project with Lorain's U.S. Steel plant was made possible, in part, because we were able to crack down on Chinese steel pipe imports that flooded the market with illegal and cheap products. They made this investment because we won that trade case. Then, along came Korea to again try to inflict the same damage on our producers and our workers. It is clear that once again we need to ensure that other Nations don't unfairly dump steel into the U.S. market. Last year, I visited the same plant and joined in with workers, managers, and union leaders to send one message: It is time for America to stand up to these lawbreakers; pure and simple, strip it all away-- these countries are lawbreakers. Here is the bad news: In January, U.S. Steel--in part because of Korea's dumping--announced 614 temporary layoffs at the plant in Lorain on Lake Erie. Those layoffs began in March. I spoke on the floor before about one of the U.S. steelworkers I met, Ryan, who has been out of work for weeks. He has four kids at home and doesn't know when or if he will be back at work. Will his home be foreclosed down the road if he can't go back to work? He has played by the rules. He has been living a responsible life, by taking care of his kids, paying his mortgage, engaged in the union and community as a good, strong, productive worker. There are hundreds more like Ryan in Lorain and around Ohio. In March, Republic Steel in Lorain announced 200 temporary layoffs. I say ``temporary'' because the company is hopeful that our government will enforce trade rules and that the dumping of steel will abate a bit. TMK is one of the largest producers of oil country tubular goods in the world, with a facility in Brookfield, OH, north of Youngstown. Since 2008, the company has invested $2 billion in their U.S. operations. They are keeping up on technology and modernizing their plant with very productive workers. But how do they compete with Korea or China or other nations that are cheating? Other companies make similar investments to stay on the cutting edge, but instead of expanding production to keep up with increasing demand, these companies operate under tighter and tighter margins and lay off workers. Last week, TMK announced plans to reduce operating hours at three of its facilities and completely idled another one. I visited Byer Steel in Cincinnati. I spoke with Mr. Byer just yesterday when I met with some steel company executives, many of them from small businesses like his, where I first announced the Level the Playing Field Act to his company in Cincinnati. American companies--Byer, TMK, U.S. Steel, Republic Steel, so many others--know firsthand that they are not in a fair fight. These manufacturers across Ohio and all over our country suffer enough from unfair trade practices distorting the market. It is their workers who suffer even more. Think about what even a temporary layoff can do to a family. They are facing mounting bills, facing mounting uncertainty. They may have to start to turn to credit cards and payday lenders to get by, and then the downward spiral begins. I don't think too many in this body who are dressed like this and who have good-paying jobs and titles and far too often an adoring staff end up--we don't think much about this, but think about the laid-off worker who has for 7 years--she and her husband have lived in Lorain, where I used to live, which is an industrial city west of Cleveland--they have lived in Lorain and paid their mortgage. They are involved in their kids' activities in soccer and school and go to the programs at school. They are living lives the way we hope they would. But then she loses her good-paying, 18-dollar-an-hour job. She has a mortgage she meets every month. She has bills she pays every month. Then she loses her job. She faces the uncertainty of what happens next, and she faces a sharply declined income. At some point, her kids understand their mom lost her job and their dad's hours have been cut back. Then they face the question--and this is what we don't think much about in this body, people who dress like us and make good incomes and have good benefits and have a staff who helps them--then she has to sit down with her kids and say: We may lose our home because we can't keep up with these bills. It is not because they speculated, not because they stole, not because they are morally inadequate in some ways; simply because they lost their job. My State--and the Presiding Officer's State is not too far behind this, I don't think--my State for 14 years in a row had more foreclosures than the year before. That is not because Ohioans are irresponsible; it is because Ohioans have lost so many of these manufacturing jobs. They were paying their bills and meeting their obligations and raising their kids, and then all of a sudden they couldn't. So they have to face their 12-year-old daughter and say: Honey, we are going to have to move. We can't afford to keep this house anymore. I don't know where we are going to move. I don't know what school you are going to go to. I am sorry. I don't think people around this place think very much about the human face of these kinds of decisions. That is why this is so important. We can do something about this. When jobs are lost due to cheap, flooded, illegal imports and at the same time we aren't increasing our exports, we need to do all we can to stop this practice and protect our workers. The other side will say we are increasing our exports. We are a bit, but the imports are much higher in almost every one of these cases. That is why we need to pass this Customs bill that incorporates the Level the Playing Field Act to crack down on foreign companies that are cheating. We welcome competition. We are a competitive country. We succeed in competing among ourselves and around the world. But it has to be fair; it has to be a level playing field. That is why the Level the Playing Field Act, title V of this Customs bill, is so very important. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum calls be equally divided between the parties.

Mr. BROWN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I call up Brown amendment No. 1242.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, if the chairman of the Committee on Finance and Senator Wyden will indulge me, I would like 2 or 3 minutes to explain the amendment and the importance of it. One of the most important reasons for the vote on Tuesday, I believe, is that a significant number of Members of this body and I think the public--those who support fast-track and those who oppose it--all believe that enforcement is important and assisting workers is important. So it would be a tragedy to send TPA to the desk of the President for him to sign, leading the way to at least two other trade agreements--the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the United States- European Union agreement, the so-called TTIP trade agreement--without enforcement and without assistance for workers. We make decisions in this body, those who support this fast-track and the trade agreements, and we know--even the most enthusiastic supporters and cheerleaders for free trade acknowledge there are winners and losers when it comes to trade agreements. Some people, because of dislocation due to these trade agreements, dislocation in the economy, lose their jobs in places such as Wheeling, WV, and Bellaire, OH, right across the Ohio River. So it is important that we take care of those workers who lose their jobs because of our actions. That is why the TAA--trade adjustment assistance--provides help for workers to get new training and find new jobs when they are laid off from the chemical or steel industry along the Ohio River or elsewhere. The opportunity to be retrained is so important. I meet people frequently who were laid off because of NAFTA or because of CAFTA and now they are back in school. A man the other day I met is becoming a nurse, a woman might become a physical therapist, a man might be trained in information technology or some other kind of work after they have lost their job. So that is the importance of trade adjustment assistance. The President's budget called for a significantly higher number of dollars for trade adjustment assistance than the bill coming out of the Finance Committee. That is why I am offering my amendment, to get those dollars commensurate with the need, because every President in both parties--President Bush I on NAFTA, President Clinton on NAFTA and PNTR, President Bush on fast-track and CAFTA, President Obama on South Korea Free Trade Agreement and now on TPP--make big promises about trade numbers and increased jobs, big promises about higher wages. Unfortunately, those big promises end up with bad results. We know it from South Korea most recently; we have seen it throughout the last 20 years of trade. That is why the number of dollars authorized and appropriated for the trade adjustment assistance needs to be increased, so it will take care of those people who lose their jobs because of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and because of TTIP, which this Congress could very well agree to in the next year or so. So I ask for support of Brown amendment No. 1242. My understanding is that vote will come on Monday night. I appreciate the support of all the Members of this body. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, as this body moves to consider trade legislation, it is our obligation to make sure that our existing and future trade laws are enforced and that we are looking out for those hurt by our trade agreements. Nearly everyone who supports these agreements--conservatives, Republicans, Democrats--nearly everyone who supports these agreements, even the most vocal cheerleaders for free trade, such as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, all admit that trade agreements create winners and losers. So if this body is going to vote for a new trade agreement, if the President is going to insist that we pass a new trade agreement, it is up to all of us that when there are winners and losers, we take care of the losers. If people lose their jobs because of a trade agreement passed by Congress, because of a trade agreement pushed and negotiated by the White House and ultimately ratified by Congress, approved by Congress, it is up to us to take care of those people who lost their jobs because of what we do; that is, to make sure they get the training and support they need, whether they are 30 years old, 40 years old or 55 years old, to find new careers. We owe it to American companies, and we owe it to American workers to make sure the laws we make are enforced and that they create a more level playing field. We cannot have trade promotion without trade enforcement. That is why the provisions contained in the Customs bill are so important. Let me go through three provisions--probably the most salient, probably the most important provisions in the Customs bill. Now, go back a few weeks, and in the Finance Committee we worked on four bills. We worked on the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and it passed overwhelmingly--no opposition. We worked on the Customs bill that had a number of trade enforcement provisions. Those are the three I will talk about in a moment--the three major provisions. We also passed training adjustment assistance, where workers who lose jobs because of trade agreements get help from the Federal Government, because we made these decisions here that ultimately cost them their jobs. And fourth is trade promotion authority, so-called fast-track. What this Senate did yesterday, when Senator McConnell tried to bring up just trade adjustment assistance and fast-track to the floor, is that the Senate said no--a denial of cloture--because so many of us wanted to make sure that we didn't leave the trade enforcement behind. You simply shouldn't send a trade agreement to the President's desk--or trade negotiating authority to the President's desk--without helping those workers who lose their jobs, without provisions to enforce trade laws. Let me talk about the three. First, there is currency. For trade to work, all parties have to play by the same rules. We must protect American workers and American companies from foreign governments that artificially manipulate their currencies. This puts U.S. exports at a serious disadvantage and results in artificially cheap imports here at home. So in other words, when a Chinese company, benefiting from manipulation of currency, sells a product into the United States, they can sell it 15, 20 or 25 percent less expensively--more cheaply-- because of their currency advantage. Because they have cheated on currency, they can sell it more cheaply than it would cost otherwise, which undercuts our businesses' ability to compete. Conversely, when American producers try to sell something in China, it has a 15-percent, 20-percent or 25-percent add on the price, almost like a tariff. It is not really a tariff. It is really a currency advantage that the Chinese have created that makes our goods not particularly sellable when trying to compete with Chinese goods. China's currency manipulation has been a problem for years, resulting in artificially expensive American imports to China and artificially cheap Chinese exports to the United States. It is not only China. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates at least 10 other countries engage in these practices--many of them mimicking what China does. This puts our American manufacturers at a serious disadvantage. Currency manipulations already cost our Nation up to 5 million jobs. It continues to be a drag on Ohio's economy and on our Nation's economy. Diplomatic efforts to address this cheating simply haven't worked, and we will continue to lose jobs if we don't take action. This is a problem under Presidents of both parties. We have been asking for currency legislation for over a decade--with President Bush, who opposed it; with President Obama, who opposes it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do that. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that addressing currency manipulation could support the creation of up to 5.8 million jobs and reduce our trade deficit by at least $200 billion. This provision contained in the bill before us today would clarify that current countervailing duty law can address currency undervaluation. It would make it clear that the Department of Commerce cannot refuse to investigate a subsidy allegation based on the single fact that a subsidy is available in other circumstances, in addition to export. American businesses have been put at a disadvantage for too long, and it has hurt American workers. Now is the time to crack down on currency manipulation. Issue No. 2 is leveling the playing field. This year I introduced the Leveling the Playing Field Act, which was included in the Customs bill we are debating. It would strengthen enforcement of our trade laws. It would give U.S. companies the tools they need to fight back against unfair and illegal trade practices. It would restore strength to antidumping and countervailing duty statutes. It would allow industry to petition the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission when foreign companies are breaking the rules. It has been a particular problem in the steel industry. The domestic rebar industry, making steel reinforcement bars--the rebar used in highways, bridges, and roadways--is operating at only 60 percent, an historic low, due to foreign dumping. I met today with a rebar steel manufacturer from Cincinnati to talk about this. He has been involved in trade disputes with Turkey and other countries. Finished steel imports grew 36 percent last year. In the first quarter of this year, finished steel imports are up another 35 percent. Imports of these finished steel products have captured 34 percent of the U.S. market as of March 2015. An Economic Policy Institute report shows that the American steel industry risks long-term damage, including putting more than half a million steel-related jobs at risk, nearly 34,000 in my State, unless the U.S. Government fully enforces its trade remedy rules. We know that when foreign steel is dumped illegally in our country, American workers pay the price. Leveling the Playing Field--title V of the Customs bill, that section that was amended that was put in the bill prior to markup--is critical to all American companies facing a flood of imports. It would restore strength to U.S. trade remedy laws to ensure that our American workers and our companies are treated fairly. The last issue is child labor. This bill includes a provision to end an embarrassing, shameful, disgusting loophole in our trade laws. It would close an outdated, 85-year-old loophole that allows some goods made with either forced or child labor--unbelievably, for 85 years we have allowed this--to be imported into the United States. It would strike language in section 307 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that provides an exception to our prohibition on the importation of goods that are made with forced labor. This loophole, called the consumptive demand loophole--that sounds not nearly as bad as the child labor loophole--allows goods made with forced labor, including child labor, to be imported into the country if there isn't enough domestic supply to meet domestic demand. This exception was included in Smoot-Hawley in 1930, before the United States passed a law banning child labor. That is how outdated this provision is. So when this provision was adopted, child labor was still legal. We banned child labor, but we have let this loophole stand to allow the importing of goods produced by child labor for 85 years. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which outlawed child labor in the United States, was signed into law in 1938, and yet this loophole still stands. The United States has ratified the International Labor Organization Convention 182 against the worst forms of child labor. We have ratified the International Labor Organization Convention 138 on the minimum age of work. We have passed laws against child labor in Congress and in State legislatures. We are a strong partner in international efforts to eradicate child labor. Yet, the consumptive demand loophole--child labor, forced labor--allows those products produced in that fashion to come into the United States. We have allowed the consumptive demand loophole to stay on the books. Since the 1990s, there have been valiant efforts by some of my colleagues to fix this. I want to acknowledge Senator Harkin for his efforts. He has since retired, at the beginning of this year. Senator Sanders, the junior Senator from Vermont, has been involved in this issue for a long time. Child labor is never OK. We are talking about children being forced to work in deplorable conditions, often under extreme duress. There is never--never a justification for that. And there is no compromise on this issue. No product made with forced labor should be allowed to come into the country, period. End of discussion. It is immoral. It is imperative to fix this, and we can fix this. The Senate should not remain silent on this issue. Now is the time to shut the door on this ugly chapter of U.S. law. We do it by passing the Customs bill today. All these provisions were added to the bill with strong bipartisan support in the Committee on Finance. It is imperative they make it to the President's desk. If we are going to continue to pursue an aggressive trade promotion agenda, we must combine it with equally strong trade enforcement language. Without enforcement, we are willfully stacking the deck for our foreign competitors and against American businesses and American workers. We see what happens when steel mills close. We see what happens when manufacturers close their doors because they can't compete with artificially cheap imports. Trade agreements and trade law without enforcement amount to no free trade at all. They amount to lawlessness. Without proper trade enforcement, American producers who play by the rules will continue to be undersold by foreign producers who are cheating the market. We can't leave our companies and our workers with no recourse against unfair, illegal business practices. That is why the Customs bill is so important. That is why the currency provisions, the level-the-playing- field title V provision, and the ban on child labor are so very important. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, would the Senator from Oregon yield for a moment?

Mr. BROWN. I want to thank Senator Wyden for his work on the Customs bill that we will be debating, the bill to which he is referring, especially his amendment that we worked on, the prohibition of child labor, closing an 85-year loophole, if you will, allowing child labor in far too many cases, and we as a nation were allowing the importation of goods produced by child labor. I appreciate his support and Senator Hatch's support early in the process before the markup began on our ``level the playing field'' language, which is particularly important to a number of industries in this country, to make the playing field more level, as Senator Wyden was saying and, third, the importance of currency. We know how many jobs we have lost in my State and all over the country because of what has happened with countries gaming the currency system. So I wanted to express my thanks to Senator Wyden.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. President. The trade package we are considering today is missing important provisions that support American companies and American workers. We cannot have trade promotion without trade enforcement. Even supporters of fast-track and TPP--those cheerleaders, the most outspoken cheerleaders for free trade--even those supporters acknowledge there will be winners and losers from this agreement. Past deals show how widespread the losses will be. Travel the State the Presiding Officer and I represent in the Senate and look at what NAFTA has done, look at what PNTR with China has done, look at what the Central America Free Trade Agreement has done, and look at what the South Korea trade agreement has done to us. It would be a tragedy if the Senate acted and failed to help the American companies and the American workers and the communities that we acknowledge will be hurt by TPP. In other words, we take an action in this body, working with the administration, and there are losers and winners from this action. The losers are those who lose their jobs, the small businesses that go out of business, and the communities that get hurt by this. Those are the losers. How do you ignore them when it comes to these trade agreements? By excluding two of the four bills from the initial trade package, we are excluding critical bipartisan provisions that protect workers and ensure strong trade enforcement. We need to make sure that our steel manufacturers and other companies in our country are protected from unfair dumping. That is why I introduced--along with my colleagues, Senators Portman, Casey, Burr, Bennet, and Coats--the Leveling the Playing Field Act. We included it in the Customs and Border Protection reauthorization with bipartisan support. It would strengthen enforcement of trade laws. It would increase the ability of industries--such as the steel industry, which is so important in my State--to fight back against unfair trade practices. It passed the Senate Finance Committee, but in the majority leader's package and Senator Hatch's package, it is nowhere to be found on the floor today. We need to make sure strong currency provisions are included. The Finance Committee overwhelmingly supported my amendment 18 to 8. We had the support of Republican colleagues: Senators Portman, Grassley, Crapo, Roberts, Burr, Isakson--who is sitting in the Chamber--and Scott. Again, this provision, which passed the Finance Committee overwhelmingly, ensures a level playing field for American businesses. It is nowhere to be found in the majority leader's package on the floor today. Finally, any trade package needs to ensure we are not importing products made with child labor. That is why the Finance Committee passed an amendment with overwhelming bipartisan support to close a 75- year-old loophole that allowed products made with forced labor and child labor into this country. For 75 years, that loophole stood. We passed that amendment 21 to 5. We had the support of Republican colleagues: Senators Grassley, Crapo, Roberts, Cornyn, Thune, Toomey, Portman, Coats, and Heller. But, again, this bipartisan provision is nowhere to be found in the majority leader's package. That is why I call on my Republican colleagues--many of whom I have named; almost every one on them on the Finance Committee--who have voted for either the currency amendment or the level the playing field amendment or the prohibition on child labor amendment. Some Republican members of the Finance Committee voted for all three of those amendments, but they are not in the package. I am hopeful my Republican colleagues will join Democratic colleagues to vote no on cloture so we can bring a package to the floor that does trade promotion authority, that takes cares of workers, and also takes care of enforcing trade rules. The trade package which passed out of the Finance Committee is far from perfect. I still have grave concerns about fast-track. I know what bad trade rules have done to my State. There is a reason these provisions were included in the trade package. The Senate should consider all four of them. Majority Leader McConnell says he wants to respect committee work on legislation. Well, here is his chance. The only way to get these important provisions to the President's desk is to combine all four into one. We have done it in the past. Keep in mind, every time Congress does major trade laws--2002 fast-track included provisions on enforcement, and it included provisions to help workers through trade adjustment assistance; the same thing in 1988 in the trade package; the same thing in 1974 in the trade package. Why would we bifurcate this? Why would we take out enforcement when that is a very important part of trade? We should not move forward with any trade package that does not include all four bills. I ask my colleagues in both parties, those who supported our enforcement efforts in both parties in Finance, to join us and vote no on cloture when we take the vote in the next few minutes. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum call be charged evenly to both parties.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute.

Mr. BROWN. Would the Finance chair yield for a question?

Mr. BROWN. I would just ask, the four bills that we passed in committee--African growth and opportunity, trade adjustment assistance, trade promotion authority, and the Customs bill--all passed out of committee by strong bipartisan majorities, right, and we hoped at the time they would come together in the motion to proceed to a vote.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, some in this body seem to be on the verge of approving the largest trade deal in our Nation's history with little debate, one rushed hearing, and barely any understanding of what we are signing on to. The last time Congress considered fast-track was 13 years ago; the Senate spent 3 weeks considering that bill. But some would like to condense consideration of the biggest trade deal we have ever debated--ever debated--and have it done in advance of Memorial Day; the reason--they know that the more we talk about U.S. trade policy, the more the American public does not like it. Trade promotion authority will give up Congress's authority to amend trade agreements. Not only will this affect the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and so-called TTIP, the United States-European Union agreement, it will affect any trade deal until 2021. With TPP and TTIP, 60 percent of the world's GDP is at stake. Millions of American jobs are on the line. This is too important to rush through with little debate and little congressional input. With the Memorial Day recess approaching, there simply is not enough time to consider fast-track in a manner that allows full debate and consideration of amendments. We do not even know if the Senate will vote on all four bills as a package that we considered in the Finance Committee or just vote on fast-track or some combination of the four. If we voted on fast-track alone, we would be giving new rights to corporations while turning our backs on critical trade enforcement measures and the workers who are left behind by unfair foreign trade. Imagine if just TPA--fast-track--gets to the President's desk; we will have done nothing on enforcement and we will have left out help for workers who have lost their jobs because of what this institution did. Fast-tracking fast-track will prevent us from having serious debates on issues from public health, to the auto industry, to international monetary policy. During the Finance Committee's consideration of this bill, I filed 88 amendments to the package of four bills, 81 of those to fast-track alone. I offered a number during markup, and I will offer more on the floor. I know Senator Menendez had a very important amendment--and he will be speaking in a moment--in the Finance Committee that was adopted. I know other colleagues have amendments that will be considered. We should debate these amendments to legislation as important as this. Now the majority leader, who just spoke, wants us to rush this bill through, to fast-track fast-track in the last few days just to get it done, just so the public won't be able to find out what is in it. We owe it to the American people to not rush through something as important as our national trade policy. We owe it to the American people to spend the limited time available on the floor passing a job- creation bill, such as the highway bill, which is set to expire May 31, rather than a provably job-killing trade agreement, as NAFTA was, as PNTR was, as CAFTA was, as South Korea was. We know the real answer, that this deal amounts to more empty promises. If it were really good for the American worker, why can't the American worker see it? More corporate handouts, more worker sellouts. As many of my colleagues know, this trade agreement simply doesn't work for us. This is what is wrong with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. First, with China, there is no guarantee it will not join later. There is no prohibition in this language--as far as we can see, with the limited access to the text--that China can't backdoor into this agreement without a vote of Congress, without any examination from the American public. Second, what happens to competition? American workers are paid a living wage. In Vietnam, the average wage is $3 per day. How do we compete with that? With currency. We know China has gamed the currency system year after year after year. They don't play by the same rules as we do. Corporations shift from democratically elected governments to corporations. We have seen it in tobacco, we have seen it in public health, and we have seen it with minimum wage, where corporations can sue foreign governments. Corporations in one country can sue a government, even if that government has passed a law democratically through a democratic process. Our trade deals amount to corporate handouts and worker sellouts. People in my State know what has happened since NAFTA. They promised NAFTA would bring millions of jobs. Instead, we have lost 5 million manufacturing jobs in this country since 1994. It is only since the auto rescue in 2010 that we have begun to gain those jobs back. We know our trade deals were for small business to compete with companies abroad that pay their workers pennies on the dollar. These foreign companies don't have to abide by the same American laws that we do. With so much to do at home and so much at stake in this deal, we shouldn't be rushing the process of considering fast-track. We should be working on a living wage. We should be working on paid sick and family leave. We should be working on equal pay for equal work. We should be working on investment to infrastructure and innovation. Instead, the majority leader wants to fast-track, fast-track. He wants to put this trade agreement on the floor as quickly as possible. This body should deliberate methodically and carefully before we agree to become a rubberstamp for the White House's trade policy. It has not worked for us in the past; it will not work for us in the future. This body should not be rushing to give up our authority on trade. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Leahy, I ask unanimous consent that Aaron Locke, an intern on his personal office staff, be granted Senate floor privileges for Thursday, April 30, 2015.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, it has been more than a year since the Food and Drug Administration issued its proposed tobacco deeming regulations. These regulations would give the Agency the same regulatory authority it currently has over traditional tobacco cigarettes to other unrelated tobacco products such as e-cigarettes and hookahs. These regulations are critical for public health, especially for children. Yet, they have languished within the administration for more than a year. A year is too long to wait because we know what has been happening. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control--the FDA's own Center for Tobacco Products--in the past year, e-cigarette use has tripled among teens. Absent any regulation, more and more of these potentially dangerous products have found a way into the hands of our children. After just a few years on the market, children's use of e-cigarettes has now surpassed the use of traditional cigarettes. Think back to the first time we heard about e-cigarettes. I didn't know what people were talking about. Now we see there are more children using e-cigarettes than traditional cigarettes. This is in large part because we have failed to regulate these addictive products. Until these regulations are finalized, e-cigarette companies will be able to freely advertise their products to our children in Juneau and to our children in Cleveland. What many people fail to realize is that often e-cigarette companies and big tobacco companies are now one and the same. Marlboro-maker Altria Group, the Nation's largest tobacco company, is making up for its loss in revenue as cigarette smoking has declined--and it is doing so among children too--making up its loss of revenue from combustible tobacco products by marketing its MarkTen electronic cigarette. Lorillard has acquired Blu e-cigarettes. Reynolds American, the maker of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes, has a new e-cigarette called VUSE. Much of Big Tobacco's behavior is driven by one giant and irrefutable fact: Tobacco in the United States kills 400,000 people a year. Think about that--400,000 Americans die prematurely from tobacco use every year. What does that mean? That means tobacco companies need to find 400,000 new customers a year. They are not going to market to people such as the Presiding Officer or me or the people staffing the Senate floor. They are going to people like the pages. They are going to people 16 and 17 years old to addict them to cigarettes. People my age rarely start smoking; people their age so often do. Big Tobacco has to find these new customers. It used to be that they preyed on children with highly paid, sophisticated tobacco executives who spend their days figuring out how to entice teens to start smoking with characters such as Joe Camel. We think of Camel No. 5, some of the things they did. Now that they are no longer allowed to advertise traditional tobacco products to kids--and parenthetically, that is one of the great public health victories in this country, what this body did, what the House of Representatives did, what Presidents did to alert public health and to change young people's behavior so young people did not start smoking in larger numbers. That was an effort by government and consumer groups and children's groups. These tobacco companies now, though, are taking advantage of the new, unregulated world of e-cigarettes to advertise their products directly to children because they can. Joe Camel has been replaced by celebrities smoking e-cigarettes. These companies sponsor youth- oriented events and air ads on TV and radio aimed at teenagers. They are using new advertising platforms on social media to get to kids where parents typically are not looking. The shameful e-cigarette marketing tactics employed by tobacco companies are encouraging this next new generation to use tobacco, and, as the CDC's study shows, their tactics are working--triple the use, triple the number of young people smoking these e-cigarettes. Another recent study revealed that teens were able to purchase e- cigarettes online in 94 percent of the attempts they made. None of them were required to show proof of their age when the cigarettes were delivered. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that examined the use of candy flavors in tobacco products found that--no surprise here--flavors drive increases in tobacco use among kids. E- cigarettes and their refill liquids come in thousands of different flavors, such as Gummi Bears, Sweet Tarts, and Fruit Loops. Just look at this photo of Gummi Bear-flavored e-liquid. The bottle is about this big. As the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. James Perrin, said, ``Because liquid nicotine comes in a variety of bright colors and in flavors appealing to children such as cotton candy and gummy bear, it is no surprise that these products have found their way into the hands of children.'' I don't think they are making gummy bears to encourage people the age of the Presiding Officer, to get them to start smoking, or my age; they are getting young children to start smoking. Gummi Bears, Fruit Loops, and Sweet Tarts--those are candies young children receive at Halloween. They are also flavors of highly toxic products. The bottle in this photo contains two teaspoons of liquid nicotine. A single teaspoon of this e-liquid, even if it is highly diluted, can kill a small child if ingested. It is totally legal. People will see this sold at drugstores and at all kinds of places. Children are likely to pick it up if they see it around the house. There is a chance--there always is in a country of 300 million people--that some child will-- attracted by this, looking at this, the cute little bottle--will drink it, and that child could die. It is past time for the FDA to regulate these dangerous products before more children and more teenagers get hooked on e-cigarettes. My colleagues and I, led by Senator Merkley, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Durbin, and others, have called on the FDA over and over again to finalize these proposed rules and reject efforts to weaken these proposed regulations. Every day the FDA waits is thousands more children getting addicted to nicotine, thousands more children getting exposed potentially to drinking this very toxic liquid, and thousands more children smoking these e-cigarettes. Tobacco companies are pushing to allow more products to be grandfathered out of the new rules. They want to exempt a huge range of e-cigarettes from any review to determine whether they are a threat to public health. That would mean these products would never be subject to review by the FDA. How stupid of a nation can we be? We have been so successful in the last 40 years as public health officials, as Members of Congress, as responsible adults, as consumer groups and advocates for children. We have been so successful in reducing the incidence of smoking, especially among young people. It has changed the whole next generation. Yet, now we are letting this happen. E-cigarettes are still tobacco products. They are used by the tobacco industry--I haven't talked about this yet--as a gateway cigarette for kids, and that doesn't stop. They see this, and they start smoking these e-cigarettes. Then a year or 2 years, 5 years, 10 years down the road, they will be smoking traditional tobacco and they will be addicted, and we know what addiction to cigarettes is for so many of our fellow Americans. My colleagues and I urge the Food and Drug Administration to strengthen and finalize these regulations before any more of our children get hooked on potentially dangerous and addictive tobacco products.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment in order to call up Brown amendment No. 311.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.