Sherrod Brown: “Mr. Speaker, in 1994, supporters of free trade and globalization painted a very positive picture of how the Uruguay…”

“Mr. Speaker, in 1994, supporters of free trade and globalization painted a very positive picture of how the Uruguay Round and GATT would influence and shape the U.S. and the global economy. They declared it would not erode U.S. sovereignty or undermine environmental health or food safety policy. It would, they promised, improve labor standards worldwide. Five years into its implementation, though, it has become clear that these promises have failed to materialize. Instead, we have suffered through global financial instability, massive ballooning of the U.S. trade deficit, and ever-increasing income inequality in the United States, and especially in the developing world. As we have engaged with developing countries in trade investment, democratic countries in the developing world are losing ground to more authoritarian countries. Democratic countries, such as India and Taiwan, are losing ground to more totalitarian nations, such as Indonesia, where the people are not free and the workers do as they are told. In the post-Cold War decade, the share of developing country exports to the U.S. for democratic nations fell from 53 percent a dozen years ago to 34 percent today.”