[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 71 (Monday, May 20, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5292-H5293]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       UNITED STATES JOBS AND TECHNOLOGY BEING EXPORTED TO CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, today President Clinton announced that he 
was going to ask Congress to renew most-favored-nation status with 
China unconditionally for the coming year. Unconditionally. As you 
know, Mr. Speaker, under the law the President must request a special 
waiver for China in order for China to have most-favored-nation status. 
That request comes to the Congress, and then Members have the 
discretion to have a motion to deny.
  The President in his statement today talked about trade with China 
leading to democratization. There he talked about why it was important 
for us to have most-favored-nation status with China, because of 
American benefits to American business, because of China's potential 
cooperation over Korea and China's potential cooperation on the 
proliferation of weapons. Indeed, if China is a responsible country, 
and let us hope that it is, it should be working to keep the Korean 
peninsula nonnuclear, and it should be working to stop the spread of 
nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

  But I want to focus today on the trade deficit itself because when 
others say why should we use trade as a lever to improve human rights 
in China, I think it is very important for all of us to understand just 
what that trade situation is.
  I have here, Mr. Speaker, and I call to our colleagues' attention, a 
chart of the trade with China in the past 10 years. In 1995, the United 
States trade deficit with China was $10 million. In 1995, the trade 
deficit was just under $34 billion. This is all at a time during mostly 
the Bush and Clinton policies which said that this was going to be good 
for American jobs. Indeed it is not.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, what we are doing, the United States is doing, 
by its policy is exporting jobs to China.
  In this trade deficit we are not even including the piracy of 
American intellectual property. The genius of America, as our 
colleague, Congresswoman Eshoo said, a product made in a free system, a 
freedom of expression and entrepreneurial spirit. The Chinese have been 
pirating flagrantly our intellectual property to epidemic proportions.

[[Page H5293]]

That is not even counted in this trade deficit.
  In addition to that, when American businesses enter into agreements 
with China to produce goods there, they also must agree to a program 
for exporting back to the United States and internationally as well as 
a transfer of our technology, and that is again exporting jobs.
  One example of that is that a few years ago Boeing closed a plant in 
Wichita, KS, which made the tail section of the 737. That plant was 
closed, and a plant in China where 20,000 Chinese workers worked for 
$50 a month, they now produce the tail section which was formerly made 
in Wichita, KS, and this is just in the last few years.
  So over the next month or so as we debate this issue, I think it is 
important for us to have the real facts about United States-China 
trade. Indeed why should we give preferential trade treatment to China 
when they for the most part do not even allow United States products 
into China; barriers to market access, piracy of intellectual property, 
transfer of technology as a term for doing business with the Chinese, 
export of prison goods made by prison labor to the United States and 
unfair competition to the American worker as an addition to being a 
violation of human rights.
  Why should the American worker have to compete with slave labor? It 
just is not fair trade; it is not free trade.
  So as we go forward, many of my colleagues and I will be laying on 
the table what the trade picture is. It is not a rosy one. It is about 
profits for certain elitist companies which are allowed to export to 
China. Most products made in America are not allowed into China.
  The President says that economic reform will lead to political 
reform. I reject that kind of trickle-down liberty just as I reject 
other trickle-down policies in our country. But the fact is that you 
cannot in one breath say that promoting democracy in Asia is a 
principle and a pillar of our foreign policy there and that we are 
going to shed the light of democracy on what goes on in China and then 
not do it at all.
  And then I know that my time is drawing to a close. I just want to 
say this is an opener. The President made his statement today. They 
will have, the President has, the power, the business community has the 
dollars, but we in Congress have the floor, and we are going to try to 
educate the American people and our colleagues as to the real extent in 
terms of jobs for the American workers.
  I urge our colleagues to listen carefully to this debate and to keep 
an open mind.

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