[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 54 (Tuesday, April 20, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H2142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICA'S EXPORT CONTROL POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss our 
Nation's export control policy. Obviously, economic growth is a key to 
a prosperous future in this country, but that fact points out how 
important exports are.
  When we look at the world right now, we have a unique situation 
where, though the United States represents only 4 percent of the 
world's population, we currently consume 20 percent of the world's 
goods, services, and products.
  In other words, if we are going to have economic growth in the 
country, we are going to have to open up foreign markets. We are going 
to have to export, and take advantage of that 96 percent of the world's 
population that does not reside in the United States.
  When we look at it once again, the recent trade deficit figures just 
released today show another record trade deficit. There are a lot of 
issues that contribute to that. Today I would like to talk about just a 
couple that have to do with our export control policy, the policy of 
the United States in limiting the number of goods and products that can 
be exported from this country.
  These are limited in a couple of ways. One of them is through what 
are called unilateral economic sanctions. That is basically where we as 
a country decide we disapprove of some action of another country, and 
then decide that we are not going to allow U.S. businesses to export to 
them.
  I completely agree that we as a country need to stand up for things 
like democratic freedoms, religious freedoms, economic freedoms in the 
rest of the world, and do everything we can to encourage and promote 
those, but policies of unilateral economic sanctions do not get us 
there. Basically, all they do is force those countries to buy their 
goods from some other place.
  The reason for this is the changing economy. As we have all heard, it 
has become a cliche now, we live in a global economy. What that means 
is if we attempt to impose our will on another country through 
unilateral economic sanctions, we will fail. It will not work, because 
that country can simply go to any one of the other members of this 
global economy and purchase what they want. All we accomplish in that 
situation is restricting our own companies' abilities to export.
  Multilateral economic sanctions make a certain amount of sense. If we 
can get enough of our global partners together, as was in the case in 
South Africa, as is the case in Iraq, to institute export control 
policies so that it is not just us alone, the United States, then the 
policies can work and can exercise some influence to make some changes, 
as they did in South Africa.
  What I am opposed to is the proliferation of unilateral economic 
sanctions that do not succeed in their stated goal and harm our 
economy. There are several bills in Congress right now that will 
attempt to change that policy. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the 
House bill, and I think we need to move in that direction.
  I have brought a chart with me to illustrate the point. This chart 
shows the number of countries in the world that currently have some 
export controls on them; in other words, the number of countries which 
U.S. businesses are somehow limited in their ability to export to. We 
can see that it is a large number of countries, as they are represented 
in red. They cover a substantial portion of the globe and a substantial 
number of people; in other words, possible markets that we are losing 
out on as a country.
  If we could change that policy and open up those markets, it could be 
a boon to U.S. industry, and I must once again point out these policies 
have not had much effect on changing the policies of the other 
countries that we want to see changed.
  So unilateral economic sanctions have reached the point where they do 
not work. All they are is bad for U.S. companies. If we want to expand 
and grow, we are going to need access to these markets. We need to make 
those changes to get there.
  There are a couple of other aspects of our export controls policy 
right now that are particularly troubling because they focus on 
technology. In other words, they focus on the highest-growing segment 
of our economy, and indeed of the world's economy. They are controls on 
encryption software and on computers.
  Basically, the U.S. has a policy right now that basically looks at 
technology and says, we need to develop the best technology here in 
this country, and then for national security reasons, we are going to 
put our arms around it and prevent the rest of the world from getting 
it, it will be protecting our national security.
  There are a number of flaws with this theory, but the biggest one I 
want to point out is, once again, the global economy. There is access 
to this technology from other countries other than the U.S. We cannot 
stop that. By implementing these policies, all we are doing is 
restricting U.S. companies' ability to participate.
  The biggest point I want to make on restrictions of technology, this 
is not, and I repeat, not a choice between business and national 
security. If that was the case, absolutely, we would choose national 
security, end of story. The point is it does not help because these 
countries access the information elsewhere.
  Take encryption as just one example, a simple software designed to 
protect programs. We restrict the exportation of top-of-the-line 
encryption technology, but top-of-the-line encryption technology is 
available from a number of other countries, and in fact we can download 
it off the Internet.
  Our restrictions do not prevent these other countries from getting 
it, they only prevent our countries from being the ones that are able 
to sell it. In the long run this even harms national security by 
restricting our ability to develop the next best technology. We need to 
reexamine our policy of export controls for all of these reasons.

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