[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2242-H2243]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            U.S. POLICIES RESTRICT GROWTH OF CERTAIN EXPORTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, one of the most important 
issues we face as a country and will continually face is the issue of 
economic growth, basic prosperity, creating an economy where all of our 
constituents can have good jobs that last and enable them to take care 
of themselves and their family.
  We must always be thinking of ways to increase economic growth, to 
increase economic prosperity to provide those jobs. I think that is one 
of those basic and fundamental services that I think of myself 
providing for the people I represent in the 9th District of the State 
of Washington, is to try to help do what we can to encourage a strong 
economy, and one of the cornerstones of a strong economy is exports.
  In order to create a possibility for economic growth, we have to have 
a strong export market, and a few basic facts make this point clear. 
Ninety-six percent of the world's population lives outside of the 
United States. But despite the fact we only make up 4 percent of the 
world's population, we consume 20 percent of the world's goods and 
services and products.
  So we can basically look at those figures and realize that if we are 
going to have economic growth, it is probably going to have to occur 
outside of the United States. We are going to have to do something to 
get access to that 96 percent of the world that does not live here.
  There is massive potential for growth in those markets for all of our 
products. Technology products, goods, services, you name it, exports 
are an incredible possibility for growth. Currently we have a number of 
policies in the U.S. that restrict the ability of those exports to 
grow, and that is what I want to address the House about today.
  Now, there are some very good reasons for why these restrictions on 
exports exist. Unfortunately, as times have changed, those reasons are 
no longer valid, so it is very important that we reexamine our policy 
of restricting exports. And there are two that I want to touch on 
today. One is unilateral economic sanctions, and the second is 
restrictions that we police on the exportation of certain technologies, 
certain software and certain computers.
  When we look at the issue of unilateral economic sanctions, it is 
important to first look at why we do it. We do it because we want to 
change the policies of other countries, policies that we are absolutely 
right in condemning and wanting to change, policies such as 
restrictions on religious freedoms, restrictions on democratic 
freedoms, restrictions on economic freedoms, and basic human rights 
concerns.
  Unilateral economic sanctions are perceived as one way to get other 
countries to change those policies. But the problem is we live in a 
global economy, and in a global economy a unilateral, which means only 
us, the U.S., placing export restrictions on our companies doing 
business with other countries, does not get us there because those 
other countries have dozens of other options. They can go to other 
countries and get their goods and services elsewhere, and all that 
happens is that we lose market share and those policies that we are 
concerned about do not change.
  Economic sanctions, in order for them to work, must be multilateral 
in order for them to have full impact. I brought a chart with me today 
to show my colleagues, in red, the countries that we have placed some 
sort of economic restriction on. In other words, these are countries 
that there are some sort of restrictions on U.S. companies exporting to 
them. These are markets that we are shutting off or reducing access to 
for U.S. companies.

                              {time}  1445

  Mr. Speaker, the important point here is it just does not work. If it 
worked, if we could actually change human rights policy, change 
democracy policy, change economic repression through a policy of 
unilateral economic sanctions, certainly it would be worth doing it, 
but it does not work. We need to reexamine that policy.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a bill in the House to do that sponsored by the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley), who spoke earlier on this 
issue. I think it is critical that we support that.
  On technology, we restrict it for a slightly different reason. We 
restrict it for national security concerns. Perfectly valid concerns, 
but the question is: Do our restrictions on encryption software and 
computers actually help national security? I would argue, first, that 
they do not and, second, that they actually hurt our national security 
interests.
  This technology is not something we can put our arms around. It is 
growing so fast and in so many countries other than the U.S. We are not 
the only ones making encryption software in computers. Other countries 
are doing it. Therefore, these countries that we want to restrict 
access to will get access to it anyway. All we will do is hurt our own 
companies and hurt their ability to grow.
  This is not a choice between commerce and national security. In fact, 
I would argue that our national security could be best enhanced by 
opening up these markets to our U.S. technology companies so that U.S. 
technology companies can continue to be the leaders in technology and, 
therefore, share that technology with our national security interests. 
We are not going to be able to get the sort of interplay back and forth 
between the private sector and our defense companies if Germany or 
Canada or any number of other countries suddenly is out in front of us 
in technology. We will lose our national security edge.
  So, paradoxically, the policy of restricting the ability of our 
technology

[[Page H2243]]

companies to have access to other markets for goods like computers and 
encryption software winds up harming our national security policies.
  The world has changed. It is global, and technology is very 
accessible. We need to reexamine old policies that no longer accomplish 
what they set out to do.

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