[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 21, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H1141-H1142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      TODAY UNITED STATES SETS AN ALL-TIME RECORD DEFICIT IN TRADE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the United States set another record today. 
Unfortunately, it is not a record of which we can be proud as a nation 
or certainly not as one of the policymakers that helps set our trade 
policy in this country.
  We set a record deficit, an all-time record deficit, in trade. $338.9 
billion trade deficit, a 50 percent increase from the 1998 level of 
$220.6 billion. Now, what does that mean? Well, let us think about it 
for a minute. Where is all that money coming from and where is it 
going?
  Well, since trade policy in this country is pretty much dictated to 
the Members of Congress, this Member excepted but most of my 
colleagues, or a majority, and to the White House downtown, no matter 
it seems which party is sitting there, by multinational corporations, 
they do not really care what the impact is on the United States of 
America, its workers or our economic future. But guess what? We are 
piling up a huge mound of international debt and some day that debt is 
going to be called and it is going to wreak havoc with the economy of 
our country.

[[Page H1142]]

  According to most recent statistics, our international debt, because 
of this huge and growing trade deficit, will reach $1.9 trillion when 
it is added up for last year, and they are expecting it will double to 
$3.8 trillion, trillion dollars, by the year 2005.
  Interest payments, money going overseas for money borrowed from 
overseas by financiers, governments, multinational corporations, 
whatever, $86 billion this year and it will be $166 billion by 2005. 
That is jobs that are not created here, capital that is not available 
here, threats to the future economic prosperity of our country.
  Now, there are two parts of the trade deficit we ought to take a 
special close look at. One is the trade deficit due to the OPEC 
nations. Now, people have just started to pay attention to OPEC again 
recently, but they have been there all along. They have been a very 
large part of our trade deficit, but they are getting bigger.
  Last month, our trade deficit to the OPEC nations, because of their 
price fixing, was $2.671 billion. That means at that rate we will run a 
$31 billion trade deficit with OPEC.
  Now, everybody around here loves free trade, the World Trade 
Organization, with the exception of a few of us who think that that is 
not working very well for the people of this Nation. Well, the WTO has 
rules. Guess what? They have rules. It is a rules-based trade. The 
President loves rules-based trade, and one of the rules is that member 
nations cannot constrain production for goods produced for export 
unless it is for conservation purposes.
  Nobody in the OPEC nations pretends that they are conserving their 
oil for conservation purposes. They are real up front about it. They 
are price gouging. They are creating an artificial shortage. Why then 
will the President and the administration not file a complaint in the 
WTO that they love so much? Why will the majority party who loves the 
WTO so much not force the President to file a complaint?
  I expect they will not allow my amendment to the legislation tomorrow 
that would resolve that the Congress wants the President to file a 
complaint in the WTO against the OPEC nations.
  Now there is another aspect to this that is very large, even bigger 
than OPEC. China, our trade deficit with China close to $70 billion 
this last year, an increase of 15 percent, the most unfair trading 
nation on earth. And yet what is this Congress proposing to do, pushed 
by the Republican leaders and the President? That is to give China 
everything they ever wanted, to give up any tools that this body holds 
to hold over China in the future to get them to behave in international 
trade, to get them to behave in human rights, to get them to behave in 
nonproliferation of nuclear weapons or dealing weapons to terrorist 
countries, to give them permanent most favored nation status.
  Well, the estimates are, by our own international trade commission, 
saying that if the U.S. gets China into the WTO and if the U.S. grants 
them permanent most favored nation status, that they expect, according 
to their model, that our trade deficit with China will grow for the 
next 60 years to $649 billion. Something stinks about the trade policy 
in this country and it is time that it changes.

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