[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 17, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H3302-H3306]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       WORLD BANK SHOULD NOT CONSIDER LOANS TO IRAN AT THIS TIME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the World Bank meets. We will not 
have the huge demonstrations of a month ago. No one will be comparing 
this meeting here in Washington, D.C., to the events in Seattle. But 
they may play a more important role on whether the World Bank and its 
sister organization, the IMF, continue to have the support, precarious 
as it is, of the American people, and whether the World Bank continues 
to exist and foster in its present form.
  Mr. Speaker, I am among the strongest advocates in this House of our 
foreign aid program, our involvement in the world, and, up until now, 
our support for the World Bank and the IMF.
  Mr. Speaker, just a year-and-a-half ago over $500,000 was spent in a 
campaign designed exclusively to vilify me personally for supporting 
the IMF and the World Bank. I continue to support those organizations, 
yet I am not sure that that support can continue for long, because 
while I am a proud supporter of world development and of our foreign 
aid and of our efforts to try to have all of humanity live in dignity, 
I do not know if I can continue to be a proud supporter of the World 
Bank.
  You see, the World Bank garners its support from the community here 
in America that supports human rights and the dignity of men and women, 
and yet it will make a decision tomorrow that will indicate whether it 
deserves the support of those who are concerned with human rights.
  For one case, in one nation, has garnered the imagination of the 
world when it comes to human rights. I speak of the show trial being 
conducted in the City of Shiraz, Iran, in which 13 Jews face the absurd 
charge of being spies for the United States and Israel.
  Mr. Speaker, let me first give you and the House some background. The 
Jewish community in Iran is 2,500 years old. It arose out of the 
Babylonian captivity after the destruction of the first Temple. It is 
the oldest Jewish community anywhere in the world except Israel itself.
  For 2,500 years Jews lived in peace and in loyalty to whichever 
regime governed Persia, now Iran. In 1979 the Iranian revolution led to 
the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and since then that 
Islamic Republic has found it necessary, or at least has decided, to 
oppress religious minorities. Their treatment of those who practice the 
Baha'i faith is well-known and is deplorable. For those who have 
practiced the Jewish faith, some 17 have been killed after trumped-up 
charges over the last 20 years, roughly one per year. It seems this is 
a regime that finds it necessary to keep this small Jewish community 
under control through terror and fear. I say a small Jewish community, 
because this community, which once numbered over 100,000, has now 
dwindled to 25,000 as people who have fled their ancestral homelands, 
homelands that trace their ancestors back for 2,500 years. They have 
left under the oppression, but 25,000 remain.
  But apparently the Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer satisfied 
with killing one of its Jewish citizens roughly every year, and so 
about a year-and-a-half ago it went out and arrested 13 and charged 
them with espionage.
  Now, why are these charges so absurd? Well, Mr. Speaker, we have 
grown up here in the United States, a multi-ethnic country, where 
people of all backgrounds and all religions are found in every part of 
our government, including our national security agencies. From the CIA 
to the Pentagon, our national security agencies look like America. So, 
anyone of any ethnicity, could, if things turned out wrong, grow up to 
be a spy.

  We have British-American spies, we allegedly have Chinese-American 
spies, there have been Jewish-American spies, and that is because 
people of all ethnicities and religions are found in the agencies that 
contain the most sensitive national security secrets.
  Iran is a very different country. No one of the Jewish faith is 
allowed near anything of national security significance. Now, I know 
the CIA occasionally makes a mistake, but to think that the CIA would, 
over a period of years, hire not one, but 13 individuals in Iran, each 
a member of a tiny group prohibited by their religion from getting 
anywhere near anything the CIA would want to know, it stretches all 
credulity to believe that the CIA would do that and that the United 
States could remain a superpower if that is how it pursued its national 
security and intelligence efforts.
  These charges are not only absurd, but the trials that began less 
than a month ago are also absurd. They are modeled after the trials of 
Joseph Stalin, trials devoid of public attendance, trials in which the 
prosecutor is always the judge, trials in which there is virtually no 
information, no evidence, except the hollow conclusionary and 
detailless confessions of coward confessions. Nothing has been proven 
at trial, except that the defendants are afraid.
  The information that they would have had access to would have been 
only information observable by anyone walking the streets of an Iranian 
city, and, of course, diplomats of countries, both friendly to and 
hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran, walk those streets every day, 
every month, observing the same things, and with diplomatic immunity 
while they do so.
  So this trial has captured the attention of those in the world who 
care about human rights. Maybe it is because 13 people are so obviously 
innocent. Maybe it is because the trials so closely resemble those of 
the dark ages of Joseph Stalin. Maybe it is because the defendants are 
a remnant of an historically significant and dwindling community.
  But where does this leave the World Bank? The World Bank will 
consider tomorrow a package of loans to the Islamic Republic, and we 
are told that these loans will be used for humanitarian purposes. But 
let us remember that money is fungible. The money the Islamic Republic 
does not spend on building a sewer system in Tehran can be used to 
develop weapons, to field an army or to increase the reach of its 
forces of oppression and interrogation.
  Not only that, but this nearly one-quarter of a billion dollars in 
contracts will go only to those contractors and

[[Page H3303]]

organizations in Iran tied to the dominant faction of the Iranian 
government, so not a penny will be spent that does not inure to those 
who are politically connected to the same government conducting these 
show trials in Shiraz.
  Now, we are told that the World Bank must make its decisions 
independent of politics, but one cannot ignore the results of a 
decision to be made tomorrow in Washington, especially when that 
decision does not have to be made tomorrow. It can and should be 
deferred.
  But beyond the human rights concerns, there is another issue that the 
World Bank should focus on. It may grow out of the human rights 
concerns, but it is a separate issue. No financial institution should 
be allowed to make a loan that imperils the success of the institution 
itself, and the World Bank, if it makes this loan, is sowing the seeds 
of its own impairment. American participation in the World Bank is 
critical to its survival, or at least to its success, and that 
participation depends upon the consent and acquiescence of a restive 
American public.
  The support for that participation comes from those who care about 
human rights, and to fund this loan this week is to turn to those in 
America who care about human rights and declare that the World Bank is 
on the other side; that the World Bank is happy to be an instrument, an 
instrument, of oppression.
  Now, there are those who will disagree with what the effect of this 
World Bank loan will be in Iran, but they do not speak with any 
expertise about what effect this loan will have on America and American 
support for the World Bank. Those who understand how foreign policy is 
made in a superpower, where the people are supreme, and most of them do 
not care very often about foreign policy, those who are involved in 
foreign policy and in the political process should warn the World Bank, 
as I do tonight, that a loan of this type undermines and corrodes the 
very thin pillars of support that the World Bank and the IMF have in 
the American public.

                              {time}  1945

  If you say no to those Americans who care about the 13 Jews in Iran, 
if you say no to those Americans who care about human rights, then who 
will stand up for the IMF and the World Bank when the voices of 
isolationism and the voices of just spending less money on foreign 
affairs, when those voices bellow that it is time for America to reduce 
its commitment?
  I am not saying that an approval of these loans will lead to street 
demonstrations reminiscent of Seattle. It will not. I am not saying 
that the State Department or the Treasury Department will talk about 
cutting back its support or participation in the IMF and the World Bank 
if these loans are approved tomorrow, for there will be no such 
immediate effect. But those who study how foreign policy is made in a 
democratic country, where the people are supreme but only a few of them 
focus on these issues, will understand that over the next 3 years or 5 
years or 8 years American support for the IMF and the World Bank are 
subject to corrosion if this loan goes forward.
  Certainly those who are voting at the World Bank tomorrow need to 
give the World Bank staff a chance to analyze these issues in greater 
depth, and certainly the loans themselves and the details of the loans 
need to be reviewed in greater depth than has been done to date. When 
the World Bank makes a loan, it tries to avoid obvious corruption, 
knowing that that is not only a waste of its money but a waste of its 
political capital.
  These loans will be under a level of scrutiny beyond those that the 
public has imposed on any other World Bank decision. Certainly these 
loans need to be reviewed for efficiency and absence of corruption at a 
higher level than the World Bank has ever analyzed loans, because here, 
here, not only does the World Bank stand to see a portion of its 
quarter billion dollars hijacked and diverted but it has a chance to 
have each detail of these loans and their expenditures reviewed with 
the greatest possible public attention, particularly in the United 
States.
  Certainly the board members, the shareholders at the World Bank, 
would be well advised, let the staff have some time. Let us see whether 
the details of these loans meet the higher standard than the World 
Bank, for its own interest, needs to impose on loans that will receive 
a greater level of public scrutiny than any other loans have ever 
faced, and let the World Bank staff review whether that institution can 
long endure and long survive as an organization with the active and 
enthusiastic support of the people of the United States if it acts 
precipitously. If the Bank votes tomorrow to ignore these concerns, it 
takes an irrevocable action or an action that appears to be 
irrevocable, that could eat away at the fabric of the Bank itself. If 
instead the Bank votes to delay considering these or if these loans are 
simply not on the agenda and no one puts them there, then the Bank can 
consider these actions in light of the concerns I have brought to the 
attention of this House and I hope to the attention of the Bank 
shareholders as well.


                   Permanent Normal Trade with China

  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I was originally scheduled to address the 
House for only 5 minutes. The House, in its rules, in its wisdom, has 
instead given me a full hour. Whether that was a wise decision of this 
body remains to be seen, but it is an hour I plan to use to discuss 
some other issues, issues that I have not mapped out in detail and so I 
will apologize to the Speaker if my remarks are not as tightly phrased 
and as well organized as I would like them to be.
  I would now like to address the same subject addressed by the prior 
speaker, the vote we will deal with on granting permanent most favored 
nation status to China.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pro-engagement. I am against isolationism and I am 
against protectionism. I am against this agreement. This agreement has 
enough in the way of disadvantages in three different categories so 
that any one of those categories of disadvantage is reason enough to 
vote it down. If it was only for the adverse effect that this agreement 
will have on human rights in China, we should vote no. If it was only 
for the adverse impact that this agreement is going to have on American 
workers and on American exports and on the balance of trade of the 
United States, we should vote no. And if it was only for the adverse 
effect this agreement is going to have on our ability to deal with the 
national security issues that confront us when we deal with China, we 
should vote no.
  Let us first talk about human rights, or let me first talk about 
human rights.
  This deal has nothing in it to protect labor rights, environmental 
standards, but we are told that the dissidents in China are for this 
agreement.
  Well, most of the dissidents I have heard of are against it. The 
overwhelming majority of those who have done time in the Chinese gulag 
are against this agreement, and certainly the overwhelming majority of 
those who have done time in the Chinese prison system and are free to 
speak their minds are against this agreement.
  For many months, this country debated whether the father of Elian was 
free to speak his mind while he lived in Cuba, and so we insisted that 
he come here and announce, with his child and with his new wife, what 
their views were and what they wanted for their son. And yet, those who 
questioned the accuracy, the credibility of statements made by someone 
living under Fidel Castro seem to accept at face value the statements 
made by people in China today, people who have been subject to 
interrogation, some, a few, subject to imprisonment before, as if they 
could not be subject to that again.
  There are those in China who have had the courage to stand up in the 
past who may not want to risk their freedom over this particular 
agreement and who may, therefore, have made statements consistent with 
their own freedom, notwithstanding the fact that those same individuals 
have in the past had the courage to risk imprisonment where they felt 
the issue more strongly, or where they felt they were at a time in 
their lives when they were willing to take such a personal risk.
  So the dissidents are, for the most part, indecipherable. Some say 
one thing. Some say another. Some are here in the United States to 
speak their mind freely and some are subject to imprisonment tomorrow 
if they say

[[Page H3304]]

the wrong thing today, but we are told that this agreement is not only 
supported by the dissidents, and sometimes the word ``dissident'' is 
confused with this second group that they refer to as the reformers. 
The reformers are not the dissidents. The reformers are the elements in 
power in China that we are told want open markets. They may want open 
markets. There are members of the Central Committee of the Communist 
Party of China that want open markets, but wanting open markets does 
not mean want human rights. Wanting open markets does not mean 
abandoning the monopoly on power enjoyed by the Communist Party of 
China.
  There may be different factions in the Central Committee of the 
Communist Party. There may be different factions in the ruling circles 
in Beijing, but there is one thing that unites them. So-called 
reformers, so-called hard-liners are united. They want to see the 
Communist Party maintain its monopoly on power forever. Reformers just 
want to do it with a different flavor.
  There is one group in China that is free to speak their minds. That 
is the members of the ruling elite, the members of the Central 
Committee of the Communist Party, and they have spoken with a loud 
voice. They have said this deal helps us achieve our objectives. This 
deal is good for us. It is indeed good for the ruling classes in China. 
It is indeed in the interest of maintaining the monopoly power of the 
Communist Party, because make no mistake about two facts: First, the 
entire ruling elite is unified, dedicated that its most important 
objective is maintaining a monopoly on power for themselves. They would 
not enter into this agreement if it, dare I say it, was for all the tea 
in China if  they thought it would shorten for one day the monopoly on 
power of the Communist Party of China. So first fact, the ruling elite 
believes this will lengthen its hold on power. Otherwise they would not 
be for it.

  Second, the ruling elite knows a lot more about holding on to power 
in China than all of the U.S. experts and all of those who have come to 
lobby us. There are those who say that China will unravel just like the 
Soviet Union. I hope that is true. Perhaps long-term it is true, but 
the Soviet Union did not unravel because of trade with the United 
States. There was very little trade with the United States. There was 
no WTO membership for the Soviet Union. It was not that every pair of 
tennis shoes, every toy and half your shirts came from the Soviet Union 
in 1985. So if we hold up the Soviet Union's unraveling as a model it 
does not compel us to accept this deal. If we believe that the 
Communist Party of China at the highest levels understands their own 
country, understands holding power in their own country, then we will 
understand that the agreement will help them do just that.
  Second, we need to focus on the human rights of Americans. Now I am 
told that our economy is doing spectacularly well. Well, it is doing 
well for many people. Unemployment is down, but many of those people 
who might have been unemployed just a few years ago today are the proud 
owners of $6 an hour jobs and $7 an hour jobs. These people should be 
working in the manufacturing sector in America at $20 and $30 an hour 
jobs. Export jobs to make machinery and aircraft, et cetera, those are 
very high-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector. But what kind of 
jobs has the Chinese Government provided? Through their limitation of 
our exports, they have provided us with a market smaller than Belgium. 
That is right. We sell less to China than we do to Belgium, and we do 
not sell very much to Belgium; $13 billion.
  Put another way, the trade deficit with China, $70 billion every year 
and rising, is six times the size of all of our exports.

                              {time}  2000

  If our exports to China doubled, we would hardly know it. Has anyone 
come to this floor and said, if we could just increase by a bit our 
exports to Belgium, that there would be dancing in American streets and 
a revitalization of every American town? I do not think so. But it is 
unlikely that there will be even a small increase in American exports 
to China as a result of this deal.
  I know that many have come to this floor and said just the opposite, 
so let me explain why. We in the United States have lived our entire 
lives under the rule of law. If the government is going to affect 
anything in the economy, they had better write a law or a regulation 
and publish it, and in the absence of a law, in the absence of 
regulation, we have the right to do what we want as individuals and as 
companies.
  We have lived our lives where published law is very important. So we 
should be forgiven if, for a moment, we believe that the published law 
in China is of great significance; that if we could just change their 
published tariff rates, their published quotas, then everyone in China 
would be free to buy American goods.
  China is not a country that lives under the rule of law. China is a 
command and control economy. In China, you do not start your own 
airline just because you want to and then buy American planes just 
because you think they are the best deal.
  In fact, when we look at what we are likely to export to China, we 
see an incredible level of control of the Communist party of China 
without any need to have published rules.
  We sell airplanes. The party controls the airline. We sell 
telecommunications systems. The party controls all the buyers for those 
systems. We sell large factories. We are not going to do a large 
factory in China over the opposition of the ruling elite.
  We do not sell little toys on the street corner to individual 
consumers. We sell big things, big ticket items. How are we going to 
sell them? We are only going to sell the quantity that the people in 
Beijing decide they are willing to allow their country to buy.
  Two years ago we sold $14 billion worth of goods. Last year they cut 
us down to $13 billion. With this agreement, they can, without fear, 
cut us as low as they want, or at least maintain us where we are, while 
they increase their sales to the United States, or at least maintain 
them where they are so that we continue to run $70 billion trade 
deficits forever.
  How are they going to do that? Well, there may be no tariff on 
American airplanes to China, but the board of the airline might vote 
not to buy our planes. Can that be taken to WTO court? No. Any 
enterprise is free to buy or not buy. The fact that the government 
controls the enterprise does not change that, so we sell only what they 
decide they want to buy. When I say ``they,'' I mean the political 
elite.
  We want to do telecommunications systems, the same thing. But let us 
imagine that there is an independent business in China. The board of 
directors is not dominated by the government or the party. This 
business wants to import $1 billion worth of American goods. They are 
the best goods. They are going to get them at the best price.
  The published regulations say that the business is free to do so. The 
director of that business receives just one phone call, one phone call 
saying, Mr. Businessperson, we know you are planning to conclude a deal 
to buy $1 billion worth of American goods. But, you know, China has 
always wanted to restrict the quantity of American goods purchased. We 
have always run this huge trade surplus with America, and the Communist 
Party wants to continue that.
  So Mr. Businessperson, we know you will decide not to buy the 
American goods. We know you will make the right decision. We know you 
will help us punish the American people for what the Communist party 
would call their meddling, what we would call human rights advocacy.
  Mr. Businessperson, we know you will make the right decision because 
you are well educated. We would hate to think you need to be 
reeducated.
  There is not a single importer in China that is not subject to arrest 
on trumped up charges if that importer decides to buy American goods 
against the advice, oral advice, of the Communist party of China. 
American exports to China are not dependent upon changing the published 
rules. Those are only for our lawyers to read.
  Getting more exports to China depends upon changing the policy of the 
Communist party, a policy that has been discriminating against American 
goods for a long time, a policy which has caused them to run a $70 
billion trade surplus with us and a significant

[[Page H3305]]

trade deficit with the rest of the world as they deliberately decide to 
use the money that we pay them for the tennis shoes to buy goods from 
Europe and Japan and elsewhere.
  Why would they change? Are we going to stop talking about human 
rights on this floor? Are we going to stop our support for Taiwan? Are 
we going to ignore the rape of Tibet? I hope not.

  But that leads to another concern. We have seen an army, an army of 
businesspeople and lobbyists come to our offices asking us to give 
China what China wants in the expectation that these lobbyists will get 
from China what the lobbyists want.
  Well, I do not think our businesses are going to get what they want. 
I think China, having had a 10- and 20-year policy of discriminating 
against American goods, at least a 10-year policy, will continue that 
policy and will do it quite well through the mechanism I have 
described, and does not need published regulations and tariff rates to 
achieve the balance of payments that they decide to have.
  So if this army of lobbyists feels this year that they must do what 
China wants in order to have access to the Chinese markets, and they do 
not get that access, they will be back here next year or the year after 
saying, whoops, looks like American exports to China are still only $13 
billion, but we hear through the grapevine that if only America would 
stop selling weapons to Taiwan, China will start buying our goods. If 
only America will stop caring about Tibet, China will start buying our 
goods.
  The same army of lobbyists asking us to do what China wants now will 
find that what China is asking for now is insufficient to garner them 
that favored status that causes the Chinese enterprises to buy their 
goods. They will be back asking us to do more. I shudder to think, will 
we be asked to ignore Chinese proliferation of nuclear technology to 
countries like North Korea and Iran? Will we be asked to cut off Taiwan 
and to lay that island, that democratic island, open to possible 
invasion, or at least blockade?
  I do not know, but I will say this, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Berman) from the adjoining district has proposed that 
we add a provision to this MFN deal that says that China would get its 
permanent most-favored-nation status, but if they blockade Taiwan or if 
they invade Taiwan, they lose it.
  The pro-China forces have been unwilling to embrace that amendment, 
an amendment which might gather them the votes they need to pass this 
deal. I worry about a Chinese embassy or I worry about supporters of 
China unwilling to even say that we should deny China something if they 
actually invade or blockade Taiwan.
  We will have to see how this develops, but if my colleagues care 
about Taiwan, at least hold out for this: Deny their vote to those who 
want to permanently open our markets to China with little real access 
to theirs, withhold their vote until at least we get a provision that 
says that Taiwan, if invaded or blockaded, that those actions would 
lead to an end of most-favored-nation status, also called normal trade 
relations, with the United States.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, recently those who support this deal have come up 
with a couple of Band-Aids. One of those is called ``antisurge'' 
provisions. It sounds good. It sounds like at least if there was a 
sudden flood of Chinese goods from a particular sector, perhaps being 
sold at cost, dumped on our market, that we would have a special 
provision to deal with it.
  Read the provision. The proposal is simply that the United States, if 
it saw its workers losing their jobs, would not be free to stop the 
onslaught of Chinese goods. No. But we would be allowed, look at this 
tremendous grant of power to us, we would be allowed to appropriate 
money for education programs and retraining programs for our displaced 
workers.
  I never thought that we lacked the power to appropriate funds to 
provide help for American workers who are in trouble for one reason or 
another. I do not think we have to thank Beijing for having the power 
to do so. It would be nice if the importers would give us some of the 
money we would need for that, but that is not found in the antisurge 
provisions.
  Second, we are given a second Band-Aid. That second Band-Aid is, more 
reports about human rights in China, Helsinki Commission style reports. 
Come to my office, I will show the Members all the reports on human 
rights in China. They take up a lot of room. There are more 
organizations issuing more reports all the time. They will turn 
Members' stomachs as to their content.
  Since when is it a major concession to know that there will be 
reports issued in the future? We know there will be reports. The fact 
that they will be called Helsinki style, who cares? We could have Los 
Angeles style reports, Vienna style reports, Rome style reports. We 
could have semi-annual reports, we could have biannual reports. We have 
reports.
  We will get more reports. All it will do is demonstrate the abuses of 
human rights happening in China, as to which we have granted the 
Chinese government an absolute guarantee that they will not lose a 
penny no matter what they do. No matter what they do to the practicing 
Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims; no matter what they do to the 
people of Tibet, they will be hit only with a report. They will not 
lose access to a single sale of a single pair of tennis shoes in the 
United States.

  So, Mr. Speaker, I turn, as I have already foreshadowed it, to the 
third reason that we should oppose this deal. Not only does it ensure 
more power and more tenacity to the Communist party in China, not only 
does it limit our access, or does it fail to eliminate limits to our 
access to their market, but finally, it ties our hands when national 
security issues come up, because if China does something, whether it is 
providing nuclear weapons or their technology to Iran or blockading 
Taiwan, our choices will be only twofold. We can declare war, which I 
do not advise, or we can mail them a scathing report.
  Right now we have the most valuable tool. We do not have to just 
eliminate most-favored-nation status, we can condition it or we can 
reduce it. Under most-favored-nation status, for example, and I will 
just use these numbers for an example, not because they are accurate, a 
country without most-favored-nation status might face a $10 per pair 
tariff on tennis shoes. China, because it has most-favored-nation 
status this year, is entitled to bring those tennis shoes in for a $1 
tariff.
  We in Congress could react to anything China does that threatens the 
national security of ourselves or our allies by raising that tariff 
from $1 to $2 or $3 or $4, or eliminating all most-favored-nation 
status and having it go to $10.

                              {time}  2015

  We have the tools; 43 percent of all Chinese exports come to the 
United States, and if we can modulate that, if we can impair slightly, 
or more than slightly, their access to American markets, then we have 
an abundance of tools to deal with whatever China might do that is 
offensive to our national security interests.
  If, instead, we grant them Most Favored Nation status forever, we 
lose those tools, and our choices are either war or a scathing letter.
  Mr. Speaker, there is one thing on which I agree with the proponents 
of this agreement; it is better than the status quo. Today we have a 
$70 billion trade deficit with China, and this contract, this deal 
makes it permanent; not a real accomplishment. It is the most lopsided 
trading relationship in the history of life on earth, a trade deficit 
six times as large as our exports.
  If we were to just continue what we have been doing year after year, 
it would be just as bad. What we have to do instead is open new 
negotiations with China, negotiations based on results, not process and 
procedure, because China is a command and control economy where the 
procedures are all underground and immune from American inspection.
  We need an agreement with China that sets targets that says okay, now 
the trade deficit is $70 billion, next year we would like it to be $60 
billion instead of $80 billion, and that we will modulate our tariffs 
up on Chinese goods, if necessary, to achieve that goal.
  We hope it is not necessary. I am not a protectionist. I am not an 
isolationist. I hope we do not have to raise

[[Page H3306]]

our tariffs a single cent on a single pair of tennis shoes, instead 
China needs to start buying goods from the United States.
  If they knew that they would suffer some loss of access to the U.S. 
market, they would do it. The Chinese, when confronted by real tariffs 
or the real threat of tariffs, will find that our goods meet their 
needs, but if they are confronted by a deal that asks them to do 
nothing more than change the irrelevant regulations that they place on 
the top of the table and ignores the results of what happens underneath 
the table, then they will be laughing all the way to even larger trade 
surpluses with the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, let me now bring up, in the waning minutes of this brief 
presentation, a third topic, a topic that is very important. I have 
only a bit to say about it, because, frankly, it is a topic that has me 
stumped. Let me by way of introduction mention that this is a topic 
that, as far as I know, has never been addressed.
  It is a topic that my staff has said, Brad, maybe you do not want to 
bring that up, because you will be the only one talking about it, you 
will look weird. It is a topic I ought to bring up, because it is one 
of the seminal topics. And it is only one of several seminal topics 
that gets no attention; by seminal topics, I mean one of the topics 
that really goes to where we are going as a species and what are the 
dangers, not only to the prosperity of the people in my district and in 
the country, not only to the issues we fight about here everyday, but 
to where we are going as humankind.
  Now, there are a number of issues that rise to that level of 
significance that do receive significant attention: nuclear 
proliferation, environmental catastrophe, overpopulation; all of these 
threaten humankind's continued prosperous existence on this planet.
  There is a fourth issue that does, I think, rise to the level where 
it can be included, and it is an issue really without a name; I call it 
the issue of engineered intelligence.
  I am going to propose to this House, I hope some of my colleagues 
will join me, we will have dinner, we will have a drink or two, we will 
think this over, not maybe a drink or two, we will think over what form 
this bill should take, but I am planning to introduce a bill calling 
for the creation of a national commission on engineered intelligence.
  There are several different forces coming together or scientific 
technologies that come under the title of engineered intelligence: 
First, there is biological engineering which could give us either of 
two huge ethical dilemmas; one is the prospect that biological 
engineering will allow us to design some sort of animal, perhaps 
starting with human DNA and going down, perhaps starting with 
chimpanzees' DNA and going up, but some sort of animal that is 
significantly more intelligent than the domestic animals that help us 
do our work, sheepdogs or watchdogs or seeing eye dogs, considerably 
smarter than the canines that help us do work, but less intelligent, 
less self-aware than human beings, and one wonders whether this would 
be an engineered slave race or just an improvement in today's pooches, 
a better seeing eye dog, or a sparely self-aware cognitive entity 
engineered by man to serve man, arguably to be enslaved by man.
  Biological engineering can engineer intelligence at a level where 
some will argue that that entity deserves the protection of our 
Constitution, and others would argue that that entity is here to serve 
us in the same humane way that we turn to watchdogs and seeing eye 
dogs. Likewise, biological engineering can go beyond.
  I can see, not today, but we are within 20 years or 30 years or 50 
years of when biological engineering cannot only do what I just 
covered, but could also engineer an intelligence well beyond that of 
the average person, perhaps well beyond that of any human that has ever 
lived, and we would have to wonder, do we want our scientists to create 
a new species that Darwin might think is superior to our own? I do not 
know.
  But it raises ethical issues that are going to take longer to resolve 
than it will take the science to get there and present those logical 
issues, those ethical issues to society.
  One example is that Einstein a few years before World War II, 
together with others, brought to the attention of Franklin Roosevelt 
the great power or potential power of nuclear science and the nuclear 
bomb, and we had only a few years to consider what that would mean. The 
science developed more quickly than the ethics, and we had to struggle 
as a species to figure out, and we are still struggling to figure out 
what the rules are with regard to the nuclear engineering.
  We need to begin thinking now of the ethics and the international 
agreements and the laws that are going to apply when science gets to 
where only science fiction is today.
  Mr. Speaker, it is not just is biological engineering capable of 
engineering intelligence; it is also mechanical engineering. One of my 
friends has said that perhaps the last decision that will be made by 
the human race is whether our successors are the products of biological 
engineering or mechanical Silicon Valley engineering; whether our 
replacements are carbon-based or silicon-based, because I do not know 
whether it will be biological engineering that engineers intelligence 
first, or whether intelligence rivaling our own or perhaps surpassing 
our own will first come from silicon chips; but the same ethical issues 
arise.
  One can imagine a thinking machine capable of spirituality. I believe 
there is a book that addresses that issue by that title.
  One can imagine a thinking machine smarter than any computer, almost 
self-aware, some would argue properly used by people, others would say 
properly embraced as the constitutional equal of human beings. 
Likewise, it is possible for us through silicon engineering, through 
computer engineering that some day we will invent machines considerably 
smarter than us who may or may not regard us as their appropriate peers 
or masters.

  I know this is science fiction, but would it not be wise to spend a 
few years, and a few, in the minds of a few people a lot smarter than I 
am trying to figure out what we would do if science begins to offer 
this as an alternative for human kind?
  I can only mention third, nanotechnology, the idea of engineering at 
the molecular level, at a level where perhaps it would be hard to 
decide whether what we had engineered was biological or mechanical, or 
maybe we will see a fusion of biological and mechanical or biological 
and electronic engineering where a combination of silicon chips and 
brain cells from human DNA or brain cells from dog DNA are fused 
together.
  I do not want to sound unusual, but the science of the future will be 
a little unusual. We in this Congress will not do the science, but we 
in this Congress should make sure that we focus the appropriate 
societal attention long in advance on the ethical dilemmas that will 
face us as engineered intelligence either approaches or surpasses our 
own.
  Mr. Speaker, although there would be one benefit of such marvelous 
engineered intelligence for, perhaps if we had an engineered 
intelligence massively smarter than myself, maybe we would know what 
the right course was for the World Bank to take or what the right 
course was for this Congress to take on the issues I addressed earlier 
in this speech.

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