[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 24, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              OUR ECONOMY

  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, this book has not hit the best seller list 
yet, but it should. This lays out the agenda of the President for the 
future of our economy, jobs, Social Security, and other programs. 
Actually, we have got to give the principal author, Mr. Mankiw, the 
President's chief economic adviser, some points for extraordinary 
honesty.
  A quote from page 229, in reference to trade, of course, the United 
States of America is running a huge and growing trade deficit. We will 
borrow more than one-half of $1 trillion, $500 billion, from overseas 
to finance this. We are hemorrhaging jobs. U.S. corporations flee 
overseas to exploit cheap labor and Mr. Mankiw says that is all to the 
good. ``When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it 
makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it 
domestically.''
  He went on to say that exporting trade jobs realizes the dream of 
free trade that economies have talked about for 2 centuries.

                              {time}  2000

  But then he says not to worry, because, of course, we have a 
comparative advantage. Well, the question would be, a comparative 
advantage in what?
  Well, since they told us first we are going to lose those obsolete 
manufacturing jobs, which I disagreed with, because I do not think you 
can be a great Nation if you do not make things anymore, but then they 
said, do not worry, we are going to go to the intellectual jobs. We 
will do those sorts of things, and we will protect those through these 
trade agreements. Well, we now find we are exporting those intellectual 
jobs, and, in fact, we are also losing them to unfair trade.
  But, remember, this President supported Most Favored Nation status 
for the bloody dictators of Beijing, the Communist Government of China, 
because of the insistence of U.S. corporations. It says here, do not 
worry, we will defend our intellectual property against countries like 
China, which regularly steal it. It said that if you bring intellectual 
property into China, within 24 hours it will be on the streets in 
counterfeit form; but yet this administration, which says if a country 
is found to be in violation of their obligations under a trade 
agreement, the United States could retaliate against those countries, 
against the entire range of transactions covered by the agreement.
  That is right. Could. But guess what? Will not. How many trade 
complaints has the United States filed against the Communist Government 
of China for wholesale theft of American intellectual property, which 
is leading to our $124 billion trade deficit with China and the flood 
of U.S. jobs into that country? None. Zero. None.
  A company in my district, Videx, an American dream. The guy started 
with Hewlett-Packard and came up with a new scanner technology. It is 
all made in America. All of it. He employs 160 people directly, and 
even in Texas he has contractors making this good. He has also 
developed an electronic lock. One day he found out, and he is operating 
in 44 countries, that he had been cloned. His company had been entirely 
cloned in China, including the Website, including the software language 
that says U.S. copyright or patents, translated into Chinese. The 
Chinese had even gone one better. They took the Videx Website and put a 
little waving American flag up in the corner on this phony Website for 
a Chinese company, and condoned by the Chinese Government.
  I thought, well, certainly the Bush administration, who say they want 
rules-based trade, they will help this company. They are for small 
business; they will help this company. We went to the Commerce 
Department and the answer was, nope, sorry, you are out of luck. In 
fact, in a conference call just 2 weeks ago, this company, Videx, 
Corvallis, Oregon, was told by the Bush Commerce Department, those 
great defenders of free trade, intellectual property and rules-based 
trade, that, in fact, they would do nothing to enforce their 
intellectual property rights or prevent the theft of their entire 
company and product in China, as is happening to dozens of other 
American firms, because the big corporations do not want such 
complaints filed against China because it might make them mad, and they 
might lose access to the cheap labor to produce the goods that they 
export back here.
  That is what this administration is all about. They talk about small 
business, but they are just there for a few multinational corporations. 
They have a real chance here to help an American company to save 
hundreds of American jobs, to stop the Chinese from stealing that 
product and the product of many other American firms and stop stealing 
those jobs. All they have to do is file a complaint.
  The company cannot file the complaint at the World Trade 
Organization. The Bush people stacked the deck. The only way it can be 
filed is by the United States Government and the Commerce Department, 
and they are refusing to do that. If they care about jobs, if they care 
about the future of this country, they will eschew these radical free 
trade policies. And they are not only free trade, they are theft 
policies being pursued by other countries against the U.S.
  This is not a level and fair trade field, and it is time that things 
changed. But I doubt very much under this administration that they 
will, because small companies cannot afford to contribute the millions 
of dollars to the reelection campaign that the big ones can.

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