[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 10, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3102-H3105]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jindal). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity here to 
address the House on an issue that I think has become more and more 
pertinent to the American people and to the American economy. One issue 
that I hear about almost as much as I hear about the Social Security 
issue back home in my district, which is northeast Ohio, I hear about 
the issue of China. We cannot, I do not think, speak of any kind of 
economic recovery in the United States of America or talk about 
providing middle-class people with high-wage, high-paying jobs until we 
figure out the issue of China. I am going to have a brief discussion 
here tonight and show some charts just to kind of outline what has been 
happening here in the United States of America.
  Quite frankly, I feel like it was an issue that was not discussed 
enough in the last presidential election. I feel like this is an issue 
that the American people want the politicians that are here in 
Washington, D.C., in this Chamber and leaders in government to talk 
about, and we have not been. Hopefully, with some legislation that I 
have offered with the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the China 
Currency Manipulation Act, this issue will become and come to the 
forefront of American politics. I just want to share with the American 
people some statistics, some charts that I think help outline exactly 
what has been happening.
  This first chart here is the State crisis. It outlines here how many 
manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United States from June of 
1998 to February 2005. As you can see, the red States here have lost 
more than 20 percent of the manufacturing that they have in their 
States. You can see the red from Maine, mostly in the Northeast-Midwest 
quadrant, Ohio, Michigan. Ohio lost 216,000 manufacturing jobs. Then 
between 15 and 20 percent of manufacturing jobs lost are in the deep 
blue or the deep purple, Georgia, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, 
California, between 15 and 20 percent of manufacturing. These are the 
high-wage, high-paying jobs that have health care, that have a good 
retirement, that have a good pension. These are the kind of jobs that 
drive the middle class forward. And these are the kind of jobs and the 
kind of companies in Ohio and elsewhere that pay taxes, that workers 
pay taxes. They vote for school levies. They vote for mental health 
levies. They vote for library levies. They vote for all the things that 
are needed to help lift up local communities. What has happened because 
of this crisis that we have here, local communities are beginning to 
suffer. They are not able to pass the police and fire levy because the 
216,600 workers who no longer work in a high-wage manufacturing jobs 
are left to go to Wal-Mart, are left to go to Super K or Kohl's and 
make very little money without health care benefits. If we think that 
we are going to maintain the kind of prestigious global power that we 
are today and hopefully will continue to be, there is no way we can do 
this by replacing General Motors with Wal-Mart or replacing Wal-Mart 
for General Electric. That is not going to be a great America in the 
21st century. This graph, this billboard here, illustrates that point.
  And so the issue of China inevitably comes up, and how are we going 
to deal

[[Page H3103]]

with it? Because we know, whether you are the owner of a small machine 
shop or a mold shop or in some light manufacturing, it is the Chinese 
goods that are coming into the United States that are helping wipe out 
the manufacturing that is here now. What is happening is the Chinese 
are manipulating their currency, and they are manipulating their 
currency to the rate of 40 cents on the dollar.
  I have a factory back at home. They make tubing when you put up the 
sprinkler systems in industrial facilities and commercial facilities. 
It is called Wheatland Tube. Wheatland Tube has been a great company 
and still is. They have invested over $8 million in the United States 
over the past few years. Their product is competing with a Chinese 
product. The Chinese are shipping their tubes into the United States. 
When the Chinese product, fully assembled, completely at the end of the 
manufacturing process, when it arrives in the United States of America, 
that Chinese tube is the same cost as the raw materials that Wheatland 
Tube has to buy. Wheatland Tube has not even begun the process of 
making their tubes. But the Chinese tubes have already been 
manufactured and produced, arrive in the United States less than the 
cost or the same cost as the raw materials for the United States 
company.

                              {time}  2130

  How can the United States company compete with that? It cannot, and 
that is why the United States in the previous billboard looked like it 
did.
  This is a graph that has the U.S. annual trade with China. This line 
here, the gold line with the blue dots going up, is imports. These are 
Chinese products coming into the United States, and it goes up to $200 
billion in 2004. And we can see where it was in the mid-1980s and early 
1990s, and it slowly began to rise.
  The exports, what we are shipping to the Chinese, is this blue line, 
coming straight across. We are not able to increase our exports. And 
the funny thing is, if the Members remember back when we were signing 
all these trade agreements in the 1990s, when we were talking about we 
have to open up markets and we have to export products from the United 
States so that other people will buy them and we will make them here 
and we will ship them off and it will be great, that has not happened 
with the Chinese.
  We were told when we signed PNTR, Permanent Normal Trade Relations 
with China, most favored nation trade status with the Chinese, we were 
told there is 1.3 billion people in China, we want to sell our products 
to the Chinese. It has not happened. It simply has not happened. These 
are the goods we are importing, these in the blue line is what we are 
exporting, and it is not working out. And when we look at the top 15 
exports from the United States to China, three are either waste or 
scrap products, three of the 15. Four of the 15 are raw materials or 
agricultural products, and six of the 15 are parts, which basically 
means we are exporting parts, raw materials, scrap, to China, which are 
manufactured there and shipped back only to be imported here in the 
United States.
  The gold bars are the trade numbers with China, the deficit that we 
have, $162 billion trade deficit with the Chinese. We are importing 
$162 billion more than we are exporting to the Chinese. They are wiping 
out the middle class in the United States of America because of our 
trade policies here and because we are allowing the Chinese to 
manipulate their currency.
  Now, if the currency situation was fixed in China, if they were not 
gaining a 40 cents on the dollar advantage, Chinese products that were 
made in China, the price would go up; and if the price goes up and they 
still try to ship it to the United States, our goods here would be more 
competitive, and then the Chinese would have currency that had more 
value so that when we shipped products, when we exported products to 
China, our prices coming from the U.S. would actually be cheaper to the 
Chinese consumers.
  And the Chinese agreed, when they came into the World Trade 
Organization, that they were going to be fair brokers and they wanted 
to be a part of the global system. And we are not seeing much action by 
the Chinese. And, quite frankly, we need to be firmer here in the 
United States. And that is why the gentleman from California (Chairman 
Hunter) and I, along with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman 
Sensenbrenner), who signed on to our legislation, the gentleman from 
Illinois (Chairman Manzullo), AFL-CIO, China Currency Coalition, a lot 
of the small business trade groups, this is not a Republican or 
Democrat issue. This is an American issue. This is an American issue. 
And if we do not fix it, there is not going to be a middle class in the 
United States of America, and we are going to continue to see some of 
the older industrial cities and industrial areas in our country 
continue to struggle. Whether it is the county funding, police and 
fire, schools, we are not going to be able to survive.
  This is a startling, stunning chart. This is the U.S. trade balance 
in goods. The U.S. trade balance in goods. The goods deficit which 
covers manufactured products hit a record $651 billion in 2004. And 
from 1998 to 2004, a $421 billion jump, just in these few years, from 
1998. These are the hardcore manufacturing products which contribute to 
job loss here in the United States: steel, supply chains for all of the 
major corporations that have moved and have altered the trade balance 
with the Chinese to the tune of $651 billion.
  So we have to ask ourselves, why do we continue down a road where we 
are losing, we are losing this battle? And I do not know about anyone 
else, but I keep score, and when we are losing, we need to stop doing 
what we are doing and fix it and apply the pressure to the Chinese that 
we need to apply until they fix at least their currency problem that is 
cheating everyone else who is trying to buy their products and in the 
U.S. up to 40 cents on the dollar. They are cheating.
  And the reason this is so urgent for the United States of America to 
act now and not wait 10 years from now, not take the slow, diplomatic 
process that we have been taking, the reason it is so imperative is 
right now we are buying all their products. Right now we are consuming 
all of the Chinese products. They need us now. They need us now. And 
when they need us, that is when we have leverage to move.

  Now, we also need to balance our budget because the Chinese are 
helping fund our $500 billion deficit. So we ought to do our job here. 
But at the same time, we need to recognize what the U.S.-China 
Commission said and told Congress, submitted a report. First it said 
that the overall trade situation with the Chinese had an overall 
negative impact on the United States, overall negative. A bipartisan 
commission, people from the Reagan administration, people from the 
Clinton and Carter administrations, totally bipartisan.
  The Chinese trade has overall negative implications on the United 
States. That is scary enough. But they went on to say that we have 
about a decade in the United States, about a decade, to fix this 
problem because at some point we are not going to be consuming as much 
as we are, because we are not going to have the kind of money here that 
we have now. We are not going to have the kind of wealth to be buying 
if we continue to go down this road. If jobs that pay $50,000 or 
$60,000 are getting replaced by jobs that are paying $30,000 or $35,000 
without health care benefits, there is only so much we can consume, and 
that is what is happening. The jobs replacing the jobs that are leaving 
are $10,000 to $12,000 less a year without health care benefits.
  So how are we going to keep up? And what the U.S.-China Commission 
has told us is that we have about a decade and we had better fix it 
now. And that is why this is so urgent. That is why we see bills, the 
Schumer-Graham bill in the Senate, talking about putting on 27 percent 
tariffs on Chinese goods coming into this country to try to stem some 
of this tide that is coming in, or whether it is the WTO-compliant 
Ryan-Hunter bill that is gaining a lot of support here in this Chamber 
because Members are beginning to recognize that this is a real problem 
in the country.
  Our bill does not violate any of the WTO rules. It is compliant with 
the World Trade Organization, which I am not exactly thrilled with the 
World Trade Organization. I do not like the way they operate. I do not 
think it is a democratic body. I think it rubber

[[Page H3104]]

stamps decisions for multinational companies. There is no doubt about 
it. But what happens a lot here is someone will put a bill up that will 
say put 27 percent tariffs or 30 percent tariffs on Chinese goods and a 
lot of people in this body will say that is not WTO compliant, so we 
will not even look at it.
  So the gentleman from California (Chairman Hunter) and I went out of 
our way with a lot of very smart people to compose a bill that is WTO 
compliant because we want to get over that first hurdle. And we have 
because we have a good bill, and that is why it is gaining the kind of 
steam it is gaining. WTO compliant. And it allows the President to 
recognize currency manipulation for what it is, and that is a subsidy; 
and so it should be seen as any other kind of subsidy that other 
countries give in order to ship products into our country and hurt us 
domestically.
  Currency manipulation is no different. If we are gaining 40 cents on 
the dollar, then that is subsidy; and it is no different than any other 
kind of subsidy. And our bill gives the President the tools he needs. 
We want to work with the administration. We have got three Chairs of 
Republican committees on this bill with the AFL-CIO, with the China 
Currency Coalition, with a tremendous amount of trade groups, mostly 
Republican small business owners. This is not a Democrat or Republican 
issue. And it is time for us in Congress to get the guts we need to 
make this happen because it is hurting average people in the country.
  This is the U.S. manufacturing employment from January of 1999 to 
March of 2005. And we can see here that in January of 1991 we were at 
about 17.3 million jobs, manufacturing jobs; and we hit the recession 
in the early 1990s and we came out of it and peaked out in 1998-1999 at 
over 17.6 million manufacturing jobs. Not too bad. And then we peaked 
off in the end of the century; and when we hit January of 2001, here 
comes the downward slide, from 17.6 million in 1999 all the way down to 
under about 14.3 million jobs in March of 2005.
  Look at this slide in U.S. manufacturing. And, again, it is the 
manufacturing jobs that are the jobs that have the high wages. They are 
the jobs that pay a decent wage, a real wage. They are the jobs that 
provide health care. These are the shops that are part of communities 
all over the country. These are not the big multinationals who can have 
the wherewithal to pick up and go over to China and ship the products 
back. These are the people who live in our communities who donate to 
the church. They are the small business owner who would donate to the 
school and give that little extra and the workers who had solid work 
can work overtime and contribute to their union and to their church and 
to the civic organizations in local communities, which would be the tax 
base that supported a lot of the local community.

                              {time}  2145

  We have all been there. In Northeast Ohio, it seems like it happens 
all too much, where a local company that has been in your community for 
100 years, or 50 years or 60 years, all of a sudden cannot compete 
anymore. Then the county and the city and the local school district 
loses hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the crunch, the squeeze on 
the people in that community continues, and it ultimately results in a 
weaker United States of America.
  Just a few final charts here.
  We were told MFN, PNTR, NAFTA. Now we want to pass CAFTA here, which 
I do not think is going to make it. Now we are being told here in the 
U.S., and we were told all throughout the nineties, we are going to 
sign these trade agreements, and it is going to be really great, 
because the low wage jobs are going to go to the other countries and we 
are going to keep all the high-tech, high-wage jobs here in the United 
States and it is going to be a panacea here. Everyone is going to have 
a good job and work with their brains and not with their hands, and it 
is going to be great.
  This is the total trade balance in advanced technology products. 
These are the millions of U.S. dollars. We had in the early nineties a 
surplus of millions and millions of U.S. dollars, all throughout the 
early nineties, throughout the mid-nineties into the late-nineties, and 
then we began the decline. These are advanced technology products. 
These are the things that appear in the computers. These are the things 
that appear in your cars, that you do not really know how they work, in 
airplanes, in televisions. We are losing this too.
  We were told we were going to win on these. We are still losing on 
that too to the tune of millions and millions of dollars in deficits in 
the United States of America. This is a trend we need to begin to turn 
around, or our kids are going to be left with a country that is not as 
strong as it should be.
  So we have been told, as the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. 
Spratt) said about an hour ago in this very Chamber as we were talking 
about a lack of job creation and more or less tied to Social Security, 
the key in the United States of America, if we are going to compete, is 
we are in the process of creating a new economy and we do not really 
know what it is. We want to help with the Chinese and we need to fix 
the currency manipulation problem, and I think we are applying a lot of 
pressure to the Chinese now with some of the legislation we have here. 
Hopefully they will be able to do it on their own and we will not have 
to implement the kind of reforms here in the U.S. to give the President 
the power to do that. We want that done.
  But, at the same time here at home, we cannot talk about our trade 
issues, we cannot talk about China, without fixing the problem here at 
home. We need healthy and educated students in the United States of 
America who have access to a quality education in any school in the 
country, because that is the only way that they are going to move 
themselves forward, that is the only way they are going to be able to 
lift themselves out of poverty, that is the only way that these 
communities are going to be able to create and generate enough wealth, 
enough wealth, to be able to fund their schools and provide for 
libraries and all the different sorts of services that need to be 
funded. So we need to focus on education, as well as dealing with the 
China currency manipulation issue.
  This is the budget the President submitted on education. Fifty 
appropriations will be below current services in the billions of 
dollars with that budget. You can see there are cuts of $2.5 billion in 
2006, $6.2 billion in 2007, and then the same and even greater in 2008, 
2009, and, by 2010, cuts of $11.9 billion in the various education 
programs.
  Something the 30-Something Group and I have been working on for a 
good many years now is college tuition and the Pell Grant. The Pell 
Grant, when it started, would account for 80 percent of a student's 
college tuition, 80 percent. Today a Pell Grant accounts for a little 
over 40 percent of a student's college tuition. An average student 
graduates with over $20,000 in loans.
  Here is what we are doing, the outpaced college tuition compared to 
what the Pell Grant is. Here is the Pell Grant minimum award, here in 
light purple, the Pell Grant maximum award in the navy blue, and then 
the average cost of tuition and fees in a four-year public college 
setting.
  You can see how much it outpaces that, so this grant here no longer 
meets the need of what the average college student needs in order to go 
to school and get an education and allow them to compete.
  So we have our work cut out for us. I commend to the American people 
this week's Newsweek, May 9 and the title, ``China's Century, a Special 
Report.'' ``China's Century.''
  The reason this is so urgent for us is not because America is perfect 
and not that America does not make mistakes, because we have, and we 
have articulated many of them on the floor here over the years, and we 
will continue to make mistakes. But when the question comes as to who 
will lead the world in the 21st century, will it be the Chinese? Will 
it be a Communist regime that is currently manipulating their currency? 
Will it be a Communist regime that is spending mass amounts on their 
military budget? Is it the Communist regime that has no concern for 
worker rights? Is it the Communist regime that has no concern for the 
environment? Is it the Communist regime that has no concern for human 
rights? Is it going to be the Communist regime that has no concern for 
religious freedom? Is it going to be the Communist regime

[[Page H3105]]

that will promote and implement a policy of forced abortions on their 
own citizens?
  Or will it be the United States of America? Will it be the country 
that has promoted the middle-class, the country that does stand for 
freedom? We have many warts, but we do promote democracy. There are 
disagreements on how we go about it, but this is a democratically 
elected body here of human beings, of American citizens who make human 
mistakes. But this is a lot better, and this country is best to lead 
the world in the 21st century, not a Communist regime who has no 
concern for the human rights of other citizens.
  That is what is at stake here in this whole debate. We could talk 
about currency manipulation and trade and funding and all these 
different political issues, but the bottom line with this whole 
situation is who is going to lead the world in the 21st century? If you 
want it to be the United States of America, we better use this window 
of opportunity to play tough with the Chinese; to tell them to fix 
their currency manipulation, or face the consequences.
  This body needs to provide the President with the tools that he needs 
to be tough with the Chinese and force them to fix this issue, and then 
we come back home and we fix and fund and implement education reform 
and funding for education and funding for health for young children and 
young students all over the country, and let us get ready to go to 
battle in the 21st century with healthy, educated kids who have an 
opportunity at schools all over the country, with access to the arts 
and speech and debate and drama and music and foreign languages.
  We can do it, but we have got to make it a priority and we have got 
to make it a goal. And this all starts, Mr. Speaker, with making sure 
the Chinese, if they want to participate in the global economy, they do 
it in a fair way. They agreed to play fair, and now they are cheating.
  This body is primed to act, and we are going to act. It is going to 
start with facing down the currency manipulation problem and not 
allowing the Chinese to cheat to the tune of 40 cents on the dollar.

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