[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 15, 2020)]
[House]
[Page H243]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            TRADE WITH CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives.
  I come to the floor today to raise the issue and be thankful of the 
progress that we have made with regard to trade. We have been through a 
year and a half or more of intense trade negotiations. I have watched 
as our markets took a hard hit and tailspinned down for a couple of 
days, down the limit awhile back, and slowly creep back in again.
  We produce a lot of corn, soybeans, cattle, hogs, eggs, and renewable 
energy in the Fourth Congressional District of Iowa. In fact, it is the 
number one egg-producing congressional district in all of America.
  We saw a publication on the part of Bloomberg that when the tariffs 
were put onto Chinese goods coming into the United States by President 
Trump, the Chinese retaliated with tariffs on products like pork and 
soybeans. Bloomberg just showed a map of the United States where that 
hit the hardest and it happened to hit exactly over the red counties in 
America that produce a lot of corn and soybeans, and you could add to 
that the other products I mentioned, Mr. Speaker.
  The situation that we are dealing with now is that we have gotten a 
long way through these trade negotiations, and we are coming around to 
the other side of it with China. In spite of all of this difficulty in 
all these markets that have been suppressed over this period of time, 
we found some new trade outlets.
  For one thing, instead of having one big pipe going to China, we have 
got multiple, smaller pipes going to other locations in the world. And 
today the President signed phase 1 of the trade agreement that will 
increase by about $16 billion a year our egg product exports to China. 
That includes a lot of soybeans, it includes a lot of pork, and it 
fixes that component.
  It also addresses the intellectual property issue that has been a big 
barrier for the trade negotiations with China. The value of U.S. 
intellectual property--the creation that comes out of the minds of 
Americans--is pirated by the Chinese somewhere between $500 and $600 
billion a year. That gets addressed to a degree in this agreement and 
it gets addressed again in the next phase of the agreement.
  U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer has spoken on that issue to me, 
and he seems to be, I will say, fairly confident that we are going to 
get at least a reasonable beginning to something that is awfully hard 
to fix.

  I would add also that it isn't just China. We are waiting now for the 
U.S. Senate to pass the USMCA Agreement. It is only the impeachment 
trial that stands in the way of getting that done. That will happen 
soon, within about a month or so, or perhaps less.
  Further we have Japan, we have South Korea, and by the end of this 
month the United Kingdom will be out of the E.U., and the door is open 
for a bilateral trade agreement with the British.
  If we could get that all done, as I said to the President the other 
day, we may find ourselves in the very best position we have ever been 
in, at least in our lifetime, with regard to trade in multiple 
locations, so that we are diversified in our markets so that we can 
send out to multiple countries and at the same time have a strong 
relationship with China and other countries.
  We are moving into an excellent position here. We have got a strong 
economy, and we have got a strong Dow. This really is a great time to 
make investments in America, and they are doing that from around the 
world.
  Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the President today.

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