[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 21]
[House]
[Page 28134]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      OPENING BORDERS TO U.S. BEEF

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I also would like to congratulate Mr. 
Dingell. Mr. Dingell lockers next to me in the House gym, and I see him 
occasionally, and I appreciate the fact that he gets down there on 
occasion, and we get a chance to talk.
  Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Japanese border was opened to U.S. beef 
trade. This was good news. This border had been closed since December 
2003. In 2003, we exported $1.4 billion in beef to Japan. Since that 
time, the border has been closed, and we have lost over $3 billion in 
trade. Regaining the market is not going to be easy. Australia has 
filled much of the void that was created by this ban on U.S. beef. We 
also must restore confidence in U.S. beef in Japan. I think roughly 
two-thirds of the Japanese public are saying that they are not sure 
that they want to eat beef from the United States. And of course, we 
have a very safe supply.
  We also must ship beef from cows 20 months of age or younger, and to 
verify that age is going to be difficult because we do not have an 
animal ID program which is critical for this country. So we hope that 
this trade can be restored rather quickly.
  Over the last year or two, much of the focus on trade issues, 
particularly in regard to agriculture, has been in regard to the 
Canadian border and also Japan. But as far as I am concerned, Mr. 
Speaker, the major issue regarding agricultural trade is not Japan. It 
is not Canada. It is being played out to some degree this week in WTO 
talks in China. The major players in these talks in regard to 
agriculture are the United States and the European Union.
  This brings me to a discussion of comparison of these two trading 
powers. On the chart here, we see the comparison. The economy of the 
United States is $11.7 trillion a year. The European Union is $9.4 
trillion. So they are very comparable economies. Well, the largest two 
in the world. The import tariffs on European Union goods coming into 
the United States are roughly 12 percent. In contrast, our goods going 
into the European Union are being tariffed at 30 percent, more than 
double. This is hard to understand when you look at the comparison of 
the economies. The agriculture trade deficit of the United States right 
now is a minus $6.3 billion to the European Union although we have a 
slight trade surplus with the overall trade worldwide. This has been a 
major problem for us. Of course, those tariff differences have been a 
major issue.
  Export subsidies: These are subsidies that are given to promote 
exports. You see that the European Union is providing roughly $3 
billion in export subsidies; the United States, $31 million in 
subsidies. So it is about a 100 to 1 ratio with the European Union 
providing $100 for every $1 that we are providing in export subsidies.
  Farm subsidy per acre: This is an interesting statistic. The United 
States subsidizes our farmers $38 an acre, and the European Union 
subsidizes their agriculture $295 an acre, almost six times as much as 
we do.
  One other interesting statistic of comparison is that we have had two 
cases of BSE or mad cow disease in the United States, just two. In the 
European Union, they have had 189,000 cases of BSE in the last 15 
years. Last year alone, in 2004, they had 756 cases of BSE where we 
have had two in the last 3 years in North America. So you would think 
that we would have a tremendous opportunity to trade beef with the 
European Union, and yet that has not happened. What has happened is the 
European Union has not allowed U.S. exports of beef into the European 
Union at all for the last several years because we use some hormones 
with our beef. They have used this as a tactic to keep our beef out 
even though the WTO has declared our beef perfectly safe. So we have 
had practically no trade with them in this regard.
  We also have had genetically modified crops such as corn and soybeans 
which have been excluded, again for final sanitary reasons which, 
again, defy logic. They have also shut out our pork and our poultry.
  Mr. Speaker, we do not think these issues will be resolved in this 
current round of trade talks that are occurring now in Hong Kong, but 
eventually, they must be addressed if there is going to be some equity 
in world trade. And if the WTO is going to move forward, we absolutely 
have to have some equanimity in the relations we have with the European 
Union, and we think that these trade issues need to be resolved.

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