[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1826-1827]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             TRADE FACILITATION AND TRADE ENFORCEMENT BILL

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I stand before the Senate to talk about 
legislation that was marked up today in committee that deals with the 
opiate addiction crisis we have in this country.
  Before I do that, and while my colleague is still on the floor, let 
me congratulate him and Senator Hatch, who is on the floor, for the 
legislation that was passed today that will now go to the President 
with regard to trade--and two provisions in particular: one that 
Senator Wyden just talked about, which has to do with ensuring that 
when you get an order against an unfairly traded import from a country 
because it is dumped or because it is subsidized, that you can't just 
take that product and shift it to another location to evade the Customs 
duties. That is called the ENFORCE Act. It is going to make a huge 
difference. I introduced it with him originally, and it is legislation 
that will help Ohio steelworkers and steel companies in particular, but 
it helps everybody who goes through the long process--which is a little 
better, now thanks to the Level the Playing Field Act--to get an order 
against a product that is not being sold here fairly, to ensure that 
some country doesn't just move it to another jurisdiction. I thank 
Senator Wyden for his hard work on that issue and ensuring that we can 
have a more level playing field. If it is level, we can compete and 
win, but when it is not level, it is impossible for our workers, our 
farmers, our service providers to be able to get a fair shake. So I 
thank the Senator from Oregon for that.
  The other is the BDS legislation, which didn't get as much play on 
the floor today because there were so many other things in this 
legislation, but there are countries that have boycotts that divest 
from and put sanctions on Israel in an effort to delegitimize Israel. 
In this legislation, it provides that if countries want to do business 
with us and do trade with us, they cannot put in place these 
discriminatory policies as to Israel. I thank the chairman and ranking 
member for that as well. This is very important legislation for us to 
be able to ensure that we can continue to stand by our friends in 
Israel so they are not treated unfairly, but rather, where trade is 
involved, we can use our leverage to ensure that they can be able to be 
treated with the respect that other countries have around the world.

[[Page 1827]]

  So those are two parts of the bill that I think are extremely 
important. I thank Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch, who was on the 
floor a moment ago, for their hard work on that.

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