Transcript: Representative Bereuter Defends China Trade Bill
(NTR status for China is in America's national interest)The Republican chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific found himself July 18 on the opposite side of a question from the Republican chairman of the House Committee on International Relations.
Representative Doug Bereuter (Republican of Nebraska) came out against a resolution that would have denied the President the authority to waive parts of the Trade Act of 1974 in regards to China in a speech in the House of Representatives.
The split with House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (Republican of New York) was emblematic of the divisiveness of the issue of China's trade status with the United States.
Bereuter, who with his Democratic colleague, Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, helped craft language for H.R. 4444, the bill that would grant China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status, argued that PNTR was in America's national interest.
"Given the strong support and 40-vote margin this body provided in passing PNTR on May 24, denying the continuation of NTR during this interim period is self-evidently neither in our short- nor long-term national interest, and therefore, this Member strongly urges his colleagues to join him opposing House Joint Resolution 103," Bereuter said.
The resolution was defeated 147-281.
Following is a transcript of Representative Bereuter's remarks from the Congressional Record:
(begin transcript)
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Asian and the Pacific of the Committee on International Relations, this Member rises in opposition to House Joint Resolution 103. Despite the recent supercharged and misleading claims by opponents to NTR that this vote is about rewarding China, it is not that at all, but instead, a vote for our national interests, just as was the case with the successful passage on May 24 of legislation to provide permanent normal trade relations for China and the context of its accession to the World Trade Organization.
This Member strongly supports the continuation of normal trade relations, NTR, status for China because it is unmistakably in America's short-term and long-term national interests.
First, the continuation of NTR directly benefits American economic prosperity, just as it has done for the past 20 consecutive years. Regardless of what this body does, China will join the WTO and be required to take major actions to open up its vast markets of 1.2 billion consumers. However, if this body recklessly disrupts current trade by failing to continue China's current NTR status during this interim period, we certainly jeopardize our ability to take advantage of the benefits of China's WTO accession and give an unfair advantage to our international competitors.
Second, continued NTR supports the U.S. national security objective of maintaining peace and stability in East Asia. Expanding trade with China and supporting further economic liberalization, and eventual political reform in China provides a means of giving China a stake in the peaceful, stable economically dynamic Asia Pacific region. If China, on the other hand, concludes that we have concluded it as our adversary, resources China currently devotes to economic reform could easily be reallocated to military expansion and modernization with adverse consequences for Taiwan and for our allies in Korea and Japan, and a destabilized region. A rejection of NTR could well trigger such a reaction from Beijing. Confronting China in this scenario will require much more than the 100,000-person military force we presently have in the Pacific area.
Mr. Speaker, this particular annual debate, triggered again this year by H.J. Res. 103, has become highly counterproductive. It is very damaging to Sino-American relations, and importantly, with little or no positive results in China on human rights or freedom, or any positive impact on our relationship with that country and its people.
Given the strong support and 40-vote margin this body provided in passing PNTR on May 24, denying the continuation of NTR during this interim period is self-evidently neither in our short- nor long-term national interest, and therefore, this Member strongly urges his colleagues to join him opposing House Joint Resolution 103.
This Member, in contrast to what the gentleman from New Jersey says, does not intend that this have a low-key atmosphere. If Members are convinced of the rightness of their position in opposition to the resolution, let it have full public scrutiny.
The gentleman from Michigan and I have established, by our action, in the House, at least, and we expect that the other body will consider it soon, an opportunity for a full review of what China does in human rights by the creation of an executive-legislative branch Helsinki-type Commission. We in the Congress are going to have plenty of opportunity to scrutinize what they do with respect to their people. That is a better mechanism than we have now. It is a better mechanism than this annual debate.
I urge my colleagues to vote `no' on the Rohrabacher resolution.
Mr. Speaker, as this Member mentioned, this body passed H.R. 4444, legislation granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China in the context of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) by a strong margin of 40 votes: 237-197. As the other body has not yet acted on this important legislation and China is still negotiating its WTO accession protocols, the continuation of normal trade with China during this interim requires another annual Presidential waiver as contained in the Trade Act of 1974. Unfortunately, despite the support in the House for Normal Trade Relations with China, as reflected by the successful passage of PNTR, the introduction of H.J. Res. 103 requires the House to vote on extending Normal Trade Relations status for China yet again.
There is perhaps no more important set of related foreign policy issues for the 21st century than the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of a powerful and fast-growing China. However, today we are not having a debate focused on those important challenges. Instead, as we have in the past, we are debating whether to impose 1930s Great Depression-era Smoot-Hawley trade tariffs on China that the rest of the world and China know for our own American interests we realistically will never impose.
This Member again points out that this particular annual debate has become highly counterproductive as it unnecessarily wastes our precious foreign policy leverage and seriously damages our Government's credibility with the leadership of China and with our allies. It hinders or ability to coax the Chinese into the international system of world trade rules, non-proliferation norms, and human rights standards. Moreover, Beijing knows the United States cannot deny NTR without severely harming American workers, farmers, consumers or businesses, or do it without devastating the economies of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
It is true, as NTR opponents argue, that ending normal trade relations with China would deliver a very serious blow to the Chinese economy, but the draconian action of raising the average weighted tariff on Chinese imports to 44 percent instead of the current average of 4 to 5 percent would severely harm the United States economy as well. China is already the 13th largest market abroad for American goods and the 4th largest market for American agricultural exports. If NTR is denied to China, Beijing will certainly retaliate against the over $14 billion in U.S. exports to China. As a result, many of the approximately 200,000 high-paying export jobs related to United States-China trade would disappear while the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia, Brazil, and other major trading nations would rush to fill the void.
Regardless of how this body votes on NTR, China will soon join the WTO and be required to take major actions to open up its vast market of 1.2 billion consumers. As part of China's WTO accession process, the U.S. negotiated an outstanding export-oriented, market access agreement which significantly lowers China's high import tariffs and allows for direct marketing and distributing in China. For example, the tariff on beef will fall from 45 percent to just 12 percent. Quantitative restrictions on oilseeds and soybean imports are abolished. Indeed, it is projected that by 2003, China could account for 37 percent of future growth in U.S. agricultural exports. Prior to the agreement, China frequently required manufacturing offsets--most products sold in China had to be made in China. This export-oriented agreement abolishes that unfair offset and eliminates currently required industrial technology transfers allowing products made in America to be sold in China. This agreement makes it less likely that American companies need to open foreign factories and thereby export jobs. Given that America's markets are already open at WTO standards to Chinese exports, the U.S. has effectively given up nothing with the new agreement; all the concessions have been made by China.
However, during this interim period as China continues to take the steps necessary to join the WTO, it is necessary to provide continued, uninterrupted NTR status to China on an annual basis to help ensure that American commercial interests remain engaged in China in preparation for the opening of China required when China joins the WTO. For the past 20 years, the U.S. has provided China with NTR status on an annual basis. It appears to make no sense to this Member to revoke China's NTR status now and only for an interim period thereby significantly jeopardizing the ability of the U.S. to take advantage of the benefits of China's forthcoming accession to the WTO.
To elaborate on our own national security interests, the continuation of NTR for China, indeed, supports the U.S. national security objective of maintaining peace and stability in East Asia. Sino-American relations are increasingly problematic and uncertain. In the wake of our accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade and China's confusion about U.S. continuing support for Taiwan, rejection of NTR, if only for an interim period, could result in a resurgence of resentful nationalism as hard-liners in Beijing characterize a negative NTR vote as an American attempt to weaken and contain China. Resources China currently devotes to economic reform could easily be reallocated to military expansion with adverse consequences for Taiwan and our allies in Korea and Japan, and a destabilized region. Confronting China in this scenario will require much more than the 100,000 strong force we presently have in the Pacific. China is not a strategic partner; it is increasingly as economic competitor that is growing as a regional power. However, it is not an adversary. If the United States is astute and firm--if America increases our engagement with China and helps integrate it into the international community--it is certainly still possible to encourage China along the path to a complementary relationship with America instead of an incredible level of conflict.
China is emerging from years of isolation and the future direction of China remains in flux--more than any major country. WTO accession and continued--and hopefully soon to be permanent--NTR are critical for the success of China's economic reform process and those Chinese leaders, like Premier Zhu Rongji, who support it. These reforms, being pursued over the formidable opposition of old-style Communist hardliners, will eventually provide the foundation for a more open economy there, a process that, in the long term, should facilitate political liberalization and improved human rights. In the near term, China will be required more and more to govern civil society on the basis of the rule of law, clearly a positive development we should be encouraging. Rejection of this standard annual renewal of NTR prior to providing China with PNTR would, indeed, jeopardize the pace and scope of these reforms in China.
Continuing to provide China with NTR and China's accession to the WTO does not guarantee that China will always take a responsible, constructive course. That is why the distinguished gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin] and this Member proposed an initiative which was attached to the recently-passed legislation providing PNTR that incorporates special import anti-surge protections for the U.S. and other trade enforcement resources for our government to ensure China's compliance with WTO rules. This initiative also proposes a new Congressional-Executive Commission on Chinese Human Rights that will report to the Congress annually on human rights concerns, including recommendations for timely legislative action.
Mr. Speaker, this Member believes that these additional provisions, particularly the Commission on Chinese Human Rights with the guaranteed review of its findings and recommendations by the appropriate standing committee in the House, do, indeed, address the multi-faceted concerns of our colleagues. The Levin-Bereuter initiative assures that China's compliance with their commitments and their human rights record will certainly not be ignored by the Congress or the Executive Branch. The Commission will be a far more effective way to address human rights issues than the noisy but ineffective annual debate on extending NTR.
Some have advocated the revocation of NTR status for China in order to punish Beijing for weapons proliferation and its espionage operations against the United States. As one of the nine members of the bipartisan Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China which investigated and reported on Chinese espionage, and as a former counter-intelligence officer in our military, this Member adamantly rejects such linkage. The United States has been and will continue to be the target of foreign, including Chinese, espionage. We should have expected China to spy on us, just as we should know that others, including our allies, spy on us. While our outrage at China for spying is understandable, that anger and energy ought to be directed on correcting the severe and inexcusable problems in our own government. Our losses are ultimately the result of our own government's lax security, indifference, naivete and incompetence, especially in our Department of Energy weapons laboratories, the National Security Council and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The scope and quality of our own counter-intelligence operations, especially those associated with the Department of Energy's weapons labs, are completely unrelated to whether or not a country like China has NTR status. Indeed, revoking NTR status for China does absolutely nothing to improve the security of our weapons labs or protect militarily sensitive technologies. However, this feel-good symbolic act of punishment would inflict severe harm on American business and the 200,000 American jobs that exports to China provide. It makes no sense to punish American farmers and workers for the gross security lapses by our own government of which the Chinese--and undoubtedly other nations--took advantage.
Similarly, revoking NTR status during this interim period before China's accession to the WTO for proliferation reasons will have minimal, if any, impact in halting Chinese proliferation. On the contrary, China's likely reaction would be refuse any cooperation on this issue to the detriment of U.S. national security interests around the globe.
The United States has convinced nearly every other country in the region that the best way to avoid conflict is to engage each other in trade and closer economic ties. Abandoning this basic tenet of our foreign policy with China--as H.J. Res. 103 would certainly do--would be a serious shock and would be an extraordinary setback from much of what our nation has been trying to achieve in the entire Asia-Pacific region. It would send many countries scrambling to choose between China or the United States.
We should first do no harm to our own nation and America's citizens. Rejecting annual NTR status for China is self-evidently neither in our short term nor our long term national interest. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, this Member is strongly opposed to H.J. Res. 103 and again urgently urges its rejection.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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