Excerpts: Rep. Levin Urges Congress to Look to Future with China
(U.S. cannot put relationships with China on automatic pilot)The majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives supports Permanent Normal Trade Relations status for China, according to Representative Sander Levin (Democrat of Michigan).
Levin spoke during a July 18 debate on House Joint Resolution 103 that would have denied the President authority to waive parts of the Trade Act of 1974 in regards to China. The resolution was defeated 147-281.
"I do think it is now important that we look to the future, that all of us join together in realizing that the challenges are mainly the challenges of the future and not of the past," Levin said.
The relationship between Beijing and Washington, the Michigan Democrat said, "is going to be a changing and difficult relationship. It is going to have a lot of edges to it, including rough edges."
Following are excerpts of Representative Levin's remarks from the Congressional Record:
(begin excerpts)
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, as we all know, we had a very thorough and informed debate in the House just a few months ago on these very issues. The spotlight is now on the Senate. There is a clear majority there for passage of permanent NTR, and I express the hope of many of us that there can be full debate on the Senate side and action there expeditiously, which I think should mean within the next few weeks.
I want to dwell on the major challenges ahead, because clearly the U.S.-China economic relationships are at the beginning of a new phase; they are far from their final form. So I believe there is a need to focus on these challenges, and we cannot simply put our economic relationships and our broader relationships with China on automatic pilot.
As we know, there were major provisions in the legislation that passed the House that attempt to address these very critical challenges, and we need to focus on their effective implementation. The legislation set up a high-level executive congressional commission to be a continuing watchdog and a creative force in the area of human rights, including worker rights.
We need to be sure during this session that that legislation is adequately funded. We need to be sure that the appointees to this vital high-level commission have the interest and the determination to make that commission work, as the Helsinki Commission has worked, and, if I might express the hope, even more so.
We need to be sure that this commission gets off to a strong start. I hope whatever the point of view may be in terms of PNTR that all of us will join together on both sides of the aisle and within each caucus and conference to make sure that happens.
The legislation also calls for strong monitoring and enforcement of Chinese trade-related commitments and, as the chairman of the committee indicated, there are numerous, indeed essentially innumerable commitments. There also in the legislation is a strong anti-surge mechanism to make sure that there is a safeguard against major loss of American jobs in any specific sector. We need to be sure that the requests for adequate funding that have come on behalf of the Commerce Department and USTR to carry out these critical monitoring enforcement duties are fully funded in the appropriation processes.
Those processes are far from complete when it comes to these aspects.
We also need to be sure that the ongoing discussions in Geneva, in the working group on China, that in these discussions in Geneva the administration continues to press for a regular annual review within the WTO of these commitments by China.
I see that we have been joined by the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter), with whom I have had the chance to work on these very provisions, as well as the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member of the full committee and the chairman of the full committee. I think all of us join in indicating the importance of the implementation process of these provisions.
In a word, we need now to focus on the future. We are far closer to the beginning than to the end of the challenges that we face in our economic relationships with China. China, as it grows, is already 1,200,000,000 people and is projected to become the second largest national economy within 20 years. We need to focus on these challenges as China emerges from 50 years as a state-controlled economy and with state abuses of human rights and individual freedoms. So today I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution and to join together to continue on this important and difficult road of confronting the challenges ahead....
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, this is not going to be the last time that we debate our economic and trade relations with China. I hope not at all.
Indeed, China PNTR as it passed the House has been molded so that we will be assured of continuing surveillance, continuing oversight, continuing pressure, and continuing debate.
The whole purpose of that effort as we shaped and reshaped it was to make sure that we both engaged China and confronted it in terms of our economic and trade relations. As a result, as we have discussed, and I do not want to go into this in detail, we set up a commission that has major responsibilities, that is created at the highest level and that has jurisdiction in terms of human rights, including worker rights.
That commission is going to report back to this Congress with provisions written in to assure that we will be discussing and debating it. Indeed, I see these mechanisms, these instrumentalities as ways to assure our greater involvement, not our lessened involvement, our deeper engagement on a regular basis rather than the once-a-year consideration.
We also have provided that there shall be major enhanced oversight in monitoring responsibilities by the executive, including Commerce and USTR and, as I expressed earlier, the hope that there will be full appropriations for these purposes.
Also, we created within the legislation the strongest anti-surge provision that has ever been introduced and eventually, I trust, enacted into American law, a safeguard provision to make sure that if there is a major deleterious effect of this growing, complex relationship on American jobs in any particular sector there will be a prompt answer from the United States of America.
It is an effort to both expand trade but to do so shaping it. It is an effort that globalization will continue, in my judgment, there is no way to slam the door on it, but to shape it, to wrestle with these issues.
So I do think it is now important that we look to the future, that all of us join together in realizing that the challenges are mainly the challenges of the future and not of the past.
This is going to be a changing and difficult relationship. It is going to have a lot of edges to it, including rough edges. We are going to smooth them in an effective and constructive way, not by insulating ourselves or isolating China. Neither is going to work.
What will work is an activist, internationalist kind of approach to these problems that looks after the needs of American workers and businesses in a world that is indeed changing.
So I urge strongly that we vote no on this resolution. I take it that a no vote is indeed a yes vote to an activist effort to make sure that as China and the U.S. evolves into a fuller relationship that it will be one with our eyes open and one with our hands strong to make sure that American workers land on their feet and that American businesses as they work overseas conduct themselves in a way that we will be proud of.
(end excerpts)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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