Asa Hutchinson: “It seems to me to be a difficult proposition to come to the floor of the Senate and argue that we should not have a…”

“It seems to me to be a difficult proposition to come to the floor of the Senate and argue that we should not have a debate and to argue we should not have a vote on the admission of China to the World Trade Organization. Yet that is the posture which the opponents of this amendment must be. The Senator from Montana has said it would be an "alarming precedent"--I believe those are the exact words--that has never happened before. In many ways, China is unprecedented. They are unprecedented in their size, their population, and their impact upon world events. And in many ways the abuses that are currently going on by their government to their own people are unprecedented. It is unprecedented to have a nation in the World Trade Organization with 40 percent of the economy controlled by the state. That is unprecedented. Perhaps that is a good reason to have a debate on this issue and have a vote on who should be admitted to the World Trade Organization, since it would be unprecedented for a nation of this size, with such a mixed economic system, to be admitted to the World Trade Organization. It is unprecedented to admit to this trade organization a nation that views us as a hostile power and, as evidence indicates, has aggressively spied on the United States and stolen nuclear secrets from the United States.”