Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time tonight. It is my hope tonight that we will have a discussion in our country and in this historic Chamber on trade policy. I am delighted that two of my good colleagues have joined me to carry on this discussion. A key tenet of international economic policy for the Trump administration has been to improve U.S. bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements with an eye toward enforcing reciprocity with our trading partners as it relates to tariff levels and the elimination of nontariff barriers. The goal: to simply achieve more market access for American goods and services. Mr. Trump recognized this, campaigned on free and fair trade, and routinely emphasizes the importance of reciprocity between trading partners. He has stated that he prefers bilateral arrangements over multilateral arrangements by indicating that he did not want to pursue the Transpacific Partnership or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, one with Asia partners and one with the EU. While it is true that bilateral treaties are easier to negotiate and acquire, select multilateral arrangements can achieve broad geopolitical and geo-economic strategic objectives. In the case of TPP, it could, potentially, significantly leverage the economic clout of China in Southeast Asia and obviously link longstanding free trade partners across the transatlantic region with the TTIP.…”