Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, as I'm certain my colleagues are aware by now, in 2002 Brazil filed a complaint with the WTO accusing the U.S. of trade-distorting cotton subsidies that were inconsistent with our international trade obligations. The WTO sided with Brazil; and after years of debate, a WTO arbitration panel authorized Brazil to engage in retaliatory trade sanctions against the U.S. for more than $800 million. Instead of effectively reforming our programs, however, the administration agreed to pay $147.3 million annually in technical assistance to Brazilian cotton farmers every year until the issues of trade compliance in our cotton programs are resolved in the next farm bill's passage or a mutually agreed upon solution is reached. There is little chance that we're going to have reauthorization this year of the farm bill. I would suggest that it's probably not likely that we will do so next year either. So here we are again. We've talked about this before: spending money, 147 million taxpayer dollars to the Brazilians, so that we can continue to subsidize our own cotton farmers. We simply shouldn't do that. Now some will say, hey, if we do this, it will spark a trade war, if we get rid of this payment to Brazil. In my view, we dealt with that effectively in the Appropriations Committee. I offered an amendment saying if you want to pay the Brazilians off to not have them retaliate for our trade protections, then let's do that out of the money we're giving to our own cotton farmers.…”