Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in opposition to this bill. There's no denying that there are issues related to Chinese currency valuation. Unfortunately, the passage of this bill today will do little to address those concerns. Instead, approval of this bill will likely only result in retaliatory actions on the part of the Chinese. A recent letter was penned to leaders of the House of Representatives by a variety of business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, National Foreign Trade Council, and others. They wrote: ``Unilateral legislation, which seeks to increase tariffs on imports from China, is unlikely to incentivize China to move expeditiously to modify its exchange policies. Rather, it would likely have the opposite effect and could engender retaliation against U.S. exports into the Chinese market, currently the fastest growing market for U.S. exports.'' Courting retaliation with no direct benefit likely qualifies for what you would call the very definition of counterproductive trade policy. And it's unfortunate that, as has been said here today before, in 2 years this is about the only trade legislation that we've considered. Certainly, very little to open up new markets. We have three pending trade agreements that languish that should be approved, and yet this is what we're doing. That's really sad.…”