Dana Rohrabacher: “Mr. Speaker, we have learned that the Vietnamese catfish industry is having a very detrimental impact on Americans who…”

“Mr. Speaker, we have learned that the Vietnamese catfish industry is having a very detrimental impact on Americans who were involved with producing catfish for the American table. Yet also, at least I suggested, and I have not heard anything to the contrary, that what we are doing is laying down the economic ground rules so that we can subsidize, through American taxpayer subsidy or loan guarantees, businessmen to go to Vietnam and set up other businesses in order to do to the current businesses of the United States what the catfish industry from Vietnam did to the catfish industry here. That does not make any sense to me. What is this all about? This is about a dictatorship in which some American businessmen want to go over there and exploit the slave labor, and want to do so with loan guarantees and subsidies by the American taxpayer. I am very happy to hear that Oklahoma set up a business office in Vietnam. A lot of other people set up business offices in Vietnam. But what we need to hear about are all the offices that have closed up, all the businessmen who thought they were going to do business there, but the environment is so corrupt that they were unable to do business, and that they have closed shop and left. The only way American business companies are going to go over there is if we guarantee their loans and subsidize them. That makes no sense. We have already put all these people who grow catfish, we put them out of work.”