Political Quotes

“I thank our distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee for the recognition and for his yielding time. I thank him for his leadership in bringing this legislation to the floor. I thank Mr. Murphy of Pennsylvania and Mr. Ryan of Ohio for their leadership in this important legislation. Mr. Speaker, for so many years we have watched the China-U.S. trade deficit grow and grow and grow. And today we are finally doing something about it by recognizing that China's manipulation of the currency represents a subsidy for Chinese exports coming to the United States and elsewhere. Many of us have been working on this issue for decades. Twenty years ago, when the issue of China trade was before the floor of the House, the trade deficit was $5 billion a year. The U.S.-China trade deficit was $5 billion a year. We thought that that gave us tremendous leverage for them to stop violating our intellectual property, to give us market access, to stop nontariff barriers to our products going into China, and the rest. We had other issues with China's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to Pakistan, with the actions taken in Tiananmen Square, and human rights in China and Tibet. But strictly on the subject of trade, the imbalance was $5 billion, which seems like an enormous amount of money.…”