Political Quotes

“there has been a lot of coverage over the last couple of months and years really--but certainly in the last few days--about the topic of China, ZTE, and trade. I have had a lot of questions about it, both in the hallways from the press and constituents back home and even from family and friends who have inquired what all the ruckus is about. I thought this was a good opportunity to lay out for my constituents and broadly for the American people what is at stake. The first thing I would encourage everyone to do is to separate the two issues, the issue of trade with China and the issue of a specific company called ZTE, which is a phone company--a telecommunications company in the cell industry based in China. They were the fourth largest cell phone company in America, up until very recently when they struggled to stay in business. We will talk about that in a moment, but let's talk about those two things separately. They are not necessarily interrelated. On the broader topic of trade and China, the United States has an enormous imbalance in trade--as we do with other countries but none like we do in China. A trade imbalance, by the way, in and of itself, is not problematic. It really depends on what has caused it, but the trade imbalance with China is problematic because of how it has happened.…”