Daniel Inouye: “at first blush, one must conclude this is a good amendment. In general, it says we Americans will purchase American…”

“at first blush, one must conclude this is a good amendment. In general, it says we Americans will purchase American goods. It is a very patriotic amendment. However, Mr. President, it is not a realistic amendment. As the chairman of the subcommittee has pointed out, we sell our allies and other friends over $14 billion worth of defense products. In return, we have purchased $1.8 billion. As everyone in this Chamber will say, trade is a two-way street. We cannot insist our allies purchase everything from us and we not purchase anything from them. If we were the only producers in the world, we may be able to dictate terms and impose our will on the rest of the world, but there are many other countries that are involved in defense production. This amendment of my friend from Illinois does provide the Secretary of Defense the authority to waive provisions of this amendment for NATO allies--for Israel, for Egypt, for Japan, and for Korea. But we do a lot of business with countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, all of South America, and all of Central America, and we may reach a point where we may find these friends of ours responding to our strict restrictions by saying: Well, if that is the way you feel about it, Mr. U.S., we will buy our aircraft from France. The Mirage is just as good. Or we might buy it from Britain. They are just as good.”