Chuck Grassley: “I support fair trade because trading creates jobs in America. A billion dollars worth of trade creates 18,000 jobs.…”

“I support fair trade because trading creates jobs in America. A billion dollars worth of trade creates 18,000 jobs. Those jobs pay 15 percent above the national average of jobs in America. In my State of Iowa, corporations that export pay 32 percent higher benefits than corporations that don't export. If we are going to continue to grow as a Nation, we are going to have to be able to export more to create good paying jobs in America. Why do we, from time to time as a Congress, give the President authority to negotiate trade agreements? The power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce is very clearly a power given to the Congress by the Constitution. It is one of the 17 explicit powers mentioned in the Constitution. Congress guards its constitutional authority very carefully. But we have found that it is very difficult for Congress, made up of 535 men and women, to negotiate with 132 different countries who are part of the GATT process. Congress, for the large part, can't even negotiate agreements among its own Members a lot of times. So you can see the difficulty of Congress as a body reaching an agreement with foreign countries on how to reduce barriers. So from time to time under very strict guidelines we delegate some of our negotiating authority to the President. But we don't do it in a willy-nilly fashion. We do it with safeguards to make sure that Congress' constitutional power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce is protected.”