Todd Young: “I thank my good friend, the chairman from Texas, for his leadership on this and so many other issues. I am a passionate…”

“I thank my good friend, the chairman from Texas, for his leadership on this and so many other issues. I am a passionate proponent of free trade because we have the most productive workers in the world, the most productive businesses in the world. Frankly, we need to open up new markets for our commodities, for our manufactured items, for our services. That is what this initiative is all about. Trade promotion authority, or TPA as it is popularly known, reflects decades of debate, cooperation, and compromise between Congress and the executive branch in finding a pragmatic accommodation to the exercise of each branch's respective constitutional authorities over trade policy. I applaud our Ways and Means Committee Chairman Camp, as well as Chairman Sessions and Chairman Nunes, for all of their hard work pushing renewal of trade promotion authority. In January, they together introduced the bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act, which updates and expands negotiation and consultation requirements. For me, supporting trade is a no-brainer. It is important back home in Indiana, where over 8,000 companies exported from locations within the State in 2011. Eighty-five percent of these companies were small and medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 500 employees. Indiana's export shipments of merchandise in 2013 totaled a whopping $34 billion. Fifty-four percent of Indiana's exports go to countries with whom the U.S. currently has a free-trade agreement.…”