Political Quotes

“That's exactly right. Louisiana produces a PVC plastic, or looking for opportunities to get into that market, and yet they're being superseded by countries in Europe and China. In fact, Russia, when it joined the WTO, agreed to reduce its average tariffs on plastic products from 10 percent to 6.2 percent. If we don't do this, we're going to be subject to higher tariffs, putting us at a major competitive disadvantage, and our foreign competitors will take advantage of this. Again, we'll have the mechanisms in place, if we do grant trade relations, to have a dispute mechanism in place to ensure that Russia keeps its commitments to our workers, our businesses back here at home. Now, there's no reason not to move forward with this, and I hope that we can see some action on this relatively soon, because as each day kicks by, we are losing competitiveness. One last tidbit of information, Louisiana doesn't have large Fortune 500 companies. We have a couple, but we have a lot of small- and mid- sized firms that are manufacturers, and we are a leader in manufacturing on the small scale in the energy sector with equipment and services that are vital to energy production, energy security globally. These companies would love to get into the Russian market, to have the right protections of law so that they could sell their goods and services. This would lead to a lot of economic activity in Louisiana.…”