John Kerry: “Well, Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use under the 1 hour, and I will not use all that, by any means.…”

“Well, Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use under the 1 hour, and I will not use all that, by any means. Mr. President, this is obviously an issue that is more complicated than the debate may have indicated--at all moments, at least. I think there are complicated and longstanding frustrations that have built up with a lot of Senators and a lot of people in America that bring us here to this moment on the Senate floor. As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I have a reluctance to see us engage in an effort that I think can put other interests at risk in certain ways. On the other hand, I have voted to allow and help this legislation to reach the point of postcloture because I think it is an important debate and because I think China needs to carefully think about the process and the substance of what people are saying on the floor of the Senate. This is a very complicated relationship, with enormous interests on both sides, and we need to avoid a confrontation in a lot of different ways. There are a lot of different kinds of confrontations--trade, physical confrontation in the South China Sea and the straits and elsewhere, confrontations over human rights in Tibet--and there are a lot of issues at play. But with respect to the trade issue, China has a huge interest in the United States being able to export more effectively to China.…”