John Sarbanes: “Why do you have it at all? It is a reasonable question. Here is the answer as I perceive it. You are trying to set up a…”

“Why do you have it at all? It is a reasonable question. Here is the answer as I perceive it. You are trying to set up a framework and a regime in the way of proceeding. As a general proposition, for the sake of transparency, for rationality, for understanding in the export community what is being done, the sort of standard way of proceeding, so to speak, on both foreign availability and mass marketing would be to follow the procedures in 212 and 213 which have been worked out and are designed, as I said, certainly in the case of foreign availability, to accomplish the objective of trying to develop multilateral negotiations. So this is the process you set out to be followed. Conceivably, that is the process which, generally speaking, the executive branch would pursue. But in a sense, in an abundance of caution, with respect to national security and foreign policy interests, we give the enhanced control power to the President contained in 201(d). There he doesn't have to go through these notices. He doesn't have to go through these procedures. He is not bound into a timeframe. But you don't simply do that. If you just did that and nothing else, you would have, in a sense, sort of a process without any sort of standards or review. We have a process of standards and review. But then we go on to say, as I said, with an abundance of caution, that in any event the President can exercise the 201(d) authority.”