Joseph Knollenberg: “They are indeed. One of the problems with that, and to just give one example, Canada has a free trade agreement…”

“They are indeed. One of the problems with that, and to just give one example, Canada has a free trade agreement, obviously with us; but they also have one with Chile. I think the gentleman mentioned that a moment ago. Just to give one example, because Canada does have a free trade agreement with Chile, we do not, a farm tractor costs something like $15,000 more if purchased from the U.S. than its Canadian counterpart. If we had, obviously, an agreement with Chile, we would be selling tractors to Chile. But you know who they are going to buy them from? The Chileans are not going to buy them from us. The same thing could be expressed about potatoes. They buy potatoes from, guess who, Canada, because they have an agreement. Burger King is big in Chile, and that is another reason we should look at it. I might just say this, that I think it is a sorry state for the U.S., which is the most open society in the world, that we begin to close our doors to allowing our products to get into other countries. I think we have a great opportunity tomorrow, if we do not fumble it and pass this bill. I would just say that we can break down the barriers to U.S. goods and services and that Chilean situation would not occur and we would have a market for our products overseas. What I like to always say is the jobs stay here, the products go overseas, and the workers earn the money here and keep their job.”