Bruce F. Vento: “I rise in favor of withdrawing normal trade relations with China. Does anyone really think that this is going to be the…”

“I rise in favor of withdrawing normal trade relations with China. Does anyone really think that this is going to be the norm, this is the type of norm we want? We want a country that uses its platform, a very large country, for nuclear proliferation, for conventional arms sales, like missiles, for weapons of mass destruction? That, of course, has such an abysmal record on human rights, that is threatening countries with force, threatening parts of its nation, Taiwan and Tibet, with force? If one just wanted to look at the trade issues, is it normal to in fact trade with countries that have encouraged child labor, that have forced labor, that have slave labor, that use their military production capacity for consumer product production, that have no worker rights? Is that the norm? There are no safety rights and no health rights for workers, as well as blatant disregard for intellectual property and other types of normal trade rules. Prohibitive and unfair tariffs, which they unilaterally impose, is that normal, or offsets they require, so much so, as one of my colleagues said, that a Boeing plane is at home when it arrives there? Mr. Speaker, I think it is time we ask for what is normal and vote up this resolution to deny normal trade with China--over two decades of excuses and excusing China is enough.”