Eva M. Clayton: “recently this House passed significant legislation to open up trade with China, a Communist nation, in direct…”

“recently this House passed significant legislation to open up trade with China, a Communist nation, in direct contradiction to the policy we established with that bill and to the policy established in H.R. 4461, the agricultural appropriations bill for fiscal year 2001. This rule will limit our efforts to allow limited trade with Cuba and several other nations. Let me hasten to add that the sanctions that would be lifted by the agricultural appropriations would be related to food and medicine, a very limited trade but yet significant. Our American farmers would welcome this trade opportunity. Putting aside it is bad policy to use food and medicine as political leverage, this House, by a substantial margin, engaged with China trade, which is in the right direction, rather than isolation. We should do that for Cuba. Why not trade with Cuba? Cuba is only a few miles away; and China indeed is many, many thousands of miles away. This rule is a bad rule.”