Byron Dorgan: “I have a couple minutes remaining. Let me point out what is happening with our trade deficit. As you can see: With…”

“I have a couple minutes remaining. Let me point out what is happening with our trade deficit. As you can see: With Canada, our trade deficit has dramatically increased from 1999 to 2000; China, $83 billion merchandise trade deficit in a year; European Union, $55 billion; Japan $81 billion. Japan, a $50 billion-plus trade deficit for us almost forever. Mexico-- this used to be a surplus, incidentally--now the trade deficit is $24 billion-plus. We cannot continue to do that. We just cannot continue to run up these kinds of trade deficits. Just for a moment, let me describe some of the circumstances of the trade deficit. When we want to ship apples into Japan, they say the apples must come from trees that are separated at least 500 feet from apples on apple trees in the orchard that are not going to be shipped to Japan. So if we are going to ship apples to Japan, they have to be in a grove 500 feet away from other apple groves. What kind of sense is that? We ship T-bone steaks to Japan. Guess what the tariff is after 12 years of an agreement. Twelve years after an agreement with them, the tariff is 38.5 percent on beef going into Japan. In Korea, just as an example, we exported 4,400 cars last year. They exported 470,000 to us. One might ask the question, Where is the fair trade here? Where is the reciprocal treatment? This country needs to demand of its trading partners that they open their markets to us so we can have fair trade.”