Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last week Minority Leader Pelosi and some of her colleagues signaled their intention to introduce a discharge resolution for a vote on H.R. 639, the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act. I applaud those in this body and in the House of Representatives who want to push on currency reform and encourage the Speaker and House leadership to support this position. Similar legislation to this passed overwhelmingly with strong bipartisanship in the last Congress. Senator Snowe from Maine and I introduced that legislation in the Senate. It would strengthen countervailing duty laws to consider undervalued currency as an unfair subsidy in determining duty rates. What does that mean? What that means is that in essence we have lost jobs in this country because too often the playing field in our trade relationship with the People's Republic of China is simply not level. We know that China in far too many cases subsidizes energy. We know they subsidize land. We know they subsidize capital. We know they subsidize production in various ways. We also know in terms of currency that China does not play fairly. When an industry such as the coated-paper industry in Hamilton, OH, in southwest Ohio, north of Cincinnati, or the aluminum industry in western Ohio, in Sidney, or the steel industry in Lorain, OH--when an industry petitions the International Trade Commission for relief against unfair subsidies, currency manipulation would be part of that investigation.…”