Political Quotes

“I thank my friend from Toledo. What she said about trading with democracies is so very important. Last year, during the debate on Most Favored Nation status with China, what was euphemistically relabeled PNTR, executives and CEOs who normally do not bother with workaday Members of Congress, they normally only go to the leaders in each party, the Speaker, the minority leader, whatever; but CEOs were roaming the halls of Congress and repeating the mantra, we want access to China's 1 billion consumers; we want to sell our products to China's 1 billion consumers. But what they really cared about was access to China's 1 billion workers, who could work and sew those Ohio State baseball caps and those T-shirts from the University of Toledo or from Oberlin College or wherever. They wanted access to those workers who would work, had no choice really, would work for a few cents an hour. In the last 10 years, and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) mentioned buying products, trading with democracies, what has happened in the last 10 years is western investors, investors from France and England and Germany and the United States and Canada, they are not very interested anymore in investing in democratic developing countries, countries that are struggling but that are democratic and developing, still pretty poor but democratic; they are interested in trading and investing in developing authoritarian countries.”