Don Nickles: “I want to compliment Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus, and, frankly, all the conferees, for their work on this bill.…”

“I want to compliment Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus, and, frankly, all the conferees, for their work on this bill. There was a lot of work that went in on this bill. This bill has a lot of good provisions, and in this Senator's opinion it has a lot of bad provisions. It has a lot of tax cuts, and it has a lot of tax increases. So you have to kind of weigh the pluses and the minuses. The plus is we are going to be WTO compliant and get away from these enormous fees that are on our exports, taxes that are on our exports that make our exports less competitive. It is a 12-percent tax right now, that goes to 17 percent by next March. We don't need a trade war with Europe. I remember talking to Chancellor Helmut Kohl when they were pushing the European Union. I said: I am a little concerned about the European Union becoming more protectionist. He assured me that is not the case. But, frankly, the European Union is becoming more protectionist. We don't need a trade war. They don't need a trade war, and we don't need a trade war. So it is necessary for us to pass a bill to be compliant.”