Political Quotes

“I have to support this legislation, H.R. 121, and I must oppose normal trade relations for China. I wish I could come here and say that I wanted to promote normal trade relations with China, that I felt that that would solve all of our problems, but my conscience will not allow that to happen. You see, we keep granting the Chinese favorable trading status in hopes that they are going to clean up their act, that they are going to fix all of these problems, and each year we are increasingly more and more disappointed. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre back in 1989, the U.S. trade deficit with China has soared from $6 billion a year to $60 billion this year, tenfold. If we use the common multiplier of 20,000 jobs for every $1 billion in trade, that is 1.2 million U.S. jobs that we have lost this year. If that is normal trade relations, Mr. Speaker, I, for one, want nothing to do with normalcy. China continues to use slave labor conditions to produce its goods and products, using children and military and exporting the goods to America, while our goods to China face tariffs that are 5 to 20 times that of the Chinese exports to the U.S. If that is normal, Mr. Speaker, then maybe we need abnormal trade relations with the Chinese. Furthermore, in the area of human rights, the Chinese continue to be the most serious of violators.”