John Chafee: “today I am introducing legislation to grant temporary duty suspensions for the importation of several chemical products.…”

“today I am introducing legislation to grant temporary duty suspensions for the importation of several chemical products. These products are colorants that are used in the coating, ink, and plastic industries; and they are particularly important because they are used to replace colorants that use heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. Duty is placed on foreign products in order to prevent harm to U.S. companies producing the same product. However, in this case, none of the colorants in question is produced in the United States. That means that the granting of these duty suspensions should not affect any domestic chemical industry. That also means that these particular duties serve solely as an added cost to those U.S. companies who need the products and must purchase them from foreign firms. We have one such company in my State, and it employs some 850 persons in a town with a population of just 31,000, making it the major employer. In this difficult economic time, the significant cost of these duties cannot be passed on to the company's customers. That means the company, faced with losing customers or cutting back internally, has no choice but to cut back to the bone internally. This kind of cost reduction effort inevitably threatens jobs. Enactment of these duty suspensions will ensure that our domestic coating, ink, and plastics industry compete fairly with foreign competitors.”