Charles W. Stenholm: “I want to take this 5 minutes to respond to one of the arguments that I have heard against permanent normal trade…”

“I want to take this 5 minutes to respond to one of the arguments that I have heard against permanent normal trade relations with China. The argument is that China, its 1.3 billion citizens, and only 7 percent of the world's arable land, does not need United States' agricultural products. USDA's Economic Research Service and private agricultural commodity groups believes China will continue to be a major market for U.S. agricultural products and that China's accession to the WTO will expand that market. For cotton, China committed to a tariff-rate quota of 743,000 tons for cotton in the Year 2000, increasing to 894,000 tons in 2004. The within-quota duty would be 4 percent and the over-quota duty would decline from 69 percent in 2000 to 40 percent by 2004. Nonstate trade companies get two-thirds of that quota, which means we help avoid the problem we have sometimes had in the past with quotas going unfilled. The ERS projects that if China did not join the WTO, it would import cotton worth $565 million in 2005. If China does join, ERS projects that its cotton imports would increase to $924 million by 2005. For corn, China committed to establish a 4.5 million ton tariff rate quota in 2000, rising to 7.2 million by 2004. Here again, ERS projects that China's net imports of corn in 2005 will increase by $587 million if China joins the WTO. U.S. corn exports to China have averaged about 47 million over the past 5 years. This will increase.…”