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[Page H243]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRADE WITH CHINA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa
(Mr. King) for 5 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to
address you here on the floor of the United States House of
Representatives.
I come to the floor today to raise the issue and be thankful of the
progress that we have made with regard to trade. We have been through a
year and a half or more of intense trade negotiations. I have watched
as our markets took a hard hit and tailspinned down for a couple of
days, down the limit awhile back, and slowly creep back in again.
We produce a lot of corn, soybeans, cattle, hogs, eggs, and renewable
energy in the Fourth Congressional District of Iowa. In fact, it is the
number one egg-producing congressional district in all of America.
We saw a publication on the part of Bloomberg that when the tariffs
were put onto Chinese goods coming into the United States by President
Trump, the Chinese retaliated with tariffs on products like pork and
soybeans. Bloomberg just showed a map of the United States where that
hit the hardest and it happened to hit exactly over the red counties in
America that produce a lot of corn and soybeans, and you could add to
that the other products I mentioned, Mr. Speaker.
The situation that we are dealing with now is that we have gotten a
long way through these trade negotiations, and we are coming around to
the other side of it with China. In spite of all of this difficulty in
all these markets that have been suppressed over this period of time,
we found some new trade outlets.
For one thing, instead of having one big pipe going to China, we have
got multiple, smaller pipes going to other locations in the world. And
today the President signed phase 1 of the trade agreement that will
increase by about $16 billion a year our egg product exports to China.
That includes a lot of soybeans, it includes a lot of pork, and it
fixes that component.
It also addresses the intellectual property issue that has been a big
barrier for the trade negotiations with China. The value of U.S.
intellectual property--the creation that comes out of the minds of
Americans--is pirated by the Chinese somewhere between $500 and $600
billion a year. That gets addressed to a degree in this agreement and
it gets addressed again in the next phase of the agreement.
U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer has spoken on that issue to me,
and he seems to be, I will say, fairly confident that we are going to
get at least a reasonable beginning to something that is awfully hard
to fix.
I would add also that it isn't just China. We are waiting now for the
U.S. Senate to pass the USMCA Agreement. It is only the impeachment
trial that stands in the way of getting that done. That will happen
soon, within about a month or so, or perhaps less.
Further we have Japan, we have South Korea, and by the end of this
month the United Kingdom will be out of the E.U., and the door is open
for a bilateral trade agreement with the British.
If we could get that all done, as I said to the President the other
day, we may find ourselves in the very best position we have ever been
in, at least in our lifetime, with regard to trade in multiple
locations, so that we are diversified in our markets so that we can
send out to multiple countries and at the same time have a strong
relationship with China and other countries.
We are moving into an excellent position here. We have got a strong
economy, and we have got a strong Dow. This really is a great time to
make investments in America, and they are doing that from around the
world.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the President today.
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