English Blasts Ways & Means Democrats for Failing to Advance China-Related Legislation

Letter

English Blasts Ways & Means Democrats for Failing to Advance China-Related Legislation

Calls on Committee to Fulfill Broken Promise

Today, U.S. Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) blasted House Ways and Means Democrats for failing to fulfill promises to advance meaningful legislation to tackle challenges of U.S.-China trade policy.

Today 15 House Ways and Means Democrats, including Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to the president expressing their displeasure with the Administration's efforts with respect to China's currency regime. In their letter, the members bucked away from specific timelines for legislative action, instead only saying such action were a possibility in the future.

At the start of the 110th Congress, Democratic leaders on the Committee vowed to act on China-related legislation to deal with Chinese currency manipulation, illegal subsidies, intellectual property rights, or any other pressing China trade issue. Now, well into the second session of the 110th Congress, the Committee has failed to produce such a bill. In response, English, in a letter to Chairman Rangel (D-N.Y.) urged the Committee to fulfill its promise to move on China-related legislation.

*Full Copy of the letter follows:

March 27, 2008

The Honorable Charles Rangel
Chairman
Committee on Ways and Means
1102 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Rangel:

Today, you and fourteen of your Democratic Ways and Means colleagues sent a letter to President Bush urging that action be taken in the World Trade Organization on China's currency policy as well as laying out other initiatives the Administration could take on a bilateral and multilateral basis. I commend the majority for its newfound interest in this most serious of issues, even if it has failed to advance legislation to deal with this problem as it had promised at the beginning of last year.

The letter asserts that the Administration's approach of quiet diplomacy has failed and the Administration, now more than ever, should use all the available tools at its disposal to address China's intervention in foreign exchange markets. While I believe that the Administration's efforts expended to date seeking to end China's intervention to maintain an undervalued currency have achieved only very modest results, I disagree strongly with the majority that the need to advance legislation is only a future possibility.

Today's letter, in my view, is meant to obfuscate a fundamental problem with respect to addressing China's illegal trade practices: the refusal of the majority to advance trade legislation to bring relief to manufacturers across the country struggling daily with the onslaught of illegal Chinese trade practices.

While the Administration should certainly exhaust every avenue to remedy and redress currency manipulation and other illegal trade practices, Congress can not simply abrogate its fundamental responsibility to act through legislation. Today's letter, in combination with the absence of any serious discussion of legislative options to date, however, is further proof that the majority has fallen well short on its promise to move China-related legislation as the Republican Majority did in 2005.

I believe it is imperative that the Committee and the Congress act immediately on trade legislation. Every day that passes the hemorrhaging of American manufacturing jobs worsens.

Now, more than a full year into the tenure of the Democratic Majority, the Committee has yet to report a bill to deal with Chinese currency manipulation, illegal subsidies, intellectual property theft or any other pressing China-related trade issues. I urge you to revisit the decision to merely keep the development of China-related legislation a possibility in the distant future should some mysterious set of circumstances present themselves. The time to move forward on legislation is now, and I stand ready to work with you to develop and pass legislation to effectively level the playing field for U.S. employers.

Sincerely,

Phil English
Member of Congress

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