America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, over the last few decades, China has used market-distorting subsidies and industrial policies to repeatedly prop up their own industries and rip off American jobs. Steel, tires, solar panels--the story plays out again and again. Too often China's economy is not run by the markets; it is run by government committee. So even though its own State Council has called out the problem of severe excess capacities, China clings to the same old tired and destructive policies. Today I want to address what is happening now with China's huge overcapacity of aluminum.

The amount of aluminum Chinese smelters are churning out has gone up by more than 1,200 percent in a decade and a half. In 2000, they produced 2.5 million metric tons. In 2015 China produced 32 million metric tons. When you create a glut of aluminum production the way China has, you send the markets into turmoil and you do enormous harm to American workers.

I spoke last week at a public hearing held by the U.S. Trade Representative and the International Trade Commission about how the overproduction of steel in China is an urgent and immediate threat to steel jobs here in our country. While China's steel mills are churning out more steel than ever, American steel towns are suffering or worse. Thousands of jobs nationwide have been lost just in the last year. Even though one-third of all steel produced today has no buyer, China keeps adding and adding to the glut by producing more steel.

The same story is played out in the case of primary aluminum. There is a huge overcapacity in China that, once again, is driven by market- distorting government policies. It has unleashed a chain of events that can end in economic devastation across this country. Global aluminum prices have already plummeted, undercutting our American companies. Between the start of 2011 and this upcoming June, the lights will have gone out at nearly two-thirds of the aluminum smelters in the United States. More than 6,500 jobs--good American jobs--will have been lost. You can bet that sooner or later the damage will ripple downstream through the entire aluminum industry, which employs three-quarters of a million Americans either directly or indirectly.

In my judgment, the United States is badly in need of a safeguard against this economic tidal wave. That is why I have chosen to stand with my friend Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, and the steelworkers. They filed a petition for relief under section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 today. Without an immediate economic bulwark, the United States is in danger of losing thousands of good family-wage jobs across our country.

It is my view that the administration should act in this case as soon as possible to defend our workers and our businesses from economic ruin. The United States and our trading partners must ramp up the pressure on China to stop overproduction, and our trade enforcers have to take on the trade cheats and use every single trade tool in the toolbox, including the ENFORCE Act, the Leveling the Playing Field Act, and the other measures my colleagues and I on the Finance Committee fought to get signed into law over the last year.

I firmly believe workers in Oregon and across this country can compete with anybody in the world, but the United States cannot afford to sit idly by and watch China's destructive policies cause our aluminum industry to be wiped out. As the steelworkers have pointed out repeatedly, enough is enough. Leo Gerard and those steelworkers are standing up and fighting back, and I am honored to stand with them.

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