Highlighting Issues with the Biden Administration
Floor Speech
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Mr. MANN. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Louisiana for hosting this today. There are a lot of things to talk about for a year. We could talk about immigration. We could talk about inflation. We could talk about crime. And we could talk about Afghanistan. The list goes on and on.
But I want to talk for a little bit today about trade and specifically our relationship with China.
I rise today to call the Biden administration to action regarding our trade partnership, or lack thereof, with China.
China has proven to be a bad faith negotiator, and they are using the United States as a doormat. Our country made a deal with China 2 years ago on January 15, 2020, and China has failed to live up to their end of the bargain by a long shot. As part of this deal, China committed to importing $36 billion of U.S. agriculture products in 2020 and 2021 combined, but they have fallen short by nearly $7 billion. China sold American farmers a bill of goods, and the Biden administration has made no effort to rectify this egregious situation.
Now that phase one is expiring, farmers and ranchers are frustrated to say the least. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, in a feeble effort to reassure us, said:
Ambassador Tai, our U.S. Trade Representative, continues to converse with China about the necessity of living up totally and completely to the phase one trade agreement, making up their deficit over the course of the next several years.
This is completely unacceptable. The next several years was never part of this deal, which is not a complex one. China said that they would purchase a certain amount of agricultural goods, and they have fallen short by a margin that suggests that they never intended to live up to their end of the deal in the first place.
Again, we have not seen any effort from this administration on behalf of farmers, which is why I am standing here today to state the obvious--the United States must either force China to comply with their end of the agreement or punish them for failing to do so. That is how deals work. At the very least, we need to see this administration developing a new, comprehensive, realistic deal to collect the deficit. The time for conversations already took place long before the deal was signed January 15, 2020, when China signed the deal.
This administration at year end needs to step up and defend our farmers, our ranchers, and our country from being financially manipulated by China--yet another unnecessary crisis.
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