Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to have the opportunity to give some thoughts today on what is going on in the United States and around the globe.

Here in these early months of this new Congress, there clearly is broad bipartisan agreement on the importance of the Indo-Pacific region for our country's future. We are strengthening our military posture in that region, and last Congress, we passed legislation to strengthen our strategic industries.

What is being ignored, however, is a third component essential to our success in the region: expanding trade. At a State and Foreign Ops hearing in March, I noted the importance of our economic relationships around the world and asked Secretary of State Blinken about our approach to trade agreements, particularly America's absence from the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership--the CPTPP.

He told me the original pact in 2015 had real benefits, economically and strategically, but since then the world has moved on. I agree with him, our allies and our partners have moved on. They have moved on without us.

A year ago this month, President Biden made his first trip to Asia and unveiled the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the administration's initiative to reengage the region on standards involving digital trade, supply chains, climate change, and corruption.

This is a small start, but it falls far short of what is needed today to advance American prosperity and security--also, the well-being of our Asian partners. In particular, the President's proposal fails to include greater U.S. market access.

The United States is belatedly offering a tepid leadership to a region that remains committed to open trade.

We can and must correct this or fall further behind in the most economically dynamic region in the world. I call on President Biden to enter into--and Congress to ratify--the CPTPP. It would be difficult to overstate how important the Indo-Pacific is to American prosperity. The region comprises 40 percent of the global economic output, and that is expected to grow to 50 percent by the end of the decade.

The largest economy in the region belongs to China, which is the largest trading partner for the region's countries. This provides Beijing with leverage to bully our allies and partners into making concessions in exchange for access to the Chinese market. It allows Beijing, not the United States, the same opportunity to have that relationship, so necessary.

China, for example, used coercion to retaliate against Australia after our allies in Canberra called for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Beijing regularly forces American businesses to refrain from criticism of China or conform to communist policies.

China's leaders can coerce and intimidate because they have economic strength. It is clear China will exert that tremendous leverage over other nations to achieve its global ambitions. Its attempts to bully countries into its sphere of influence are on full display through the Belt and Road Initiative, which has left trails of debt traps and human rights abuses. Unfortunately, the United States is ceding our economic leadership that we established and maintained for the last 80 years.

Having quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership under bipartisan, Republican and Democrat, criticism for that departure, the countries we worked with--treaty allies and partners--moved ahead. They moved ahead without us and in 2018 brought into force a successor agreement, the CPTPP. These countries represent more than 13 percent of global GDP, and in the last few weeks, Great Britain has gained membership.

So important is the CPTPP to the Pacific economies that China has applied for membership. They did so last September. It would be a grave mistake for us to assume that in America's absence China would be denied membership indefinitely.

China wants in, despite already being the largest member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Agreement, which also includes our treaty allies, Japan and South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. This trade bloc accounts for nearly one-third of global GDP.

These two agreements, comprised of nations with diverse ideologies, underscore the importance of the economics of the Indo-Pacific region. In Asia especially, economics and security are one and the same, and for Washington to ignore that is a miscalculation.

Our allies and partners in this region are noticing. They notice our absence. Australia's Foreign Minister said at the end of last year:

America's decision not to proceed with the CPTPP is still being felt in the region. . . . We have reached a stage in the evolution of our alliances where they will increasingly require a fully developed economic dimension, as well.

In other words, we can't have the same relationship with countries that we don't deal with in trade in economic relationships.

At the end of 2022, Singapore's Defense Minister had this to say:

The U.S. increasing their military presence in Asia as a stabilizing force is virtuous, it is good and we will support that.

But then he made this key point:

We think that the U.S. should do more to engage as it did previously, to build an economic framework, which as a tide can lift all boats.

Despite our own National Security Strategy which declares that ``we need to win the competition for the 21st century'' and that we will ``shape the rules of the road for . . . trade and economics,'' the document makes clear President Biden believes ``we have to move beyond traditional Free Trade Agreements.''

But given the words of our Pacific friends, it is equally clear they have not moved beyond such agreements. In fact, they are doubling down on them without us. The President and his administration are either oblivious to this fact or indifferent.

Given the stakes, whichever one it is, it is a serious mistake. Dating back to the 1980s, the National Security Strategy is a congressionally mandated report issued by the President to convey the administration's national security goals and how to achieve them. In recent decades, one document is published each Presidential term rather than yearly.

The 2022 document, President Biden stresses upholding the ``rules- based international order'' but then refuses to engage in shaping one of the significant pillars of that order: trade.

The National Security Strategy invokes four principles, two of which are openness and inclusiveness. And as one scholar observed, the President's approach to trade is neither open nor inclusive.

This hurts our goals in this region, and it hurts Americans at home, our very national security. Our engagement really is about our own well-being. Our own well-being is often dependent upon the well-being of our friends and allies or those we want to be our friends or allies.

Economic partnerships can promote U.S. national security interests by protecting critical access to technology, minerals, and food supplies. We know what happens when we are so dependent upon one particular country for meeting our country's needs in strategic items. It is a mistake for us to have all eggs in a basket. Robust trade agreements safeguard the intellectual property and manufacturing capabilities that underpin our American military dominance.

Southeast Asia presents a situation in which our agricultural producers can score significant market access wins, while U.S. soft power can bolster our influence with these critical partners with these countries that are or can be our friends.

America's economy is the foundation of our power. Without the creation of wealth, we cannot afford to sustain the world's greatest military, which in turn defends the peace that enables the flow of goods. As a column in the Wall Street Journal just within the last week argued, ``The U.S. must embrace the politics of growth. Our world must be, and must be seen to be, the surest, fastest path to raising living standards all over the world. That's what we did after World War II. We must find a way to do it again today.''

What that is saying is we can't allow China to be seen as the path to economic well-being for people and nations around the world and specifically in the South Pacific.

Southeast Asia presents a situation in which our agriculture producers can score significant market access wins while we are making a difference in our own capabilities to influence the world.

America's economy is the foundation of our power, and we must utilize it. In competing with China in the coming decades, it is essential that the United States provide a positive vision for the region that attracts countries to what America offers beyond security support. Leadership is more than making clear what we are against. We must offer a compelling case of what we are for and how it will benefit those we wish to lead, those we wish to be partners with.

Little in geopolitics is a win-win, but trade is a rare area that advances our interests and those of our partners. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the American people understand this. Three in four Americans think that trade is good for the U.S. economy, but Congress and the President are making a mistake ignoring the old idea of open trade.

To best compete with China in Asia and to help Americans at home, joining the CPTPP and providing greater market access is an obvious place to begin. Jobs, economic opportunity for us, and most importantly, the well-being of our Nation, our national security, depend upon trade and that relationship it creates.

(Ms. CORTEZ MASTO assumed the Chair.)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source