Hearing of the House Small Business Committee - Impact of Pending Free Trade Agreements on U.S. Small Business Panel I

Interview

Hearing of the House Small Business Committee - Impact of Pending Free Trade Agreements on U.S. Small Business Panel I

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REP. HENRY CUELLAR (D-TX): Thank you, Madame Chair, and Mr. Ambassador, thank you for being here with us. You know, one thing we're missing here is that all we're trying to do with this free trade agreement is to allow our exports to go out to those countries because Peru, Colombia, Panama, 90 percent of their goods are coming into our country duty-free. So all we're doing, members, is allowing our exports to go to those countries. It's not a regular trade agreement where we're opening up our country to those imports because we've been doing that for years and years.

For example, the CBI -- Caribbean initiative -- in the 1980s because what was happening in Central America we decided to help those countries by opening up our country to those imports so the TAA and those other, you know, bills that we've been working on they're more aimed for imports coming to the United States.

But in this case, and I supported that yesterday, but again, we got to keep in mind, members, that this trade agreement simply deal with our exports going into those countries, and in fact when you look at it, and I know you went over this already, under CAFTA, Bahrain, Chile, Singapore, Australia, Jordan, Morocco -- all those trade agreements have shown that the exports from the United States have increased and as you know for every job that we -- for every dollar that we create or that we have for exports it means that we're going to have jobs created here in the United States.

If you look at example for -- and I have a -- I don't have copies for the members but if you look at the exports or you look at the trade between Colombia and the United States, 90 percent of the Colombian industrial products are coming in to the United States duty- free. When you look at the duty-free ag products coming from Colombia they're coming in duty-free into the United States.

When you talk about our industrial products going into those countries -- into Colombia -- they're literally zero and I know I don't have enough copies but you can see that all we're talking about, members, is to allow our exports to go. We're not talking about imports coming in because we've been doing that for years and years and years and years.

So, members, I would ask you to really look at this and I can understand the arguments that Charlie made and regulations and assistance and I can understand this, but bottom line is, members, what we're talking about here, bottom line, is it's not a regular free trade agreement where you're allowed imports to come in and you negotiate what imports come in like NAFTA. NAFTA was different because we negotiated with Canada and Mexico. This is a very, very different type because all we're talking about is talking about exports going into those countries.

And let just say one more thing on the -- I don't know how much time I have left but let me just say this. On CAFTA if you look at what happened on CAFTA, pre-CAFTA -- the pre-CAFTA trade we were in the deficit with those countries $1.9 billion. The year that we got into CAFTA those two years, 2006 and 2007, our trade balance went up -- it went into a surplus. Immediately, we made -- we went into a surplus with those countries.

So members again, CAFTA and this free trade agreement are just simply, if you look at the bottom line, it's simply allowing our exports to go into those countries. And that's basically where we target them.

Especially when you talk about it, most people think that it's big companies are talking about going to those countries. But it's really, what was it, about 89 percent in CAFTA when we talk about CAFTA as an example, 89 percent or so are small, medium-sized businesses, which is exactly what we're talking about here. It's not the big multi corporation like most people make it sound. It's 89 percent are small and medium sized businesses.

So members, we can go into different type of discussions, but I would ask you to just look at what the bottom line is. All we're talking about is sending our exports to those countries.

Mr. Ambassador, that was not a question, that was a statement.

MR. VERONEAU: Well put, Congressman, well put.

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