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. VERN BUCHANAN (R-FL): Thank you, Madame Chair. And I know we've got votes. But Ambassador, real quick, how do you -- my interest as all of this committee is small business -- how do you define small business as it relates to these relationships in various trade agreements? How do you look at -- do you have a definition for small business?
MR. VERONEAU: Well, I think we've used the SME, small and medium-sized enterprise definition of 500 companies or less --
REP. BUCHANAN: You mean 500 employees?
MR. VERONEAU: Yes, 500 employees. But as I was saying earlier, what we do to oversimply is, we're in the business of eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers. And I think that mission benefits small companies frankly more than big companies, because big companies have the resources to find their way around and navigate these barriers, where small companies don't.
REP. BUCHANAN: Let me mention just in terms of that, there's a lot of -- I mean that's one way to define small companies, but I know in the state of Florida and all throughout the United States a lot of small companies, we -- the chairman of the state chamber, and those businesses, we defined a lot of our companies, small companies, were 20, 50, 40 employees or less.
What are you doing, and how does it affect those groups?
MR. VERONEAU: Well, again, I would say, whether I'm a company with 10 employees or 10,000 my interest is seeing a tariff eliminated or a non-tariff barrier eliminated.
So from our perspective, from the mission of USTR, my -- my goal and interest in eliminating this barrier is the same for you as a small company as it is for a large company, and in that sense our mission is not -- does not split I think in the following way of small business interest versus big business interest. We're in the interest of eliminating these barriers, and small and large can take advantage of that.
REP. BUCHANAN: Well, I just -- on the record I'd just like to say, I'd just love to see us do more in any of these trade representative meetings is help companies 50 employees or less, because that's a lot of what we I think we recognize -- represent here.
Thank you, and I know we've got to leave.
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