Extending the Generalized System of Preferences
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are talking about trade, how we create markets for what Americans grow or build and sell abroad, which creates jobs here at home. But I wish to talk about a rather specialized area of trade, and that has to do with foreign military sales, and particularly I wish to talk about a topic Senator Menendez and I introduced a bill on last week called the Taiwan Air Power Modernization Act of 2011. This bill requires the U.S. Government to respond to the request of the Government of Taiwan for the sale of at least 66 F-16 C/D fighter aircraft to Taiwan.
That sounds like a mouthful and a big subject, and it is, but let me try to put some meat on the bone and explain why I think this is so important.
Support of the people of Taiwan has been a bipartisan priority for decades. Democrats and Republicans supported the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan, signed by President Eisenhower in 1954. Democrats and Republicans came together and passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which was signed by President Carter in 1979, and which remains the law of the land today. The Taiwan Relations Act states that the United States will provide to Taiwan the defense articles necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities in furtherance of maintaining peace and stability in the western Pacific region.
What does sufficient self-defense capabilities mean? President Reagan, in a memorandum he dictated dated August 17, 1982, laid it out. This is about the time the third communique between Communist China and the United States was formally adopted, because the Chinese wanted to know exactly what this meant. Were arms provided to Taiwan a threat of aggressive weaponry or purely for defensive purposes? According to James Lilley, who was America's top representative in China at the time and who later served as Ambassador to China under George Herbert Walker Bush, that is what this was designed to do, to crystalize what the nature of the weapons sales to the Taiwan Government would be used for. This memorandum from President Reagan in August 17, 1982 laid it out:
..... it is essential that the quantity and quality of the arms provided Taiwan be conditioned entirely on the threat posed by the People's Republic of China. Both in quantitative and qualitative terms, Taiwan's defense capability relative to that of the PRC will be maintained.
This is strictly for giving Taiwan the ability to defend itself against potential Communist actions by Communist China. It was directly proportional and reciprocal to the threat posed by the People's Republic of China.
But Ronald Reagan was not alone in this interpretation. In fact, both Democrats and Republicans over the years have supported numerous arms sales to the Government of Taiwan, including the current request for 66 F-16 C/D advanced fighter aircraft.
So far this year, 47 Republicans and Democrats have signed a letter--these are Senators--to the administration in support of this sale. In August, 181 Members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats alike, wrote to the administration endorsing this same sale.
Why is Taiwan asking for these aircraft and why do so many Democrats and Republicans join together in a bipartisan way on this issue when the parties seem to be so polarized by so many other issues? The answer is simple and straightforward: Taiwan's air defense capabilities are nearly obsolete, while China's military capabilities are growing at an alarming rate. This chart demonstrates the problem.
On the right in the red you will see that China has 2,300 operational military combat aircraft, while Taiwan has 490 operational combat aircraft. But air defense is not just a numbers game. Quality of those aircraft matters a lot--just as much as quantity. So what about the quality of Taiwan's existing forces?
According to our own intelligence services, the Defense Intelligence Agency, in an unclassified report last year, said that ``many of Taiwan's fighter aircraft are close to or beyond service life, and many require extensive maintenance support.''
China's capabilities, on the other hand, are clearly newer and clearly growing and clearly focused on intimidating Taiwan and the United States. China's official press agency reported in March that the People's Republic of China will increase its military budget this year by 12 percent, after an increase last year of 7.5 percent. But the Pentagon estimates that China's official military budget of about $90 billion they disclose, is actually far less than the $150 billion they actually spend. In other words, they only disclose part of their expenditures on national security and not the full amount, which is some $150 billion. The question is, who does China intimidate with this growing military power?
Here is what the Pentagon had to say in its 2011 report to Congress, called ``Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China.'' The Defense Department observed that China continued modernizing its military in 2010, with a focus on Taiwan contingencies.
The Pentagon also noted that China's air force will remain primarily focused on ``building the capabilities required to pose a credible military threat to Taiwan and U.S. forces in East Asia.''
Let me repeat that. The Pentagon noted that China's air force will remain primarily focused on ``building the capabilities required to pose a credible military threat to Taiwan and U.S. forces in East Asia.''
Some say the United States should not look at our policy with Taiwan in a vacuum, that we should consider the context of our larger strategic relationship with China. I could not agree more, because the strategic situation with China these days is very troubling. Many of China's neighbors are concerned about its military buildup and territorial ambitions. Last year, China claimed the South China Sea as a ``core interest,'' which unsettled Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other nations in the region. China also renewed a long-running dispute with India over the borders of the Arunachal Pradesh region.
China continues to be an enabler of the nuclear ambitions of the regime in North Korea. This summer, Google publicly reported that a Chinese entity has been targeting the personal e-mail accounts of U.S. and South Korean government employees, and Pakistan's defense minister publicly discussed the possibility of China building a naval base at Gwadar, Pakistan, which is already home to a new strategically important port at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman.
China, we know, has also escalated its rhetoric aimed at the United States, and particularly the U.S. Senate. A number of my colleagues visited Beijing last April where they reportedly received a lecture from Chinese officials on fiscal policy. Just last week, more to the point of this topic, China's top official newspaper used a lot of unnecessary and bellicose rhetoric on the subject of the proposed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. This official newspaper of the Communist Party in China said that those of us on Capitol Hill who support Taiwan are ``madmen.'' They said we were ``playing with fire.'' They said we could pay a ``disastrous price'' if we continued to support our ally Taiwan, as we are obligated to do by the Taiwan Relations Act.
I suggest the United States should not give in to this intimidation and these threats, and that we should instead pass this legislation to send a clear message to China that respects only strength, not weakness; that the real madmen are those who think America will abandon our friends and allies and our principles and our longstanding strategic interest in the stability of East Asia.
Supporting this legislation would also greatly reassure our allies and friends around the world. Many remember what happened when President Clinton deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups during the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996. That crisis developed when China tried to intimidate Taiwan on the eve of its first free Presidential elections by conducting a series of military exercises that included the firing of missiles a few miles north of Taiwan. President Clinton responded by ordering the largest U.S. military force since the Vietnam war to deploy to the region, including carrier battle groups led by the USS Nimitz and the USS Independence.
America's show of strength and resolve under President Clinton's leadership did not escalate the crisis, it defused it, and it sent a welcome signal to our friends and allies in the region. According to an article in the current issue of Washington Quarterly, following the crisis, ``the region's confidence in the United States soared.''
`` ..... Japan, Singapore, the Philippines and other nations all bolstered their security ties with the United States.'' The Taiwan Strait crisis was one of the real foreign policy success stories of the Clinton administration. But the authors of this same article conclude that ``forsaking Taiwan [now] would likely have the opposite effect.''
This bill deserves bipartisan support of the majority of Members of the Senate based on our longstanding bipartisan consensus on policy toward Taiwan, the growing gap in military capabilities between the People's Republic of China and the Government of Taiwan, China's aggressive behavior toward its neighbors and toward the United States, and America's credibility with our allies and with free peoples everywhere.
I conclude by pointing out perhaps something that is obvious, but maybe it is not so obvious to everyone. Since we are talking about trade, what we grow and we sell to people abroad creating jobs at home, it is worth mentioning that selling F-16 aircraft to Taiwan creates jobs and exports for the U.S. economy and does not cost 1 penny of taxpayer money. This map demonstrates all the States in which direct and indirect employment from which the export sales of F-16s to Taiwan is projected to be at least 60 person years of employment, which is the equivalent of 10 American workers employed full time for 6 years.
As you can see from this map, 32 States will have that level of job creation or more as a result of the sale of these F-16s, making the sale of the F-16s to Taiwan a coast-to-coast job engine. In fact, according to the Perryman Group, the requested sale of F-16C/Ds to Taiwan ``would generate some $8.7 billion in output; and directly support more than 23,000 jobs.''
As I pointed out earlier, these jobs do not cost the American people one cent. These are private sector jobs paid for with money coming in from overseas because this is an export-driven industry. The only thing the U.S. Government needs to do is get out of the way and let these Americans continue to stay on the job and collect an estimated $768 million in Federal tax revenues. Yes, not only will we be selling these aircraft, creating jobs, we will be generating revenue for the Federal Treasury in the process, generated by this private sector, export-driven economic activity.
I wish to thank the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez, for introducing this legislation with me, and I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have agreed to cosponsor it. I hope more Senators will join us, and I hope we will pass this bill soon. I hope we can help American workers continue building these aircraft to strengthen our friends, the people of Taiwan.
Mr. President, let me just close on this comment: This is standalone legislation I discussed here today, but I will be offering, in due course, an amendment to the pending bill that would mandate this sale. So I would ask my colleagues to please join us in a bipartisan way of showing our support for our friends and allies in Taiwan and generating jobs right here at home.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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