Sanders Introduces Legislation with 60 Co-sponsors to Repeal Normal Trade Relations With China

Sanders Introduces Legislation with 60 Co-sponsors to Repeal Normal Trade Relations With China
2/9/2005

WASHINGTON- At a press conference today, Congressmen Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Walter Jones (R-NC), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Peter Visclosky (D-IN), Virgil Goode (R-VA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and other members of Congress announced that they would be introducing legislation that would repeal Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (PNTR). The legislation has 60 bi-partisan cosponsors.

Sanders said, "In industry after industry corporate America is shipping our manufacturing plants and our good paying jobs to China where desperate people are forced to work for wages as low as 20 cents an hour. Anyone who went Christmas shopping this year knows that more and more products on the shelves are made in China: toys, bicycles, computers, televisions, auto parts, shoes and sneakers, all kinds of clothing and hats, telephones, furniture and even artificial Christmas decorations. Ironically, the little American flags that members of Congress wave around are often made in China."

Since the passage of PNTR with China, the U.S. has lost more than 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, while China has created an estimated 2.5 million manufacturing jobs. If the current trade policy is maintained, an estimated 630,000 U.S. textile and apparel jobs will be exported to China by December 2006 and 1,300 textile plants in the U.S. will close.

Sanders concluded, "Over one and a half million American jobs have been lost due to our disastrous trade policy with China, and our trade deficit with China has skyrocketed to an estimated $160 billion in 2004, an increase of 29 percent over last year. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, if we continue on the current path, our trade deficit with China alone will more than double to $330 billion by 2008.

"The word has got to go out loud and clear, to companies like WalMart, GE, GM, IBM, Microsoft, Boeing, Flextronics, Cisco, Sears and Roebuck, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and hundreds of other corporations, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that they cannot keep sending America's future to China. Trade is a good thing, but it must be based on principles that are fair to American workers. The U.S. Congress can no longer allow corporate America to sell-out the middle class and move our economy to China."

http://bernie.house.gov/documents/releases/20050209150240.asp