FLASHBACK To 1996: Pelosi Says US-China Trade Is A “Job Loser,” China Benefits With 10 Million Jobs

In 1996, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) boldly opposed the prevailing U.S. policies toward China, passionately highlighting their detrimental effects on American jobs.

REP. NANCY PELOSI:

How far does China have to go? How much more repression? How big a trade deficit and loss of jobs for the American worker? And how much more dangerous proliferation has to exist before members of this House of Representatives will say, I will not endorse the status quo. As I mentioned, it’s about jobs, proliferation, and human rights. And there are those who say we shouldn’t link human rights and trade and proliferation and trade.

I disagree. But if we just want to take up this issue on the basis of economics alone, indeed, China should not receive most favored nation status for several reasons that I’d like to go into now. I’d like to call the attention of our colleagues to this chart on the status quo that the business community is asking each and every one of you to each and every one of us to endorse today.

Right now, we have a $34 billion trade deficit with China, the 1995 figure. It will be over $40 billion for 1996. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre, this figure has increased 1,000% from $3.5 billion then to about $34 billion now.

In terms of tariffs, I think it’s interesting to note that the average US MFN tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States is 2%, whereas the average Chinese tariff on US goods going into China is 35%. Is that reciprocal on exports? China only allows certain industries into China, of US industries into China. Therefore, only 2% of US exports are allowed into China.

On the other hand, the US allows China to flood our markets with a third of their exports, and that’ll probably go over 40%, and it’s limitless. We have not placed any restriction. In terms of jobs, this is the biggest and cruelest hoax of all.

Not only do we not have market access, not only do they have prohibitive tariffs, not only are our exports not let in very specifically, but China benefits with at least from US-China trade. The president in his statement requesting this special waiver said that China trade supports jobs in the United States, 170,000 jobs, whereas our imports from China support 10 million jobs at least. Fact is that US-China trade is a job loser, and one of the reasons that is, is because in order… Well, first, let me just make another point, and that is that our colleagues on the other side of this issue will say that trade with China, exports to China have increased three times in the last 10 years.

They have, but they failed to mention that exports, imports from China have increased 11, thereby leading to this huge trade deficit. The other issue, in addition, if intellectual property is a $2, $3 billion loss, technology transfer is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. If you want to sell to China, your products into China, the Chinese insist that you open a factory there.

They take, misappropriate your technology, open factories of their own, and then say that we want to see your plan for export. That’s as simply as I can say it briefly, but the fact is this isn’t about products made in America. The Chinese want American products that are made in China, and the most serious of these transfers of technology are in the airline industry, where tail sections of the Boeings were mostly made in Wichita, Kansas.

Now they are made in Shen Province, where workers make $50 a month, and the transfer of the technology and the transfer of the jobs has taken place. General Motors, Ford, they’re all fighting to get in to build factories there so they can make parts there. They want MFN so they can get those parts back into the United States.

So we are exporting not low-tech jobs and textile jobs. We’re exporting our technology. Now if you take a country the size of China, with the cheap, the very cheap, and in some instances slave labor, the lack of market access, the rip-off of our intellectual property, the transfer of technology, a country that is not willing to play by the rules in any respect in this trade relationship, you have a serious threat, not only to our relationship, but to the industrialized world.

And if there’s one message that I want our colleagues to understand today and our constituents is that on this day, your member of Congress could have drawn the line to say to the President of the United States, do something about this U.S.-China trade relationship that is a job loser for the United States. And this brings us to the point that others have said, well, we can’t isolate China. Do you think for one minute that with 10 million jobs at least and 35 billion and be over 40 billion dollars this year in a trade surplus, all those billions of dollars in surplus that the Chinese are going to walk away, where are they going to take 35 to 40 percent of their exports? Who’s going to buy them? This is what sustains the regime, the funding and the jobs.

They can’t have those people out of work, have to be at work exporting to the United States.

Democrats don’t really hate his policies; they just hate his success! This was a minor issue decades ago that could have been addressed. Instead, corrupt politicians prioritized their own interests over the nation, leading to a problem that now threatens to destroy America.