By Joseph Lord
February 16, 2023 Updated: February 16, 2023
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.),
left, talks with Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during a Senate Finance
Committee committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in a 2019 file photograph.
(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The U.S. Senate Finance
Committee on Feb. 16 held a hearing on “Ending trade that cheats American workers by
modernizing trade laws and enforcement, fighting forced labor, eliminating
counterfeits, and leveling the playing field.”
Much of the hearing,
which was gaveled in by Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), focused on the ways that
China exploits trade cheats to increase its own wealth and influence.
Throughout the hearing,
Republicans and Democrats agreed on the threat China poses to America’s
industrial interests and sought solutions that could limit the harm China-based
industry does to the U.S.
“Trade cheats in China
and around the world are constantly looking for new ways to evade U.S. trade
laws and rip off American jobs and American workers,” Wyden began. “They
wish to sell illegal products in America—goods made with forced la for,
illegally-harvested timber, and products that steal our intellectual property.”
“Trade cheats are a grave
threat to the American worker–farmer and all those who play by the rules.”
Wyden said the worst
offenses come in China’s western provinces, where the Central Asian Uighur
minority faces systemic persecution by the communist regime in Beijing.
Over a million Uighur
Muslims have been placed in what are effectively concentration camps by the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In these camps, the Uighur’s are forced into
labor and reeducation courses.
“The Chinese Communist
Party’s treatment of the Uighur population is a moral abomination,” Wyden said.
“It’s awful hard to
compete with slave labor,” Wyden quipped.
The effect of the CCP’s
cheap slave labor, Wyden said: “Factories shuttered [and] American jobs lost to
China.”
Wyden called on companies
like auto manufacturers and Apple to cleanse their supply chains of forced
labor. To this day, most of Apple’s technology is designed in California but
manufactured in China.
China-manufactured car
parts are particularly tainted by slave labor, Wyden added.
The U.S. auto industry is
too important, Wyden said, “for those jobs to be ripped off and sent to an
economy that by strategy—by strategy—pays nothing.”
Wyden said that the front
lines of the battle to fight trade cheats is at ports of entry, both land ports
along the southern border and sea ports along the west coast.
He proceeded to list a
litany of trade abuses.
“Counterfeiters rip off
American products, posing an economic and health risk to American citizens.
Intellectual property theft is estimated to cost the U.S. economy $600 billion
every year, much of that from China.
“Foreign companies
continue to find ways to work around our foreign trade laws,” Wyden added,
comparing efforts to counteract trade cheats to “a game of Whack-a-Mole.”
‘Opportunists’
In his opening remarks,
Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) emphasized that the United States has not
updated its trade laws for over 30 years.
“Opportunity is out
there, right now, waiting for the law to catch up with it,” Crapo said. “The
last modernization [of U.S. trade law] could not foresee the tools available to
us today, or the sheer number of small businesses that take advantage of
international trade, or the benefit to consumers from widespread access to
e-commerce.”
But, Crapo continued,
“With any new opportunity comes opportunists.”
“Modernization is
necessary to counter not only existing threats, but those on the horizon,” he
said.
US—Mexico
Border
Crapo also noted the
burgeoning drug crisis caused by the flow of extremely dangerous drugs like
fentanyl across the southern border.
The National Institute on
Drug Abuse reports that 70,601 people died from a
fentanyl overdose in 2021.
In testimony during a
hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 15, Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) head Anne Milgram explained that Mexican drug cartels are
responsible for most fentanyl that comes into the country.
“Between August of 2021
and August of 2022, 107,735 American lives were lost to drug poisoning,”
Milgram said.
“Perhaps the most
important thing I can tell the committee today—we know who’s responsible: the
Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco (CJNG) Cartel, both cartels in Mexico, are
responsible for the vast majority of fentanyl that is coming into the U.S.,”
Milgram said. “It is why DEA has made defeating those two cartels our top
operational priority.”
These cartels “dominate
the global fentanyl supply chain,” she added.
Crapo related reports
that in January 2023 alone, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the El Paso,
Texas, port of entry “seized over 320 pounds of methamphetamine, 139 pounds of
cocaine, and 42 pounds of fentanyl.
Like many other
Republicans, Crapo argued that the solution to this problem is to enhance
security on the southern border.
After he took office,
President Joe Biden made radical changes to U.S. immigration policy. Under
President Donald Trump, the U.S. had enforced a “Remain in Mexico” policy,
whereby would-be asylum seekers were required to stay in Mexico until their
asylum request had been approved or denied.
Under Biden, Border
Patrol agents have been directed to move to a “catch-and-release” policy,
whereby anyone claiming asylum can be apprehended crossing the border but then
released into the country to await their day in court as the merits of their
claim are assessed.
Tom Homan, former acting
ICE director, told
a panel of House lawmakers that 90 percent of asylum seekers “lost their
case.”
“We’ve got to close the
flow of these drugs over our southern border,” Crapo said.
Republicans and Democrats
alike on the panel called for the United States to modernize its customs
enforcement to address the challenges, not only of drugs pouring over the U.S.
border with Mexico but also Chinese counterfeits and corporate moves to cheaper
markets in Asia.
The push, led by Senate
Democrats, comes after Biden suggested in his State of the Union address that
increasing U.S. manufacturing would be a priority of his administration during
the second half of his first term.
“Where is it written that
America can’t lead the world in manufacturing?” Biden said.
“For too many decades, we
imported products and exported jobs,” Biden said. “Now, thanks to what
you’ve all done, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs.”
In particular, Biden
pointed to the CHIPS Act, which he said would bring thousands of jobs to Ohio.
This got a mixed
reaction from
Republicans, who had criticized Democrat’s expanded version of their bill for
its reckless spending that could add to inflationary pressures while
promising billions to companies with no accountability.
Later, Biden called for a
made-in-America policy that won a round of applause from Republicans.
“We’re gonna make sure
the supply chain in America begins in America,” Biden said.
“We’re gonna buy
American,” Biden said later.
“I’m requiring that all
construction products used in federal projects are made in America.”
The 118th Congress is
split, with Republicans holding the majority in the House and Democrats holding
the majority in the Senate.
Biden, Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy
(R-Calif.) have expressed hope that they can work together to achieve shared
goals.
“To my Republican
friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we
can’t work together in this new Congress,” Biden said during the State of the
Union.
Republicans gave the
comment a standing ovation—a good sign for Biden as he tries to move forward
with a divided Congress.
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