Border Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to call up S. Res. 134, as amended, my resolution urging the President to bring negotiations on a free-trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom to a mutually advantageous conclusion.

I have been working on the Senate floor and behind the scenes for several years now trying to get this measure adopted and a trade deal signed. Things are finally moving. The message to the President, if approved with unanimous consent of the Senate, could not be any more timely.

President Biden recently announced that after a delay of more than a year, we are finally going to resume trade negotiations with the United Kingdom. It is not often these days that I am really excited about all the news coming from the White House, but this one is absolutely thrilling to hear. I am very pleased with it.

For more than 100 years, throughout times of great change, tumult, and uncertainty, our partnership between the United States and the United Kingdom--sometimes referred to as the ``special relationship''-- has been constant. Through two world wars and the Cold War, through centuries of economic partnership that have forged the world's single- largest bilateral trade and investment relationship, the UK has been our staunchest and our most loyal ally.

Now, with the UK's newfound ability to negotiate independent free- trade deals and the President's commitment to resume negotiations on that front, the stars are aligned, and we have the opportunity to grow that relationship even further. This Senate resolution is the next step, calling on the President to bring those negotiations to the finish line. What could be better for American jobs, American prosperity, and American security than securing such a deal? This is what our country needs. This is what my home State of Utah needs.

Let me tell you a little bit about what that relationship means for the people back in my State, back in Utah. Almost 11,000 Utahns are employed directly by UK companies and their subsidiaries, and nearly 40,000 jobs are supported by exports from Utah to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is our largest export market, and we sent over $9 billion worth of exports just in 2019 alone.

Our credit and financial services industries also thrive from our trade relationships with the UK. Imagine what it would do for Utah and for the rest of the country if we made that trade even easier.

In this age of great power competition with China, we need to work closely with our allies renewing old friendships and crafting new ones.

As we have seen, our supply chains are in a precarious position, and they need to be redoubled and reinforced before we face the next calamity. Whatever you might have heard, trade is one of the best ways to reinforce our supply chains, and so what we need is a proliferation of free-trade agreements with countries around the globe. The United Kingdom would certainly be on that list, and, in fact, it should be chief among them.

So now I ask my colleagues to join me, using the full voice and the authority of the U.S. Senate, to urge the President to proceed full steam ahead on a deal. Throughout history, the partnership between our countries has steadied the world through some of its greatest perils, and it can continue to do so today if only we let it. The American and British peoples have the opportunity to once again join forces and emerge from the challenges we face today and to do so stronger than ever for the benefit of our countries and nations across the globe.

To that end, Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 134. I further ask that the Lee substitute amendment to the resolution be considered and agreed to; the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; the Lee amendment to the preamble be considered and agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; that the Lee amendment to the title be considered and agreed to; the title, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President.

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Mr. LEE. I appreciate the insights shared by my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, with whom I enjoy working on countless issues, but I want to offer a little bit of additional context here.

Senator Menendez and I have worked together for some time now to address how any such trade agreement with the United Kingdom might take into account the obligations we have to Ireland under the Good Friday Agreement.

Just to be very clear, our resolution does not make any statement on elements of the transatlantic relationship outside the jurisdiction of U.S. sovereignty. So this shouldn't affect that. Those two things shouldn't be tied together.

Brexit and the debate surrounding the Northern Ireland Protocol are issues exclusively between the UK and the EU. This resolution is interested only, exclusively, in making a statement on working closely with a longstanding and stalwart ally and trade partner. So we certainly would welcome a similar resolution on U.S.-EU trade, and I would be happy to work collaboratively with my friend from Connecticut or with any other colleague on either side of the aisle on that project.

If there are additional concerns here, I would love to know what those are immediately so that we can resolve this expeditiously. As I said earlier, I have been working on this resolution for at least 2 years now, and I would hate to see it blocked because of a quibble that we have already worked with the Foreign Relations Committee, the staff across the aisle on that committee, to address. I mentioned that this is important to my State of Utah. It is also important to Connecticut.

In Connecticut, the United Kingdom is directly responsible for over 22,000 jobs, and it supports another 12,000 through Connecticut goods and services that cross between those two countries.

So I think this would be good for Connecticut. It would be good for Utah. It would be good for the entire country, and I hope we can get it done. I am disappointed we weren't able get it done today. I am going to keep moving ahead on this because it needs to happen.

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