United States-Korea Free Trade Implementation Act

Floor Speech

Mr. President, I support all three pending free trade agreements, FTAs. They will be good for our country and good for Virginia. They will create jobs by opening markets for high quality American products.

Trade with Korea was worth $379 million to Virginia in 2010. Colombia was worth $80 million and Panama was worth $30 million. The Commonwealth stands to benefit from expanded opportunities for agriculture, chemicals, information technology, services, and other key sectors.

The success of FTAs for Virginia can be seen in the 13 other agreements entered into over the past decade. The 2004 U.S.-Singapore FTA enabled Singapore to become the fastest-growing market among the major buyers of Virginia's goods, rising from $300 million to over $1 billion last year, mainly in computers and electronics.

All told, Virginia did $17.1 billion in exports last year, including $14 billion in manufactured goods, $1.2 billion in agriculture, and a host of other products.

Nonetheless, it is very important to me that we do more as a country to make sure the benefits of trade agreements and international commerce are more evenly distributed across this country.

In the past, some States have done really well under trade deals. Others have not. Most of Virginia has been lucky to be on the winning end of trade. But there are areas, like southside Virginia, that have not seen the same benefits from earlier trade deals.

That is why I am a strong advocate for onshoring initiatives and greater economic engagement between foreign-owned companies and rural America. I have joined my Virginia colleague, Representative Frank Wolf, in sponsoring bipartisan legislation called America recruits, which would support new inbound investment into the United States.

The United States is one of the few countries without a national policy of supporting the recruitment of new companies. As a former Governor, I can tell you that this hamstrings the States when they compete head-to-head with foreign countries that can match or exceed support for individual State recruitment efforts.

Looking forward, I hope the President and the Administration will be ambitious in working to complete the nine-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, as soon as possible.

I commend our Trade Representative for the ongoing work on TPP. It is an innovative new type of trade deal, which aims for a high-standard, broad-based regional free trade agreement with Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

It is critically important that we not lose sight of the fact that many of our competitors, ranging from Canada and the European Union to China, India, and Brazil are signing market access agreements and trade deals as quickly as possible. They understand the value of securing favorable terms for their goods and services in an increasingly globalized world. We cannot sit back and do nothing when 95 percent of the world's consumers live outside the United States.

Therefore, while new trade agreements and efforts to remove market barriers are crucial, I conclude by urging Congress to reauthorize Trade Promotion Authority, TPA, which expired 4 years ago.

TPA is often just referred to as ``fast track'' authority to pass trade agreements. But it is much more than that. TPA sets the direction of U.S. trade policy and guides the work of our trade negotiators.

We need to have clear national objectives for trade and economic engagement. We need a greater focus on development and maintenance of global supply chains. We need strategies to address intellectual property issues and emerging concerns about the effects of state-owned enterprises as we focus on expanding market opportunities for U.S. goods and services.

Trade is a key aspect of U.S. competitiveness. It is difficult to get completely right, but it is important to acknowledge our progress. The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed the three free trade agreements this evening. I hope the Senate will do the same in the next few hours so that we can continue to work together in support of an international economic agenda that benefits the United States to the greatest extent possible.

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