Ex-Secretaries Support China Vote

April 11, 2000

An impressive bipartisan list of former secretaries of the Treasury and Agriculture has come out in support pf permanent normal trade relations with China. The United States has nothing to lose by approving PNTR and everything to lose by rejecting it, say the secretaries.

Economics make a compelling case for PNTR, the agriculture secretaries say, but it’s not the only one. "There are also national security implications. Rejecting PNTR would weaken our ties with a nuclear power that has the ability to tilt the global balance of power in Asia."

China is home to one of every five human beings on the planet, they continued, more than 1.2 billion people with a rapidly expanding middle class and an economy growing at 7% a year. "There is no nation that offers a greater potential customer base for American businesses. But trade barriers of every kind have limited our access to the Chinese market and contributed mightily to the nation’s record trade deficit."

Last year, "every man, woman and child in China took less than a dollar’s worth of American agricultural goods," the secretaries said.

Signing the statement were former Secretaries of Agriculture Bob Bergland, John Block, Earl Butz, Orville Freeman, Mike Espy, Clifford Hardin, Richard Lyng and Clayton Yeutter.

"The commercial benefits to the United States from the bilateral agreement reached with China last November are clear and compelling," wrote the Treasury ex-secretaries. "American farmers, workers and companies will benefit from reduced tariffs on agricultural and industrial products, expanded rights to import and distribute within China and broad new market access for banking, telecommunications and insurance services."

In addition, they added, "the broad, market-based measures China has committed to as part of its World Trade Organization accession will expose Chinese firms to the discipline of global competition, deepening reforms that are transforming China’s economy ... A more open, market-oriented, prosperous China, firmly rooted in the international economic system, is profoundly in the interests of the United States."

Signing the statement were former Treasury Secretaries James A. Baker III, Lloyd Bentsen, W. Michael Blumenthal, Nicholas F. Brady, Douglas Dillon, G. William Miller, Robert E. Rubin, George Schultz and William Simon.