Barshefsky Defends Administration’s Trade Record

September 28, 2000

U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, in a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles this week, said the Senate vote approving permanent normal trade relations with China "closes the book on perhaps the central issue in American trade policy in this decade.

In a defense of the Clinton Administration’s trade policies, Barshefsky said U.S. businesses, farmers and working people "can sell their goods and services overseas more freely than ever before. We see this as, over eight years, U.S. exports have expanded by 74%, or nearly $500 billion. In practice, this means tangible new opportunities for people on the job and on the farm throughout the United States."

Trade has played an" irreplaceable role in America's prosperity," she continued, "and we are all familiar with the overall economic record: 21 million new jobs since 1992; the lowest peacetime unemployment rates since the 1950s; a $400 billion expansion in American manufacturing; the longest era of economic expansion in our history."

Some of the concerns about trade policy "reflect insecurities at home," she said, "and they are quite valid, though not uniquely associated with trade. Some parts of American society have not drawn the full benefits of our modern prosperity: inner cities and Indian reservations; those with less education and training; much of rural America."

Concerns that are more directly linked with trade involve the relationship that exists among trade, environmental protection, and worker rights, she continued. "The most basic fears it embodies - that an opening world economy will force us to weaken standards or face the loss of exports, investment and overall prosperity - are not borne out by experience. Far from weakening standards under the pressure of competition, we have strengthened them, with the Family and Medical Leave Act, the minimum wage increase and the new Safe Drinking Water Act; new and stronger clean air rules; signature of the Kyoto Convention on climate change; the protection of nearly 100 million acres of wild lands; and as we have done so America became more competitive rather than less. But the critics of trade raise genuine and reasonable concerns: sweatshops and child labor are real global problems; the climate change, loss of habitat, depletion of fisheries and cross-border pollution all present real challenges; and while domestic policies must be the central means of solving them, trade can play a part."

China's WTO accession, together with PNTR, "is a landmark achievement in concrete terms: a comprehensive agreement covering virtually every part of China's economy; and a congressional debate ending in the full normalization of our trade relationship."

In coming years, Barshefsky added, the agreement will open China's economy to the world "more fully than at any time in the modern era, and launch China's most important domestic economic reforms in more than two decades." In doing so, "it will strengthen the rule of law throughout China and give China and its people far greater contacts with the outside world, complementing our work in the cause of human rights."