TALKING POINTS
Permanent NTR for China is neither merited nor necessary. It is against the US national interest. It is clear to us that Members of Congress who support PNTR are going with corporate special interests and against us, our families and futures.
PNTR IS NOT MERITED
1. PNTR is what the Chinese Communist regime wants most of all
because it means unconditional, unlimited, permanent access for Chinese-made
goods into the US market. The Chinese regime and US corporations
seeking to relocate production to China want PNTR because it means an end to
the current annual review of China trade and guarantees permanent,
unconditional, unlimited access to the US market. That review shines a
spotlight of scrutiny on an otherwise totally unaccountable Chinese regime.
(Congress is not voting on whether China goes into WTO. The Clinton
Administration had the authority to ok this and it already did so. The
question for Congress is will Congress maintain its hand in the China issue
and keep its annual China review so that when China breaks all of the WTO
rules or acts in some outrageous manner, Congress has a way to deal with it.)
2. PNTR is not merited because the Chinese government's dismal and worsening record on:
o Labor rights: Independent unions are illegal in
China. Trying to organize one means a long jail sentence or worse. Chinese
manufacturing wages average 20 cents and hour and go as low as 13 cents are
hour. The reason why US corporation are so eager for Congress to pass PNTR is
that they want to take advantage of this situation. The real interest is not
selling things in China because only a few elite make enough to buy much. The
real interest is moving production to China. PNTR makes sure these
corporations have unconditional, permanent access back into the US to sell
their goods with no say by us or Congress. Already, the US trade deficit with
China is over $70 billion! The International Trade Commission says PNTR would
make this even worse.
o Human rights: In 1994, the Clinton Administration
changed US policy, "delinking" human rights from trade policy. Their argument:
free trade means more freedom in society. Yet, every year since "delinkage",
human rights conditions in China have gotten worse. Separating trade and human
right was a failed experiment. It must not be locked in with PNTR. Now, every
democracy, free speech, labor and religious activist is either in jail or
exiled away from China. Millions of Chinese are in forced labor camps as
punishment for wanting the most basic freedoms - to elect their leaders or to
speak freely. The Clinton Administration destroyed the effectiveness of the
annual review by delinking it from human rights and other concerns. However,
before this Administration put this tool on the shelf, it was used
effectively! We need to keep it for future Administrations and Congresses.
o Threats against US national security: Even with
the heightened scrutiny that comes with this big vote, the Chinese regime
announced in recent weeks that it will soon lose "patience" and invade Taiwan
and force that democratic nation to reunite with Communist China. The US had
pledged to fight on Taiwan's side if that war started. How is China ready to
pick that fight? It is using the hard currency it earns by selling 42% of its
total exports to the US to buy up Russian war ships and planes and to develop
cutting edge military capacity. Exiled Chinese democracy activist Harry Wu,
who escaped to the US after decades in the Chinese gulag, makes a key point:
giving PNTR locks in a trade policy which is paying for arming a country that
has threatened to attack our allies and whose military threatened the US by
noting that it now had missiles that could reach the US west coast and bomb
LA.
o Religious freedom: People who seek religious
freedom in China are imprisoned. There are only five officially recognized
religions in China, and each is tightly controlled by the government. For
instance, China recognizes only the Catholic Patriotic Movement as its
"Catholic Church," but that sham is not recognized by the Vatican as a
Catholic Church. The Vatican believes there are as many as 10 million
"underground" Catholics. In the past year several Bishops ordained and
recognized by the Vatican have been detained and a long list of priests and
nuns have been imprisoned. Recently, the 80-year-old Archbishop ordained by
the Pope but not recognized by China disappeared. Many people believe he has
been arrested again. In the past year the Chinese government has conducted
severe crackdowns on Protestants. Protestant churches have been raided with
followers and Bibles swept up by police. The highest holy person in the
Buddhist religion is the Dalai Lama, yet no picture of him is allowed to be
displayed. Indeed, many Tibetans are serving long prison terms for the crime
of posting his likeness. Amnesty International reports that the hundreds of
teenage girl and boy Buddhist monks jailed in Tibet face horrible abuse, from
systematic rape to starvation.
o Violating all past trade, human rights, anti-prison labor,
endangered species and other treaties. The Congress must not give
the Chinese regime the PNTR blank check because China has shown itself to
systematically break its international commitments. Congress needs to keep its
hand in, given this record, to protect the US national interest.
PNTR IS NOT NECESSARY
3. PNTR is also not necessary: even if Congress opposes China PNTR, US exporters still would obtain the potential trade benefits of China's WTO accession under the 1979 US-China Agreement. Proponents of PNTR say PNTR is necessary to avoid putting US businesses at a competitive disadvantage relative to other WTO countries if China joins the WTO. This is a lie. (Offer the Member of Congress the longer Public Citizen memo on this as backup if needed.)
The November 1999 US-China WTO deal is not a separate trade
agreement that somehow fails if Congress rejects PNTR. PNTR boosters have
tried to confuse Congress about this: that November 1999 deal is only the US
contribution to what will be the overall WTO terms under which China enters
the WTO. All the other countries get everything the US negotiators got and the
US gets whatever the other countries negotiators get. What the US got is
already locked in and now other countries are trying to get more. Congress'
vote on PNTR has NOTHING to do with this.
4. The Administration and the business boosters of PNTR do not want
Congress to know about the 1979 Agreement. The 1979 Agreement
automatically renews every three years and which is the basis for billions of
dollars of current US-China trade. The 1979 Agreement provides US farmers and
manufacturers with the identical benefits China must give all WTO
nations if it joins the WTO. The 1979 Agreement unequivocally requires that
the US and China "shall" grant each other "any advantage, favor, privilege or
immunity" they grant to any other nation.(1)
This means that China must give the US the same best treatment it
gives any other nation. If China enters the WTO, that "best treatment" will be
the WTO terms China gives other nations. Thus, claims by the Administration
that U.S. goods alone would miss out on the significant tariff cuts that the
Administration is touting as a key result of China's WTO entry or that US
businesses would still face domestic content or performance requirements are
false.
5. The U.S. could have the best of both worlds: tariff cuts and other trade benefits required if China enters the WTO and effective enforcement via US measures such as speedier domestic surge-protection, anti-dumping laws, and Section 301 which WTO forbids.
If Congress passes PNTR, the US would be required to only use the WTO to
enforce China's trade commitments. WTO rules would forbid the US from ever
again using the speedy and effective US unilateral trade enforcement tools
such as Section 301 and the US anti-dumping laws. These are the laws on which
Steelworkers jobs rely - but passing PNTR means these laws can never be used
on China again. This is outrageous, because it's the trade sanctions that come
under these US laws that have been the only thing that China has responded to
in the past as far as cleaning up it act on trade. It makes sense: using our
US laws we have the leverage of threatening to cut off an export market that
takes 42% of China's goods. In the WTO we are one of 136 countries and as we
have seen with assorted WTO fights with Europe, WTO dispute resolution takes
at least two years (our jobs are long gone!) and is enforced by something
entirely missing in China: commitment to the rule of law.
6. The US has nothing to lose by maintaining the annual review and taking a "trust but verify" approach to China trade while reviewing whether China follows its WTO commitments. The US has plenty to lose by granting PNTR: we lose use of our effective trade enforcement tools, we lose the leverage of the annual congressional review of China's record and we would face new WTO attacks on US laws by China.
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1. 1979 Agreement, Article II.