Voinovich gives the elephant in the room a name: China

U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, has said something precious few in Washington have had the courage to say: China is getting away with murder. Its unfair trade policies and outright theft of intellectual property are killing American companies and stealing jobs.
Voinovich has been saying some of these things for years, but no one, at least no one in the Bush administration, has been listening.
So last week he took dramatic action. During debate on a new trade agreement with Australia Voinovich announced that he would not vote for the bill -- not because he has anything against Australia, or, for that matter, against free and fair trade. But he will not vote for any trade agreement until the Bush administration gets tough with China.
Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China was $120 billion dollars. That's $10 billion a month. Every minute of every day Americans buy about $250,000 more in goods from China than the Chinese buy from the United States.
One reason for that, Voinovich points out, is that China has pegged its currency at 8.28 yuan per dollar. The artificially low exchange causes American goods to be more expensive in China than they should be. Chinese goods in America are cheaper.
Grand larceny
Meanwhile, about 90 percent of the American films, videos and CDs that are sold in China are counterfeit. China refuses to meet its obligation to respect intellectual property rights.
One of the most glaring examples of Chinese theft involves an Ohio company, Gorman-Rupp Co. of Mansfield, a designer and maker of industrial pumps since 1933. A Chinese company not only produces pumps using Gorman-Rupp's specifications, but it copied the company's product manuals, even using the Gorman-Rupp logo.
These abuses are not secrets. Yet, as Voinovich said on the Senate floor, "When it comes to trade, China is the elephant in the room that everyone is afraid to acknowledge because they fear it will rear its ugly head."
President Bush must realize that American voters, especially those in battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are losing a disproportionate share of manufacturing jobs to China, can get just as ugly as a Chinese trade negotiator.
It is time for the United States to get tough with China. What do we have to lose? We're already losing $1 million every four minutes, almost $15 million every hour, more than $330 million a day.