Rep urges legislation on trade with China

U.S. Rep. Phil English says there’s a menu before Congress of acts that fight unfair trade.

STAFF REPORT

WHEATLAND, Pa. — U.S. Rep. Phil English, R-3rd, said Congress has to act to keep China from slipping through trade legislation loopholes to gain unfair advantages against U.S. companies.

English, of Erie, decried Congress’ slow pace in dealing with the issue against the backdrop of Wheatland Tube, a company that fought China’s steel pipe dumping without the help of Congress and won a favorable ruling in June from the International Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

At a gathering there Tuesday, English said he and a handful of other federal legislators are going to push hard for a vote on stronger trade legislation.

English said Congress has to “level the playing field” for American employers.

“If we want to sustain our standard of living, we have to end the bias built into our economy which encourages imports and disadvantages domestic production, including exports,” English said in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Nowhere is this issue more obvious than with our trade relationship with China.”

English said that because of lax enforcement of trade laws and loopholes, China is able to dump goods on the U.S. market at a 40 percent price advantage.

He said the Chinese are able to do it by manipulating their currency so that it matches the dollar. They allowed products to be shipped out at below the cost of raw materials, he said, and were subsidized by their government.

In the last Congress, English managed to push the Trade Rights Enforcement Act, a China-focused trade bill, through the House. It passed in July 2005, but stalled in the Senate.

He said that last week, U.S. Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced H.R. 6530, the Trade Enforcement Act of 2008. It would increase import restrictions, strengthen U.S. trade laws and reduce barriers to exports. The bill fails, though, to address currency manipulation, he said.

He said there are other bills Congress has failed to move on, including the CHINA Act, which hammers illegal imports that benefit from currency manipulation with steep tariffs; the Nonmarket Economy Trade Remedy Act, which removes an impediment that prohibits the U.S. from fighting subsidies in some countries, but not others; the Trade Law Reform Act, which provides a framework for policing the U.S. market on illegal trade; and the American Steel First Act, which would make it a law that U.S. tax dollars be used to buy U.S. products.

Wheatland Tube makes steel pipe for nonresidential construction, including for plumbing, heating electrical conduit, sprinkler products and fence tubing.

Company president Bill Kerins said that it and six other pipe companies filed the trade case in the past year against China for dumping and subsidizing pipe below the cost of raw materials.

The ITC found that there was in fact dumping going on, Kerins said, and imposed tariffs on the Chinese products for the next five years.

English said he and the other legislators are pushing for a vote in September or October.