America Gives More Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Trade is pretty simple. We do it every day, whether you are trading in the old car for a newer car, or whether it is the largest economy in the world trading with the rest of the world. We do it every day.

At the end of the day, what we want is a fair deal. I give you something; the benefit of the bargain is I get something back.

Any country that wants access to our markets needs to play by the rules. We can't allow cheating to hurt our workers, their wages, our businesses, or our economy.

And the American people get it. That is why they are so apprehensive about any trade deal this Congress puts before it, because they want to know, will we lead on their behalf? Or are we going to let the special interests dictate the rules?

Will we retreat from our responsibility to make sure that if some foreign company is going to have access to our markets, they are going to play by the rules?

When I take a look at this trade promotion authority legislation, I ask myself, how can you ever get a good trade deal out of this when the rules are rigged against America?

One simple example. Everyone agrees we have had a bipartisan consensus in this House--more than 230 Members have signed on to a letter in the past saying, We have got to stop countries that manipulate their currency to try to make their products produced by their companies look cheaper than American products.

Yet, this legislation would prohibit us from going after the countries that are cheating to prevent the companies in those countries from cheating. So how are we going to stop the companies that we know are pirating, that are stealing, that are cheating against us, how are we ever going to stop them if the rules require us to go through those countries to try to get those companies to abide by the rules?

When the country is cheating, I guarantee you, the companies are going to cheat. And that is not the way you get foreigners to access our market.

We can do much better. We have to do much better because the American people want us to lead, not retreat.

That is why we should vote this down and get a better deal that the American people know and feel is the right thing for America.

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