Q: How can international trade help create jobs?
A: By opening markets through trade liberalizing agreements with countries around the globe, we increase the size of our marketplace. And that fosters greater demand for our goods and services, resulting in increased sales for our producers and service suppliers. Expanding production domestically to fill the demand for high-quality American goods and services creates jobs here in the United States because when businesses in the United States sell more of their products and services overseas, they hire more workers to keep up with the demand. Opening up new market opportunities is especially vital for states like Iowa that produce many goods and services for export. For our economy to get back on track by putting people to work, the United States needs to continue to expand access to global markets.
Q: What is Congress doing to open up world markets to create jobs?
A: As former Chairman and current ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees international trade issues, I’ve worked to break down tariff and non-tariff trade barriers and have led congressional efforts to implement bilateral trade agreements with countries like Chile, Singapore, Australia, Morocco, Bahrain, Oman, the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, and Peru. These agreements have demonstrated their value by either resulting in trade deficits becoming trade surpluses or expanding the size of preexisting trade surpluses. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has sidelined pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. That decision is hurting American workers as our trading partners continue to negotiate trade liberalizing agreements among themselves, to the exclusion of the United States. This will cost U.S. producers valuable export opportunities.
For example, no one in Colombia is going to purchase a road grader built in the United States by Caterpillar with Colombia’s 5 percent tariff in place, which adds $15,000 to the price of each road grader, when they can just as easily buy a Canadian-built road grader that doesn’t carry any tariff. This will be the case once Colombia completes implementation of its free trade agreement with Canada. Iowans wouldn’t pay $15,000 more for a similar product, and neither would Colombians. It’s just simple common sense and we need to make sure American workers and companies aren’t getting the short end of the stick because of this administration’s lack of willingness to implement our pending trade agreements.
The independent International Trade Commission has reported that our trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea would likely result in a net increase in American exports and a combined increase in our gross domestic product measured in the billions of dollars. With America’s economy in trouble, there’s no excuse for neglecting these opportunities and handing them over to other countries around the world. I told President Obama during his “Jobs Summit” at the White House that he needs to break the political gridlock over these trade agreements and take immediate action to help American workers. I will continue to fight for American workers and businesses to promote export opportunities and create jobs here at home. I look forward to working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, as well as the President, to make expanded global market access become a reality for U.S. producers and service suppliers.