Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140407 :

CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings April 7, 2014

Repercussions to now, to today. Whoo were seeing in this difficult Transpacific Partnership negotiation, fearing we could slip back into the old ways of doing business. I realize, that your job is difficult. You inherited and are negotiating with a lost country s that dont share our values and commitment to High Standard for labor and environment and we saw a breakthrough in the peruvian trade deal. That was, i think, a Pivotal Point for the congress of the United States to have enforcement rules, to have countries countries agree best deal is signed, sealed and delivered they will make some changes and do that in a very transparent way. Countries should be our allies in that fight are nowhere to be found many times, mr. Ambassador. I urge you to stay firm and not go backwards. Mr. Ambassador, im a cochair of the house textile caucus, what is left of the textile industry of the United States of america which weve seen dwindle away in the last 40 years. I would like to thank you for your commitment to the yarn forward rule of origin for textiles and apparel, which as you know is of critical importance to the textile industry in this country. My question today is on Market Access to the most sensitive textile products manufactured here in the United States. Can you assure the members of this committee that your negotiators will seek the longest duty phaseout possible for the most sensitive textile items . Thats a pretty direct question. We dont need a glossary of discussions here. Would you give me an answer . Well, were working very closely with textile and apparel stakeholders to make sure we have a full understanding of what the most sensitive products are and using the tools that you mentioned, the yarn forward, short supply list and staging issues. Were making sure that we strike that right balance between assuring protection for our domestic producers as appropriate and also allowing the importers of apparel as you heard before, folks are concerned about vietnams wanting immediate access and i think that is a serious problem. Do you think thats a hurdle we can get around, get over, et cetera . Well, thats very much part of the current negotiation . But what do you think . Were in the midst of negotiating that with our trading partners. I cant tell you at this point. Are you making a commitment today to this committee you are going to do what the question entails . We are firmly committed to assuring that we have an outcome on textiles and apparel as well as other products frankly that support the maximum number of american jobs in this country and taking into account sensitivities of some of our key sectors. I wanted to highlight a concern about intellectual property. Those decisions in canada, in recent years that go against our Neighbors International commitments. The canadian courts have ruled that certain pharmaceutical patents, including many belonging to companies in my home state of new jersey, invalid do, what i believe to be an inappropriate interpretation of International Patent standards. This is an issue increasing access to medicine to developing countries. Canada is well think. It is an industrialized nation. This policy is designed to benefit their manufacturers at the expense of our own. Mr. Ambassador, we do not need a corporate draft for our trade policies. All right. Time expired. Do you want to respond briefly. On the canadian patent issue this is something were monitoring very closely. It is you now the subject of litigation both in the canadian courts and investor state case but something were monitoring very closely as part of tpp as well. Thank you. Miss black is recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you, ambassador for being here. This is such an important conversation were having here today. I want to go to the issue of intellectual properties which i continue to ask about because i hear so much about that in my own district about our job creators there that do business overseas and how they believe specifically in the asian country s that theres not the respect for the intellectual property. So tpp must contain strong ipr protections to be effective and comprehensive trade agreement. Not only are these protections needed to support millions of jobs here in the United States and significant portion of our exports but there are also encouraging American Innovation and investment. The full spectrum of International Property rights must be covered, including patents, copyrights and trademarks in all types of services muse be adequately addressed including pharmaceuticals. My will it insure that tpp will contain strong and effective ipr similar to that found in our u. S. Law. That is certainly our objective in this negotiation and as i mentioned in my opening remarks, we have millions of americans whose jobs depend on innovation economy, on creativity, on our intellectual Property Rights and whether it is copyright, trademark, side of things or in the pharmaceutical side of the ledger were working to assure the appropriate level of intellectual Property Rights. Very much based on concepts in u. S. Law. So strong copyright protection. Limitations and exceptions consistent with u. S. Practice and on the pharmaceutical side, consistent with the may 10 agreement insuring incentives for innovation and access to medicines by the poor and developing countries. The other issue right along those lines is the issue of crossborder data flows which are critical not just to Service Companies but loss the globalized company in any sector. So respecting the differences of those data privacy approaches in country to country, how can we insure that theres a robust protection of those crossborder data flows . That is a central part of our new approach on the Digital Economy in cpp to try to Reach Agreement around disciplines on regulating the flow of data. Making sure there can be the flee proof data. Dealing the issue of. Servers are not required in particular country to service that market. When we talk about updating our trade agreements for the 21st century and emergence of additional economy is is those trade agreements precisely what were focused on. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you. Mr. Davis. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i do want to commend you for your service to the nation and especially for the outstanding leadership youve provided as chairman of this committee in terms of the way that you facilitated its work. I trust that when you leave congress you will always relish the memory of that. And thank you, mr. Ambassador, for being here. And to you and your staff for the great work that you do. Mr. Ambassador, i come from chicago, illinois. Which has been known as the Candy Capital of the nation. Thousands of jobs in chicago are directly related to the availability of sugar at a competitive price. According to the Commerce Department to date, in in country, weve already lost 127,000 sugarusing jobs since 1997 because of the trade distorting sugar program. Over the last five years, confectioners, bakers, candymakers and other manufacturers, have suffered through the highest sugar prices anyone can remember. All due to a repressive sugar policy. Now that those high prices have brought on greater sugar production in both mexico and the u. S. , and a temporary sugar surplus, big sugar has decided to use more Government Action to eliminate competition. Last friday sugar processors filed antidumping and countervailing duty cases against the impourtation of mexican sugar, allowed under the north american freetrade agreement. Mr. Ambassador, can we count on you to oppose any effort to restrict access to adequate supplies of sugar from mexico or anywhere else that are needed to preserve good manufacturing jobs in the Confectionery Industries in chicago and throughout the nation . Well the andy dumping and countervailing duty case that you mentioned is province of the Commerce Department and the icc. It is actually a quasiadjudicatory process in which usgr nor any other agency is involved. It is being dealt with in a technical way that those two agencies deal with it. Sugar is obviously a very sensitive issue in trait negotiations, as has been and were consulting very closely with stakeholders on the issues around sugar but were not going to do anything through these trade agreement s that will jeopardize or undermine the sugar program. In your view, does this dumping complaint help or hurt our bilateral trading relationship with mexico . This they would buy these cases when they thought there was dumping and countervailing duties. Certainly something that the Mexican Government and mexican stakeholders care a lot about, but it is the province of our industry, any industry, whether it is sugar or steel or any other industry to avail themselves of trade remedies congress has created. As you have indicated there is a long history of trade disputes involving sugar and sweetener trade between the u. S. And mexico. In the past mexico placed restrictions on american exports of highfructose corn sirup. Doctor syrup. Did you share my concern that farmers in illinois and other states could be caught up in another crossborder trade dispute that is not their fault but because of a market distorting sugar subsidies . I certainly hope we could avoid that situation. Well we, thank you, very much. And i thank you for your work. Mr. Chairman i yield back. Thank you. Mr. Young. Mr. Ambassador, thanks so much for being here today. Really do appreciate it. Ill begin by noting my colleague, mr. Griffin of arkansas, was called away to the floor and he just asked that i convey to you, he will be submitting a letter for your conversation pertaining to tpp and japans treatment of rice. Also pertaining to dumping of steel rebar from turkey and mexico. So he will forward to your responses there. Mr. Ambassador, i recently working with several of my colleagues helped launch a caucus related to it. Tip. This is very ttip. This is hope we consummate a agreement between the u. S. And e. U. Were we to do so, it is projected exports from my home state of indiana would increase roughly 33 . There would be net increase of employment up to 13,780 jobs. The largest categories of exports benefit from this agreement we estimate will be pharmaceuticals. So the intellectual property right protections we heard about today is very important to that industry as we work on this agreement. From your perspective, what barriers for ipr intensive trade are most significant as we look at the u. S. And e. U. Negotiations . Perhaps you could cite areas where there coo be some convergence and other areas where harmonization might not be possible. I think one thing to categorize or character is the u. S. Eu relationship is that both of us have strong intellectual Property Rights regimes so we start from a fairly common perspective in that regard. And obviously our innovative and Creative Industries will benefit from that perspective and were trying to Work Together through ttip, the u. S. And the e. U. , to promote strong intellectual property right protections elsewhere around the world as well. As part of ttip we are working to bring our regulatory systems closer together or to bridge divergences in our regulatory systems without reducing, undermining, lowering our health, safety and environmental standards. Neither one of us want to lower our standards. The president spoke quite elegently on at brussels last week. This is not about deregulation. It is about taking two wellregulated markets but market thats are regulated in slightly different ways and those differences create trade barriers and seeing whether we can bridge those trade barriers by further cooperation on the regulatory side and works closely with the ema in europe to determine what areas of cooperation may allow for more interaction with pharmaceuticals and medical devices. So my sense, based on your response which i appreciate that were still teasing out some of those areas, the thorny areas. Areas of common agreement and so forth. Well look forward to staying in touch with that regard. Essentially a Development Program designed to lesser developed countries of africa that expires december of 2015. We have want to make sure the reauthorization occurs in a way that improves ideally upon the existing program. Ustr requested studies from the program and. This committee requested a separate study from gao. Can we agree to share information so that we can Work Together to improve this program . We certainly want to work closely with this committee and others in congress on this issue. We launched a full review of agoa last august precisely to do what you laid out. Assess what worked well, what worked less well. Whats changed in the african economies, whats changed in their relationships with their trading partners and as we seek the seamless renewal of agoa next we are what needs to be done to update it to make sure it is having maximum impact along the lines it was originally designed. We look very much forward to working with you on that. Thank you. Finally i would just build upon representative pascrells comments pertaining to intellectual Property Protection as it relates to canada, particularly important to the pharmaceutical industry and, youll be receiving a letter from representative pascrell and myself along with several other members pertaining to this issue and elevating to special 301 priority watch list in 2014 because of canadas lack of adequate and effective intellectual property right protection. So well look forward to getting your response on that. I appreciate the dialogue today and thank you again for your service. Thank you. Thank you. Miss sanchez. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and id like to begin by adding my voice to that we wish you well. At the risk of my husband taking umbrage, i will say like all good men in my life you are leaving too soon. And whale i say that tongueincheek youre leadership will be missed. Ambassador froman, i want to thank you for joining us today. I have two, i have many questions i would love to ask, two that i would like to get to, so i will jump right in. As you know the United States is the Worlds Largest creator, producer and exporter of copyrighted material and jobs that support industries that are innovative typically are the kinds of jobs that provide benefits to workers and allow somebody to support a family off of the wages from those jobs and innovation. So i think it is incredibly important to not just think about trade generally but to be very specific about making sure that we protect and try to grow jobs in the Innovation Sector because they typically do also include manufacturing jobs with them. Being from Southern California im sure you can appreciate the livelihoods of many Southern Californians are directly impacted when there is lack of respect for u. S. Domestic industries and intellectual property. Some of my colleagues have mentioned canada and india in particular. And i know that the administrations goals have been to achieve quote, unquote, 21st century agreements but the size and the scope of our pending agreements is what concerns me. As members of congress we spend a lot of time, often years and years, crafting federal legislation to try to achieve that goal. And my concern is that in trade agreements like tpp the work that has been done to pass these laws could be undermined if we dont include some kind of incentives and Enforcement Mechanisms for making sure that we are incooperating standards of u. S. Law in those trade agreements. In that same vain, criminal enterprises enable infringement of u. S. Intellectual property which further impacts u. S. And global marketplaces and our workers. So i think youre in a pretty unique position to help address that particular problem by fostering legitimate online commerce. So im just curious how are you going to insure that the 21st century agreements reflect u. S. Law for all industries and insure that those who are intentionally enabling infringement are held liable for their actions. First of all i couldnt agree with you more about the significance of intellectual property and protecting our Creative Industries and not just, i was in los angeles several months ago, and not just for the actors and directors who may participate in this but for the unionized carpenters and engineers working on the sets and its a whole ecosystem there that where we want to make sure theyre getting benefits of their labor and theyre earning the benefits of their labor. That is what were trying to do in tpp, in our intellectual property efforts, on copyright, on come according, on making sure that camcording. Maybe sure there are Enforcement Mechanisms. We have a notorious markets process where we list websites that are notorious for selling pirated material and getting countries to close them down and getting websites themselves to drop the, drop the offending material, the pirated material, and so that is something that we work on both in our negotiations and in our enforcement efforts and it is high priority for us. Thank you. Switching gears rather quickly and if we run out of time i will just ask for your response in writing you testified before this Committee Last year that administration will insure that the jones act is productive under our trade agreements. Recently i heard report has the European Union put forward a draft proposal that would undermine the jones act. Im looking for reassures that nothing has been changed with respect to the commitment you made to the committee and you will continue to jones act and o

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