“While I oppose the Colombia FTA for the same reasons as Congressman Levin, like him, I fully support the Korea and Panama FTAs.
“But what I cannot understand is why we have waited so long to consider the Korea and Panama FTAs -especially Korea.
“The Korea FTA should have been submitted for consideration last February as soon as the ink was dry on the autos deal, along with extensions of the historically bipartisan TAA program and the GSP and APTA preference programs, which never should have expired to begin with.
“While the Korea FTA has languished, the EU’s FTA with Korea has gone into force, hurting U.S. workers, farmers and businesses.
“As a result of the decision to let TAA reforms lapse, trade-impacted workers have suffered.
“And as a result of the failure to extend GSP and ATPA, workers and businesses in the U.S. and in developing countries that rely upon these preferences have struggled.
“Now that these hostage agreements are finally being released, I hope we’ll turn our attention to addressing China’s currency, which is costing the United States one million jobs.
“The Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act deserves an immediate Floor vote. And we need to tackle China’s other job-killing, trade distorting practices- like rare earths export restraints, subsidies, lack of IP enforcement and State Owned Enterprises.
“And it is also time to move the miscellaneous tariff bill, preferences reform legislation and a Customs reauthorization.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues on all of these issues."
