Speaker Pelosi on China, Trade Deficits, and Human Rights
June 15th, 2007 by Jesse LeePelosi Says Congress Will Pass a China Currency Bill (Update1)
Mark Drajem, Bloomberg - June 14, 2007
The U.S. Congress will pass a measure to prod China to raise the value of its currency after the U.S. Treasury’s refusal to label the export powerhouse a currency manipulator, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted.
Pelosi, a California Democrat, said today that she has been warning about the U.S. trade deficit with China for the last 17 years and now the impact on U.S. manufacturers from the weak yuan is attracting the attention of her colleagues.
“Congress will step in,” Pelosi said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.”
The article also discusses Speaker Pelosi’s long history of involvement in these issues:
The top Democrat in the House has been a longtime critic of human rights in China, and she demonstrated in Tiananmen Square in 1991, according to the New Republic. In a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi on May 23rd Pelosi raised issues ranging from the value of China’s currency to Chinese complicity in genocide in Darfur to human rights in Tibet, she said in a statement then.
The unhappiness over the weak currency has moved other lawmakers into her camp, Pelosi said today.
“It hasn’t been a central focus for me, but others now are coming forward on it,” Pelosi said. “So I think you will see legislation.”