Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez speaks at ‘America Wins With Trade’ campaign

Today at the History Center in St. Paul, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) held an event for its campaign “America Wins With Trade.” Speakers included Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, former Chair of the House Rules Committee, Representative David Dreier (R-CA), and Rhett Dawson, President of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI).

The “America Wins With Trade” campaign is aiming to encourage Congress to work on the Panama, South Korea, and Colombia trade agreements. Jason Oxman, CEA’s Senior Vice President of Industry Affairs, said that CEA represents around 2,200 US companies that want their business to grow, and such free trade agreements would enable this to happen.

Rep. Dreier spoke concerning the problems of “raw politics” preventing the trade agreements from being made, even though in the case of Colombia he claimed that many Democratic congressmen did wish to ally with the nation. He said that it was a “tragedy” that bipartisanship had broken down over the issue of trade in Congress, and he called for Democrats to join with Republicans and work for the common interest of American workers and consumers. Dreier struck a political note when asked about the Democratic Presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), saying that he hadn’t heard anything positive from Obama on the issue of trade, and that Republican nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was the only one who “passionately embraced the issue of free trade.”

Secretary Gutierrez, when asked on the importance of free trade agreements to the United States’ world standing, said that “we need to be seen as a reliable partner,” and that the US needs to engage the world and be committed to a free trading system. He made the importance of trade clear when he said that trade made up much of the US’s GDP in the second quarter, and such projects as residential construction have relied on it. In relation to the proposed Colombia trade agreement in particular, Gutierrez stated that Colombia has been a “tremendous ally,” and that it is a mistake not to have a full trade agreement with the nation when such agreements exist with other South American countries like Mexico, Chile, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.