Lawmakers confident on China currency measure, despite hurdles

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, and other lawmakers at a Thursday news conference said China undervalued its currency anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent, giving it an unfair trade advantage. 

“Now, we want China to be a good friend and a good trading partner,” said Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), who co-sponsored the measure the House passed last year with Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). “But friendship must be based upon trust, not exploitation. Where friendship has failed, where contracts have failed, trade enforcement must prevail.”

The lawmakers also said they were confident that they would be able to get the measure through Congress and to President Obama’s desk. (Last year’s legislation never received a vote in the Senate.)

But while Levin said that the measure being reintroduced had already attracted roughly 100 sponsors in the House, the measure does have hurdles to overcome. For instance, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has indicated that the bill is not one of his priorities.

“He, like many Members, remains frustrated about China’s currency policy but does not believe it should be a defining issue in U.S.-China relations,” a spokesman for Republicans on the Ways and Means panel said. 

The Treasury Department, in a semi-annual report to Congress delivered last week, also decided not to label China a currency manipulator. But Brown, who plans on introducing the Senate version of the currency legislation with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), said he had gotten an encouraging response from Treasury on the measure.

Brown also said that he believed he could support a China currency measure being pushed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democratic senators (and vice versa), but that he thought this legislation had the best chance of being signed into law. 

“We’re confident we have well over 60 votes to pass this,” Brown said. “And we’re confident the House can do again what it did.”

Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Mike Michaud (D-Maine) are among the other backers of the measure.