S.Amdt. 2681

1. Adds TITLE V--MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS at the end of the bill

   Adds a title

   In S. 1637 · Reported to Senate

   (b) Effective Date.--The amendment made by this section shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2003.

   Inserted: TITLE V--MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

   Inserted: SEC. 501. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING NEGOTIATING, IN THE UNITED STATES-THAILAND FREE TRADE AGREEMENT, ACCESS TO THE UNITED STATES AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY.

   Inserted: (a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:

   Inserted: (1) The United States Trade Representative recently announced an intention to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA) with Thailand.

   Inserted: (2) Properly structured FTAs may have important benefits for the United States, and a bilateral free trade agreement program pursued under a coherent policy and strategy may play an important role in United States trade policy.

   Inserted: (3) The global automobile market is subject to inherently multilateral problems that need to be addressed on a multilateral basis, including numerous, widespread, and complex nontariff barriers maintained by major producing countries.

   Inserted: (4) Providing Thailand privileged access to critical segments of the United States automobile market would significantly erode United States leverage to negotiate reductions to global automobile market distortions in multilateral negotiations, because producers from third countries would be able to benefit from the privileged access of Thailand under the FTA.

   Inserted: (5) Thailand is the second largest source of pick-up truck production in the world, with many major automobile manufacturers from outside of Thailand producing pick-up trucks there.

   Inserted: (6) Thailand's Board of Investment has actively been recruiting automobile producers from outside of Thailand, including Japan, South Korea, and India, to produce automobiles in Thailand, and some of these producers have cited Thailand's privileged access to foreign markets through FTAs as a rationale for setting up production in Thailand.

   Inserted: (7) Many of these producers from outside of Thailand have moved their pick-up truck production out of their home countries and into Thailand in order to make Thailand their global pick-up truck production and export bases.

   Inserted: (8) As a result of this activity by automobile producers from outside of Thailand, pick-up truck production in Thailand will soon approach 1,000,000 units annually, and could grow even larger.

   Inserted: (9) Given these facts, if Thailand were given privileged access to critical segments of the United States automobile market in an FTA, it could be used by third-country automobile producers as a backdoor into the United States market; however, Japan, South Korea, India, and other major producing countries would not be required to reduce their tariff and nontariff barriers to United States automobile producers, and in fact the tariff and nontariff barriers maintained by those countries would continue to distort global markets and restrict the access of United States exports to markets in those countries.

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   Inserted: (10) Given that these third-country producers would already have privileged access to the United States market through the United States-Thailand FTA, their home countries would have less incentive to address the inherently multilateral problems in the global automobile market through negotiations on a multilateral basis.

   Inserted: (11) The United States automobile industry is a major driver of the United States economy--accounting annually for between 3 and 4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States, leading all United States industries in annual research and development spending, directly employing over 500,000 highly skilled and efficient workers in jobs that pay on average 60 percent higher than the average United States job, and supporting the jobs of over 7,000,000 other workers--and it has played a critical role in efforts to revive the United States economy.

   Inserted: (b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that negotiations on access to critical segments of the United States automobile market should not take place on a piecemeal basis, but only--

   Inserted: (1) as part of negotiations that include all major automobile producing nations; and

   Inserted: (2) as part of comprehensive negotiations that address both tariff and nontariff barriers specific to the automobile industry, with progress on eliminating tariff barriers explicitly linked to concrete progress on eliminating nontariff barriers.

   Original wording

   At the end of the bill, add the following:

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As printed