Bill Text: OR SJM5 | 2013 | Regular Session | Enrolled

Oregon Senate Joint Memorial 5 (Prior Session Legislation)

Bill Title: Urging the Acting Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to investigate the extent of subsidies China grants to Chinese paper manufacturers and the impact Chinese subsidies have on United States paper manufacturers.

Spectrum: Bipartisan Bill

Status: (Passed) 2013-05-21 - Filed With Secretary of State. [SJM5 Detail]

Download: Oregon-2013-SJM5-Enrolled.html



     77th OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2013 Regular Session

                            Enrolled

                     Senate Joint Memorial 5

Sponsored by Senators SHIELDS, BOQUIST, Representatives KENNEMER,
  WITT; Senators BEYER, DEVLIN, JOHNSON, OLSEN, Representatives
  BARTON, BERGER, DEMBROW, ESQUIVEL, HOYLE, REARDON, THATCHER (at
  the request of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper
  Workers and the Carpenters Industrial Council)

To the Honorable Rebecca Blank, Acting Secretary of Commerce, and
  the Honorable Ron Kirk, United States Trade Representative:
  We, your memorialists, the Seventy-seventh Legislative Assembly
of the State of Oregon, in legislative session assembled,
respectfully represent as follows:
  Whereas the United States is home to more than 420 pulp and
paper mills that together employ an estimated 445,000 American
workers; and
  Whereas in recent years, pulp and paper mills based in the
United States, and the well-paying jobs the mills support, have
been put at risk; and
  Whereas in recent years, an estimated 105,000 jobs have
disappeared from the paper and paper products industry, according
to the Pulp and Paper Research Council, leaving families and
communities devastated; and
  Whereas in 2011 alone, the oldest recycled paper mill in the
United States closed in Oregon City, Oregon, and the SP Newsprint
mill in Newberg, Oregon, declared bankruptcy; and
  Whereas the United States International Trade Commission has
recognized, in imposing duties on a number of specific Chinese
products, that large subsidies from provincial and local
governments in China are putting United States manufacturers at a
significant and unfair competitive disadvantage; and
  Whereas the United States is a natural fit for the paper
industry, with more forest cover per capita in the United States
than in China and with cutting-edge industrial technology; and
  Whereas labor costs in the industry in the United States amount
to not more than eight percent of the costs of production,
leaving China little ability to compete on the reduced cost of
labor; and
  Whereas according to Economic Policy Institute estimates, the
Chinese government has made the government's intentions to
subsidize the paper industry explicit in the 11th Five-Year Plan
and elsewhere, and has followed through with direct subsidies to
the paper industry between the years 2002 and 2009 amounting to
$33.1 billion, with related subsidies to electrical production
and to coal; and
  Whereas estimates of subsidies to Chinese recycled paper
producers for recovered paper amounted to $1.7 billion between
2004 and 2008; and
  Whereas additional and more opaque subsidies can also include
low-cost preferential loans from the state-owned banking system;
and
  Whereas the results of these subsidies have included a surge of
paper-product exports from China, with exports to the United
States rising at an annualized growth rate in February 2010 of 22

Enrolled Senate Joint Memorial 5 (SJM 5-INTRO)             Page 1

percent and a rise in the cost of recovered paper, which is the
recycled paper pulp used in finished recycled paper production;
and
  Whereas the subsidies that foster this growth in exports and
rise in prices likely violate the international trade laws and
the World Trade Organization agreements to which China is a
party; now, therefore,

Be It Resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the State of
  Oregon:

  That we, the members of the Seventy-seventh Legislative
Assembly, respectfully request that the Acting Secretary of
Commerce and the United States Trade Representative immediately
open a broad-based investigation of:
  (1) The subsidies that China provides to Chinese pulp and paper
manufacturers;
  (2) The degree to which the subsidies that China provides
violate World Trade Organization agreements to which China is a
party and other trade agreements; and
  (3) How the subsidies affect United States pulp and paper
manufacturers; and be it further
  Resolved, That the Acting Secretary of Commerce and the United
States Trade Representative are respectfully urged to take swift
action to counter unfair Chinese subsidies in order to provide a
level playing field for American pulp and paper manufacturers;
and be it further
  Resolved, That a copy of this memorial shall be sent to the
Acting Secretary of Commerce, to the United States Trade
Representative and to each member of the Oregon Congressional
Delegation.
                         ----------

                                Adopted by Senate March 18, 2013

                               ----------------------------------
                                   Robert Taylor, Secretary of
                                             Senate

                               ----------------------------------
                                  Peter Courtney, President of
                                             Senate

                                  Adopted by House May 16, 2013

                               ----------------------------------
                                  Tina Kotek, Speaker of House

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