Rep. Nunes Appointed Chairman of Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade

Today, my office issued the following press release: 

Washington, D.C. – Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) today was appointed by the House Ways and Means Committee as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Trade.  

“It’s an honor to have been given this responsibility at a time when expanding trade is one of the vital ways to improve our sluggish economy,” said Rep. Nunes.

The Ways and Means Committee has jurisdiction over taxes, international trade, Social Security, Medicare, and various welfare programs, among other areas. The jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Trade includes tariffs, import and export policies, customs, international trade rules, and commodity agreements.

“During his tenure on the Committee, Rep. Nunes has been a key player in developing economic policies that help create more jobs in this country,” declared Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp. “In his new role as Trade Subcommittee Chairman, his expertise will be critical to creating new opportunities to sell American-made goods and services around the globe while holding our competitors accountable. I look forward to working closely with him to expand America’s share of the global marketplace.”

Rep. Nunes identified progress toward a U.S.-EU free trade agreement and the expansion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as priorities for his tenure as Chairman of the Trade Subcommittee. “Boosting U.S. participation in free and fair trade will benefit both the United States and our trading partners,” he said. “It will open new opportunities to promote economic growth for my constituents in California’s San Joaquin Valley, as well as for the agriculture, manufacturing, and service industries throughout America.”

Congressman Nunes, who represents parts of Tulare and Fresno Counties, also serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He was first elected to Congress in 2002.

A Visit to Boomtown

What will pull our economy into recovery? Contrary to the Obama administration’s dreamy pronouncements, it’s not windmills, solar panels, or other forms of “clean energy.” These heavily subsidized industries may eventually produce abundant energy, but that day is far in the future. For now, the 5 million “green-collar jobs” that Obama promised have not materialized, and the million electric cars he vowed to put on the roads are rarely seen.

What’s going to spark our economic recovery is traditional energy – that is, the proven energy sources that transformed America into an industrial powerhouse. As I explained on the John Batchelor show (listen here), I just returned from a trip to Williston, where I saw how oil drilling in the Bakken Formation - which stretches across parts of North Dakota, Montana, and southern Canada – has turned a sleepy North Dakota town into a bustling city. In Williston, the biggest employment problem is that they can’t get enough workers there fast enough to fill all the available jobs. Work on oil rigs often starts at $100,000 a year, and many other jobs offer higher salaries than I’ve seen anywhere else for comparable positions. Housing prices are skyrocketing, and the physical infrastructure is developing at a breakneck pace – the place is an absolute boomtown.




Williston, ND


This is all enabled by horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracking, and other advances in drilling technology and methods. These innovations have helped boost U.S. oil output by 7 percent this year, the biggest jump since 1951. As the AP reports, “U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer.” Furthermore, “Increased drilling is driving economic growth in states such as North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana and Texas, all of which have unemployment rates far below the national average of 7.8 percent. North Dakota is at 3 percent; Oklahoma, 5.2.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal finds that America’s recent surge in natural gas production is boosting our manufacturing sector. According to the Journal, “Economists at Citigroup Inc. earlier this year estimated that increased domestic oil and gas production, and the activity that flows from it, would create up to 3.6 million new jobs by 2020 and boost annual economic output by between 2% and 3.3%.”

This boom in oil and gas production is occurring almost entirely on private lands. That’s unsurprising – through its veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, its lavish funding of failing green energy schemes, the thickets of regulation it lays upon oil and gas drillers, and countless other incomprehensible decisions, the Obama administration has repeatedly shown a bizarre hostility to traditional energy.  

As usual, we have to rely on the private sector. America could become the world’s indispensable energy producer, and hundreds – maybe even thousands – of booming towns like Williston could pop up across the nation – if the government will just stay out of the way.

Kickstarting the economy through business tax reform

Tinkering with tax rates on business is not enough; we need to replace the entire business tax code with a new system that dramatically boosts economic growth. My proposal for a business tax overhaul appears in the Washington Post today.

Obama Administration “Resets” Relations with Mexico

Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, is reporting that a massacre by a Mexican drug cartel involved U.S. weapons trafficked to Mexico through the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious gun-walking operation.

Meanwhile, here’s a short analysis by the Heritage Foundation of my suggestion in National Review Online for redirecting U.S. foreign policy.

Lead from the Front with a New Economic Alliance

U.S. embassies are being torched, U.S. flags are burning, and American diplomats are being murdered in countries that are supposedly our allies. In National Review Online today, I outline an alternative to Obama’s policy of “leading from behind.” Read it here.

Toward a New American Alliance

America has been slow to react as the international order is upended by revolutions in the Middle East and upheavals elsewhere in the world. As we watch passively, the world is being remade to our detriment. It’s time to re-establish America’s global leadership – not by promoting democracy in far-off lands with hostile populations, but by creating a new international alliance in which friendly nations voluntarily bind together through mutually beneficial free trade.   

Toward that end, today I introduced the Economic Freedom Alliance Act in the House of Representatives. The bill would advance global free trade through four measures:

·        The Transatlantic Commerce and Trade Enhancement Act would authorize the U.S. President to conduct negotiations with the European Union toward a comprehensive free trade agreement.

·        The United States-Brazil Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade Act would establish a commission between the United States and Brazil to work toward dismantling mutual trade barriers, promoting commercial opportunities, and in the long-term, establishing free trade between the two nations.

·        The Agriculture Trade Facilitation Act would establish U.S. negotiating objectives for removing improper sanitary and phytosanitary barriers to U.S. agricultural exports.  

·        The Generalized System of Preferences Improvement Act would reform the Generalized System of Preferences so that certain countries with rapidly developing economies will no longer receive trading preferences from the United States while blocking U.S. imports in their own markets. Instead, they will be encouraged to work with the United States to remove trade barriers on both sides.  

Amid the burning American flags and charred U.S. embassies that dot the world landscape today, we should try a new approach. The U.S. is now negotiating a multilateral free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Australia, and seven other nations through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Economic Freedom Alliance Act will expand this effort into the creation of a broad free-trade zone that unites us with peaceful, like-minded allies and sets clear conditions for U.S. friendship.