*"China's Exchange Rate Regime and Its Effects on the U.S. Economy"*

Grant D. Aldonas

Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Administration

Testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services

Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and
Technology

October 1, 2003

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you very much for inviting
me to participate in this hearing to discuss our trade relationship with
China and the Department's role in implementing the President's
Manufacturing Initiative. Both issues are timely and I appreciate your
willingness to focus the Committee's attention on these two
inter-related topics. While I will leave comments related to China's
currency to Under Secretary Taylor, I will focus on the broader market
rigidities that have impact for U.S. manufacturing.

## The Economic Context

Let me start by setting the economic context for discussing both the
health of our manufacturing sector and our trade relationship with
China. I want, first, to underscore the continuing strengths of our
manufacturing sector. We tend to forget that the United States remains
far and away the largest producer and exporter of manufactured goods in
the world. Standing alone, our manufacturing sector would rank as either
the 4^th^ or 5^th^ largest economy in the world. Far from being hollowed
out, our manufacturing sector is, in fact, larger than the entire
economy of China.

In addition, I think it's important to stress that productivity in
manufacturing today is higher than it was even during the late 1990s
when everyone was speaking about a "new economy." Those increases in
productivity, and the policies that we have adopted to reinforce them,
have allowed the United States to reclaim the top spot in the World
Economic Forum's rankings as the most competitive economy in the world.

The productivity numbers are important for another reason that reaches
beyond the current economic prospects of our manufacturers. What they
reinforce is the importance of a healthy manufacturing sector at the
core of our economy. According to Paul Krugman, the noted economist and,
I should add, at times a critic of this Administration, "Productivity
isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A
country's ability to raise its standard of living over time depends
almost entirely on its ability to raise output per worker." What both
the latest statistics and Krugman's comment point out is the
contribution that manufacturing makes to innovation -- innovation that
is key to raising our productivity and the standard of living enjoyed by
all Americans.

Having said that, there is no doubt that our manufacturers face some
very significant economic challenges in today's business environment.
Most importantly, they face continuing pressure on pricing power and
profit margins due to the excess capacity on the market even as the
recovery from the recent recession takes hold. The most recent figures
suggest that the economy grew at a 3.3% rate in the second quarter of
this year and the pace of economic activity appears to have accelerated
since then. Timely fiscal stimulus and management of the money supply
appear to have set the foundations for a solid recovery.

It now appears that manufacturing, after many months of very slow
growth, is beginning to participate in that broader economic recovery.
Durable goods orders have been up generally, although down in August.
And, the Purchasing Manager's Index, a key indicator of future economic
growth, is now consistently above the level that means stronger growth
ahead.

Even on the unemployment front, there are signs of job growth consistent
with a stronger economy. It's probably worth recalling that unemployment
has remained above 6 percent for four months. Not that long ago, that
would have been perceived as relatively low in terms of unemployment.

Having said that, I want to reiterate, as the President has, that the
Administration is committed to working towards an economic climate where
everyone that wants a job has one. And there is an important story to
tell about the unemployment figures in manufacturing. The job losses
began in 2000 when the manufacturing sector entered into a recession
about 10 months earlier than the economy as a whole.

The recession in manufacturing began in 2000, ten months in advance of
the general recession in the economy. The economy was just beginning to
cope with the effect of a sharp drop in business investment as industry
pulled back from a period of heavy investment in technology. Not
surprisingly, most of the job losses in manufacturing came in precisely
those industries -- telecommunications equipment and computing -- that
benefited most from the boom in investment related to the "dot.com
bubble" of the late 1990s.

What has surprised most economists has been the fact that manufacturing
continued to shed jobs deep into the recovery of the economy. As
recently as this past month, manufacturers dropped another 93,000 from
the employment rolls. Employment in manufacturing has been declining for
decades as productivity gains have significantly reduced the number of
man-hours needed to produce a given product. Those gains have averaged
3% or more for the last 15 years. And, employment in manufacturing has
fallen commensurately.

Some share of the recent reduction in manufacturing employment during
the initial stages of the recovery and expansion is directly
attributable to the efforts of manufacturers to cut costs and raise
productivity. Under considerable competitive pressure, American
manufacturers are finding ways to do more with less. And, the labor
market is responding by shifting jobs to other industries.

That said, the more important thing to focus on for purposes of our
discussion today is the link between the competitive pressure that has
driven American manufacturing to pursue those productivity gains and
what is going on in the international environment, particularly with
respect to our trade with China and its emergence from a fully
state-controlled economy to become a major force in manufacturing.

On the international front, one of the most frequently cited statistics
is our trade deficit, which has been growing overall and particularly
with China. Although the trade deficit is often thought of as an
indicator of our competitiveness, and over long periods of time it is
such an indicator, today it is better understood as a measure of the
relative growth in our economy compared to our trading partners. In past
recessions, continuing growth abroad mitigated the effect of the U.S.
recession on our manufacturers. In the most recent recession, that did
not happen. Japan led and Europe followed us into the recession and
neither has yet to climb out to any significant degree.

The data behind the trade deficit bear out the effects of differences in
economic growth rates between economies. While the common perspective is
that the entire deficit is due to an increase in imports, the truth is
that our exports have fallen off far more sharply. That points to the
fact that the economies of both Europe and Japan are stagnant. As former
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put it, "The world economy is flying
on only one engine." That engine happens to be the United States. In
eleven of the last twelve years, US economic growth has outpaced that in
Japan, Germany, and the European Union.

What's more, slow growth among our leading trading partners is not new.
Japan's economy, which still represents close to 2/3 of the gross
domestic product of Asia, has barely grown for a decade. Germany's
economy has not grown appreciably in three years. On top of that, the
rest of Asia, with the notable exception of China, has presented a very
mixed picture in terms of economic growth since the onset of the Asian
financial crisis in 1997. While some economies have recovered, others
have not. And, these are markets that were once among the fastest
growing in the world -- markets that had become significant consumers of
the sorts of advanced technology capital goods that our manufacturers
sell.

What that should tell us, both in terms of the economy as a whole, and
the manufacturing sector in particular, is that perhaps the most
significant single action we could take is to step up encouragement of
our trading partners, particularly Japan and Germany which together make
up 20 percent of the world economy, to jettison their anti-growth
policies and to adopt policies that are designed to boost economic
growth. We need to preach what we practice because the alternative to
growth is always a zero-sum game of dividing up the existing pie and
that leads directly to the sort of strains we are seeing now in our
trade relationships.

## Our Trade Relationship with China

Which leads me to China. In the more than 20 roundtables the Department
held with manufacturers across the country over the past six months,
there was no single country that garnered more attention than our trade
with China and its emergence from state-imposed economic isolation to
become a major center of manufacturing. The Chinese have made
considerable progress over the last two decades in lifting more than 200
million people out of poverty by relying ever more heavily on the market
to direct resources within its economy.

The stakes involved are high. China is our fourth largest trading
partner. Bilateral merchandise trade reached \$147.2 billion in 2002.
Last year, China overtook Japan to become our third largest source of
imports. In July of this year, China surpassed Mexico to become our
second largest source of imports. Our imports from China are more than
five times greater than our exports. The bilateral trade deficit hit
\$103 billion in 2002 and reached \$65 billion in the first seven months
of this year. In addition, China has provided help on a number of fronts
-- from the arms talks with North Korea to the War on Terrorism. China
has helped on the economic front as well. Along with the United States,
China accounts for most of the current growth in the world economy.

The upside is that China's economic policies have brought about a rising
standard of living in China and considerably higher disposable income.
All of that makes China an attractive market for much of what we produce
in the United States.

It is worth noting that since 2001, China has been our fastest growing
export market by far among our top ten trading partners. Our exports to
China surged 19% in 2001, 15% last year, and more than 22% in
January-July even though our exports to the world declined 7%, 5%, and
rose less than 3% during the same respective time periods.

One of the basic reasons for negotiating for 13 years with the Chinese
over their accession to the World Trade Organization was to ensure that
we would knock down the many barriers to entering China's market. On
paper, the accession agreement represents a considerable success. Today,
the tariff rates that China imposes are lower on average than much of
the rest of the developing, and in some instances, the developed world.
In addition, the WTO agreement obliges China to protect the intellectual
property of U.S. manufacturers and service suppliers. The agreement also
eliminated many of the barriers to the free distribution of American
goods throughout the Chinese economy, instead of being beholden to
trading through a Chinese state enterprise as in the past.

The situation facing our manufacturers from a competitive perspective
was far worse prior to China's entry into the WTO. Our manufacturers
lacked access to the Chinese market, but their manufacturers had
relatively free access to ours. In the first year following China's
accession to the WTO, I think both Congress and the President showed an
extraordinary amount of patience as China worked to pass the literally
thousands of new laws needed to bring the country into compliance with
WTO rules.

Now, as we move deeper into the second year of China's participation in
the WTO, we need to see actual enforcement of those laws and basic
compliance with WTO rules in other areas. I know that the President,
Secretary Evans, Ambassador Zoellick, and most recently Secretary Snow
have all made that point vigorously with their counterparts in China.
And, I can attest that, at a working level, the rest of us have taken up
the cause just as vigorously.

But, there is still a very, very long way to go. We have considerable
challenges in terms of WTO compliance, particularly in areas like the
protection of intellectual property that represents the key U.S.
competitive edge in many manufacturing industries. In fact, no country
raised more attention as a source of concern than China during the
roundtable discussions. Our manufacturers complained about rampant
piracy of intellectual property; forced transfer of technology from
firms launching joint ventures in China; a broad range of trade
barriers; and capital markets that are largely insulated from
free-market pressures. We also heard rising concerns about the
timeliness and direction of China's implementation of its WTO
commitments in areas such as transparency, IPR protection, trading
rights and distribution services, agriculture, and financial services.

Fundamentally, China's change from a non-market economy to one that
operates fully on market principles is incomplete. Although the Chinese
often make the case that they are a market economy because they want the
benefits that designation would yield under our antidumping laws, the
simple fact is that many of the main drivers of the Chinese economy
remain in state hands. Whereas U.S. companies face continuing pressure
from our capital markets to turn a profit, that pressure simply does not
exist in many cases in China.

In one sense, this problem is not new. American firms have seen the same
pattern in other Asian markets for years. Even the 1997 financial crisis
has not weaned industries or governments from those unhealthy practices
-- witness Korea's continuing support for the Hynix semiconductor
operations, a company that was otherwise headed for liquidation.

I recognize that many commentators see a demand for a "level playing
field" as a demand for protection, but that is not always, or even
usually the case. Most manufacturers I have spoken with over the last
six months didn't want protection; they wanted the unfair trade
practices that rigged the game against them eliminated. A good example
is the forest products industry, which has an enormous fight with Canada
over subsidies. In the context of our roundtable on forest products
manufacturing their principal request was for the President to negotiate
the elimination of the barriers they faced abroad and the subsidies they
faced in terms of competition from imports.

The same held true for most manufacturers with whom we discussed China.
There was a strong recognition that we were better off in a world in
which the rules were observed and the competition was fair, than a world
segmented by trade barriers which would mean less trade and slower
economic growth for all.

At the same time, I also must stress that there are significant parts of
our manufacturing sector that are under extraordinary pressure to adjust
to new levels of competition from imports, particularly from China.
Industries like textiles and apparel in the south and tool and die in
the Northeast and Midwest offer examples of the sorts of pressures our
manufacturers face. Both the challenges and the pain felt in many
communities are very real.

In the case of textiles and apparel, the challenges are particularly
intense because the industry is emerging from a 40-year period when it
was protected by quotas on imports of competing material and clothing.
As a consequence, the industry remains highly fragmented and is being
forced to go through, all at one time, the adjustment and consolidation
that most U.S. industries went through in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the last round of world trade negotiations, President Clinton agreed
to phase out the quota system that had protected the textile industry.
Most of the truly sensitive items from the perspective of U.S. industry
were given the longest phase-outs. But, the quotas will come to an end
on January 1, 2005, and that will mean still stronger competition from
imports.

What is not generally understood is that most of the sharp increase in
Chinese imports has come at the expense of our other trading partners.
As new products have come free of quota arrangements, retailers no
longer face the need to source products from multiple countries.
Instead, much of what was previously shipped to the United States from
other Asian countries now comes to us from China. But, that has not
meant less pressure on U.S. manufacturers in terms of price competition.

While the argument most frequently raised about China by commentators
seems to be the difference in wage rates, most of my conversations with
manufacturers, particularly in textiles, suggested other reasons for
increased Chinese competition. What is not often understood is that,
today, the textile industry is actually very high tech. There is very
little labor involved in many products that come out of the industry and
wages are a relatively small portion of the total cost of production
except in the case of products that require considerable hand stitching.

The truth of that statement was brought home to me in a conversation
with a North Carolina manufacturer of textile products used in the
luggage industry. Most bags today are made with some form of rip-stop
material, none of which is hand sewn. Nor is the frame of most roll-on
bags manufactured by hand. Yet, the North Carolina manufacturer showed
me 5 suitcases, one nesting inside the other, that sold for a total
price -- delivered from China -- of under \$30. In other words, the
total cost of the five bags was below the North Carolina manufacturer's
cost of materials alone.

The point to that story is simply that it is not wages alone that
allowed the Chinese manufacturer to sell the 5 pieces of luggage for a
delivered price of less that \$30. The cost of most of the materials is
determined in world markets, so if the Chinese economy were open to
international trade and competition, then the Chinese manufacturer's
materials costs would be comparable to that of the U.S. costs. This
means that to get the delivered price down to below \$30 there must be a
very large amount of government subsidy, express or implied, to the
manufacturer -- a subsidy that can take the form of an outright cash
grant to the exporter, but more often will take the indirect form of
tariff protection against competition, the forgiveness or rebate of
taxes, or the continuing extension of credit to uncreditworthy
enterprises.

In my view, although the textile industry is commonly criticized for
seeking protection based on the past 40 years of quotas, the complaint
that has led the industry to seek safeguards against Chinese imports
stems from a different motive. There is no real argument that the
Chinese market operates fully on a market basis, and the reasons for the
industry's request for help stems from that simple difference between
the pressures they face in our market on a day-to-day basis and the
pressures that their Chinese competition doesn't.

What that also points out is the fact that, in addition to pressing the
Chinese at every opportunity on their compliance with their WTO
commitments, we also have to be extraordinarily vigilant regarding the
injurious effects of other forms of government support for Chinese
industry that are not covered by current WTO rules. Those sorts of
practices require a different type of tool -- one that requires digging
out the facts regarding the underlying competitive differences that our
industry faces in terms of import competition from China.

As I noted above, the textile industry is not alone in facing Chinese
subsidies and protection. Other industries like tool and die face
similar competitive conditions. That is why one of the most
forward-leaning recommendations we intend to make regarding our trade is
the establishment of an office in the Commerce Department the sole
function of which will be to investigate these sorts of practices. When
we find these anti-competitive practices, we will vigorously seek their
elimination by the Chinese and by other trading partners.

The one thing I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the
Committee, is that the Department of Commerce is dedicated to making
sure China does play by the rules. We will vigorously pursue China's
compliance with its WTO commitments and we will enforce our domestic
unfair trade laws rigorously and fairly, as both President Bush and
Secretary Evans have made clear.

# **The Department of Commerce's Role in Trade With China**

Number range CHAPTER

The Department of Commerce, in close coordination with USTR and other
agencies, has adopted an aggressive and multi-pronged approach to ensure
that China honors its WTO commitments and that U.S. companies benefit
from these opportunities. We will target unfair trade practices wherever
they occur. We are exploring the use of new tools to expand our trade
promotion activities in China. We are expanding efforts to engage
Chinese officials to make sure they "get the rules right" as they
continue their enormous task of restructuring their economic system.

The Commerce Department has actively provided WTO-related technical
assistance to China since September 2000, well before China's accession
to the WTO. Initial programs focused on increasing the awareness of
general WTO principles among Chinese government officials. As China
developed an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the WTO system,
our programs have been tailored to more specific areas, such as
standards development and intellectual property right (IPR) protection.
For example, in 2003 Commerce sponsored or coordinated programs on
fertilizer standards, antitrust, government procurement, medical device
regulatory training, and information and communication technologies
standards and conformity assessment.

Despite China's commitments to crack down on rampant piracy, counterfeit
CDs, DVDs, and pharmaceuticals continue to flood the U.S. market. In
addition, piracy and counterfeiting in China has a significant impact on
U.S. intellectual property rights holders in China itself. In fact, the
International Intellectual Property Alliance estimates that business
software, music, movie and entertainment software piracy rates in China
exceed 90%, with damages of \$1.85 billion in 2002. We have raised
specific IPR concerns during our meetings with senior Chinese government
officials and have repeatedly demanded that the Chinese government
uphold its bilateral and multilateral IPR commitments.

Through the annual Special 301 process, we scrutinize China\'s IPR
conditions in close coordination with our colleagues in other agencies.
To make sure that China has the tools to implement its commitments, we
have organized a series of seminars with Chinese officials. Programs in
development for later this year include a WTO pharmaceutical regulatory
seminar and anti-counterfeit training, and IPR criminal & border
enforcement seminars. We have worked on these programs on an intra and
inter agency basis, using the resources of US Patent and Trademark
Office, Department of Justice and other agencies. We think China can and
should do better in these areas. We continue to press for progress.

However, keeping our focus on China's WTO implementation and the
country's other trade practices is only part of the solution. We must
continue to enhance the ability of U.S. businesses to compete in China.
We are increasing our efforts to ensure that U.S.-developed technical
standards are accepted in China just as they are throughout the world.
We are launching "Doing Business in China" seminars in cities across the
country to address concerns about the Chinese market from small and
medium-sized businesses. We are exploring ways to develop more trade
leads in China and to provide even more targeted information on
opportunities in China for companies in the U.S.

Combined with these domestic efforts, we regularly engage Chinese
government officials to ensure trade agreement compliance and market
access for our products and services. Secretary Evans will visit China
in October to advance U.S. interests and advocate for a level playing
field in our economic relations with China. We will have another
opportunity to raise outstanding issues during the 15^th^ U.S.‑China
Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) to be held in Washington
in early December.

# **The President's Manufacturing Initiative**

With that, I would like to turn to the topic of the President's
Manufacturing Initiative. In March of this year, during Manufacturing
Week, Secretary Evans had the opportunity to speak before the National
Association of Manufacturers in Chicago. At that time, he announced the
President's Manufacturing Initiative.

As a part of that initiative, Secretary Evans directed me to lead a
comprehensive review of the issues influencing long-term competitiveness
of U.S. manufacturing. The central goal of the review is to develop a
strategy to ensure that government is fostering an environment that
promotes a dynamic manufacturing industry. The review will conclude with
the release of a report later this fall.

The Commerce Department's senior management, including Secretary Evans
and Deputy Secretary Bodman, all pitched in. We held roundtable
discussions with manufacturers in the aerospace, auto, semiconductor,
and pharmaceutical sectors, among others, in more than 20 cities across
the United States -- from Manchester, New Hampshire to Columbus, Ohio,
to Detroit to Los Angeles -- to develop the report and recommendations.

What we heard from manufacturers in terms of the challenges they face
was significant. While the international competition is what has
garnered most of the attention in the press, by far the greater weight
of the manufacturers' comments focused on domestic issues -- what I call
"keeping our side of the street clean." What I mean by that is simply
paying attention to the needs of our manufacturers as we develop
legislation or implement regulations. It is the steady accumulation of
multiple burdens, rather than a single cause, that has had the most
severe impact on the competitive environment in which our manufacturers
operate.

The list of issues our manufacturers identified should not surprise
anyone who has taken a serious interest in manufacturing. While our
manufacturers have tightened their belts and raised their productivity
in an effort to remain competitive and, in fact, to succeed in the
day-to-day competition in the marketplace, they have seen that advantage
and the hard-won productivity gains eroded by everything from higher
energy costs to higher medical and pension costs to higher insurance
costs due to a run-away tort system.

Just a few examples might suggest why manufacturers have seen their
costs rise. We heard from manufacturers in New Jersey that 30 cents of
every dollar of revenue went to pay health benefits for employees.
Manufacturers gladly pay for their employee's health benefits because
they see their own interest served by a healthy and motivated workforce,
but if we are serious about manufacturing, we have to be serious about
grappling with the underlying drivers that have created 145 percent
increases in health care insurance costs that obviously are not
sustainable indefinitely.

In Michigan, I met with auto parts suppliers that faced continuing
pressure from the auto companies to lower their prices by 20 percent or
face the prospect that the auto companies would turn to overseas sources
of supply. Much of the concern those parts suppliers reflected the terms
on which they compete with those overseas suppliers, particularly in
China. But the auto parts suppliers knew that the ultimate source of the
problem lay in an auto industry that is grappling with the same sorts of
legacy costs that burdened the steel industry. If we are serious about
manufacturing, then these industries will have to get those financial
obligations under control.

In Columbus, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, and in my hometown of Minneapolis,
Minnesota, I met with manufacturers in the plastics and adhesives
businesses that are heavy users of natural gas. The companies in the
plastics businesses in particular risk seeing whole new markets fall to
their foreign competitors who see lower natural gas prices. If we are
serious about manufacturing, we have to adopt a national energy plan
that will help us access new sources of supply and improved transmission
to reduce the cost of energy to our manufacturers as well as to
consumers.

Another example we heard from virtually every manufacturing trade
association we met with was the need to eliminate the complexity and the
disincentives our tax system creates for investing in manufacturing in
the United States. Any number of issues fall in that category. Take the
bias in the current tax code against equity financing, which raises the
cost of capital, thereby reducing the investment. This bias also
translates into a preference for debt, which yields highly leveraged
companies and a highly leveraged country, all the while encouraging the
worst sorts of gaming as clever tax lawyers try to find ways to take
what is an equity interest and call it debt in order to qualify for an
interest deduction. Taken together, even without cutting rates, reforms
of the tax code could make a profound difference to the relative
attraction of investing in manufacturing in the United States.

But, perhaps the most egregious example comes out of the tort system in
this country. If we are serious about manufacturing, we have to get
serious about reforming the tort system.

One issue, in particular, stood out among the manufacturers' concerns
about the tort system. That was the ongoing asbestos litigation. There,
the continuing litigation has yet to help many individuals who were
harmed by prolonged exposure to asbestos, while, at the same time, the
litigation hangs over virtually all U.S. manufacturing, raising their
insurance costs and dampening their returns.

Manufacturers pointed to declining vocational school programs, declining
enrollments in engineering and the funding of scientific research, all
of which are essential to the productivity gains that keep our
manufacturing sector competitive and keep a skilled workforce employed.

Finally, as I noted above, in addition to keeping our own side of the
street clean, U.S. manufacturers demanded a level playing field. For
most, that translated into a demand that we negotiate down tariff rates
that are higher than ours and break open new markets. Or it translated
into a demand for the enforcement of rules barring the theft of
intellectual property. It translated into a demand for the enforcement
of our unfair trade laws or laws against customs fraud.

What I did not see was an interest in outright protection. Rather, most
manufacturers saw trade as a simple question of equity. If we keep our
markets open to our trading partners goods, they should do the same for
us. But, where our trading partners did not live up to the terms of our
agreements or otherwise heed the rules, our manufacturers expected that
those trading partners should pay a price.

While we are still in the process of finalizing the report and
recommendations across many fronts, Secretary Evans has outlined several
new initiatives in response to the concerns we heard from manufacturers,
particularly the need for a stronger focus within the U.S. government on
manufacturing and the most immediate cases of unfair trade affecting our
manufacturers. The first initiative, announced by the President on Labor
Day, is a new Assistant Secretary of Commerce to serve as the point
person in the Administration and within the U.S. government for
manufacturers and as an effective advocate for the manufacturing
sector's competitiveness. There are many programs within the federal
government that bear on manufacturing, but heretofore there was no one
person or one office responsible for bringing their efforts into a
coherent strategy. The second would call for the creation of Assistant
Secretary for Trade Promotion to boost our exports, particularly to
those markets that our negotiators have recently opened to our trade
like China. And, the third is the establishment of an Unfair Trade
Practices Team to track, detect, and confront unfair competition before
it injures an industry here at home.

We expect the report and the remainder of the recommendations to be out
soon. In addition to moving on the implementation of those
recommendations, we intend to do two things to follow up. The first is
to go back to the manufacturers we visited earlier this year to get
their reaction on what we have suggested and to help us refine our
approach as we move forward. The second is to discuss the next set of
issues we intend to tackle as part of our on-going commitment to support
our manufacturing sector.

That concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to answer any questions
that you, Mr. Chairman, or any other Members of the Committee may have.