Ohio's U.S. Sen. Rob Portman says he's going to keep trying next week to address currency manipulation in a trade bill—despite criticism from conservatives. For Ohio Public Radio, WKSU's M.L. Schutlze reports.
The GOP senator lost his fight this week in the Senate finance committee, which approved the bill to streamline passage of global trade deals.
Portman wants trade agreements to penalize countries that keep their currencies artificially low, which keeps their export-prices artificially low.
"If people believe that currency manipulation is bad, and I believe that's a broad consensus, then we've got to do something about it," Portman said in a weekly conference call with reporters. "So I'm going to continue to fight for fairness for Ohio workers."
But Portman, a former U.S. trade representative, says overall he thinks new trade deals would be good for the U.S. economy, and that currency manipulation is not a dealbreaker for him.
Ohio's other senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, says trade deals have hurt U.S. workers over the last three decades, and that's one reason he opposes this one.