When we look at the world right now, we have a unique situation where, though the United States represents only 4 percent of the world's population, we currently consume 20 percent of the world's goods, services, and products. 

In other words, if we are going to have economic growth in the country, we are going to have to open up foreign markets. We are going to have to export, and take advantage of that 96 percent of the world's population that does not reside in the United States. 

When we look at it once again, the recent trade deficit figures just released today show another record trade deficit. There are a lot of issues that contribute to that. Today I would like to talk about just a couple that have to do with our export control policy, the policy of the United States in limiting the number of goods and products that can be exported from this country. 

These are limited in a couple of ways. One of them is through what are called unilateral economic sanctions. That is basically where we as a country decide we disapprove of some action of another country, and then decide that we are not going to allow U.S. businesses to export to them. 

I completely agree that we as a country need to stand up for things like democratic freedoms, religious freedoms, economic freedoms in the rest of the world, and do everything we can to encourage and promote those, but policies of unilateral economic sanctions do not get us there. Basically, all they do is force those countries to buy their goods from some other place. 

The reason for this is the changing economy. As we have all heard, it has become a cliche now, we live in a global economy. What that means is if we attempt to impose our will on another country through unilateral economic sanctions, we will fail. It will not work, because that country can simply go to any one of the other members of this global economy and purchase what they want. All we accomplish in that situation is restricting our own companies' abilities to export. 

Multilateral economic sanctions make a certain amount of sense. If we can get enough of our global partners together, as was in the case in South Africa, as is the case in Iraq, to institute export control policies so that it is not just us alone, the United States, then the policies can work and can exercise some influence to make some changes, as they did in South Africa. 

What I am opposed to is the proliferation of unilateral economic sanctions that do not succeed in their stated goal and harm our economy. There are several bills in Congress right now that will attempt to change that policy. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the House bill, and I think we need to move in that direction. 

I have brought a chart with me to illustrate the point. This chart shows the number of countries in the world that currently have some export controls on them; in other words, the number of countries which U.S. businesses are somehow limited in their ability to export to. We can see that it is a large number of countries, as they are represented in red. They cover a substantial portion of the globe and a substantial number of people; in other words, possible markets that we are losing out on as a country. 

If we could change that policy and open up those markets, it could be a boon to U.S. industry, and I must once again point out these policies have not had much effect on changing the policies of the other countries that we want to see changed. 

So unilateral economic sanctions have reached the point where they do not work. All they are is bad for U.S. companies. If we want to expand and grow, we are going to need access to these markets. We need to make those changes to get there. 

There are a couple of other aspects of our export controls policy right now that are particularly troubling because they focus on technology. In other words, they focus on the highest-growing segment of our economy, and indeed of the world's economy. They are controls on encryption software and on computers. 

Basically, the U.S. has a policy right now that basically looks at technology and says, we need to develop the best technology here in this country, and then for national security reasons, we are going to put our arms around it and prevent the rest of the world from getting it, it will be protecting our national security. 

There are a number of flaws with this theory, but the biggest one I want to point out is, once again, the global economy. There is access to this technology from other countries other than the U.S. We cannot stop that. By implementing these policies, all we are doing is restricting U.S. companies' ability to participate. 

The biggest point I want to make on restrictions of technology, this is not, and I repeat, not a choice between business and national security. If that was the case, absolutely, we would choose national security, end of story. The point is it does not help because these countries access the information elsewhere. 

Take encryption as just one example, a simple software designed to protect programs. We restrict the exportation of top-of-the-line encryption technology, but top-of-the-line encryption technology is available from a number of other countries, and in fact we can download it off the Internet. 

Our restrictions do not prevent these other countries from getting it, they only prevent our countries from being the ones that are able to sell it. In the long run this even harms national security by restricting our ability to develop the next best technology. We need to reexamine our policy of export controls for all of these reasons.