On "Forbes Newsroom," Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC), member of the For Country Caucus, discussed his bill, the Military Installation Retail Security Act, and where he sees President Trump's negotiations with other nations on tariffs heading next.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.
00:07Joining me now is Congressman Pat Harrigan, member of the four-country caucus.
00:11Congressman, thank you so much for joining me.
00:13Brimi, thanks for having me. Good to be with you today.
00:16It is good to be with you, especially news just broke a little less than an hour ago,
00:20so we have a wide-ranging conversation in store. But before we get to that,
00:24I do want to talk about some legislation that you introduced earlier this month.
00:28It would prohibit businesses owned by certain foreign adversaries from operating on U.S. military
00:33bases. To start off the conversation, can you talk to us about the inspiration behind the legislation?
00:40I think everybody knows broadly we've been trying very hard in Congress to find a way to prohibit
00:45our adversaries, including the Chinese Communist Party, from purchasing land around our military
00:51bases. What we have overlooked is where they are already operating on our military bases,
00:57and that's actually the point of the Military Installation Retail Security Act,
01:01which is taking any country or any company that is owned by a foreign adversarial nation,
01:08whether that's China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, and making sure that they cannot operate
01:13from our military bases. It seems like common sense, but unfortunately this is something that
01:19was overlooked in our government, and we are overlooking it no longer.
01:22We are going to take a company that we identified that's wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party,
01:27that's GNC, the supplement company, and we are going to remove them from our military bases.
01:32You're saying that this was overlooked. I mean, how did this come to your attention? Talk to us about
01:37that.
01:38Well, someone came to our office and actually said that a good portion of the product that GNC sells
01:43is manufactured in China. And so we started to look into that, but through that investigation
01:48process and the due diligence, we actually discovered that GNC is owned by a company called
01:53Harbin Pharmaceuticals, which is a company that's wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party.
01:59How this actually happened and how it played out at 83 different retail locations on our military
02:05installations is actually just kind of an exploitation of a whole that was in our system.
02:11GNC got onto our military bases as a wholly owned U.S. company. Then in 2018,
02:16it sold 40% of its company, a minority stake, to Harbin Pharmaceuticals. In 2020,
02:23GNC actually went bankrupt and Harbin bought the remaining 60% out of the bankruptcy process.
02:29There was no review or oversight with respect to a Chinese Communist Party-owned company
02:36operating on our military bases because when the initial sweep was done, it was an American-owned
02:42company. We're fixing that through the Military Installation Retail Security Act with respect to GNC,
02:48but we are also going to force base concessions and AFES to do a review of all of the concession
02:57contractors that are underneath their purview to make sure that we don't have anyone else besides GNC
03:03that fits into this category. So there are over, from what you're saying, over 80 different GNC
03:09locations on different military bases across the U.S. What concerns do you have specifically about
03:15GNC? Is there any indication that the CCP is infiltrating the military bases through the GNC
03:21locations, or is this more of a preemptive measure?
03:24It's the bottom line. GNC says that information is not being transmitted back to China,
03:30but this is very similar to the argument that TikTok is making, effectively asking the folks
03:37in the United States to just trust them, that they have our best interests in mind. I think that's a
03:43bridge too far when we're talking about our military service members, particularly as I was at Fort Bragg
03:49this weekend. There's actually four different locations where GNC is operating on Fort Bragg,
03:54and Fort Bragg, as many people know, is home to our special operations forces. Some of them roast
03:59elite special operators, our base down at Fort Bragg. So just the access and the placement,
04:06the availability and potentiality to abuse the information of our service members and use that
04:13for personal or intelligence or somehow any type of state action as they decide to build targets in
04:20this country. It just seems like a bridge too far. I think we all are free and fair marketers in this
04:27country. You have the right to sell to whoever you want to in this country. But I think that it just
04:34goes beyond common sense that if you sell to the Chinese Communist Party, that you're still allowed to
04:40operate on a military basis. I think that's just more risk than we can accept here, Brittany.
04:45You alluded to it, but I do want to read what GNC CEO Michael Costello did say, according to Bloomberg.
04:52They're reporting he said this, quote, our Chinese ownership sees no personal information. And in fact,
04:57they have zero access to our data and our networks. And he also added this, nothing gets transferred to
05:02China in terms of personal information or other data. Do you not believe that? Or you're saying,
05:07hey, it is not even worth the risk. It's not even worth the risk. I mean, look, when they're telling
05:12the American people, our Chinese ownership takes your privacy very seriously. I don't think that we
05:19can take that seriously as someone that is operating on our military bases with access to our military
05:25personnel. That's just the bridge too far. We are not about, you know, allowing folks to take
05:32advantage, particularly our adversaries to take care, to take advantage of our country, let alone
05:38our troops on our own military bases. GNC needs to leave our military installations.
05:43What's interesting is you started this conversation by saying this was overlooked. Are there any other
05:49retailers from foreign adversaries like China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea that have companies that
05:55are operating on military bases aside from GNC? We don't know. And that's actually part of what the
06:01Military Installation Retail Security Act is going to study. It's going to force Department of Defense
06:07to study this and say, okay, hey, let's do a big, huge sweep of all of our contracts, all of our
06:13contractors, and make sure that they don't have foreign adversarial ties to countries that have
06:19intentions that are completely averse to ours so that they do not and don't have the access and
06:25placement to take, you know, negative actions against our country and against our service
06:31members. It seems like a pretty common sense approach to me. Congressman, I feel really lucky
06:36in my conversations with members like yourself of the Four Country Caucus. It's a bipartisan group of
06:42members of Congress who are veterans. Do you have bipartisan support with this legislation,
06:48especially when it comes to that caucus?
06:50So we are actually pursuing it right now. All of the feedback that we've had so far is completely
06:55universal. This is something that we actually just put in and filed independently because the
07:02likely vehicle for this is actually just to go into the National Defense Authorization Act,
07:07which is the big, huge document that controls our nation's defense spending every year. And so that
07:15would end up going in, it would get included in the NDAA. This could absolutely be a standalone suspension
07:21bill where we suspend the rules and take it directly to the floor because it should have such bipartisan
07:28support. This is a 90 percent issue. I think everybody takes the security of our troops very,
07:35very seriously. And so far, we've had nothing but positive feedback about what we've discovered and
07:41what we've decided to do about it. Congressman, I would love to have you back on. And as the bill
07:45develops and as there are more action on this, I would love to have you on and talk about it. I do
07:51now want to make a bit of a left turn and talk about some breaking news. President Trump and his
07:56stunning reversal announced on the same day that they went into effect a 90 day pause on all tariffs
08:01except on China. He ratcheted those up to 125 percent on Chinese imports. So I do want to get to the
08:08escalation when it comes to China in a second. But what do you think about the 90 day pause?
08:12I think this is indicative that President Trump is achieving what he set out to achieve.
08:17I think that there's no question. There's been wide reporting that over 70 countries that were
08:22tariffed have called President Trump, have engaged in multiple discussions with his administration
08:28about lowering the barriers to American exports that we don't have in this country with respect to
08:35their imports. And so President Trump's entire design throughout this changing of the
08:42economic process of how trade is going to be conducted moving forward is designed to level
08:47the playing field so that foreign countries respect their ability to trade with us as much as we've
08:53respected their ability, our ability to trade with them over the last 40 years that's had
09:00very demonstrable pernicious effects on our middle class, particularly our manufacturing middle
09:07class. I think it's we well know at this point between 2001 and 2018, America lost 3.7 million jobs
09:17just to our trade deficit alone. Seventy five percent of those job losses came from the manufacturing
09:23sector. We have got to reverse this curse of our country's inability to manufacture. I think President
09:30Trump has made strong progress towards achieving that goal. And that's why you are seeing this pause
09:37at this time. The the market was very happy at this pause. Both the Dow Jones and Nasdaq both jumped
09:44a thousand points after President Trump announced the pause. But since Liberation Day, global markets have
09:50lost trillions. Fears of a recession really ratcheted up and stocks plunged. As of now, what what did the
09:57president achieve from this? I mean, what did other countries that we know right now? What did they come
10:02to the table with? Are there any concessions that we see as of now? Well, from what we've seen from
10:08the reporting that has played out over the last week, all these different countries are coming to
10:12the table like Israel and Argentina, Cambodia and Vietnam. And they're saying, look, we want a zero zero
10:19relationship with the United States. You all treated us so well. We're going to start now treating your
10:24companies well and give them the ability to export from the United States to our country. And that's
10:31what President Trump wanted. Right. That gives our manufacturing sector actual power on the global
10:38playing field of trade that we have not had for 40 years as really poor trade policy has effectively
10:45sold out our manufacturing industry to foreign countries that used low labor rates, artificially low
10:52labor rates in many cases because their industries are subsidized by their governments or their
10:57currencies are manipulated. And coming down to a zero zero, that's the fair trade that President Trump
11:04has been looking for. And do you think we will see get him writing that zero zero from a slew of
11:10countries? I mean, will we get that from those some 75 or 70 countries that have called to the White House
11:15already, according to the Trump administration? I think that we're absolutely on pace to get that.
11:21Certainly, it's been reported that we are getting that with a number of countries. And I think that
11:26President Trump isn't going to let us put off the gas with these other countries unless they do that.
11:32I think he's very clearly show that he is willing to take this a lot farther than people anticipated
11:40than you would and a much, much farther than foreign governments, particularly our adversaries,
11:45thought that he would. I think China is getting that message absolutely loud and clear,
11:49as they have not come to the table in good faith. They have simply retaliated.
11:54And President Trump's not going to put up with that. And so in addition to putting a pause on
11:59these tariffs, he also put a hundred percent, 125 percent tariff on China, not just a hundred and
12:05four percent tariff like it was yesterday. And that's in response to China not coming to the
12:12table in good faith. As we know, they are our greatest adversary. They are the greatest
12:16currency manipulator in the world. They have truly put barrier after barrier up in front of American
12:23companies, preventing them from doing business in China. We have not done the same thing with
12:27preventing China from doing business in the United States. It's about darn time that they actually
12:32start showing us some respect. And President Trump is demanding that.
12:36In this escalation with China, you're seeing this tit for tat. Like you said, President Trump did
12:41announce that 125 percent tariff escalation after China announced their retaliation. When you're
12:48seeing this, won't that hurt the American consumer? Won't that hurt small businesses in America,
12:53at least in the short term?
12:54No, what's what's really hurt America is 40 years of terrible trade policy that sold high-skilled,
13:02high-paying jobs out to foreign countries like China that do not share our values. And in exchange,
13:08we got low cost of goods and unskilled work that doesn't pay very much in this country. It has
13:16absolutely hollowed out our middle class. It has destroyed our manufacturing middle class.
13:22That has taken 40 years to get to where we are right now. And that middle class, that manufacturing
13:29middle class, finally has a president that's willing to stand up for them and rewrite the rules of the
13:35game so that they have the conditions set for them to be successful in the United States again. And I think
13:41that's exactly what is happening through this process.
13:44Congressman, earlier this week, one of your Republican colleagues, Congressman Don Bacon, he introduced
13:49bipartisan legislation, the Trade Review Act of 2025, that would give Congress more power when it comes
13:55to tariffs. Is this something you support? Because this is what he said. The Constitution makes it very
14:00clear Congress has control of taxes. And let's be candid, tariffs are a tax.
14:06Well, look, the Constitution does make it clear. However, we also have the ability to delegate that
14:12authority. And in this regard, Congress has done that. We have deferred to the President of the United
14:19States. And I wholeheartedly agree with the plan that he has charted. This is 100% the most productive
14:29thing that any president has done for the American middle class in 40 years. There's absolutely no
14:36question about it. I am not going to be one that stands in the way of protecting our manufacturing middle
14:42class, making sure that we reshore American manufacturing. Because look, at the end of the
14:46day, Brittany, if we cannot produce things in this country, we are worthless, truly worthless,
14:53and we are incapable of defending ourselves. And so I think that what has developed over the last week
14:59and a half, you're going to start to see the payoff of that really tough action that President Trump took
15:06in the form of increased opportunity for American manufacturing, as well as American exports.
15:13Do you think, though, I know you're very supportive of this, but do you think that is the right way to
15:17negotiate? I mean, I was talking to economists as earlier as this as this morning, right before
15:22the reversal, and they were calling this a tariff induced recession. That's where we were hurtling
15:27towards. You saw the markets really plunge and nosedive. You saw global markets lose trillions.
15:32Is that the way to negotiate? If people paid any attention to what happened in my district over
15:38the last 30 years, as American manufacturing was systematically hollowed out because business
15:44owners were incentivized to cut all of their American labor and send it all overseas because
15:49they could bring it back into this country just a little bit cheaper. What that did is that created
15:55a massive debt crisis for our middle class because they weren't seeing those high paying wages that
16:02they were seeing in the past. They were not being rewarded for their labor of high skill. Those high
16:07skilled jobs turned into low skilled stocking jobs that paid very little or stocking our Walmart shelves
16:15across the country. That is actually where the pernicious effect has been building over the last
16:2040 years. And the fact that we actually have now someone and a policy that is very clear about who it's
16:28prioritizing. It is prioritizing the American middle class and America's ability to produce
16:34things in this country that, if achieved, and I believe President Trump is achieving it, will set the
16:41conditions for this country's stock market to absolutely flourish like it never has before.
16:48And so look, the market's very pliable, right? The market's responding in the very short term
16:54to uncertainties about how the rules of the game are going to be played moving forward.
17:00As that clarity comes into focus, the market's going to bounce back. And if the conditions are
17:06better for our economy to be to be more successful when this is done, people are going to be thanking
17:12President Trump. And that's exactly what I think they're going to be doing.
17:15Congressman, I really appreciate the conversation today. I hope we can have plenty more of them.
17:20Congressman, thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome back anytime.
17:23Congressman, hey, thanks for having me. I look forward to the next time.