James Lankford Presses Trump Treasury Nominee About Tariffs: ‘I’m Not A Big Fan Of Tariffs’

3 days ago

During Thursday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) questioned Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Nominee William Kimmit about President Trump's tariffs.

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Transcript

00:00We're going to have to move on to Senator Langford.

00:04Thank you. Thank you both.

00:06I'm pleased that you're going through this process.

00:08You both have incredibly difficult tasks that you've been

00:10asked by the president to be able to do.

00:12You have great resumes to be able to do and great backgrounds

00:14for this, so I appreciate you stepping up.

00:16It is a tremendous sacrifice for your families

00:18to be able to do this.

00:20Just from the people of Oklahoma, I wanted to say

00:22thank you for going through the process

00:24on this because it's really important.

00:26I do want to make two quick side comments because

00:28it has been interesting to me the last

00:30week or so to hear all the conversation

00:32about tariffs and I'm not a big fan of tariffs.

00:34Tariffs are a good negotiating policy

00:36to me to be able to try to get down

00:38non trade non tariff barriers and other

00:40trade barriers that are out there.

00:42So it's a great negotiating piece.

00:44But at the end of the day, I want to try to get tariffs as low as we

00:46possibly can. But it is interesting

00:48to me that number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle

00:50that have talked about tariffs right now

00:52when the tariffs that were put in place

00:54under the first Trump administration, President

00:56Biden kept all of them.

00:58And apparently thought they were a good idea

01:00and had lots of opportunity to be able to change those.

01:02But instead, he agreed with them.

01:04And so that has been an interesting rewrite

01:06of history of late on this.

01:08But I'm grateful that we've got folks

01:10that are engaging trying to negotiate.

01:12Mr. Kim, I do have a question, though,

01:14about how we're going to deal with some

01:16of the negotiations.

01:18I've got a lot of companies in Oklahoma

01:20that they deal with Chinese or Turkish or Indian

01:24or other challenges that they have

01:26where they're producing a product.

01:28But then other entities will then dump product

01:31into the United States at a much cheaper rate,

01:33often subsidized internationally.

01:36And they dump it into our market

01:38and it drives down the benefit for American companies

01:41or drives them out of business entirely.

01:43And they're trying to survive it.

01:44The challenge is, if you're a really big corporation,

01:47you can fight that.

01:48If you're a small to mid-sized company

01:50and foreign actors are dumping,

01:52we have anti-dumping laws and rules on it.

01:55But it costs those smaller companies

01:57millions of dollars in litigation,

01:59years of time to be able to work through it.

02:02And they've got to be able to actually get the documents

02:05from a foreign company to be able to prove

02:08that the foreign company is actually dumping in.

02:11There's just a lot of barriers in this and a lot of bureaucracy.

02:14My question is, when we can clearly see,

02:16and you're a small to mid-sized company,

02:18you can clearly see there's dumping,

02:20how do we decrease the bureaucracy,

02:22decrease the cost, speed up the process

02:24so we can hold foreign entities accountable

02:26and have American companies

02:28that are standing up for their own rights

02:29and know that an administration

02:31is standing up on their behalf?

02:33Thank you for the question, Senator.

02:36And I agree.

02:38If confirmed, I would be honored to oversee

02:41the Enforcement and Compliance Division at ITA,

02:43which plays a vital role in countering dumping

02:46and countervailing duties.

02:47I think it's important that that unit has the resources

02:53they need to process these matters quickly,

02:56to bring meaningful relief to U.S. industries.

02:59And certainly, I'm aware that there is legislation

03:03that's being contemplated.

03:04The Leveling the Playing Field Act, I think, touches on this.

03:06And I would absolutely welcome engagement with you,

03:08your team, and this committee

03:10on bringing more efficiency to that process

03:13to bring quicker relief

03:14to small and medium-sized businesses in particular.

03:16Well, that would be extremely helpful.

03:18We're glad to be able to partner with you on this.

03:19This matters to the entire country,

03:21every small to medium-sized business.

03:23Quite frankly, your giant corporations,

03:24they'd love to have some help on it as well,

03:26so it's not so much legal cost,

03:28and they can actually get their moment

03:30to be able to actually get it resolved.

03:32But small to medium-sized companies especially,

03:34this is a huge issue.

03:35The other issue is just foreign entities

03:38deliberately mislabeling products that are coming in,

03:41using a different code,

03:43all the different things they're doing,

03:45combining packaging in to try to hide what they're doing,

03:47so they're not paying duties coming in.

03:50Once it's actually discovered,

03:52though it may have just absolutely crushed

03:54an American company in the process

03:56because they've undercut them,

03:57undercut them, undercut them.

03:58The penalty seems to be just back paying the duties,

04:01but the American company is still crushed

04:03in the process on it.

04:04So all those jobs were lost,

04:06all the benefit of it to the United States was lost.

04:09If they win, the American taxpayer still wins back the duties,

04:13but the American worker does not.

04:15How do we fix that?

04:17Thank you for the question, Senator.

04:20I think we certainly, if confirmed,

04:23I would work with CBP to address that issue on the front end

04:26to bring stronger enforcement to prevent that from happening,

04:29but absolutely would look at the circumvention authorities

04:32and all legal authorities that could bring the relief needed,

04:36particularly to a damaged U.S. industry.

04:38And again, I would welcome the opportunity to work with you,

04:40the committee, your staff,

04:42to think of creative legislative solutions to that problem.

04:44Okay, thank you.

04:45I appreciate both of your help in this.

04:47There's a lot that needs to be done.

04:48There's about 70 countries that are all knocking on America's door

04:51right now saying we're ready to negotiate.

04:53I would tell you my farmers and ranchers, my manufacturers,

04:55all of them are eager for that

04:57because they've been blocked out of markets all over the world

04:59and they are eager to be able to get a balanced level playing field

05:03so they can get a chance to be able to compete

05:05and stop having countries get a chance to be able to block them out

05:07from selling their goods and products there.

05:09So I appreciate all the work that you're planning to be able to do

05:12and I look forward to voting for you.

05:13Just very quickly and then I'm going to go to Senator Warren,

05:16but all the tariffs I've talked about are new Trump tariffs

05:22and in fact we just...

James Lankford Presses Trump Treasury Nominee About Tariffs: ‘I’m Not A Big Fan Of Tariffs’

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