And at 9 a.m. on C-SPAN 3, healthcare professionals join lawmakers and government officials to discuss ways to address public health disparities.
Also, at 2.30, White House Chief Economist Jared Bernstein discusses recommendations for tackling key economic challenges while also improving health outcomes, education, and the environment.
You can also watch our live coverage on the C-SPAN Now video app or online at c-SPAN.org.
C-SPAN is your unfiltered view of government.
We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast.
You think this is just a community censor?
No, it's way more than that.
Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lifts so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything.
Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live.
Then, Elizabeth Goyton, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, discusses President-elect Donald Trump's potential use of presidential emergency powers to facilitate mass deportations.
And columnist and economist Peter Morisi on the economic policy approaches of the incoming Trump administration.
Washington Journal is next.
This is the Washington Journal for December 3rd.
Part of President-elect Trump's economic proposals is to impose new tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada, and other countries to achieve policy goals like reducing the number of illicit drugs entering the country, as well as reducing illegal immigration.
Reaction to those proposals has been mixed, especially over concerns about how those new tariffs will affect the cost of goods to the consumer and the impact to the economy overall.
What do you think of this idea of targeting these countries with more tariffs?
Is that something you support?
You can call in our yes line 202748-8000.
If you say no, you don't support these proposals, 202-748-8001, perhaps you are not sure, 202-748-8002.
If you want to express your thoughts on the use of tariffs against these countries and you want to text us those thoughts, 202-748-8003, you can also post on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
CBS in a recent story of theirs looks at the overall reason the president-elect wants to use these tariffs against these other countries.
They write in a recent story that the president-elect is an avowed fan of tariffs.
He's pledging to enact stiff import duties as soon as he's inaugurated in January.
For Mr. Trump, these new levies would both supercharge the trade policies pursued during his first administration and more broadly help the U.S. achieve key economic and social goals.
To that last part of economic and social goals, the president-elect laid out those thoughts in recent posts on Truth Social.
Here's a portion of them, one concerning Mexico and Canada, saying this, as everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through those countries, bringing crime and drugs at levels never seen before.
He goes on to say, as of January 20th, one of my many first executive orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% tariff on all products coming into the United States and its ridiculous open borders.
This tariff will remain in effect until such time as drugs and particlefentanyl and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country.
Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long-simmering problem.
That's one of that.
When it comes to Mexico and Canada, it was more recently that the President-elect said that he plans to put more tariffs on other countries, BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, and other countries.
He wrote this in that recent post saying the idea that these BRIC countries are trying to move away from the dollar while we stand by and watch is over.
We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create new BRICS currencies nor back any other currencies to replace the mighty U.S. dollar, or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling to the wonderful U.S. economy.
That's just some of the president's thinking when it comes to the use of these tariffs.
What do you think of this idea of the president-elect's when it comes to those use against those countries?
If that's something you support, you say yes to that, 2027488,000.
If you say, no, you don't support it, 202-748-8001, perhaps you're not sure.
You can give us your thoughts there, too.
202-748-8002.
You can always text us.
You can post on our social media sites as well on Facebook and on X.
It was recently that the President talked about the overall goals when it comes to placing tariffs, what it would do to the economy.
He did this back in October at the Economic Club in Chicago.
Here are some of the President-elect's thoughts from then.
The higher the tariff, the more likely it is to have them come into the country.
The higher the tariff, the more you're going to put on the value of those goods, the higher people are going to pay in shops.
Ready?
The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory in the United States so it doesn't have to pay the tariff.
That would take many, many years, that would take many years.
In fact, I'll tell you, you know, there's another theory is that the tariff, you make it so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they'll come right away.
When I do the 10%, 10% is really, first of all, 10% when you collect it is hundreds of billions of dollars.
The numbers that you're talking about, all reducing our deficit.
But really, so there's two ways of looking at a tariff.
You can do it as a money-making instrument, or you can do it as something to get the companies.
Now, if you want the companies to come in, the tariff has to be a lot higher than 10% because 10% is not enough.
Guys, they're not going to do it for 10%.
But you make a 50% tariff, they're going to come in.
Again, that's back from October.
The President-elect's thoughts when it comes to tariffs and their use against these countries that he has specified.
That's something you support there, the numbers that you can use.
If you support it, 202-748-8,000.
If you oppose it, 202-748-8001.
Not sure, 202748-8002.
Let's hear from Blake Blake in Kansas, a supporter of this proposal.
Blake, good morning.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I support President Trump with the tariffs.
I think that's a good move in the regard of what our country needs to do to move forward for us.
Why do you say that?
Why do you think that?
Well, I think it's pretty evident.
For so long, we've been focusing our attention on what everybody else is doing, and all of our money has been going to other countries.
And I think that it's time that we focus back on America and keep our jobs, our revenues, and everything congruent with what we have and are doing here.
And this is Otis on our no line when it comes to this idea of tariffs in Florida and Orange Park.
Otis, you're next.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I say no.
Terror is a great idea In certain instances.
But when you blanket it, you're going to hurt us.
Every time you raise the price on anything, the American people pay the cost.
Terrorism is a tax increase.
It's the same thing as when we said you give people how wages to work, the companies are going to raise the price of the products we have to purchase.
So when that happens, everybody suffers.
Only a few people got raises.
I think a lot of people are happy to get $15 an hour.
I'm happy to fuck them.
But you cannot say we're going to raise the tariffs and then what?
We're going to force somebody to come to the United States, bring their businesses back to the United States.
What we're going to force them to do is say, well, tit for tat, you do me, I do you.
And it's going to hurt everybody.
And if you middle class and below, you're going to hurt us really, really bad.
So don't just don't just agree with demand for agreeing with demand.
At least understand what affects you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Otis there in Florida giving us his thoughts why he is against this idea of these tariffs.
The Washington Post recently took a look at some of those goods that might be affected if these tariffs go into place from beef to beer to barley, how Trump's tariff threat could affect your wallet.
In talking about beer, the Post writes this, under the headline, that Mexican beer is actually kind of American saying, here's the thing about U.S.-Mexico trade.
The countries increasingly produce things together, thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Treaty.
Take that Mexican beer.
It might be made with barley from Idaho, Montana, or North Dakota.
Mexico doesn't produce enough of its own barley for its booming cerveza industry.
American farmers have happily watched their total exports of malted barley, one of the main ingredients in beer, roughly triple since 2000 to 318,673 tons last year, a whopping 97% of that went to Mexico.
If Mexican beer in the United States become pricier and sells less, that could wind up hitting barley producers.
There's other things they talk about besides beer in that story, but talks about the possible impacts of these tariffs if they were to go into effect.
Harvey says, not sure about this idea.
He's in Santa Monica, California.
Harvey, tell us why.
Good morning.
Well, about 100 years ago, around the crash in 29, the Smoot-Hawley bill, a tariff was passed within a few months.
And there's questions as to how that stopped growth of the U.S. and around the world.
They said it was maybe 15%, 20% lower GDP or what the trade.
But I heard that from 30%, it's like to 32, it was like 40%.
So there's big questions here.
It has to do with inflation.
And this started 50 years ago with OPEC quadrupling the price of oil.
We see what's happened 50 down in the Middle East now.
And energy inflation is what's firing on.
And that's supposed to be like food and fuels, about 15%, et cetera.
And the equity issues we've got in keeping our democracy right on the other things that are going on, Project 25, getting rid of justice and Education Department changing them and EPA, et cetera.
So we've got to learn from the past and study it.
And apparently, I wasn't aware of that.
We had used tariffs extensively for like 50 or 100 years before going back to the Civil War and stuff before.
Okay.
Harvey there with a bit of history adding to his thoughts this morning.
Let's hear from John.
He's in Ohio on our yes line.
Hi.
Hey, Pedro.
Yeah, this is John from Cleveland area.
Yeah, I support the tariffs.
I hope they work.
Will they?
I don't know.
I think it's going to be tough to make them work because our workforce right now doesn't seem to want to work.
So you can bring these jobs in, you know, and will it work?
No.
I don't think it will.
I want it to work.
My deal is.
Specifically, why do you think they won't work?
Well, where I live, everywhere you go, they're understaffed.
No one's working.
I'm talking particularly fast food places, that type of thing.
Restaurants, they're all understaffed.
What I really wanted to say, though, what I really wanted to say was, you know, General Motors, Buick in particular, I believe they make all their vehicles in China now.
Okay, so that's good.
But my thing with that is: so General Motors is saving money using the China workforce to build their cars, right?
But when you get that Buick over here in the U.S. and they sell it, you're not getting a break on the price.
So where's all that extra money going?
Who's getting it?
You know, the top end's getting it, not the worker.
I worked my whole life, you know, I'll call it in the trenches.
You know, hands and, you know, nails and hammers and screws and drills and saws.
And that's what I did in 45 years.
I just retired.
And, you know, my 401k is really not very well good because I couldn't put enough into it.
Okay.
That's John there in Ohio.
When it comes to other industries taking a look at tariffs, one of the people calling for more, this is highlighted in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the U.S. steel-making industry.
And a story that you can find there by Bob Tita saying that the call for additional tariffs was part of a trade proposal the steel manufacturers group released on Monday.
It said the new duties would boost the domestic steel market and help address trade distorting practices that it believes other countries are conducting.
Economists have said that an aggressive use of tariffs would drive up prices for the consumer items and U.S. prices for durable goods with significant steel content, such as appliance, automobiles, which the caller had mentioned, and farm tractors are already higher as a result of supply chain bottlenecks for materials and components after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additional tariffs on imports would give domestic steel companies more leverage to increase their prices by effectively raising the prices for their foreign competitors' products.
That's in the Wall Street Journal.
This idea of tariffs being placed to specific countries, a proposal by President-elect Trump saying that he'll enact these on the first day.
We're asking your thoughts on the use of tariffs and what you think they would do overall.
Again, if this is something you support, 202748-8000 is the number to call.
202748-8001.
If you say no to this idea, and 202748-8002, if you are not sure, if you can text us and you post on our social media sites as well.
Let's hear from Eric, says he's against this idea.
He's in Maryland.
Hello.
Hello.
You're on.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm 71 years old.
And I remember in junior high school, we had economic courses with an economic book about two inches thick.
Okay.
And in that book, it said it talked about smooth volley tariffs.
And they had a picture of a man with a wheelbarrow full of money and couldn't buy a loaf of bread.
These tariffs and tariffs in general weaken the economics around the world, not just the United States.
I'm talking around the world.
Since everything is interdependent, we should think long and hard about tariffs.
And Smoot Hawley was not just an admiration.
It really affected the economy and made the 1920s crash real and worse.
And, you know, we got to think about this.
I mean, we put a I'm going to call him non-educated, but he's an idiot back in the White House.
So, you know, you can't do this.
You shouldn't do it.
And the economy is working just fine right now.
Okay.
That's Eric there in Maryland mentioning that Smoot Hawley Tariff Act.
ABC News taking a look at that, taking a look at the history, saying that within the months of the stock market crash, President Hoover signed into law the Smoot Hawley Act, a 1930 measure that increased tariffs for a broad swath of imported goods.
In response, several countries imposed retaliatory tariffs, and trade plummeted.
Many economists view the measure as a factor that exacerbated the nation's economic downturn.
It quotes Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, saying a whole generation of Republicans and Democrats after World War II was very much conditioned against tariff hikes because of the experience of the 1930s.
Now we have a new generation of leaders who are much more willing to pull the trigger on higher tariffs.
Again, those are the thoughts of that economist.
We're getting your thoughts as well.
Someone who supports this idea is Bradley there in West Virginia.
Bradley, tell us why.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning there.
I am, I mean, moot my TV there.
You got to me quick.
You said I was 20-something.
I am a Vietnam veteran, and the gentleman out on Wai is 100% right.
General Motors did move to China.
Not only did General Motors, I'm about 100% sure that on the news I seen that Ford took their Lincolns and the Navigators over there.
I don't have a problem.
The problem I have, you move there, you sell them there.
You don't bring them here.
It's against the law to bring them here.
General Electric, guess where they moved to?
Vietnam.
It kills me when I see that because I was an engineer and built better roads, better everything in Vietnam than we had here.
Now they're taking their jobs.
My opinion is, and I said it to C-SPAN years ago, shut the United States down.
I don't care if they've got a tariff or whatever they got.
Shut them down.
You don't make it here.
You don't sell it here.
Well, specifically to tariffs, why do you think it's an effective move then to place these tariffs on these specific countries?
Because put the tariffs on them because, like I say, everything coming in the United States is coming from foreign countries.
Support our country.
They ain't nothing makes me no matter than seeing a veteran's license plate on the back of a foreign piece of junk.
That's what I call it.
The little Buick I bought, I told the dealership the next day, I would have poured five gallons of gas on that thing and burned it if I wouldn't lose $40,000.
I kept the car two weeks and got rid of it, and I know better.
One, on your serial number, the first digit is America.
Two is Canada.
Three is Mexico.
J is Japan.
K is Korea.
China is WW with crazy numbers on it.
If they bring them over here in a crate and put the wheels on them, they've got fours, fives, six, sevens, and eights on them.
Shut America down and build it here.
Okay.
Bradley there in West Virginia giving his thoughts.
Senator Chris Murphy giving his thoughts on this tariff proposal from President-elect Trump.
He did this on Sunday during an interview that he had on NBC's Meet the Press.
Well, what we know is that Donald Trump has no idea how to use tariffs in order to create American jobs.
He did impose tariffs during his four years in office, and we lost manufacturing jobs.
Joe Biden knew how to use tariffs in coordination with subsidies and incentives for domestic manufacturing such that while he was president, we grew manufacturing jobs.
The headline here is that Donald Trump's entire economic policy is going to be about a massive tax break for those billionaires that are in charge of his cabinet.
The tariffs are a distraction from what the real agenda is going to be to be able to use government in order to dramatically increase the wealth of his cabinet and the friends of that cabinet.
Those tariffs, if they're not used properly, are just going to raise costs on ordinary Americans while the billionaires get off scot-free.
Well, and that takes me to my next question, which is that economists of all stripes say that tariffs, regardless of how they're imposed, do ultimately hike up prices for consumers.
So, if they're so bad, why didn't President Biden roll back the Trump-era tariffs?
Because President Biden did this the right way.
He imposed restrictions, for instance, on electric vehicles coming into the United States and the technology connected to electric vehicles, while also giving subsidies to American electric vehicle companies.
That's the kind of coordinated policy that ends up in hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs being created in the United States.
Donald Trump engages in sort of thoughtless, insane tariff policy that ends up in prices going up, but jobs not being created in the United States.
The president-elect planning new tariffs against specific countries to achieve policy goals and economic goals as well.
What do you think of that proposal?
If that's something you support, 202-748-8,000.
If you don't support it, 202-748-8001.
If you're not sure, 202-748-8002 is the number to call.
Let's hear from Kevin.
Kevin, on our no line, he's in Texas.
Hello.
Yeah, thank you.
Are you there?
Yeah, you're on.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Yeah, I do oppose it because, you know, I believe in supply-side economics and anything that adds costs to production is, you know, it hurts the economy.
But I do want to make two important points.
One, you know, what Trump proposes and what Trump does, there's a big difference.
And we'll see what happens through these negotiations.
And two, I mean, the alternative was Harris's increase in corporate taxes, which also would be passed on to consumers.
I mean, if she had won, then the discussion wouldn't be how this tax is adding costs to consumers.
The discussion would be about: do corporations need to pay more taxes?
Or are corporations too greedy?
I mean, so I see a bias there, and that's all I want to say.
Okay.
Marsha in Arkansas, also on our no line.
You're next up.
Hello.
Marsha in Arkansas.
One more time for Marsha.
Okay, let's try Tyrone.
Tyrone there in Illinois.
Good morning on our yes line.
Good morning.
Good morning, Pedro.
Hey, what I'm seeing is I'm a retailer.
I deal with China quite a bit myself.
We need the first thing we need to do is put some type of a leverage on all these ships coming in on our freight charges.
Our freight charges have been as high as 30,000 and as low as 3,500, but then they go back up to 10.
We get that under control.
That'll help a lot with the inflation part of what's coming into America as far as China.
China is working very hard on their own infrastructure.
They've cut back on a lot of their factories over there.
They consolidate goods to ship over to us.
We can work on the tariff part to force companies to bring back more goods, which would help us quite a bit.
You know, the gentleman talked before that you had on about the helping companies to come to America under Biden, but a lot of those companies that he went after for the batteries and that, he gave them billions of dollars and they went bankrupt.
I think we need to look at more of a heavier infrastructure as far as for America.
Make sure that at first we're bringing in the goods that we learned very, very importantly through COVID that the medical supplies, the basic goods that we are getting from China, we are making here so that if something does happen, we have that stuff in our own infrastructure made here in America so that we don't have to sit there and worry about getting our goods from another country.
If China gets upset with us or another country, which they are now, we are putting ourselves at pretty high risk.
And I can't believe the Biden administration has allowed this to happen.
That's pretty much all I got.
Thank you.
Tyrone there in Illinois.
Let's hear from some of you.
This is Albert off of Facebook saying, depending on the other country's stance on trade, yes, when it comes to tariffs, we had no trouble gutting the U.S. manufacturing to chase the cheap widget at the expense of skilled jobs.
Now it's time to drag them back.
We are a unique country in that we have the raw materials and population to be self-sufficient.
We won't be overpaying for goods.
We'll be catching up to reality.
Vicki Manfield saying when it comes to the use of them, absolutely, and use it as a negotiating tool.
It's time to grow this country.
People crying that the costs will be passed along to American consumers are the same people who think that raising taxes on American businesses won't raise prices for the American consumer.
Again, Facebook is a means.
If you want to communicate with us that way, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN is how you do that.
If you want to post on X, that's at C-SPANWJ.
Phone line's also available to you in Texas on our not shoreline.
This is Kelly.
Kelly, hello.
Hey, hello, Pedro.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I so much love your program, and you're such a great commentator.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, I'm just kind of, I don't know about how these tariffs are going to go.
We're paying so much more for goods and services, and that's not good, especially for the middle class.
I think it's eroding and making many people fall out of the middle class, which is not good because we, as you know, we pay the most on taxes and to keep all the government programs running.
And I just, you know, my dad, I was speaking to my father the other day, which he is part of the silent generation.
My mother is one of the baby boomers.
I'm a Gen Xer.
And he said, you know, when my father went to work, he had one job and he could afford five children.
And my mother, my mother didn't have to.
He said, my mother, my grandmother, did not have to work.
We could afford to buy the family home, one family car.
We took two weeks in the summer and, you know, went off to wherever for a family vacation and it was all paid for.
And a lot of these manufacturing jobs went offshore.
And I think it was 1996 with the Clinton, you know, NAFTA.
And those were replaced with service-oriented jobs, which, as you know, don't pay much.
Most of them were when I was a kid in the 80s, you know, teenagers worked a lot of those service-oriented jobs, worked at the mall, you know, at the retail and the little restaurants and whatnot.
And the thing is, is that you have too many adults working those now, and their minimum wage paying jobs, maybe they're paid $10 over the federal minimum wage is what, $7.40 an hour, whatever it is.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
That's Kelly there in Texas there giving us her thoughts when it comes to this use of tariffs.
Again, she was on our not sure line.
So and that's fine too.
If you're not sure, but you want to express your thoughts or concerns there on that line, 202748-8002.
This is Elvin adding to the mix when it comes to Facebook saying I don't think China, Mexico, and Canada would care if the U.S. imposed more tariffs on them.
And if so, they will drop the dollar for bricks, those brick countries, then that would destroy the American economy.
Again, that's another way to reach out to us, too, when it comes to this idea of tariffs and their use, their planned use by the president-elect, as he's talked about on that first day of taking office on January 20th.
Again, you can give us your thoughts on the tariffs, the impact, what you might think if you agree with this or not.
Pick the line that best represents you and call in.
And if you called in the last 30 days, if you hold off from doing so today, we would appreciate it.
Glenn Burney, Maryland on our no line.
This is John.
Hello.
Morning, Pedro.
Morning.
I have a slightly specific lens that I tend to view the tariff stuff through.
My dad works for a switchgear company, like heavy industries type of stuff, like big power grid infrastructure and whatnot, deals a lot with very raw material, like steel, of course, copper, and the litany of other materials that I can't even specify because I can't remember anything that he's told me specifically.
But the way that wraps into tariffs that I find specifically problematic is that a lot of these materials simply don't exist here in the United States.
And something that his company specifically, and I know other companies in his industry have been having trouble with, like the materials that they require, they can only import them because they don't exist here as natural resources.
And it's really expensive simply because the global economy has been struggling at tariffs on top of that.
And if we're talking about increasing tariffs, then it becomes prohibitedly expensive.
And these are industries that employ tens of thousands of people doing huge infrastructure projects.
So it makes infrastructure projects in and of themselves almost prohibitively expensive to do.
And there's no other way to do them because there's no other way to obtain the resources other than buying them from other countries where they're available as a natural resource.
Okay.
John there in Maryland.
Thanks for the example, adding to the mix of conversation when it comes to this topic.
This is Joe in Tennessee adding his thoughts too on our yes line.
Hi, Joe.
Good morning.
I just want to quickly say something that people, it's not just an economic situation, the tariffs.
Every single one of us knows someone has died from fentanyl.
This is a stick that he's using or a carrot or however you want to look at it in order to get China to not provide the chemicals, the ingredients to Mexico, and also to stop it coming in at the Canada and Mexican border.
That's something we got to, you know, we take care of that.
We're talking hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Our children, our families are dying from this stuff.
He uses this to stop it, and we're all ahead.
And he may not even have to use the tariffs, okay?
And we're look, then we've solved this problem or helped it.
So that's what I have to say, and I appreciate your time.
Joe there in Tennessee, giving us his thoughts.
A recent editorial in the Las Vegas Sun talked about the use of tariffs, at least the concerns from the editors there.
It reads in part this, saying, there's no question that addressing the devastating toll of drug addiction and creating an orderly and manageable immigration system are necessary goals, but tariffs don't address the root causes of these challenges.
Even if the tariffs work exactly as Trump promises and are fully paid for by companies and countries against which they are levied, an unlikely outcome given that tariff costs are almost always passed on to the American consumer in the form of higher prices.
Similarly, the United States drug epidemic is driven not by supply alone, but also by unrelenting domestic demand created in large part by a desire to escape pain, insecurity, hopelessness, and other underlying realities.
Those are the thoughts of the editors at the Las Vegas Sun when it comes to the topic of tariffs and their use, their promise use by the president.
You heard the last caller explain the president's thinking when it comes to how they would use it against these specific countries.
Is it something you agree with or do not agree with?
You can call on the lines and let us know.
In New York City, this is Henry on our no line.
Henry, you're next up.
Hi.
Good morning, Joe Joe.
Listen, thank you for letting me speak for a minute.
I don't think people remember what happened when Trump enforced the last tariff when he was president.
Everything went, everything that came from China everywhere went up.
You understand?
And for this man to get up here and say that he's going to enforce tariffs again, and nobody, nobody enforced, nobody investigated or did they do their due diligence.
Now he's in office again, and he already told people what he's going to do.
So Canada, China, Europe are already in place to force their tariffs on America.
And I guarantee you, it will not be pretty.
America, you get what you voted for, and that's about it.
Okay.
Henry there in New York.
Let's hear from Joe in Pennsylvania on our yes line.
Yeah, good morning.
So I don't know if anybody realizes this, but when the United States was founded, the way they funded their treasury was from tariffs.
And then after the World Wars, the United States decided to rebuild the rest of the world with letting the other countries tariff us.
So I think anyone who tariffs us should be tariffed right back the same amount.
That would cause a level playing field.
And then we wouldn't even need to have income taxes.
Do you think, though, for those who say that tariffs are at least their use?
And if other countries retaliate, ultimately, do you think those do harm to an economy or could do harm to an economy?
No, I don't think so.
I think if they're equal, especially if they would Put a lot of money in the treasury so that we would never, the government would no longer need to collect income taxes.
It would be beneficial to everyone.
Okay, Joe there in Pennsylvania giving his thoughts.
The newspaper The Guardian took a recent poll asking the Harris poll to take a look at a survey of 2,000-plus adults when it comes to this idea of tariffs and if it will increase prices.
The question was: the percentage who saved that tariffs on imports would lead to much or somewhat higher prices on domestic good.
It was 79% of Democrats saying that that would happen, 68% of Independents saying that would occur if those tariffs were put into place.
And then amongst Republicans who took the survey from the Harris poll, 59% of those saying that if those tariffs go into effect, higher prices will be the result.
Again, you can add your thoughts to the mix there too as you call in on the lines.
Let's hear from Michael.
He's in Tyrone, New York, on our no line.
Michael, you're next up.
Hi.
Hey, how are you doing this morning?
I love your show.
There's a lot of great commentary on it.
And I like to voice my view on what I think about tariffs.
I took economics in college when I went to college.
And one of the things that tariffs cause, it causes demand to drop.
On the supply and demand end of it, the demand drops so that the economy will actually falter because of less demand.
I mean, that's because people can't afford the goods and services that come out of the GP, the gross national product, GNP.
So what I want to say is if people are going to support putting more tariffs against other countries and those items are coming into our nation, they're going to be charged a higher price.
So we're going to pay a higher price for goods and services, and it's going to cause a falter in our economy in these ways.
Jobs.
We're going to lose a ton of jobs over this because we're not going to be able to produce the demand that will support the jobs to push our economy forward.
I think the tariffs are a big mistake.
And I think if you're going to do something like that, it needs to be planned with these other countries so it works for both sides.
Because let's face it, when all other countries are doing well, it seems like the United States has better trade.
And right now, the way the proposal is of putting higher tariffs on China and Mexico and Canada, I think the demand of those products coming to our country is going to drop.
Okay.
But the prices of those goods that are here is going to go right through the roof.
And inflation is going to be out of control.
I think we'll be heading into a deep recession under this president.
That's my prediction.
We got somebody in there now in the White House that we voted for.
Like it or not, it's going to be a problem, I think, down the road.
And mark my word, it's going to be.
That's Michael there in Tyrone.
Some of you posting on social media, this is Raquel Russell on X giving her thoughts, saying no, when it comes to the idea, we can't afford to pay any more taxes.
And then also on X, Donnie Abnar, saying yes, as a strategic trade policy, there needs to be such tariffs in place.
However, politicizing it by the Democrats would impact the markets and ultimately your wallet negatively, since the cost has always passed to the consumer.
Since 2017, he finishes by saying the U.S. is the trade-imposing country.
Again, X available to you at C-SPAN WJ.
If you want to post there, Rhonda in Illinois on our yes line, good morning.
You're next.
I totally disagree with your previous caller.
I didn't go to college, so I still have a little common sense.
I think that President Trump's idea is good.
I think that it'll bring more business to America.
It'll be everything made in America again.
We'll have to resort to that to get back on our feet.
It's the only way it's going to stimulate more new business here.
So I'm for it.
Do you think there's a, are you concerned, as some expressed this morning, about the retaliation from other countries if we impose these kind of tariffs?
Well, what are they going to do?
Just raise the prices.
We'll just make it here.
You know, we send all our metal over to them to fabricate, and then we have it brought back.
We should be doing our steel here.
We should be doing all of that here.
We have the land.
We have the resources.
We have the equipment.
We have everything here.
We need to make America great again by making the business here be self-sufficient.
Okay, Rhonda there in Illinois giving us her thoughts.
Somebody giving their thoughts on the idea of tariffs.
This was Scott Besson.
He is the president-elect's choice to become the Treasury Secretary if he does get confirmed by the Senate.
But it was back in October that during an interview that he talked about at least how he approaches tariffs and his thinking on tariffs.
Here's a bit from Scott Besson back from October.
I've suggested maybe with tariffs, but it's some combination.
And this came from Jared Bernstein, who is the current chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, gave a speech at Council on Foreign Relations about nine months ago.
And after he'd spoken, a woman from a European think tank stood up and said, you've used the word friend shoring seven times, but you've never told us what it takes to be a friend.
So Mike, to your point, I think we establish criteria.
You can call it ABC, the green, yellow, red.
And these are our real allies like Australia.
This is how you get in the green box.
This is how you stay in the green box.
If you're India, you want to have 20% tariffs.
You want to buy sanctioned Russian oil.
You're in the yellow box.
And by the way, you keep buying that oil.
You're moving toward the red box.
And so I think you have criteria.
People can move.
And the green box shared values, shared economies, shared defense, shared currency goals.
There's some reaction from other countries when it comes to this idea of imposing new tariffs.
This is the Associated Press saying that the Prime Minister, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, told the President-elect that Americans would also suffer if he follows through on that plan to impose sweeping tariffs.
This story adding that Mr. Trump threatened to impose those tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico if they don't stop what he called the flow of drugs and migrants across the borders.
The story says that Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic DeBlanc, whose responsibility include border security, attended that dinner with Mr. Trump and the Prime Minister at Mar-a-Logo Club last week.
Mr. Trudeau requested the meeting in a bid to avoid the tariffs, saying, quote, Mr. LeBlanc, in quote, is saying the Prime Minister, of course, spoke about the importance of protecting the Canadian economy and Canadian workers from tariffs, but we also discussed with our American friends the negative impact that those tariffs could have on their economy, on affordability in the United States as well.
Let's hear from Nathan on our no line.
He's in Indiana.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
You know, I don't believe this is about the economy.
This is about money, power, and corruption.
And when you apply tariffs across the board, you can either reward companies by giving them exemptions, or you can punish companies and countries by imposing stiffer sanctions.
And you can do that based on, you know, how much money they donate to your campaign or whatever other rewards you look to receive from those companies.
And what you end up with is a mafia-style economy with one of the largest economies in the world.
And when you look at the economy, understand a bad economy is not necessarily bad for those who are flushed with money.
It's during those bad economy times that they go out and buy.
They buy real estate, they buy companies, they look for bargains, and they expand their total wealth during those down economies.
So, and all of this is done on the backs of the working average American.
You know, getting a tax reduction doesn't help Americans that are not paying taxes now.
You know, they're not going to get a tax cut, but the wealthy will.
All they get is higher prices.
And I think that this creates a situation where we're going to have corruption in this country like we have never seen before.
Okay, on our not sure line, this is Ed from Maine.
Hello.
Hey, hello.
Hey, thank goodness for C-SPAN.
I'm not sure about this conversation.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me since we have an agreement with Canada and Mexico, the USMCA, and we also had an agreement with China for trade.
And I would think that tariffs would be for when they break the rules of the agreements that we set up in the first place.
That's what I thought tariffs were for.
But the problem is, is when you're playing a football game, you can't throw a flag because the other team is better than you.
You throw the flag when they actually break a rule that everybody agrees on.
This is the part I don't understand.
I wouldn't throw tariffs just because they're making a cheaper product than you or they have a different philosophy.
You knew that when you got into it in the first place.
Thanks a lot.
That's it there in Maine.
I can't read the whole story, but at least show you the headline.
This is from quartz.
QZ.com is the heads on the website.
But it takes a look at the potential of the levying of tariffs against these countries.
According to this story, spelling disaster possibly for auto industry giants such as GM and Ford and other automobile makers.
Again, just one of those analysis pieces, taking a look at the end results of these tariffs against these specific countries that President-elect Trump has laid out and the impact there.
We're asking you what you think about the idea of tariffs overall does and specifically towards these countries and asking you if you support it or you're not supported or maybe you're not sure if this is something you support.
202748-8000, 202-748-8001.
If you don't, that's our no line.
And then if you're not sure, 202748-8002.
Let's go to Dennis.
Dennis in Indiana on our yes line.
Thanks for calling.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I think that these tariffs are just A way to more or less try to get the drugs under control that we've got coming in the United States.
I've lost three family members to the fentanyl overdoses.
They put this fentanyl into these normal type pills that these kids can take, Xanaxes and hydros.
And it's a death sentence for our younger generation.
They're under so much pressure anyway in schools and everything.
But we need to.
I was working in a factory here in Indiana, and we had 27 factories here in Madison County, Indiana, Delco Remy, Guide Lamp.
And they all slowly moved to, they'd moved down to Louisiana or Texas.
Then they'd move in on over into Mexico.
And we got to get our factories back here in the United States.
We can't let our government move all of our factories over.
And our medicine, like this one guy said earlier, we got to get our medicine built back here in the United States.
I mean, for sure, you can't trust China making our medicine here for us.
That's really dangerous.
And people need to wake up and get a little bit of common sense back in the United States.
I mean, it don't seem like to me that people know, have a whole lot of common sense about what's going on in the world anymore.
Okay, Dennis there in Indiana.
Thanks for the call.
Michael in New York on our Not Sure line.
Hello.
Hi, Ardern.
You're on, go ahead.
I don't think that with the situation with the world economy and tax and tariff and all this stuff and things like that.
One of the problems the United States have is that the United States would send the goods to manufacture in other countries to come back to the United States because due to the big companies don't want to pay the price which would be cheaper liver in other countries.
And this is the reason why things are so expensive because the economy here doesn't allow the company to manufacture things at cheaper prices.
So this could be an issue when it comes to tax and tariff and all this stuff and things like that.
Keep it in that price might be cheaper, but we'll wait to see if it really helps the economy or not.
Michael Baer in New York, CBS looking at the possible other increases of goods that could happen if tariffs do take place.
One of the categories they highlight, Consumer Electronics saying that the tariffs would reduce American consumers' spending power by $90 billion on products including TVs, headphones, laptops, tablets, video game consumers and consoles and the like.
That's according to the Consumer Technology Association, the trade group, which modeled the impact of a 10% tariff on Chinese imports, coupled with a 60% levy on goods from the country that President-elect previously floated, estimated that laptops and tablets would see the steepest prices hikes, steepest price hikes, with cost surging as much as 45%.
Video game consoles and smartphones could also see double-digit gains.
And researchers assume retailers would pass those added costs related to tariffs along to consumers.
In the smartphone category, the average increase in price would be $213 per device.
That's according to the Consumer Technology Association.
So, again, another one of those analysis pieces, taking a look at the potential of these tariffs, should they take place with the incoming of the Trump administration.
Someone who doesn't support this idea in California, this is Sam.
Hello.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
No, I do not support this idea for a very simple reason.
It will likely increase prices.
That, for me, was the number one topic on the agenda during the 2024 elections.
Prices have gone up.
Rate of inflation may have come down, but prices have come up and they haven't gone down yet.
So, I mean, before COVID, you could buy a jingle on the radio or on the TV, $5 foot-long from Subway.
I know tariffs won't affect the price of Subway foot-longs, but the point is that prices in general have not come down.
So, I don't want anything to happen which will not bring down prices.
So, that's my comment.
That's Sam there in California.
Let's hear from Mark Zandy, who is with Moody's Analytics, senior economist there, was on this program recently, asked about the potential of tariffs and their impact.
Here's some of what he had to say on this program not too long ago.
Obviously, the world's a big place.
A lot of countries, a lot of trade policies.
I mean, you know, if you go to Europe, for example, the Europeans really have no tariffs.
Their effective tariff rate is pretty close to zero and has been for quite some time now.
Now, in the case of China, I agree with you that that's a very problematic relationship.
And I don't think the Chinese have played fair in trade and other economic relationships.
And so, there, that goes back to my point earlier about what I would call strategic tariffs, tariffs that are very targeted.
So, for example, President Biden imposed tariffs on $18 billion worth of imports from China not long ago, things like EVs and solar panels and some other various other manufactured product.
And that's 18 billion.
So, in the grand scheme of things, that's very small, but it's sending a very strong signal to the Chinese that, you know, look, you got to play by the rules.
So, I'm not saying tariffs, there isn't a role for tariffs.
I just don't think there's a role for broad-based tariffs across the board.
Here's the other thing: Canada and Mexico, they don't impose tariffs on our goods.
We have a free trade agreement with them, the so-called USMCA, which actually was negotiated, renegotiated by President Trump in his first term.
And that creates a free trade zone.
So, there is no tariffs.
And those are our two biggest sources of trade, the Canadians and the Mexicans.
So, some countries impose tariffs, some countries don't play fair.
And I think the use of strategic tariffs makes a lot of sense, but most countries do.
And our biggest trading partners absolutely don't charge tariffs.
So, we're in a free trade zone.
So, I don't think we should be pushing them with the threat of 25% tariffs, which is the last couple of days.
By the way, if you're interested in seeing that full interview, you can always go to our website at cspan.org.
All of our Washington Journal segments are archived there, as well as others taking a look at matters of the economy, including the use of tariffs.
And you can always find all those interviews by going and searching our website again, cspan.org.
Let's hear from Joe.
Joe, in Pennsylvania, on our not shoreline, go ahead.
You are next.
Okay, well, the tariffs wouldn't do anything for our country.
We may be one of the biggest consumers, but there are several other countries in the world that will buy these goods.
And these corporations don't really care.
You know, they'll sell to anybody.
So I can't see where tariffs are going to help us any.
Just raise our prices, that's all.
Okay.
This is from John.
John also, a Pennsylvania resident on our not shoreline.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Yeah.
So I think the tariff concept is quite interesting because, well, why wouldn't we tariff somebody else who tariffed us?
I think the tariffs were put on us by other countries because they wanted to use our economy to help rebuild their countries after wars and, you know, to get them up to where they should be in industry.
So that was supposed to go away after a certain amount of time.
So I think, I'm not really sure, but I think if we tariffed them, they would take their tariffs off and then we would take our tariffs off and everybody would be able to let the market decide like perfect competition instead of having tariffs, the thumbs on the scale, so to speak.
I just don't think, I think they would all go away if we put them back in other countries.
If you want to buy a motorcycle in Japan from the United States, you've got to pay like 100%.
So that's why they don't buy them.
And in Germany, there's no American cars because the tariffs are too high.
In this case, the president-elect wants to use tariffs to reduce things like illegal immigration and reduce the illicit drugs in the country.
Do you think tariffs can achieve that?
Well, I think just by him saying that would make the other countries come to the table so there could be negotiations to stop the problems that hurt our country.
So I think they would all go away.
I think the problems would all go away.
It's kind of like he's kind of doing that.
The president-elect, I think he's just doing that because he's trying to make deals, and that gives him the leverage that he needs.
Okay.
John there in Pennsylvania adding your thoughts.
You can add your thoughts in the minutes left.
2027488000.
If you say yes, no, 202-748-8001.
And if you're not sure, 202-748-8002.
If you want to give your thoughts there on this idea of tariffs, this is Deborah on Facebook saying it means a consumer will have to pay more for goods.
It could result in a holdup in a supply chain as well.
She goes on from there.
You can always contribute to the conversation by those means at facebook.com slash C-SPAN for the Facebook page on X at C-SPANWJ.
And as always, you can give us a call on the phone lines to let you know about things happening on the networks today, things to watch out for.
With the incoming of a new Congress means that several senators-elects will be part of the conversations, particularly on the Senate side.
A conversation with some of those new senators was going to take place 9 o'clock this morning on our C-SPAN 3 network.
That's going to be a conversation with Representative John Curtis and Alyssa Slotkin, who will be serving in the U.S. Senate when the new Congress meets in January.
They're going to sit down with Punch Bowl News to discuss bipartisanship in the lame duck session, other things to expect in the 119th Congress as well.
That coverage starting at 9 o'clock Eastern on C-SPAN 2, C-SPANNOW, that's our free mobile app, by the way, and C-SPAN.org.
Later on, about 9 o'clock as well, today healthcare professionals will gather with lawmakers to talk about health disparities and ways to encourage innovation and preventive measures for treating common diseases.
That will be hosted by Health and Human Services Secretary Javier Becera and New Jersey Senator Corey Booker.
They'll be among those speakers.
9 o'clock today, C-SPAN 3 is where you can find that.
And then taking a look at this idea of economic challenges and possibly the discussion turning to tariffs as well.
The White House Chief Economist Jared Berstein talking about tackling those economic challenges.
2:30 this afternoon is that conversation.
That will be on C-SPAN 3.
Again, you can always find that on the app, our C-SPAN app, and c-SPAN.org.
Also, you can find at c-span.org a way to contribute to C-SPAN directly, as we've been telling you for the last couple of days.
Today is Giving Tuesday.
And as you know, over the last weeks and months, we've been inviting you to be part of C-SPAN directly by contributing financially to us on this Giving Tuesday, a special reason to do so because our first $10,000 in donations will be matched dollar to dollar, doubling your effort.
And you'll have a chance to make sure that you can meet that goal and continue our coverage of your government, keeping democracy accessible to everyone.
There's a couple of ways that you can reach out and contribute.
If you want to click the QR code there with your phone, you can do that.
That will take you to the website where you can contribute.
You can do that directly too at c-span.org/slash donate.
Coming up on the program, a couple of guests joining us, Liza Goyton from the Brennan Center at New York University will discuss President-elect Trump's potentially using presidential emergency powers to facilitate mass deportations.
Later on in the program, we'll hear from columnist and economist Peter Morisi as he discusses the president-elect's economic proposals.
Those conversations coming up on Washington Journal.
Are you a nonfiction book lover looking for a new podcast?
This holiday season, try listening to one of the many podcasts C-SPAN has to offer.
On QA, you'll listen to interesting interviews with people and authors writing books on history and subjects that matter.
Learn something new on Book Notes Plus through conversations with nonfiction authors and historians.
Afterwards, brings together best-selling nonfiction authors with influential interviewers for wide-ranging hour-long conversations.
And on About Books, we talk about the business of books with news and interviews about the publishing industry and nonfiction authors.
Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
The house will be in order.
This year, C-SPAN celebrates 45 years of covering Congress like no other.
Since 1979, we've been your primary source for Capitol Hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy is debated and decided, all with the support of America's cable companies.
C-SPAN, 45 years in counting, powered by cable.
Listening to programs on C-SPAN through C-SPAN Radio is easy.
Tell your smart speaker, play C-SPAN Radio, and listen to Washington Journal daily at 7 a.m. Eastern.
Important public affairs events throughout the day.
And weekdays, catch Washington today.
Listen to C-SPAN anytime.
Just tell your smart speaker, play C-SPAN Radio.
C-SPAN, powered by cable.
Be up to date in the latest in publishing with Book TV's podcast about books.
With current nonfiction book releases, plus bestseller lists, as well as industry news and trends through insider interviews.
You can find About Books on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Washington Journal continues.
Joining us for a conversation on the incoming Trump administration, the possible use of emergency powers by the president-elect, Liza Goitin from the Brennan Center for Justice, Liberty, and National Security Program.
She serves as their senior director.
Thanks for giving us your time today.
Thanks for having me.
I suppose that when you hear the term emergency power, a lot of things can emerge.
So what's the best way of understanding what that is to a president?
That's a great question.
Emergency powers take very different forms in different countries.
Most countries have provisions in their constitutions for emergency regimes where some or all of the rights that the people have under the Constitution can be set aside by the president or the head of state, the prime minister.
It's very different in this country.
We're really an outlier.
There are no emergency powers granted directly to the president in the Constitution.
The powers that sort of look like emergency powers are granted to Congress.
So presidents, for the most part, rely on Congress to provide them with the powers that they need to deal with military or economic crises.
And Congress has done that through a number of very potent laws, several of which could come into play in Trump's plans to conduct mass deportation.
Would the acts by Congress, do they limit the powers of the president or at least limit the scope?
Or how expansive are these powers as they stand currently?
They can be quite expansive.
The powers that Trump has referred to explicitly include the power to declare a national emergency, the Insurrection Act, and the Alien Enemies Act.
Each of them is a little bit different, but just to give you a sense, the National Emergencies Act authorizes the president to declare a national emergency.
There are no substantive criteria.
There's no definition of emergency.
The president signs an executive order or proclamation saying there's an emergency.
At that point, that declaration frees up, unlocks enhanced powers that are included in more than 150 or roughly 150 different provisions of law that span almost every imaginable area of governance.
So whether it's military or economic or agriculture or health.
And to give you just a sense, what of those laws allows the president to take over or shut down communications facilities in this country.
So we're talking about some very, very potent powers with very few, unfortunately, checks against abuse.
The National Emergencies Act you referenced 1976 when it was passed.
If we got that right, it would standardize that process of declaring a national emergency.
The president can declare that emergency by executive order.
But the third part talks about Congress and their ability to terminate that power.
How does that work?
Well, it works differently now than it did when the law was passed.
When the law was passed, it included a provision that allowed Congress to terminate a national emergency declaration using what was called a legislative veto.
And that's a simple majority vote of both houses, and the president does not have to sign it for it to go into effect.
In 1983, the Supreme Court held that legislative vetoes are unconstitutional.
So today, if Congress wants to end an emergency declaration, it basically has to muster a veto-proof supermajority in both houses of Congress.
It has to pass a law overriding the president's likely veto.
And that, as you know, is nearly impossible in today's polarized political environment.
Could you offer some examples on how previous presidents have used specifically the national emergency powers or using these emergency powers?
Sure.
So a very obvious example would be after 9-11.
A national emergency was declared at that time and it was used to call up reservists and to sort of bolster military strength, which is one way emergency powers can be used.
It was also used to impose sanctions on foreign terrorist groups.
So that's really a classic example of an actual emergency in which emergency powers were in the beginning appropriately used.
Now, what's concerning to me is that every president since 9-11 has renewed that particular emergency declaration.
So we are still in a state of emergency over 9-11, even though Osama bin Laden is dead, even though al-Qaeda has been decimated.
And it's just being used to sort of prop up military strength bypassing sort of the usual means by which Congress allocates the resources to the military.
Viewers, if you want to learn more about these emergency powers from the president and ask our guests about that, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002, you can always text us at 202-748-8003.
Ms. Goitine, you referenced it, but the president-elect saying that he is interested in using these powers, particularly when it comes to mass deportation.
Remind the viewers what the president has implied using these powers for and can he do it.
Well, in terms of declaring a national emergency, he has said he will do that.
He hasn't said how he would use that declaration.
He hasn't specified the particular powers he would then invoke out of these 150 that are available to him.
But we can look at what he did in his first administration.
He declared a national emergency at the southern border, and he invoked a power that allows the president to engage in military construction projects, essentially diverting funds from other military construction projects.
So it provides resources for military construction, and he relied on that to try to secure funds to build the border wall.
Now, several courts held that that was a misuse of that provision, but by the time it got to the Supreme Court, there had been a change in administration, and so the whole thing was moot.
So we don't know officially whether that was legal or not, or at least what the Supreme Court would have held.
But really, I think Trump is more likely to be relying on the Insurrection Act, which is a different set of emergency powers.
And that allows the president, well, it gives the president tremendous discretion to deploy the military, to deploy federal armed forces inside the United States to quell civil unrest or to execute the law.
And this is an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which is the general rule that federal armed forces cannot participate in civilian law enforcement activities.
But the Posse Comitatus Act allows for statutory exceptions, and that's what the Insurrection Act is.
Now, the conversation about whether or not this deployment would be legal or illegal under the Insurrection Act is a pretty long conversation.
I think despite the great discretion or the very broad discretion that the president has under the act, even the broadest of discretion can be abused.
And I do think depending on what happens and what Trump does, I think there are certainly legal challenges that could be brought.
If we understand it correctly, this act, the Insurrection Act that you referenced goes back to 1807.
How have previous presidents used this specific act?
So it hasn't been used previously for immigration enforcement.
It's been used in a number of different ways.
I would say probably four categories.
One has been to put down rebellions, including during the Civil War, for example.
It's been used to suppress labor movements and to intervene in strikes on behalf of the employer.
That was not within the century.
And then it's been used to protect civil rights during Reconstruction and then again during the civil rights era.
And then it's been used most recently to, well, the most recent time it was used was in 1992.
But between 1965 and 1992, it was used primarily to intervene or to support state and local law enforcement in dealing with the so-called race riots.
That was the reaction to the Rodney King decision that came out.
That was the most recent use of the insurrection.
And President Eisenhower used it too, I think I read, or at least in the research.
Right.
And President Eisenhower used it to enforce a federal court order desegregating the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
When these powers are used, I suppose, how does the public react to the use of these powers?
Or at least what does history tell us about that?
Yeah, I think over time, it has become less and less accepted to see the military intervening in civilian life inside the country.
And I think that's why we haven't seen it since 1992.
And there's a couple reasons for that.
I think it just modern sensibilities don't, it just doesn't sit right with Americans to see tanks rolling into their cities.
It's just sort of how we've evolved as a nation.
But I would also say that the capacity of police and police departments to handle civil unrest or other crises inside the United States is so much greater than it was when the Insurrection Act was passed, because at the time, there really were no professionalized police departments.
I mean, law enforcement was a very nascent, or professionalized law enforcement was a nascent concept in this country.
And so really, in order to deal with serious civil unrest or situations like that, it was often necessary to sort of call it the militia.
And as time has gone on, we now have police departments that have forces that are really the size of armies in smaller countries and that have a lot of the sort of equipment and technology that's needed that otherwise the military might need to be called in.
This is Eliza Goitin from Brendan Center for Justice joining us talking about these emergency powers.
Again, you can call on the lines.
You can send us a text if you wish at 202748-8003 if you have a question about those powers.
On our Republican line from Michigan, we'll start off with Ron for our guest.
Ron, good morning.
You're on with the guest.
Yeah, it seems to me that the people have chosen the direction they want to go.
Are you still there?
You're on with the guest.
Go ahead.
It seems like the people have chosen the direction they want to go with Trump.
And it seems like that people don't see that the communists, you know, are kind of anti-God and that they're trying to do like Satan did.
Use God's word against himself, the law.
And that's why he loses in the end because he never gives up.
They're still fighting.
The Democrats are still fighting.
They're not going to give up, but they will lose in the end.
So, Caller, as far as these emergency powers that we're talking about, do you have a specific question for our guest?
Why do you kick against the prick, the thorns?
Why do you kick against the waves of God?
People are chosen where you fight it.
Okay, that's Ron there.
Ms. Goethein, against the sense of the president won the election.
He has the right to use these powers as he pleases.
Take it from there.
I mean, he has the right to use the law within the bounds of the law.
And there are certainly some concerns that could come into play if he were to use the Insurrection Act, for example, to have soldiers in the interior of the country conducting arrests of people.
I think there are some very strong legal arguments for why that would be or why that could be illegal.
And so he has to act within the bounds of the law.
So that's obvious, I think, regardless of whether he was chosen by the electorate.
But I think the other point to make is that the electorate is not a monolith.
People voted for Trump for different reasons.
And I don't think we have any basis to say that a majority of people in this country would support Trump's use of emergency powers of the Insurrection Act in this context.
I just don't think we have that evidence to say that.
If the president-elect does put this act into play, who could he pull from as far as military or otherwise to achieve these goals, particularly when it comes to mass deportation?
Sure.
So what the law allows is for the president to call up the militia, which in modern terms means that he could federalize the National Guard.
So the National Guard ordinarily operates under state command and control, but the president can federalize the Guard, and then it becomes really a regular part of the federal armed forces.
So he can deploy the federalized National Guard.
He can also deploy active duty armed forces as well.
And there is some question over whether or not the term militia in the law would allow him to actually call on or deputize private militias or even just other groups of people, because the term militia, as defined by Congress, includes not just the organized militia, but the unorganized militia, which is defined essentially as able-bodied males between the ages of 17 and 45 and a couple of other categories.
What do you think about the possibility of pushback against the use of these laws, particularly now that both the House and the Senate will be in Republican hands?
Well, it's hard to see how Congress is going to intervene because, again, Congress would have to pass a law by a veto-proof supermajority.
There is no mechanism in the Insurrection Act for Congress to otherwise terminate a deployment under the Insurrection Act.
But as I said before, I do think that there are legal challenges to be brought.
There are Department of Justice opinions interpreting the Insurrection Act more narrowly than the text would seem to suggest.
So if you read the law, it's quite broad in terms of what it allows.
But the Department of Justice historically has said this law must be interpreted consistently with the Constitution and with tradition.
And if you do that, it has to be a last resort.
It has to be a situation where civilian law enforcement has completely broken down.
And, you know, given that President-elect Trump intervened to prevent Congress from passing a bipartisan border security bill, it's going to be hard for him to argue that this is a last resort, that everything else has been tried.
Those legal options that you were talking about, can a suit be filed by anyone or does somebody have to have standing to file the suit to go against the president?
Definitely somebody has to have standing.
But for example, if Trump were to deploy troops in a state over the wishes of the state, there are circumstances in which that state might have standing.
And certainly anyone who was directly affected by the deployment would be able to bring a lawsuit.
Let's hear from Margot, Democrats Line in North Carolina.
You're on with our guests.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I wanted to know why the Insurrection Act is applicable now, but not January 6, 2021.
So the Insurrection Act is a great question, first of all.
It would have been applicable on January 6th if President Trump had chosen to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to put down the insurrection at the Capitol building.
I think he would have been on solid legal ground because by any honest account, that checked the boxes in the Insurrection Act in terms of the criteria.
It was obstruction of federal law because it was preventing the vote count.
It was domestic violence.
It was an insurrection.
And even if, you know, even if you want to quarrel over the word insurrection, it certainly checked some other boxes in that law.
And so it would have been appropriate.
The problem and the concern that top military leaders within Trump's administration had was that he might invoke the Insurrection Act not to suppress the insurrection, but to sort of further impede the transition of power.
And for example, he could have shut down the Capitol building for a period of days or longer on the pretext of keeping the peace, but with the purpose of delaying or preventing certification of the vote.
Ms. Goethein, to the larger idea of emergency powers, a viewer asked us texting us this morning if President Biden has employed any of these powers.
Yes, Biden has deployed emergency powers.
He declared a national emergency for international drug trafficking.
And under that emergency declaration, he actually called up reservists in case they were needed to supplement the military forces that he deployed to the border.
So the military has been at the border for decades, and they've been there assisting the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, when the military is assisting civilian law enforcement, but not actually conducting law enforcement itself, which is a very sort of fine legal distinction, the Posse Comitatus Act doesn't apply.
So the military has been legally at the border doing some supporting immigration enforcement for decades, and Biden used emergency powers to supplement the manpower available for that.
He also relied on emergency powers to forgive student loan debt.
And that was something that the Supreme Court actually struck down.
Our guest is with us.
And if you want to ask her questions about these emergency powers, Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
Let's hear from Jean.
Jean's in Kentucky, Independent Line.
You're on with our guests.
Go ahead.
Gene in Kentucky.
Good morning.
One more time for Jean.
Okay.
Ms. Goetin, you talked about it several times, but the Posse Comitatus Act, I'm interested in the name itself.
Talk a little bit about that and then describe the act if you would.
So a posse comitatis is essentially a group of people who can be rounded up or called up by the sheriff of a county to go pursue somebody who has broken the law.
And that is the term.
That's why you hear the term posse in old Western movies, right?
When the sheriff gets together a posse to go chase the robber or whoever.
And so that is where that comes from.
It's obviously Latin.
You know, it's hard to be speaking a lot of Latin this early in the morning, but that's what the posse comitatus act refers to.
Its meaning in the law at this point is law enforcement, essentially.
So what the posse comitatus act says is that it should, it will, it's unlawful to use federal armed forces as a posse comitatus or to otherwise execute the law.
And it just basically means using the military for law enforcement.
So when you say military, which branches of the military does it fall in?
Is it all branches equally, or are there certain branches that are refrained from you for being part of that?
It's basically all branches.
I mean, the U.S. Coast Guard actually is not included, and the Space Force was only recently added.
But other than that, it covers pretty much not just the federal armed forces, but as I said before, the National Guard when called into federal service.
When it's in its use, then how would what situation would there be to use that act versus some of the other acts that you talked about when it comes to using military in other situations other than defending the country?
Yeah, and that's a really good question.
So some of these other authorities allow deployment of the military to assist in law enforcement activities, but they don't actually allow direct participation.
As I said before, it's kind of a very fine distinction, but basically, courts have held that core law enforcement activities are things like arrests, searches, seizures.
Those fall within posse comitatus.
But if the military is essentially conducting reconnaissance, if it is sharing intelligence, if it's providing or maintaining equipment, that does not fall within posse comitatus.
So there are plenty of laws that allow the military to support law enforcement in these indirect ways.
The Insurrection Act is different in that it actually is an exception to posse comitatus.
It allows the military to participate in core law enforcement activities.
Having said that, there's a Department of Justice opinion, again, that says that it should be construed to stop short of allowing arrests because arrests are perhaps the most core law enforcement function because they are essentially part of charging someone with a crime.
So that is an unsettled legal question: whether or not the Insurrection Act allows soldiers to actually go up to people and put them under arrest.
This is Robert.
Robert joins us from Alabama.
Republican line for our guests.
Good morning.
Morning.
Just have a couple of quick questions.
The Emergency Powers Act, President, has been used several times by several different presidents to enforce federal law.
What is the difference between forcing schools to accept desegregation and breaking the law there and cities who have declared themselves sanctuaries in violation of federal law stopping federal enforcement from removing illegal aliens?
Okay.
Yeah.
So sanctuary cities are cities that essentially will not cooperate with federal law enforcement.
Federal immigration enforcement, they are not legally required to cooperate with federal legal enforcement.
So, sorry, with federal immigration enforcement.
So it is different.
There's no federal court order that cities are defying when they are sanctuary cities.
There was a federal court order that was clearly being defied in Little Rock.
And one of the things the Department of Justice has said in interpreting the Insurrection Act is that the conditions that need to apply are either an insurrection at the state level where a state has requested assistance or state and local law enforcement has completely broken down or there is a federal court order that is being defied.
So Little Rock falls squarely within that range of circumstances, whereas I think Sanctuary Cities is a different question.
Democrats lying.
Dave, he's in Baltimore.
You're on with our guests.
Good morning.
Yeah, I was wondering about, it seems kind of dangerous that the Supreme Court was striking to have struck down one part of the National Emergencies Act, but gives the legislative veto, since now, you know, maybe they wouldn't want the whole thing to be struck down since they wouldn't want to give the president those sorts of powers if, you know, they couldn't have the final say, right?
So it seems like they kind of cut off the safety guard of the act.
Is there any discussion about this?
Yeah, that's such a great point.
There's been a lot of discussion.
And in fact, for the last few years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been working to try to basically replace the legislative veto that was taken out of the law with some other mechanism for Congress to meaningfully be able to step in.
And there's actually a bill that passed overwhelmingly out of committees in both the Senate and the House on a really broad bipartisan basis.
It was unanimous in the House that would have tried to sort of recreate some of the same, a similar mechanism, essentially by requiring presidentially declared emergencies to expire after 30 days unless approved by Congress using expedited procedures.
And those expedited procedures would allow any member to force a vote.
It's just a simple majority.
The Senate can't filibuster.
So it kind of tries to recreate as well as Congress can this sort of way for Congress to terminate a national emergency declaration without having to muster either a 60-vote threshold in the Senate or a super majority in the case of having to override the president's veto.
Ms. Goyton, when a president decides to use any of his emergency powers, what legal counsel does he turn to to make sure he's on the right standing to use those powers?
Well, the president has a lot of lawyers at his disposal.
He has lawyers on the National Security Council.
He has, obviously, White House Counsel's Office.
He has the Department of Justice.
You know, he can turn to any of them.
And that is one of the reasons why the people who serve in a president's administration are so important.
And the president's ability and willingness to seek and listen to wise counsel is so important.
And I'll just leave it there.
Well, and let me follow up then.
If the president has an incoming team of lawyers and if they've been described, say, as loyalists generally, is that a concern then if a president is how this president might apply those powers?
Absolutely.
I mean, there's a reason why the Department of Justice has a tradition of independence and why the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice sees its role as giving the best legal advice it can rather than simply giving the president the answer that the president wants to hear.
That's been a long and proud tradition at the Department of Justice.
And there are a lot of concerns about whether politicization of the Department of Justice will really undermine this really fundamental tenet of the rule of law in the administration.
Our guest is the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice, Liberty, and National Security Program.
Tell us about that program, Ms. Goyton.
So our program was founded in the aftermath of 9-11.
And what we seek to do is to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law.
Let's hear from Jim.
Jim joins us from Connecticut on our line for independence.
You're on with our guest, Liza Goitin.
Jim, go ahead.
Hi, Liza.
Hi, Pedro.
I just want to say that we civilians have a voice when it comes to opinions about using the military to deport migrants here, but our sons and daughters in the military don't and must obey orders and would be denied the exercise of their own conscience.
And the result may be major or minor, wouldn't it?
I'll take my answer off the air.
Thank you.
I mean, these are all such great questions.
Yes.
I mean, the people who serve in the military, they don't have a choice.
They can't say, no, I'm not interested in doing that.
I mean, there is a principle and in fact, a legal requirement for a soldier, or soldiers are not supposed to follow unlawful orders.
But that is a very, that's an extreme situation.
You wouldn't expect a rank and file member of, you know, service member to not follow an order to deploy under the Insurrection Act, for example.
And this is one of the reasons why the military is not fond of domestic deployments or deployments to enforce civilian law or to quell civil unrest.
There are many service members and retired generals and such who have gone on the record to say this is not what we're trained for.
This is not what we signed up to do, but it's also not really what we're trained for to handle civilian populations who have constitutional rights.
And it also diverts personnel and resources from the very real overseas threats that we face.
And so there's a real, I think, sense within at least, you know, obviously the military is not a monolith either, but the retired generals with whom I've spoken and many who have gone on record have said this is really not the core of what we do.
It's not what we would prefer to be doing.
From John, who joins us from Florida Independent Line for our guests.
John, go ahead, you're on.
Yes, and the Presidential Act, she mentioned, and she brought it up, that the bipartisan border bill that was killed by, I think she mentioned it was killed by Trump, but this bipartisan border bill was just letting people in faster.
And I'm insulted when I hear the word bipartisan.
There's only like seven people on each side.
That doesn't make it bipartisan.
So how do you reconcile the liberals that are overtaking the meet the press, the Washington Journal?
Well, sorry, the seven on each side was after that, you're talking about the vote that happened.
And that vote was after Trump reportedly intervened and encouraged Republicans not to vote for it.
We don't know what the vote would have been otherwise.
So, and certainly it was bipartisan in its creation, and it did not let in more people across the border.
It was quite the opposite.
Ms. Koitien, when it comes to the president's plan for deportations, mass deportations, as he talked about, if he wanted to expand centers to hold people or build new ones, could he use powers to do that, circumventing everything else?
So under existing law without invoking the Insurrection Act or any other emergency power, the military, Federal Armed Forces can provide support to civilian law enforcement, and that support includes the provision of military bases and equipment.
And so without declaring a national emergency, the president could make use of military bases to detain immigrants.
And in fact, the Afghan refugees who came to this country after the Taliban retook Afghanistan, they were housed in military bases.
They weren't detained, but they were housed in military bases.
So you don't need an emergency declaration for that.
However, the resources available, the bases available to do that, you would quickly run into sort of resource issues.
And a national emergency declaration, in theory, could be used to try to get more resources for that.
Trump could use the same power that he used to secure funding for the border wall to secure funding to build additional military bases.
Now, as I said before, some courts held that that was a misuse of the military construction provision, emergency powers provision.
So it's not clear that that would withstand a legal challenge, but that is one thing that the president might try to do.
This is also from John John in Rhode Island, Independent Line.
Hi there.
Hi, how are you?
Fine.
You're all with our guests.
Go ahead, please.
My question is, does the president have the power or the authority to hold back federal funding for sanctuary cities?
I'm hoping he can.
That would make my day.
That issue was actually litigated during the first Trump administration.
And again, it never quite, it never got to the Supreme Court.
There was a court that held that he did not have the authority to withhold federal funding.
There was another court that said that he did.
And so that overruled that.
But we did not get a final answer on that from the Supreme Court.
And I think you highlighted this, but if a state or locality says that if they want to resist the president who wants to use emergency powers, that might impact that state or locality, how much power does the state or locality have to push back on that?
Well, to push back on, if we're talking about a use of emergency powers, something like the Insurrection Act, I mean, there's not much the state can do in advance to prevent the president from invoking the insurrection act.
I mean, the state cannot, the state cannot order its National Guard not to be federalized.
So the president can federalize the National Guard even if the state objects.
However, if the president is violating the law in the course of invoking the insurrection act or deploying National Guard forces, the state can challenge that, assuming the state has standing.
Certainly, if Trump were to federalize a state's National Guard in a situation where, you know, let's say the state is using the National Guard for other purposes and then the president comes in and federalizes the Guard, the state would have standing in that situation to bring a legal challenge.
And so it's really a question of how the president uses these powers.
And if the president is misusing the powers, then the states have the opportunity.
And other people who have standing will have the opportunity to sue in court.
In Massachusetts, on our line for Democrats, Richard up next.
Hi.
Hello.
I am concerned that this whole discussion ignores the fact that Trump has said he would use his emergency powers to oppose everybody who disagrees with him and even to prosecute them and use the Army to round them up.
And it's just impossible to be reasonable about trusting a man like that with emergency powers.
And that is the root of the problem.
And the American people have fallen for that.
And that leaves us in this mess.
And the rest of this discussion about emergency powers is just not avoiding the elephant in the room.
Thank you.
It's true that we are discussing emergency powers specifically in the context of immigration enforcement.
But absolutely, Trump has threatened to use emergency powers.
He's threatened to use the Insurrection Act to put down protests against his presidency.
He said he would use the Insurrection Act and send it into what he calls crime dens such as New York and Chicago.
So he has threatened when there were protests in D.C. and across the country over the police killing of George Floyd, President Trump said he would invoke the insurrection for those.
These were largely peaceful protests.
There was not a single mayor or governor who said our state and local law enforcement is overwhelmed.
We need federal forces, but he still wanted to use the Insurrection Act.
And at the time, the acting Secretary of Defense publicly said that would be a, we shouldn't use the Insurrection Act for this.
And that's pretty much what put a stop to it.
And it's one of the reasons why that person was fired.
But absolutely, I think we have heard Trump say that he will use emergency powers essentially to quash dissent or opposition to his presidency.
And that is a very frightening and alarming prospect.
And that is certainly a situation where legal challenges could and should and will be brought.
From John in New Hampshire, Independent Line.
Hi there.
Hi.
You had talked about the insurrection and called it an insurrection.
And there were no weapons there.
And if you look back at the hearing that was held, the real hearing, not the January 6th hearings, the hearing that actually had the chief of police, Stephen Lund, at the time.
I'm sorry, Stephen Sund at the time.
He will tell you it wasn't an insurrection.
He will tell you he didn't have enough resources that he requested before the event that Trump try to supply these people.
I'd also like to know if you believe, as liberals have taken over state houses across the country, if you believe those were insurrections also.
Thank you for your time.
So one of the reasons I said it's really not necessary to discuss quarrel over the word insurrection is because the Insurrection Act itself does not apply only to insurrections and it certainly does not apply only to situations where people have weapons.
It also applies to obstructions of federal law.
So I don't think it's worth getting into a discussion of what's an insurrection, what isn't an insurrection.
It is quite clear that the criteria for the Insurrection Act were met on January 6th.
So as the new administration comes in next year, Ms. Gwynton, what are you watching for?
What's a red flag for you?
Well, Trump has said that he will declare a national emergency on day one.
I think he said that.
I think we can expect to see that.
I am curious, I'm not sure that's the right word, but which emergency powers he plans to invoke.
So at the time the president declares a national emergency, he has to specify the powers that he intends to invoke.
He can then later add new powers, but then he has to issue an executive order identifying the powers he's going to rely on.
So I will be looking to see what powers he thinks can be used for mass deportation.
Now, you know, there are, as I said, about 150 different emergency powers.
I will say that none of them is designed to facilitate deportation.
And so, and I'm not saying that none of them could possibly be used to free up resources.
I think there are legal questions around that that the courts will resolve.
But because none of those provisions were designed for that purpose, It is likely that he will be stretching powers beyond what they were intended to be used for in a way that is going to be legally questionable.
So I will be looking to see what powers he relies on.
And if he invokes the Insurrection Act, you know, he could use it in any number of ways, and he could not use it at all.
He could invoke it simply for the shock and awe, and he could continue to rely on existing statutory authorities that give him a good amount of, or that allow Federal Armed Forces to support civilian law enforcement in a number of ways.
So I think, you know, he's been very vague about what he would do under a national emergency declaration, what he would do under the Insurrection Act.
And I will be looking to see those details.
I don't know that we're going to see them on day one.
I don't know that we're going to see them on day 30, but that's what I'm looking carefully to see.
The website is BrennanCenter.org.
Liza Goitian is the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice, Liberty, and National Security Program, here to talk about the presidential emergency powers.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks very much.
Later on in the program, we're going to talk about the economic policy goals of the incoming Trump administration with Peter Morisi, University of Maryland Emeritus.
A first open forum if you want to participate.
Here's how you can do so: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents 202-748-8002.
We'll take those calls and open for them when Washington Journal continues.
There is something for every C-SPAN fan when you let your fingers do the shopping during our Cyber Monday sale.
Going on right now at cspanshop.org, our online store.
Save up to 35% off site-wide.
Save on hoodies, sweatshirts, glassware, mugs, and more.
And every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations.
Shop C-SPAN's Cyber Monday sale.
Going on now with up to 35% off at cspanshop.org or scan the code on the right.
Attention middle and high school students across America.
It's time to make your voice heard.
C-SPAN Student Cam Documentary Contest 2025 is here.
This is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness, and make an impact.
Your documentary should answer this year's question, your message to the president.
What issue is most important to you or your community?
Whether you're passionate about politics, the environment, or community stories, StudentCam is your platform to share your message with the world.
With $100,000 in prizes, including a grand prize of $5,000, this is your opportunity not only to make an impact, but also be rewarded for your creativity and hard work.
Enter your submissions today.
Scan the code or visit studentcam.org for all the details on how to enter.
The deadline is January 20th, 2025.
The C-SPAN Bookshelf podcast feed makes it easy for you to listen to all of C-SPAN's podcasts that feature nonfiction books in one place so you can discover new authors and ideas.
Each week, we're making it convenient for you to listen to multiple episodes with critically acclaimed authors discussing history, biographies, current events, and culture from our signature programs about books, afterwards, booknotes plus, and QA.
Listen to C-SPAN's bookshelf podcast feed today.
You can find that C-SPAN Bookshelf Podcast feed and all of our podcasts on the free C-SPAN Now mobile video app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website c-span.org/slash podcasts.
Washington Journal continues.
This is the part of the program we call Open Forum.
And if you want to make comments on issues of politics and public policy, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and 202-748-8002 for independents.
The Associated Press reporting that President Biden arriving for that long-awaited first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa.
He did that on Monday to the cheers of thousands of Angola, where he will highlight an ambitious U.S.-backed railway project meant to counter China's influence on the continent of 1.4 billion people.
The three-day visit will largely focus on the Libido Corridor Railway development in Zambia, Congo, Angola.
It aims to advance the U.S. presence in a region rich in the critical minerals used for batteries for electric vehicles, electronic devices, and clean energy technologies.
You are seeing a video there from the president's arrival in Angola.
On the way over, the White House Press Secretary Karim John Pierre had a chance to talk with reporters, was asked about the presidential pardon that was given to the president's son, Hunter Biden.
This is in an audio only of that conversation that took place on Air Force One, but here's part of that press conference.
You have said repeatedly yourself since the election, the president has said for months no pardon was coming.
I just, I wanted to ask you, could those statements now be seen as lies from the American people?
Is there really a credibility issue here given now this announcement?
First of all, one of the things that the president always believes is to be truthful to the American people.
That is something that he always truly believes.
And if you see the end of his, I assume that you've read his statement and you look at the end of that statement, and he actually says that in the first line and the last paragraph and respects the thinking and how the American people will actually see this in his decision making.
And I would encourage everyone to read in full the president's statement.
I think he lays out his thought process.
He lays out how he came to this decision.
He came to this decision this weekend.
So let's be very clear about that.
He says it himself.
It's in his voice.
He said he came to this decision this weekend.
And he said he wrestled with this.
And because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes that the war politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice.
This is his words.
I'm just repeating what the president said.
He also said that no reasonable person, if you are looking at this in a good faith way, if you are looking at the facts of Hunter's cases and can reach, you can't reach any other conclusion, right?
That full press conference, by the way, is available at our website at cspan.org.
Let's hear from Adriana in Los Angeles Democrats line.
Hi, good morning.
I'm calling about the last guest that was on your program and the last caller.
And my criticism is that the last caller asked three questions and the guests selectively answered partially only one of them.
And the host, which I'm not criticizing the host, really, because I know there's a time factor involved sometimes.
But nobody approached her and said, hey, wait a minute, can you answer the questions that this caller just made?
And I feel it's very important to cross-examine some of the guests because sometimes they're propagandists and they're promoting their own position rather than educating the public on the issues.
And that's my sort of criticism.
But I love C-SPAN.
And I'm sure there must have been a time factor, but it would be nice to hear that the host or hostess probes the guests more and gets them to answer the questions.
Okay, well, you're talking to the host, and thanks for the comment.
Time was a factor in it, but, you know, it's a fair point.
And thank you for that.
Let's hear from Francisco in California, Independent Line.
Hi there.
Hi, this is Francisco McGania.
Yeah, with all this debate on Biden with his son and everything, you know, I mean, he said that he was going to not pardon him, and he parted him.
You know what I mean?
And it's getting really bad for him for just saying that.
He should have just not got into it because of parting the son.
Then you got Trump.
He haven't got in the White House and they're accusing him of all this, what he's going to do.
Let him get in the House before you accuse him of doing this or doing that.
Give him a chance.
Nobody gives the president a chance.
He never did a bad thing when he did his own to make it good for our government.
And I don't understand that.
Arlen in Florida, Republican line.
Hi.
Hi, good morning.
Wonderful show.
I just want to make a statement regarding the person that you had on before, the gal, and that she speaks to the President Trump as Trump.
That's very disrespectful.
She always says President Biden, but this is our president, President Trump.
The majority has spoken.
He is our president.
And now the opposition are walking around like a dog with a broken leg.
And they're trying to rehabilitate themselves, but it is not going to work.
The American majority has spoken in our beautiful republic, and it will remain that way now.
We will come back and we will hold.
We will love each other no matter what color or race.
But this is the United States of America.
And everybody should hold hands and enjoy our life here.
It could be a lot worse.
Thank you.
That's Arlene there in Florida on Capitol Hill.
This from Politico saying that Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, launching a challenge to the top House Judiciary Democrat Jerry Nadler.
He did that Monday afternoon in a letter to Democratic colleagues.
The bid sets up a generational clash for the leadership of one of the most high-profile congressional panels as Democrats look to build a bulwark against Donald Trump's presidency.
Quote, after a week consulting most of our colleagues and engaging in serious introspection about where we are, I am running today to be your ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee on the 119th Congress.
This is where we will wage our frontline defense of the freedoms and rights of people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of the most precious birthright possessions, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself.
More there about that decision by Representative Raskin to run for that post, uh, part of the changing that will take place between now and uh next year.
Let's hear from Joe, Joe, on our line for Democrats in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, good morning.
Uh, yeah, I was like to talk about uh a couple months ago, they passed a bill to get funding for the candidates, and they rushed to True and got it done, which is all right.
But when uh, Mix McConnell years ago, kids were getting killed in school, he always said, This is not the time to take care of this, and he never did nothing.
I think the man should be thrown out of office, and that's my opinion.
Thank you in Albany, New York, excuse me, Albany, New York, Sergio, Independent Line.
Hi, thank you for taking my call, C-SPAN.
Um, as I observe, you know, what was going on during this election, it always kind of makes me giggle or laugh, or I don't know what it is, but it seems to be that Republicans always seem to think that all of the government programs that they're looking to destroy only benefit Democrats.
For example, I just looked this up before I called 52% of the nursing homes in this country, 80 to 100% of their funding comes from Medicare.
Now, I've got to believe that there are some Republicans who need these services from Medicare.
We took a look at the Department of Education.
Oh, we've got to destroy that too.
Well, aren't there Republicans who get Pell Grants and student loans from the Department of Education?
If you have a child with an IEP, you have a child with special needs, the Department of Education oversees how we help those children.
Is it only Democratic children that need those services?
I don't think so.
The last thing I want to mention is Social Security and Medicare.
When you look at those two programs, I have to ask the people who are listening: since their inceptions, there has only been one political party that has looked to take them away from you, to destroy them, and that is the Republican Party.
So, as an independent, I've got to look at this and say, you know, is it only Democrats that need government support or government help?
And I hope that, you know, my Republican colleagues out there are listening and realize there's a lot for them to lose, too.
That's Sergio there.
Let's hear from Luciano in Pennsylvania, Republican line.
Yes, I was wondering if any way they're going to be able to build up the economy so that I can get fed.
I'm in a nursing home and we're eating garbage food.
And I'm telling you, it's amazing we didn't get anything at all.
We need help here at LeeCom.
There's no food.
Are you there?
Yeah, we're here.
I'm listening.
There's really no food here.
And I'm at a retirement and it's a rehab.
Now, I asked for the doctor, and there's no doctor.
At least I never see one.
They say, well, he'll be here tomorrow.
And tomorrow never comes.
And that was like six months ago.
So I don't know what they're trying to pull here, but there's a lot of people around here.
When they first started here, they were happy.
Now they're walking around sad.
I'm one of them.
Okay.
Luciano there in Pennsylvania, Axios reporting that the Biden administration announcing a new $725 million security assistance package for Ukraine.
They did this on Monday.
It also includes a provision for more landmines and precision rocket launchers.
This goes on to say that the president has committed to a surge in aid for Kiev before he leaves office, with President-elect Trump having publicly criticized military aid to Ukraine.
It also quotes retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, Mr. Trump's pick for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has pushed a proposal to end the war between the two nations that would include requiring Kiev to relinquish its goal of regaining seas territory.
We're there in Axios, if you want to see it there when it comes to defense issues.
It was the Senate Republican leader on the Senate floor Monday talking about defense legislation, the need to pass it, and accusing Democrats of pushing through judicial nominations at expense of the readiness of America from its military.
Here's some of Mitch McConnell from the Senate floor.
And last year, the majority leader said publicly that, quote, the United States is ready to compete vigorously with the PRC.
The overwhelming consensus of U.S. national security experts contradicts that view.
But even if we were once ready to compete and deter aggression from the adversaries who are working together to threaten us, letting critical national security legislation collect dust for months while the Senate rubber stamps radical nominees is one heck of a way to sustain that elusive readiness or project American resolve.
From Iowa, we're joined by Barb on our Democrats line.
Hi.
Hi.
I'm going back to that other segment also.
The caller who said that there was no weapons during the insurrection is wrong.
The reports that the police seized enough ammunition to shoot every member of the House and Senate five times that day.
But also, I think that I just wanted to say that Jamie Ratkin would be awesome in charge of the Democratic Party.
And I am so proud of President Biden for pardoning his son, who was wrongly prosecuted and targeted.
And also for everything that he's trying to accomplish during this time, he is no lame duck president.
He is going out there and getting stuff done for the American people, for progress, the battery, what you just talked about in Africa.
You know, hopefully Trump won't come in and eliminate that.
Chances are he will.
But it's all, he's great.
So thank you very much.
As the viewer mentioned, President Biden in the last stages of his presidency, he's in Angola currently, visiting with leaders there to talk about railways and other things when it comes to U.S. interests there.
That's some of the more recent footage of the president's travels as he makes his first visit there.
We'll show you a little bit of that.
Also, to let you know, when it comes to actions by the Biden administration, that includes lending $7 billion to build battery factories in the United States.
This is highlighted in the New York Times this morning, saying that the loan that was announced Monday for $6.85 billion, not including interest, will be used to finance two battery plants in Kokomo, Indiana that are being built by StarPlus Energy, a joint venture between Stellantis and Samsung, a South Korean company.
The factories will employ 2,800 people once they are up and running and 3,200 workers during construction.
The plants will be capable of making batteries for 670,000 vehicles a year, according to the Department of Energy.
The loan agreements for Star Plus and Rivian will be binding once the government and the company sign those final contracts, which is expected to take place before Mr. Trump's inauguration in January.
Bill in Arizona, line for Republicans.
Go ahead.
Yeah, how you doing?
I don't know what everybody's so worried about because within the next 90 days, the dollar and the banks are going to collapse.
Thank you.
Why do you say that?
It's going to happen.
You'll see.
But what do you base that on?
The rest of the world is rejecting the dollar.
And that's what's going to happen.
Thank you.
Okay.
This is from Douglas Douglas in Maryland, Independent Line.
Yes, Pedro.
I am piggybacking on the first caller who called in and questioned why you didn't hold the guests' feet to the fire.
And I want you to think about the number of guests that you've had on since Biden has been in office who have said that illegal immigrants do not receive special gifts or things from state and federal people, from the taxpayers, and they do.
They have.
And I find at times your stance bias because you don't contest these guests properly.
Now, you have before.
They had a guest on here a week or two ago talking about the mass deportation proposed by Trump, and you had a lot of questions.
But now here we are fast forward, and all of these immigrants, illegal immigrants, are here in this country, and you don't seem to ask why.
So that's all I got.
Be fair.
No, we're fair all the way through as far as the questioning of our guests, the guests we bring on, the way we approach it.
But really, this program is a conduit for you, the viewer, to ask the questions of the guests and get results from them, whether they be an expert, a politician, or whomever.
So as far as our role, we moderate, we keep the things going.
But really, you're the star of this show when it comes to asking questions of the guests and asking questions of the host as well, really, if you think about it.
Let's hear from Dave.
Dave, in Las Vegas, Democrats line, you're next up.
Hello.
Well, I hope you don't cut me off because you cut off every Democrat.
Shame on you and the C-S fans because you never let people talk.
I got something to say.
First of all, Trump had 34 felonies and convicted in court.
Nobody does anything.
Tries to overthrow our government, which is a communist.
He did that.
People were killed from the covert.
People were killed.
And a million people died because of Trump.
This sucker is going to ruin this country.
He ain't going to make America great again.
He's going to make America hate again.
And every time somebody says, you said, Al, he didn't rape that lady, the Washington Post said that he raped that lady.
And I say what the jury decided was he was held liable for sexual abuse.
That's what we've said the whole way through.
And that's what the jury said.
The Washington Post said, it was in the Washington Post.
Put it in there.
The judge said he raped her.
And you go against anybody.
And I, and again, caller, I say what the jury decided, but I'll let you finish.
Go ahead, please.
First of all, there's something wrong with the American people.
He's going to put us in a recession and depression.
He's going to hurt the middle class.
He's going to cut Social Security, Medicare, and everything.
And you people don't care.
You put a criminal in the White House.
Something wrong with you.
Okay.
Okay.
That's Dave there in Las Vegas, the Washington Times, their front page, taking a look at a report from the House Select Subcommittee when it comes to the issue of COVID.
This is the headline lab leak, most likely origin of COVID saying that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic faulted U.S. health officials, particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci, for discrediting the lab leak explanation and instead pushing the theory that the virus originated in nature.
Representative Brad Redstrup, Ohio Republican and subcommittee chairman, said that the explanation doesn't fit the facts.
The timing of the virus, the unexplained illnesses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the virus's specific biological characteristics argue heavily for a human crisis.
Again, it's an almost 600-page report.
It was released by Republicans, the House Select Subcommittee there.
But that's take a look at the report.
You can read the Washington Times for more of that.
Let's hear from Al in New Jersey.
You're next up.
Hi, Dylan.
Good morning.
I just wanted to say the Democrat people that voted against President Trump, they're very angry people.
They have to embrace the new presidency.
He's going to make the country, President Trump, so much better.
He has way more better ideas than Biden.
Biden wrecked our country.
I'm 66 years old.
I never seen so much trouble in my life.
And Biden caused the most four years of damage.
So the people got to embrace President Trump.
He's making all the best people in position to help straighten out the country, make it safe again.
The people have spoken.
And it seems like these Democrat voters and people that got a lot of hatred.
All they want to do is every thing President Trump picks a person for the cabinet, they don't like nothing newly picked.
Everybody's a problem.
They got to just, you know, let him do what he's got to do and get everything straightened out and move forward.
And I don't want to see more money, billions of dollars.
People are struggling in America.
All that money going to Ukraine again, Pedro.
I don't think it's fair.
I'm on Social Security or fixed income.
I'm struggling.
I just make all my bills.
But I mean, I think we should be increasing Social Security for us people.
The cost of living is so high, and we don't get a raise $12, $25.
You know, we need $200, $300 extra on our check to help us get by.
Thank you, Pedro.
Al in New Jersey there calling in.
It was the process of nominations that was part of the discussion of the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the floor Monday, urging his Republican colleagues when it comes to the process of the president's nomination and what goes on in confirming that.
Here's part of Chuck Schumer from yesterday.
The Senate's advise and consent power will be especially important next year, given that the president-elect has at times made statements about potentially working around the Senate to appoint his nominees.
Hopefully, this doesn't become an issue.
But nevertheless, it will be the responsibility of the incoming Republican majority to protect the Senate against any attempt to erode its authority.
So today I sent a letter to incoming Republican leader Thun, urging him to uphold the Senate's constitutional duty to provide advise and consent on the president's nominations.
I said Democrats will be ready to work with Republicans in a bipartisan way on the nominations process and give each nominee the same fair and thorough consideration that previous nominees of both parties have received.
We should hold hearings with the nominees, markups in committee, and senators should be given the chance to vote on nominees here on the Senate floor.
The American people deserve public servants who put the needs of the country ahead of the political needs of any individual, Republican or Democrat.
The American people deserve public servants whose judgment, character, and experience inspires confidence and reflects our nation's highest ideals.
Most of all, the American people deserve public servants who will uphold their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The best mechanism for ensuring the president appoints qualified, capable, and ethical officials is precisely the advise and consent power of the Senate.
And it will be the responsibility of the incoming majority and the incoming majority leader to ensure that the authority of the Senate is carried out and preserved.
Again, Senator Schumer from the floor yesterday, Nora is up next in North Carolina Democrats line.
Hello.
Hi, you're on.
I'm calling concerned President Biden, pardon his son.
I think he did a great thing.
If they can put a convict felon in the White House, and just because Joe Biden told one lie, he is no good.
Think about all what Trump had did before he came to president in 2016, 17.
So they have no room to talk just because the president told one lie.
Everybody feel, especially the Republicans, feel that Trump is above the law.
So other words, it's a lie being said, no man above the law.
Look at debt.
Think about debt.
People should go back and think about what the holy Bible said in the last evil days.
They were called right, wrong, wrong, right.
So the Republicans feel that whatever they do, it's right, but not in the sight of God.
So if you can put a convict felon in the White House, they shouldn't say anything about Joe Biden told one lie compared to the lie that Trump told.
Get it real.
What President Biden should do is.
Go ahead and finish, Nora.
Go ahead and finish.
Pardon me?
Go ahead and finish.
Because President Biden told one lie, they can scold him.
But in the last days, God will pay all liars because he said he despised a liar.
Okay, that's Nora there in North Carolina.
The New York Times takes a look at a film that was made by Dinesh D'Souza.
You may have remembered it called 2000 Mules.
Now the director going back on submitting some of the findings of that film were wrong, saying more than two years after the widely debunked 2000 Mules poured gasoline on right-wing conspiracy theories about election fraud, the documentary's writer and director Dinesh D'Souza has acknowledged that its findings were based on a faulty analysis.
Mr. D'Souza said in a statement on his website that the analysis used in the film, which claimed to despict a vast ring of mules illegally gathering large numbers of ballots and surreptitiously placing them in drop boxes was incorrect.
The film's premise was based on matching surveillance videos from Dropbox locations with geolocated cell phone data that appeared to show repeated trips to areas near drop boxes near the 2020 election.
More of that available at the New York Times.
Let's hear from Gilbert.
Gilbert in Ohio, Independent Line, you're next up.
Gilbert in Ohio, hello.
Hello, I'm here.
Are you there?
Yep, go ahead.
Oh, I just wanted to make a statement to all the Americans here that are listening to this station.
You know, the thing that we have a problem with is that we got to start attacking term limits for these politicians.
I'm 75 years old.
All I listen to is Schumer's name, McConnell, Nader, just all these old people that's been there way too long.
This country needs a term limit for these politicians.
I'm 75 years old, and that's all I've heard.
What, Biden, 50 years?
Come on.
Enough is enough.
We need term policies.
Period.
Thank you.
Joe, but they're in Ohio.
One more call.
This is Michael.
Michael in Texas, Republican Line.
Hey, good morning.
I have a comment to the lady a couple moves back that stated that Joe Biden told a lie.
Jesus, people, help me.
Joe Biden has lied his entire life.
His life is a lie.
So with that being said, y'all need to get off Trump.
Trump will get us back to where we once were.
You know, all the petty BS that people spread and talk about is getting old.
You know, we, the people, are sick of, we will love for them to put term limits on the ballot.
Let the people decide.
Because if it goes through Congress, it will never pass.
Nobody's ever going to cut off their own job.
Put it on the ballot.
Let us vote on it.
Okay, Michael there in Texas, finishing off this open forum.
Thanks to all of you who participated this morning.
I really appreciate it.
Again, as we told you, you are the reason we exist as far as your avenue to talk to experts and politicians about issues of politics.
Especially that makes sense on this Giving Tuesday, as it's known.
You've probably heard us talk about it over the last couple of days.
Your opportunity to give directly to C-SPAN financially if you choose, especially now on this day, the first $10,000 of donations being matched dollar to dollar.
That will double your impact.
It will help us and help you when we give you unfiltered no-commentary coverage of how your government operates, keeping democracy accessible to everyone.
If you want to find out more by clicking the QR code with your phone, you can do that.
You can also go to our website at c-span.org/slash donate to find out more.
Coming up, a conversation with columnists and economist Peter Morisi about President-elect Trump's economic priorities come January.
We'll have that when Washington Journal continues.
C-SPAN Now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what's happening in Washington, live and on demand.
Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips.
You can also stay current with the latest episodes of Washington Journal and find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV networks and C-SPAN radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts.
C-SPAN Now is available at the Apple Store and Google Play.
Scan the QR code to download it for free today or visit our website, c-span.org/slash c-span now.
C-SPAN now, your front row seat to Washington, anytime, anywhere.
Since 1979, in partnership with the cable industry, C-SPAN has provided complete coverage of the halls of Congress.
From the House and Senate floors to congressional hearings, party briefings, and committee meetings, C-SPAN gives you a front-row seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions, and completely unfiltered.
C-SPAN, your unfiltered view of government.
If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org.
Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights.
These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos.
This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington.
Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest.
There is something for every C-SPAN fan when you let your fingers do the shopping during our Cyber Monday sale.
Going on right now at cspanshop.org, our online store.
Save up to 35% off site-wide.
Save on hoodies, sweatshirts, glassware, mugs, and more.
And every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations.
Shop C-SPAN Cyber Monday sale going on now with up to 35% off at cspanshop.org or scan the code on the right.
Washington Journal continues.
We're joined by Peter Morisi.
He's a national columnist business professor emeritus at the University of Maryland talking about the incoming administration and economic policy.
Good morning to you.
Good morning.
How would you say are the core beliefs of the incoming administration when it comes to economic policy?
What would you say those are?
Well, they're certainly populists.
In some ways, they're similar to the Biden administration.
They both have this nostalgia about manufacturing.
They want to bring back good union jobs in the Midwest.
They want a tough line against China.
In those ways, they're similar.
Where they're different is that in leveraging up the economy as you deal with the Chinese problem, the Republicans, their classic, is a classic Republican administration.
They want to raise taxes, excuse me, lower taxes, cut spending.
Whereas even the Biden folks wanted to raise spending and if they could get away with it, raise taxes.
I mean, that doesn't change much.
With regard to the rest of the world, Joe Biden did a remarkably good job of reforming and connecting us in terms of alliances.
And that was good for the economy.
Unfortunately, they're both protectionists in their core.
And neither of them see much value.
For example, in ASEAN, ASEAN is this region from Thailand to the Philippines, extraordinarily dynamic, an alternative to the Chinese, growing like gangbusters, having problems with the Chinese the same way we are, that President Obama wanted to link us to through a Pacific trade agreement.
They both shunned that.
It's a terrible mistake because it leaves an open door for the Chinese.
And that's where the growth is.
And it's remarkable.
Malaysia's got a tech sector now.
And you say, gee, Malaysia, well, who would have thought India would have a tech sector 25, 35 years ago?
The world is changing rapidly.
Where they're both weak is they tend to just be too isolationist.
We're going to pay dearly in terms of economics for what's going on in Europe right now.
We have to ask ourselves, you know, the appeasement of the 30s, was it really a good economic choice?
The answer is no.
And we're on the verge of that right now in Europe, and that could cost us incredibly in terms of defense spending.
Why Europe and why defense spending?
Well, quite simply, if we have to spend much more in defense because we permit Putin to achieve victory in the Ukraine, which he's about to do, then he will be emboldened.
He's got his economy on a war footing.
He's spending huge sums of money on defense or on his military.
It's not defense, it's offense.
And in turn, someone's going to have to match that, or we're going to, in the end, have him gradually eat up Europe.
That's going to be very costly to us.
You know, Americans don't realize this, but they talk about NVIDIA makes chips.
NVIDIA makes nothing.
NVIDIA designs chips.
And these are the most powerful chips of the world.
They're the crown jewels of the American economy.
They're the equivalent of the Model T in the 21st century.
They design those chips.
They only can be manufactured in Taiwan, which is just a brush away from China.
And they can only be manufactured in Taiwan with machinery made in the Netherlands.
The Dutch have a lock on the machine tools to make the chips.
Through RD, through certain visionary decisions they made, and so forth.
We have an economic interest, a security interest, in defending Europe.
We have an economic and security interest in defending Taiwan.
Permitting the Axis to become stronger and bolder will mean ultimately that we will have to defend those places at much higher cost than we would today.
There's a profound connection between security these days and economics.
You know, the nostalgic view of America is that we can live here in splendid isolation, make everything we need on our own.
It might cost us a little more, but it's worth it not to be engaged in a nasty and terrible world.
That's just not true.
Is that reflected in the President's current ideas for trade?
No, it's not.
Hitting the Europeans, the Europeans are reeling from a lot of bad decisions over the last 25, 35 years.
They haven't invested adequately in their economy.
You know, during COVID, the way the counties and the equivalent of our counties and states sent information to Berlin about cases and so forth, you know how they did it?
By facts.
They didn't do it through email or the internet.
They did it by facts.
The Germans make great 20th century machinery.
They haven't modernized.
They're no more capable of competing with the Chinese on electric vehicles than General Motors is.
They haven't invested in their economies.
And so if you hit them now with a 20% tariff and cut off this enormously important market to them, that could send that economy tanking into the ground in ways that we just don't want to see.
Then how will they defend themselves and those factories in Holland that make those machine tools?
If I were President Z, confronted by the sanctions we have imposed by denying them access to the technology, the two assets I most want, the things that are most important to me, remember ball bearings factories in World War II, we have to bomb the German ball bearings factory so they can't make the machinery?
The two assets I'd really want are the factory that make those chips in Taiwan and the factory that make the machine tools to make those chips in the Netherlands.
If we don't defend those, the American economy is going to look like a very different place.
So when the president talks about using, say, trade policy to China and other countries specifically to achieve policy goals, is that a good direction to go to?
With regard to China?
Yes.
Yes.
Threatening our friends?
No.
We have had, well before and after, since the 60s, a free trade arrangement with Canada in the automobile sector.
We used to call it the Auto Pact.
There's no American cars.
They're Canadian American cars.
The parts go back and forth.
The chassis go back and forth.
You put a 20% tariff on that.
You might as well just say the Japanese are going to make all the cars and send them here.
Because it completely gums up that supply chain.
Who was writing the script for Donald Trump when he said that?
Who was giving any thought to that?
Well, if you look at who he's appointing, he's decided that trade is going to be handled by the Commerce Secretary.
The trade representative is not going to be a particularly senior job.
He's going to take orders.
Lutnick has no experience whatsoever with trade.
Probably someone right now is explaining to him what Section 337 of the Trade Act is.
You can't have people like that making those kinds of policies.
Over at Treasury, we're not getting Janet Yellen.
We're getting a good, you know, we're getting a good derivatives trader.
Scott Besson.
Right.
And I'm not a Democrat.
You know that.
But credentials matter.
Experience matters.
A defense secretary that does your job doesn't, if you look at the various and significant challenges the military faces over the next four years in terms of modernization, force structure that's outnumbered in Asia and so forth, compensating for that, the distance at which we will have to fight if we have to defend Taiwan.
Someone who's been a platoon leader in the military should be commended for his service, but not handed the keys to the executive, you know, to basically be made CEO.
Let me pause you for a second only to invite viewers to ask questions about economic policy in the next administration.
202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748, 8,000 for Democrats, 202-748-8002 for Independents.
If you worked at the International Trade Commission.
I was chief economist.
How does that inform your view of trade now, particularly when it comes to tariffs?
You have to understand.
My whole career has been about trade agreements and tariffs and so forth.
I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the structure of the U.S. tariffs.
And I worked on that through my entire career.
It comes and goes.
I work on other things.
So that gave me an inside view of how, for example, these laws that Trump will have to access to impose the tariffs.
You have to perform investigations to impose the tariffs.
My office did the economics on those investigations.
I signed off on them.
My signature was on those investigations.
So my feeling is that we need people.
Like, for example, the last U.S. trade representative for Mr. Biden, she's an experienced trade lawyer.
She worked the cases.
Trump's last trade representative really carried the ball.
Initially, he was put under, I believe, Yellen's authority, but he quickly read, or no, it was someone, it was the Commerce Department, but he quickly wrestled that away because over there they had a trader as well, an investor.
But he's a trade lawyer.
I worked with him on some cases.
Economists do get called in.
He knew what he was doing.
I believe people should be loyal to Donald Trump to work in his administration.
But it would be kind of nice if would you entrust surgery to someone who kind of picked it up on the web two weeks before they met you?
Rhetorical question, sure.
I don't think so.
I love to hear from Milton.
Milton of Philadelphia, Democrats line, you're on with Peter Maurici.
Go ahead.
Okay, thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to make three points here.
One, okay, Trump is when he comes in, he's going to make the, he's going to destroy this economy.
Let's look at, okay, he starts a trade war with Mexico, Canada, and China.
You know what they're going to do?
They're going to retaliate.
And that's going to cost even more jobs, and it's going to cause prices here in America to go up.
I don't understand how people supported this idiot.
Second of all, okay, now every he's talking about this mass deportation, right?
You go out and you deport all these illegals.
Look at who's doing the work in our country right now.
Who's picking those produce and crops from the farmers' fields right now?
They are illegals.
You deport all of them.
They work in our hotels.
They work, they do J in our restaurant.
Okay, Milton, what's the third point, please?
For these people, who's going to do them jobs?
Prices for produce, prices at restaurants, and hotels are going to go through the roof.
Okay, okay, we'll leave it together.
You make a good point.
I don't expect all these tariffs to go into effect.
First of all, he can't put them into effect right away, with the exception of China.
Of course, the president can do whatever he wants, and if someone doesn't challenge him in court, I mean, that was Joe Biden's strategy.
Donald Trump is no more lawless than Joe Biden.
He kept forgiving student loans, even though the courts told him he couldn't do it.
His basic strategy is: I'll forgive him and catch me if you can.
But if he imposes a 20% tariff across the board, I'd expect him to be challenged in court.
I don't believe he'll be able to declare a national security emergency on trade and impose a 20% tariff unless there is strong sentiment in the Congress that he's on strong ground.
The court presidents run in that direction.
I think that by and large he would get an injunction.
A tariff on China, he can go back to the prior investigations he did during his administration and invoke authority from that.
Normally, that sort of thing, the authority he used there takes about a year to do.
So I think he can move pretty quick on that.
If he does that and he does it in the right way, he isn't going to cause the kind of harm you say.
On the immigration point, probably the most dangerous man in America right now to the U.S. economy is Stephen Miller because he's the architect of this deport everybody kind of thing.
When I tell Republican operatives, you know, somebody's going to have to pick the crops.
Well, we'll just pay more Americans to do it.
40% of the field workers in American agriculture are probably irregular immigrants.
They're not necessarily illegal.
Some of them have been granted temporary asylum because their cases have to come up, which then may never happen.
But we have a macro terms, they're concentrated in agriculture, food processing, construction, the hospitality industry, in macro terms.
Through our regular program of immigration and population increase from people becoming 18, the U.S. economy can add 80,000 new workers a month once it gets to full employment.
By the summer of 2023, we were surely at full employment.
Unemployment was well less than 4%.
The thing was just right at there.
At that point, you can only add 80,000 jobs a month.
Yet from September to September of 23 to 24, we added 195,000 jobs a month.
Unless Martians were landing in the Arizona desert and releasing into the population workers to pick lettuce and to work at our hotels and to work in our construction projects in New York and so forth, unless Martians were bringing people in, those were irregular immigrants that found some way.
Now, some of them have work permits, many don't.
Let's turn this around.
What's this going to look like if he starts really deporting people beyond felons, those here who have a deportation order, who haven't left, they just sort of disappeared.
We can find them, apparently, pretty easily.
What's going to happen is all of a sudden, the person that cleans your house is going to disappear.
The person that cleans your office is going to disappear.
You won't be able to do an improvement on your home.
If you're buying a home, construction may stop.
The economy will stop.
What's more, go to the supermarket and try to find lettuce.
It's going to get very interesting when there are these kinds of shortages.
I don't know that Stephen Miller ever goes to the supermarket and asks himself, who picks the lettuce?
But the trust that Donald Trump has in this man to craft this kind of policy and put this kind of noise in his ear to say the things he is now saying, the election's over.
Everybody makes campaign promises.
Everybody exaggerates.
Everybody knows that.
What you're doing is establishing your theme of governance.
If he enforces the border and exercises the kind of deportation policy that he did and Barack Obama did, as opposed to Joe Biden, who was let him in, let him stay, then the economy will continue to function.
If he doesn't, this place is going to grind to a halt.
Okay, let me get Brian in.
Brian in Massachusetts Republican line.
Hi.
Hello.
You're on.
Go ahead.
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'd like to ask the professor for a comment or an answer to my question.
One of the President-elect's campaign promises was to raise tariffs, which has been in the news recently with both Canada and Mexico.
But a bunch of folks lost their jobs at International Harvester.
Excuse me, excuse me, John Deere.
I got that wrong.
And Mr. Trump said that he was going to raise the tariffs on tractors made in Mexico by 200%.
It's been reported in publications such as Successful Farmer and magazines like that.
But what do you think of that campaign promise?
And I understand that he's said something about 25%, not 200%.
What about all the folks losing their jobs at John Deere?
So I'll take my question on.
On the larger aspect of tariffs and then the agriculture industry.
Well, when he said 200%, he was talking about tractors.
25% was trade generally.
The Mexicans can turn around and do the same thing to us.
Then where are we?
They basically deny our exports.
One of the problems that we have is Joe Biden had a very promiscuous, I believe the John Deere workers are represented by the UAW.
I was caught a little off guard here being asked about John Deere.
But he adopted a very supportive, in fact, promiscuous attitude towards the UAW when they made their outrageous wage demands.
And basically, he leaned on General Motors, much as he did the folks that run the docks with regard to the launch mini, as if this money would be readily available.
Well, you know, General Motors might have been able to sustain those wage increases because they were getting lots of subsidies to build electric cars.
But John Deere isn't getting much in the way of that to build electric tractors.
You have to ask yourself: why is the cost structure at John Deere so uncompetitive that these tractors, which have been made in America for generations because of their technological sophistication?
These tractors today are not the ones you see from a 1940s movie on Turner Classic Movies.
These are very sophisticated contraptions, and farming has become extraordinarily technological.
Folks don't realize that.
Why is it not cost-effective to make them here?
And the entire auto belt has got a basic problem.
Up and down the line from the CEO to the people on the plant floor, they pay themselves too much.
They simply do.
And they have a great deal of bureaucracy.
They've learned how to be good government agencies that has complied with lots of regulations.
Probably one of the toughest things that Mr. Musk had in establishing out of whole cloth a new car company, though he had a lot of government subsidies to do it, was learning how to deal with all these government regulations.
So they become civil servants making cars at very high prices.
And they don't make economic sense anymore.
There's another sector that Chris in Alabama brings up saying that the President-elect says that U.S. steel in Fairfield, Alabama can't be sold to Japan.
Asking, can you explain the impact and importance of that decision?
I think it's a terrible decision that both presidents supported.
The decision not to sell U.S. steel to let the Japanese buy it was terrible.
U.S. steel is kind of like the German automobile industry.
It needs modernization.
The Japanese company was willing to come in and put a lot of money into the facilities, and it was willing to provide a lot of technology to modernize them, which is sorely needed.
There's really two sectors, two steel sectors in the United States.
There's the mini-mills, which recycle steel.
And when I say recycle, I'm not just talking about rebarticle, it's concrete.
They make steel for the automobile industry, which is highly efficient and very competitive.
And the old integrated mills, which basically make it from ore.
Those are not as modern as they could be.
There was no particular threat of those jobs leaving.
The reason is you don't ship steel across the ocean to make automobiles.
You make it down the street from the auto plant, so to speak.
Not quite down the street, but a lot of your steel and cars and so forth is locally sourced.
It wouldn't have made much sense to take the production of steel across the ocean.
If you look at the importance of labor in the steel industry, it's not nearly as important as the importance of technology because of the cost of transportation across the ocean.
This is very, very different than vehicles, where there's a lot of technology in it, a lot of value-added.
As we say, you have to look in economics at the weight to value ratio.
You know, in steel, the weight is very big relative to the value.
In cars, it's not.
Peter Morisi at the University of Maryland, Business Professor Emeritus.
Margaret in Wyoming.
Independent Line, you're up next.
Margaret in Wyoming, hello.
One more time for Margaret.
Go ahead, Margaret.
You're on.
Oh, let's go to Matthew.
Matthew in Michigan, Dearborn, Michigan, Democrats line.
You're on.
Good morning, sir.
I'd like to ask Mr. Morrissey about Trump's plan about crypto.
He wants to make crypto like a reserve currency, and I don't know, spent $200 or $50 billion or trillion.
I can't remember the number.
But I don't think that's a good idea.
But I'd like to hear Mr. Morrissey's what he thinks about it.
Well, this is like so many things.
Donald Trump wants to control inflation, but he wants to put on tariffs.
He wants to grow the economy, but he wants to take the immigrants out of the labor force.
The same thing goes with cryptocurrency.
The U.S. dollar is the reserve currency around the world.
That gives us great benefit.
What do I mean by the reserve currency?
Central banks hold dollars around the world to back up their currency.
In addition, they hold some gold, but the dollars is what they really hold.
They hold it in the form of treasury securities.
And it is also the transaction currency for most cross-border transactions.
For example, you're in Thailand and you're going to send some toys that you've manufactured to Chile.
There's not much of a market for Thai bats and Chilean pesos.
What they do is the Chileans buy dollars, then trade the dollars to buy Thai bats and pay for it that way.
So the dollar is the transactions currency on one side of an exchange or the other in about 90% of it goes on in the world.
In order to have that In order to have that, you have to have two things.
You have to have a sound, reliable economy whose currency is respected, and it has to be one that is respected militarily.
The global superpower has always had the currency.
People don't recognize that.
The second thing you have to have is what we call a messaging system for banks to trade the currency, to actually perform these transactions.
The SWIFT system, Citibank has a transaction system.
Those things provide that for the dollar.
In order to have an alternative currency, for example, as the BRICS Nations described, you'd have to develop an alternative messaging system.
Out of the crypto system could come that.
The second thing is, if we abandon the idea that a country should have it, some basket of currencies could do the job, like Facebook was proposing something called Libra.
A government would have to get a hold of it and back it up.
Empowering the crypto world is a great way to undermine the dollar because it's encouraging the development of the infrastructure necessary for an outside of government system.
Right now, governments control money.
This creates the capacity for an outside the government system.
Before we take our next call, I want you to comment on a piece you wrote today on the dollar saying, and this is just the headline saying families could be out $2,500 if for some reason the world decides to let go of the dollar.
Couldn't you explain that?
Sure.
Everybody knows we have a big budget deficit.
We have a bigger budget deficit than anyone else in the world could tolerate.
The Chinese budget deficit, I think, like 3.5% of GDP.
Ours is 7%.
The reason we get away with that is people need dollars to perform trade.
They need dollars to invest.
If you're an Argentine school teacher and you have the equivalent of an IRA, where are you going to put your money?
In the Argentine currency or the U.S. currency?
You probably want to find some way to open up a Vanguard account and put it here.
That requires dollars.
Every year, we float bonds to finance that deficit, and some of them get bought up abroad.
Those bonds function as dollars.
After all, you don't really want to keep your dollars in dollars.
You want to keep them in an interest-bearing asset.
Ten-year Treasury is a nice interest-bearing asset.
It pays 4%.
Inflation in the United States is less than that.
It's going to go up in value in real terms, not down.
Your government's not going to inflate it out of sight.
You're not worried about the Russians swallowing your country, and so on and so forth.
You don't want to keep it in Yuan.
You don't want to keep it in Chinese assets.
I mean, we know at any given morning, President Zi can wake up and decide he doesn't like you and take the company.
And he kind of does that.
You don't want to keep it in Saudi reals.
I mean, after all, he locked up all his relatives to get their money.
It was Henry VIII closing the Abbey.
I mean, as long as we have that Crown Prince there running the country, nothing's secure.
My feeling is the only place that are really, really secure are the pound, the dollar, the yen.
Historically, historically, that's worth about $2,500 to $3,000 a family.
Let's go to Rick.
Rick in Idaho, Republican line.
Good morning to you.
Pedro Pete, double up on the beach this morning.
This is Rick Ageson, Nap, Idaho, tired Marine.
Publicly, I put in my resume for Secretary of Transportation, President Trump, and this is why.
I can cut the debt by $16 trillion, $700 billion in 38 months, two weeks, and generate $440 million every 24 hours.
Mr. Maurici, part of the puzzle with our products coming in from China is no one ever paid attention to the shipping and handling costs.
When an ocean-going cargo ship comes into port, $619 per ton, $1,827 U.S. gallons, which equates to 51 cents per gallon.
The way to offset the cost of our shipping and handling costs, we're going to increase our production in the United States by 1%.
GM Ford, Chrysler, dynami, mechanical engineers.
Okay, slow down.
Slow down.
Rick, slow down.
Rick, Rick.
Hold on, hold on.
I'll do it.
Rick, what's the question?
Okay, Mr. Maurici, will you look into ocean-going cargo ships to identify what they pay for bunker oil?
Okay, we'll leave it there, and we'll talk about shipping overall if that fits into the conversation.
Well, you know, we use the same ships to send out our exports.
I guess what he's saying is there's a subsidy in the shipping because of the price of fuel.
He went by so fast.
It was kind of like, you know, reading the back of a theater ticket inside the theater in the dark.
If there's a prejudice there, you know, I'd like to know about it, but it was kind of hard to work all that out.
Back to immigration for a second.
You recently wrote that when it comes to the president's views on immigration, you talked about it, but he has to moderate those views.
What's the proper view then?
In your opinion, what's the proper view?
Certainly, we don't want to have the kind of border that Joe Biden gave us.
You know, the AOC foreign policy is one of let anybody come here that wants, let anybody settle here who wants, and don't worry about crowding in the cities, homelessness in New York, and things like that.
We need to enforce the border and we need to regulate immigration again.
But we probably need to have about twice as many legal immigrants as we're currently letting in.
You know, so that we can, we need another one to one and a half million workers a year over what we can provide through the programs we already have.
And we need to make that skills-based.
And by skills-based, it doesn't mean they're all electrical engineers.
We need a lot of ordinary workers.
My feeling would be that you look at where you need people and where people are willing to go to work.
That's what the Canadians do.
That's hardly a fascist society.
From Margaret.
Margaret in Wyoming.
Thanks for trying again, Independent Line.
Margaret, hello.
Yes, hello.
Can you hear me?
Yep, you're on.
Go on.
We can hear you.
All righty.
Well, getting back to the question regarding immigration and labor in economics, economically speaking, all right.
You mentioned the need for so many foreigners to come in and do these jobs, but what about the other side of the equation?
That would be the cost to the American economy for maintaining these people since many of them do not leave.
What I'm talking about is this: what about the cost of SNAP?
What about the cost of Medicare?
What about the cost of Medicaid?
Many of these people will want to get government-subsidized benefits.
What about the cost of all of that to the economy?
That is my question.
Margaret, thank you.
The labor force participation rate of immigrants is higher than Native Americans.
They're hardworking.
They come and buy into the American dream.
They don't particularly want to get involved in identity politics.
We just saw that in the last election.
You know, ASC is running around and saying white guys are oppressing you.
Vote Democratic.
And what did they do?
They pulled the lever for Donald Trump, despite a wall of Mr. Trump's liabilities, personal liabilities.
Why did they pull that lever?
They don't buy into that.
You know, my family came here at the turn of the 20th century, four immigrants who married here and so forth.
My older brother summarized it best, because we actually knew the immigrants in the 50s.
They were elderly then.
They were at the end of their working lives, but they were still working.
One was a longshoreman, one was a buttonhole maker, and the two women were seamstresses.
And my brother says, when I see these Hispanics coming across the border, you know who I see?
I see our grandparents.
Trust me, my brother and I are hardly viewed by your progressive friends as progressive.
But the reality is these are hardworking people.
Now, you should need to screen your immigrants, just as they did the Italians when they came in.
You came in through Ellis Island, they screened you.
Are you healthy?
Are you going to go to work?
Things like that.
That's what the Canadians do.
The Canadians have a population one to tenth the size of ours.
But they're emitting like 500,000 immigrants a year to staff their economy because they have the same demographic problem we do.
The birth rate went down dramatically 20 years ago, and now we're reaping the harvest of that.
Unless we want to have more babies in America, we're going to need immigrants to keep the country going.
The other thing is, who's going to pay the Social Security tax to support you in your old age if we don't admit people?
The number of workers relative to the number of old people in America is going to get too low to do that.
You know, if you want to work till you're 85, keep the Hispanics out of America and the Asians and the Africans and so forth.
Also, the kind of reaction we're getting today is no different than the reaction I saw as a boy to when Puerto Ricans first started coming here.
They lived in New York, Westside Story, true story, the prejudices and so forth, and that I felt the residual consequences of going through the school system.
You know, one day I was sitting in the cafeteria with some faculty from other departments where I went to graduate school who vaguely knew me and didn't catch my last name really well.
I listened to distinguished professors talking about how all the Italians are in the mob.
I sure wish I had those connections.
I'd have gotten ahead a lot easier.
Probably gotten tenure instantaneously.
This is from Ed.
Carslion would have gone visited the dean and said, Peter should be a full professor.
This is Ed in Pennsylvania, Democrats lie.
Ed in Pennsylvania, hello.
Ed.
Hello.
You're on.
Go ahead, Ed.
Go ahead.
Yeah, as I said before, we need these immigrants that are here, not the ones that are here now.
It's not been controlled like it should have been.
Okay, but what they're talking about, putting them on a plane and sending them all back to where they came from.
Who's going to pay that fee and are the countries going to accept them back?
No one's ever said anything about, will the countries accept them back?
Well, actually, people are exploring that.
One of the problems that we have in Great Britain has, by the way, look at how tough they have.
Great Britain's got a moat, and it's overrun with illegal immigrants the way we are.
Think about all the bodies of water those people have to cross to get from Africa into Britain.
They have to get across the Mediterranean, which you cannot do, you know, in an inflatable raft.
And then they have to get through Europe one way or another, which is not that hard.
Once you get into Europe, you can pass through pretty easily.
And you have to get across the channel, but they manage.
No, the problem with sending them back is a country has to be willing to accept them.
If people come from Nicaragua and you send a plane to Nicaragua and the Nicaraguan government won't accept them, then you're faced with the choice of also sending a battalion of Marines down there to clear a path for them at the airport.
We're not going to do that.
The cost has been estimated, I think, sending back a million a year, and there are $13 million here, a $13 million program.
It would be like $87, $83, $80-something billion a year to send back a million a year.
And probably it's a lot worse than that.
Also, do you have the stomach to watch the Army, as Mr. Trump says he would do with the National Guard, knock on doors and pull grandmothers out of their beds and throw them in wagons and take them away?
Do you really expect all these folks to go peaceably?
Not if there's sympathy towards them here.
I don't know that Stephen Miller really understands the social dynamite he's playing with and how much it makes us, could make us look like places from the 30s in Europe, or how much Stephen Miller fully appreciates that he won't be able to get lettuce again if he gets his way.
This administration is badly advised on trade and immigration and likely taxes too.
I mean, we now have a Treasury Secretary who pronounced that tariffs won't raise prices.
If tariffs won't raise prices, then close your eyes and open them again in 30 seconds.
I will be 26 years old, 6'2, and I'll be playing linebacker for the New York Giants next Sunday.
Let's hear from John Johnson, Florida, Independent Line for Peter Morisi.
Go ahead.
Hello.
So earlier you mentioned the grocery stores would increase their prices if immigrants weren't picking all our fruits and vegetables.
And Florida actually did crack down on that and stop people who were illegal from picking our fruits and vegetables.
No prices increased.
There was a small period of worker shortage that lasted between one and three months, depending on the store, and everything went back to normal.
And it actually helped the economy.
People in places like McDonald's started speaking English again, and it was fantastic.
It was the best thing that ever happened to Florida.
No prices increased, and there was even more opportunity, more jobs.
And I want to hear your take on that.
Well, I'd have to see the documentation of what you're saying, what the size of the industry was, how many people were involved.
I suggest to you, if you take the immigrants out of the Central Valley of California, you can't find enough people in California to work in those places, even if you force them to.
Even you told, you know, we're going to get rid of food stamps and everything, and you forced people to work.
I don't think you could find enough bodies to do it.
Finding a million people to replace all the agricultural workers in the United States is a little different than replacing some orange pickers in Florida.
It's a much bigger scale.
And so I think what I frankly expect is this is not going to happen, is that cooler heads will sooner or later prevail.
I mean, Lutnick and the new Treasury Secretary are not stupid men, and they're going to go over to those buildings and people are going to start to explain these numbers to them.
And fortunately, we do know this about both of them.
They read.
Mark in Florida also, Democrats line.
Yeah, hello.
Good morning.
Thank you for C-SPAN.
And it's a real pleasure to get to speak to Mr. Morisi.
I am 100% behind a lot of what you've just been saying right now.
I don't know what's wrong with our country, and I don't know what's wrong with the Democratic Party.
This is my last call as a Democrat.
I will be switching back to independent, which I switched from back when it was.
Join the Republican Party.
It's good for your soul.
No, I'm going to be cute.
You should be what you want to do.
Running a little short on time, Carla.
Go ahead, please.
Okay, my grandparents were from the old country.
They came into Ellis Island, much like your guests' grandparents came into Ellis Island.
And it was a great thing that led to our country growing and prospering.
That's what's wrong with immigration right now.
And in fact, it's what's wrong with the Democratic Party.
They become Republican lights when they keep saying the bill, the bipartisan bill.
What we should be doing is filling up all the empty work slots with all these people that walked 3,000 miles to get here, so they've got to have some initiative to them and let them come in through the modern Ellis Island, put one along in Texas somewhere where they could come in and get registered, get registered to work, start earning a living, start paying taxes and filling up those empty slots, and maybe that would help our country become good again.
And that's why I'm no longer going to be a Democrat because they don't support that.
Mark in Florida, thank you.
Is there a way to revamp the immigration system in order to achieve those goals?
Oh, sure.
Look at what the Canadians are doing.
It's a much smaller country on a proportional scale.
They're admitting the kinds of immigrants and the quantity of immigrants I'm talking about.
And they're getting it done.
My feeling is this can be done, and it's a matter of getting organized.
It's just like, you know, we decided to help the semiconductor industry, and by and large, that program will be successful, save Intel.
Nothing can save Intel from itself.
It's the general motives of the CHIPS world.
But the rest of the CHIPS business can be reinforced and strengthened and will be.
And I think we can do the same thing when it comes to this.
When Americans set their mind to an organizational task, they get it done.
But you have to decide that it's a good thing to do, and you're going to get it done.
You also have to have an administration that believes in it.
It's kind of like free trade.
Right now, there are maybe 11 of us in the city of Washington, I think, that free trade is a good thing.
It's very unfortunate because trade creates jobs, trade creates wealth, creates opportunity, and it's very unfortunate that the attitudes that are developed with regard to that.
You hinted at it, and we'll finish with this, as far as the tax cuts that were passed in the previous Trump administration, what should happen currently, and what does that do for the debt of the nation overall?
Well, we probably can get away with extending them, but that's about all he can spend.
The notion that tariffs are going to replace it is just silly sauce.
If we put a 60% tariff on China and we got away with it, they didn't retaliate, we'd probably get $100 billion a year out of TUPS.
Extending the tax cut is going to cost about $300 billion a year, $350 billion a year.
That's about the limit we could do.
That would give us the kind of deficit we had in 2024.
In 2025, the deficit is going to be a bit smaller as a percentage of GDP because the economy has been growing so rapidly that it could get away with that.
But that's about the limit.
One of the things to also recognize, and I want to leave as a parting thought, is that Joe Biden will tell you differently.
Donald Trump bequeathed to Joe Biden a very good and strong economy.
COVID required us to shut it down.
It was running like an Olympic athlete during Donald Trump's time.
It was growing at 2.8% a year.
When it woke up from COVID, it woke up like a prize fighter.
For the last eight years, the U.S. economy has been accomplishing annualized growth at 2.8%.
That is light years above what Bush and Obama accomplished.
The U.S. economy is going gangbusters.
This is not a time to mess with this well-oiled machine.
Brianna Maurici of the University of Maryland, Business Professor Emeritus.
He writes a regular column on several fronts.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you for having me.
That's it for the program today.
Another edition of Washington Journal comes your way tomorrow at 7 a.m.
We'll see you then.
Well, coming up later today at noon Eastern here on C-SPAN, the U.S. House returns to session for the first time since the start of their Thanksgiving holiday break.
Today, lawmakers are expected to work on several judicial and natural resources bills, and they could also vote on whether to release the Ethics Committee's report on former Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gates.
Later this week, the House will consider legislation to posthumously award a congressional gold medal to the late New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress and to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
You can also watch live coverage of the House on the C-SPAN Now video app or on our website, cspan.org.
Attention middle and high school students across America.
It's time to make your voice heard.
C-SPAN Student Cam Documentary Contest 2025 is here.
This is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness, and make an impact.
Your documentary should answer this year's question, your message to the president.
What issue is most important to you or your community?
Whether you're passionate about politics, the environment, or community stories, StudentCam is your platform to share your message with the world.
With $100,000 in prizes, including a grand prize of $5,000.