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Doggett talks tariffs and more

Office Visit
Sunday, August 26, 2018

Editor’s Note: U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett recently stopped by the San Marcos Daily Record office to meet with staff and answer questions about current issues. This is the final part of Staff Reporter Robin Blackburn’s interview with Doggett. Part One and Part Two

BLACKBURN: After the farmers got the $12 billion bailout because the tariffs that have been imposed were hurting them, are there plans to bail out other industries harmed by the tariffs, like maybe the newspaper industry?

DOGGETT: Newsprint?

BLACKBURN: Yes.

DOGGETT: I have expressed myself on that issue in particular. The softwood timber and Canadian issues were actually there before this last round in the easyto-win trade war. I think we can see how phony the president’s easy-to-win trade war was with the first $12 billion of what was really welfare. I think our farmers want to work, not welfare, but they’re getting welfare. And all of us end up having to pay for that. I don’t believe there are specific plans at this point to assist other industries. I believei the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had estimated something like $39 billion — a much larger figure if you count in harm to other industries. We see the benefits and the challenges of trade every time you look out here at I-35 and the string of 18-wheelers, or UP going up the train tracks through town. And I think that while there was a definite need — and that’s one area I agree with the president on, about challenging China, particularly on its stealing intellectual property, its dumping of certain goods here — his approach was all the wrong way. His threats to NAFTA were really unjustified. Reform NAFTA, don’t terminate it.

BLACKBURN: That leads to the next question — is there any sense of what direction our economic relationships with Russia, China and particularly Canada — like how mad is Canada right now?

DOGGETT: They certainly have justification to be very mad. The president who attacks our friends and praises our adversaries is difficult to comprehend. But I think he’s doing tremendous damage — just as the damage that’s being done within the country, without the country will take many years to repair that damage. We’re also losing some really talented people, whether it’s a scientist at the Environmental Protection Administration or NOAA, or a career diplomat representing us around the world at the State Department. I think as far as Canada, the administration’s approach — and there may even be some further announcements on it today — I serve on the Trade Subcommittee — of trying to work a deal with Mexico and then force Canada to come in, it’s not a good policy. We need all three countries working together to try to achieve a better NAFTA. I do want a NAFTA agreement that does a better job by the environment and by working standards that we have now — a better way to resolve disputes than we have now.

As far as Russia — it was kind of buried in the story, but The New York Times did a story that I was involved in concerning Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, where I was challenging the commerce secretary as to how it is that out of some 28,000 applications to be excluded from those tariffs, three days after Helsinki, that they granted relief to some of the thugs around Putin and their aluminum company to bring in a substantial amount of aluminum. After much doubletalk, delay and conflict between Treasury and Commerce, they finally reversed themselves, I think as a result of our exposing this. But the relationship with Putin is in direct conflict with our national interests, and I think the president is really endangering our national security. The entire way he’s treated Putin, but also in the way he’s caused chaos among our friends and allies in this hemisphere and in Europe. Other than that, he seems to be doing a really good job.

BLACKBURN: Which Texas-specific industries do you see being hurt the most by the tariffs?

DOGGETT: Well, I think agriculture — soybean farmers. Agriculture is the main thing. But over time, if these tariffs all stay in effect and exclusions are granted, anyone who relies on aluminum or steel — from craft brewers to auto manufacturers. And of course I said my comment on everything else with humor and sarcasm. Because i think he clearly is unfit for office and endangers our country every day he’s in office.

ANITA MILLER: I’d just like to give you the opportunity, if there’s anything we missed that you’d like to say to the voters of Hays County.

DOGGETT: Yes. One of the things we’ve talked about some before but I’ll mention it again that I’m working on a great deal that I think does affect many people in health care is prescription drug price gouging. I joined with a large number of public health groups and now have 85 cosponsors on new legislation on Medicare negotiation — legislation to let Medicare negotiate the way the Veterans Administration does, and to back that up with a new approach that I call competitive licensing. The government basically grants monopolies to pharmaceutical companies on new drugs, but they don’t exercise any restraint on those monopolies. And this basically, if you couldn’t get negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies, would grant competitive licenses to generics to come in — the generic company would have to pay, of course, a license for the product. But the idea is to use negotiation and competition to get prices into a better place than they are now, where we’re really having to pay some, if not the, highest prices in the world for pharmaceuticals. This is all part of our healthcare debate, which we haven’t gotten to yet.

I see soaring pharm prices at the top of the list, but the other really big concern is pre-existing conditions and the unwillingness of the administration to defend pre-existing condition provisions. We know that those have been defined very broadly in the past, covering victims of domestic violence — when my own daughter was about to have a baby her husband was denied coverage at that time — and I don’t want us back to a point where seniors are having to pay … seniors is the wrong term — those who are too young for Medicare, in the 50-64 range, end up having to pay now three times, they want to raise it to five or higher, what someone in their 30s, and where there’s discrimination against women of childbearing age where they basically can’t get coverage. And all of these are problems that we could see right here in Hays County before the Affordable Care Act was enacted. And the administration is doing everything it can, since it couldn’t legislate it out of existence, to try to subvert it out of existence, like the attack on pre-existing conditions. There are — you’ve covered so many of the key issues, but I think that’s one — the health issue is really important to me.

MILLER: Thank you for that.

DOGGETT: Thank you all. It’s great to get a chance to talk with all of you.

rblackburn@sanmarcosrecord.com

Twitter: @arobingoestweet

amiller@sanmarcosrecord.com

Twitter: @AnitaMillerSMDR

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666