NASHVILLE, TN—Today, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations, Banking, and Foreign Relations Committees and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, joined Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News to discuss President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade negotiations, what to do about the debt ceiling, and the efforts to cut spending in the federal government via budget reconciliation.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the trade negotiations with China: “I worked on trade deals extensively. Not only the two trade deals we did with the U.S. and Japan, but also with the team that negotiated the phase one China trade deal, which China did not abide by. David’s right. I’m so glad he’s going to his post now. He’s going to be a great ambassador representing the America’s interest with China. What’s happening in Switzerland right now, I’m very excited about. I think there’s great potential there. It has to get resolved. And with ambassadors or leaders like David in the field, I think we’re going to have every opportunity then to hold China to account, because that’s going to be a critical aspect of this. They have not followed through on their prior agreements with us. We need to make certain that what we strike with them today, what we strike over the weekend and in the days to come, is something that we can ascertain, we can hold them accountable to, and that we can verify.”
Hagerty on the debt ceiling: “I have a lot [of] faith in President Trump’s ability to get long-term effect achieved here. You’ve seen the DOGE effort. There’s a massive deregulation thrust underway. Every conversation is about efficiency, cutting costs, getting more for less. It’s going to take President Trump a little bit of time, though. You know how much stimulus was unleased into this economy. We’ve got to give President Trump the headroom to sort this out. And so, President Trump has asked for an extension of the debt ceiling. I’m more than inclined to grant him what he needs to give him the time and the runway to actually get our economy to a far better place, a much more efficient and effective place. At the same time, shoring up some of the problems that have been left to us by this Biden administration. That’s been outgoing.”
Hagerty on the need to cut wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive spending in the federal government: “From my standpoint, and certainly having been a senator who served on the executive branch in the State Department and have seen the actual dispensation of this foreign aid, there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity to clean this up. And I think if I talk to my constituents here in Tennessee, they’ve been very clear to me. We need to be fixated on and focused on America right now, shoring up what’s wrong here, rather than sending our aid dollars overseas. And when you looked at some of the specifics of where our aid dollars were going, it was absolutely disgraceful. This organization has run amok. I applaud Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio for getting his arms around this, for taking control of it. And we certainly do need to start cutting back. We need to cut back there. We need many other places where President Trump is fixated. Again, he needs a little bit of headroom to get that done. I’m willing to support that. But this is exactly the type of thing that the American public expects to see from us […] I think as more information comes out and more of my colleagues see the abject waste that has gone on in places like USAID, I think it’s going to become easier and easier for them to realize and get their arms around cutting some of these programs. Now granted, these programs have constituencies that are very vocal in Washington. They’ve been lobbying very hard. But again, transparency will make a big difference for my colleagues. I certainly hope to see even more of it. I think that’ll make it a lot easier to get to where we need to be. That takes time.”
Hagerty on Japan’s opportunity for a trade deal: “Japan certainly has the opportunity to be next. They’re the third largest economy in the world. They have every incentive to step up and take part in what I think will be a transformative situation across the globe. Japan could be a real leader here if you think about their opportunity to join us from an economic standpoint, from a national security standpoint, again, our largest presence in Indo-Pacific region is our partnership with Japan. We have more U.S. Military station there than anywhere else in the region. Again, I can’t put myself in their shoes.”
Hagerty on the India-Pakistan conflict: “That’s a top shelf issue. When you see two nuclear powers like Pakistan and India going at it, it’s top concern. That’s why President Trump was immediately on it. JD Vance stepped up in a remarkably admirable way to leverage his personal relationship with [Prime Minister] Modi. I’ve seen President Trump and Modi together. They have a great personal relationship, but it’s these relationships and also the gravity of the situation that, I think, has helped bring this to a quick resolve. I only wish [former President] Joe Biden had used his political capital to do the same thing with Ukraine and Russia.”
Hagerty on the need for major spending cuts in the reconciliation package: “The Senate is actually talking more like two trillion in cuts. We’re very focused on it. The reason the threshold is lower in the Senate is because there’s certain rules there that you can’t exceed or you can’t fall below. Again, we’re leaving ourselves leeway to get it done, but every one of my colleagues that I’ve spoken with wants to see an even greater number of cuts in this package.”
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