WASHINGTON—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, today joined Mornings With Maria on Fox Business to discuss the Senate-passed budget resolution being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives this week, along with President Donald Trump’s trade agenda.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the budget resolution: “I’m very optimistic. The House Rules Committee will actually be meeting this morning. President Trump, as you know, met with a number of people in the House last night. I think we’ll get this moved through. This budget resolution process will then unlock the reconciliation process, which is where we’ll actually get the tax cuts extended. We’ll bring the certainty that American business needs to make the capital investments that they want to make. The optimal deadline would be sometime before the 8th of May, but I think we can definitely get this done in the next four weeks.”
Hagerty on the misunderstanding of spending cut levels in the budget resolution: “We’re going to get to work on the committee level to work through and try to bring about as many cuts as we can possibly deliver for the American people. Over time, we want to deliver at least $2 trillion worth of cuts here. There’s been some miscommunication, I think, about some of the targets that we set, but we want to make certain the hurdles are low enough that we don’t have a procedural issue, but we certainly are going to be shooting high, in terms of the cuts that we want to deliver.”
Hagerty on potential trade negotiations: “As you know, Japan’s got a team here this week on the ground. I think there’s a wonderful opportunity to see real breakthroughs and real progress. When I served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan, we did two trade deals there. Our teams know the issues, and I’ve encouraged the parties to really think broadly beyond just trade, but also think about our defense relationship, to think about opportunities with energy, ways that we can make our economies much more integrated, much more harmonized, and at the same time, our national security and our energy security needs will be met as well. I’m very optimistic about what will be forthcoming here.”
Hagerty on the budget resolution passing before recess: “As we look at the House Rules Committee today, I think we certainly will [get it passed]. I hope that they’ll be able to move on this before we leave for Easter recess. Our teams are certainly working hard here in the Senate on the reconciliation process itself. So, we’ll be ready to go as soon as we get back from recess [and] get [tax reform] passed.”
Hagerty on Trump using tariffs to resolve trade imbalances: “I think we’ve got a great opportunity here, and Maria, there’s an historic reason for this. A lot of these imbalances that President Trump has been signaling, very clearly to the market, that he wants to address a lot of these imbalances dated all the way back to World War II and the reconstruction effort afterwards. Japan, European nations got very favorable terms of trade. Now is the time to rectify that, though these are fully developed economies, and what we’ve seen is a very deep imbalance. We’re in the process of getting that adjusted. We started working on that when I was Ambassador, but COVID hit. So, there’s more opportunity there on the terms of trade, but if we broaden this even further, there’s a lot more that we can do, in terms of defense production, technology development. If you think about energy, Maria, there’s a tremendous opportunity for us to cooperate with the Japanese there to send more American energy, not only to Japan, but to partner with Japan, to send it throughout Southeast Asia. I see great opportunity here, and I’ve been encouraging the parties to really focus broadly, make the problem larger, and then solve it.”
Hagerty on China’s retaliatory tariffs: “China should have seen this coming. President Trump telegraphed this throughout the campaign. He wants to rectify the situation with China. There’s an opportunity here as well. I think China needs to step up to the plate. I’m very optimistic that David Perdue, former U.S. Senator, will be confirmed as our Ambassador to China very soon. My colleague, [Senator] Steve Daines, has been working closely trying to encourage the right type of cooperation there. And when David Perdue gets into the mix, I think we’ll see a lot more opportunity to bring the parties together. That’s where we need to head with China.”
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