NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking, Foreign Relations, and Appropriations Committees and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, today joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss Republican’s policy priorities.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the economic priorities of the incoming Trump Administration: “Well, if you think about one of the most incredible legacies that President Trump has from his first Administration, it was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That’s got to be job number one for the incoming Treasury Secretary is to get that incredible piece of legislation extended and through. If we don’t deal with it, Americans are going to be faced with enormous tax increases. I think President Trump clearly understands the impact of getting his tax package through. He’ll need a Treasury Secretary that’s going to be capable of working with this legislative branch to get that done. It’s going to have an incredible impact on our economy, just as it did back in 2017: incentivizing more investment in America, getting our economy strong again. And it’s with a strong economy that we then have the ability to rebuild our military and find ourselves back in a posture from a diplomatic standpoint where the rest of the world respects us again. Our economy is the strongest lever. It’s the strongest asset that we have here in America.”
Hagerty on the Trump Administration’s economic posture towards China: “Maria, you and I have talked about this before. It’s incredible that we allow companies to trade on our exchanges that don’t follow and abide by the same rules. Our American financial markets are one of the greatest sources of competitive advantage that we possess. We should utilize those to our advantage, and the last thing we should do is allow China to come in under a different rule set and undercut us and abuse those markets. We also have a very robust CFIUS [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] process that’s managed by the Treasury Department. I think it needs to be enhanced. It’s being looked at right now, but we need to make certain that we’re not in the process of allowing companies that do not have our best interests at heart, from countries that don’t have our best interests at heart, to access, again, one of the most incredible financial markets and mechanisms that exists in the world. We need to continue to support and build that marketplace, continue to look at the regulatory constructs here. You know, the Biden Administration has so abused regulations in our banking system trying to impose, you know, ESG and social justice types of initiatives onto our banking system. Clear that out. Make us competitive as a nation, and then use it to advance our competitive advantage, not allow other countries like China to abuse it to advance their own advantage.”
Hagerty on Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Peru: “The Biden Administration has put us in the backseat in a place of weakness. President Trump would’ve never found himself in that position. They would’ve never even tried this. Again, I’m looking forward to America stepping back to the fore. You mentioned sanctions: the Biden Administration has utterly failed to enforce sanctions. This is why Iran is back in business. This is why Russia has been able to come in and wage war on Ukraine. The Treasury Department needs to come in and impose and enforce the sanctions that are already on the book. That will have an incredible impact in terms of deterrence. President Xi can see this already. This is why he’s already taken [a] conciliatory tone toward President Trump. We need to utilize our economic strength. We need to take, again, the American posture that we deserve on the international stage. President Trump will do just that. We will never see another picture like Joe Biden’s weakness there.”
Hagerty on the Pentagon failing its seventh audit in a row: “You’re exactly right, Maria. It’s an $824 billion budget. This is an enormous amount of taxpayer funding, and the fact that this [Biden] Administration has allowed them to just go lax is absolutely shocking to me. Our military is at the forefront of major crises around the world. These crises, of course, have been unleashed by the weak posture that the Biden Administration has adopted. You’ve got it right: a strong economy will beget a strong military. We need to have our military operating on strong economic footing. I mean, this is the frustration that President Trump sees when he puts a leader like Pete Hegseth in. The American people want to see somebody come in and stand for strong American leadership. This is feckless letting these corporations come in, these long procurement programs that don’t work, this has to be completely rethought. We need to be thinking about lethality again. The Pentagon has been more worried about their pronouns than they have about our military capability. We need to see strength. The world is begging for it. And again, with a stronger economy, we’ll have stronger national security, a stronger military, and therefore a stronger diplomatic posture in the world.”
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