SCHAUMBURG – Illinois U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood visited online in February with TMA News Editor Fran Eaton and TMA Advocacy Team’s Rich Carter to discuss several issues of importance to the Association’s members. The topic that was most pertinent at the time was President Donald Trump’s propositions to resume the use of trade tariffs.
Congressman LaHood was elected in November 2024 for a fifth term and continues to serve on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, as well as on two crucial subcommittees that have impact on U.S. Manufacturing: the Ways and Means Subcommittees on Work and Welfare and on Trade.
The morning’s dialogue was as follows:
Fran: Let’s just get to the big issue that everybody’s focused on right now, which is trade. We’re expecting to hear a lot about that in the upcoming session. President Trump has focused on trade during his campaign, suggesting there could be dramatic changes on the rate of tariffs.
We don’t know quite what’s going to happen every morning when we wake up. So, as our members order materials, production materials and parts from outside of the U.S, need to kind of know what to expect. Do you have any idea? What are you hearing and what can we kind of make judgment calls on as we move forward here?
LaHood: Well, great question, Fran. And I think you teed it up well. And what you just described, I’ve heard from a lot of my manufacturers throughout my district — people that rely on the supply chain, particularly from countries around the globe.
And my district is heavily reliant on trade About 40% of the corn and soybeans that are grown in my district go somewhere else around the globe. I have many manufacturers throughout my district that are involved in the global supply chain and send products to customers and markets around the earth and so having a robust trade agenda is important.
You know, I serve on the trade subcommittee, which has sole jurisdiction over trade agreements. President Trump has taken a different approach when it comes to trade. You mentioned tariffs, which I think frighten some of our manufacturers or people that are involved in international trade.
I’ll just say a couple of things on my position on tariffs. It’s maybe a little bit different than some of my Republican colleagues. To me, tariffs are taxes in many ways. They’re taxes on my consumers, their taxes on my constituents, their taxes on businesses, they’re taxed on my farmers. That’s what they are. And they also don’t pay for themselves, if you look at the economics of it.
Can tariffs be used in a strategic and targeted way to go after bad actors and countries that don’t abide by the same rules and standards or take advantage of the US? Absolutely.
And I think President Trump, during his first administration, did an excellent job in going after those countries, particularly China and others that have really cheated the system, taking advantage of the US market to do that.
And so I look at this as a balanced approach when it comes to tariffs that tariffs can be implemented again in a targeted way but you have to also do that in concert with tax reform, bringing down taxes, making sure we’re helping our small and medium sized businesses with an R&D tax credit, 100% bonus depreciation, 20% pass-through, those things help so we have to have that. You have to have energy production at a lower rate. You’re going to see that under this administration. You got to fix our border problem, which will help. You have to bring in more workforce. I mean, all those things together, I think can offset tariffs. And having a roaring economy can do that.
If it’s just predicated on tariffs and tariff policy, I think we have to be very, very careful about the last point that I will make on this, Fran, and I think you’ve seen this. Over the last two weeks, you’ve heard the expression “flooding the zone.” Well, the president is flooding the zone in many different ways over the last two weeks. And he had talked about tariffs on Mexico and Canada. He gave them a three or four day notice. And voila, what happened? They came to him and said, hey, we don’t want these tariffs. This is going to be detrimental to our country.
He’s a master negotiator and those tariffs did not go into effect, as we know. And so I give him some discretion and some flexibility on being a negotiator, working with these countries, to get the best deal possible for America moving forward.
Fran: Well, just to let you know where our people are standing, we’re just conducting a preliminary survey just in the past couple of days on this issue. And our members are 49% opposed to tariffs, 41% in favor of tariffs and 10% undecided at this time. So we’ve got a lot of listening going on and everyone has a different angle on it. We’ll update it as we go along. But we’re hearing that they’re still trying to make decisions, I’m sure, as to how it will affect their plans. And it’s an awareness. I’m sure the president is aware of the fact that they make plans ahead of time a long way. So that’s a big issue.
LaHood: It’s a great point. We have to remember when we think about your membership with TMA and when I think about small and medium sized businesses across my district, what do they want? They want certainty and predictability, right? As they make those long-term investments, they don’t want massive disruptions to the supply chain and to their business and so we got to be careful both on the tax front, on the trade front, on the tariff front of making sure that we are not making knee-jerk reactions that create waves that disrupt the flow of business and our economic system and so we need to keep that in mind. And I’ve tried to bring that voice to the Ways and Means Committee with a number of my colleagues.
More of the discussion available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmL1qU_F6bg&t=407s
