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Floor Speech
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, this morning, we had a Finance Committee meeting, and Ambassador Greer was there, our U.S. Trade Representative, whom I voted for and have a lot of confidence in. I asked him a line of questions. Then I saw the press getting lazy and not reporting what I said. So I felt like, instead of having to talk a lot to the press, here is what I said:
I was a partner at Price Waterhouse for most of my career. I have advised big clients on big projects. What I was asking the Ambassador today was a simple question on policy--or, I should say, on business-- that didn't resonate with the people in journalism who have, apparently, never worked a day in business. We used to have this concept of ``one throat to choke,'' right? When somebody makes a business decision for a major enterprise, there is always one person-- it is not the President; it is not the Vice President, as they are in elected positions, and they have to roll out experts.
All I was saying there is I support what is going on, right now, with trade. As uncertain as it may seem now, I think the President is right in challenging other nations that have, for decades, abused their relationship with the United States--to press. I think he should. Whether or not I would do it ``alla prima,'' as I described--that is all at once--or whether or not I would pick out the top quartile of the worst offenders, work on them, and then kind of work down the list is subject to debate.
But the point that I was making is that someone in the administration--I assume, when they decided to do broad-based tariffs against dozens and dozens of countries, that they gamed out the second- and third-order effects of that decision. I am assuming that anybody with a modicum of business experience would have understood that the markets are going to react the way they did, and that is OK. Markets go up and down. Markets reacting the way they have over the past few days over the long term is a problem.
So my request--just to make it clear what I said--of ``one throat to choke'' is just in jest: Whom is it I am either going to put on a pedestal and show up at the ticker-tape parades when all this stuff works out well or whom am I going to hold accountable for not thinking through some of the second- and third-order effects? That is what businesspeople do, and that is what I did for the majority of my career. Presumably, with the very successful businesspeople consulting President Trump, they have thought it through.
We need to know that because the American people are wondering. I have got farmers--and the Congress has failed to pass a farm bill for a few years now. So I have got farmers living harvest to harvest, and now we are being told that there may be some nontariff trade barriers shutting down markets. So I will hear from my pork farmers and I will hear from soybean farmers and I will hear from cotton farmers and I will hear from people who grow about 80 different commodities at scale. We are one of the No. 1 pork States, and we are one of the No. 1 chicken States. They need certainty. I am willing to have some of this happen, but at some point, we have to settle it down and sooner rather than later.
The only other thing I said that, I think, bears repeating is that businesspeople do think in long terms. Most of the business cases I have built for clients were for 5-year, 10-year, 15-year sort of horizons. You don't have that luxury in business. If you get the country on the right track or the wrong track, you suffer the political consequences or the benefit every 2 years. So anybody who tells me this trade stuff is going to be tumultuous for a couple of years does not understand American democracy. Americans give you about 14 months after January when you get sworn in to demonstrate that you are putting the country on the right track. If you do, you get rewarded at the ballot box, and if you don't, you get sent home.
So the only thing that I was trying to communicate today is I hope and I believe that there are people in the White House who are protecting the President by looking around corners and implementing policies that are going to benefit the American people. If they did, then this should work out really well. If they didn't, they should be that ``throat.''
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