What Makes Cartels, China, & Other Enemies Quake? | Heritage50

I work in the media of course and they always tell you when you're doing a production when you're staging a production that you shouldn't hype up the production too much you want to under promise and over perform because if you say it's going to be great then people are going to be waiting to be wowed and waiting to be dazzled but what I'm here to do today is just to moderate an incredible discussion so I feel no pressure whatsoever put on myself to tell you that this is going to be the best panel that you see today these this is all the pressures on them not me this panel of experts understands the reality of the threat that we're facing when it comes to China and they not only understand the reality they have detailed well thought out ideologically sound prescriptions for how to protect the United States's stance as the world's superpower so that's all I'm going to say without further Ado let me welcome our panel first up is president of the government accountability Institute author of Clinton cash and red-handed Peter Schweitzer thank you we have former U.S trade representative Ambassador Michael lighthizer Robert lighthizer we have congressman from Texas chip Roy and we have our resident expert on all things China Michael Pillsbury all right so what I want to do today with this panel is start out with a yes or no question and go down the line ask you each yes or no In Our Lifetime are we going to face war with China yes yes no I'm a politician not if we do the right things okay what are the right things start going on offense and stop playing defense on China stop talking about it and do it um right now we're letting China own the Western Hemisphere why don't we have a you know 21st century version of the Monroe Doctrine why don't we own Latin America ourselves why don't we export the rule of law in the western hemisphere in southern allowed China to own our backyard Empower cartels endanger Americans and actually own the economic environment in South America we can change that instantaneously if we went on offense it's our hemisphere that would alone reset the state the stage right away um I think if we went on offense right now we're America there's nothing we can't do but that's the starting place for me is going offense and send a loud message to the world we're not going to let China do it it's not exactly the foreign policy that we've seen the last few years it is not and perhaps that's why we are where we are today Ambassador you say no that we're not going to see a war with China but the fentanyl crisis especially you say you said this to me the other day you said this alone would be justification for strategic decoupling with China explain what you mean so so I mean I think we won't have a war because I'm optimistic like uh Rick Scott and Josh Hawley I I think that we will and and the congressman I think we will have a we will do the right things and to me it's one it's clearly the military stuff and everyone knows that and we know what it is we know how to do it and we're slipping behind but we know how to do it but the most important thing is we've got to stop giving them 350 billion dollars every year and American jobs and communities and we need we need to strategically decouple and I'm happy to talk about what that means we CA anyone who understands the crisis and the challenge and the threat cannot then say we need business as usual we cannot have business as usual we have to change our economic relationship to China and get back to balance no technology and very little investment going back and forth and if we do that then we're going to at least get in a position where it's going to be difficult for them to wage war on us and Peter we talk about this you're often a guest on the Liz wheeler show we talk about this often there's incredible institutional resistance to what the Ambassador is talking about speak to that because it's nearly impossible to do the Strategic decoupling when our institutions have been captured yeah I mean it's a real problem you have a lot of uh officials in Washington that I would say essentially are for sale or at least for rent and China is willing to provide opportunities for their families to flourish I would begin with the first family of the United States but it's not a problem simply with him it's a bipartisan problem on both sides of the issue and there is so much money sloshing through Washington D.C from China or Chinese connected entities it's a huge problem not only in government but in the private sector I mean there are a lot of think tanks in Washington that take money from China or uh you know the the US Affiliates of china-based companies Heritage Foundation by one is not uh Heritage has a policy of not taking that money and they ought to be applauded for that but it's an enormous it's an enormous problem and just you know you asked for a single uh word answer yes or no if we're going to be at war with China my view is that China's already at war with us um and and you can look at fentanyl I'm doing research in this area right now very extensive involvement by the CCP and the fentanyl trade which I'm researching right now you can look at how they handled covid their efforts to Corner the market on masks before they let the world know that it could be transferred from Human to human even though they already knew that in my mind and I would defer to Michael Pillsbury on this because he's the expert their mindset is they don't want a kinetic war with the United States to to paraphrase Churchill they want the fruits of War they don't want war and I think they're already engaging in that behavior and Michael let me clap or let me ask you when you're diagnosing this problem which you do masterfully you diagnosis problem is not necessarily wanting a kinetic War but that they have this 100 year plan from the perspective of our foreign policy what or who is most responsible for allowing the Chinese to get this close to success with their plan I think part of what part of the answer is what Senator Josh Hawley said about the global order but it's not just the 90s he was talking about the 1990s the idea goes way back into the 1880s 1890s that somehow there needs to be a global order with a kind of a judge and a jury and everybody follows the laws there won't be any aggression or if there is will be punished this dream you see a lot in the Declassified conversations that Henry Kissinger had with the Chinese back in 1971. and they were very clever they humored him they said yes we just want to be one of the top five countries oh by the way please help us because we'll be your friend and I'm simplifying but it's a over a 50-year story when large percentages of the American officials who dealt with China in the 70s 80s and 90s became what I would call cheerleaders and the reason I know this is I was one of them I was on the Reagan campaign Advisory Group the Reagan transition and then worked for Reagan in the Pentagon he sold weapons to China Mark 46 Torpedoes for the Chinese submarine Fleet artillery a set of seven weapon systems where'd the idea come from I went to see him at his home in Pacific Palisades I just written an article in foreign policy magazine that the ultimate Way for us and the Chinese to cooperate to bring down the Soviet Union was not just top secret intelligence sharing but weapon sales and Reagan in a press conference after we met said yes he was in favor of that so if you've got the greatest anti-communist conservative president of all time Ronald Reagan as one of the cheerleaders you see what Peter's referring to deep in our government still is the notion that China is our friend maybe Xi Jinping shouldn't be so mean to the uighurs maybe he should reign in the fentanyl money laundering activities but somehow the Chinese are going to come around again and this is how why I said yes about war with China in 1950 we had very similar views about China the U.N said unify all of Korea we went North top secret instructions were sent to MacArthur you may continue into Northern Korea unify the whole country if you don't detect any signs of Chinese presence there were at that point we now know there were 300 000 Chinese soldiers inside Northern Korea we didn't know about it and some One account is they stand up in snow suits white snow suits and start killing Marines one of the Marines still alive I talked to him from the next book Bob his name is Major Patrick Rowe he was the young intelligence officer who first saw the Chinese stand up and he spent the next 40 Years of his life writing the book on how it happened how we were deceived surprised unprepared thirty thousand Americans get killed that's why I'm very nervous and scared about the prospects of misperception between the U.S and China by accident leading to another War like Korea and Congressman what's interesting I think as we see what Michael talked about is the the battlefronts of the this maybe war that China thinks that they were fighting against us is both culture is both military but also cultural so talk to me about a piece of legislation that's been highly controversial in Congress this bill to ban Tick Tock talk to me about the Chinese Communist influence behind Tick Tock and the threat that poses to the American population yeah sure unless you had one other point though and you asked that first question about War I mean the point that you know China is already at war with us I don't I wouldn't dispute that uh that concept and proposition when you said you know we'll be at war that to me implies Hot War and look there's nothing more that the people in this town would love for me and other politicians to say then yeah we're going to be in a hot war with China so the defense complex in this town can start rattling up about how they need to spend more of our money and continue to ratchet up the very debt that is beholding making us beholden to China in the first place we have 32 trillion dollars of debt we're under a 22 year old authorization of the use of military force in Iraq which we refuse to undo we are not actually strategically figuring out how we need to make our military strong but sparingly used Allah Reagan it ought to be the strongest military in the in the world but we should use it freaking sparingly and we should make it so if it's used it's decisive but nobody in this town wants to talk about that because they would love for us to just keep throwing out billions and billions of dollars racking up debt for your kids and grandkids and we can't do that anymore we're at a place right now where the debt level is where it was in 1946 after World War II So I listened to another person come up to me and tell me it's 1939. start acting like it well guess what we're not in a position to ratchet up the machine like we were in 1941. because we've spent ourselves into Oblivion so you want to beat China get your physical house in order and do it right now and that's why we're having to fight over the debt ceiling on Tick Tock all I'll say is this if you put a clean bill in front of me to ban Tick Tock like straight up I'm in I don't want China to be anywhere near what they're doing to our kids right now in terms of infiltrating and social media I'd go further I think social media is killing our kids I don't think our kids should even be on social media and I know I'm a limited government Federalist but I was at the Masters last Sunday with my son where they ban iPhones and it's the best day we've probably ever had because there was no technology we were having conversations with people like it was 1992 again so I had banned Tick Tock but I don't like the Mark Warner bill I don't want to empower bureaucrats in the federal government to just go banning all manners of Technology because some democrat and bureaucrats say they know what's good for us so if we're going to do it Congress should own it and do it don't you love a guy like this in Congress it's a breath of fresh air Ambassador I want to go back to something that you said before this phrase your phrase strategic decoupling do explain that to us because the idea of disentangling our economy from China's is not a small proposition it sounds good philosophically how do we do that without destroying the American way of life well let me say first of all if the American way of life depends on 580 billion dollars of imports from China then we are doomed don't worry about anything else just go home and kiss your kids because we're doomed all right so what we have now is a situation where we buy 580 say a billion dollars we we sell them about 150 billion dollars some agriculture some this and that the net of that is that every year we ship them about 350 billion dollars and if you want to know what the real butcher's bill is it's 350 billion dollars on on the trade deficit it's probably another 20 or 30 billion of stuff that comes in through Vietnam it's probably about 300 billion a year in loss of technology that they steal from us and it's probably an unknown number but certainly in the tens of billions in fentanyl which they ship to Mexico as a party in power knowing is killing our kids right it's not like and you alluded to this before it's not like these are Banditos someplace on the outskirts of wherever shipping this stuff these these precursors to Mexico these are the biggest companies in the country that have power in the party and everyone there knows they're shipping to Mexico and they're killing Americans everyone knows it and and every time I read it of course I think of Mike's great book and the whole Opium War and all that they see specifically that in their mind as payback for the Opium War which which which Mike wrote so elegantly about so for me what does it mean first of all you need a transition secondly you need tariffs on everything coming in from China you would have and you would you would have the ability maybe 35 or 40 percent you would have the ability to to adjust those so that you stay at balance so now we're selling them 150 they're selling us 150. that's the first element it has to be balanced number two you have to just stop the integration of our technology not just in Military and Joint use but across the board there's no reason for us to be integrated in technology with China there they are stealing that technology from us and then the third thing is these these these big investment Banks shipping hundreds of billions of dollars over there to build up their their military industrial complex there is I mean this is a fundamental fact there is no truly private sector in China there isn't any if you're shipping money to invest in China you are shipping money to help the state period full stop our talk about state-owned Enterprises yes and every other Enterprise is a state-controlled Enterprise and that means any U.S company doing business there all of them the money's going to the state and then the second thing their money coming here why are we letting them invest in things that have technology and data the thing they pay the premium on is data so you'll say why are they buying this for that little insurance company they want your data then they put it into their artificial intelligence that's what this is all about it is madness to think once you cross the line and say yes I understand the threat and I would say if you at this stage in this year if you don't understand the threat then you're in Peter's book right guarantee 100 if you talk to me and say yeah I don't think there's a threat then this is the book so so once you realize that this is what is going on why would you continue to do business with them it doesn't would you have done it with the Soviet Union would you have done it with which with with Nazi Germany in the 40s would have done it with I mean of course not not of course it's just common sense and who's going to object a lot of people in New York a lot of bankers a lot of people on the West Coast that's who's going to object and importers that's who's going to object and what it means to me is they either don't understand the problem or they're really really deficient in thought process Peter your book's getting some wicked good plugs today I want to ask you about your book because some of the reasons that there's resistance to this extremely common sense right this Common Sense ideology or plan that the Ambassador has laid out is because we have politicians families who are corrupted by Chinese money we have universities that are corrupted by Chinese money we have academic Fields stem specifically that are infiltrated by Chinese Nationals who even if they aren't officially part of the military or the intelligence apparatus they are beholden to it because their families are still in China Hollywood is beholden to Chinese interests as well we've seen that ratchet up increasingly in the last few years from a legal standpoint wood legal action meaning would legislation at the federal level make this swamp that we are sitting in here in Washington DC more likely to embrace the Strategic decoupling and if so what laws would it take it's a great question Liz I mean the problem is Washington DC Silicon Valley Wall Street have a lot of very smart clever people and when you create a law you create a barrier it's like water going downhill they figure out a way usually around it but just think of a basic reform that I think everybody should agree on think about the first family of the United States Joe Biden is required every year to disclose if he has a thousand dollars in General Electric stock he's required to disclose you know any other income or assets that he's received he is required to disclose campaign donations 200 or more but his adult son engages in a series of deals with Chinese state-owned companies and and the the calculation is and it's based on the email laptop it's 31 million dollars that he's received 31 million dollars from four businessmen that are named in the laptop and I do this in the book you look at who those four men are you go through Hong Kong corporate records you see who their business partners are the four businessmen that arrange those deals for Hunter Biden based on his own words all have business relationships at the highest levels of Chinese intelligence now Ambassador lighthouser said you know we would never do this you know with Nazi Germany or with the Soviet Union imagine if in the 1980s Jimmy Carter's family or Ronald Reagan's family got some 31 million dollars from Russian businessmen linked to the KGB people would be apoplectic but that's exactly what's happened with Biden so you know the reason I'm bringing this up is it's a disco disclosure question you know my feeling is if anybody in elected office or in the bureaucracy the senior level if their immediate family members are engaged in Commerce with foreign state-owned companies they should be required to disclose it specifically and explicitly I don't see how anybody could oppose that um and and the fact that we know that Joe Biden owns GE stock for twelve hundred dollars but we don't know that his son is doing deals with you know Chinese government entities is an example of the kind of Gap that we have in our disclosure requirements Michael people can feel hopeless when we when we talk about the enormity of what the Chinese Communist party has leveraged and continues to leverage against the United States in all aspects of our life can we win yes and I can tell you some good news from the Heritage Foundation I wish I don't know if Kevin Roberts is here or Derek is here but we all owe a round of applause to their coming to Heritage and reversing its approach to China Heritage used to be one of the cheerleaders and one of the orders Kevin Roberts gave he wanted a compilation of all the good recommendations to deal with China one page each the problem the solution how to implement it and all parts of Heritage contributed part of is what Ambassador lighthizer says how to get our own fiscal house in order our trade policy but another 50 recommendations have to do with legislation Congressman like chip Roy have already introduced like farmlands but he gets no co-sponsors so the idea is this is not going to keep you up at night reading because it's it's like a recipe or a handbook for what are the hundred most important things we need to do that over the next three or four years we will now have the Liz wheeler show for example able to comment okay 14 have been done 85 have not this is a revolutionary thing and no other Think Tank has done this our idea and again Kevin Roberts he had the idea how do we know how we're doing in the competition with China how do we measure the indicators well there's different anecdotal stories China has more beer drinking than we do but they're also ahead of us in super computers in Hypersonic drones so Heritage is going to be introducing an index of strategic competition between the U.S and China which in part we've already done a lot of it it's quite scary they're ahead of us in Far More areas than I had realized it's part partly because of what Ambassador lighthizer said we've been open to sharing our technology and our scientific discoveries the National Science Foundation has been one of the best friends of China for 40 years every new scientific discovery the National Science Foundation makes must be transferred quickly to China we have a staff in our Embassy in Beijing which as Bob knows is our largest Embassy in the world 2 300 people 50 federal agencies are in our Embassy in Beijing all of them helping China in one way or another so this is what heritage is starting to do in an optimistic way so that chip Roy sees aha this this legislation hasn't even been drafted yet and so he and his staff drafted this goes back to the way Heritage began 50 years ago actually was around 50 years ago and saw the original Heritage office what they did from the beginning they hired three young 25 year old Senate and House staffers and they got involved in legislation legally very early on in the process and that's been the the secrets for Heritage for 50 years get involved with Congress help them suggest new things hire staff we just hired a staff person for China from the house Foreign Affairs committee who will be drafting some of this new legislation so I'm trying to be optimistic there may not be a nuclear war in which we all die it may just be a small one and it can be negotiated so but I am looking over at chip Roy is this correct is Heritage helping Congress by taking this approach um absolutely and I couldn't agree more about uh I mean I got to be honest and upfront I'm biased Kevin Robertson's friend we work together at the Texas public policy Foundation before he came to Heritage but uh Derek Morgan I've known for 22 years or something like that and we worked together on Capitol Hill uh they're doing a phenomenal job uh I think Heritage is on offense in a way that maybe it hadn't been for a while and uh in this issue in particular uh they're helping enormously my good friend Victoria coats has brought on board at Heritage and is doing a phenomenal job on National Securities you know I run a joint op-ed in the Wall Street Journal but uh yeah I couldn't agree more and we do have legislation that needs to be Advanced we now have this committee on China my friend Mike Gallagher is chairing that and they're doing some good things um I've you alluded to the legislation that we introduced in my office to ban uh the ownership of land in the United States by the you know Chinese Communist party and Affiliates I don't know why on Earth we allow that to happen it's like oh yeah absolutely Nazi Germany 1940 come roll over here and buy American Farmland is absurd but we we hedge on it you got we have this sort of I think over expanded notion of you know how we view uh like you know in terms of free trade and people being able to come over and buy land and okay hold on a second we are a country right I mean at some point here and say well do you want your aircraft carriers built in Beijing I mean or you know or or do you want to make sure we have that capacity here in the United States do you want to have Farmland where you can grow Goods you know and and uh you know feed your population without being overly reliant on the world trade's good I'm for trade but we got to make sure that our country is strong and that our lands are our small businesses are strong uh we got to stop this corporate cronyism subsidy that we've got going on which brings in China as well uh and make sure that the the backbone of this country and small businesses is secure but I'm ranting now Beyond them one question the moderator didn't even ask me no my question actually and this we're going to open it up to question and answer here in just a second but my last question for you is you know you're a member of the United States Congress you have access to a lot of classified information about what John is going to do next what can you tell us so uh you know you know the answer that question uh you know although you know I'll tell you I mean right I mean sometimes a lot of that stuff gets stovepiped it's one of the problems that we're trying to crack through a little bit a little bit of what the speaker's fight was about in January is kind of redemocratizing the house as a whole it's like oh you know you're on armed services and you're on formulation so you're special and you get to know everything well you know what I represent 750 000 Texans and I need to know the information that I need to know to represent them so we're trying to do that there's a lot more work to do to make the house be the house again it's not just a handful of leadership positions and a handful of you know committee chairmen who make make all the decisions we make the decisions uh the body makes the decisions and I think we're making some progress on that the only other thing that I'll mention uh since I've got the floor and I'm filibustering is energy we haven't talked about energy here and we've got as a part of this debt ceiling fight that we're currently engaged in and I hope Republicans will fire something off to the Senate next week I think the framework is good we're not here to talk about that but a part of that is hr1 to restore some more American Energy and to get you know the permitting streamline but also to repeal most or all of the ridiculous so-called inflation reduction act subsidies last August which put us on a perilous path to not having strong American Energy and make us reliant on China while China is building you know two new coal-fired planes a week while they have 1100 coal-fired plants in operation we have 250 and we're building none in the state of Texas our grid is going to be 50 wind and solar by the end of next year 50 wind in solar and of 790 projects we currently have in the pipeline 700 and like 80 of them are wind and solar like 10 to 15 our gas uh gas related projects think about that Texas we have a lot to do to get our country on the right path and stop being beholden to the radical leftist climate fetish agenda and get back on on stride to be be strong as America [Applause] the question to the specific panelists whose answer you want to hear oh I'm sorry the microphone is in the back if you'd like to ask a question you can raise your hand and let them there's a couple people with microphone oh back here yeah I have a question about our ability to even analyze what China is doing because I'm a Texan too um served at Laughlin Air Force base for a while and we've got 200 square miles right next to that base owned by a CCP General and if it wasn't for Kyle bass I'm not sure anyone would have been doing anything about it so when you look at cypheus and how the government even analyzes what China owns here I feel like we're at whack-a-mole level any thoughts yeah I don't know some of these guys are gonna be more expert I think on some of that I mean I'll just say one thing if you don't know Kyle bass if you don't follow him on social media do uh he's exposing a whole lot of the stuff going on with China so follow Kyle Ambassador Ambassador you want to take a question well I mean the reality is we we don't have a clue right I mean that's the the the you know I sat on the cepheus which is the board that looks at inbound investment and I can tell you every single time I can't talk about things classified but every single time anything came up with China I said I got we got two options we either don't let them do it or we go to the president let the president decide I'm not having bureaucrats in the Department of Treasury say well this is okay or we can mitigate it somehow the reality is we really don't know and most of you are sitting there thinking well but somebody in the government knows and the reality is nobody in the government knows we need a whole new approach to this thing and and most of what comes out really doesn't come out of the intelligence community in any event who I have found you know during my time both always in the Reagan Administration before Trump I found them on these kinds of issues to be sadly lacking so so so we are we are we are in trouble and I have a sense that they know a hell of a lot more about what our people are doing there than we know about what their people are doing here you can all go on Amazon and pre-order uh Ambassador lighthizer's new book there is no free trade I've done so how many are you willing to do that he talks in the book about how to reorient the U.S government to really take China seriously well he gets royalties thank you and I would say God bless Kyle bass he has exposed a lot of Nefarious things the Chinese are up to but Ambassador lighthizer is referring to I think is a recent GAO study that there is no law and no requirement to report Chinese purchases of American Farmland no matter how close it is to Lackland Air Force Base or anywhere else we simply don't do that and the Farm Service Agency is now said it does not have the people to do it so yes Chinese behind Farmland is a big deal our government does not know what's going on correct and by the way it's not just Farmland right they they own major food processing facilities they own major you know corporate entities that that you know employ lots of Americans and pharmaceutical interests that we ought to be moving back over here I introduced legislation to be China act try to incentivize more of that but we've got to have a strategic plan to do it on hopefully this China committee with Mike Gallagher and some others will kick start some of that thank you I'd like to hear from each of you your guesstimate or your feeling how soon will China militarily invade Taiwan [Music] Michael start with you China may not invade Taiwan they are looking for signals for whether the deal they made with Henry Kissinger still is in effect and almost nobody knows about this deal it goes under the term One China policy China says Taiwan belongs to them you would think our policy would be no Taiwan does not belong to you that is in fact our secret policy that's what the lawyers say in the state department but the Kissinger deal which every president has continued although Trump challenged it the deal has been we will not object we will acknowledge that you say taiwan's part of China there's no the idea that why don't we deter an invasion of Taiwan by having U.S troops or Munitions on Taiwan or exercises with them or training we don't do any of that because under this deal we won't have any formal contact with Taiwan we will not call them a country we will not say their name and there was an effort to fix this just in December in the end in the National Defense authorization act language was put in bipartisan actually came from Senator Menendez over on the Senate side let's call Taiwan by its proper name it was mysteriously removed in the conference along with every other important provision about the defense of Taiwan so if you're in Beijing and you're thinking of invading right now you're a little bit confused Taiwan looks like a Sitting Duck but there are some people in Congress who want to help Taiwan will they be successful will the candidate who is pro-china win the election in January in Taiwan these are the things Xi Jinping is thinking about so my view is we need to take it very very carefully the issue of deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and I'm not confident that we understand enough about the indicators that Xi Jinping and his military are using because they're certainly thinking about it and these exercises are getting more and more intense coming closer more jet fighters when I don't think Congressman Roy was on the trip but you probably heard Mike McCall talk about how while he was in Taiwan 71 jet fighters were kind of sort of coming toward him along with the 15 ships and Maria Bartiromo was you could see she was moved wow maybe they are serious about attacking Taiwan but can we deter them without understanding their own way of thinking their own calculations I'm not confident Peter sorry um yeah I would just Echo what uh Michael was saying I think the the January election of next year in Taiwan is critical I think Beijing is going to do all sorts of things to try to get the pro Beijing party to win that election and they may be successful so so just briefly if I think it is 100 percent that Xi Jinping in his mind expects to have Taiwan when he's done 100 percent the question is he views that as part of his legacy part of his Destiny so I think it's a hundred percent the question is timing what does it cost versus what doesn't it cost can it happen without Force I'm sure his preference would be for sure that it would happen without Force but but if the if the question is does will he leave and not have that happen I think there is zero chance in his mind of that the other thing is just one China policy indication is your Doctrine I got a kick out of him because I when I was negotiating with the Chinese and the Trump Administration they would try this idea of strategic ambiguity on me and I would come back and say I don't want any ambiguity strategic or otherwise there's no ambiguity about Lighthouse it's just is or it isn't that good I can confirm this from preparing for the panel together just so you guys know Congressman what's your take again I would just say this like I think um this goes back to what I started with we need to be on offense and we need to be acting now um and and I say that because and it's related to the question um if you're going to be at a place wanting to decouple uh if there's any rattling towards Taiwan um that's a good place for us to be to be able to push back on China but we have to be ready to do it and we've got to make sure that we're in a position to do it and we've got to get more manufacturing capacity here not be too reliant on China we need to open up the Western Hemisphere we need to stop allowing them to basically own the Western Hemisphere right South America and now their number one trading partner is China it's not us it's China they're it's grown 25 26 fold since 2020. the trade between South America and China why are we allowing that to happen we should have a robust full trading economic engine going on in the Western Hemisphere competing with China pushing back on China we should be obviously making our military stronger but we need to be in a place to be able to push back on China uh the right way and and be able to avoid hot warrant and Conflict by using our economic might and engine to do it and we're on our heels with 32 trillion dollars of debt with China engaged in offense and we're all just sitting back twiddling our thumbs the best way to prevent them going to Taiwan or be in a position to have a strong response to it is if we're on offense economically in my view all right we're just about out of time but I want to take one last question from the gentleman in the back thank you my name is Brendan steinhauser all the way from Austin Texas unfortunately I live just outside of Congressman Roy's District drive by it every day there's time to move yeah pitch um I'm with Young Americans for Liberty and uh one of the questions I have or in my mind is you know what is we talked about Tick Tock what should American policy be as it relates to American companies like Google Facebook but also companies like 23andMe who are doing a lot of data collection what should American policy be as it relates to you know those companies working with the CCP to sell shared data things that could lead to a potential you know surveillance State issue on Americans thank you Ambassador so so I mean to me it's the the implementation may be slightly more complicated but to me I wouldn't allow it I think it's outrageous nothing like that happens unless they may have made a calculation that it's net in their interest more than it is in our interest so I don't think our technology should be growing together I think it should be growing apart and we ought to be growing together with Europe and Japan and our allies so to me I would not permit it I don't understand the argument for it and I've I've had senior people I won't tell you their names but senior business people when I was in the government who came in and said our smartest people are in Beijing I'm not and if I told you what are the names trust me you know the name and and my kind of reaction was we'll shame on you right I mean don't you get it what do you think this whole thing is just about you getting another couple of billion to add to your 30 now what what's going on in your head I don't think and I think there's an awful lot to that you look at the apps that are coming out they're all coming out there they're leading in all these apps that they have all that kind of Technology over there in Beijing and we ought to not allow any of it we ought to force the the the the the that technology back in the United States and what is the cost of not having things like Tick Tock I mean there is literally zero cost to these things right I mean it isn't like we're giving up food or something we're giving up something we don't need in the first damn place so so for me I would not I would not permit that kind of of technological integration as part of my strategic decoupling and I hope that Congress finds their way there and I also believe this to be true I think if you pastel if you and I would like to get the congressman to tell me yes or no well actually wanted to say yes not yesterday but some of these some of these things that everyone in here in this room would agree every single one if you had a vote in the house on that item it would pass with a vast majority of our people and a substantial majority of the other right I mean I mean I just think like this simple kinds of things if you just ran one vote after another now the Senate is going to be the Senate okay fine but at least you would be on record that we can't allow these things to happen that we can do this kind of decoupling so I mean what's your answer would these things pass am I am I am I wrong is it no I mean a little bit what I said earlier that you've got to some degree you've got this kind of conflict in the in the general conservative slash Republican mind I don't say they're one of the same that's why it's a conservative slash Republican mind uh about getting they're so beholden to Market thinking that they go oh well but that exists we can't interfere with you know a Google or Apple or whatever so and and for me for for the record I see a little bit more of a kind of a sliding scale from the standpoint of social media companies you may even look at the value ad right like I don't give a rip that Tick Tock exists it would be better if it didn't right in my view I feel that way about a whole lot of social media you've got some you know things like apple that are producing products and things that we use and um you've got obviously Google to provide services that are both some helpful and some that are less so my point of bringing that up is there's two issues at play China and what they're doing in China I think we ought to take a hard line on that you've also got size and scope of these companies you get an older questions of antitrust issues but our guys get resistant when you're saying guys you don't understand what time it is like this isn't just like okay what are we doing in some sort of economic sense your National Security your well-being is at stake China is a hundred percent embedded with all of these guys and we need to go to war to change that mindset I'm telling you a good block of your your general average Republican in the house in the Senate they're not there in that way of thinking can I ask you do me a favor when you find the actual Conservative Republican who thinks that market principles are more important than American families in communities if you would just call me I'd love to have a meeting with the person because I've got you use the term actual conservative that limited the pool pretty limited all right well yeah so so let me just say a republican even one who claims to be a conservative these are not similar scope problems China versus oi unbalance I like market now if you like Market you're gone right I mean the market is what got us to the point that we have this trillion dollar deficit and that we're shipping them hey that's called the market there was a great there was a great quote if I remembered by a a a a French prime minister and he said he said what is the market but human nature and what is civilization but a fight against human nature and I thought that kind of summarizes it don't tell me the market the market is I mean that's that's that's not we we're we're civilized because we fight that those kind of Tendencies and this is an exact example of one so I I know those people exist and I'd love to talk to them ladies and gentlemen Ambassador lighthizer Congressman chip Roy Peter Schweitzer and Michael poseberry thank you thank you [Applause]

Channel: The Heritage Foundation

Views: 15,058

Keywords: The Heritage Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Conservative

Id: pDFZuun5gWs

Length: 45min 27sec (2727 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023