Post Next: How America invests in the industries and workforce of the future
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This Washington Post Life podcast is presented by Samsung Electronics America, powering America's future by investing in America's present. With 45 plus years of U.S. operations and billions of dollars in investment, Samsung is sparking innovation and defining a new age of American tech manufacturing. This is a future shaped by Samsung. I'm Dan Marica, co-anchor of the Washington Post flagship political newsletter, Early Brief.

I recently sat down with Republican Congressman Michael McCaul in a post-live event about the future of manufacturing. We talked about the CHIPS Act, President Trump's criticism of the legislation that the congressman was key in passing, as well as why his home state of Texas is a powerhouse of semiconductor manufacturing. Later, you'll hear my colleague David Lynch in conversation with Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana about America's economic competitiveness and his growing concerns about the cuts to federal funding for science.

Let's start on a broad topic, and I know this will be a question that you have near and dear to your heart. Where do you see the semiconductor industry in the scope of American industrial policy? How critical is it, and how should we view it in the future? Well, if I could take you back, when I chaired the China Task Force, and it was during COVID, so we were looking at supply chain.

examining what are the most critical supply chains and semiconductors, number one. Two, I'd say rare earth minerals. Three would be medical as we saw the PPEs hoarded by China after COVID.

So, interestingly, I know that the president seems to have forgotten that it was his administration that actually advanced this idea. - We will get there for sure. - And so, semiconductors I think are absolutely number one key.

They're in everything, our phones to our cars. And from my perspective, as both chairman of Homeland and chairman of Foreign Affairs, the most advanced weapon systems. And as we enter the AI age, which the smaller nanometer the chip is, the more you get into AI, you open the window.

then you get into the advanced weapon system. So this is part of the great power competition we have with China. And if we're gonna win this, we have to start manufacturing this in the United States. - You mentioned chips. You were one of the main drivers behind that bipartisan, I will say, piece of legislation that passed in 2022. How do you grade the implementation of that legislation? Has it accomplished what you had hoped? Could it have been implemented better?

- Yeah, I know there's criticisms about the grant program. I didn't see a lot of

misuse of that to be honest with you I think what start what drove the when I talked to you you know the Samsung's and the TSMC's and the Intel micron it's the tax incentives and those are permanent and and that was very hard to get through ways and means they thought that that refundable investment tax credit was for small startup you know companies not

But I emphasize, but this is a national security issue. We need to bring, pull supply chain out of Taiwan, which is very vulnerable to China, and start manufacturing this, you know,

in the United States. And so I think it's just absolutely critical for the future. - So let's get to the president now. I wanna read these quotes directly because during his joint address to Congress earlier this year-- - And I was sitting next to Todd Young when he said this. - Yeah, well, I'll ask you what your reaction was when you heard it. But March 4th, he says to Speaker Mike Johnson to quote, "Get rid of," end quote, "the act," speaking of the CHIPS Act,

saying, quote, your CHIPS Act is a horrible, horrible thing. We give hundreds of billions of dollars and it doesn't mean a thing, end quote. So two months have gone by since then. Have you spoken to the president at all about the CHIPS Act since then? And what does he get wrong about it? Well, we've spoken to his team. If I could go back to the genesis of the CHIPS Act, it was not even my idea. It was Secretary Mike Pompeo,

It was Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, his national security team that came to me chairing the China test were saying, you know, this has to be the highest priority to incentivize manufacturing in the United States. If you think about it in the president's theme of America first,

You're talking about bringing that supply chain out of Taiwan to manufacture it in the United States. It falls directly within his philosophy. And by the way, the grant program was $52 billion, not hundreds of billions of dollars. The industry said that that would be important.

the tax incentives were the most important. It passed on the national defense authorization that I authored during the Trump administration, and it was applauded by the Trump administration and Secretary Wilbur Ross and Pompeo. The appropriations got held up by Senator Shelby, the chair of appropriations in the Senate, unfortunately.

I think he wanted something in Alabama. They horse trade a lot in the Senate and it held it up and then they put it into the Biden administration. And I think somehow in his mind, he got tainted as a Biden program when in fact, it was his first administration that proposed the idea.

To you, do you see it as he is just reflexively against anything that happened in the four years between his terms? I think so, and I think that's tainted his perception. But to answer your question, when he said this at the State of the Union, that went off script, by the way. It was not in his script. And we had conversations with Lutnick, and who said it's a worthwhile investment? I mean, Lutnick is very supportive.

And now they're calling it something else, the accelerator investments program that oversees a chip program. But essentially, it's rebranding the same program. The president has said that tariffs would be enough to get and encourage companies to move production to the United States. Is he right about that?

When I talked to TSMC about why they doubled down on their investment, they said it was the tax incentives from the CHIPS bill that was the main driver. Now, the tariffs can play a part in terms of a carrot and stick approach, the tariff being the stick. I think TSMC saw that coming. So I'm not going to say the tariff threat

didn't help facilitate that more investment in the United States, but their biggest rationale for doing that was our, the tax incentives. I think if tariffs are done right, the right approach

They can't be effective as a state, but I think a permanent tariff on Semiconductors would have a disastrous result when it comes to Taiwan because 90% of the advanced global manufacturing of advanced chips comes out of Taiwan not the United States and that would drive the cost to our consumers and The reason we did chips is so we can get to the advanced manufacturing over time, but we're not there yet and

So this would have a consequence of the next several years of everything, all the consumer products to chips going up in price. Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and I want to read this quote directly. I know you worked closely with her on the chips bill. She said, quote, China does a chips act every month.

So I know there's been talk of CHIPS 2.0 or something like that. What do you think the chances are of a bill like that passing Congress right now with bipartisan support? Well, right now we're trying to get the R&D design tax credit, which I had in my original CHIPS bill. And then the Senate took it out.

So I'm working with Todd Young, Senator Cornyn, trying to get that back in and the reconciliation piece. But to your point, China, if we're gonna compete, we gotta get this right. And they are subsidizing so much

of their advanced chips. Now AI, thanks to Nvidia, selling them advanced chips prior to the export control. Europe has their own chips program. I just met with the Netherlands the other day and they were asking me how I got the chips bill passed and what worked, what didn't work. And they were very interested in their own

CHIPS program. So this is hitting Europe and Asia. They're all following the lead that the United States took because they're seeing that the investment now is hitting...

in the short term, about $600 billion and a projected trillion dollars in a couple of years. This is a, it's working. We will have about 30% of the advanced semiconductor chip manufacturing in the next several years. We're not there yet.

Let's talk about China because when I talk about the president, I think that you talked to members of Congress that there's a messaging problem with this bill when you think about the president. Is it all about framing it for him and his team as competing with China or is it deeper than that? Well, it's competing with China and it's about America first. And if you want to manufacture the most important supply chain in the United States, this program has a track record of success and

It worked. I think the other thing that happened, quite frankly at the time, the Senate loaded up all these authorizations on the bill, not appropriations, which made it look more costly than it actually was. It was only $52 billion in grants. The other problem was that Schumer and Manchin cut the reconciliation deal the night before the bill went from the Senate to the House.

McConnell called McCarthy, told him to whip against the Chitz bill, which had nothing to do with the Manchin conversation about reconciliation. It was more of a punitive retaliation. And so I had my whip calling me saying, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to whip against your bill. And I was stunned. Still, we got half of the chairs of the major committees, including House Intelligence and Appropriations, voting for it.

So as the Trump administration negotiates with China, can you talk about the power that they hold in this fight when it comes to critical minerals and how the U.S. should respond to that power?

Again, I think if you look at the three major supply chains, we have to incentivize. I think CHIPS is a good model for that, but we have to start manufacturing rare earth minerals both in the United States and with our allied nations.

This is going to be a race. China controls the majority of it. The refining capacity is much greater in China than it is anywhere else in the world. And so when you talk about lithium, you know, we talk about batteries, electric, it all comes out of China. I was in Australia. They have a lot of lithium there, but they have a port that sends the lithium to China to be refined, and then it comes back to Australia. How much of that is a workforce issue?

I think especially on the chip manufacturing, look, I'm blessed to have two major universities. University of Texas produces a lot of the top engineers. Texas A&M, a lot of the top engineers. So we think it's a good ecosystem for the national centers that we put in the bill to focus on advanced manufacturing. But I'll tell you,

China, they work around the clock and they have a lot of advanced degrees. This gets into an immigration debate, the H-1B visas, the high skill bill. Maybe as we get the border under control as we're doing right now, people will be more open to this. I look back at my dad's generation, he was a bombardier, bombed the Nazis in World War II. Remember, we imported a lot of the scientists from Germany that worked on the Manhattan Project.

In the universities I see, we'll have students from Asia come in to study, but they can't stay. And so we educate them at taxpayer expense, and then they go back to our competition. So what would you do about that? Would it be as simple as inviting them to stay, or is there something about incentivizing folks who want to study come to the United States? Is it about incentivizing them to come here? Well, you know, the president, I had this bill recently.

Several years ago, if you get a PhD in high skill in engineering, you get a green card. The president mentioned that after he met with a lot of the high tech community. I'm not sure how others in the administration may view that now. No, you'd have to have a proper vetting, you know, because espionage is real. But that can be done.

And then we have that talent pool that we currently have a workforce issue with. - I mean, this is something you and I were talking about backstage, is the age of manufacturing. 25% of manufacturing workers are 55 and older. And there's really almost a tidal wave facing manufacturing when it comes to retirements, and younger folks not being interested in picking up those jobs.

What is the federal government's role in tackling that issue? And are you concerned about the age of manufacturing workers? - When I look at the Defense Industrial Base, which is chairman of Foreign Affairs, I sign off on all weapon systems, foreign military sales. That was a huge issue. What we found, all these mom and pop shops that create the parts that go into the weapons, were starting to retire.

Now you're seeing a new wave, like there's a company called Hadrian in Los Angeles where they have really moved forward with very high tech manufacturing and training people that worked at Home Depot to operate these million dollar machines. This is what you're gonna start seeing more and more of. The Palantir weapon system companies, it's more small, agile weapon systems, defense contractors.

So yeah, it's an issue. But it's something that we can, I don't think we need the Defense Production Act. Like in World War II, that would be a very drastic move. If we end up in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific with China against Taiwan, then that would be a problem. Yeah, I was at TSMC in Taiwan, and all the machines are ASML.

It's interesting that lithography was actually developed at Lawrence Livermore labs. Somehow the Netherlands got it, right? And now we're reliant on it. Now there are some manufacturers here in the United States that are working on advanced lithography so we can't compete. And now China is working on this advanced lithography as well. When I look at TSMC, the founder

was on track to be the CEO of Texas Instruments. So interestingly, it could have been Texas Instruments

Not TSMC, Taiwan, but Texas. I wanted to ask you about Texas because it has become a hub, and you've seen other states try and get into this race domestically. What do you think Texas has done right, and what lessons does it hold for other states who are looking to get into this race? I think a friendly business climate.

from a tax regulatory. We are going to have to deal with NEPA environmental issues when it comes to manufacturing of these big fab plants.

So we just have a very, and the ecosystem with the universities, I think when Admiral Emmen brought DARPA into Austin, now we have the Army Futures Command in Austin and College Station. When you add all those together, it's a very good ecosystem of the universities, the military, and the private sector very involved in innovation.

And we have to unleash that innovation in the United States if we really intend to compete with China. And Texas has been a leader on clean energy as well, clean energy development, the research there. Are you at all concerned that some of the cuts that are happening inside the Trump administration could hurt your home state and hurt that research? You know, there are more windmills in Texas than any other state, which is hard to believe, right? I haven't made a TV show about the wind industry in Texas. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of using tax incentives to...

advance good policy. Now, I like the all the above approach in energy and I think we need to unleash. The thing that I think in terms of energy that's going to be the wave of the future in Texas A&M at RELLIS campuses developing the small modular reactors. This is going to be transformational. As you look at AI and these data centers are going to suck up a lot of energy. Eric, my grid system in Texas,

has fallen twice, shut down. And I don't think it's capable of sustaining the power necessary. But when you add the SMR capability, which will probably have in about two years to provide the energy for the data centers,

To me, that's a perfect combination. So I have to ask you a news of day question. The president is in the Middle East right now. You mentioned that you're a member of House Committees on Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security. I do want to ask you about this luxury plane that is being gifted to the president. Of course you do. I'm sure you're shocked. Do you have issues with this gift? And what is Congress's role in overseeing or oversight on this gift?

you know if it's government to government that is ethically permissible so if it's a gift to our you know united states military you know statue of liberty was a gift from france uh my only concern about it well first of all i'd sweep it for surveillance bugs i mean it is qatar yeah the only concern i have is the optics that it overshadowed

I think the good work that was done between this economic alliance and partnership that I think is absolutely critical with Saudi, UAE, Qatar, because they will also be playing a lead role in the normalization process with Israel and eventually reconstructing Gaza in that conflict.

But all the press is focused on is this luxury plane. And I get it. It's a low-hanging fruit. But are you surprised by that? I mean, it's not every day that the president is gifted a $400 million plane. I agree. And I think it overshadows, I think, the more...

the success of that trip. I mean, you're gonna have $600 billion invested in the United States in technology and AI as a result of that meeting, but no one's talking about that. They're talking about this luxury plane.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and I appreciate you ending on the news of day question and handling it so well. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Please stick around, everyone. Good morning, everyone. I'm Vineet Khosla. I am the Chief Technology Officer at The Washington Post. With us today, we have Kodal Hull. He's the Executive Vice President of Samsung America.

And today we are going to discuss how the company is positioning itself to not only be a technology leader, but also be known for sustainable economic growth across U.S. Kudel, welcome. Thanks, Vineet, and thanks to The Washington Post for the invitation to come have a discussion today. All right.

I have way too many Samsung TVs in my home, I have to tell you guys that. We appreciate that. I'm embarrassed to admit how many. But Samsung has long been investing in the U.S. manufacturing. Help us understand why is U.S. important to Samsung manufacturing goals and what's driving the long-term commitment to U.S. from Samsung?

Sure, and I will say I've been with the company for seven weeks and the amount I've been able to learn in that time really has been inspiring and I'm glad I get to share it with you today.

So Samsung has been investing in the US for more than 45 years. We've been building here, we've been building semiconductors in Central Texas for nearly 30 years. We've opened a high-end manufacturing facility for home appliances in upstate South Carolina. We have some battery factories in Indiana.

So to say you use the word important, I would go so far as to say it's critical to Samsung's growth and to our plan, our business plan going forward. But quite simply, manufacturing is in Samsung's DNA. And the US market and the US manufacturing facilities are a critical part of that. Interesting.

Talking about manufacturing, how do you see private sector role in manufacturing and how it helps define America's role in global manufacturing? And I'm also very curious to hear if you have thoughts around the private-public partnership and how that fuels manufacturing.

- Absolutely, and we heard Senator Young and Congressman McCaul both talk about advanced manufacturing, and that really is a lot of what Samsung does, and private sector,

Investment in manufacturing really is key to America's growth. It leads to more and better paying jobs. It helps America's global competitiveness. We've heard from our previous speakers the challenges we have around the world, and Samsung and other companies manufacturing here in the U.S. really are key, and we form partnerships with our governments, federal, state, and local, with our industry stakeholders, as well as research institutions where we operate.

And we really feel like what we're doing here helps to fuel America's economic growth.

Yeah, and a lot of your manufacturing campuses are in a local and regional area. How do you see the impact of Samsung in those local and regional communities where your campuses go? Well, I'll give you a few numbers, and I think the numbers really help paint the picture. In South Carolina, we've made a $500 million investment that supports 1,500 jobs.

In Central Texas, with our semiconductor facilities, we support more than 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. In 2024, there was $20 billion of economic activity around our semiconductor industry.

run our semiconductor work. And in Indiana, we support approximately 4,400 jobs with our battery plants. So the numbers, I think, really tell the story. And each of those areas surrounding where we operate, each have unique ecosystems, each have unique community features that really are driven by Samsung's presence there. And we're certainly pleased to be partners with the communities where we live and work.

That's a lot of communities that Samsung is part of. And I did hear about Newberry in South Carolina, and you guys have a lot of impact on that community. Would you like to talk about that? I would love to. Again, as I mentioned, 1,500 jobs supported by the factory. It makes two-in-one washer-dryer combos. It makes washing machines. And the area where Newberry is...

really was an area that needed investment and Samsung was happy to come in in 2018 and open our factory there. And I think it's fair to say, and I think there's certainly been reporting on this, that it really has revitalized the local community. We partner with the local food bank to help alleviate hunger. We're supportive of STEM programs in the local high school and have made donations there. We work with the American Legion to feed veterans.

And one point, perhaps only interesting to me, but there is a local sandwich shop that named a sandwich after the company as a testament to how it has revitalized the area. So again, seven weeks on the job, so I really look forward to getting down to see Newberry. But from everything I have read, seen, and heard, Samsung's impact down there has really been extraordinary. Thank you.

- Yeah, everything I know about American culture, having a sandwich named after you, it's right up over there. Congratulations. - I will confess, I tried to find out what kind of sandwich, 'cause I'm eager to know that, but I wasn't able to do it before coming up here today. - Well, maybe one day we can go together and have that sandwich. - I would love it.

We heard a lot in the previous notes about workforce development and the manufacturing. So let's talk a bit about workforce development. What kind of skills and training do you think our next generation workforce really needs?

Well, I guess I'll take a step back and I'll frame it in sort of a wider way. We in this country have a STEM worker gap of 1.4 million people. And we heard Senator Young say we need to be bringing advanced manufacturing here. We at Samsung, of course, are doing that. But we need to address that. And whether it's through mechanisms by keeping STEM graduates here, whether it's fostering a homegrown STEM education, I think the answer probably is both.

But we are doing our best to partner with universities and research institutions where we work. We partner with the University of Texas and Texas A&M to provide resources for students studying semiconductor manufacturing. We have a research partnership with Clemson University and the University of South Carolina.

So we're hoping, we're doing our part at the university level to try and bring along STEM education in this country because we really, we recognize the gap and we recognize the need to fill it. - Yeah, and staying on the same theme of

talent development, are there specific programs in those universities or maybe outside of universities that you guys are encouraging or promoting? - There is, and we've developed a five-star workforce plan that is part of what I talked about. But we go even earlier than university, and we go through, and again, Senator Young mentioned his children in the K through 12.

We invest in that as well. And our signature school program is called Solve for Tomorrow. And what it is, is it's a nationwide competition with high schools whereby each high school is paired one-on-one with a Samsung employee as a mentor. And these students will put together projects really trying to solve current problems or future problems.

We just had the event in our office two weeks ago and we did an event in the Rayburn building. I have to say, again, new on the job, but I was blown away by how amazing these students are. One of the winning teams was from Arkansas and came up with an app on your phone to do oral cancer screening. The problem for which they were trying to solve was rural health gaps.

and I asked the students what inspired you to come up with this and they said our families are from rural India people really have a hard time

getting health care quickly. I think the app had something like 93% accuracy. That was one of the winning projects. And we're talking sophomore, junior, seniors in high school. And so the project was judged by a panel of Samsung and non-Samsung employees. And the winning schools, of which there were three, each received $100,000 for investment in their school. So we

really are putting our money where our mouth is on this and we're really trying to bring along that next generation of STEM students, again, at the lower school levels but also at the university levels.

Wow, that is impressive investment of time and money. And just reflecting on some of the students, my niece is in high school and she asked me to help her on a science project. And I was embarrassed. I think you should just make a company and just go for it. Your ideas are so far advanced. So it's good to see that.

STEM get the recognition and the funding in US. - Well, I know your background, so I find it remarkable that you weren't intimidated. - Well, we always want the next generation to be a level above us, right? That's how we progress. - And we've been doing this program, it's called Solve for Tomorrow. We just did our 15th anniversary of it, so it's been something that's been a long-running program for us. - Nice.

Yeah, so we talked a lot about the current stuff Samsung is doing, but we are at the post next. And when you think about manufacturing and the future manufacturing hub, there's a lot of thoughts around people, workforce, robotics, etc. So how does Samsung view the manufacturing hub of the future?

I think the future manufacturing hub is beginning to take shape today. And I would point to our footprint in Central Texas. We have now two fabs for semiconductors in Central Texas, including one to build the very leading edge GPUs. And what we've seen around that is really an ecosystem that grows up around that. Again, I mentioned our partnership with the University of Texas, as well as Texas A&M.

But you're seeing other companies in the ecosystem come by, and so you come near the facilities. And so you're really getting these hubs, really is the right word, that is a self-contained ecosystem. And we've seen it with batteries. We have that in Indiana. I know there are some battery places in other parts of the country.

And I think that's what it's going to look like. And I think the benefit and what it means for folks in the audience is more resilient supply chains. I think it's better quality education. I think the schools around will be teaching to some of the area industries as historically has happened in this country. So I think the future for manufacturing hubs, we're really seeing it take shape now. And I only see it increasing as we bring more manufacturing back to this country.

That is exciting. I mean, I find all of this exciting, as you said, like given my background in STEM. But what do you find exciting things coming out of these manufacturing hubs? You know, what are you maybe personally looking forward to?

I am looking forward to all of it. We at Samsung, one of our areas that we're very excited about is AI for everyone. And so on your new Samsung phone, you have on-device AI. And much of the AI conversation today is large language models, data centers,

that sort of thing. What we do is we have AI on your device and so it's pretty amazing. I was in Korea a few weeks ago and it does real time translation of phone calls as you're talking. For a non-Korean speaker that was very helpful.

But every Samsung phone coming out now, or at least the Galaxy phones, have that on. But one product that we're really excited about is made right there in Newberry, South Carolina. It's a combination washer/dryer powered by AI. And what it does is it senses the soil level of your load, uses the right amount of detergent, puts the right amount of water in, runs the load for the amount of time it needs to get the soil out,

and then dries it to the optimal time. So no more over drying your shirts. But that is something, those two examples really are how Samsung is bringing AI closer to our customers. I'm very excited about that. I think as we get to usable AI for everyday Americans, I think we're leading the charge on that. And as for the future of it, I could not be more excited.

I love the second example. It's one of those things you don't think about too much, but personally, I would geek out on the AI that just figures out exactly how to do it so I don't have to think about it.

On the first one, what you mentioned was very interesting. It's a very private AI in the world where privacy is at a premium. Unfortunately, I spent 10 years at Apple, so I don't know if I'll be able to try that one out. I hope you can make an exception. But I really love the fact that this is the area where Samsung is interested and excited and investing in is making AI more private and privacy safe for everyone.

And we want our customers to be able to control how they use it. No. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for your time and talking to us. I'll hand it back to my newsroom colleagues, but it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

Good morning. Welcome again to the Washington Post. I'm David J. Lynch, Post's global economics correspondent. I'm thrilled to be joined this morning by Senator Young. And as we've got limited time, let's dive right into it. We'll start with an easy question. Sure, of course. The administration has focused a lot on reshoring of manufacturing, bringing back jobs and work that went abroad during the age of so-called hyper-globalization.

But only 8% of the workforce now is employed in factories. Is the administration overdoing the emphasis on manufacturing? What do you think is the appropriate role for manufacturing in the future economic landscape? What's the right way to think about this? Well, the right way to think about it is to employ tariffs to achieve...

various schools. You can employ terrorists as we've seen to encourage your allies and partners to invest more in their own militaries, for example. We've had some measure of success

with respect to our NATO allies in particular, taking seriously those obligations, continuing to invest in their own militaries. I think important debates will continue to happen as to the extent to which those are attributable to the terrorists, because some of that began beforehand. But I think at least marginally that has yielded successes.

Tariffs can also be employed for strictly trade-related concession leverage. We've seen some of that. We've seen Vietnam offer a zero-for-zero trade arrangement. We have seen the Europeans make some concessions that we hadn't seen in a long period of time. I'd like to see more, but it's certainly a start. So that's justifiable.

I think with respect to reshoring manufacturing though, a key focus of this forum,

The emphasis should not be on trying to reshore everything that is manufactured. That would be untenable economically. That is not something that frankly is even desirable. We don't want people employed in lower value added manufacturing jobs. We instead want our workers to move up the value chain wherever possible. That means advanced manufacturing and

It also means manufacturing key components

and technologies that have some relationship to our national security and our economic security. National security, I think, is self-explanatory to most Americans. Economic security is a more malleable concept. But in short, we want to take risk out of our value chains so that we are not at the mercy of our adversaries or even of natural disasters

for key components. We discovered the importance of being more resilient and less dependent on others during the course of the global pandemic as it relates to all kinds of things from drugs to semiconductors. And that's become ever more important the more we examine the issue and the more our relations with China

continue to be unhealthy and adversarial. So I think I acknowledge in terms of the administration's approach successes. I think there have been a number, but I also want to be clear. We need to focus in a more disciplined way moving forward

on reshoring those technologies, those inputs that are essential to our national and economic security. If we do that, David, I think we will realize the sort of job creation and economic opportunities that Americans have been promised.

And then we can have a deeper and more extended conversations about the merits of reshoring other things like textiles that are of lower value added. Now, since Inauguration Day, the president has made a

up to, I think, 50 different tariff announcements. - Yes. - Announcements, changes, revisions, pauses. This is according to a tally by my colleague Jeff Stein here at the Post. I know you've called for Congress to reclaim some of its constitutional prerogative over tariffs. - Yes. - Tariffs are a tax. Congress has the power to tax. That's in the Constitution.

How do your fellow senators feel about that, particularly in the Republican caucus? Do you see any prospect of Congress actually moving forward on that? Well, let my colleagues' public statements stand for themselves. I would suggest that some of them may have strong opinions that have not been vocalized, right, because they want to remain effective, which is understandable, right? But as far as

And so your pointed question was, I want to make sure I'm not avoiding it, David. No, I just, I know you have been among those saying Congress needs to reclaim some of the power it's delegated, but there doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot of motion in that direction. No, Congress is very good at giving up responsibilities, right? There's...

Many people campaign on making hard decisions, and then seemingly upon arrival and after taking the oath of office, in fairly short order, they become very adept at delegating responsibility from the legislative branch to the executive branch, and it then becomes really difficult to claw back. And every president I've served with

Every president I've spent any time studying seems to have a penchant for using the full measure of the office's responsibility. There are very few presidents that demonstrate responsibility.

heroic levels of self-restraint. Thomas Jefferson offered a big piece of real estate, decided to accommodate his views on the appropriate role of the federal government. We had the Louisiana Purchase, right? So every president, to some extent, tries to

utilize all the various authorities given to him thus far and her sometime. And I guess where I would like to focus are on what you will regard as a more interesting area, which is some of those gray areas, right? Areas like international economic emergencies. And this is the area where

Even at this early stage of this presidency, some of us said, you know, listen, a president, and here is how I look at it, a president should not have to bear the full burden of declaring what constitutes an emergency. And therefore, all of the responsibilities associated with

uh... carrying out uh... the executive responsibilities of of government in the midst of an emergency date they should have the sanction of the people's representative for those extraordinary actions uh... we should have in short accountability for any decisions

wise or unwise under those authorities. I've applied the same line of logic to authorizing military force, not why we're here today, but it demonstrates a certain, I think, consistency in how I approach many of these issues. Congress has to do its job,

And that's going to require over a period of time, I think, reclaiming certain responsibilities. I haven't witnessed a lot of reclaiming, though, in my lifetime. So it remains an open question whether or not we can accomplish that. Sure. I want to go to a question from somebody in the audience.

Which goes to, I think, one of the main questions over the reshoring effort, which is even if we are able to effectively use tariffs to encourage the return of work, there's a question about finding the workers to do the jobs. Manufacturers, as you know, even today are constantly complaining about not being able to find enough people to fill their vacancies. Merrill Davis from Texas asks,

What's the biggest disconnect between what employers need over the next decade and how we're preparing today's students and how do we fix it? It being a disconnect, I imagine, in 60 seconds or less. Goodness.

We need to up our game as a father of four children, three of whom are still in the pre-K through 14 stage. I guess my oldest daughter just finished her first year at a university, so they're all in pre-K through 14, which are key years. And we need to significantly focus on pre-K through 14 investments,

best practices, outcomes. I know this has been a focus for a long period of time by a lot of smart people, particularly at the state and local levels. There's intermittently interest in this topic here at the federal level.

Early in the Reagan administration, I know that there was a framing of this issue as a national security concern. I still regard this as the foremost national security concern. We need, at a very young age, to be stimulating the intellectual curiosity of our children and challenging them and exposing them to reality.

material that allows them to be come the you know realize their full human potential as they age and I just feel like we're falling way short benchmarked against other countries we lack the level of rigor that is required and and so more focus there

particularly for lower-income students. And this plays into economic opportunity, though I stated I begin with national security. We have low rates of economic mobility in this country, upward and downward. That's antithetical to the American narrative, the American dream.

And not just the lack of upward, the lack of downward. No one should feel too secure. That's not freedom. That's not freedom. That's a stagnant sort of environment. And so I want more churn, and that happens through legal immigration, because with fresh eyes and incredible work ethics,

People who come to this country and their children, next generation, they oftentimes do remarkable things, but it's harder to realize the opportunities ahead of us and to realize

be instilled with the tools to seize them if our schooling system is not optimized. So I can't give you a 10-point plan to turn it around, but somebody needs to own this, right? And I just don't think we talk enough about this.

Let me ask you about something that you've... I have 60 seconds in the Senate. ...been very outspoken about. You co-authored with Matt Pottenger an op-ed in The Post a couple months ago arguing that federal funding for basic research is an absolutely vital ingredient to our competitiveness, future economic prosperity, et cetera, and that it is consistent with the president's promise of a new golden age.

I don't think the ink was dry on that op-ed before the president started taking a chainsaw to federally funded research institutes, National Science Foundation has sought to defund some of our best universities, to be clear, to defund the research, federally funded research at these universities.

That seems to me to be going in directly opposite direction of what you are calling for. What's your view of what's happening on that score? I think you summed it up pretty well. Yeah. So what do we do about it? This is a vital ingredient, and the president's taken a chainsaw to it.

So, listen, I don't think the president, as it relates to this issue, is being well served by some of the folks who, despite...

A number of us speaking up, calling to the attention the fact that today I'm reading in the newspaper we have the European Union beginning to entertain enticement, formalize programs to get the best in class fundamental science and applied science researchers out of the United States into the EU. I mean, we're in the midst of a competition. And, you know, to use a

a Heartland analogy. I mean, we're throwing our seed corn in the well.

So it's really short-sighted. I wish our business community, to sort of call them out, had been more vocal on this issue. They're focused on all kinds of other issues, but they could be helpful in amplifying the importance to their business models beyond the next quarterly return and probably beyond the tenure of the current C-suite occupants, but the sustainable growth

business and innovation viability of our best-in-class companies is tied to federal research, ultimately, much of it. I recognize that enormous research is made within firms and by firms, but

There are public goods created through our university system and our research laboratories and all the rest, the whole ecosystem that benefit us in unpredictable ways. And so many of those are harnessed by the private sector. Others are harnessed by our military, by our intelligence community, by

and public health agencies. And so this is our model. And here's what I would say, and this is a broader point about this whole era. If we want to disrupt our model, I think almost every facet of our life is due for some measure of disruption.

because our leaders have become, I think, inattentive to the concerns of many overlooked people, and they've become distant. And I actually agree with that. But if you're going to disrupt, then have a plan to rebuild, right? And so if not,

the longstanding model for federal research, which has barnacles on its vessel, right? Then point the way for something better. And I'm all in to optimize the system, but let's not deconstruct

before having any, you know, even vague renderings of what the next generation of research looks like. Yeah. I want to give you a chance in the minute and a half we have left to talk about shipbuilding because I know you've pushed in that area as well. This is an example of the sort of heavy industry that just isn't really done in this country anymore. We produce a relative handful of ships relative to China. How realistic is it

now that the horse is completely out of the barn to get that back. That's gonna take decades, isn't it? - It's gonna take a while. We have 80 commercial vessels, which has really been where my work is. We have other folks focused more narrowly on the US Navy and rebuilding it.

We have 80 U.S. flag commercial vessels right now and some merchant mariners that we can put on those vessels. The aim is to get to 250 vessels over the next 10 years. Is it doable? All the experts, most of the experts tell us yes. However, it's going to require investments, investments through the tax code mostly to crowd in foreign capital and expertise, which ought to be welcome.

And it will also take investments in our workforce. Most of this actually won't cost money to the federal treasury, though. It will just be regulatory optimization and taking existing stream of revenues through port fees, cargo fees.

going through our locks and dams, putting those revenue streams into a new trust fund, dedicated trust fund for these various purposes, and then working the plan, being very disciplined and working the plan. But it's a national security issue. China can produce 1,000-plus vessels a year. We can produce 5,000.

And so the fact that, frankly, Congress has not been particularly focused on this and focused on what I would charitably call more ancillary issues from time to time strikes me as sort of an indictment. So among the things that need to be disrupted is the culture of inattention and...

and sort of the influencer culture on Congress. We need to focus on stuff like this. We need to focus on R&D, where since 2000, China has increased through their brute force economics, public research 16-fold. Just last year, they went up 8.5%. The United States...

still we're still thinking through our plan yeah so um i i we can do this and this is this generation's charge it is to disrupt i completely agree with that but it's also to build just as the post-world war ii generation built new institutions that served us well for uh generations yeah great

Well, sadly, we're out of time. I think we could easily keep you here for another half an hour, but I know you've got other things to do. Thank you, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks, Senator Young, for joining us today. Thanks for listening. For more conversations like these, be sure to follow our Washington Post Live podcast page on Spotify and stay tuned every Friday for our weekly episodes. I'm Dan Marica signing off for Washington Post Live.