Rep. French Hill Talks Renegotiating USMCA, Limiting Inputs
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Senate Republicans working on changes to the House GOP tax plan, looking to require fewer cuts in Medicaid benefits for the poor and disabled. The move aiming to appease members of the party worried about public backlash. I'm pleased to say that a good friend of this program, a good friend of ours, the Congressman from Arkansas, French Hill, joins us now for more. Congressman, good to see you, sir. Jonathan, great to be with you and Lisa and Anne-Marie. Always good to be back in New York. Is it turning out to be as much fun as you thought it would be down in Washington?

Every day is a joy. April 2nd, how much of a joy is that going to be? I'm just glad it's not April 1st because that would even increase the uncertainty even more. What are your constituents telling you about what's happening in Arkansas on the ground? Look, on the relations to tariffs, about 30% of our output in Arkansas goes to Mexico or Canada.

and that's food and manufactured goods and back and forth. And then you have the North American Free Trade Agreement, now under USMCA, that was crafted to make North America the destination for manufacturing. So for 30 years it's been knitted together. And so I think the first thing that I'm hearing is certainty.

and just lay out the plan on how you want to use tariffs to open up more markets for Americans, have reciprocity on fairness in certain markets that are highly disproportionate, a disproportionate treatment like India, for example.

But when it comes to North America, let's renegotiate USMCA. If you want to limit certain inputs from China into Canada, Mexico, or the United States, you can do that in the agreement. Those countries can do that on an input basis. If you want to have the American manufactured content higher, you could negotiate to do that, as President Trump successfully did.

Last time he was president on the North American auto content. He got more American content. So I think it's best to tackle this Canadian and Mexican issue inside a new and revised USMCA. But USMCA was done under Trump. It replaced NAFTA. So you want USMCA part two. Do you think that's what he's getting at, Donald Trump here, the president? He's getting at the start, bringing those 2026 talks up.

into the mid 2025. - Yeah, potentially. And I think that's not wrong thinking on his part. If you're concerned about Chinese dumping through trans-shipment of steel, for example, into Canada or Mexico, let's deal with that inside the agreement. Let's have Mexico deal with that in their own trade policy on inputs coming into the country.

Because that's how I think you have a more robust, competitive international system where manufacturing is at the heart of America. I think President Trump strategically in trade diplomacy, I'd like to see more things made in America. That takes time to do. It's not overnight.

We had steel and aluminum tariffs for the past five or six years, and they haven't been overnight changes across the board. Walmart is headquartered in your state. They went to China and said, "Look, we're dealing with tariffs. You're going to have to eat some of this cost." And the Chinese are saying no. Are you concerned about the cost being passed on to consumers? I am when I don't know what the strategy is.

This is the whole point. You have trade diplomacy on using trade as a sanction potential, like you saw the President do on Colombia on repatriation of immigrants.

you had trade use for reciprocity to bring down actual barriers that benefit actually both countries potentially over time. And we did that successfully for 40 years. We did it targeted. When I was in the White House working during the Bush administration, we used Section 301 to target bad activities by principally then Japan to open those markets doing this kind of tariff activity and limitation on imports to the U.S.

So you can do that in a classic trade diplomacy situation. But when you have across the board and it's not clear on what the time frame is for the increased production in the U.S., I think that's the challenging part. But is it your sense when you speak to the White House that April 2nd is the start of negotiations, that at the end of the day the president is a dealmaker and wants to get deals done? Well, I hear from my colleagues on the House, they want clarity like the American business community.

So you tell us what components and what timeframes you want to do trade diplomacy, you want to use reciprocity, you want to protect certain industries in the U.S. where you want to have achievable gains in production here.

But when it comes to autos, which is the most important topic of the day, I think, I think that's best done through advancing changes to the USMCA that President Trump led successfully with the Mexicans and the Canadians in his first term. The market's also looking for clarity on all of Trump's proposals, especially tax cuts.

The Senate, the Republicans, Eric Wasson, a reporter in Washington, D.C., is talking about how they want fewer cuts to Medicaid health benefits for the poor and disabled, which would be different from what the House is talking about. Do you think House Republicans, Senate Republicans can come to an agreement on how much can be cut? I do. I think we'll come to an agreement. I think we can come to an agreement rather quickly on a joint House and Senate resolution for reconciliation so the committees can get to work.

And I just referred to the Wall Street Journal story today talking about duplicate payments in Medicaid across the states and how large that number is. House Republicans are looking ways to improve Medicaid, focus Medicaid on the most vulnerable, the young, the poor, the disabled, and trying to wring costs out of the systems

Democrats, I think, in a political charge are, well, you're going to cut benefits for Medicaid. That's an assumption by Democrats politically. Well, because the math doesn't work when you're talking about $880 billion. And also, that's the charge for the whole committee. Right, but most of that money goes to Medicare, no? Right, but look at the numbers, and I think that's what the House and Senate want to do. Let's get to a Senate resolution.

and let's let these committees work to mark those bills up to find the savings that we can produce. Besides the extension of TCGA, what other tax cuts do you think are actually feasible? The president has talked about no tax on Social Security, no tax on tips. Just this week, no tax on auto loans apparently is being thrown out there and he's flirting with. What actually can get passed? Well, this is the beauty of the reconciliation process because the president puts his plan out there, his best ideas, what he wants to try to accomplish.

And then the House and Senate have to come together and figure out what we can do in the context of that budget resolution. Can we find the cuts? Can we find the offset? Do we agree in the House and Senate on the economic forecasts? And so I won't prejudge what the possibilities are. I just know how hard the work is going to be. I want to put an emphasis on things that grow the economy.

So, if we have to narrow the focus on what amount of tax cuts we're going to have, let's focus on ones that produce production, more jobs, faster economic growth. Do tariffs increase revenues and turbocharge growth? Again, this depends on the strategy, Lisa. You can have an across-the-board modest tariff that might raise revenue and not impact growth economically.

What is your goal? Is it reciprocity? Is it market opening in new countries? Is it level of the playing field or is it increasing production in the U.S.? Those things are sometimes in conflict. What number are you penciling in for the tariff revenue to offset some of the cuts? Right. So in Congress, we're actually not penciling in tariff revenue because it's not counted by this Congressional Budget Office as an offset, which doesn't mean we can't count it. Like if there was a strategy and it laid out,

the two budget committees could agree. We will accept some revenue from projected tariffs in the revenue estimates in the reconciliation package. But we're not, as of now, counting that. That's a hypothetical that we're actually not counting on. As Walmart being in touch, I imagine they must have reached out to you and other representatives of Arkansas. How upset are they about this?

Well, they want, I think so many businesses, and they report on your broadcast on a regular basis, they can live with certain things that they know what the plan is. And so Walmart's concerned about the number one thing they think about every single day, which is the American family they serve.

and they want to make sure that that can be done in an affordable way. That's their goal in life. So this could interfere with that. But we need to wait and see what the ultimate goal is. Do you think the White House appreciates that? Because we hear this every single day, and we've said on this programme, confidence coming into 25 was sky high.

We wanted to see that sky-high confidence translate into hiring, into investment. And the lack of clarity, the lack of certainty, it's really how things back, and you see that in the sentiment surveys now. Does the White House, in your opinion, sort of understand that? The lack of certainty, the lack of clarity is holding this economy back. I certainly think Treasury Secretary Besant and a National Economic Council leader has to know that.

They're very experienced in economic policy making. And my view is you've got, I think, clarity about right-sizing regulatory costs in the economy. You've got clarity about trying to reduce the bureaucracy in the government. You've got clarity on where we want to go on tax policy. We need an equal amount of clarity on the strategy in and around tariffs and increasing manufacturing here.

President Trump's big picture point is a good one, but you've got to develop a workable strategy to do that. And I think that's what the role of the Treasury Secretary, the Commerce Secretary, and the National Economic Advisor, that's their principal mission. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is going to be staying put in Washington, D.C., not coming to New York to work at the U.N. Do you think that's an omission by the White House that they're nervous about getting this tax bill done through Congress? They have the votes?

Well, it surprised me. I'll be candid. I think Elise is an outstanding member of our leadership team. We welcome her back to the Congress, but I also thought she was going to be an exceptionally well-trained and qualified ambassador for the president at the United Nations. It could signal that. I think President Trump's own quote says we need to make sure we have the votes in the House. So if you consider that an admission, we welcome her back.

I think it says that maybe replacing her with a Republican they think might be tough in New York as a political strategy, which is that's been a red district. But, you know, that may indicate that. And we need every vote we have. We have the most narrow margin. Mike Johnson has the most narrow margin since World War I. And so we don't want to have a gap there. When we passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act back in President Trump's first term, I think some 20 Republicans voted no.

So we don't have the luxury of that this time. Congressman, we always appreciate your time. It's good to see you. Great to be with all of you. Thank you, sir. Congressman French Hill and also the chair of the House Financial Services Committee. AI is redefining what's possible for your business with more unique challenges to solve and higher stakes than ever. Microsoft helps you stay ahead.

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