Here & Now

Pocan Updates on Trade and Immigration Policy

Frederica Freyberg:
Now to the thorny federal issue of tariffs and immigration. President Donald Trump has set Monday for the day a 5% tariff on imported goods from Mexico will take effect. The president wants to use the tariffs to push Mexico to stop people from coming to the U.S. from that country’s southern border. The tariffs could increase by 5% each month until hitting 25% on October 1st. As that move royals Congress, the House of Representatives voted to approve the so-called American Dream and Promise Act. Under that measure, 2.5 million dreamers and immigrants eligible for temporary protected status would be eligible for a path to citizenship. That includes nearly 19,000 immigrants in Wisconsin, according to the Center for American Progress. In tonight’s “closer look,” we check in with Second District Democrat U.S. Representative Mark Pocan, who voted in favor of the Dreamers and Promise Act. Thanks very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:
Yeah, thank you. Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
First to the tariffs, what is your position on the tariffs of goods imported from Mexico?

Mark Pocan:
Yeah, it’s not just the goods imported from Mexico, which is a bad idea. It’s all the tariffs that we’re throwing out there, much like spaghetti against a wall, hoping that it sticks and does something. The president really doesn’t have a trade policy. I think when he ran in Wisconsin, he talked about bringing American jobs back. That resonated with a lot of people who’ve lost manufacturing jobs, but he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he’s been dealing with trade. That’s why we don’t have a NAFTA 2.0. That’s why on the tariff issue, our farmers are really hurting in Wisconsin just from the existing tariffs. I’m not against tariffs. You can use a targeted tariff in an effective way to stop a country from dumping steel or something else, but the way that we’re doing it is completely haphazard. And I had a farmer recently come by, who has come by every year whose family has a long history of farming who’s talking about maybe selling the farm. And when people have talked about how the president has a package to provide some relief for farmers based on the tariffs, this farmer told me on soybeans, it’s about 50 cents on the dollar, on dairy, it’s about 2 cents on the dollar and for corn grower, it’s about 1 cent on the dollar. That’s not getting you anywhere close to keeping a family farm a family farm. So the tariffs right now are really hurting Wisconsin farmers and we’ve got to have a change in the president’s policy.

Frederica Freyberg:
On the tariffs with Mexico, Wisconsin imported nearly $3 billion in goods from Mexico last year, so how might a 5% or a 25% tariff then affect people in Wisconsin?

Mark Pocan:
It will be a mess. I mean, first of all, we already have a problem with trucks bringing some goods in to Wisconsin businesses that are talking about laying off staff because they can’t produce goods in Wisconsin because they’re not getting some of the product that they need to assemble from Mexico. And if you keep doing this, of course it’s going to be price increases to people in Wisconsin, but also it’s going to have that other ripple effect where you’re going to see people actually working in Wisconsin not being able to work because goods are going to cost more or take longer to get here and a there’s no reason. The president has absolutely no policy reason/proof that this will work in any way other than he feels like it’s a way to try to pressure the Mexicans on the border. When last time I looked, the surge that we have at the border is from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, not Mexico. So once again, the president is shooting at a target here when the rest of the American people are busy worrying about what’s here.

Frederica Freyberg:
On that, let’s take a listen to what U.S. Senator Republican Ron Johnson says about the flow of immigrants coming through Mexico.

Ron Johnson:
I completely understand President Trump’s frustration with Congress not acting to solve this problem, and quite honestly with Mexico not doing enough to help solve the problem as well. I met with the Mexican ambassador and foreign minister and in that meeting asked them to move toward enacting a third safe country agreement with America which would help deter that flow of people from central America taking a very dangerous journey into America. This is completely out of control. We’re already up to 400,000 unaccompanied children, mostly people coming in as a family unit primarily one adult, one child, in just the first eight months of this fiscal year. If we maintain May’s rate, it will be 800,000 by the end of September. So that compares with 120,000 in 2014. So this is a crisis that is growing.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what do you know about the Mexican government’s potential to curtail immigrants coming to the U.S. because of these tariffs and could they be doing more?

Mark Pocan:
I think that’s the wrong question that the president is trying to put out there. The real question is, my first term in Congress, there was a bill that came through the Senate that would have been a comprehensive immigration reform. It got nearly 70 votes in a very bipartisan manner that would have dealt with aspiring Americans as well as deal with protections at the borders. But this president refuses to ever take anything like that up. All he wants to do is build a wall because that goes well when he goes to his rallies around the country. But the reality is, he’s taking away funding from the countries where people are coming so we could stop the violence there so that people wouldn’t leave those countries. The last 10 years we’ve had a net migration outside the United States but the spike we have right now is because the president is talking about building a border, people are like, well, we’d better hurry up and get here to address dealing with the violence in those countries. So everything the president has done has been wrong-headed in this area and quite honestly, Ron Johnson is just wrong His Senate did a very responsible thing with nearly 70 votes my very first term. We should be doing comprehensive immigration reform instead of trying to piecemeal a wall or take kids who have been here legally through the DACA program and punish them. Everything about this issue has been done wrong by this administration.

Frederica Freyberg:
One more clip from Senator Johnson about the tariffs with Mexico, and there seems to be opposition among Republican Senators. Let’s listen to what he says.

Ron Johnson:
I’m not a fan of tariffs. The president is fully aware of that. He’s using tariffs, is what he says, for leverage. If we can use a tariff as a leverage to get Mexico to enact a third safe country agreement, that would be a good thing. I do not want to see these tariffs imposed. Tariffs are a tax on consumers, I’m painfully aware of that as well.

Frederica Freyberg:
So there you have it, his persuasion on tariffs. Another matter related, the House this week as we said, passed the Dream and Promise Act. Wisconsin according to statistics is home to nearly 19,000 immigrants who would be eligible for this path to permanent citizenship. Why in your mind is this important now?

Mark Pocan:
it’s important because we’ve had a lot of people right here in Wisconsin, as you mentioned probably about 19,000 people according to the Center for American Progress that are here, who may have come at two weeks or two months old, may not speak the language of the country they came from, and we had protections through the DACA program for a very long time and some other efforts and yet the president kind of took that and broke it. And no one asked for it in Congress. That’s the thing. It’s not like this has been a problem, but he created a new problem in trying to get money for the border wall. We decide we needed to fix this but really fix this, not just the temporary fix that President Obama had in place but actually figure out how to do this. So if you work here, go to school here, serve in the military, that can help provide you that path to citizenship. But I also want to add one thing on the last part. Mexico is one of our biggest trading partners. It is an ally. The way we’re treating Mexico when that’s not where people are coming from is wrong-headed on this and again, it’s going to impact consumers in Wisconsin, continue to impact farmers in Wisconsin, and other businesses in Wisconsin. I talked to someone in Sauk County and their trucks, again, that they need to get to have supplies that they’re going to assemble and put together and create the jobs for people working in Sauk County, they can’t do because the president won’t put money towards letting the trucks come through because he’s trying to make a point again about the border wall. Everything that we’re doing in this area is so wrong-headed that it’s very difficult. Let’s not even forget the family separation policy and all the rest that we’re dealing with. This is an area where really the president has been very stubborn-headed around wanting to find money for the wall no matter what and because of this, we have this ripple effect, whether it be the tariffs, whether it be treating people who are in the DACA program who are here to provide that pathway to citizenship. We need to do a lot more than what this administration has been doing.

Frederica Freyberg:
A lot more to talk about. Representative Mark Pocan, thanks very much.

Mark Pocan:
Sure, thank you.