Here & Now

Johnson on Southern Border, Tariff Disputes

Frederica Freyberg:
President Donald Trump this week postponed tariffs on imports from Mexico in light of an immigration agreement he said he reached with that country. Meanwhile, the acting secretary of Homeland Security sounded the border alarm Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee siting a 623% increase in total law enforcement actions taken at the southern border since May of last year. Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson is chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, and he joins us now from Milwaukee and, Senator, thanks very much for being here.

Ron Johnson:
Hello, Frederica, happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
The agreement the president reached with Mexico that allowed him to back off those tariffs would have that country do much more enforcement action at its own borders to cut the flow of migrants coming here. What can you tell us about the agreement and whether you think it will work?

Ron Johnson:
I think multiple administrations have been asking Mexico to do more to stem the flow of migrants from Central America coming from their southern border into America. And so what they’re going to do – what they’ve told us – is they’re going to basically place up to 6,000 National Guard troops at the border to deter further migration. As well as accept more of the Central Americans that have come in here claiming asylum, accept them back into Mexico while they have their asylum claim adjudicated. The reason we need that is because we haven’t fixed our laws that only allow our officials to hold family members for about 20 days. It’s not enough time in general. And as a result we’re releasing these family units into America, which is causing a huge incentive for more to come. The basic numbers are in 2014 President Obama declared it a national — humanitarian crisis when about 120,000 unaccompanied children, but primarily people coming in as part of a family entered illegally and we’re apprehended. Through the first eight months of this year, we’re already over 400,000 individuals. And if May’s pace continues, in the next four months, we’ll double that. We’ll be over 800,000. Now hopefully the actions that Mexico has taken, the additional National Guard troops, will act as a deterrent and that flow will be reduced and we won’t see those numbers.

Frederica Freyberg:
Does this ally your concerns about imposition of tariffs, this agreement with Mexico now?

Ron Johnson:
It certainly allays them indefinitely. I’m not a big fan of tariffs. It’s fine when tariffs are used as leverage to get the attention, whether it’s our trading partners, in this case Mexico that had to do more in terms of reducing that flow. But long term, let’s face it, tariffs is just a fancy name for a tax imposed on imports, imposed on American consumers. Long-term they’re harmful economically. But they can actually be used beneficially when it gets the attention of people we’re trying to negotiate a better deal with.

Frederica Freyberg:
So do you support legislation reasserting Congress’s authority over tariffs?

Ron Johnson:
Yeah. I’ve been original co-sponsor of every bill that’s been proposed in the Senate. This is authority that Congress gave away back in the Great Depression. After the SmootHawley Tariffs, Congress, I think, came to their senses and realized that was pretty damaging economically but they didn’t have the courage to repeal the tariffs themselves. So they gave the president that authority. So this is just one of many examples where Congress simply hasn’t had the courage to pass laws themselves and so they sluff that authority and responsibility off on executives. Generally presidents are happy to take additional power and authority. I think it’s well past time for Congress to reclaim an awful lot of this constitutional authority that has been willingly given away to past presidents.

Frederica Freyberg:
On another matter, for her part, your colleague across the aisle, Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin has written a letter to the president this week asking him to immediately release details of a deal he announced saying Mexico has agreed to begin buying large quantities of agricultural product from the U.S. What do you know about that agreement for Mexico to purchase potentially Wisconsin agricultural exports?

Ron Johnson:
Well, I’m not involved specifically in those negotiations, so I don’t have any knowledge of it. I’m completely supportive, though, of the Senate and the House ratifying the new NAFTA, the USMCA agreement. NAFTA was highly beneficial to Wisconsin. We had a trading surplus with both Canada and Mexico. Mexico’s our largest export market for Wisconsin cheese. It’s incredibly important for Wisconsin, both the farmers and well as manufacturers now that we set up all these very complex supply chains to have an agreement in place, whether that’s NAFTA or whether it’s the new USMCA, which modernizes NAFTA. So I would call on Senator Baldwin to call on Nancy Pelosi to bring that up in the House so we can ratify that agreement for the benefit of Wisconsin farmers and manufacturers.

Frederica Freyberg:
In your belief, what are the changing winds on tariffs and retaliatory tariffs and trade doing not just to farm markets, but business certainty more broadly?

Ron Johnson:
Well, it’s created instability and uncertainty and that’s not a good thing. The thing that this administration has done for the economy is by — we stopped adding to the regulatory burden, we enacted a more competitive tax system. That brought a great deal of optimism and certainty and [unintelligible] into our economy. Which is why we got out of the economic doldrums, where under Obama they said the new normal was less than 2% growth. We’ve achieved more than 3% growth. But the whole trade wars have produced a certain level of uncertainty. What’s amazing to me though Frederica, as I talk to business interests and farmers in Wisconsin, as much as they may be feeling some of the short term pain, they really do support what President Trump is trying to do, achieve fair and reciprocal treatment by all our trading partners, or from all out trading partners but in particular addressing the abuses of China. The theft of our intellectual property through cyber theft, through espionage, through forced technology transfers. So they do support what President Trump is trying to accomplish. It’s just very unfortunate that our trading partners really require this level of attention-getting to come to the table in good faith and really do a more fair, more reciprocal trade deal with America.

Frederica Freyberg:
With just about a minute left and back to the migration levels at our border, 144,000 migrants were detained by the U.S. last month alone. Is part of the answer for our federal government to add immigration judges to process asylum claims faster?

Ron Johnson:
That is. We also need to reform the Flores reinterpretation of that agreement so we can detain people a little longer so we have enough time to adjudicate those claims. You know Frederica, one dimension that’s not being talked enough about this is the human traffickers themselves. The involuntary servitude, sex trade. The fraudulent families. You know we’ve done some pilots 13%, 25%, 33%, We’re not quite sure. But I do know when we were down on the border we were told about a three-year-old boy that was left in a hot Texas field by his fraudulent parent, the adult that he crossed with. Just abandoned with nothing more than a telephone – a contact telephone number written on his sandal. That’s a dimension we’re not talking about. This is a crisis. It’s a growing problem. We do need to enact law to fix it.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Senator Ron Johnson, thanks very much for joining us.

Ron Johnson:
Have a great day.