Montana Senator Steve Daines joined me today to talk about his upcoming trip to China:
Transcript:
HH: From Secretary Burgum, I go to United States Senator Steve Daines from the great state of Montana. Senator, welcome back. I know you’re about to go to China. I’ve got a bunch of questions for you. But before I do that, you announced your retirement. You surprised me after you killed it for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Then, I got to thinking about it. I said Steve Daines might be running for president. Have you ruled out running for president?
SD: (laughing) I’m not running for president, Hugh. I’m not doing that.
HH: Is that a Shermanesque, not know, not ever, never statement?
SD: Yeah, that’s a not now, not ever. That’s very Shermanesque. You know, Hugh, and I had a really great, long chat with President Trump, with Susie Wiles as I made this decision. And Hugh, when I graduated from college, and I had a chemical engineering degree, I worked for Proctor and Gamble for 13 years – six of those years in China launching American brands to compete against the Chinese brands and dominate that market for a U.S. company. Then I came back to Montana. We wanted to raise our four children in Montana. I got involved in a cloud computing start-up. We took the company public. We sold to Oracle right there in my hometown of Boseman. That was 12 years. And then, I came to the U.S. House for two years, and in the Senate for 12. There’s 14 years. You can see my life’s kind of been in chapters of 12-14 year chunks. 14 years has been a wonderful experience. I’ve so enjoyed public service, and serving the people back home in Montana, and getting a lot of great things done, changing the Supreme Court, stopping the biggest tax increase in American history, doing wonderful things with President Trump and the Republican team. But I’m ready for the next chapter. And we now have seven grandchildren. Anybody who’s listening who has grandchildren understands we went from 0-7 grandkids in the last six years, Hugh. And I just want to spend a little more time with those grandkids. But I will tell you this, Hugh. I am not retiring. I’m re-purposing. I’ve got a lot of energy. I love working the federal portfolio, love working the multinational complexities that we face around the world. And so I’m going to take the experience I’ve had in the private sector and in public service, and we’ll figure out what to do next.
HH: All right, I’m right with you. I have seven, soon-to-be eight grandchildren, and our highest and best use is attending baseball games and swim meets and school plays. That’s our highest and best use. So okay, you’re not running for president. You’re going to China, though. Are you going to meet with Chairman XI?
SD: We’ll see. We have five U.S. senators headed over there. To put this into perspective, Hugh, from 2010-2019, there were 59 Congressional visits to China. In the last six years, there have been three, and I was one of them. So there’s just been a drought of engagement. And I fully support Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent’s 30,000-foot view of China, which is this. We cannot decouple, but we need to de-risk. So isolation and disengagement is not a good strategy. Engagement, talking through our issues, continuing to advocate on behalf of American companies, okay, do you realize, Hugh, the S&P 500 had about $1.2 trillion dollars of topline revenue selling into China. You compare that to a $200 billion dollar trade deficit we had last year, it’s closed dramatically because of President Trump’s leadership, and Jamieson Greer and Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick and the team. But our revenue surplus in terms of American companies is six times greater than the trade deficit. So I think it’s important we continue to advocate for the Boeing’s of the world, the Proctor & Gamble’s, the Microsoft, great U.S. companies that need that market. And you think about the United States and China are 40% of the world’s GDP. It’s important we stay engaged and we compete. Now I am in no way stepping back from the real challenge we face with I.P. theft, and the multiple issues we face right now with China, tariff and non-tariff barriers. But isolation, in my opinion, is not a good strategy. I’m proud to have a bipartisan group of senators heading over to China this weekend. We’ll start our meetings on Monday.
HH: Senator, I’m no one to ask you for a commitment, but I’m going to do it anyway. Will you commit to me to ask every Chinese official that you meet with to let Jimmy Lai out of prison and to go to England before he dies? Will you do that?
SD: Well, let me tell you something, Hugh. I was just in Hong Kong about three weeks ago. Very aware of the Jimmy Lai situation. I’ve met Jimmy Lai here in my office in Washington. In fact, I had dialogue, written dialogue with his daughter. It is right gesture and a humanitarian gesture, a gentleman there who is failing in his health, will spend his remaining years in prison, to let him out. So these are some of the dialogue we have. It’s some of the backchannel work we do. Let me tell you something. We’ve got a great ambassador there in China – David Purdue.
HH: Yup.
SD: My former colleague here in the U.S. Senate. David was in Hong Kong with Sarah Lee and Rebok in Singapore when I was in Guangzhou with Proctor & Gamble at the same time back in the early-to-mid 90s. So there’s quiet work going on behind the scenes on behalf of Mr. Lai.
HH: Well, President Trump has told me on this show, Senator, that he brought it up with Xi and didn’t get an answer. Secretary Rubio says there’s ongoing work. I just think that they’ve got to understand I’m never going to believe anything they say until Jimmy Lai’s out of jail. It’s sort of like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov and Bukovsky in that era. If they can’t let an old Catholic man out before he dies in isolation, why would we ever trust them? Do you think that is persuasive to them?
SD: You know, it’s a persuasive argument. And it’s something that clearly, the relationship has been very strained, and trust is the most important currency in any relationship. I don’t disagree with your point, Hugh. But having spent six years working in China, I had two children born in Hong Kong back in 1994 and 1996. There are certain ways you engage and work with the Chinese leadership that are much more effective. And they’re done, often times, behind closed doors. I just will tell you in doing a lot of deals with China and having strong relationships with many of the leaders, there are better ways. If you want to get out outcome, if you just want to get a press release and clicks on social media, there’s one way to do it. If you actually want to get an outcome, there are better ways. And I’m choosing the better way path.
HH: Who is going with you, Senator? Who are the other four?
SD: So it’ll be bipartisan. We’ve got, on the Democrat side, Senator Marie Cantwell. She, of course, will be advocating for Boeing, Microsoft, the shipbuilding industry for her state of Washington. I’ve got Deb Fischer, senator from Nebraska. She, herself, is a cattle rancher, her and her husband, Bruce, run a great cattle operation there. The non-tariff barriers on beef are significant. It’s the second-largest beef export market in the world. I opened that market up to U.S. beef producers back in 2017 when I went over there with a group of Republican senators. They’d been shut down for 14 years. We got it opened up again. Now, they’ve allowed some non-tariff barriers to shut it back down again. Very important for U.S. producers. We’re also going to have Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, also a big aviation kind of interest there in Kansas, as well as advocating on behalf of wheat and barley and our U.S. Ag producers. And then Senator Mike Lee of Utah will also be joining us. So we’ve got a good delegation. We’ll be in China for the balance of the week next week.
HH: Well, that’s the set-up. That’s sort of like putting the volleyball up for President Trump to spike it. But I hope if the Chairman sits down with you, are you the leader of the delegation? Are you the senior member in the area?
SD: Yeah, I’m leading it. It’s actually my seventh Congressional visit to China, so I’m leading the delegation. I was over there in March working, in fact, before I went over in March of last year, I met with President Trump in the Oval. We talked about the importance of working on this fentanyl precursor issue, of course, the leading cause of death of 18-45-year-olds in America. Continue to put pressure on China to cooperate, to shut off those precursors, which the precursors are then shipped to the Mexican cartels as the fentanyl is produced, and then shipped into America to kill Americans.
HH: Well, good luck to you on your trip. I’ll tell you, I know you don’t work for press releases, but if Chairman Xi wants to make headway, he’ll send Jimmy Lai home on the plane with the five senators, and maybe Americans will relax a little bit more about his intentions. Good, safe travels. Travel and mercy, Senator. Travel and mercy.
End of interview.
