about chinese trade practices and therefore there s a legitimate concern about what the chinese do. i think the question that most people have including people in my state and among my constituents is can we do this in a better way, can we have a multilateral trading strategy with china. if we impose tariffs, they ll come back and impose tariffs on our guards and our competitors, the europeans and the japanese and others will steal our business. so we have to be doing this in a mult multilaterlateral fashion. seems like the democrats are on board with the president s tough approach with china. the same approach with mexico, not so much. why is that? i was a small business man before i came to congress. my company s intellectual property was the target of chinese espionage. so a lot of republicans and
this luncheon earlier today seemed unprepared. not only in how to detail, i guess, how all these tariffs are going to be implemented and put into place, but also unprepared to teal with the push-back coming from their fellow republicans. in the words of this one republican official, they must have seen this coming. they should not have been surprised by all of this because, what s happening, john, republicans have gone along with the president s tariffs on china so far, because they ve seen that as retaliating against chinese trade practices. they see this as something being very different. they see this as going after mexico, because of the policy down on the border and the president is trying to get some sort of response out of mexico by slapping these tariffs. senator ted cruz, who has been a strong supporter of if, even though he was a critic of the president in the past, apparently talked at length about how he s not only worried about how these tariffs will affect texans on the u
that do not lead to the reciprocal pain? what are the other choices? the other choices are multilateral action. the united states is not the only country that has been victimized by chinese trade practices. our european allies, mexican, japanese ones have also complained of the same keends of abuses. so president trump taking the baton from president george w. bush had been part of this multilateral trade negotiation, the transpacific partnership, involved the 12 countries around the pacific rim, one of the objectives was to band together and have leverage over china and push back on china s bad behavior. one of the first things president trump did after he took office last year was to pull us out of this trade pact.
be united to prevent that conflict. which is another reason staying with our allies and trying to curtail all these aggressive actions from iran is important right now. chris: i want to get into one last issue with you. a delegation of top u.s. officials has just returned from trade talks in beijing and the chinese at the end of the talks , big differences remain. how concerned are you about a possible trade war with china? a lot of countries are concerned about chinese trade practices and working with them i think we have the best chance of pushing back against a lot of what china is doing. one example in the defense world is china is stealing and obtaining all sorts of ways, critical intellectual property that they are going to use for their defense purposes. we have to close the door on that. what i worry about is the steel and aluminum tariffs have alienated some of our friends
be united to prevent that conflict. which is another reason staying with our allies and trying to curtail all these aggressive actions from iran is important right now. chris: i want to get into one last issue with you. a delegation of top u.s. officials has just returned from trade talks in beijing and the chinese at the end of the talks , big differences remain. how concerned are you about a possible trade war with china? a lot of countries are concerned about chinese trade practices and working with them i think we have the best chance of pushing back against a lot of what china is doing. one example in the defense world is china is stealing and obtaining all sorts of ways, critical intellectual property that they are going to use for their defense purposes. we have to close the door on that. what i worry about is the steel and aluminum tariffs have alienated some of our friends