to remain strong you have to tell us what happened here. certainly somebody knows what happened. by the way, we can have bilateral relations with a country that murder the washington post journalists. that s black and white. let me let s talk about some of your concerns about last week, some of the big events that happened last week. you said while the rest of the country was focused on the kavanaugh hearings, the explosive kavanaugh hearings, which the result of which will impact us for a generation, you also said the most significant geopolitical event in some time also occurred last week unnoticed and that was that donald trump s conflict with china was raised several levels in a way that you said could have generational effects. explain why. yeah. first of all, i did think that. with the kavanaugh hearing and everything else, the noise around the trump administration,
also the new nafta agreement, what i think is the only significant geopolitical event of last week but maybe of the trump administration. you had a mike pence speech saying that china was a bigger threat to us than russia. you had an announcement that the u.s. naval fleet was going to do a set exercises in september over a week sending a message. you had a new dod, pentagon report on threats to our military industrial base, including raw materials and especially metals from china and so on and so forth and it all came together last week. i talked to a senior professional who said over the last two years officials have worked for thousands of hours, studies, assessments and just decided that, you know, we brought china in. we thought as they modernized economically they would become more liberal in terms of human rights, democracy, common cause with the united states. we ve given up on that now and
agreement. i was for a new nafta agreement, we needed upgraded. it is almost 25 years old. but we also don t want to have no nafta, because the biggest trading partner is ohio and other states. we do have lower tariffs and other countries as a result of some of those agreement. neil: in the wall street journal today, saying this trade agreement with mexico is actually worse than it presumably will replace before did you make of that? at the beginning of the editorial, they said it is half-and-half. have good and half not direct so good. there are some great things there opening up the market for mexico among others. really good stuff along intellectual property. and also stuff along biologicals, to have a longer period. there are some good things in there for the united states and our workers and our farmers. but, the sunset provision has been a concern of the wall street journal and mine. the second is this arbitration panel for investors.
many of those politicians who want to stop tariffs are, in fact, republicans. the tactics that are being used right now are not helping our producers. and all we re saying is, look, wouldn t we have been better off if we made a deal with tpp or strengthened our nafta agreement before we go after china? when you have tariffs, they re a bad thing. and then you try to solve them with bailouts. you re trying to make america 1929 again. that s not what the people in the state i represent want. we want to feed the world. more markets and more trade. i don t support tariffs. i think tariffs are taxes. i think there are better tools to use to get them to play fairly. china, of course, isn t the only target of the steep u.s. tariffs. right now the president is holding trade talks with european commission president jean claude junker. tom foreman is here to break it all down for us. how are the tariffs hurting the u.s. economy?
de-fuse things with humor. in terms of the actual relationship, the fundamentals are not good between our president and the prime minister of canada. and that will make it very difficult to land this nafta agreement, which broadly speaking, there are certainly things we could fix in it. but broadly speak, that s to the benefit of not only canada and the united states but also mexico. so these are two men who are on very different planets. not only in policy but, as you can see, in personality. it s a good thing they got along well in person at the summit. but frankly, look for a little more road rage before this one is over. he ya. beyond the relationship with trudeau, of course you saw before the summit, the president was expressing dissatisfaction left and right with world leaders. he is tweeting looking forward to straightening out unfair trade deals with the g-7 countries. if it doesn t happen, we come out even better. is the president right? are they unfair? is he making a bigge