Khanna: We Need Tariffs on Dumping Goods from China

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) argued that America needs to push to bring industries it has lost to China back and either take an approach of, “we will invest in you if you invest here” or slap tariffs on the dumping of goods.

Co-host John Roberts asked, [relevant remarks begin around 4:40] “I want to ask you quickly just at the end here about something that you’re writing extensively about, and that is that you want to wean the United States off of relying on [China] to do all our manufacturing, therefore, level out the trade imbalance and return America to its former glory as a manufacturing power in the world. What do you say to American companies who are willing to overlook China’s human rights abuses just to save a buck?”

Khanna answered, “John, we made a colossal mistake in this country, we shipped our jobs to China. The trade deficit used to be about 60 billion, it’s grown to almost 400 billion. Industry after industry left steel, aluminum, paper. We need to bring that industry back, we need to reduce the trade deficit. And what I say to American companies is, we need to — we will invest in you if you invest here or there should be tariffs on the dumping of goods and we should not be allowing companies to go send our jobs to China just for lower wage jobs and having human rights abuses and less environmental standards.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett