WASHINGTON – Yesterday, during a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) asked about common misconceptions surrounding tariffs and how they can be used to stimulate the economy and create job growth. During the discussion, Sen. Tuberville also focused on the unprecedented amount of credit card debt in our country and how Congress can help Americans return to financial stability. Sen. Tuberville also addressed reining in the unsustainable expansion of the federal welfare system.
Read Senator Tuberville’s remarks below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for being here this afternoon, fellas.
Mr. Ferry, a lot of misconceptions about, floating around the media about tariffs and how they’ll hurt the American economy. Can you speak to how tariffs, if they’re done right, will boost the economy?”
MR. JEFF FERRY: “Thank you for the question, Senator. That’s an absolutely true statement. Tariffs done right will stimulate our economy. I just want to say, following on from what Mr. Lawson said, that there is no money tree. The percentage of old people in our economy continues to grow, I’m sitting here as a living, breathing example of that. And we have fewer people in work earning, in a sense, less real wages than 50 years ago when we had four working people for every retired person. Now, we’re getting close to two, I think. So, we need to make this economy grow and we need to raise the real incomes and the value of the production of every single worker.
Tariffs are a key way we can do that because what tariffs do is they handicap imports and they allow domestic production to grow. We want to tariff the high value, highly productive, high growth manufacturing sectors, which is roughly three quarters of the entire manufacturing sector in the United States. And by doing so, we will produce more cars, more computers, more machinery, more machine tools, more medical equipment, and more steel, and more aluminum and all of that. All those industries pay higher wages.
As an example, the average large steel company is, today, paying its average steel worker over a hundred-thousand dollars a year. The average steel worker no longer works with hot molten metal. He works in a computer control room. And tariffs are a key way to stop the handicap this economy has due to an overvalued dollar and due to trade cheating, from countries like China and Germany. So, they’re an absolutely essential tool.”
TUBERVILLE: “Do you do you see an increase in job opportunities with increased tariffs?”
MR. JEFF FERRY: “Yes. I mean mathematically well, yes. We will see a higher labor force participation rate with increased tariffs because domestic production will rise, and those jobs will attract people to get off the sofa and go out and get those jobs. But most crucially, I see a transition from people working for places like Jimmy John’s at minimum wage, into high value jobs, which not only pay more today, but offer them career opportunities to get on a rising escalator.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. Mr. Antoni, Americans are upside down in credit card debt. 1.17 trillion dollars. Eighty-five percent of Americans have credit cards, eighty-five percent of Americans over 65 have a credit card. What can be done at the congressional level to encourage savings and keep more money in the pockets of Americans when it comes to credit.”
MR. E.J. ANTONI: “Sir, thank you for the question. A big disincentive to save has historically been inflation because as your money is sitting there in the bank, or even if it’s in in equities, whatever the case may be, much of the growth that it’s experiencing is simply just the dollar losing value. So, it doesn’t really, there’s not really much of an incentive there. If you want to get rid of inflation and you want to not only incentivize people to save, but disincentivize them from borrowing, you got to get inflation down. And I think the way you have to do that is by cutting government spending.
The only other thing I would add is to help the people who are already in so much credit card debt, who are suffering with the combination of high credit card debt and high interest rates, is you need to get the interest rates down. And the interest rate is simply a price. It’s the price to borrow money. If you want to reduce the price of something, reduce the demand. So, reduce the demand for borrowed money. All marginal spending by this congress is by definition borrowed. So, if you reduce that spending, you will also reduce the demand for borrowed money and help bring interest rates down.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. Mr. Bragdon, you talk a lot about this unsustainable expansion of the federal welfare programs that have caused massive increases in spending, particularly SNAP. SNAP spending has grown by more than seventy-three percent since the last Farm Bill. It’s predicted we’ll spend more on SNAP in the next ten years than we have in the last two decades. This is over the top.
So, what’s your thoughts here on this massive increase in the TFP and what recommendation do you have to address this farm bill with SNAP?”
MR. TARREN BRAGDON: “Senator, thank you for the question. I think it’s really twofold.
One, the authority for setting the food stamp program, the SNAP program, really relies on Congress. And when you look at what the Biden administration did with the Thrifty Food Plan by just through guidance, literally, a bureaucrat with a pen and a power trip, dramatically increasing that benefit, and then that going, as my colleague said, into borrowed money and increasing interest rates.
You also took away the incentive that people have to go into the workforce because it pays more not to work. And as I talked about, it drives even higher food inflation because SNAP benefits can only be used for food. And as we saw with the research that I cited, that drives increased demand and raises food prices.
I think there’s really twofold things that need to be done within the SNAP program. One is greater anti-fraud measures. If you look at the improper payments, that’s fraud and waste within the SNAP program, that’s primarily driven by individuals who are receiving benefits, who are no longer eligible, either because an income change, they moved or some other benefit change or life change.
The second piece is really looking at how do we effectively use work requirements for working age, able-bodied adults. We’ve seen this work well with adults with no kids and disabilities. We recommend that pro-work, anti-poverty policy be expanded to more working-age adults who have school age children.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP, and Aging Committees.
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