Neal Statement at Full Committee Hearing on Critical Resources and Supply Chains

(As submitted for the record) 

President Trump has spent his term running the economy into the ground. Despite bold promises to deliver for the people on lower prices and abundant jobs and opportunity, he has brought the opposite. He abandoned his promises to chase a relentless campaign of war, chaos, and self-enrichment. All the American people have been left with are out-of-control prices and jobs that are either too hard to find or can’t keep up with the growing costs of the President’s failures.

We’re six months into the President’s war of choice in Iran. While he struggles to find a way out of what he once promised was only going to be a four-to-five-week excursion, families are watching him botch every negotiation along the way as their costs soar. Gas is up 38 percent in just 6 months! Back home, he’s throwing American cattle ranchers under the bus with the tariff chaos he created, which has beef prices on track to rise nearly 10% this year. And while he plays nice with China, the greatest trade cheat in the world, he’s reignited feuds with our closest allies, stooping so low that he’s more focused on renaming lakes than answering for the 75,000 manufacturing jobs he’s lost since retaking office.

The President’s trade agenda is a humiliating failure, and American workers, businesses, and families are paying the price.

Yet astonishingly, some in Congress are willing to look at that reality and decide now is the time embolden Trump with new tariff powers. He’s proven that he will abuse whatever trade authority he has. He’s only concerned with pursuing vengeance against our trading partners and improving his bottom line.

The topic of today’s hearing is critical minerals. What you won’t hear from Republicans is any question about the President’s efforts to leverage these markets to benefit his own pocket. Or about how his family or that of the Commerce secretary stood to benefit from billion-dollar mining deals struck by Trump himself.

Everywhere you look, the stench of Trump’s corruption is there, making his life easier and yours harder. Even more troubling is how my Republican colleagues have allowed themselves to become powerless, looking on as this Committee’s constitutional authority is repeatedly ignored and abused.

Trade policy fueled by grievance and retaliation is no way to govern. It is beyond time that we dust off this nonsense and craft a trade agenda that serves the people.

I yield back.

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