Thompson Opening Statement at Tax Subcommittee Hearing on Promoting Global Competitiveness for American Workers and Businesses

Thank you, Chairman Kelly, the members of this Subcommittee, and to the witnesses, for convening this hearing today.

I’d also like to extend a special welcome to Chairman Brady – it’s always great to welcome a former Committee Member back. You look relaxed and younger.

This hearing is on “Promoting Global Competitiveness For American Workers and Businesses.” But if Republicans want to seriously discuss global competitiveness, then they need to talk about the elephant in the room.  The Trump Administration’s reckless and chaotic tariffs, that are crushing small businesses and farmers. 

Once again, the Ways & Means Committee is fiddling while Rome is burning. Our Committee—the House Committee with jurisdiction over tariffs – has sat idly by—done absolutely nothing – while the Trump Administration has imposed the largest tax in history on the American people.

Global competitiveness for American workers and businesses?   Tell that to Advanced Pressure Technology, a 33-year Napa manufacturer that supplies parts to tech and semiconductor firms.  Just this Monday, AP Tech permanently closed its Napa plant and laid off 237 workers because the business has a significant customer base outside the United States, and they simply could not weather this Administration’s chaotic global trade policies.

In fact, the Trump tariffs have been an outright failure nationwide. As Professor Clausing stated in her written testimony, these tariffs amount to a $1,700 tax on each and every household in the United States.  They have harmed U.S. business competitiveness, and again as Professor Clausing testified—have actually cost the United States manufacturing jobs. 

But no sector has been hit harder by these reckless tariffs than our farmers, who have been devastated by this trade war. U.S. agricultural exports to China fell by more than 50 percent at the height of the trade retaliation. Soybean exports collapsed so severely that prices dropped to decade-long lows – with prices falling some 34% from prices in 2021.

Dairy producers have faced declining market access, and pork producers lost major overseas buyers. Nearly 8,000 farms shut down nationwide during the early phase of the trade war.

These aren’t abstract numbers: these tariffs slammed the door on foreign markets that took decades to build. Farmers cannot simply “wait out” a trade war. Once a foreign buyer shifts to Brazil or Europe, those markets don’t come back.

This Committee should work together to take back our tariff authority, and develop a sensible, consistent trade policy, rather than letting the Administration run roughshod over Congress.  I’m sure many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are hoping that the Supreme Court does their job for them—and maybe they will. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that struggling businesses, struggling farmers, and everyday Americans who are struggling to keep up with ever-rising prices, are asking Congress for help.  And Republicans continue to turn a deaf ear to their pleas.

And with that I yield back.