00:00We're going to have to move on to Senator Langford.
00:04Thank you. Thank you both.
00:06I'm pleased that you're going through this process.
00:08You both have incredibly difficult tasks that you've been
00:10asked by the president to be able to do.
00:12You have great resumes to be able to do and great backgrounds
00:14for this, so I appreciate you stepping up.
00:16It is a tremendous sacrifice for your families
00:18to be able to do this.
00:20Just from the people of Oklahoma, I wanted to say
00:22thank you for going through the process
00:24on this because it's really important.
00:26I do want to make two quick side comments because
00:28it has been interesting to me the last
00:30week or so to hear all the conversation
00:32about tariffs and I'm not a big fan of tariffs.
00:34Tariffs are a good negotiating policy
00:36to me to be able to try to get down
00:38non trade non tariff barriers and other
00:40trade barriers that are out there.
00:42So it's a great negotiating piece.
00:44But at the end of the day, I want to try to get tariffs as low as we
00:46possibly can. But it is interesting
00:48to me that number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle
00:50that have talked about tariffs right now
00:52when the tariffs that were put in place
00:54under the first Trump administration, President
00:56Biden kept all of them.
00:58And apparently thought they were a good idea
01:00and had lots of opportunity to be able to change those.
01:02But instead, he agreed with them.
01:04And so that has been an interesting rewrite
01:06of history of late on this.
01:08But I'm grateful that we've got folks
01:10that are engaging trying to negotiate.
01:12Mr. Kim, I do have a question, though,
01:14about how we're going to deal with some
01:16of the negotiations.
01:18I've got a lot of companies in Oklahoma
01:20that they deal with Chinese or Turkish or Indian
01:24or other challenges that they have
01:26where they're producing a product.
01:28But then other entities will then dump product
01:31into the United States at a much cheaper rate,
01:33often subsidized internationally.
01:36And they dump it into our market
01:38and it drives down the benefit for American companies
01:41or drives them out of business entirely.
01:43And they're trying to survive it.
01:44The challenge is, if you're a really big corporation,
01:47you can fight that.
01:48If you're a small to mid-sized company
01:50and foreign actors are dumping,
01:52we have anti-dumping laws and rules on it.
01:55But it costs those smaller companies
01:57millions of dollars in litigation,
01:59years of time to be able to work through it.
02:02And they've got to be able to actually get the documents
02:05from a foreign company to be able to prove
02:08that the foreign company is actually dumping in.
02:11There's just a lot of barriers in this and a lot of bureaucracy.
02:14My question is, when we can clearly see,
02:16and you're a small to mid-sized company,
02:18you can clearly see there's dumping,
02:20how do we decrease the bureaucracy,
02:22decrease the cost, speed up the process
02:24so we can hold foreign entities accountable
02:26and have American companies
02:28that are standing up for their own rights
02:29and know that an administration
02:31is standing up on their behalf?
02:33Thank you for the question, Senator.
02:36And I agree.
02:38If confirmed, I would be honored to oversee
02:41the Enforcement and Compliance Division at ITA,
02:43which plays a vital role in countering dumping
02:46and countervailing duties.
02:47I think it's important that that unit has the resources
02:53they need to process these matters quickly,
02:56to bring meaningful relief to U.S. industries.
02:59And certainly, I'm aware that there is legislation
03:03that's being contemplated.
03:04The Leveling the Playing Field Act, I think, touches on this.
03:06And I would absolutely welcome engagement with you,
03:08your team, and this committee
03:10on bringing more efficiency to that process
03:13to bring quicker relief
03:14to small and medium-sized businesses in particular.
03:16Well, that would be extremely helpful.
03:18We're glad to be able to partner with you on this.
03:19This matters to the entire country,
03:21every small to medium-sized business.
03:23Quite frankly, your giant corporations,
03:24they'd love to have some help on it as well,
03:26so it's not so much legal cost,
03:28and they can actually get their moment
03:30to be able to actually get it resolved.
03:32But small to medium-sized companies especially,
03:34this is a huge issue.
03:35The other issue is just foreign entities
03:38deliberately mislabeling products that are coming in,
03:41using a different code,
03:43all the different things they're doing,
03:45combining packaging in to try to hide what they're doing,
03:47so they're not paying duties coming in.
03:50Once it's actually discovered,
03:52though it may have just absolutely crushed
03:54an American company in the process
03:56because they've undercut them,
03:57undercut them, undercut them.
03:58The penalty seems to be just back paying the duties,
04:01but the American company is still crushed
04:03in the process on it.
04:04So all those jobs were lost,
04:06all the benefit of it to the United States was lost.
04:09If they win, the American taxpayer still wins back the duties,
04:13but the American worker does not.
04:15How do we fix that?
04:17Thank you for the question, Senator.
04:20I think we certainly, if confirmed,
04:23I would work with CBP to address that issue on the front end
04:26to bring stronger enforcement to prevent that from happening,
04:29but absolutely would look at the circumvention authorities
04:32and all legal authorities that could bring the relief needed,
04:36particularly to a damaged U.S. industry.
04:38And again, I would welcome the opportunity to work with you,
04:40the committee, your staff,
04:42to think of creative legislative solutions to that problem.
04:44Okay, thank you.
04:45I appreciate both of your help in this.
04:47There's a lot that needs to be done.
04:48There's about 70 countries that are all knocking on America's door
04:51right now saying we're ready to negotiate.
04:53I would tell you my farmers and ranchers, my manufacturers,
04:55all of them are eager for that
04:57because they've been blocked out of markets all over the world
04:59and they are eager to be able to get a balanced level playing field
05:03so they can get a chance to be able to compete
05:05and stop having countries get a chance to be able to block them out
05:07from selling their goods and products there.
05:09So I appreciate all the work that you're planning to be able to do
05:12and I look forward to voting for you.
05:13Just very quickly and then I'm going to go to Senator Warren,
05:16but all the tariffs I've talked about are new Trump tariffs
05:22and in fact we just...
