During Thursday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) questioned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about tariff negotiations.
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00:00Thank you. Are you all back? Mr. Alfred? Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize for missing the first round. I just literally ran back from the House floor doing a speech, but that's our job, and I need to get in shape. Anyway, thank you for being here. You're doing such a great job, and we're proud to have you in that position.
00:18I know all the good questions have already been asked and answered, but I want to talk about the tariffs just a little bit. The Democrats doubted these. The media doubted it. The pundits doubted it. A lot of people made fun of the tariffs, didn't like them, but they're working. We've already seen the results. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office now estimates the proposed tariffs will reduce our federal deficit by $2.8 trillion. That's a success story.
00:48Secretary, what is the strategy behind these? Is it simply a negotiating tool? Is it the art of the deal? Or does the president mean it when he says it about these tariffs, and why are they being so successful so far?
01:04Build in America in the greatest economy in the world? Remember, America is the consumer of the world. $20 trillion. We consume every year. So if you want to sell here, build here. And if you don't want to sell here, pay to come into our market.
01:27We are receiving a run rate of $34 billion a month to the Treasury of the United States of America because of tariffs. So anybody who says that tariffs aren't working can't count to $34 billion.
01:44I want to talk about the funding for NOAA and the National Weather Service. You know, Missouri has gotten hit pretty hard. We have a lot of tornadoes. We had a bad spring, and it's still going on. There was a lot of damage in my district just south of Kansas City. We have a regional NOAA center in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. It's a smaller center like you were talking about earlier.
02:04And I heard you talking about what's going to be happening in the future to some of these centers. Are centers like Pleasant Hill, which they already have some vacancies, are those regional centers in danger of closing at any time in the future, as far as you know, being replaced by automation and AI in a centralized location?
02:25I'll give you an example in Missouri, which was we have all these research people in NOAA, but they were separate from operational. So we started putting them together to take that research and start using it.
02:40And what it did is it produced an analysis that showed that we had horrible tornado conditions in Missouri. And so two hours earlier than the record ever in NOAA, we gave those warnings and saved 120 people, got them out two hours earlier.
02:58So we are totally on it. But the concept of having four people, and one of them has a baby, and one of them's out sick, and somehow we're not able to do it 24 hours a day, it seems silly that we should have, if we have 2,100 meteorologists, I promise you, we can cover the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we can have better technology, right?
03:22We used to have human beings would launch a weather balloon. Like, I could imagine someone just going, whoop, come on. It's called Auto Saunders. We now do it in an automated fashion.
03:35So I don't need the person to launch the balloon, because I could automate launch the balloon.
03:40So I've been inside this center. It's pretty cool. And I used to be in television news there in Kansas City. A lot of my friends are meteorologists at these stations who have personal relationships with the people that know NWS.
03:50I think they're a little concerned. Will these centers be closing, but the information, which is also life-saving, be coming from a centralized location?
04:02I think it'll be both. I think there'll be many centers that will stay and will augment and be bigger and stronger and more powerful.
04:09But the concept is, we've got to be able to automate ourselves and back each other up.
04:14This concept that the data just stays in Missouri and is not available to be analyzed by Nebraska or other meteorologists is illogical.
04:23That needs to change. If I showed you the technology, you'd drop your head embarrassed to be an American.
04:29When we are done in this Commerce Department, and I'm done with my term, I promise you, you will be proud of the technology in the Department of Commerce.
04:39Mr. Chair, if you would indulge me for one more question.
04:42I want to talk about the BEAD program, also very important to my state, very rural state.
04:47Biden administration put in $42.5 billion and not one home hooked up.
04:53It's a disgrace, I think.
04:56You talked about tech agnostic approach, and you talked about the three options.
05:00It's got to be a fix. What are those three options again?
05:03Fixed wireless, which we all know is Wi-Fi.
05:06Right.
05:06Right?
05:07Fiber, lane cable, or satellite.
05:10Any of those three serve broadband, and we should be agnostic to which one.
05:15So some of the folks in my district and state are concerned that we want to get everyone hooked up, and it's got to be the right system.
05:22Satellite is not going to work all over Missouri.
05:25So we're going to get the system that actually works, right, for our money.
05:31All right.
05:31Yes.
05:32I hear the light tap of the chairman.
05:34So gavel, I will yield back.