ICYMI: Congressman Nick Begich Joins Fox News to Discuss China Tariffs and Effective Leadership at DOGE
WASHINGTON, D.C. – February 4, 2025 – Today, Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK) joined Fox & Friends First on Fox News Channel to discuss President Trump’s tariffs on China, inflationary government spending, and the effective leadership at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Click here to watch the clip.
Congressman Begich on China Tariffs
“What we need to remember is China was already restricting critical minerals coming into the United States, even before President Trump took office. China was threatening us with export controls on geranium, gallium, antimony, – these are critical minerals that we need for national defense. What Donald Trump is doing is standing up for America and Americans, and he is putting America First. He is pushing back on China’s own tariffs and export controls against the United States, and I think it opens the opportunity for us to have a broader conversation.”
On the Inflationary Environment caused by Democrat Policies
“There are two ways that you address inflation. First, you stop the deficit spending – the money printing that is going on to finance this endless request list from the democrats has caused the inflation that we are experiencing today, but what’s also inflation is the war on production. What we saw with Joe Biden and his democrat allies in Congress was a war on American energy, American mining, and American production. When you reduce the amount of goods available for purchase and increase the amount of money available to purchase goods, inflation is the obvious result. Democrats just don’t seem have understood that it was their policies that created the inflation environment that we are experiencing right now.”
On Elon Musk Identifying Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in the Federal Government
“What we hear from the President and from the Treasury Secretary is these folks are investigators. They are going in and looking at opportunities to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. And when those opportunities are identified, they are giving those recommendations to policy makers who do control those levers. We should be thankful that Elon Musk and his team are willing to come and do this work. We have to remember; this is one of our nation’s greatest innovators. He is somebody who went into payment systems like PayPal and turned that on its head. He went in and took on the traditional auto industry. He went in and took on the traditional space industry with SpaceX. We are fortunate to have Elon Musk willing to set aside his time and dig into this issue as a priority and make sure that taxpayer funds are being spent wisely and properly. This is good news for the American people, and we should welcome this type of input and oversight.”
On Identified USAID Fraud
“It is absolutely staggering the amount of waste, abuse, and fraud that’s gone on through USAID. I think many people around the country assume that USAID is there to sensibly help the poorest of the poor – the most vulnerable around the world, but in reality, that program overtime has been weaponized for things like regime change and the agency has not been honest with the American taxpayer. At the end of the day when find opportunities to cut, when we find situations in which the government is not serving the taxpayer, it is incumbent on Congress and it is incumbent on the Executive Branch to take decisive and quick action and resolve those issues and that is what is happening with USAID and it is what will happen with additional government agency as these kinds of examples of waste and fraud are identified.”
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