When U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick was the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs during the George W. Bush administration, he was a free trader and a tariff foe.
Fast forward to the Trump administration 2.0, and the freshman Republican now favors tariffs as a tool, but only if used thoughtfully and sparingly.
“The reality of what’s happened is that we have a fundamentally unfair trading regime with the European Union, with Mexico, with Canada, with China, particularly—they’re the worst offenders,” McCormick, 59, told the DVJournal podcast.
“So, essentially, what President Trump said is he wants to have fairness: fair trade, not free trade. And what that means is using reciprocal tariffs as a mechanism to make sure we have fairness. Now, in the best of circumstances, some may disagree with this…What that means is you use the leverage of reciprocal tariffs to lower tariffs on the other place so nobody has bad tariffs. Now that is the best alternative, in my opinion.
But if you can’t have that alternative, if the European Union is not going to be fair and allow Pennsylvania beef to come in or manufacturing, then you can level the playing field with tariffs.”
He noted that his hometown, Bloomsburg, is the home of MaGee Carpet Mill, a carpet manufacturer that once employed a couple of thousand workers. Now there are only 200.
“Because of unfair trading across different industries,” said McCormick.
McCormick said he also supports trade protections for industries essential to America’s national security, like steel, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
“You’ve got to have semiconductors here,” he said. “The whole economy depends on it.”
But for other industries, “I don’t think we should be overly protectionist,” said McCormick. “But for the strategic ones we’ve got to have here at home, and we’ve got to have fairness.”
McCormick also mentioned one of his books that’s “crazy good,” called “Superpower in Peril.”
“It talks about how to take free market principles and integrate them with the populism of the moment for policies for America,” he said.
