The Daily Signal - The Effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Monica Crowley, Treasury Department assistant secretary of public affairs, joins the podcast to talk about the "incredible economic boom" that followed the tax reform passed in 2017. Jessica Ditto, deputy communications director at the White House, joins for an interview as well, discussing tax cuts and the future of trade. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, December 18th. I'm Rachel Daljudice. And I'm Kate Trinko. On Tuesday, Rachel and our fellow podcast host, Rob Bluie, participated in a media row at the U.S. Treasury Department. There, they spoke to Monica Crowley, the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the U.S. Treasury, about the 2017 tax cuts and how they've affected the economy during the past two years.

Rob and Rachel also got an exclusive interview with Jessica Diddy, Deputy Communications Director at the White House, where they discuss trade deals, taxes, and more. And don't forget, if you are enjoying this podcast, please do be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke Tuesday from the Senate floor

in response to a letter from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, asking him to have Trump administration officiated. including former national security advisor John Bolton and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney testify in the Senate impeachment trial. McConnell said it is not the Senate's job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to guilty. He also said, Maybe the House's public proceedings have left the Democratic leader with the same impression they've left many of us. that from everything we can tell, House Democrats slapdash impeachment inquiry has failed to come anywhere near, anywhere near the bar for impeaching a duly elected president, let alone removing him for the first time in American history. And so those who have been eagerly hoping for impeachment are starting to scramble.

Schumer, however, kept advocating for the witness's inclusion on Tuesday. Here's what he had to say. The House has built a very strong case against the president. Maybe that's why Leader McConnell doesn't seem to want witnesses, at least not agree to them now. Maybe that's why the president is afraid, because the House case is so strong that they don't want witnesses that might corroborate it. The House Rules Committee met Tuesday to discuss how debate will run on Wednesday when Democrats hold their vote to adopt articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Democrats are alleging that Trump's call with Ukrainian President Voldemore Zelenskyy, where he discussed the 2016 presidential election, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden's dealings in the Ukraine, are proof that Trump was lobbying the country in exchange for U.S. military aid. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says this is not the case, tweeting Tuesday.

The House Rules Committee is about to meet on impeachment. But why bother? Two-thirds of the Democrats on the committees voted to impeach the president before the Ukraine call even happened. For Democrats, this is about pure politics, not facts. The House passed a major spending deal on Tuesday, which the Senate is expected to take up as soon as today. The White House signaled support for the nearly 1.4-20s. trillion-dollar spending deal on Tuesday. Top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said, per the Hill, there's a lot of good stuff in there and noted the $1.3 billion in the deal for barriers at the

border. Heritage Action, the sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, spoke out against the legislation, noting it increased our nation's debt burden by approximately $400 billion by repealing Obamacare's offsets and making other health care spending changes. without simultaneously reducing spending, and that it expanded taxpayer funding of abortion through Obamacare insurance plans. Heritage Action also said the spending bill included language requiring the CDC and National Institutes of Health

to spend $25 million each studying violent usage of firearms. Rick Gates, a former staffer on the Trump campaign, was sentenced to 45 days in jail on Tuesday. Gates will also pay $20,000 in fines and face three years of probation. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman-Jackson called Gates's work with prosecutors an important public service. For more than a decade, Gates engaged in a range of crimes at Manafort's direction, prosecutors stated in a sentencing memorandum per USA today. Gates at Manafort's direction helped conceal the nature of their work, the income derived from it, and the overseas accounts where those funds are maintained. Gates assisted in laundering funds to promote the scheme.

Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared on Fox and Friends Tuesday to discuss separation of powers. It has been more than two years since Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the nation's highest court. And now he is out with a brand new book, A Republic If You Can Keep It, joining us now for a rare live interview, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Good morning to you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. I love that you say that.

What an honor to talk to you. start with the separation of powers. When there is a conflict between the executive branch and the legislative branch, what is the role of the judicial branch? Well, one thing I wanted to talk about in the book, and I've been writing about it and talking about it for years, is the importance of the separation of powers and how it keeps us free. And when it comes to the role of the judiciary, I believe that the role is to be faithful to the original meaning of the Constitution. I tell my law clerks I have just two rules. Rule number one, don't make things up.

Rule number two, when you're in doubt, when everybody is yelling at you, begging you to do this or threatening you if you do that, refer back to rule number one. I like that. But some liberals are pretty unhappy about what Gorsuch had to say. Comedian Sean Kent tweeted, on Fox News, Neil Gorsuch made a point to say, Merry Christmas, like he just gained the freedom to say it under Trump.

This guy is such a worst-case scenario of a stolen Supreme Court seat. And BBC contributor Amy Vanderpool tweeted, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch just appeared on Fox and Friends this morning, making a point to parrot the Merry Christmas talking point of the GOP. If he's willing to go on Fox and throw a shout out to Republican narratives, what else is he willing to do? Next up, we'll feature Rob and Rachel's interview with Monica Crowley about the tax cuts. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation.

We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. The Daily Signal podcast is coming to you from the U.S. Department today, and we're joined by Monica Crowley. She's the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the U.S. Treasury. Monica, thank you so much for being with us today. Such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. So we're coming up on the two-year anniversary of tax cuts, and given everything that's happened in these past two years, what is your message to the American people about tax reform? That economic freedom works. So President Trump ran on and he certainly

run his presidency on a platform of economic freedom. The opposite of socialism is in capitalism, it's freedom. And the president understood this coming in and created an economic policy agenda based on four core pillars, tax reform being first and foremost, of course, but deregulation, unleashing the energy sector and realigning international trade reform. We're seeing all of these elements coming into play, certainly over the last two years, and the results have been astounding, particularly on tax cuts. the TCJA, or Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed by the president into law in December of 2017,

has generated an incredible economic boom. What we have seen is a record number of Americans who are working. We are seeing unemployment at a 50-year low, with certain groups of Americans seeing at or near historic lows for unemployment, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and women, all-time lows for those groups. Let's talk about wage growth because that is an astounding and direct result of the TCJA. The average American is now experienced 3.1% increase year over year in wage growth. And when we talk about the bottom two quintiles of wage earners, those in essentially

traditional blue-collar jobs, they have seen the greatest and fastest wage growth, 3.7% percent. year over year. What we're witnessing is a true blue-collar boom, but all Americans are benefiting as a direct result of the TCJA. Monica, I'm sure that you've heard many stories of people who are benefiting directly as a result of this. Do you have any favorites that you'd like to share with our listeners that come to mind? People who maybe have had a bonus that they never received before from their employer have been able to do something with this extra money. Absolutely. You know, thanks to the TCJA, the average family of four, making $75,000 a year has seen a tax cut of over $2,000 on average. That's real money, despite the fact that the Democrats have tried to talk it down and minimize

the effects. That's real money for anybody, but certainly for the average wage earner, that is huge. By the way, it's their money. So this tax cut has really empowered the American people keep more of their own hard-earned money, which they're putting back into the economy and providing for their families and their children, their education, it frees them up to start their own business and live their version of the American dream. You asked about particular stories. We hear all the time from small business owners who have said the combination of tax reform and deregulation, getting big government off of our backs, have really allowed us to live our dream and do our business in the way that we originally envisioned and really haven't

been able to do because of all of these restrictions on us and all these burdens of taxes and regulation. So my heart gets warmed when I hear stories of small business owners who have launched their dream, because that's what this country is all about. It's aspirational, and it's about allowing people freedom, economic freedom, to do what they want and provide for themselves and their families in a way that brings them reward and joy. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included a bunch of reforms. Some of them were lowering the corporate rate, full and immediate expensing for businesses. Can you talk about some of the policies included in tax reform and maybe highlight one that you think has been most beneficial for Americans today? Sure. Well, I mean, look, the tax

package as a whole. The president wanted to make sure that middle class Americans got most of the benefits of this. And that's why you're also saying, in addition to the blue collar boom, you're seeing a middle class boom as well. So the bulk of the tax reform was targeted to the middle class, which I know as a historian and political scientist is also incredibly important for stability of any society. So that in particular is something that I think has generated most of the economic growth. The left has attacked the TCJA as only benefiting the wealthy, and that, in fact, is not true. The middle class has benefited, and as we have seen, because of the record low unemployment across the board, that groups that traditionally have not seen economic growth or the benefits of a growing economy,

African Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, Asian Americans, that they are almost disproportionately benefiting from this economy because those tax. tax cuts have been in place and have benefited all Americans. You talk about the success and the benefits to all those Americans. Of course, President Trump is somebody who has not been shy in his criticism of the media and their failure to tell the full story about the tax cuts. He's not shy about much. But on this day, as Democrats seem to intent on impeachment and doing other things to stymie the agenda, what has it been like to work with him and see his passion for these issues? Well, you know, I am sort of famously one of the very few, or one of the very first, if not the first person, to go on national television a couple of days after he came down the escalator and went on national radio and told the folks who were laughing up a storm about the idea of Donald Trump as a candidate, never mind as president, to stop laughing, do not underestimate him. And I predicted he was going to pull the whole thing off. So for me, it's incredibly, um, it's a source of wonderment for me and incredibly energizing for me to watch him in action and now be

part of the Trump Revolution, which is really all about economic freedom, protecting the hardworking American taxpayer, protecting the American worker, protecting American businesses so that they're all free to do what they do best, which is compete, innovate, and succeed. So for me, it is a great honor and a blessing to be part of this. And every day that I come into the White House campus and enter the Treasury building, and I see the White House there in the American flag, this American patriot, it still gets misty. Seven months into this job, I still get misty-eyed.

It's such an honor. Monica, you mentioned the Trump Revolution, and part of that has been tax reform. However, we've seen someone left say that they would repeal the tax cuts if they were given the chance. And how would you say American business, and even the overall economy would be affected if that actually happened. That would be disastrous for the use economy. You know, for a long time, we have heard from Democrats, the left, president's opponents,

talking about how they would roll back taxes. And for a long time, they've been talking in general terms about this is the new normal, globalization, stagnant wage growth, if little to any wage growth. They've been talking about how we need to accept all of this because it's the new normal and there was nothing we could do to reverse it. President Trump's economic freedom agenda has put the lie to that, and now people can see it with their own eyes. They're living this Trump economy on the ground every day,

benefiting from it. So when they hear from the president's opponents that they're going to roll back all of these things that have made their lives so much richer in every way, I just don't see that as a political or economic message that would be resonating. now understand that what we as conservatives have been talking about for a long time, that when you have these pillars in place that work, tax reform, lower tax burden, tax cuts,

deregulation, unleashing the energy sector, and trade reform. When you have all of those pillars in place and they are working, that means that you are going to see an economic boom. And we've been talking about this for a long time. we'd been stymied by even presidents who have been Republicans, we have been stymied in really affecting this kind of agenda. President Trump has put it into place and it is generating exactly what we always knew it was going to generate, which is a thriving economy that's benefiting everyone.

Let's talk specifically about one of those other policies that you just mentioned, and that is trade. Of course, big news, both in the China front with phase one of the trade deal there, USMCA, coming to a vote in Congress. What will that mean to Americans? What's your message to them about these trade deals? So President Trump, when he was candidate Trump, he really built his campaign on this idea of economic freedom.

And an important part of that was the idea that if he became president, he was going to negotiate fairer trade deals for the American people because he believes in the American worker, he believes in the American dream. And he said for far too long, the United States has been taken advantage of by countries like China, European Union, this NAFTA deal is horrible and is putting our workers at a severe disadvantage. And if I become president, we're going to be done with all of that.

And he meant it. And so when he became president, he really, from day one, put his attention to renegotiating these trade deals and trying to make sure that the American worker and American companies were protected. So you mentioned USMCA, let's deal with that. first because that was first on the trade agenda. To have any American president get two foreign countries to agree to anything is quite the achievement. Mexico and Canada have agreed to this new NAFTA deal, USMCA, which is a complete overhaul and modernization of the NAFTA agreement.

It's got tremendous protections in there for American workers. Part of the negotiation with the Democrats back and forth, too, has been over environmental protections. They're now in this deal as well. This is going to generate an incredible number of jobs and opportunities for the American people. The ITC estimates hundreds of thousands of jobs created as a result of USMCA. So he has taken NAFTA and brought it into the 21st century in a whole new framework that's going to serve the United States. And in terms of China, China is probably the sexier deal, which is why everybody is fascinated by it. But USMCA is actually a more substantial, you know, it's a bigger size deal than China. But going into the future, because China has its site set on

economic domination, it is the sexier set of negotiations. Phase one essentially focuses on intellectual property protection and a number of other things. It's been a long and hard-fought negotiation led by Ambassador Lighthizer at USTR and my boss, Treasury Secretary Stephen Manuchin, who are superb negotiators. The interesting thing to me as someone who worked with President Nixon during the last years of his life is watching the Chinese economy develop over the last 25 years. So when I worked with President Nixon, who, as we all know, opened the door to China in 1972. I was with him in the early to mid-1990s, and I went with him on his last trip to China

in 1993. Nixon is still considered a rock star, but when he was alive, it was like God from heaven had come down when he stepped out of his car in Beijing and Shanghai and all these cities. And I remember being in Shanghai and Beijing, a number of other places in China with him in 1993, and seeing a country that was just beginning. to make the decision to develop their economy. So I remember being in Shanghai, for example, and seeing a million cranes reaching into the sky in a million different directions.

And there was some work being done. They were trying to throw up buildings really fast, but you could see it was just starting. Well, about two months ago, two and a half months ago, I joined Ambassador Lightheiser and Secretary Manuchin on their last trip to China as part of the round of trade talks. and I remember we were in Shanghai. I remember opening the drapes in my hotel room

and looking across the river in Shanghai where I had seen 25 years ago all of those cranes in the air and it was just a megalopolis, right? I don't know if you guys have been to China recently but the development is staggering. And you see the river and there's literally a ship

maybe every hundred yards making its way into the South China Sea. And I saw it. this and I thought, you know, in the space of one generation, the Chinese have gotten to be an industrial superpower. They will never voluntarily give up the theft and deception and brute force that they use to get there in the space of one generation. Therefore, you needed a blunt force instrument to get their attention and bring them to the table. And that's what the president's tariffs regime has been all about. We can debate, you know, whether tariffs are good or bad as

sort of an academic exercise, but the only thing that got the Chinese talking were the tariffs, and the president reserves the right to reimpose tariffs at any given moment, should the Chinese not live up to their promises and obligations held in the phase one agreement. Monica, you had mentioned that the USMCA is going to generate an incredible number of jobs for American people and are there any other pieces of this trade deal that you want to highlight for everyday Americans that they might not be aware of as something that will be beneficial to them as this goes through? Sure.

There's one particular part of USMCA, which I don't think has gotten a lot of love, but I think deserves some attention. So thank you for giving me the question to highlight it. That's the automotive sector in the United States. So under USMCA, the car industry in Detroit and elsewhere in the U.S. will have access to these markets, which will be huge, which really was somewhat stymied by NAFTA. The automotive industry, it's estimated,

will generate 100,000 jobs, maybe more, which would be huge for our rust belt. So thank you for saying that. I wanted to highlight that. But also beyond the automotive sector, we have farmers will benefit, ranchers will benefit, our fishermen will benefit. American businesses of all sizes will benefit as a result.

of greater market access and greater worker protections for us here in the United States. Monica, we created the Daily Signal five years ago to tell the stories that we're just not getting out to the American people. Some of these wins that you've highlighted on the interview today, those stories that don't get the coverage that they probably deserve, rightfully deserve, by the national news media. So thank you for spending the time talking with us today. Well, it's my great pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Monica, for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast.

You bet. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. The Daily Signal podcast is coming to you from the U.S. Treasury Department today, and we're joined by Jessica Ditto. She's the Deputy Communications Director at the White House. Jessica, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you for being here. I'm excited to be on your program. So we're coming up on the two-year anniversary of tax reform. The Republican tax package, among many things, reduced the federal corporate tax rate. It repealed the corporate alternative minimum tax. And so looking two years down the road, how would you say tax reform has impacted the American economy? Well, I think there's no question that this president has brought tremendous growth to this economy and put us in an amazing time of economic optimism, obviously delivering within his first year,

tax, historic tax cuts and reform and making sure that American families have access to the child care tax credit. We've since learned that nearly 40 million families, not individuals, but families have actually benefited from the child care tax credit that helps address one of the biggest issues our working families have now that we have this booming economy and jobs of plenty for people to enter into the workforce. There needs to be a plan in which we support working families and child care affordability is one of our biggest issues that we have yet to confront. So seeing the effects of that and seeing the way the companies responded immediately following the tax cuts, giving bonuses directly to their workers, wages are increasing, and people are investing

in their workforce. So we're seeing that kind of impact across the board, but it's also created this tremendous amount of investment in job creation within our country. So where you look at the split screen of what the Democrats have done over the last three years of this presidency, and from the moment he was elected, seeking to undermine his election, undermine the vote of over half of this country to what the president has managed to achieve through obstacles, obstruction, resistance, with the passage of the Republican-only supported tax cuts. We have seen that we have, what the CBO predicted, 1.9 million job growth. We've actually created over 7.2 million jobs. And tax cuts obviously played a tremendous role in that.

The deregulatory agenda that he swiftly put into motion has also had a significant impact on job growth and small businesses being able to boom in our economy. So we're really thrilled to see that, but we want to continue pushing forward. You brought up the Democrats there, and of course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said that the American people would only get crumbs from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. You now have some very prominent members of the party saying that they want to repeal the tax cuts, despite all of the economic success we've seen. So what is your response or your assessment of where they are today?

They are completely out of touch with reality. You see what's happening in Congress right now. They're actually taking a vote to impeach the president when he has created the strongest economic prosperity in our nation's history. The rest of the global economy is struggling, and this president is delivering when after when, exceeding job expectations,

month after month, breaking records for African Americans, for Hispanic Americans, for are women in the workforce. People are coming off the sidelines. Fewer people are applying for food stamps. This is a tremendous time to be an entrepreneur, a worker in the manufacturing sector, all across the board.

While farming and rural prosperity was on the decline when this president came into office, he's putting the farmers and ranchers first when all of his trade negotiations, where he's fighting for market access so that America's products, the best in the world can be traded all over without barriers. So it's really an astounding time, and it's astounding to see what the Democrats are running on.

It's astounding to see what they're proposing in contrast to this. The fact that all of them proposed paid leave and child care and all the things that they claim to support, and yet they all voted against it in the Republican tax cut bill two years ago. It's all been all talk, and the reality is when you look at the proposals, Medicare for all or the crazy green new deal. It's all about putting a burden back on the worker, driving jobs out of this country, slowing growth. And that's the direct opposite of what this president is doing for this country. Jessica, you had mentioned how minorities have benefited from tax reform.

And Adam Michelle, he's a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. He just published a piece saying that very thing, highlighting that lower-wage black workers seeing wage growth of 8.5 percent and similar low-wage black women, gains larger than 10%. What has those gains meant for these Americans? I mean, it's life-changing. This president is a jobs president. He understands the private sector. He understands why government should get out of the way and let the private sector drive momentum for the African-American community and rural and urban areas alike. This president has invested in creating new opportunities. So through tax cuts, again, a very bipartisan concept

only gained Republican support and passed, and is being implemented across this country for opportunity zones, where we're giving states and investors the opportunity to rehabilitate areas of our country that have been left behind and forgotten. And this is having transformative effect from the president's policies, even a year later, where bipartisan legislation passed with a very divided time following the midterms to do criminal justice reform and give people a second chance and an opportunity to reenter the workforce and not see recidivism. This is something that the trend is it's lifting up all Americans, it's supporting the forgotten man and woman. He's messaging and working directly for the American people because for too long, Washington

has ignored them and has not pushed policies that directly meet the needs and the American people where they are. So this president is confronting some complex problems with very clear economic objectives and priorities, but he's also implementing a domestic policy that support it to create that kind of family structure, that opportunity and stability throughout our country. So we're really proud of all of these accomplishments and certainly to see the records of African American employment wage growth. That's why we do what we do every day. That's what motivates this White House is what motivates this president because he came here to create new opportunities for all. Jessica, let's shift gears to another policy topic that I know you've been

focused on a lot lately, and that is trade. I'll start with China, then Rachel can get into USMCA. So this president has talked about China going back to his campaign, wanting to make sure that... Decades. Decades, that's true, long before his campaign. Talk about this phase one deal and what it will mean to Americans. I think it should not. be lost on anyone what Ambassador Lightheiser said on Sunday that Friday was the most historic day in trade history. So for the American worker, that translates into two major trade agreements getting cemented for growth in market access, both with Canada and Mexico, but also with China, transforming a relationship that has been strained and broken for decades since China entered

the WTO. Everyone knows that China's been a bad actor, that they have stolen our technology, that they have stolen from our farming and ranching, that they've retaliated against our rural communities in order to continue to keep an upper hand in our trading relationship, but the president has for decades and very clearly indicated on the campaign that he would do something about it. And so what he has achieved in such a short amount of time with no support from Democrats is something historic and it's on the move and it is actually getting finalized as we speak. The president announced the agreement in force on Friday with Ambassador Lighthizer confirming that with the Chinese. This is phase one. It is very substantive. It's more than

agriculture purchases. It's 60 billion in energy trade. It's massive amounts of energy export. it has IP and enforcement and structural changes, the technology transfer, which they forced our companies to hand over key information in order to operate in the country. All of these things are being addressed in the phase one. Someone even asked Larry recently, what's left for phase two? So this is so historic, it's huge, and for this administration to get this done with all of the obstruction and resistance that we've had is quite monumental. The president outlined in June of 2016, in Pennsylvania, a job speech in what he was going to take

seven actions on trade, and he's done all seven. And you're seeing the effects of it throughout our economy, the global economy. People are in all of what this the president's achieving for American workers. So for China, we see tremendous progress, as Ambassador Lighthizer said, this is an important first step, but the American people need to remember that when they entered the WTO, 70,000 factories left our country. Millions of jobs were lost, and it's going to take a lot of time for us to rebuild that, but from the moment he took office, the president has been taking action to bring these

jobs back. We've seen furnaces start back up. We've seen an auto manufacturing plant be opened up in Detroit for the first time in 25 years. These are tangible signs of this economy working in full force. Well, the House is currently working on finishing their part of working on the USMCA deal. And looking at what they've been working on, what the president has been working on, what are some of the pieces to this trade deal that you say are maybe most important for the American people, but they might not be aware of what are some pieces that you can pull out and say

these are how this will benefit you. Well, this president and this White House has been talking about this for over a year. was signed by Canada and Mexico last year as the president, again, in record time, negotiated one of the best modern trade agreements, if not the best, in U.S. history. It is a template for all trade agreements going forward. The speaker herself conceded that last week. We are putting forward a model of trade that will ensure that a small business has a chapter for the first time in U.S. history. So the foundation of a lot of our economic relationship, with Mexico and Canada wasn't even in NAFTA.

And so for the first time ever, small businesses have a chapter and they have a structure in which we can do business with our two largest trading partners. We also have the auto rules of origin is so huge, which is why you've already seen the promise of USMCA working in our states where we have the auto manufacturing. Our auto industry was on the decline. Cars were being made in Mexico and brought back over the U.S. for much cheaper labor. We have addressed that and right-sized that so that cars and a percentage of all of the products are made here in America by American workers. So these things are real. They're creating jobs and communities across this country. Toyota has announced investment, GM, Ford, they've all announced massive investment with the promise.

of USMCA. And that's why this White House was so frustrated with the delay and the partisan bickering over USMCA that to the point that it was what is the largest trade agreement in U.S. history is being rolled out on the same day that they announce impeachment. It's an astounding and absurd split screen that I hope the American people can see through. Well, Jessica, finally I wanted to ask you about that because we are seeing not only a government funding bill move forward, impeachment, USMCA, of course, the National Defense Authorization Act.

I mean, there's a lot of activity happening within the past week, the China trade deal. President Trump has talked about how the media doesn't give him the credit that he believes this administration deserves for the accomplishments. What is it that you, working in the communications office, what are you trying to convey to the American people that they should know about, and what do you want to do

going forward to counter this negative media attention and this impeachment drive that we're seeing on the part of Democrats? Well, I think, first of all, we know that not everyone watches CNN and MSNBC. In fact, far fewer are watching every day. We know that it's important to talk directly to the American people, which the president does through Twitter and through his briefings on a daily basis. We also know that it's really important to do regional media. Our cabinet is deployed all over the country all the time,

talking about business that we're doing for the American people. We also want to highlight the fact that this president is getting wins on behalf of the country without bipartisan support, without Democrat support in the face of massive resistance and obstruction. It's been going on since day one. So we are used to the chyrons that say largest military spending bill ever rebuilding on the defense amid Russia investigation, amid impeachment. So we're used to doing this amid some kind of partisan scam on the other side. but we do know that it's important to articulate what is truly happening in this economy

because next year there is going to be a choice. There is an election next year. And the proposals that are being put forward on the other side are incredibly scary. They will take away your health care choices. They will burden you with incredible amounts of taxes. So we want to make sure that people understand that USMCA, this new agreement, it's not just an update of NAFTA in the Internet age. It is structural changes to help protect our manufacturing.

industry, to bring jobs back, hundreds of thousands of jobs back, and to have a massive impact on our GDP. We're going to see growth in the long term as a result of the two major trade accomplishments that we had last week that are getting overshadowed by impeachment. So it's really upon us, and we know it, to help articulate that for the president and talk about it every day. We are doing hundreds of interviews on a daily basis, talking to the American people, through radio and regional press, because no, it's important to get that word out. And Jessica, it's not every day that you have a member of Congress switch parties amid something that is as big as this. So certainly something to keep an eye on. We will continue to watch

the work from the White House. I appreciate you mentioning in particular the president's direct communication with the American people. It's one of the reasons that we decided to start the Daily Signal because we felt that that media filter was not letting conservatives get their voice out. So definitely wholeheartedly support your efforts in that regard too. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us, Jessica, on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. And if you haven't already, please do be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify. And please leave us a

review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again. tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen, sound designed by Lauren Evans, the Leah Rampersad, and Mark Geinney. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.