Furthermore, the congressman said it was “wrong” for the U.S. to sell oil to China, and he and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) are calling on President Biden not to export it.
“It’s wrong. I have, Senator Jack Reed and I early on said that we shouldn’t be exporting our oil or gas. I, I don’t think that that was the right decision, and we’re still calling on the president not to export it. In fact, one of the reasons to declare a climate emergency is it would actually give him power to strict the export of crude oil. That’s one of the things that comes with it,” he said.
Khanna said that it’s more important to figure out how to “make things in America again and outcompete China,” and that’s been his focus.
The congressman said that he agrees that there’s inflation, but he blamed the Federal Reserve for it.
I agree that there’s inflation. I agree that prices are up, but there are two reasons for that. First, the Fed had quantitative easing for far too long, and that was one of the main primary culprits of this. They didn’t anticipate the inflation.
The monetary policy’s largely determined by the Fed, and the second thing is we’re not making enough things in America. Look at the shipping costs. Look at the costs for importing all these goods.
If we had an industrialization policy, if we made more things in America, we would lower costs, and I’d a rather we be making the solar panels, the electric vehicles, the wind turbines in America than China. Why would we want China to have the lead in batteries and the new energy of the 21st century? I want America to lead in that.
The congressman also said that President Donald Trump deserves some blame for contributing to inflation with $3 trillion in spending.
“Just to be factual on inflation, there was $3 trillion of spending under President Trump. And, yes, there was spending under Joe Biden, but it is unfair to say that it’s just the spending under Biden that somehow caused the inflation and not under Trump. They were both parties that were committed to helping people, rescue them from COVID,” he said.
“But, Maria, you know correlation and causation are different. You can’t say that Trump sending stimulus checks in December of 2020 was not inflationary and somehow Biden doing it in March was inflationary,” Khanna said.
“What happened is we got out of COVID because of vaccines developed by President Trump and President Biden distributing them, and that increased demand, and the supply was constrained, and the fed policy was wrong, but I agree with you that inflation is a major problem,” he said.
The congressman said that the way to address inflation “is to have more industrialization in America, to build more things in America, not to be reliant overseas.”
“And the climate emergency, look, if there were ever a time to say we don’t want petro states like Russia to have power, we don’t want our president to have to go to beg to Saudi Arabia for oil, We don’t want to be going dependent on Iran or Venezuela,” Khanna said.
“The way to do that is to have a moonshot on renewable energy and to make that stuff in America, not China. That’s what a climate emergency would do. It would say because of this war, let’s have a long-term energy independence strategy and make the solar, the wind, the batteries here,” he said.
The congressman blamed oil companies exporting oil overseas for high gasoline prices.
“What would get gasoline prices lower is stop exporting oil while these oil companies are making billions of dollars. It’s not like they’re not making huge, record profits —$30, 40 billion in profits while Americans are getting fleeced at the pump, and they’re selling their oils overseas to make a profit,” he said.
“I’m not for investing in communist China. I’m just saying that the oil companies are doing just fine, and you know that, Maria. Exxon, Chevron, they’ve got record profits,” the congressman said.
Khanna agreed with Bartiromo that there are way too many critical products made in China right now.
“There we completely agree, Maria. Look, the last time we had a trade surplus in this country was 1975. It’s crazy. We’ve outsourced our industrial base. We need to get it back. We should have a bipartisan goal to have a trade surplus in America again by the end of the decade, and this act is a step. It’s a bipartisan act,” the congressman said.
“It would make sure that semiconductors are made in America again like the Ohio plants, bipartisan Governor Dewine, Republican, deserves credit for that happening. It would make sure that we’re investing in A.I. here, in quantum computing here, in electronics manufacturing here, in clean technology here,” he said.
“I am for the reindustrialization of America, and that is something that we should do when China has a made in China 2025 initiative, and I’m not for removing these tariffs on China on the dumping into the United States. We need to have an industrial policy both with the incentives and also stopping the Chinese dumping to rebuild our productive capacity,” Khanna added.
