Trump doing ‘too little, too late’ on China and COVID-19: DNC Chair
DNC Chairman, and former Labor Secretary, Tom Perez speaks with Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi about the July jobs report, the U.S. relationship with China, and the presidential race.
Video Transcript
BRIAN SOZZI: All right, and joining us now to talk about the jobs numbers this morning is Tom Perez, chairman of the DNC and former labor secretary. Tom, good to see you this morning. You just heard that breaking news. It follows a series of ramped-up rhetoric by the Trump administration with regards to China. What could be the economic impact of this ramped-up rhetoric and, frankly, action?
TOM PEREZ: This is a proverbial too little, too late, by the Trump administration. Listen, last December, January, and February, the original sin of our pandemic was Trump's failure to take it seriously. He was repeatedly warned about the problem. And the reason he didn't take it seriously is he was in the middle of negotiating a trade deal with China. He wanted that trade deal desperately. So he was lavishing praise on the transparency of the Chinese leadership.
He got that trade deal. And you guys are number of people. And that trade deal was a lousy deal. They're not keeping up their end of the bargain. They're not purchasing the goods that they promised they would purchase. And here we are, too little, too late from this president. And this is all about election-year politicking.
I've never heard this president talk about the Uighurs and the human rights abuses there. He has been constantly kowtowing. He lost this trade war with the Chinese. And now, he's trying to put a nice face on it. That's the reality of this. This is election-year politics by this president, who got played by China. China's eaten his lunch, economically.
- Tom, being a former labor secretary, I know you're poring over that jobs report today with a close eye. Look, the fact is, we've been adding jobs over the past three months. And we actually added 1.8 million, or just about, last month. That was better than expected. The unemployment rate is coming down. Are we moving in the right direction? Is the labor market really beginning to heal here?
TOM PEREZ: Well, we have such a ditch to dig out of. And what concerns me the most right now are two or three things. Number one, the pace of job growth slowed precipitously. We had 4.8 million jobs in the June report and 1.8 million jobs in the July report. And I'm confident that part of that is a function of the fact that the coronavirus epidemic, he hasn't gotten a handle on it. So we're still 12.9 million jobs below where we were in February.
The last president that presided over net job loss in his presidency was Herbert Hoover. Donald Trump is still 6 million jobs short. We've lost a net 6 million jobs under Donald Trump's presidency. And when I look at the numbers, and I always look at them very closely, we've got 5 million workers who've left the workforce since February, since the COVID epidemic.
These are folks who've given up. Because they don't think anything's going to happen to them. There's another 1.2 million workers who are classified as employed. But they're not working. So they're not counted in the statistics. So people are suffering. I want people to get back to work as fast as possible. And the biggest barrier to that is Donald Trump's failure to address the pandemic.
He doesn't have a plan. And that is the situation in a nutshell. When you don't have a plan to address the pandemic, you can't bring the economy back in the way it needs to be done. And that's why Joe Biden's plan is exactly what we need, addressing the pandemic, listening to the experts, getting us back to work by fixing the pandemic. This president's failure to have that plan has fundamentally made this recovery so much more difficult.
BRIAN SOZZI: Tom, we just had NEC chief economist Joe LaVorgna on criticizing Joe Biden's plans, if he were to become president, to raise corporate taxes, says it's a job crusher. What would be your response?
TOM PEREZ: Well, the job-loss president is Donald Trump. Barack Obama and Joe Biden presided over the longest streak of uninterrupted job growth in our nation's history. And remember, we inherited the Great Recession. We've had 20 weeks in a row, 20 weeks in a row, of first-time claims for unemployment benefits in excess of 1 million. You know how many there were in Obama-Biden, in the depths of the Great Recession? 0. The worst month was something like 700,000, which is really bad in and of itself.
I bring this up because Joe Biden understands what you have to do to get people back to work. Donald Trump had an opportunity to invest in an infrastructure plan. He didn't do it. Joe Biden has a very robust infrastructure plan that's going to put people back to work in good, union, middle-class jobs, investing in our workforce, making sure people have the skills to compete for the jobs of today and tomorrow. There are still tremendous opportunities in so many sectors.
Before this pandemic, we had a manufacturing recession-- and that was before the pandemic-- because of Donald Trump's failed trade wars. It was killer for so many states and so many industries-- by the way, including but not limited to farmers. And Joe Biden is going to make sure that we are investing in jobs that are going to bring supply chains back to the United States, making sure that we're manufacturing electric cars here in America, making sure that we don't give out exception after exception.
The transportation department under this president gives all these exceptions for businesses to get their source materials from foreign countries. Why are you doing that? We should be making that at home. We can make that at home. So Joe Biden has a very robust plan.
And these tax cuts from 2017 were reckless. Many of them need to be reversed. And Joe Biden will have the courage to take that on.
- But Tom, I've got to ask, I mean, confidence is so much a part of the hiring process, right? If companies feel confident about their finances, their balance sheet, and the future, they're willing to open up the payrolls a little bit. If they know they're going to be facing higher taxes, what incentivizes these companies to bring on more workers?
TOM PEREZ: Well, I mean, I think you look at the history of Democrats and Republicans in job creation. And I'm happy to go back as long do you want to go back. If you want to grow the stock market, put Democrats in the White House. If you want to create jobs, put Democrats in the White House. And so we've figured this out.
When you are investing in our workforce, when you are creating a level playing field for everyone, that's how you create jobs. Again, we had the longest uninterrupted streak of private-sector job growth in our nation's history under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. We rescued the auto industry.
Look what's happened. Donald Trump said there would never be a plant closure. Look at all the plant closures there's been under his watch. The manufacturing recession that we are in predated COVID. And that's because of Donald Trump's reckless trade wars.
We will work together with the global community to build a global economy where American workers have a legitimate chance, American businesses have a legitimate chance, to succeed. We will not incentivize offshoring. And again, that 2017 tax bill did nothing to stop the bleed of jobs overseas. It continued those incentives.
So again, I look at the record of Democrats. And I compare it to Republicans. And I'll tell you, the thing that just baffles me is why this president did not take on infrastructure year one. Joe Biden is going to attack the infrastructure challenge. Because that is a great way to work with business, to work with workers, to work with labor unions, to work across the spectrum of America to address much-needed infrastructure projects.
BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's leave it there. Tom Perez, chairman of the DNC and former labor secretary, good to see you this morning. Have a nice weekend.
TOM PEREZ: Always a pleasure.
