Heidi Heitkamp on AI, Immigration, China, Trade and Transparency
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Heidi Heitkamp was the first female senator elected from North Dakota where she served six years, 2013-2019, after holding a number of positions in state government.
She was a principal speaker at the annual meeting of the National Council of Textiles Organization (NCTO) last spring, but she’s quick to say she knows a bit more about soybeans than about the textile industry.
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However, as chair of the 2023-24 advisory committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and the director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, she knows a thing or two about international trade, from soybeans to textiles, from AI to tariffs. In addition, as attorney general of North Dakota she served on a number of advisory boards for the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
She believes in free trade, bemoans the fact that over the past 20 years the U.S. has given away much of its manufacturing capability and is determined to do what she can to help the nation gets it back. “We have created barriers to compete and [given] advantages to people who compete on a level you would never be allowed to compete on in this country,” she told the NCTO audience of textile executives, referring to government subsidies that trading partners like China commonly distribute to their companies to tip the scales in their favor.
“People started to understand, and certainly it came to a crescendo during the pandemic, that we have to begin to focus on making things again in America, for national security and for economic security,” said the senator, who also serves on the board of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a public policy think tank. “We have to make sure we’re generating enough steel in this country to run our industry, make sure that we have enough manufacturing to put clothes on our backs and sheets on our beds without being beholden to another country that’s not as friendly to us.”
As for the rumored “decoupling” from China, and India, for that matter, the two most populous countries in the world, why would America do that? Heitkamp wonders. Doing so would be deadly for exports. “India and China are very large populations,” she said. “And if you take a unilateral step to decouple and you don’t have an economic relationship, what is the opportunity for American business going forward?”
Heitkamp is anti-tariffs, which she says are nothing more than taxes borne by the consumer and the importer who pay them. The only effect Trump-era tariffs have had on China is to force them to begin to move manufacturing to Vietnam, where wages and tariffs are lower, she said. She wonders why President Biden has not rolled back the tariffs, which currently include a 14.5 percent tariff on shoes and clothing coming from China. That computes to $726 per household per year.
Not even legislation to discourage forced labor, like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) has proven to be a silver bullet, although in its first year, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade has detained more than $1.7 billion worth of goods suspected of containing inputs from persecuted Muslims from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
In Heitkamp’s view, a better approach to ending such practices is transparency, country of origin labeling, and letting consumers know upfront that a product passed muster rather than imposing sanctions. “Corporate reputational risk is more of a legitimate tool,” she said. “Sanctions are less significant than a source and an investigation of where things come from.”
That is, if transparency with China, a “non-transparent, very opaque Communist government,” is even possible, Heitkamp said.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of what the Chinese government tells us that can be trusted,” she said.
Although Americans love their $200 flatscreen TVs, according to Heitkamp price is not the only criteria for some buyers. She is an avowed free market capitalist and believes educated consumers carry the day.
“As a consumer, I want to know,” said Heitkamp, who is the founder and chair of the One Country Project, an organization focused on the needs of rural America. “My values may be something in addition to price and I should have access to that information.”
Child labor and forced labor abroad are two subjects that send up the senator’s red flags and when she hears them, she immediately thinks “immigrants” at home and abroad. According to her, the U.S. needs a revamped, and broad immigration reform package, one that is not driven by humanitarian concerns. It will be based on what the immigrants want, which is not necessarily a path to U.S. citizenship.
“There’s an attitude that every person who wants to come to this country to work wants to be a citizen, and I don’t think that’s true,” said Heitkamp, whose agriculture-driven home state grows soybeans, corn and wheat. “I think a lot of them want to come, make money, go home in the off-season and come back (again) and work.”
Policies are beginning to change, becoming more lenient about work permits in some cases but the change is not strategic or permanent. President Biden will grant 475,000 temporary work permits to Venezuelans who arrived in the U.S. before July 31, but anyone not already in the country will be forced to leave. Only a quarter of the 60,000 in the New York City shelter system are Venezuelan.
The future of the country will likely be driven by AI, which Heitkamp noted is already entrenched in the U.S. economy. It’s used every day in American factories, and Heitkamp is concerned about efforts to slow the spread of it. Sandbagging progress has never been the way forward in the U.S.
“It’s proven over and over again, that if we adapt, and we’re early adapters of technology, we’ll not only produce the best goods and services, we will grow our economy and grow jobs,” she said.
“My recommendation is to continue to be who we are in America, the most innovative, effective manufacturers and creators of goods and services,” Heitkamp said. “That’s what democracy does.”
