MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Sherrod Brown

Interview

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HAYES: A big concern for Democrats heading into November`s midterm elections is the number of Democratic centers up for reelection in states that Donald Trump won in 2016, 10 states in total, Democratic incumbents are particularly vulnerable in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia, states that Trump won by big margins. And then there`s Ohio, it`s a state that Trump won about eight points but where two-term Democratic incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown is up 17 and 16 points respectively in two new polls.
With me now, Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat from Ohio.

SEN. SHERROD BROWN, D-OHIO: Thanks.

HAYES: I saw an ad of yours that you covered, it`s about sort of tariffs in trade. The president looks like he`s going to approve tariffs about $50 billion on Chinese goods. There`s a lot of mixed feeling about the president`s trade policy right now and the tariffs particularly. Where are you on the tariffs?

BROWN: Well, I support them. My whole career has been about fighting for workers and you look at what`s happened with these trade policies, what it`s done to Mansfield, Ohio and Youngstown and Cleveland, Dayton and everywhere where the business plan for hundreds of tens of thousands of businesses have been you shut down production in Toledo or Chillicothe, Ohio and you move it to -- you can cash in on a tax break and move it to Wuhan and Beijing. It`s been a trade policy that`s betrayed workers, tariffs are a tool, only a tool, they`re not a trade policy, but they`re a temporary tool to begin to change that policy.

HAYES: Okay. But do you support the ones against Canada?

BROWN: It depends on which day. I mean, the president has changed his.

HAYES: You, Senator Brown, don`t not support slapping tariffs on Canada for national security reasons?

BROWN: Correct. I support -- I mean, the president has, first, he`s been all over the board. When he rolled it out, it was supposed to be aimed at China, he was supposed to be consistent in what he did, he called it a trade war. It`s not a trade war, it`s a tool. I want to see it consistent. We know they need to be temporary. That`s how you do tariffs to get as part of a policy, as part of a trade tool to get to a better policy. I don`t like it that he`s aimed much of this from the G7 discussions or wasn`t really a discussion was it with Trudeau and Europe, I mean, that`s not the way you do this trade policy.

The violations of trade law have been what the Chinese have done including legislation I`m working on, China investing in the U.S., and in many cases those investments could undercut American jobs. So we need a test, if you will, of Chinese investments here that only leads to American jobs, not more profits for Chinese-owned companies.

HAYES: Okay. But I`ve been in Ohio, I don`t know it as well as you do, you represent the state. But you got farmers in Ohio, you got farmers that export products to China, you`ve got manufacturers that buy steel from other places, right? There`s two sides of the ledger, right? So you got factories in Mansfield, steel that you want to help, but if you start getting tariffs on exported soy and things like that, I mean, that`s going to hurt your state.

BROWN: Twenty years ago during the PNCR debates with China, the number that we arrived at, there were about 100 million unemployed Chinese workers and no authoritarian or democratic government wants a bunch and wants millions of young men running around the countryside unemployed. So china puts them to work. They put them to work by subsidizing their energy and their water and their land and their capital.

In many cases, they own these businesses, they`re government-owned enterprises and they break trade law day after day after day. They will work their way up the supply chain, it`s steel and aluminum today then its autos, then they work their way up the supply chain by subsidizing those and investing in the U.S. and we`re in a worse place.

That`s why you use these tariffs now. We do them selectively, we do them in ways that retaliation is minimized and they are more temporary. But that`s not the way the president has laid them out. That`s my concern. I talked this week at length with a U.S. trade rep from my wife`s hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio and we`ve got a lot to do to do this right. It`s been done generally in the right direction, but not been done as well as it should be.

HAYES: There`s big Supreme Court case regarding your state that upheld the ability to purge voter rolls. I know this is something close to your heart. You were Secretary of State in Ohio but back when you were quite young. Was that correctly decided, that Supreme Court case?

BROWN: No. It was terrible. There`s an assault. When I was Secretary of State, I convinced the McDonald`s corporation to print a million tray liners so when you go to McDonald`s they put a piece of paper in as your tray liner and you could register to vote on that tray liner, and you could go to the Board of Elections in Lima, Ohio and find ketchup-stained registration forms I imagine still.

But we`ve seen this Secretary of State, more than that, we`ve seen nationally Republicans go after voting rights whether it`s eliminate Sunday voting, whether it`s restricting more absentee voting, whether it`s re- districting, of course, and whether it`s these voter purges. Ohio`s may have been the worst in the country.

The president not only that case that was wrongly decided, the president of the United States has just selected two appellant judges that have been part of some of these on everything from for-profit charter schools to voting rights.

HAYES: Two nominees.

BROWN: Yes, nominees to the pre-existing condition ruling. And we`re fighting on this because I know that if the rulings like to stand its one more move, one more piece the Republicans are going to continue to go after to suppress the vote. They won elections by suppressing the vote in many cases. In close elections, if they can keep 1 or 2 percent of people from voting, it makes all the difference in the world.

HAYES: Final question. I think I know the answer. Are you supporting legislation from Diane Feinstein to rescind--

BROWN: Yes, yes, yes. I haven`t signed on yet. I want to understand it better. But watching your piece with Mr. Davidson and then Senator Boxer, it`s just incredible and the phone call that you made, that your staff made
just breaks your heart. In Sandusky, Ohio there was one of the biggest
raids ever.

HAYES: Yes.

BROWN: . Where children were separated from parents. It`s the most mean- spirited, awful thing I`ve ever seen from my government and we should all be ashamed, we should all fight back. I talked to somebody from Bread for the World, a religious based food advocacy group and the work they`re doing to fight back in Sandusky and all over the country. It`s so, so important to tell these stories and you contributed a lot tonight to that. Thank you.

HAYES: Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

BROWN: Thanks. It`s good to be back.

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