Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I want to start with the meetings that took place over the weekend in Geneva, and I'm curious sort of how you look at the way they unfolded and the outcome of them. Do you see it as a positive step the agreement that has come to.
Well, First of all, I start from a first principle, and that is that China's been the largest and most important disruptor in the global trade system for about three decades right now. There's a reason why the United States and many other countries around the world have placed terrafts
on China. China's manufactured exports in particular, is because China's been dumping them around the world below the cost of production, and it's been a killer for jobs both in the United States historically in the last several decades, but also around the world. You have a situation now where Turkey and India and Brazil and Colombia and Mexico and Canada and the United States and the European Union have all
put tariffs on China. So I have a degree of sympathy for the situation that President Trump and his team inherited, which was a situation that we left when I left in mid January as ambassador to China President Biden a year ago I made twenty twenty four placed one hundred percent tariffs on Chinese evs, fifty percent on semiconductors, twenty five percent on lithium batteries.
So the root of this problem.
Is China and Chinese trade policy. The Chinese are trying to act now. You sought in the statements over the weekend from Vice Premier Hurly Funk is that they're the innocent party, that they're the victim of this trade whereby President Trump would in fact, and that they're the responsible party, when in fact the reality is quite different. I think it's important to set the stage having said that these are going to be very very difficult negotiations over the
next ninety days. I think in the end, self interest and logic will prevail. Both sides need and agreement. Was encouraging to hear Treasury Secretary Scott bess And say that they had agreed in principle they don't want to couple these two economies. Last year, we had a six hundred and forty two billion dollars two way trade relationship in goods and services with China. China is our third largest trade partner. About a million American jobs depend on trade
with China. Upwards of twenty million manufacturing jobs in China depend on trade with the United States. So neither country can afford to sunder the economic ties and the millions of interactions that our private sector has had with the Chinese economy over the last forty years.
And I think in the.
End there will be a trade agreement, but getting there, I think is going to be extraordinarily difficult.
During your tenure, you were trying to, if I may, rehabilitate a relationship that had worsened during the first Trump administration, develop conduits for communication, re establish economic and security ties. When you left that post, could you've envision this turning out the way that it has in terms of how the rhetoric has been ratcheted up, the tariffs have been put in place. Is it the worst case that you envisioned or worse yet?
Still, I certainly did not anticipate one hundred and forty five percent American terrafts on China or one hundred and twenty five percent Chinese tariffs on American goods, and the trade war that has resulted effectively led to a trade embargo as of the past week, when no ships were sailing with goods back and forth, when manufacturers couldn't export to each other's countries, and you see the significant shortage of goods that traditionally are important to both economies. So
I didn't expect that to happen at all. And that's the most important thing happening in the global economy right now, which is another reason I think that eventually both sides have to agree to a deal to calm global markets. We're the two largest global economies, so we have a profound impact on the health of global economy. But we also need the global economy to be functioning in a rational and stable way. There's so much at stake. I
didn't see that happening. I think few people saw that happening. You remember Canada, Trump pledged sixty percent tariffs on Chinese goods, and people thought that.
Would be a revolution.
Will one hundred and forty five was a revolution of a different magnitude. And I think, you know, we're not anywhere close to being out of the woods. If the levels now are set at thirty percent tariffs on the American side imposed on China and ten percent by China imposed on the United States. Those are historically high levels, and a lot of trade will not be able to take place. It just simply won't be economical for people to be importing manufacturers at that level. So this is
an urgent crisis. I assume this is going to be one of the highest priorities of the Trump administration and of the Chinese government. But I hope that cooler heads will prevail, and I do think for the long term here health of the US China relationship.
Trade's a major part of it.
And a decoupling of a two global economies, of the two economy, let me say that again. Sure, a decoupling of the US and Chinese economies would have profoundly negative consequences for both. So getting this right is going to be very important. Trade negotiations normally take a year or two or three. To try to compress this level of complexity in the ninety days is going to be a real negotiating challenge, but it has to be done.
You know, well, the difficulty of establishing dialogue between these two countries. The Treasure Secretary talks a lot about a consultative mechanism. It's called it the Geneva mechanism. Going forward here and establishing kind of regular communication. What's the going to take to make sure that happens. We don't yet know when they're next going to talk or they're next going to meet.
I think self interest is going to dictate a fast paced of these negotiations over the next ninety days. Both sides have committed to this consultative process, and it has to happen at a very high level. In China, the decision maker below President Xi Jinping is Vice Premier Huli fun, the head of the Chinese delegation, who met Secretary of Bessant.
Secretary of Vessint has a I think a good reputation globally, and he's the logical person to lead, along with James and Greer, the US trade representative from the American side. So the right people are going to be involved, but it's going to have to be at a really quick pace, and it's going to have to be done with a lot of alacrity and a lot of determination to get to the to get to the finish line.
A minute ago, you spoke about how China is portraying not just the talks, but the way that this trade war is unfolding. And I'm very curious sort of.
How effective you think that is.
Do they walk away from this feeling like they have the upper hand. Do you think the world views them as having the upper hand in these negotiations.
Well, the Chinese are the Chinese press, the nationalist press, and to an extent, the government of China have been have been saying that they held out, that they stood strong, and that they faced up to the American tariff threats and they did not blink. And they've been trumpeting that line in the Global South. President she just hosted most of the major leaders from South America at a major summit he's been making. He made a trip in Southeast
Asia to the Asian country. So they clearly are signaling to the United States, you're not going to bully us. We have other options. You've seen a big increase in Chinese manufactured exports to their neighbors in the Southeast Asian Organization ASIAN and so they're very definitely standing up has become a nationalist, nationalist issue. When Vice President JD. Vance referred to the Chinese as peasants an unfortunate term under any circumstances.
But that really lit a fire in.
Chinese social media, which is a force in Chinese society. So yes, the government of China is trying to portray itself as the steady, solid country that stood up to the United States. I think that China needs a deal too. There's a reason why the Chinese met with Secretary Vessant. The economy is slowing down. If they grew by five percent in twenty twenty four, well most economists would say they probably grew by less.
They're facing lower.
GDP growth for the next five to ten years. They have a property crisis that continues to linger.
They have a consumption problem.
The Chinese people are not consuming in a rational way, sitting on their money because of the uncertainty of the investment environment in China itself. They have strength in the Chinese economy and normous strengths, but they also have these weaknesses. China could not afford a sustained trade war with the United States. That's why they were at the table, and that's why they've agreed to a deal in ninety days.
What did you learn being there about that country's capacity to whether something like this so you're saying they couldn't sustain it long term, But give us some site into how they had been preparing for a moment like this one where there would be this kind of geopolitical test.
I was in China, of course, during the presidential election, our presidential election of November twenty twenty four, and as soon as President Trump was declared the winner in that election and prepared to take office, the Chinese began to prepare for a trade war. They saw it coming. They had listened to Candidate Trump. They've did a lot of remobilization of their supply chain to try to stock up on minerals and on technologies that were important to them,
and they expected this. They also have an authoritarian system of government, and so it's one man rule, and President Hijinping whatever he says goes. He prepared the Chinese people for a long struggle with the United States. And you know, China is like the United States. People are patriotic about their country. I would say there's a highly nationalist element in Chinese social media and their undreds of millions of
Chinese involved in Chinese social media. So this was a moment where the leadership said, we have to stand strong and defend our country and they think they've done that.
Do you have a clear sense of what the US, what the Trump administration wants this relationship to be like. I detect kind of a change in rhetoric where you have the US Trade Representative Jamison Greer a few days ago County getting very negative terms, and then President Trump after this deal was announced saying that the relationship is very good. What does the US want this relationship to be like?
At this moment, I think we have not seen a full explanation or articulation of what President Trump wants to do writ large in China policy. Because it's the most important relationship that the United States has around the world, it's also the most complicated and problematic for the United States.
I do sense as I listened to Secretary of Rubio Secretary hag Seth, that they on issues where the Biden administer was very strong, agree that we have to stand up for our policy to inhibit a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, that we have to stand up against what the Chinese, the PLA, the People's Liberation Army is doing to try to intimidate the Philippines and the South China Sea or Japan in the East China Sea, that we have to be supportive of India in its border struggle along the
Himalayas border disagreement with China, and certainly have to oppose what the Chinese have done to be such an important source of microelectronics and dual use goods for the Russian defense industrial base as they prosecute this war in Ukraine. So on the national security side, it seems to me there's going to be continuity with where President Biden and our team left off. I think the bigger question mark is, and we're seeing it play out in real time right now,
are on tariffs. On the future of the economic relationship. I was involved heavily involved with the American business community, with the American farm and ranch and fisheries community. You know, we have tens of thousands of American businesses doing business in China. It is our third largest trade partner. A lot of American companies depend on either importing or from China exporting to China, and so I think there you
obviously have to follow the comments of President Trump. He's a very transparent leader, and he's very transactional, and he has always spoken about President Xi Jinping with a great deal of respect. He's been very solicitous of him. So it seems to me that President Trump is heading in a direction on economics to be more closely engaged and to continue a full throated economic relationship between the two countries.
I actually think that would be a good thing if we continue to trade with China and try to carry on this level of economic activity. At the same time that we have to compete with China both on technology, whether it's AI quantum computing, biotech, or in some of those national security issues that I talked about, where the PLA has been extraordinarily aggressive and we have to find a way to deter them.
Fentanyl is something that you worked on quite a bit when you were there. A point that you made, if I remember rightly, is sanctioning China on that front isn't going to be enough. There has to be some kind of collaboration when it comes to security and getting US law enforcement more involved in making sure that the chemicals involved in the preparation and manufacturer of fentanyl can't do it.
Do you have a clear sentence on this specific topic of what the Biden administration wants They do talk about it a lot clear that it's something that they want to negotiate over these next ninety days and beyond, what are they hoping will change When it comes to the production of fentanyl.
I think President Trump's been right to say that fentanyl's one of the top issues in this relationship because death by overdose in the States is a public health crisis. That's the majority, it's the leading cause of death of Americans eighteen to forty nine. The facts are that the majority of the precursor chemicals that make up the synthetic opioid come from the Chinese black market, not from the
Chinese government, but the black market in China. So China's an authoritarian country, has an authoritarian government, it has the capacity to stop the flow of these precursor chemicals. President Biden made this a top priority. Over the last year and a half of the administration were able to convince the government of China to arrest fabricators of these precursor chemicals,
to shut down online platforms. We began to expand our law enforcement cooperation, and I think the Trump administration has accepted that and now try to take it further. And
I think their right to do that. You know that the thirty percent tariffs on China right now as it was of May fourteenth, ten percent of the recarp tariffs that are placed on every country, twenty percent are for feentanyl, And I think that is a good reminder of the Chinese there's going to be a price to pay if they don't cooperate with the United States on this major health crisis that we're facing.
So I think it's a major priority for President Trump.
The US is going to have a new ambassador in Beijing soon, David Perdue has been confirmed.
I wonder if.
You've spoken with him, exchanged messages with him, and what counsel you would give him about the role itself and how you found the ways in which you found you could be the most successful successful.
Well, I have spoken with him, and I told him, and I said publicly actually on American and social media on x that I congratulated him on his appointment, that I'd help him in any way I could, and I wish him the best of success because we have so much writing on this policy with China that we've got to be successful, and I'm rooting for his success. I think he's very well placed to be. He worked in business in Hong Kong and Singapore. He's been to China
as a member of the Senate. He was on Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, which are the two relevant committees, two of them for China, and has a clear sense of what he wants to do. So he's going to go out very soon and he's going to take the reins of the embassy that I left in mid January, and I do wish him well.
It's a tough job. I found out. It's not for the feint of heart.
We have with China the most competitive relationship of any country in the world, if you think about it in quadrants. China's our leading competitor for military influence and military power in the Indo Pacific, our leading competitor on the major technologies AI, biotech, quantum computing that will form the basis of the future of the global economy. Our third largest trade partner with which we have a very problematic trade
and teriff relationship. And obviously, and maybe this is the most important part of it, we believe in human freedom and human rights, and the Chinese government does not practice that. There are major violators of the human rights of their own people, and so there's so much writing on this relationship, and the American ambassador has to be the point person in competing with China and helping to strengthen the American
position on those issues. But at the same time, and this makes it so complicated, David, is that China's our largest and strongest competitor, but there are certain issues where China is one of our most important partners. We're the two stewards of the global economy. We're seeing that play out right now in the tariff issue. On climate change, we're the two leading emitters of carbon and so President
Biden felt very important to work with China. If we want to do anything about fentanyl, we've got to work with China to make that happen. So I always thought it was it wasn't a fifty to fifty balance. I actually thought I spent about eighty percent of my time on the competitive edge with China about twenty percent non cooperative matters.
And that I thought was the right ratio.
But that makes for a very complicated relationship where you've got to both defend and push and resist on one hand, and then you've got to stretch out your hand to work with them and shake their hand on the other that's the reality of being the American ambassador to China. So I wish now Ambassador Purdue former Senator David Perdue.
Well, I think he's a very good man for this job.
Wrapping up before I kind of pull back and ask you some broader questions, I wonder how you felt about the relationship between the US and China when you left. And I mean nothing by this, but do you ever think that the work that you've done has been squandered or is being squandered as a result of what's happened over the last few months.
Well, I arrived in China, was sworn in in twenty twenty one, and arrived a couple months later hawkish about the relationship on national security grounds because China is this very competitor impinging on a lot of American interests in the Indo Pacific. And I think I left China more hawkish.
Yeah.
I saw the reality of the relationship and the cynical nature of the government of China, and of the duplicity on some issues of the government of China, the fact that we would make an agreement and then it wasn't honored, and that was very much true of the Trump Phase one teriff Agreement of twenty twenty, which we inherited, China was obligated to spend several hundred billion dollars in purchases of American agricultural products. Didn't get close to that. I
monitored that very carefully when I was ambassador. So I think this is a long term structural rivalry. We're the two strongest economies, the two strongest militaries, were the two countries with the greatest global reach. We're competing for global power.
I don't think that will change no matter who's president, and so we've got to steal our else for the next decade or two to a historic competition with China, and China right now is stronger than any adversary of the United States has ever faced in the history of the United States, going back to the Revolutionary War, including the First and Second World Wars, including the Cold War.
The Soviet Union in.
Its heyday was not as strong as China is today. And so we've got to face that competition. But here's the catch. We've got to do it in such a way that we don't end up in a war, because a war would be catastrophic for the world and for both countries. Obviously, given the power of both of our countries,
that makes for an enormously complicated relationship. And there's no other alternative but to be engaged with the Chinese leadership, to talk to them, as Secretary Vessent did this past week on the teriff issue, but on a thousand other fronts. Be engaging them and talking to them so you can compete. We can cooperate where we can, but we avoid a conflict which in the future would be an absolute catastrophe. That makes for a very difficult and complex job.
I want to ask you how international fears have changed. And I've been traveling in recent months. I was in Brazil for the G twenty and kind of noticed in real time the way that long standing relationships were changing physically. Different countries were meeting with other countries in the way.
They might not a before.
I covered the election in Canada, and of course before Mark Karney won that election, he reached out to kind of solidify or re establish relationships that had with other allies besides the United States. There seems to be a message from this administration Washington that there can be bombast and heated rhetoric radically increased tariffs, but then you can flip the switch back and things can go back to normal.
And drawing on your experience as a diplomat for many decades, do you think that that's folly or that that's act. There will be no damage done and things can go back to the way they were. When it comes to a relationship that the US has with its allies.
I think we're at a moment of great transformation in the global power picture were alliance is shifting very rapidly. You see that China and Russia, in Iran and North Korea and Venezuela and Nicaragua are kind of all working together authoritarian dictatorships, and they're working together to try to cut down the power of the United States, reduce it
in the world, and of our democratic allies. And I always felt working for President Biden, one of our strongest suits is that we have reinforced our alliances, our alliance with NATO and the European Union countries, our alliances with Japan and South Korea and the Philippines and Thailand and Australia, five military alliances that are the bedrock of our power.
And as I left China.
One of the lessons that was very clear in my mind is that in this day and age, despite the fact that we are still the strongest power in the world, you do need friends and allies in the world, and that we are so much stronger politically, diplomatically, militarily and economically if we think about working closely with allies. And I do think that's the greatest mistake that President Trump has made in his first four months in office.
What has he done.
He suggested that Canada repeatedly should be the fifty first state of the United States, and you can see how Canada and Canadians have reacted to that made He's been heavily critical of Denmark for its two century rule in Greenland in an attempt to convince the Danes to hand over Greenland, and the Greenlarners have a lot to say about this and are resistant to the United States.
Here are two NATO allies.
That are among the strongest and most faithful allies the United States has had, and yet he has driven them away. And at the same time, the trade war. If Donald Trump had faced China down but had not placed high tariffs on Japan South Korea, the European Union, Canada, and Mexico. All those countries would have been on our side.
Of the table have the same trade and tariff.
Problems with China that we do, but they weren't compelled, they weren't interested in doing that once they were placed under the same tariff regime that China was placed under. And so I fear that the administration really has a blind spot.
They think the United States can go it alone in the world. We can't. We need other.
Allies to support our power across every dimension of power. I started as an intern in nineteen eighty with the State Department, for That's how old I am forty five years ago this summer. And that's probably the fundamental lesson I learned when I was ambassador at NATO, when I was under secretarist for Condoleeza Rice, is that despite our enormous power, and I'm proud of that and want us to build our power base, we need friends and allies in the world. And so that's an own goal by
the Trump administration. It's one that they've got to reverse if they hope to be effective, because the Chinese are forming a block, and that block with Russia run in North Korea is a strong block. You need something to counter it. It's called NATO, and it is called the East Asian Allies.
We talk a lot in business and economics about American exceptionalism. I know that that's a phrase that's used in international fairs as well. And there is the sphere in some corners that it's waning where it could go away.
Is that a real fear that you have as well?
Kind of picking up what we were talking about about the relationship with allies alienating allies. Do you worry that the uniqueness of the United States is in jeopardy?
America is an exceptional country. It's exceptional because of the way we've acted around the world. We've built ourselves around the world. We're the country that promised free trade and fair trade with the rest of the world, not high protectionist barriers. We're the country that created NATO and created our East Asian alliances that are so important to American power in the world. But now we are letting those alliances atrophy because we're not interested in leading some of
them anymore. And at home, of course, we're the epler of Bazunim country. Every single American has an immigrant story. My story is two of my grandparents immigrants from Ireland, my dad's parents, and that story has been replicated a million times over in our society. I'm against illegal immigration in the United States. We have to protect our borders, but we have to keep our door open to legal immigration, particularly young people who want to be business small business owners,
who want to go to our universities. And we have to keep our universities open to foreign students. But look at the climate of fear produced by this administration. The Trump administration on university campuses foreign students who worry about being expelled from the country before they can take a final exam. People who are in this country legally as Green card holders, and yet they're somehow rounded up and deported.
This is the lifeblood of America. The Statue of Liberty is one of our most famous symbols for one reason. You know, we welcome people from around the world, and they've made us stronger in waves of immigration. And I think even in political science great power terms, we are the second youngest demographically of all the great powers in the world. India is the youngest, but only because of immigration. Our birth rate is not much higher than China and Japan,
South Korea, Europe, But it's higher because of immigration. I see that this university, what immigrants and what are immigrant students and refugee students contribute to this university. And I really worry about a closed America, denying and shutting off what has made us great. One of the primary elements that's made America great is that. So there's so much that can be done to unravel and weaken a great power like.
The United States.
And we've got to reinforce some of these better angels, as Lincoln put it, call on the better angels of our nature to remember what made America great?
Can you recognize the State Department today? You can spend forty five years in government service. Is it recognizable to you given the cuts that have taken place, the priorities of it. How different is it from the place that you first went to forty five years ago?
David, I answer it this way.
I spent a lifetime in government at the State Department in White House, serving in Washington and overseas. Every government agency can be subject and should be subject to reform. There is waste, a fraud, and abuse in every government agency. You need perpetual reform but taking a slip to USAID and firing eight thousand people in one week, without a thought, without a plan, without actually knowing what you're tearing down.
That was a huge mistake.
Treating nonpartisan civil servants, military officers, foreign service officers as if they are disloyal because they work for President Biden. Well, they also work for President Bush. They've worked people like me work for both parties. We take a note to the Constitution to be nonpartisan. But the Trump administration has not appointed a single foreign service professional ambassador since it took office. They've appointed lots of political appointees, but nobody
from the ranks of our serving career diplomats. Seventeen of our deputy chiefs of mission are number two officials in embassies who were assigned to these jobs and getting ready to go have been told they're not going. And many of them, if not all, of that group, are women and people of color. And so there is a crisis in our civil service right now.
And if these.
Cuts continue the way they are, and if the denigration of our civil servants continue, you're losing You're losing a great group of people who just want to serve the country and want to do it in a non partisan way, and they will be non partisan. When I left China and held my last staff meeting, I told my staff in our very large embassy in Beijing, you need to work for President Trump as faithfully as you did for
President Biden. You need to work for my successor, Ambassador Purdue, as faithfully and as hard as you did for me. That is the Foreign Service and US government way. And I think the Trump administration has been extraordinarily destructive of this tradition we've had in this country now for about one hundred and thirty years of a professional civil service,
not a political spoils system. What we had in the nineteenth century, professional civil service that would serve the country and serve any president that the American people elected.
That's what's at stake.
And I think when the pendulum does swing back at some point, we're going to have to create USA, recreate USAID, recreate the Voice of America, recreate Radio Free Asia. These are journalists who we employ to tell the story of the United States, in the case of China, to several hundred million Chinese listeners of VOA and Radio Free Asia. So enormous damage has been done by this very cynical effort.
Doge to tear down all.
These institutions and not replace them with anything of value.
But you're confident that that force of gravity will swing the pendulum back, that we will be able to do that.
Well, I don't recreate them.
I don't think anybody can predict when reason will prevail again and logic will prevail and sanity. But it has to because I think future administrations, future presidents will look around at their government and say, where are my diplomats? Where are my aid workers? How do we run vaccine programs, global health programs, literacy programs that we ought to be doing around the world because of Americans are generous people.
Where are my diplomats? Why do I not have any diplomats.
With thirty or forty years of experience? Well, they were all fired, summarily kicked out in the first couple of weeks and months of the Trump administration. It's a true national crisis.
I'm going to go out on a limb and imagine You've kept in touch with folks at the embassy in Beijing, and I think a lot of focus has been on what these cuts have been like in Washington, d C. But for a major embassy like that one, What have they meant for the way that it operates.
I can't speak for my team at Embassy Mission China. I left just before January twentieth, and our tradition is you don't when you leave, you leave, you don't get involved. And obviously the Trump team had to come in and run that. So I can't speak for them, but I can speak for a lot of people who've been laid off in Washington, and a lot of people who are thinking now seriously of leaving. These are people whose lifelong ambition was to work for the Treasury Apartment or the Pentagon,
or the State Department or the Commist Department. They just wanted to serve our country. But they're being treated like second class citizens, and they're facing massive layoffs of the type that we've never seen before in the history of the United States.
Nothing like this.
The wholesale destruction of federal government agencies in some cases, and the almost irrational downsizing of the numbers of others, nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of the country. Because it's not smart and it's going to weaken US. I can tell you who's really happy about this the government in China. They are competing with US diplomatically for how many embassies and consulates east of
US have. They are hiring new diplomats at a pace that we can't manage, and that matters around the world. It matters in our ability to be effective as we compete with them in every part of the world.
I'd like to close by asking you what you're telling students here who are here at the Kennedy School here at Harvard to learn from your experience, to learn an art of diplomacy that has been practiced and perfected for many decades. There must be many students here wondering if the path that they predicted would be there has been foreclothes that there's no ladder the likes of what you've
described before. You could start as an intern at the State Department and work your way up to heading the largest mission in the US.
What do you tell them?
I'm telling students here at Harvard, but students I meet from across the country.
Hang on, hang on to your ideals.
It's a good thing to want to spend your life
serving the United States of America, your country. It's a good thing you want to be in the public square, what Teddy Roosevelt called the arena of public service, and that I'm just convinced that future presidents of either party are going to want to rebuild our capacity to have a fully fledged State Department and US Agency for International Development so that we can be effective in the world and defend ourselves and prepare yourselves, study hard, and don't
leave that dream behind of public service. Because what a tragedy would be for our country if young people in this country felt, well, I can't serve in the federal government because I'm not welcome as a career official in the federal government. We need non partisan Americans out there representing us without any regard to party allegiance. That's what we have in the federal government service and in the US military.
That's the oath of office that we all take to.
Defend the constitution. It's not an oath to the president of either party. It's an oath to the Constitution that we will be non partisan. That's an enormous asset, and if we let it wither away in this administration is doing that, it's going to do enormous damage to our country.
Lastly, what is this like for you personally?
Somebody who has served for presidents from both parties in a very non partisan way, to find yourself asking students to hold on calling for the return of these regilations and in so doing, I guess being seen probably by some as acting in a partisan way. It's going against what this administration is doing. It must be a very foreign feeling for you to have.
Well, what I'm advocating is not partisan. I worked for Republican presidents as well as Democratic presidents, and as a Foreign service officer, career diplomat, my oath was to the Constitution, it was to the country. So in advocating for a strong diplomatic corps in the State Department, for a strong USAID, for a strong military, I think that's patriotic. It's not partisan, and not everything has to be about politics.
And one of the great strengths of our.
Country is a federal government workforce that is not about politics. But they're being politicized now, they're being penalized. They're being told that they can't be trusted because they work for President Biden. All of my colleagues work for senior colleagues work for President George W. Bush and his father before it as well as President Clinton and President Obama and President Biden, all of them work for President Trump in his first term. There was no mass layoff then, so
why the change now. I think it's extraordinarily shortsighted for the United States government to be heading in this direction.