You're listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast in the Clay and Book Podcast Network. Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I'm Tutor Dixon, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. We've got a lot to talk about. You know that I've talked quite a bit about the dangers of China, and my guest today has gone even so far as to include this in his latest book. So I'm really excited to dig deep into this one. Today.
I'm joined by David McCormick, former GOP candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania and the author of the book Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America. I love this because we absolutely have to have a battle plan to renew America, don't we.
Thanks so much for having me, and we do need a battle plan. You know. The premise of the book is that we're under threat. We're under threat from within from some of the decisions we've made that have led America to be in decline, and we're threatened from abroad with the techno authoritarian model that's China, and we don't have a plan. China has a plan, we don't have a plan. So there's a lot to talk about.
So let me I think this is going to shock you, but I'm not sure I think it will. Though we both just ran for office, we both know how challenging it is, and then we both know what Democrats are doing in office. So in Michigan this week, Democrats there was a bill brought forward to say we will not welcome companies into the state of Michigan that are connected or loyal to, or in their by laws say they
are loyal to the Chinese Communist Party. And every single Democrat voted no that they would not stop companies that are loyal to the Chinese Communist Party from coming into Michigan. They're clearly stating that they're loyal. I mean, isn't that insane.
Yeah, there's a lot of insanity. Honestly, there's a lot of insanity. And that's just one good example of it, just to put it in perspective. And you know that as well. But we learned during COVID how unbelievably dependent we are on China semi conductors. Ninety percent of the semiconductors we need to make our economy run. Everything from pickup trucks to defense weapons are manufactured ninety miles from
mainland China. Our pharmaceuticals I didn't know this. During COVID we saw our entire pharmaceutical supply chain is dependent on China. So one of the things I outline in Superpower Apparel is that is the need to strategically decouple those industries that are so critical to our economy and our national security. We need to bring those home or have those in the hands of our closest allies, certainly not the communist Chinese.
Well, I think what you're saying is something that people need to understand because we've heard a lot of America First, We've heard some candidates come out and say day one, no one's working with China anymore. This isn't possible to immediately decouple. It has to happen over time, and it doesn't have to America first, doesn't necessary. Everything's going to be manufactured in the United States, but Allied countries going
to friendly countries is so important. If you look at China and you look at take iPhone City for example, in China, this is an entire city that is surrounded that is just high rise buildings. These people are living in what we would consider a dormitory. They're only allowed to go home to their families maybe once a year, and they're working sometimes ten hour shifts with just one meal in between. I mean, this is essentially slave labor.
It's not. The sad thing is it's not easy to move out of that because there's no place in the United States or friendly countries that will say, yes, yes, we'll have high rises of three hundred thousand people. And that's the other thing. It's hundreds of thousands of people that are trapped working.
Yeah, you're so right, and I'm glad you said that, because it's easy to sort of throw away these lines on television, but to actually understand what is required to really change the game with China is what I try to do in the book, and I essentially say there's four things we need to do. The first thing we need to do is that's strategic decoupling, not everything, those industries that are most critical to our national security economics.
Second thing we need to do along the lines of what you said, we need to hold China accountable for its bad behavior. The wigers and the human rights abuses there, but the Wuhan virus COVID, so you know, it's like it was not. We were not able to talk about the fact that a virus that originated in Wuhan, where this research lab exists, probably was somehow connected to that
research lab. And yet three years later we see our intelligence services acknowledging that that's a real possibility, but that the media was pushing that.
What does holding them accountable for that mean to you? Because that's another thing where I think people go, well, I mean, what's Joe Biden really going to do? But there is stuff that he can do, so explain the.
Most important thing to start with is to call it out. I mean, believe it or not that that's not what's happened. Joe Biden hasn't all that out and made that clear. But the way that we begin to hold them accountable is to stop allowing our dependency on those key industries and also stop American companies from investing in China in
ways that goes directly against our interests. So today, as we speak, there are venture capital firms in the Silicon Valley that are investing in artificial intelligence companies in China that do business with the PLA and the Communist Party. It absolutely makes no sense. So this is something that you may disagree with. I'm not sure. So I'm not saying we should stop all trade as a practical matter. We're the two biggest economies in the world. There's millions
of jobs that are dependent on it. And I saw this in Pennsylvania. I bet you saw it in Michigan. So I go into York, Pennsylvania, and I go into a manufacturing facility and the fact that China is dumping steel and globalization has hurt those workers, hurt the business, and they want fair trade. I'm with them. I agree on that. I go down the street and I'm in a machine shop and this is where Harley Davids's are manufactured.
And that machine shop makes racks that go on the back of Harley Davidson's in the biggest market in the world they have is China. And so what I say in the book is listen, we can talk about what the economic makeup should be five years from now, but today, the things we need to focus on are the things that are strategic and decouple them from China because China is a legitimate threat.
I agree. So I'm a steel girl. I come from a steel foundry. My family owned a steel foundry. We actually, I would say most of the steel foundries that went out of business in the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine timeframe. We're going out of business not only because of the recession, but also so much was being moved to China at that time. And I think that you're going you're not going to there's no way to get completely out of that. But I think there
are strategies you can take. For example, we used to make the m WRAP vehicles of parts for the m RAP vehicles for the military. That was like an eighty percent by America clause why isn't our military equipment one hundred percent by America or allies? So I mean, really, can we go to that extreme and say military needs to be someplace safe?
I couldn't agree more. And you know what's happened along that point under Joe Biden, in particular our defense industrial base, and we saw this with what's what's happening with Ukraine. Our defense industrial base is really really sad and lacking.
So our defense industry, the defense industry used to support with your family steel mail, is in trouble because first of all, the actual spending on defense is going down because the Biden budget doesn't even keep up with inflation, and then our defense industrial base, our manufacturing basis supports our defense industry has become overly dependent on foreign countries or just inadequate to deal with the next generations of weapons.
And that's a real problem. Particularly you see China on the march around the world as we do.
Yeah, so we see China here on land in Michigan. We've been having this fight over the past couple months now where a Chinese Communist Party aligned company has come in and decided to build a battery factory in Michigan. Once we found out, the community has kind of rallied
against it. So what do you say to governors like Gretchen Whitmer who has said, I will align with these companies that are coming from China, and she's going overseas to try to bring more overseas companies into the state of Michigan, which I say again, if these are allied
countries or friendly countries, it's different. But what do you say to governors who are bringing in companies and not only just bringing them in, seven hundred and fifteen million of our taxpayer dollars are going to bring this in like, we're paying these companies that are aligned with the CCP to come in and then they own land in the middle of our state. And you know, our greatest resource here is water, which is something everybody in the world wants. Why would we do that?
Well, I'd like to make a distinction between foreign investment and foreign investment from China, because I think what you describe is Chinese company investing in ev which is which is becoming incredibly strategic in Michigan, and having that dominance in the US market and also having that dependency we have on China is absolutely what's to be avoided. And so I agree with you one hundred percent, and we have to have restrictions. We should have an inbound investment
SIPIUS kind of restriction. SIPHIUS is the foreign Investment review process that happens at the federal level to make sure that that doesn't happen, because it's bad for America. It's bad ultimately to be dependent on anybody, but really bad to be dependent from the Chinese communis. I would make
a distinction between that and other foreign investment. For example, I was in Korea, I was in South Carolina earlier this week and I know they've had great success of bringing in the South Koreans, a critical ally and having manufacturing facilities that have brought new jobs to South Carolina. Great business opportunity to help make South Carolina's economy really strong. It's a critical ally in South Korea. It's technology that
we want to build here at home. I think that kind of inbound investment's good, Chinese based inbound investment.
Back, let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on a Tutor Dixon podcast. Okay, you just brought up jobs, so I want to ask you about that because in the state of Michigan, we have really nobody out there to work. We have businesses leaving the state because they're
so desperate for workers. I don't know if Pennsylvania is in that situation, but I want to ask you when you see states that are desperate for people to do jobs, like we need people on our farms, we need people in our hospitality industry, we need people in our manufacturing plants. We need all of these people. We don't have enough. We're in the midst of a total crisis at the border.
Why can we not have immigration reform that would vet these people and get people that we really need in here and keep the bad guys out.
Yeah, it's a huge, huge issue, and I agree with what you're saying your sentiment one hundred percent, and say make two points one. In the book, I make the point that Listen, I grew up thinking a four year degree was the path to a great middle class life and opportunity, and that's not the case. It doesn't just have to be a four year degree. Not every person has that be four year degree to have the American dream and skilled training. I go across manufacturing facilities, tech
facilities in Pennsylvania. The biggest issue CEOs have in fracking, which is a big industry natural gas in Pennslvania. The biggest issue they have is skilled workers. It's not that there aren't people to take jobs, there aren't people with the adequate skills. So I think gi benefits like I had when I left the Army, pell grants, partnerships between industry and the community colleges to get these skilled workers
is huge. So let's help Americans get the kind of that you had in your family, Maill, that I learned about in Pittsburgh, where you can have a great middle class existence, great middle class life by having adequate skills. That's one thing. Second thing on skilled immigration, I agree one hundred percent. But the first step is to stop that pouring across the border. I saw it when I ran, I went down and visit the border. I know you're
seeing it in Michigan. That is an absolute travesty that we don't have control of our border, that the fentanyl that's killing kids in Pennsylvania and Michigan is coming across through those cartels. We've got to stop the border crisis. But we also, in my opinion, have to reform our skilled immigration process to make sure that we get the people coming into our country that have the skills we need.
But see, the way that works right now is exactly what you just said, the skilled immigration, Because we tried to bring in factory workers from Ukraine. This was years before the war, but we knew we had factory workers there that could teach our factory workers here. And the only way you can bring someone in through the federal program who is skilled is someone who is skilled because
they have a degree. But we I mean, the learning on the job is I mean that's priceless, but that's not considered skilled.
Why well, it's a great question. And what President Trump did at the end of his term, there was a proposal he put on the table for skilled immigration reform that addressed some of these issues. It was more in line with Canada system, which has a whole range of skills, both educated and non formally trained skills that we can bring workers in. And the key point you have to make, I think both subsident politically. These don't take away American jobs.
These are skilled immigrants that come in and help fill jobs that are going to help American companies grow and be more prospress for our community. So skilled immigration reforms key. I think Trump had the right idea, he just didn't get it done in the latter half of his administration. And that's the kind of approach we need to take hand in hand with fixing the border.
All Right, Elections, we've got to get through elections. Obviously, you just went through a rough primary and then your primary opponent who won ended up losing the Senate seat to someone who is not even able to be in the Senate most of the time. So I think all of us are shocked by the John Fetterman situation across the country. I mean He's an example that people use as why people who are impaired in some way shouldn't be in office, no matter what age they are. It
was really shocking. But one thing that I've come out of my campaign and done a lot of research on, and I've learned from folks who are in other states doing lots of research and doing a strong performing, a strong ground game on the Republican side, They've told me that there is a difference between these states. You have messaging states, which would be like a Florida or a tech You have ballot states, which is a Pennsylvania, and then Michigan would be a combination of a message and
a ballot state. And really what we're not doing is that work on the ground to get to be I mean, you don't have to have a message in Pennsylvania. If you're John Fetterman, you have no message. You're literally just going and doing the business of elections to capture those ballots. So if you run again, how do you change the way you do things on the ground there?
Well, you know, there's the electro reform issue and then there's how I would campaign. They're related but different. I mean, the thing that was so frustrating, and I dealt with this in a primary, as you might imagine. But when the race. The day of the race, it looked like I was going to win the race. I was told I was going to win the race, and even for the seventeen days that followed, I thought for most of that time that I was going to win the race
based on the numbers that I was being told. But you had sixty seven counties that had totally different pricesses for counting votes. You had all sorts of screwed up things where ballots were lost. In Philadelphia, the count from the Secretary of Stage, who's a Democrat, was of absentee ballances were inconsistent. And so I could see the frustration that people have on how screwed up our systems are. And one of the basic things that's missing is basic
voter ID. Hard to imagine that you can show up at the polls and you don't have to show ID, but yet you can't get on an airplane with that idea. It seems so obvious, and yet we haven't been able to get voter ID passed in Pennsylvania. That's one thing that I would stand from the top of the Mountain and scream that we need that in Pennsylvania and we need that everywhere. It seems so obvious.
It's but they're winning. So you make a good point. It seems so obvious, and yet they are winning on these issues with young people. Somehow they are able to twist the message in a way that young people go, my gosh, how terrible of you two quire of Voto, I d How do Republicans bring that take that message back?
Now? I think it's it's got to start from the first day of the campaign is thinking about election day and all the work that needs to go into that and making the case that we want everybody to vote. We want every legal person to commit and vote. And in Pennsylvania. I don't know about the story in Michigan, but the fact that we didn't embrace absentee ballots killed us. It killed us in Pennsylvania. And you know that narrative that Republicans are going to vote on election day, and
you know that that was devastating. And so we've got to do a better job. And there's initiatives underway here to really look at low propensity voters and figure out how to reach them, how to encourage them to vote, how to encourage them to vote by mail and play that game. The Democrats executed much better than we did on that plan. And there's obviously all the election irregularities, but just on the basic mail in ballot, they outperformed.
So the person that beat me in the primary was memodas he started on election day six hundred and fifty seven hundred thousand votes down in the absentee ballot. You can't win elections unless you execute on that, and we didn't, and we need to do a better job in twenty.
Four So what is the message going forward for Republicans? I've been watching everybody kind of pontificate on what Republicans did wrong. I mean, I have my own opinions, certainly having gone through a race and lost as well. But what do you think the message is on a federal level for people?
Well, I think it's three. I think it's three things. I think first and foremost, we need to be unified. I think the Democrats, at least in Pennsylvania were very unified, and we weren't unified, And we spend eighty percent of our time talking about the twenty percent of the things we disagree with among each other. I mean, I don't agree with my wife on eighty percent of things. So we need to unify as a party around candidates that
can win general elections. Winning is important, right, Winning the general election is support particular of purple state like Pennsylvania and at critical state like Michigan, We're gonna have candidates that can win the general election. That's the first thing. The second thing, and again this is my opinion, we need to look forward. We need to look forward, not backward.
So we can spend all the time in the world talking about twenty twenty, but the people I met on the campaign troo, I want to talk about how we're going to fix the inflation which is killing working families, killing people on fixed income, how we're going to stop the fentanyl scourge. Crime in Philadelphia, the murder rates in an all time high. Those are the things we should be talking about. What we're going to do is Republicans
and Conservatives to fix those problems. And three, we need to execute I think on the absentee ballots in Pennsylvania at least Acts seventy seven was passed with Republican support. Those are the rules now of how voting takes place, and we need to within those rules win the game from an execution state point, from a ground game standpoint. If we do that, we're going to win elections. Right now, we're not winning elections, and it's putting our commonwealth and
the country. And because critical states like Pennsylvania Michigan are critical to the majority in the Senate and the House also critical to the future of the country. So those three things make it will make a big difference.
How close is America to falling off the edge when it comes to being a superpower? I mean, it sounds like you think we are in great danger. I also believe that China has been working on one hundred year plan and they're like eighty five years in and we are just asleep at the wheel. We're looking at eight
years ahead and we're missing the boat here. So how scary is it when you look at them having the biggest navy in the world, when you look at them having this outrageous amount of exports and bringing in all of this money, and suddenly people are looking away from the US dollar. How close are we?
Well? I think we're in crisis. I think in economic terms, thirty one trillion dollars debt Sky high inflation, national curity, the challenge from China. China has a plan technologically superior in many areas, and I think spiritually, the basic premise of our exceptional country, the idea of merit capitalism, the fact that America is the most uniquely successful country in the world in terms of bringing people out of poverty.
All those things are being challenged. And that's why eighty percent of Americans think we're headed in the wrong direction. Is why two thirds of parents think their kids are going to be less well off than they are. And that's why sixty percent of Americas living paycheck to paycheck. So we're in crisis. But here's the contradiction. Because I believe we are a super power apparel, I'm optimistic. And the reason I'm optimistic is because this is the American tradition.
We get to the edge of the cliff and we pull ourselves back. We've done this throughout history. The Civil War is a good example. In my lifetime, I think I'm a good bit older than you. But in nineteen seventy nine, I was fifteen, and under Jimmy Carter, we had sky high inflation, we had an incredible disaster with desert one where we tried to rescue our Iranian hostage. American hostage is held in Iran. We lost eight service members. A lot like Afghanistan. We had sky high prices for gas.
There was odd days and even days. You had to go to the pump on your odd day or even day to get your gas. Eighty percent of Americans thought the country was headed in the wrong direction, just like today and four years later when I was a plea but West Point, I'm walking across the campus and America's back, the economy's on fire, inflations in check, we're building up the military. Mourning in America under Ronald Reagan leadership and good conservative policies matter.
I'm hearing you say that if you study history, then you would see we've been close to this before, and there is hope.
Absolutely, there's hope, but it depends on what we do. Decline is a choice, but so is renewal. So if we can get the right leadership in place, America is incredibly resilient. I'd still rather be an American than any other person in the world. I'd still rather be in our country and have our hand for playing poker. I'd rather have our hand than any other hand, but we could really screw this up.
So oh no, I one percent agree with you on all of that. I'm so grateful to be an American. Really quick, before I let you go, I've got to have you comment on culture wars. What's your thought there.
I think it's a progressive ideology that's permeating our schools, our military, or business community. I'm a veteran of the army.
Yeah, what do you think about that? When you see the trans.
Let me give you an example of this. Under the Biden administration, the army released its climate change strategy before it released its war fighting strategy. Yeah. So it's it's pervasive and the only way to fix this is with leadership. We got to have the right leadership on these top of these institutions. I think the progressive movement has pushed things so far that the pendulum is starting to swing back. I think school choice for us as conservatives, I think
we're at a tipping point. I think what parents saw during COVID looking over the shoulder of their kids, about the sexualization in elementary schools, about the history of America, that America was conceived in sin I think all of these things are at a place where we could actually really change the game in a very positive ways based on the crisis we feel at the moment.
I'm with you, and I see it every day that the folks that are against choice school choice are out there getting louder and they're more scared. And they are because you see states like Arkansas, Iowa, and Florida Oklahoma all going to a choice model and it's working. And I think we're going to see success. And we have to because we've never seen scores as low in reading, math and history. But we can all keep fighting this fight. I'm anxious to see where your fight goes, David, and
what you do next. So I won't ask you if you're running. I'll just say we're hoping that that might be in the future.
Well, that's mutual. I'm anxious to see what you do as well. And thank you. Really admire what you've done in Michigan, and thank you for having me on.
Yes, absolutely, David McCormick. Make sure you check out his book, Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America. I think that's what we all want and we're so grateful that you came on today. David. Thank you, Thanks dear, and thank you all for joining me on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go to tutordisonpodcast
dot com. You can subscribe right there, or go to Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you join us next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have an awesome day.