Saturday, Congressman Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) addressed the Shelby County Republican Women.
“We have got a pretty tough row to hoe going forward,” Palmer said candidly. “We are in position to both hold the House and grow our lead in the Senate. We have got really good candidates, unlike some previous years.”
Palmer said that Republicans have a good shot at picking up Senate seats in Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri, and West Virginia. Rick Scott has gotten a great shot in Florida. In Minnesota Al Franken’s seat might be in play. Bob Mendez in New Jersey. Even in New Jersey there is a level of corruption they won’t put up with.
“MSNBC, CBS and ABC will not report the good things that we have done,” Palmer said. “We could land someone in Mars and find gold and they would not report it.”
“I am Vice Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee,” Palmer said. “I have been focused on repealing the Energy Security Act of 1980. They passed that when they thought we would be out of oil in 15 years.”
The repeal passed, Palmer said. We now are exporting oil. We are now the leading oil producer in the world and soon will pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil exporter. This will add 964,000 jobs and improve our trade deficit by over a $trillion. There is also liquified natural gas. I have made a couple of trips where my main focus was on energy issues. Georgia, Estonia, Lithuania have all agreed to buy their energy from the U.S. because they want to be out from under the thumb of Russia. I am trying to put together a trip to Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, and Azerbaijan. “We are already shipping liquified natural gas to Poland and Lithuania.”
Vladimir Putin has used his energy income to modernize their military, Palmer said. “Their entire economy is built on their energy.
“I don’t like the tariff approach, at least broad based,” Palmer said. “I am going to see how this works out.”
Palmer said that China is the principal problem with trade and that he has had talks with the administration about that.
“We are within 5 percent of the Chinese now in manufacturing,” Palmer said. “We have higher productivity and we have lower energy costs.” American power projection has been based on our military and on economics. I favor adding a third leg and that is energy.
“Vietnam fears the Chinese,” Palmer said. “They want to work with us.” China is not playing a short game they are not worried about the next five years, they are thinking about the next 25 years, the next 40 years. “India has a fast growing economy and they are going to catch China in population. We need to pivot to India and help them grow their economy. That is how you deal with China. China is in a tough spot right now. They are over built and under capitalized.”
Palmer said that he thought that tariffs on raw steel and aluminum was a mistake but that their was a place for targeted tariffs on manufactured goods.
“I was in a meeting with Peter Navaro and Larry Kudlow before I left and it was pretty intense,” Palmer said. With Europe we put together very favorable trade agreements with Europe and Japan to help them recovered from World War II and those need to be renegotiated.
Speaking of President Trump, Palmer said, “I wish he would explain it someplace else other than intweets which often times are not very helpful.”
Congressman Gary Palmer faces Danner Kline (D) in the November 6 general election.’’
