From Washington: How Will the Trump Administration Take On China & Russia?
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Sunday, November 24th, 2024. I'm Jared Halpern. President-elect Trump's picks to lead foreign policy are seen as a signal to China. What President Trump might say is that we don't want to manage this. If they're going to be this aggressive, we want to win. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. This week, President Biden asked Congress for another nearly $100 billion in disaster relief, including for people in Western North Carolina. But it's not the only thing.

Is that amount even enough as disaster expenses climb year after year? We need FEMA, but we need FEMA to operate efficiently. And right now, it's just not. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington. For the last time in office, President Biden met this past week with G20 leaders telling the world's richest countries they've all made a lot of progress the past four years. We all know. We all know what it takes.

History is watching us. History is watching. I urge us to keep faith and keep going. The president says world leaders need to stay focused on shared challenges with combating climate change at the top of that list. This is the single greatest existential threat to humanity if we do not deal with climate change.

Our children, our great-grandchildren, our great-great-grandchildren, their future is going to be determined by what we do. But in Rio de Janeiro, where the G20 was held, reports indicate world leaders were more interested in the next U.S. president and what a second Trump administration will mean for many of the U.S. commitments made over the last four years.

There are clues to how President-elect Trump plans to reorient U.S. foreign policy by the people he's tapped to top diplomatic in National Security Post, led by Secretary of State nominee Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Victoria Coats served in the first Trump administration as Deputy National Security Advisor. She's now the vice president of the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Security in Foreign Policy. I think it's a terrific nomination. Senator Rubio obviously has been on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a decade. He also serves on the Intelligence Committee. It's very well known internationally.

And he will be the first Secretary of State, if confirmed, who is both sanctioned by and prohibited from visiting China.

something that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. But now I think that's perfectly appropriate for the American Secretary of State and I think sends exactly the right message to Beijing about how President Trump is going to approach the growing confrontation with China. So I think a very strong pick. Obviously, his confirmation should go very smoothly. And that's also a very good thing for an incoming president.

administration. So overall, very high marks on that one. Yeah. You know, I know it used to be kind of said that politics stop at the water's edge. I'm not sure if that is true anymore, but it does seem even in our very divided political climate that China has been a uniter of the parties. Right. We've seen that this House China Committee meeting

You have a lot of bipartisan buy in. You have seen Democrats be as vocal as Republicans about their concerns about China. How does that relationship look now? Does it look different in a Trump administration than it has over the last four years of a Biden administration?

Yeah, as you as you said, there is bipartisan understanding of the threat from China. And, you know, if you look at the polling, China polls poorly amongst about 80 percent of the American people. So that's that's pretty much a mandate. The big difference between the Biden Harris administration and the incoming Trump dance administration is

It's going to be on prioritization. If you look at the sort of fundamental documents of the Biden-Harris administration, the national security strategy, the national defense strategy,

They all prioritize climate as the top existential threat to the to the United States, a prioritization that was echoed by President Biden as recently as yesterday in Rio when discussing his legacy. And he said that climate was the existential threat to the United States. And if you think that, which I believe they honestly do, yes.

then you can't prioritize China over that. And in that case, you also have to get a deal with China of some form to get to your climate goals because they're the world's largest polluter. So I think that has led to some muddled messaging on China for the last four years. But I think

President Trump, while certainly no enemy of the climate, who lowered emissions to a historic level during his first term, at the same time, I think he would prioritize China as a much more immediate and deadly threat to the United States than climate. So I think he's going to be much less constrained in the actions he can take on China. We have seen President Biden talk about needing to manage this competitive situation.

relationship with China, that we are competitors, but we can't let that veer into conflict or confrontation. I'm curious just with the names that we've seen, whether it is Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Senator Rubio at State, even some of the picks now that we've seen with Congresswoman Stefanik at the UN, if you think that still sort of is the mantra for the U.S. over the next four years.

Well, President-elect Trump has been very clear. He doesn't want to fight with China. He wants China to do well, but he wants them to behave themselves. And clearly, China has been on a very aggressive program against the United States, including here at home. And I think one of the things the president-elect is going to be very concerned about are, for example, the deepwater port that Chairman Xi inaugurated last week in Lima, Peru. I think he'll be concerned about the gigantic

Chinese embassy in the Bahamas, which happens to be the largest embassy in the world, 180 nautical miles from Miami. So this is all, you know, China taking these actions in our hemisphere. So we don't want, you know, to fight with them. But I think what...

What President Trump might say is that we don't want to manage this. If they're going to be this aggressive, we want to win. And so I think that will be how he puts America first. And yes, I agree with all of these picks, including Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon with the ambassadorial picks. I think he is sending that message very, very clearly.

Do you foresee in sort of the earlier part of the President-elect's term maybe a sit-down with President Xi?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is one of President Trump's signature sort of MOs is that he will meet with anyone. He'll always take a meeting. And, you know, he got on fine with Chairman Xi. He has no illusions about him or, you know, what China is up to. But certainly he'll talk. He'd be happy to make a deal with China. But it's going to be a fair deal for the American people. It's not going to be the kind of

rip offs that we've had in the past where China takes tremendous advantage of America. And one of the things that caught my attention is China around the Biden Xi summit that just took place issued their new so-called red lines, one of which, of course, is Taiwan. But another one they came up with this time is their status as a developing nation. They want to retain that.

And I think President Trump might say that's a little ridiculous for the world's second largest economy. But what that means is in bodies like the United Nations, they get special status. They're allowed to keep polluting under the most recent proposed WHO treaty, which thankfully has not been ratified. But under the terms of that treaty, if it were ratified,

if there was another pandemic, the United States would have to give China as a developing nation technology and money to fight the pandemic that they might have caused. So I think that, you know, this for these reasons, you know, this this is going to be a very different approach under President Trump. What do you see the U.S. reaction being or the Trump administration reaction being in the event that China makes a move on Taiwan?

You know, this is something they're going to have to develop, you know, as the team gets confirmed and into place. And I don't want to get ahead of the president-elect on this or any of his cabinet officials. I think, you know, the reality is that we have a very heavy dependency on the technical expertise of Taiwan, the manufacturing capacity of Taiwan. It is unique.

Even the CHIPS Act hasn't succeeded in replicating it here. China has spent tens of billions of dollars over the past decade trying to replicate it in China, and it has failed. So I think there are going to have to be some very hard discussions as the new team, as I said, comes together about what the United States is prepared to do. One piece of good news in that is that the attitude of Taiwan has dramatically shifted over the last really five years

towards a much more forward-leaning approach to their defenses. They're spending much, much more on their defenses. They're buying all of that equipment from the United States. And so I think working with them to improve their defenses is something we could expect to see the new administration do.

Let me stay in that region. One of the things that President Biden has tried to do is enhance a lot of the partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, obviously creating stronger ties between Japan and South Korea. You have AUKUS and you have the Quad in India. Are those relationships going to change at all under the new administration?

Oh, I would see that cooperation only getting stronger because remember the whole concept of the Quad was actually a Trump administration initiative. And so, you know, I think credit to the Biden administration for seeing that's just a good idea that we have a very strong network of allies in the Pacific.

At the Heritage Foundation, we've also been doing a lot of work on the Pacific Island nations, which can grant the United States additional, particularly naval, but also aviation assets in the region. And so I see that continuing. I think President Biden

Trump will focus much more on what you might call hard power in the region rather than, you know, agreements on climate and such that have been the priority of the Biden-Harris administration. But all of that is just a good idea.

I mean, I asked that because there have been comments by by the president elect about maybe South Korea needs to pay more. It raised some questions during the campaign about his commitment to defending a soul in the event of an attack from Pyongyang. Is any of that in question in your view?

Oh, I think certainly, you know, President Trump wants all of our partners and allies, and I certainly include our NATO allies in that, to do their fair share. That he's sick of the United States bearing a disproportionate burden for collective defense. And the fact that we have obligations in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, nobody else.

has that kind of burden on them. And so I think it is the top priority for him that our very successful and wealthy allies in particular do their fair share. So I don't think that then leads to a lack of commitment on the part of the United States. I think it's wanting our partners and allies to be as committed as we are to their defenses. So South Korea should not worry that the

the U.S. would not help in the event of an attack? Not if they are caring at least as much about their own defenses as we do. Do you see the, we've heard, you know, a lot of administrations dating back probably a quarter century talk about this pivot to Asia. Is that really where the U.S. foreign policy focus ought to be, the Pacific and the Indo-Pacific region?

It is certainly a point of focus. Unfortunately, as I just said, being the United States, we're not just a Pacific power. We are also an Atlantic power and we also have significant interests in the Middle East. So we're going to have to be able to walk and chew gum. But I think, you know, the kind of post-Cold War sense that that the Pacific wasn't a danger to us in any way, you

that that has changed. And so maybe a little bit more of a World War II kind of approach that we are going to have to pay attention to both the oceans that flank us and make sure that we are sufficiently postured to defend our interests in the Pacific if needs be. Is the U.S. in a Cold War with China?

Well, at the Heritage Foundation, we certainly think so because we published a report two years ago titled The New Cold War. So I think this is a similar kind of conflict in terms of it not being immediately kinetic conflict.

that there's a lot of kind of proxy jockeying going on. But it is certainly a different world that the president-elect is inheriting now than he handed over to President Biden in 2021. And that is, to my eye, because China is increasingly brazenly creating its own networks.

of partners and allies. And it's China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea that are now functioning increasingly collectively. And so we see things like North Korean troops going to Russia for the war in Ukraine. We have Iranian drones also going to Russia, but then we have Russian missiles going to the Iranian proxies

in Yemen, and we have Russian arms going to Hezbollah in Lebanon for attacks on Israel. So this is, as I said, increasingly collective and all under the direction of China, because those other three countries are increasingly and exclusively economically dependent on China. And so this is a new challenge that is very different from

The world, as I said, we had in 2017 when we wrote President Trump's first national security strategy. And it's going to take a very nimble and strategic team to confront it. You mentioned Russia. That's actually where I wanted to go next and really finish this conversation. That has been maybe the most –

contentious relationship that President Biden, the Biden administration has had, obviously the invasion of Ukraine, the underlying component to that. Is there any fences to be mended? Ought fences be mended with this ongoing invasion and occupation in parts of Ukraine between the United States and Russia, between an American president and President Putin?

It's certainly a very bad situation right now and escalating dramatically, really, in the last week since President Biden made the decision to permit the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, the Atakoms and HIMARS, against Russia. And now we're having kind of a, again, Cold War-style tit-for-tat going back and forth, but it does appear to be escalating right now. So

The president elect is going to inherit a very tense relationship there. He's going to inherit the partnership without limits between Putin and Xi that was established in February of 2022, which has expanded dramatically, as we were just discussing. And so, you know, I think.

President Trump, fortunately, is a known quantity to Vladimir Putin, who knows he is not to be trifled with. I think it's always noteworthy that the one president over the last three or four, rather, under which Putin did not invade a neighbor was President Trump. And so hopefully, Putin will realize that there's a much stronger hand coming back to Washington and

and behave accordingly. But there's no sugarcoating the fact that the relationship is in a very, very bad place. And it's hard for me to see it getting much better anytime soon. Should the two leaders meet? Again, as with Chairman Xi, I think President Trump would have no problem meeting with Vladimir Putin. Certainly he wants to discuss what is possible in terms of ending the war in Ukraine. So I would expect that might happen.

Does ending the war in Ukraine change any international borders in your view? That is to be negotiated. You know, borders do change. This has happened historically a number of different places.

And I mean, as recently as during the Trump administration, when we recognized the Western Sahara as sovereign Moroccan territory or we recognized the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory. You know, that said, one does not want to reward Putin for his war of aggression in Ukraine. So I think that's something that would have to be have to be negotiated. But I think President Trump would be very interested in negotiating from a position of strength.

And I don't think the Biden-Harris administration has done the sorts of things that would exert significant economic pressure on Russia. I mean, heck, their economy grew by 3.8 percent this year. You know, that's that's hardly an economy in distress.

we didn't grow by as much. So I think maybe President Trump would want to do some things, judging from what he said on the campaign trail, to get some leverage over Russia. So you're not just handing Ukraine to Russia in this negotiated settlement, but rather getting something satisfactory for the United States. Do you expect the U.S. military assistance to wind down? I think it's going to have to.

You know, we are facing increasing, as I said earlier, obligations in the Middle East. We do have to be conscious of Asia. We're over $160 billion into this thing. Secretary Blinken announced this week that he's going to try to stuff as much of the $60 billion that was in the most recent emergency supplemental out the door before they're out of there on January 20th. That money was supposed to be programmed to last through September of 2025.

So I think they're trying to kind of force President Trump's hand, force him to try to issue more aid to Ukraine. But I don't think there's a lot of appetite for that in the U.S. Congress, and it's not something he can do unilaterally. So I would expect that to also be winding down. Would you expect some of these restrictions that were lifted? You mentioned the ATACOMs, you mentioned the HIMARS. Will that continue, do you think, because the president can kind of put limits on that, can't he?

Well, it's hard to stuff that genie back in the bottle. Yeah, you know, when you've done it, I mean, it's hard to take that back.

So I don't know what their strategy is going to be along those lines. And because I don't know what the Biden strategy was for this. I mean, two years ago in the fall of 22, President Biden, when asked for precisely this capacity, said no, because that would lead us into World War III. Well, certainly...

President Trump doesn't want World War III. And for that reason, I'd like to know why this is the moment when Biden decided this was a good idea and not two years ago. And so that's the kind of question they're going to have to grapple with. It's a good question for sure. Victoria Coates, appreciate your insight, your analysis.

There are a lot of issues that are going to hit the Resolute Desk on January 20th abroad. And I'm happy you were able to kind of give us some insight to how those are going to be handled. We'll talk soon. Sounds good. Thank you. How about listening to the sounds of Istanbul?

Beautiful, isn't it? But you can't discover the coolest city in the world just by listening. Check Istanbul.GoTurkiye.com now and plan your Istanbul trip today.

This week, members of Congress found out President Biden is asking for nearly $100 billion in additional disaster relief funding, specifically for responses to Hurricane Milton and Helene. The request came down as FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was set to testify before Congress. Some lawmakers did want to know more about why a FEMA worker had skipped over homes impacted by Hurricane Milton in Florida that had

that it had Trump flags or signs in the yard. There is nothing in FEMA's policy that would ever direct anybody to avoid anybody, regardless of political affiliation or way of life. Our mission is to help all people before, during and after disasters. Criswell told a congressional hearing this week that that worker was fired. And she said while she doesn't believe other FEMA workers operate like that, she did request an investigation.

Now, as far as funding goes, though, money for disasters is running low. The National Flood Insurance Program is in trouble. Criswell says for most people, that is their only source of help after flooding. At 2D8, I believe the number is somewhere over $800 million that we have paid out in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. But we will...

quickly run out of funding from that fund without the debt relief. And we'll have to go to the Treasury and ask for additional funding to pay those claims. But there's also broad concern about the overall lack of disaster relief funding. We seem to keep falling behind with these one year, I think it's called as needed funding. Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch expressed concern that we seem to lack enough disaster funding year after year after year. You don't have a multi-year program where you can actually

try to get ahead of some of this stuff. So we're still dealing with Hawaii. We're still dealing with some of these 2017 disasters that we haven't caught up to. For a decade leading up to 2019, we had an average of 13 disasters a year that ended up costing us a billion dollars or more in damages. But last year alone, we had more than double that. And before Hurricane Helene this year,

We had already had 20 such disasters. Well, I've not completed my review of the president's supplemental request. North Carolina Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards. We've been putting our own together here in my office based off of feedback that we've received from FEMA, from the Small Business Administration, from our local and county governments and our constituents.

I understand money is low, right? And we can do this piece by piece. But what is your biggest concern when you look at this overall? I know the FEMA disaster relief fund is apparently low. How low, especially in the event, God forbid, we should have another disaster?

The thing that I'm comfortable with is before we adjourn for our October work session, we added $20 billion in disaster recovery funding to FEMA's budget.

And that was plenty enough to get us started. Little did I know that next disaster would happen right in my very own district. Right. But that gave us plenty of funds to get started. There's no question that now is the time that we're back in session and we recognize the destruction to western North Carolina.

We simply to add some funding to those different programs. My main concern is putting money in programs that will actually work. I've met members of Congress from around the nation that have dealt with natural disasters and received quite a bit of good feedback on those programs that are efficient in helping people.

constituents rebuild and those that just get caught up in bureaucracy where money's not able to be sent out the door. So we know, for example, like North Carolina's governor, Roy Cooper, is asking for, I think, a billion, right? And he's got a list of transportation-related needs, SBA, Small Business Administration. There's a whole laundry list of things. Is it better for

you guys all you all in Congress to come up with ways to put money into different federal pots or should should things shift or are things shifting so that depending on the needs of a state or county that that money should specifically just go directly to a local level rather than to a another federal agency?

I don't believe that the solution is a one-size-fits-all. I believe that we should look at each individual program on its own merits and then have dialogue with folks like the governor and local governments and the North Carolina legislature to come up with a plan that best fits the needs for this storm. One thing that's

come to mind for me, while this is my first natural disaster, hopefully my only natural disaster while serving in Congress, all the storms are different. Every disaster takes on its own personality, if you will, whether it's wildfires, tornadoes, Midwestern floods, mudslides in California, hurricanes at the coast, or

an inland hurricane as we're dealing with in western North Carolina. And so I don't think it's a one size fits all. I think we have to go through each component and make sure that we hear one another. I meet with the governor later today and some folks from back at home

that serve in local governments. We need to hear from everyone and then put together a plan that addresses the needs that are in front of us right now. Okay, but given what you just said, time is of the essence, right? So

Do you necessarily I guess what I'm asking is, can we always take the time in every disaster to say, well, now that there's been a disaster weeks later, let's come up with a plan of like how we should spend the money? I think the whole point is the president saying here, give me 98 billion now. Should should there be sort of a new way of addressing how we fund disaster?

disasters so that if time is of the essence, that money can get out the door more quickly, whether it's to a county government, a state government, or whether the federal government should be handling certain aspects of disaster relief? Well, time is certainly of the essence. We have folks back at home right now that will soon be looking for additional funding of FEMA and for small business loans and that sort of thing. But I also think it's important that we get it right.

One of the problems that I've seen with government over the last several years, many times decisions are made at pace that turns into weights. We need to get it right. And we also understand whatever we come up with this time is not going to be perfect.

We'll have to come back at some point in the future and maybe shift some of the funds around, maybe add some funds. Maybe we could take some funds away. But I think it's important that we deliberate and are thoughtful in how we spend our taxpayers' dollars. How bad is it still? I mean, I...

see on my feeds that it still looks really bad. I mean, there are still washed out areas. There are still areas that are inaccessible. It's cold. There are still people without running water. I know most waters come back, but digging out is still happening. How bad is it? What are you hearing? Well, we certainly have a long way to go. We've got about 250 roads that are still impassable.

The main corridor coming into western North Carolina from the western United States is still impassable. About four miles of that cannot be used right now. We've got about 4,800 people in temporary housing and shelters around the district.

There are water systems that still need to be restored. I wouldn't say that we have areas that are totally inaccessible. We've been able to get to neighborhoods and create systems

where folks can get in and out in case of emergencies and get supplies in and out. But we clearly have a long way to go, the most significant of which is probably that we have so many small businesses that have been destroyed, and they're having a tough time making a decision. Do they want to take out the loans that are necessary to rebuild businesses

after putting their life's work, life's savings into those businesses and just coming off of the pandemic. We clearly have a long way to go. We've got a Blue Ridge Parkway that's out in the national forests that are destroyed. We've got a tourism industry that is in peril right now. We've got a lot of work to do.

I keep hearing about SBA, that for all the talk of the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund, that SBA has really been hit among the hardest in terms of lack of funds. Is that top of mind? That is absolutely top of mind. And I know that the president's supplemental request has a little over $2 billion to replenish the fund.

The loan balance that could be administered, I'm not sure if that's enough. That's one of the things that I'm working on right now.

Governor Cooper's office says 2,000 FEMA employees are still on the ground. 9,000 North Carolinians have received housing support from FEMA over the course of this disaster. Do you feel like the federal government is still doing what it can be doing, I guess, on the ground in terms of boots on the ground? Do you want more help from FEMA or how do you feel about it?

Well, we definitely need more help from FEMA. It's not necessarily in boots on the ground. It's in efficiencies in dealing with the thousands of applications that are coming in. Constituents that I'm hearing from are frustrated with the inconsistent communication from FEMA, the bureaucracy of their applications, with the inconsistencies in the responses that FEMA is sending.

to constituents. We need FEMA, but we need FEMA to operate efficiently. And right now, it's just not. And I'm not sure that we can totally rebuild it as needs to be rebuilt right now while we're in the middle of dealing with this natural national emergency. But it certainly lends

The fact we have to have a deeper conversation in being able to address the next disaster. Last question for you, and it addresses that. My understanding is from this is from Baker Donaldson, the law firm. Between 2010 and 2019, the U.S. sustained 131 weather and climate related disasters where overall damages reached or exceeded a billion dollars adjusted for inflation. That's 13 on average a year.

In 2023, we had 28

billion-dollar events, as in at least a billion dollars in damage or more. So more than double what is average. And then as of 2024, we've already had 20 such events. Are we just going to need to put every year far more money into the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund to address these multi-billion-dollar disasters that only seem to be increasing? What is the solution? I think it's an ongoing conversation. There's no question

There seem to be more of these expensive storms taking place, and there's lots of reasons for that, some of which would include that folks are building in riskier and riskier places with more and more expensive facilities. It's a comprehensive discussion that needs to be taking place. Congressman Edwards, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you.

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That will do it for this week's Fox News Rundown from Washington podcast. Tomorrow on the Fox News Rundown, Chief Washington Correspondent Mike Emanuel speaks with South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace on the heels of her efforts to keep the first transgender woman elected to Congress, Delaware Representative-elect Sarah McBride, out of women's restrooms. Thanks for listening. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington.

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