Capital-Star Q&A: Deluzio on tariffs, the Democratic Party's future, and 'Monopoly Busters'

Yahoo

14-05-2025

U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio announces his intention to seek a second term during an event in Collier Township on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (Steve Mellon/For the Penn Capital-Star)
U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio's (D-Allegheny) successful reelection campaign was one of the lone bright spots for Pennsylvania Democrats in 2024. Republicans in the Keystone State carried the commonwealth's 19 electoral votes which helped propel Donald Trump back into the White House; Dave McCormick unseated the longest serving Democratic senator in Pennsylvania history, Bob Casey; GOP candidates won all three state row offices (attorney general, auditor general, and treasurer), and flipped two U.S. House seats in the process. However, Deluzio's victory in a battleground district over GOP state Rep. Rob Mercuri earned him a second term.
He represents a purple region in western Pennsylvania and penned an op-ed in the New York Times in March saying 'anti-tariff absolutism is a mistake.' Deluzio recently joined U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to speak at rallies in Harrisburg and Bethlehem along the Vermont Independent's 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour, and NBC News reports that he's viewed 'as someone who could be a future statewide candidate' in Pennsylvania.
As Democrats continue to chart a path forward to better connect with voters, Deluzio spoke with the Pennsylvania Capital-Star about President Donald Trump's tariff policies, focusing on economic populism, joining the 'Monopoly Busters' caucus, and more.
This interview was edited for length and clarity:
Capital-Star: ​​In November, you were elected to serve your second term in Congress. What are your priorities for this session?
Deluzio: Well, I think we still have a big opportunity to pass my Railway Safety Act and get rail safety done.
This is, I think, an urgent priority for so many of my constituents and people like us who live close to the tracks.
And I always bring out this point: I think my Railway Safety Act may have been the only bill that Joe Biden and Donald Trump both agreed about and supported as they were running for president.
Senator Vance was even one of my co-sponsors in the Senate.
So, I think it's something we can get done.
I also want to be clear, the railroads continue to lobby hard against rail safety efforts.
There's reporting, even this last week, that they are pushing the Trump administration to roll back the two person minimum staffing requirement that the Biden administration had put out.
And so, I highlight that to make the point that the powerful railroads do not want to see us succeed to get rail safety passed.
I think we've got to do it to keep us safer from derailments like East Palestine.
I also get to a problem I see that is bigger than just one bill.
I'm 40 years old, so people my age, around my age, and younger, you know, we're the first Americans, really, since the Second World War, that the data says you shouldn't expect to be better off than your parents and that's really unacceptable to me.
I think that goes to the heart of the American dream.
I think corruption has had such a big impact on why you have such a corporate stranglehold in our economy, why growth struggles, why people can't make ends meet.
And so, I want to take on that corruption, I've been working on congressional stock trading bans.
I've got a whole defend democracy agenda around combating corruption, so I'm really going to keep pushing on that. I think it's such a major problem, not just for our economy, but for people's trust in our government.
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Capital-Star: President Donald Trump's tariff policies have played a significant role in his second term, thus far. I know most Democrats have been vocal against Trump's tariffs policy. I know you've criticized it at points in time as well, but you did pen an op-ed in the New York Times saying that it was time for Democrats to 'rethink our stance on tariffs.'
So I want to ask you, do you think Democrats are making a mistake in how they've talked about tariffs during Trump's second term thus far?
Deluzio: I think the Trump tariffs have been really bad and hurtful to American workers and industry, and I think Democrats have been nearly unanimous in condemning them.
And you've heard from so many in the business world about how harmful they have been.
What I'd like to see is a strong Democratic alternative that yes, will include some targeted enforcement.
I'm thinking strategic sectors like ship building or steel against trade cheats like China, paired with real and meaningful industrial policy here at home. That means incentivizing companies to bring that production back home, to incentivize investment from friendly countries to invest here in America and American assembly lines, and you've got to be focused on parts of the economy where there is a national security impact: semiconductor chips was a good example. But we should be thinking about that for steel, for ship building, and any other sector where we need a strong industrial base.
I serve on the Armed Services Committee. I will tell you there is round agreement and concern about our defense industrial base's ability to ramp up, if, God forbid, we're ever in another major war.
And so these issues of our manufacturing power are not just some academic debates. They have real consequences for our military readiness, and of course, I always connect the dots between what happened in places like western Pennsylvania, whether you're talking about glass manufacturing in the A-K Valley, steelmaking all along the Ohio River in my district.
Trade really hurt communities, like many that I represent, and I don't ever want to see us go back to just a race to the bottom. We've got to get this right for American workers and American jobs.
Capital-Star: Earlier this month, you joined U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for two of his appearances on his 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour in Pennsylvania. So, why did you decide to join him for those events that were outside of your district?
Deluzio: I think what you're seeing is a lot of frustration with some Republican members of Congress. Scott Perry's district was one in particular, I joined, for their willingness to push these dangerous and harmful cuts to Medicaid to support this Republican, partisan tax bill that would saddle all of us with trillions of deficit spending and balloon the debt.
And I think it's important.
Folks are pretty fired up across the country.
They're mad about this corruption that I see in our government, and whether it's congressional stock trading or the outsized influence of corporate money in our politics. They want something to change.
And I made the point talking at both of these rallies that whether you call the folks who are running the show oligarchs or robber barons, or, as I might say in western Pennsylvania, corporate jagoffs. We know who we're talking about and their control of our political system.
That's not a problem just for one party or one candidate. I think you have to confront this for the sake of American democracy and I'm going to go wherever I can at the means we're going to rebuild trust in our government, and if we're going to fix our economy, so that people who work hard can get by.
And to me, that is about making sure that hard working people have a bigger share of the pie and that we can also grow the pie.
Capital-Star: Do you think Democrats should be embracing more of the message from Senator Sanders or someone like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez right now?
Deluzio: I think the message that I put up on that stage both nights, which was about fighting oligarchy and fighting corruption, is a winning one.
It is grounded in patriotism. It is grounded in a belief that if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to have a shot at the American dream, and we've got to unrig our economy, so that it works for folks.
That is a message that is not just good politics, but it's grounded in policies that people want, that we know can work to get more competition in our economy to make it so that people who are working hard can afford their life.
I think that's where my party should go.
Capital-Star: Although I was unable to cover your appearance with Senator Sanders in both Bethlehem and Harrisburg, I did cover Senator Sanders' appearance in Philadelphia on May Day. He spoke at a rally led by the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, and during that speech, he had an interesting quote, and I wanted to ask you about it. He said 'to my Democratic colleagues in the Congress, stop defending the status quo economically.'
Do you think Democrats have been defending the status quo economically?
Deluzio: I certainly haven't, because I know, and I think my constituents know that things haven't been working out as well as we should demand that they do.
If you're my age or younger, right? So, you're either (in your) early 40s, 30s, 20s, the data suggests you probably won't be better off than your parents.
We should never accept that, and we should be clear about the fact that people who are working hard right now struggle to pay for child care, pay for housing, pay for health care, you name it.
And we've got big corporate monopolies who have made it too hard for small businesses to compete.
None of that should be the status quo we accept, especially when we've lived now through years of supply chain problems and rising prices for people.
So no, I don't accept that and I think we have to be clear to connect the dots between those economic problems and the corruption in Washington.
And I talk to my constituents, Democrats or Republicans, they hate the corruption that they sense, and congressional stock trading is part of it. I think the Trump administration's willingness to do things like accept a new massive jumbo jet from a foreign government is about this kind of corruption, and so people don't like it, and they shouldn't like it.
They should be mad about the state of our economy, and they should want better and I think they do.
And whether you're Democrat or Republican, we should be willing to be clear about who's causing these problems and what we're doing about it.
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Capital-Star: Last month, you joined a few of your colleagues in launching the Monopoly Busters Caucus. So, I wanted to ask you, why did you decide to join this caucus?
Deluzio: Well, I think we've seen the lack of competition really hurt American capitalism.
It's bad for workers. It's bad for rising prices, and it's really bad for small businesses.
So, I was really honored that I had a couple small business owners join me, a father-son team that runs an independent pharmacy in Aspinwall in Allegheny County, and they shared how their small business really has gotten squeezed by pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs, who are essentially middlemen with lots of power in the healthcare economy. They're vertically integrated, and they really have led to these independent small business pharmacies closing and dying across Pennsylvania and across the country.
They've made things worse for people who need the prescription drugs, costs are rising, as we know, and so I think it's really important that you heard from someone like that.
These are small business owners who deliver a really critical service, especially to seniors, to get prescription drugs to folks, and how monopoly power is hurting their business, and really how it's hurting all of us in Pennsylvania.
Capital-Star: A Fox News national poll and a Reuters poll released last week, but conducted in late April, showed that President Donald Trump's approval rating was 11 points underwater. However, Democrats in that same Fox poll… that the Democrats' approval rating was also double digits in the red.
So, how do you think the national Democratic Party has arrived at this point? And what do you think they can do to essentially boost those numbers, even though, again, President Donald Trump's approval rating right now is also in the red?
Deluzio: I've been with colleagues of mine in the House, pushing forward what we're calling economic populism, or economic patriotism, which to me, ties together these fights against corruption and this fight to restore the American Dream.
I think it's where we got to go.
It has to put the economic fight right at the heart of what my party is about.
It's got to be unrigging the economy, taking on this corruption, and doing the things in our government to get competition and to make it so that when you're working hard, you can actually afford your life in America. And if you're working hard, you're playing by the rules, you got your shot at the American dream.
I think that's where my party has to go.
And I think the corruption problem – I talk about congressional stock trading a lot: it is not unique to either party. I think I want to see Democrats be crystal clear about fighting it and fighting the horrible influence of unlimited corporate money in our politics.
I think too many have cozied up over the years for that corporate money. It's time to break that hold on our politics and be bold about it.