Wesley Bell Presses Military Official About The Effect Of Tariffs On NATO Defense Spending Goals

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During a House Armed Services Committee hearing held before the congressional recess, Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) questioned Military officials about the effect of Trump's tariffs on NATO ally defense spending.

Transcript

00:00Gentleman yields back. Chair now recognizes Mr. Bell of Missouri.

00:04Thank you, Mr. Chair and the ranking member. Ms. Thompson, General Cavoli, thank you for being

00:15here. And also, General, I want to add to the course of thanking you for 38 years of service.

00:23I would be remiss if I did not express my deepest condolences to the families of the four service

00:29members who tragically lost their life serving our nation in Lithuania. But again, thank you for

00:39your service. And on behalf of my district in the St. Louis region, we want to thank you. And since

00:46you got a little time, if you ever want to come out, we're known for a beer. You can have that now,

00:51right? We're known for that in Cardinal's game. So while our European allies have been working to

01:00increase their defense spending to meet the 2% NATO defense spending target, the administration's

01:09recent decision to impose tariffs on nearly every NATO country and allied partner could undermine

01:16these efforts and potentially slow our collective progress. General Cavoli, how do you foresee these

01:24tariffs impacting the defense spending of our European allies?

01:29You know, I don't know, Congressman. Sir, in an economic sense, I'm not an economist, so I can't,

01:38I can't, you know, walk through the trail of how it'll work. I do know that our allies are determined

01:45to increase their defense capability and capacity, no matter where they buy things from, or no matter,

01:51no matter how they get it. That is nearly a universal sentiment in the alliance right now.

01:58And to spend more than 2% as you go around, you hear a lot of that.

02:03And are these countries now less likely to meet the 2% target due to these tariffs? And will this hurt

02:10our European allies, including the Baltic states, who outspend the U.S., you know, as a percentage of GDP?

02:17Mr. Sir, if, if they're unable to access our market, or if they have to pay more than expected

02:26for, for equipment, certainly that's going to, going to affect how much capacity they can build,

02:32how quickly. I don't know how the tariffs will exactly do that, though.

02:36In the past six months, Russian and Chinese ships have been implicated in sabotaging undersea cables.

02:45This comes as no surprise, given Russia's ongoing efforts to target Ukrainian power cables,

02:52telecom links, and gas pipelines since, since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. General, how is European

03:00command addressing the threat of sabotage or disruption of undersea cables in European waters,

03:07and what steps are being taken to mitigate the risks posed by state actors, particularly Russian China?

03:16So European command, sir, first, as with some of the other responses, shares intelligence when, when we get

03:22intelligence on this to support our allies as they defend their own infrastructure. We also defend our own

03:29U.S. critical infrastructure that's overseas. Interestingly, the biggest collective defenses

03:40of critical national infrastructure don't involve the U.S. hardly at all. So last year, I started an

03:48operation called Baltic Sentry, where we brought together under NATO command, voluntarily donated ships and

03:54crews as well as coastal defense radars from the Baltic allies, the allies in the Baltics and the Nordics,

04:02and we sewed those together into a, into a single operation that surveils and increases our

04:09understanding of what's going on in the surface and below the surface of the Baltic Sea. For the longest

04:14time, there were no U.S. ships involved in that. There are no U.S. ships involved in it today. I think I have

04:1840 Marines who temporarily helped with a, a couple of radars. Um, I, and I think they may have departed

04:24already. So this is an example of our allies taking that upon themselves as, as, as they should and

04:30happily. And let me, if I could get one more question in general, can you discuss the implications

04:36if the administration, administration withdraws U.S. troops from Syria? How might this affect our

04:42counterterrorism efforts in the eastern Mediterranean? So it would mainly, from my perspective, uh, affect

04:53our ability to, uh, collect intelligence. Um, and, um, and I have to leave that at, at that in, in open

05:01session, sir. Um, you know, I, I concern myself very much with the, with the Russian presence in the eastern

05:07Mediterranean. That has been greatly weakened. The gentleman's times expired.

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