Interview: Rep. Bill Huizenga on the CFPB, Trump’s tariffs, crypto, GITMO, and more

The Lowdown:

• Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.) applauds President Trump’s tariff policies that have led to renegotiating trade policies with Mexico and Canada and getting America a better deal.

• Huizenga, Co-Chair of the Northern Border Caucus, says Canada annexation won’t be “happening by any stretch of the imagination.”

• Huizenga is reintroducing his Strategic Ports Reporting Act to ensure that the State Department and Department of Defense have active roles in countering malign Chinese influence in strategic global ports such like those in Panama.

Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga’s (R., Mich.) home state of Michigan could have been the first to feel the consequences of President Donald Trump’s recently proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. However, Huizenga’s “confidence that [Trump’s] going to be able to” renegotiate America’s deals with bordering countries, much like how he renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — a feat that every president since Bill Clinton failed to do, was well-placed as both of America’s neighbors found off-ramps that many thought might not have existed only a few days ago.

“I think he's going to find willing partners certainly in Canada and hopefully in Mexico as well,” Huizenga had predicted in an interview with the Washington Reporter just prior to the tariff pauses, adding that “the simple fact is that some of the largest trade corridors in the entire world are between the United States and Canada and Mexico. Some of those largest trade routes come right through Michigan as well.”

Following Trump’s initial tariff announcement, Mexico announced that it will crack down on both fentanyl smuggling and on illegal border crossings, and the implementation of the tariffs was delayed a month; likewise Canada too announced a border deal that saw its tariffs delayed a month, despite some sabre-rattling by politicians on both sides of America’s northern border.

Huizenga is a co-chair of the Northern Border Caucus. Trump’s claims that Canada should be America’s 51st state won’t be “happening by any stretch of the imagination,” he said, even though some provinces of Canada have more in common with Idaho than Ontario.

Huizenga has also focused on issues in the Western Hemisphere during his time on the Foreign Affairs Committee — and Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s plans to reassert America in the Americas will make America “a positive force,” he said. “You're going to see a far more engaged America in the Americas. And that's a good thing. And now, with an ally like Javier Milei down in Argentina, setting the pace, there are some real positive things that could be happening all throughout Latin America, and I applaud it.”

During the Biden administration, China flexed its muscles in a major way in Latin America: it controlled ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. That is why Huizenga is reintroducing his Strategic Ports Reporting Act, which is designed to ensure that the State Department and Department of Defense have active roles in countering malign Chinese influence in strategic global ports like those in Panama.

“While the Biden administration disregarded growing concerns from House Republicans about the buildup of China and Russia in our backyard, the Trump administration has immediately taken action,” Huizenga said. “All it took was one visit from Secretary of State Rubio and Panama announced it would not renew its 2017 agreement with China’s BRI. This is a clear statement that a strong presence in the region delivers positive results for American interests.”

Trump has also pressured countries in Latin America to help curb illegal immigration; Trump even suggested housing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in Guantanamo Bay, which Huizenga said “makes a lot of sense. This has been utilized before, whether it was with Haitian boat lifts, or other times where we have seen surges that have overwhelmed our system. We've utilized Guantanamo, and the Biden administration was clearly welcoming the previous influx. That's part of the problem.”

Closer to home, Huizenga was thrilled to see that Trump recently fired Rohit Chopra, an ideological ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a holdover from the Biden administration as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Huizenga, who previously called Chopra to a “chameleon” to the Reporter, noted that Chopra’s “dwindling deathbed conversion to a conservative view, or, shall we say, maybe a restrained view, of what it looks like to protect the consumers and taxpayers of America wasn’t enough” to save his job.

“The proof is in the pudding,” Huizenga said. “He's an ideological progressive. He has pushed the bounds, and there's no going back from where he has been. So this was absolutely the right move by President Trump, and I was glad to see him do it…I never thought I'd pine for the day of Richard Cordray, but at least he knew what his legal lanes were. Rohit just went and exploded those.”

Brian Johnson, who served as CFPB’s deputy director during the first Trump administration, is a possible replacement for Chopra, Huizenga said. In recent years, the CFPB has “damaged the exact consumers that it purports to protect,” Huizenga added. “By taking choices away, whether it's with the credit unions, the banks, whatever it might be,” the agency has caused problems. “When you're a regulatory hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That’s exactly what Rohit Chopra has done and has supercharged over the last four years.”

Huizenga also praised Trump’s positions on AI and crypto, which have included the elevation of David Sacks to serve as a czar for the issues.

“These are all very positive moves so far,” he said. “Because, look, we've got digital deniers in Congress who don't envision that the world is heading in this direction, and frankly they’re just dinosaurs when it comes to where technology is going, where society is going, where finances are going, and I'm not satisfied in putting the United States in the slow lane on this…President Trump personally is setting the pace and embracing this. And that's a huge improvement over where we were over the last four years, where it was not clear, it was not focused, and frankly, it wasn't effective, because we were all over the place.

Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Bill Huizenga, lightly edited for clarity. [Editor’s note: this interview took place before President Trump came to agreements with Canada and Mexico to pause the tariffs]

Washington Reporter:

You've been a fierce critic of the CFPB under President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, as we saw, just fired Rohit Chopra. What do you want to see from Trump's CFPB, and how do you think you could work with the next director?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

Names like Brian Johnson have been floated out there, these are people who have been very effective at putting the CFPB in its proper lane during the first Trump administration. The question is what is the future role of the CFPB? I was there actually when Elizabeth Warren, before she was a senator, came in front of our Financial Services Committee, testifying about the need for a CFPB and what the effects were right after Dodd-Frank. I’ve always said that I wasn't here for the passage of Dodd-Frank, but I've just lived in the echo effects of it my entire my entire time being in Congress and there's no doubt that the growth, expansion, and influence that the CFPB has had has ultimately, I believe, damaged the exact consumers that it purports to protect. And by taking choices away, whether it's with the credit unions, the banks, whatever it might be, not just financial institutions, but the ancillary side of all those things, and look, when you're a regulatory hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That’s exactly what Rohit Chopra has done and has supercharged over the last four years. I never thought I'd pine for the day of Richard Cordray, but at least he knew what his legal lanes were. Rohit just went and exploded those.

Washington Reporter:

In one of our recent stories, you described Rohit Chopra as a chameleon. Do you think it was the right move by Trump to fire Chopra, despite Chopra’s last minute attempt to try and keep his job?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

Maybe his dwindling deathbed conversion to a conservative view, or, shall we say, maybe a restrained view, of what it looks like to protect the consumers and taxpayers of America wasn’t enough. But the proof is in the pudding. He's an ideological progressive. He has pushed the bounds, and there's no going back from where he has been. So this was absolutely the right move by President Trump, and I was glad to see him do it.

Washington Reporter:

One of the other things you've talked a lot about, including in previous interviews with us, was crypto. You've led the opposition in Congress to the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. What do you make of the Trump administration's prioritization of AI and crypto? We saw, even before he stepped into office, the appointment of David Sacks as an AI and crypto czar. Where do you see that going for the next four years?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

These are all very positive moves so far. Because, look, we've got digital deniers in Congress who don't envision that the world is heading in this direction, and frankly they’re just dinosaurs when it comes to where technology is going, where society is going, where finances are going, and I'm not satisfied in putting the United States in the slow lane on this. We need to be leading the effort in the world, because we will set the pace for the rest of the world, rather than having the rest of the world dictate to us what should be happening with these technologies. David Sacks is a great addition to this. I think Scott Bessent and others that are going to be involved in this, including at the SEC, at Treasury, etc, etc., are going to show that there are great, knowledgeable people involved in this. And at the end of the day, we need to embrace this technology. We need to then make sure that we have the proper guardrails in place, but that we also leave lanes for innovation open. Maybe I'll leave names out, but I have colleagues who believe that every transaction is somehow nefarious and that it doesn't benefit society. It's true that there are occasionally illegal and nefarious things that are done with this technology, just like there is with paper cash, just like there is with Venmo right now, or any other digital transmission of a traditional currency, and we've got to be cognizant of that. But that doesn't mean we shut it down. That's just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Washington Reporter:

In terms of things like AI, how do you see America being able to make sure that we're staying at the front of the race on AI? Congress doesn't allow DeepSeek in Congress; how do you make sure that we as Americans are able to stay dominant in that realm?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

I think you are onto something by calling it the race to AI. This is like an amped up space race between the good guys and the bad guys. We have to be at the forefront of this and embrace this and figure that out. I serve both on the Financial Services Committee’s Digital Assets Committee, and also on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) falls under my purview. These reports of Nvidia chips coming through, whether it's Singapore or other places, being used, it's not just about how we use the technology. It's about controlling the technology in my mind, and we need to look at how we are going to move forward with that, balancing out that need for innovation, but also the need for national security and what does that mean as we look at everything from tariffs on trade to actual sanctions and governors on that free flow of some of that technology. We've got a lot of work ahead of us to hit that balance. I think first and foremost, let's just start with the fact that this administration, President Trump personally, is setting the pace and embracing this. And that's a huge improvement over where we were over the last four years, where it was not clear, it was not focused, and frankly, it wasn't effective, because we were all over the place. I'm hopeful that President Trump's leadership and the people that he's appointing and surrounding himself with are going to give us a good, strong guiding hand on where we're going.

Washington Reporter:

Let's look a little closer to home in this hemisphere; President Trump is getting ready to levy tariffs on our neighbors in Canada and Mexico, as well as on China. How do you see this impacting districts like yours in the Midwest, which obviously flipped back to Trump in a huge way last year?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

A lot of that move back to Trump here in 2024 was the auto workers and other unions that surround the industry here in Michigan and manufacturing here in Michigan. The simple fact is that some of the largest trade corridors in the entire world are between the United States and Canada and Mexico. Some of those largest trade routes come right through Michigan as well. We've got a very close relationship with Canada, economically and even culturally, in many ways. When we don’t go north to Canada and actually drive east to Canada, it allows us to think a little differently of that interchange that we have in a place like Detroit or Port Huron, and then even up in the Upper Peninsula, but most of that trade is coming through either Detroit or Port Huron. This could have a big effect. We've got a lot of agricultural products that move back and forth. We've got a lot of automotive and manufacturing that goes back and forth; we’re trying to get our arms around what exactly this looks like and anticipating that the president who was able to renegotiate NAFTA into the USMCA, which, by the way, every president, including Bill Clinton, who had signed it into law, had said that they were going to revamp NAFTA, and the chattering class always giggled and laughed at any notion of that ever being touched. Well, guess what? Trump did it. And I've got confidence that he's going to be able to do it again, and I think he's going to find willing partners certainly in Canada and hopefully in Mexico as well. The Mexico border situation complicates it in a deeper way, because it's not just about trade and fair trade practices and that kind of thing. It's also about what are we doing with a secure border there? There is also that on the northern border. We certainly have that partially with the northern border because we have resources pulled from the northern border and sent down to the southern border to deal with the deluge of people coming across without proper documentation and illegally. We're going to be monitoring this very, very closely. There are a lot of nervous people, whether it's in the automotive industry, between this trade issue, as well as then, clearly, a rejection of the EV mandates and the things that they have been gearing up for. There are going to be a lot of changes, especially in automotive.

Washington Reporter:

You are the co-leader of the bipartisan U.S.-Canada working group, and you deal a lot directly with members of the Canadian Parliament. What’s the temperature check on the people that you talk with about Canada becoming the 51st state? How does that register with the Canadians?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

I actually talked to the ambassador shortly after the meeting where Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau and President Trump spoke; she was at that dinner. All of my Canadian friends take it with the spirit that I believe that it was offered in, which is a joke. I don't see that happening by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, Alberta, Calgary, and Saskatchewan align with an Idaho, Montana, and some of those states out west certainly more than they do with Quebec or with Ontario. But that's the same thing that we have, right? Maine and Montana are very, very different, and as we all know, Texas is a mentality unto itself in many ways. So they've got some of those same differences internally for them. Canada really is a very rich nation, with lots of national resources, everything from the lumber side to the mining, we need a lot of that. Unfortunately, this past administration especially, had put moratoriums down on our own natural resource usage and exploration. And I think if we go into whether it's in energy or whether it's into mining for some of these critical minerals that we need in our technology, that's going to change the balance in the world. But just like what we saw with world energy, the more that the United States put on the world energy market, we saw lower prices, ultimately, that benefited U.S consumers, and, frankly, consumers around the world. I don't think this is going to be a purely zero sum game, if we start utilizing our resources properly that somehow every other country is going to lose out, I don't buy that.

Washington Reporter:

Line Five has been a huge issue for you in Michigan. Are you optimistic the Trump administration will allow for the completion of the Line Five tunnel? Enbridge, the company involved, is a Canadian company; how does that fit into all of these discussions?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

Keystone was a Canadian company as well, and we talked about that, and it's the infrastructure that's needed from Canada to get those exports out. But Line Five in Michigan isn’t just about oil that's going back and forth. There's heating oil, there's kerosene that travels in there. It really is a trade route back and forth. There are a lot of folks who are nervous about the ecology surrounding this, but the science that I've seen, shows that it appears safe. Governor Whitmer has gone back and forth on this because she's been trying to catch the political trade winds here. She's been going back and forth on this particular issue, but at the end of the day, there's simply no physical way of avoiding the fact that we need to have this connection and with the Peninsula State as it is, it seems like this is going to be the proper thing to do.

Washington Reporter:

In Latin America and Central America, President Trump said that he's looking at reopening tens of thousands of beds in Gitmo for illegal immigrants. Tell me what you think about that and how that plays in districts like yours in the Midwest.

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

I applaud President Trump. It makes a lot of sense. This has been utilized before, whether it was with Haitian boat lifts, or other times where we have seen surges that have overwhelmed our system. We've utilized Guantanamo, and the Biden administration was clearly welcoming the previous influx. That's part of the problem. So there was no ability, either on a local level, state or federal level, to really deal with this. The Marines heading down to Gitmo to help prepare for that, I think it's nothing but positive. And frankly, if we continue to see the pace at which these bad guys are getting picked up, these are people who have been convicted, they have been sex offenders, they've been traffickers, they’ve been drug lords, they’ve been all kinds of gang members. Even if we can get them down to Guantanamo before they make a flight into whether it's Venezuela for Tren de Araguas or another country, that’s great and we need to have that effort put forward. There are a lot of trying to, pun intended, trump up the disaster card, that they claim is going to be happening. I’ve done local media where I’ve been getting asked ‘what about the raids on schools and at churches?’ Well, there haven’t been any. If you can provide evidence for this, other than a school saying that they are preparing for this, provide it. I’ve had one of the municipalities in my district have the township supervisor put forward a very aggressive sanctuary community stance, and the pushback in the community, even though it is a progressive community, was like ‘hold on, let’s tap the brakes here.’ There are a lot of folks looking at this and seeing what has happened because of the presence of gang members and really bad dudes coming into our communities, and they've been ruining them, and they've, frankly, been making a bad name for immigrants who do come properly, and we should get them out and foremost, and we'll be dealing with these other issues for the remaining four years. Let's get this low hanging fruit which, by the way, they all know where they are, they couldn’t be picking them up otherwise. And it's not like Donald Trump and the Trump administration just suddenly discovered where they are. The Biden administration knew where they were, too, but they decided not to do anything about it.

Washington Reporter:

You've spent a lot of your time on HFAC focusing on the western hemisphere. One of the things we didn't talk yet about was Ric Grenell getting the Americans who were held in Venezuela out of prison. What do you see as America's posture in the Western Hemisphere looking like for the next four years with Trump back in the White House?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

We’re going to be a positive force. I’m a child of the 80s, and watching how Ronald Reagan dealt with communism and the expansion of communism around the world, was significant for me. At the time, it was mainly Soviet influence, whether it was in Nicaragua, whether it was down south in South America, and I think you're going to see a far more engaged America in the Americas. And that's a good thing. And now, with an ally like Javier Milei down in Argentina, setting the pace, there are some real positive things that could be happening all throughout Latin America, and I applaud it.

Washington Reporter:

One of the things in Michigan, in your election, in the election for Senate, and the election for president that was important, was Biden-era EV mandates. The Trump administration has already rescinded basically all of these. What do you see as the future of the auto industry in your state of Michigan, and in the Midwest, with Trump's promise to rejuvenate American manufacturing?

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

Automakers are going to have a lot of big decisions ahead of them. They were making these decisions only with the support of federal subsidies, and that would be their argument, that we can't do this without federal subsidies, but we've had some robust, shall we say, conversations with the automakers, and executives and senior level folks who basically were making the argument that, ‘look, this is the future and you guys have got to get on board,’ and it’s kind of like, A, people really don't want this technology that you're pushing. B, the fact that you are saying that you have to have subsidies to be able to make this work undercuts any of this demand argument, and at the end of the day, you're making these decisions not in a vacuum. I feel for them, because these are decade decisions, not the quarterly decisions, right? I mean, sometimes with signing of facilities and supply chains and all of these things that they have to deal with, these are big, weighty, expensive decisions that they're having to make. And I think some of them have overly depended on some of that technology that really isn't ready for prime time and certainly isn't ready for the marketplace because their own consumers are rejecting a lot of what they've been pushing. A year ago, every single commercial you saw during the Super Bowl — by the way, the Detroit Lions should have been in that Super Bowl and in this Super Bowl — was all about EVs. Every single commercial had to do with electric vehicles, even though it accounted for about 6 percent of the entire purchasing universe of new vehicles in the United States. I'm just betting this year that you'll probably see a lot more trucks, a lot more a lot more traditional internal combustion engine driven vehicles, and maybe even a few muscle cars — looking at you here Dodge — to see what they might put out. And my Ford Mustang, I'd love to see those too.

Washington Reporter:

Finally, I’d like for you to rank these words, in no particular order: House, Senate, governor.

Rep. Bill Huizenga:

Pass.