Carlos Gutierrez, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce provides a deep analysis of current global situations

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Lebanese journalist Maria Maalouf interviews Carlos Gutierrez, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce during her program called “The CAPITOL”.

Maalouf spoke to her guest, Gutierrez, asking about his assessment of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and of Afghan immigrants. He replied: “When people think about Ukraine and think about Afghanistan, they look at immigrants differently, maybe they are less educated in Afghanistan and maybe they won’t be as well integrated, but Ukrainians look like Americans, many of them with college degrees, he said. So bias can easily enter our migration policies and how we deal with refugees. My concern is that Afghanistan will feel the impact of that”.

Biden’s popularity drops

On the poll that said President Biden’s approval rating had dropped to a 38% lower, Gutierrez said, “I think unfortunately people were expecting to see more, the idea of an inflation-reduction law, but they still see price hikes”.

He added: “Many of the things President Trump reflected could have been corrected immediately by President Biden, but he didn’t. The Asia-Pacific Free Trade Agreement, the tariffs that hurt our workers and American consumers, we didn’t see that”.

I think what people see is that you have one party here saying, “Make America great again.. And we want to protect American workers and these business deals have not been good for us, and we believe that legal migration is harming our country and harming our jobs.. Democrats, on the other hand, seemed to be working on abortion, which was the only issue, and he emphasized that Democrats had a lot of work to do; because the mid-term elections are going to be very difficult”.

America, Russia and Ukraine

Asked if the US had gotten Russia in Europe, Gutierrez said: “We went ahead and chose to fight with China, why fight two battles at the same time? Especially when Russia’s priority is. He pointed out that this is a big problem and there is no strategy, I have the impression that it is all about tactics, and there is no comprehensive foreign policy”.

He added: “We were careful with Russia and Ukraine, he continued, what we showed Putin is that we don’t want war, that’s what Biden kept saying, and he stopped saying it, because that’s exactly what motivates Russia”.

What Biden can do is continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, which is the maximum we want to do to help them defend themselves, but we choose arms, and in many cases, weapons that can’t strike Russia, so that they’re not said to be using U.S. weapons and that there’s a U.S. attack on Russia.

American Oil

On the subject of oil, he said: “It is a political issue. We have oil and gas in the United States and there is no full use of it because of the regulations that were put in place by this administration. So our production is limited and our supply capacity is limited…We are angry at OPEC and not angry at our regulations”, adding: We are ready to go to Venezuela and say, please, can you give us oil, instead of producing it ourselves, our energy policy is out of control, and we will pay for it”.

Biden administration and Nuclear of Iran

How does the Biden administration view Iran’s nuclear prospects? In response to this question, Gutierrez said if we follow President Obama’s example, there is absolute confidence, but Obama’s assumption is that Iran will not commit to nuclear weapons and will use nuclear power for several purposes. Today, Republicans in particular are challenging this assumption. Iran is not a friendly country to the United States, the agreement gives them money to invest in nuclear weapons, and Iran and North Korea are bad players according to American foreign policy.

Gutierrez added: “Those who are not friends of Iran in the region tell us not to make a mistake negotiating with Iran because they will be the first to suffer”.

And on Iraq, he said, “As Colin Powell said, if you break it, you will own it, and once we went into Iraq, this was our country, we had to take care of it”.

Regarding the tweet that Liz Cheney served her country better than most members of Congress, the former secretary explained that it’s interesting that Cheney to me was a bit conservative, but what I did took a lot of courage.

Trump owns the Republican Party, so the Republicans are silent on January 6th, which was a scandal. I mean, were there any discussions or are they still arguing about whether it was a riot or an attack, and that’s absurd, so I congratulate Liz Cheney for having the courage to say that this is not a representative of the Republican Party.