Congressional candidate Josh Riley and presidential nominee Donald Trump do have one opinion in common: Both want to see tariffs to raise the price on some foreign goods.
Riley is the Democratic nominee in the 19th District, which includes the southern portions of Cortland County in a district that stretches from Tompkins County to the Massachusetts border. He faces incumbent Republican Marc Molinaro of Catskill.
Riley was in Cortland on Friday to meet with the editorial board of the Cortland Standard.
“We have got to allow American workers to work on a level playing field,” Riley said, advocating tariffs on components for solar panels, batteries and computer components, technologies important to the Southern Tier and Central New York. “The tariffs are replacing the savings they (other nations) get from exploiting people.”
“It’s something I absolutely could support,” he said.
Riley is a native of Endicott and now lives in Ithaca. He was on the staff of former Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee. He was an assistant to former Rep. Maurice Hinchey of Saugerties, a policy analyst with the U.S. Department of Labor and a clerk on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Molinaro is completing his first term in Congress. Before that he was the Dutchess County executive from 2012 to 2023, an Assembly member from 2007 to 2011, a Dutchess County legislator from 2001 to 2006, and mayor Tivoli from 1995 to 2007.
Here’s some of what Riley had to say:
On economic development: Beyond support for tariffs, Riley said international trade agreements in the 1990s undercut American industry, noting his parents and grandparents worked their entire careers with IBM and Endicott Johnson in Broome County. “They worked their hands to the bones to put clothes on my back, to pay for college and to give me better opportunities,” he said. But that ended: “My uncle lost his job; my neighbor lost his job. They all lost jobs,” he said. “The worse it was for my neighborhood, my community, my friends, the better it was for Wall Street.”
He sees two recently designated federal technology corridors — in microelectronics along Interstate 90 in Central New York and in batteries centered around Binghamton University and the Southern Tier — as a way back.
“The future is microchips and space ships,” Riley said. “I am nothing but optimistic about the future.”
However, the greater Cortland area and the rest of the region need to get ready for the growth, Riley said. It needs housing; it needs child-care; it needs training and work force development programs.
“We have a massive housing crisis,” he said. “And nobody should have to choose between caring for a loved one and earning a paycheck.”
To address the needs, Riley said he would request a seat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
On abortion rights: “I’m pro-choice,” Riley said. “Women can make their own health-care decisions. Congress should stay the hell out of it.”
Beyond that, Riley said, he would re-institute the standards set in the overturned Roe vs. Wade decision by law, adopting the Women’s Health Protection Act, first introduced in 2013 and passed by the House in September 2021 and July 2022, but defeated in the Senate.
On immigration and border security: Riley said he worked with both Republicans and Democrats in 2018 in Washington to increase resources for border security. “We need thousands of border agents,” he said, targeting drug trafficking and violent criminals, “not to put kids in cages. That’s not a good use of resources.”
Further, he said immigration law should be revised to allow more farm worker visas and other ways to lawfully enter America. “Our immigration system is completely broken,” Riley said.
Molinaro, as a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, also called for an end to the federal policy separating migrant children from their parents. “I actually agree with him on that,” Riley said.
