WASHINGTON — A California Democrat who is part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus' leadership team says he is looking to find common ground with President-elect Donald Trump.

“President Trump signed five of my bills in his first term. I think I was the California Democrat who had the most bills signed by him, and it's because I looked for areas of common ground,” Rep. Ro Khanna said in an exclusive interview with Spectrum News.

Common ground for Khanna and Trump now may be in the form of tariffs — though Khanna’s vision on tariffs is more narrow than the incoming president’s.

“Yes, we need strategic tariffs, but where we need tariffs are on semiconductor chips so that people are buying here we don't need blanket tariffs on every consumer product that's going to increase prices,” argued Khanna. When asked whether he had spoken with the President-elect’s team about tariffs on computer chips rather than blanket tariffs on a wide variety of imports, Khanna said he had.

“I've spoken to people who I know in the President's incoming team, and I've spoken to members of Congress — but I'm very concerned about Intel, for example, with the CHIPS Act — keeping our semiconductors here,” he said. 

“I think we need to do two things: We need to have a 'Buy American' tax credit for companies that are going to buy American chips instead of chips from Taiwan. And we need to have a tariff on those chips coming in from Taiwan so that we don't lose our manufacturing work base in semiconductors. Some of that is in Ohio, so I hope to work with Vice President Vance on that.” 

Khanna, who represents California’s Silicon Valley, said he also would like to work with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory panel known as DOGE, to identify wasteful spending in the Defense Department. DOGE is headed by billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I believe in spending money on people, on health care, on education, on child care. I don't believe in wasting money, and so if there is a way to work with DOGE or Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy to cut the bloated defense budget, I'm going to do that,” said Khanna. 

“We waste so much money on almost a trillion dollar defense budget a year. We've had cost overruns with the F-35 of almost $200 billion. We're paying $150,000 for soap dispensers to Boeing.”

Khanna said he believes DOGE should focus on trimming areas like defense, but should leave Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unscathed. 

“Let's look at other agencies — if there is actual waste, if there's actual duplication, then of course we should be for better government. If we can modernize it, if we can make sure that agencies aren't doing redundant work — even President Obama looked into that,” said Khanna. 

Asked if he trusts Musk and Ramaswamy, the congressman brushed off the question.

“This is not about trust. This is about figuring out how you cross the aisle to get something done for the American people,” he said. “The question is, how do you put the country first? How do you work where there is common ground, and how do you hold people accountable when there isn't?  So I certainly wouldn't give them carte blanche, and there are a lot of areas where we disagree.”

Khanna has met Ramaswamy before, debating the former presidential nominee in New Hampshire in 2023, though Khanna was not a candidate for office himself. He’s also not the first progressive lawmaker on Capitol Hill to express interest in the work of DOGE and trying to cut back on wasteful government spending. Early this month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., posted on X that “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It's lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.” Khanna was a co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 presidential bid.

Khanna represents the richest congressional district in the country, but says he’s focused on raising the minimum wage and “getting workers equity in their companies, basically raising the pay of America's workers.”

“10% of Americans control 90% of the stock market. 50% of Americans aren't even in the stock market. How about we give the actual workers some stock in these companies?” questioned Khanna.

“We need to understand people are hurting. Wages have stagnated, jobs have gone offshore, people feel like they don't have a stable life anymore, that their kids can't get a house, their kids can't get a car,” Khanna continued. “Our party has to bring together business, labor, technology, community activists to have an economic renaissance, to have sweeping economic change that's going to make Americans feel they're winning again, that they're moving forward again.”

During the 2024 campaign, Khanna traveled the country on behalf of Democrats, leading the charge on President Joe Biden’s write-in campaign in New Hampshire and then later supporting his fellow Californian Vice President Kamala Harris. He’s not been shy about his own political ambitions, but was coy when asked about potentially running for president in 2028.

“We just don't even have the new president. I'm hoping that we can work on things to improve this country,” said Khanna, collecting himself. “It's not a just a political game — if we don't figure out how we're going to uplift places in this country that have been left out of the modern economy, if the wealth keeps piling up in districts like mine, if the billionaires keep making more — and they will this AI revolution, I see it firsthand — it's going to be extraordinary.” 

He continued: ”So many people have been left out of this modern economy. They've seen their jobs leave. And my mission is, how do we get those communities to participate? How do we get the people I grew up with in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — my dad was a chemical engineer, you go to Bristol, work in manufacturing. How do we bring that... how do we bring vitality, jobs, the modern economy everywhere? And I'll work with anyone to do that.”

With Democrats in the minority, Khanna will have to work across the aisle to get any legislation passed in the next few years. But until then, he plans to continue refining what he calls a “sweeping economic vision” that he believes Democrats need to focus on.

“If we were intentional about it, we can create economic stability and security for every community in America,” said Khanna. “Many of these communities have been shafted. They've been given a raw deal for the past 50 years. Our task is, how do we do that?”