On the inside but still an outsider
How political veteran connects with Trump
She is the ultimate Washington insider: a senior appointee in the past three Republican administrations and the only member of President Trump’s Cabinet to have served in a Cabinet before. As the spouse of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, she is half of D.C.’s top power couple.
Despite all that, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said she still sometimes feels like the outsider she once was, the 8-year-old girl who arrived in the USA on a freight ship from Taiwan not knowing a word of English.
That perspective may have made it easier for her to con-
nect with the most outsider of American presidents. She has spent hours by Trump’s side during his trips to Michigan and Kentucky over the past week or so. She will be at the center of the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure initiative she said is likely to be unveiled this fall.
“He obviously has touched a chord with the American people, many of whom did not feel comfortable saying that they were for him as president, but as we saw in the election, there were many, many people who were for him,” she said in an interview with Capital Download, USA TODAY’s video newsmaker series. “I thought that he had tapped into something, a strain of anxiety, of fear, of vulnerability that somehow nobody else did.”
She said that anxiety may have less to do with the economic impact of trade than about the crush of new technologies, adding that Silicon Valley has a responsibility to try to ameliorate those qualms. In her new job, she’ll have a say in federal regulation of some of those developments, among them the advent of self-driving cars and the expanding use of drones.
“For a lot of people, the rapid pace of technology is making them feel alienated and unconnected to other people,” she said. Her message to the tech industry: “You take it as second nature, but for much of what you do, people do not understand.”
That’s not helpful to their corporate interests or the national interest, she said. “I want to challenge them to help the rest of our country understand this new phase of technology that they love. They’re on the cutting edge, but we’re just making a lot of the people, the rest of the country, very anxious.”
‘BEING ON THE OUTSIDE’
Chao understands what it is to feel anxious and vulnerable.
Her parents fled to Taiwan from Shanghai after communists won control of China in 1949. Her father immigrated to the USA nine years later, leaving behind his wife and three daughters until he could get a foothold.
“It took him three years before he could bring my mother and me and my two sisters,” Chao recalled. “We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, N.Y. I didn’t get my citizenship until I was 19 years old. I didn’t speak English. None of us did, except for my father. And it was very hard in the beginning. I remember how vulnerable our community felt at the time, and I think those lessons, those experiences of being on the outside” stuck with her.
“At ninth grade, I had to stay at school for lunch, and I didn’t know how to use a fork and knife,” she said. “Nobody ever taught me. We used chopsticks.” Popular music and culture were a mystery to her; her time was consumed with doing schoolwork and helping at home with her five younger sisters. Her father would scramble to find people who could help broaden her horizons — an alumnus to talk about Harvard, where she ended up receiving an MBA, or someone with experience working at a big bank. Her first job was at Citicorp.
In January, James Chao, 90, beamed as he held a family Bible when Vice President Pence swore in his daughter to her second stint in a president’s Cabinet.
She has discussed her family’s immigrant experience with President Trump, whose hard-line policies and rhetoric on immigration have exacerbated fears within some foreign-born communities about how welcome they should feel in the USA.
She said the national security briefings she’s received as a member of the Cabinet underscore the need for tougher policies.
“There are bad people coming across the borders — I’m not saying everybody, but there are bad people coming across, and they want to do us harm,” she said. “We’re talking about, how do we protect the borders, protect our people, and yet still try to absorb people who want to be Americans?”
PRESIDENTIAL PRIORITIES
Chao, who will turn 64 Sunday, has seen a string of presidents up close. She was a White House fellow during President Reagan’s administration. President George H.W. Bush appointed her deputy secretary of Transportation, then director of the Peace Corps. President George W. Bush nominated her as secretary of Labor, and she was the only Cabinet member to serve throughout his eight-year tenure.
Each president has had his own distinct priorities and preferences on how to operate, Chao said, pointing out accessibility as Trump’s signature.
“People walk in and out of the Oval Office, and he has a great sense of curiosity,” she said. “He wants to learn from everybody . ... He’s a very accessible person, always learning with a very populist touch.”