Steve Daines

Today in @washingtonpost Early Brief https://t.co/LBa2mcHHHp

Opening day antelope in Montana. A family tradition going back decades. 6.5 PRC https://t.co/q4RLRajuMn

.@SenJeffMerkley & I announced a bipartisan plan to reform Senate rules & make it easier to get things done for the American ppl. Read our op-ed in the Washington Post below.

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Read the full proposal here: https://t.co/0nxT2mrnMd

Great piece by Yuval Levin in @NRO https://t.co/mZRdcZOxug

Over the past several decades, deliberation in the Senate has nearly ground to a halt thanks to toxic, partisan political culture- diminishing the Senate as an institution. We need change. That’s why @SenJeffMerkley & I announced a sweeping, bipartisan proposal that will help end the dysfunction, reduce the likelihood of shutdowns & omnibuses, & help get things done for the American ppl.

ICYMI: our bipartisan proposal to Save the Senate https://t.co/DSH4GT4vxv

It’s been three years since the horrific Hamas terror attacks of Oct 7, 2023. We will never forget, and we will always stand with Israel.

Happy National 4-H Week! MT 4-H supports and builds our next generation of ag leaders, who help provide food for millions of Americans across the country. You’re the future of MT ag- keep up the good work!

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Steve Daines and Representative Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) today led a letter to the U.S. International Trade Commission Chairman urging strong support for U.S. sheep producers and relief from damages resulting from sheep imports to ensure U.S. producers are able to compete on a level playing field. “As Members of Congress who proudly represent growers and processors in the American sheep industry, we write regarding the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (Commission) global safeguard investigation of lamb meat imports pursuant to Sections 201-204 of the Trade Act of 1974. During this investigation, we urge the Commission to carefully consider the data and testimony before it regarding the significant challenges faced by American sheep producers. And should the Commission make an affirmative determination in accordance with the statute, we urge the Commission to recommend a remedy that provides prompt and meaningful relief to the domestic industry. The families behind America’s sheep farms and ranches have faced mounting pressures, including from rapidly increasing imports, which negatively impact our rural communities and domestic food production. The U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) July 13, 2026, letter directing the Commission to initiate the Section 201 investigation states that “import statistics indicate that lamb meat imports…have increased in recent years” and “[a]vailable information suggests that these imports have resulted in domestic industry lost sales, revenues, and market share as imported lamb meat significantly undersold the domestic like product.” USTR’s letter further states that “firms have exited the domestic industry entirely, and there have been domestic industry job losses, decreased capacity utilization rates, and struggles to maintain profitability,” they wrote in the letter. Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), John Curtis (R-Utah), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.) joined Daines in sending the letter. Representatives Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), James Baird (R-Ind.), Brian Babin (R-Texas), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.), Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), John R. Carter (R-Texas), James Comer (R-Ky.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Jeff Crank (R-Colo.), Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas), Donald G. Davis (D-N.C.), Troy Downing (R-Mont.), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), Brad Finstad (R-Minn.), Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.), Vince Fong (R-Calif.), Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), James Gallagher (R-Calif.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.), Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas), Tracey Mann (R-Kan.), Max Miller (R-Ohio), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Burgess Owens (R-Utah), Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), David Rouzer (R-N.C.), David J. Taylor (R-Ohio), Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), Roger Williams (R-Texas), Rudy Yakym (R-Ind.), Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), and Michael Simpson (R-Idaho) also joined Daines in sending the letter. Read the full letter HERE. ###

Today, I sent a letter to the US International Trade Commission strongly supporting efforts to protect American sheep producers. It’s critical we level the playing field and provide relief for producers in MT. https://t.co/fQ3IP4KRzq

This week on MT Angle: water bills & the 50th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment. https://t.co/YKG1PNQjmq

Glad to join my colleagues on this letter. Planned Parenthood and its affiliates should not be receiving any federal funding. https://t.co/VFSBvArnHL

An honor to be with the @nixonfoundation today to discuss the future of U.S.-China relations. Thank you for having me! https://t.co/L6lp8i0aiw

Now for the rest of what I said…Watch below. I make it clear Republicans can keep the majority. https://t.co/8U3f4FgxcM

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today announced that his bill, the “Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act,” passed the U.S. Senate and now heads to the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill creates a new expedited pathway for ecosystem restoration projects that meet low-risk criteria, streamlining approval for important restoration work while still upholding flood safety standards. “This is huge news for Montana. Critical ecosystem restoration projects across our state have been abandoned due to FEMA’s onerous and costly ‘No Rise’ rule. This commonsense, bipartisan bill will reduce unnecessary burdens on important conservation and restoration work, while continuing to keep our communities safe from flooding, and I’m glad to see it pass the Senate. Next step: the U.S. House!” said Daines. Read the bill text HERE. Background: Under current Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) policy, any proposed development in a regulated floodway must prove that it will not increase the base flood elevation (BFE) of the area. This requirement is commonly referred to as the “No Rise” rule. While important for protecting communities from increased flood risks, it has had major unintended consequences on important environmental restoration in Montana and around the country. The “Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act” will create a new pathway only for ecosystem restoration projects that result in less than a one-foot increase in BFE and has no adverse impact to critical infrastructure. Read the release from when Daines introduced the bill HERE. ###

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today spoke at the Nixon Foundation’s 2026 Grand Strategy Summit, where he laid out a vision for the future of U.S.-China relations. Watch Daines’ full remarks HERE. Daines on his background working in China: [My history with] China began back in 1991. I was a chemical engineer by degree, and I began work for Procter & Gamble in management…I spent seven years managing operations in the United States, and I got a call one day from our senior executive team that asked if we might be willing to go over to China 1991 to launch our businesses there, to take American brands, compete against the Chinese brands, and, of course, that massive consumer market. So my wife and I, we had 18-month-old little David at that point and little three-month-old Annie, we moved to Guangzhou in January of 1992. It was about a 400 billion dollar economy then… we got to see firsthand the incredible evolution, arguably an economic revolution, that’s occurred in China. We were the first non-state-owned enterprise allowed to recruit on the campuses of China…so I think part of my role here in Washington, I feel like Paul Revere, trying to just build awareness in terms of what’s at stake in the competition we face in China. It’s a world-class innovation ecosystem that is rapidly progressing. Daines on the tech ecosystem in China vs the U.S.: When I bring U.S. senators over to China, my goal is for them to understand the technology ecosystem. There’s a lot of goals you can have for a visit, but I want them to really understand that. Because there’s a lot of, I would call it, rear-view mirror thinking on China that’s primarily a supply chain issue…They can do a phase one clinical trial now in half the time that the United States does a phase one clinical trial to basically FDA standards. It’s not a perfect model, but more or less. So they’ve been able to get all the good coming from an FDA process for safety without the incredible regulatory burdens that we face sometimes that slow us down to getting drugs out to market faster. But number two, they do it at 20 percent of the cost…if you remember, Europe used to be the epicenter of pharma research and development and innovation. That shifted to the United States because of Europe’s overreaching regulation and government burden. It came to the United States. If you look at… clinical trial starts globally last year. The United States was at 45 percent a few years ago. It dropped down to 35 percent. China has come from nowhere to last year with 32 percent. So that’s one example. We talk a lot about AI, but I also keep an eye on the biotech and biopharma ecosystem. That’s very, very important. So if the… Innovation ecosystem supply chain shifts to China, which it’s doing right now as we speak. That becomes yet another, I think, concern for us in America as it relates to the next breakthrough, cancer drug, brain disease drug, Alzheimer’s, and so forth. Daines on China’s AI adoption: They’re [China is] doing a much better job of adoption, as I mentioned. At least Stanford’s ranking says number two. And you see it diffusing much more into their industry. At Zheijing university in Hangzhou, as I mentioned, it is an AI-driven curriculum now on the campus. They took us through. We met with the university officials. It’s pretty much free-form AI that the students use now to developing their learnings and by the way China graduates three times more PhDs every year than we do and five to ten times more engineers every year that we do and so not only is their ecosystem now becoming world class but it’s growing larger. Daines on peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan: What we did is we brokered a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia. And I was playing a shuttle diplomat between Baku and Yerevan, and I’ll tell you the secret sauce here was President Trump. They didn’t trust each other necessarily, but the United States had to step in the middle of that as the superpower and broker that deal. They came to Washington on August 8th last year and signed a peace agreement. I was up at UNGA last week, Wednesday, and we had the Central Asian and South Caucasus countries in one room. We had the foreign minister of Azerbaijan sitting next to the foreign minister of Armenia. And rather than talking about bloodshed and maybe thinking about a ceasefire and figuring out a way through this, you can see it in their body language and certainly their remarks, they’re both talking about their optimism right now economically as they’re opening up that corridor. As Brzezinski wrote in his book, The Grand Chessboard in the late 1990s, he said Central Asia is the wine bottle, the South Caucasus is the cork. We’ve popped the cork. And one of the best ways to understand that part of the world in a very simple… 10-second illustration. If you look at a, like, FlightAware, an app that shows where the air traffic is around the world, you can see the airplanes shoot the gap there between Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, because they can’t overfly Russia, and they can’t overfly Iran, and then it explodes again. It spreads out again as they move through that little choke point. That choke point has just gotten opened up. And what that means is you’ve got incredible oil and gas reserves there certainly in Central Asia. Kazakhstan is the leading supply of uranium in the world. Turkmenistan is the fourth largest reserves of natural gas in the world. Severely underutilized. If we can start moving those resources, given what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz at the moment, having an alternative kind of routing. that bypasses Russia and Iran and comes through the Caucasus, then you can go to the Black Sea, Turkey, or to Europe. This is absolutely a breakthrough moment for us. And so that whole Trans-Caspian opportunity is now opening up before our very eyes. And I credit Steve Witkoff and Areyh Lightstone and the President. ###

The New Markets Tax Credit that we made permanent last year in the Working Families Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has delivered huge results, creating thousands of jobs and making life more affordable for Americans. https://t.co/tIwjht7UpY

Huge news- my bill with @SenCortezMasto to protect taxpayer privacy passed the Senate and is now headed to the House! We’ll keep fighting to get it across the finish line.

This is huge news for Montana! My bill, the “Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act,” has passed the U.S. Senate and now heads to the U.S. House. This bill will reduce unnecessary burdens on important conservation and restoration work, and I’ll fight to get it across the finish line. https://t.co/JtZK1RYULo

It’s been a privilege to host MT Coffee during my time as Montana’s senior senator. No better way to start my day than with MTns in DC! https://t.co/t3pVS9oeLg

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment. Since its passage, we’ve made great strides in protecting the unborn, especially with the overturn of Roe v. Wade. But there is still work to be done. Today, we reaffirm our belief that all human life is sacred and that taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund abortions.

An Indian hero. 🇮🇳

Digital assets have moved into the mainstream, but the tax code hasn’t kept up. My bill would create clearer rules for stablecoins, network fees, staking and lending—while extending familiar tax rules like wash sales and constructive sales to digital assets. https://t.co/W6nXSsTgvX