Oren Cass
Appearances
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
It's only when you're talking about policies that are not their ideological preference that they suddenly sort of zoom in and are focused very heavily on the immediate short-run transition costs. And so I certainly acknowledge there are short run costs, but I think they're worth it not only to your point about the other things beyond GDP that we might accomplish.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I think they're also worth it because they point in the direction of a much stronger and healthier economy in the long run. And so I think we're asking sort of looking across the next generation or two. What trajectory is the right one for the American economy?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I absolutely think that we will be much better off if we make a commitment to reindustrialization rather than saying, you know, well, according to the economic model, we should just be happy with everything being produced in China because it's more efficient there and we get cheaper stuff.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Well, so I certainly appreciate your point about the but-for case, and I think you're absolutely right. What I find so funny is that when you say, hey, globalization has had a lot of costs, all of the biggest pro-globalization fans will just post a chart of GDP going up and say, well, you see GDP went up, so obviously globalization was great.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I think it's important to sort of offer the corrective that if you actually look at performance during this era, it has been weaker, not stronger. You're absolutely right that the U.S. economy has been performing well relative to a lot of other developed economies. And I think that's a function of a few things.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
One is there are a lot of other things that, for all of America's challenges, we still get right. And whether that is in the flexibility of our economy, the way that we do embrace innovation in a lot of areas, what is generally a lighter regulatory environment. You know, those are all great things.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
At the same time, and this kind of goes back to that question about the business cycle, I think if we sort of step back and look at the indicators of social well-being and how the kind of typical working family is doing, yeah, they do have more stuff. I don't question that. But I think there is a lot of very well-placed frustration with the bargain that was struck with globalization.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I do. I would split it into two pieces, though, which I think also is helpful in understanding a lot of the policy in your discussion, which is there's sort of the China out step and then the into the U.S. step. Because to the extent that what we're concerned about is kind of the over-dependence on China... you know, we can just impose tariffs on China and try to push supply chains anywhere else.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Say we're happy to get it from India or Mexico or, you know, other countries we expect to be allied with as long as it's not China. And I think that's actually a really important thing to do, the sort of decoupling side of things. And that's where particularly high tariffs on China are valuable. The other question is, what do we actually want to have made in the United States?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And that's where, as you framed the question exactly right, some of that is just the basic manufacturing case for all the other reasons we just discussed. But one piece I would add to it on the national security side is I think it's really important to recognize that you can't maintain a strong defense industrial base independent of a strong industrial base. We've essentially tried to do that.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
We've said we still need to be able to make our own aircraft carriers and submarines and fighter jets and so forth. But the other stuff, it doesn't matter because it's not, quote, national security.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And what we've seen is that's not a stable equilibrium, that you can't believe that you're going to just be able to remain good at that sort of very high-end end of the supply chain stuff if you let all the basics go away.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
So obviously I'm a very strong supporter of industrial policy. I think where we identify something in particular that is absolutely critical, like, you know, advanced semiconductors, industrial policy absolutely makes sense.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I think the problem is that when you're talking about a strong industrial base broadly, there isn't some narrow set of most important things that that's all you have to worry about, right? If you actually want to be an industrial power, you You need, first of all, the actual materials themselves. You need to know how to make the tools that make the materials, right?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Things like machine tooling, the actual excellence in engineering that's going to lead to efficient production, and so on and so forth. And so, you know, it's funny, I was just doing a discussion with Congressman Ro Khanna, who was making this exact point that we should have very narrow targeted tariffs in
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
and be using industrial policy to support the kinds of factories we want because otherwise we don't have a plan for the factories.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And I sort of smiled because I think this actually gets at an interesting left-right divide where the left of center tends to have much more confidence that, yes, we can figure out all the things we need and design a sort of broad range of industrial policies to support each of them.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
You know, I always emphasize that I actually see tariffs as the much more free market position because, yes, they are a significant intervention into the market, but they are a relatively simple, broad, and blunt one. And once you've inserted that rule, once you've changed the constraints such that domestic production is relatively more attractive—
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
you then are able to leave more to the market to figure out, okay, under these conditions, what else do we want to produce here and how do we do that effectively?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And so I'd much rather see us pick a few things that we know really matter for industrial policy and then support that with a broad tariff policy that creates the conditions, generally speaking, to promote reindustrialization rather than look to Congress again every time we realize there's another, you know, product that we need.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
So I guess the first thing I'd say is I think tariffs can be a significant revenue raiser. It's just important to be clear on what your vision for the tariff is. So if you're proposing a tariff as a negotiating tool and you're saying, we hope we can take this away when the country behaves the way we want, obviously you shouldn't count that as long-term revenue.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
When you're talking about an actual permanent tariff, let's take something like the kind of 10% global tariff that Trump seems to want to have as a permanent tariff. That, I think, is a significant revenue raiser. And it's worth keeping in mind that it will be for the long run because the equilibrium you're headed toward is not one where we shut off trade.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Well, I think you described where we were in the business cycle quite well, but I think it's really important to distinguish the business cycle from the long run sort of secular trajectory of the economy. I've used the metaphor of bumps on a downward slope.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
It's one in which there's more friction in trade so that there's a preference for domestic manufacturing. But at the same time, you're still likely to have quite high levels of trade with a 10% tariff. The goal of permanent tariffs is not to achieve autarky and shut off trade.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
So I do think we should celebrate the role that they can play in raising revenue and also recognize how that therefore reduces the cost of the approach. Because I think one thing that really frustrates me when folks talk about, you know, all of the costs associated with tariffs is they tend to sort of assume we're collecting all this money and just sort of setting it on fire. I mean, the U.S.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Fair enough. It could be spent very poorly. But, you know, if you think sort of, okay, by default— Hypothetically, yeah. Well, look, by default, if we collect all this revenue and all that means is that deficits are lower, that has substantial upside. And you were just elaborating some of that.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
The flip side, as you just mentioned, is that some of these tariffs, certainly that Trump is using, do seem intended to be used for negotiation, with the goal not being that they are permanent, but the goal being that they bring countries to the table to reach other arrangements.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And there, you know, I think the most constructive agreements we're likely to reach are around pushing toward balanced trade and around pushing toward getting China out of our markets. I think we can make a lot of progress there. I don't think we're going to sort of solve our deficit problems through those negotiations.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And I say, you know, if you're sledding down the hill, you can even go over a really big bump and go soaring through the air and, you know, scream, wee! And then you do still land even further down afterward. And I think what we've really seen in the U.S. economy for going on 50 years now is exactly that dynamic.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Yeah, I think that's a quite good summary of my general views on this. I think the tools that the administration is using here are the right tools that can do a lot of good. The question is sort of how do you use them?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And I have a few concerns, quite serious concerns, with what the administration has done, again, at least in this first few days after the announcement, where I think one real issue is with phase-in. I think, you know, it is important to be credible that you are, in fact, doing these things.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
But snapping them all in immediately imposes all the costs up front long before it's plausible to expect anybody to have actually adjusted. So if you think reasonably it's going to take a couple of years to actually—even if everyone starts moving today—
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
to actually be bringing new capacity online domestically, to be moving supply chains and so on and so forth, you want everyone to firmly believe that the tariffs will be in place by then. And so they'd better start moving immediately. Yes. So I think phase-ins are very important and something that we don't have right now. The other one on the flip side is just the predictability and the certainty.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I think, you know, you need much clearer guidance on, okay, what if this is going to be permanent versus not? and a real sense of where we're going. What is the ultimate end goal that we want people planning around?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Is it, you know, my hope, the way I've articulated a goal that I think is consistent with what folks in the Trump administration have said, is we want to have a large U.S.-centered economic and security alliance. You know, obviously Mexico and Canada, obviously other core allies. We want to have very low tariffs within that group. But unlike in the past, we have some conditions or some demands.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
We want to see balanced trade within that group so that we reshore and reindustrialize significantly in this country. And we want to see a common commitment among all these countries to decoupling from China.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And I think if we communicated that clearly, we said that's where we're going toward, here's what's going to be permanent, and we're phasing in in that direction, then there would be costs, absolutely. But the costs would be much lower and more manageable, and you would induce much more of what you want.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
You would get more of the kinds of investments that you're trying to create the incentives for. So, you know, look, these are all things that the Trump administration could still be moving toward. But it's really important to actually get there, I think, if we're going to achieve the kinds of things that we're talking about.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Obviously not in terms of, you know, overall GDP or economists' favorite measures of wealth and material living standards. But when we're looking at the actual well-being and flourishing of the typical working family, their ability to achieve middle-class security, the sort of various social measures that I think are fairly tied to economic opportunity and outcomes, we've seen real decay.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Well, I think there are a couple of problems here.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I don't think that the idea of these tariffs proportional to the size of deficits is daft. I think you're right that the idea of an end state where we have perfectly balanced trade with every partner is daft. That's not what we need to be pushing toward.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
But to me, anyway, what the Trump administration was is pushing toward with these reciprocal tariffs was something quite obvious that I wrote about a couple of months ago. And, you know, look, maybe the word reciprocal is too confusing and they should have called them proportional tariffs. But but possibly wouldn't wouldn't that have been a good idea?
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
That seems like it would have been a good idea. Just putting that out there. But the thing about the reciprocal tariff is that if your goal is just, look, we want your tariff down and our tariff down, then kind of holding up a mirror to other countries might make sense. As the Trump administration has made clear, it is deficits they are concerned about.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
So that basic reciprocal tit-for-tat model was never actually going to be responsive to what they were describing. or concerned about. If what they're concerned about is the trade deficits, particularly with our very large trading partners, then creating tariffs that are proportional to the size of those deficits is a good starting point.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And you're right that in a healthy, balanced economy, we could have surpluses with some and deficits with others. But the reality is that that is not our system. We essentially have large deficits with all of them, which should be a red flag that there are real imbalances in the system that are not what the economists envision and are not healthy.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And I think that helps to explain why somebody like Donald Trump has become as successful politically as he has. And it's a problem that has been decades in the making and is going to take a long time to turn around and recover from.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
But I think it would be a terrible mistake every time we're at the top of a business cycle to say, well, unemployment is below 4%, therefore the problem is solved, where unemployment has been there at the top of every business cycle throughout this period. And that hasn't changed the picture of the broader challenges that we have.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Thank you. Thank you for watching.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Yeah, I think there's a few things they're missing. One is when you're looking at these household income numbers, it's important to notice, for instance, the extent to which they rely upon the household having two earners, the extent to which they actually find themselves more reliant on government programs than they would have in the past.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And also, I think just the factor of rising inequality, which conservatives have traditionally poo-pooed, certainly in the last 40 years. As long as you have more stuff than you did 40 years ago, you're not supposed to have any right to complain about the broader shape of the society.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
But I do think we've seen a very clear divergence in the fortunes of the typical worker who still does not have a college degree and the upper middle class
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And so, you know, one thing that we look at at American Compass that frustrates economists because it's not the standard inflation measure but that resonates with a lot of people because it speaks to the reality of their lives is that if you actually look at the cost of attaining the sort of basics of middle-class security, you know, health insurance, housing, transportation,
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
being able to pay to send your kids to public university, basic basket of food. It has become much harder for the typical worker to afford that, you know, certainly on one income.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And so I think what we have is a problem where, you know, particularly for the right of center that has sold this idea that a rising tide lifts all ships, embrace our model, and, you know, we all march forward together into the brave new future. What people are seeing instead is that some people got to march ahead into the brave new future, and a lot of folks did not.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I mean, and for particular groups, you know, maybe this is somewhat narrow, but I think it's really important to look at something like young men, if you want to know how your society is doing.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And even very kind of optimistic groups like at American Enterprise Institute, you know, their research shows that young men ages 25 to 29 really are earning the same or less than they would have been 50 years ago. And so I think it's hard to kind of sell that as a successful economy or one that's likely to produce a flourishing society.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
What does trade have to do with it? I guess if you'll give me a bit of patience, I realize to answer that I have to highlight one other element of what's gone wrong in the economy. We were talking about the sort of very broad statistics. I think something else that has gone wrong is the deindustrialization of the economy.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
You know, what we have seen really going back even into the 90s after NAFTA, but certainly after welcoming China to the World Trade Organization, is a real hollowing out of the manufacturing sector. The loss of manufacturing has been a serious problem. And so trade is at the heart of that.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And figuring out how to make it relatively more attractive to make things here in America is therefore becoming a really big and correct focus for policymakers.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I think that's approximately right descriptively with the caveat that a flatlining in the manufacturing sector in what is otherwise a growing economy domestically, globally, is in effect a form of collapse that weakens the American ability to essentially keep up in all sorts of vital areas. And as a result, as you just said, leads to a real loss of opportunity for people.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Well, I think it's important to say that there's nothing especially valuable sort of in the abstract about a manufacturing job. That being said, in practice there are things that are notable about the manufacturing sector and manufacturing jobs. One thing that's very good about manufacturing jobs is sort of where they tend to be located. If we want a sort of
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
broad prosperity with diffusion across the country, it's important to have strength in a variety of sectors that are going to make sense to be in different places, not just knowledge work that's going to agglomerate in a few big cities. And so it happens that based on, you know, logistics, access to natural resources, the need for a lot of space, the need in a
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
You're a lot more likely to see manufacturing in a lot of the areas that do not have finance and technology and media and so forth. And so they provide an incredibly valuable diversification in that respect. A second thing that's really nice about them is the kinds of people who tend to work in them and excel in them.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
For one thing, again, I would say there's nothing inherently important about a manufacturing job. It is nice to have a pluralism in our economy where people who prefer to be making things and doing that kind of work have good opportunities, too. On top of which, it's the case that if you want to have good, highly productive jobs that pay a good wage—
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Just empirically, what you see is that those opportunities exist, especially for people with less levels of formal education in the manufacturing sector.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Thank you. It is indeed a pleasure to be living in interesting times.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
So while it's true that the average manufacturing job doesn't pay more than the average services job, if you zoom in on one type of worker, let's say without a college degree, what are the comparable service jobs they would otherwise have, the manufacturing jobs do tend to be better.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
I think, generally speaking, the answer is yes. And one good place we have to look to understand what this sort of highly advanced manufacturing would look like is what's starting to happen with the CHIPS Act and where you see the sort of high-end chip makers locating and who they're hiring.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And so if you look at TSMC locating outside of Phoenix, Intel locating in the middle of Ohio, Micron focusing on upstate New York, Obviously, those aren't sort of rural agricultural places necessarily, but they're the kinds of places that otherwise have not been the beneficiaries of a lot of the other kinds of growth we've seen in recent decades.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And if you look at who they're hiring and how you're doing it, what you see is, you know, yes, there is some kind of very high skilled employment, very sophisticated employees. And I think it's also a good thing to bring more people with those types of skills to those communities. But then on top of that, you're seeing a lot of what gets typically called mid-skill jobs.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
You're seeing the companies partner with community colleges to equip people with the kind of training they need to be the technicians, let's say, in jobs. in these factories. You see a lot of partnerships with labor unions. You're seeing the same thing from the big tech companies as they need to build out data centers.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Suddenly they're very interested in electricians and figuring out how to work well with labor unions. So I think that's all to the good I think the caveat that's fair but also unfair is to then focus on the specific example of, okay, you know, let's talk about the person who has been so harmed by deindustrialization, people in these left-behind communities who are out of the workforce entirely.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Are those the particular people who are going to be able to take these jobs? In some case, the answer is probably yes. In some case, the answer is probably no. And I think we, therefore, have certainly a lot of other work to do to think about how to engage those folks. But what having this will do is make sure that the next generation has a lot more opportunity than this past one did.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
And so the fact that it doesn't necessarily resolve every problem we have today, I think, is certainly not an argument against building in this direction going forward.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
Well, so first of all, yes, I think that is a trade-off we should be willing to make. But I think when you're asking, you know, what is the effect here, I would really separate the short run from the long run. You know, there are absolutely short-run costs associated with this sort of transition.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
The funny thing, of course, is that when we were talking about short-run costs of globalization, economists just waved them away and said— oh, don't worry, let us tell you about our long-run equilibrium model that says someday this will be for the best.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Well, at the end of the day, I think tariffs are important because making things matters. I've found you have to start all the way back there because we've gone through 30 or 40 years where economists and policymakers said making things doesn't matter. We're going to have a free trade system where we are perfectly happy if all of our manufacturing jobs go to China.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
They'll make cheap stuff for us and we'll find something else to do. And what we've seen is that's a terrible model. It is terrible for working people who see good jobs leave and not so good jobs replace them. It's terrible for the economy. We've seen less innovation, lower growth. And it's certainly terrible for our national security.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
If you can't make stuff, you know, you can't defend the country with bowling alleys. And so the entire argument for free trade and just saying you don't care where things get made, if that's not right, then in fact, you probably do need some sort of tariff. You need a finger on the scale that says all things equal, we would rather things be made here.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And by having a tariff, you change prices a little bit so that people deciding where to build, where to make things will think harder about doing them here in America.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Well, tariffs are a tax, but at the end of the day, you have to raise revenue from somewhere. So if you have more revenue coming in from a tariff, you can also reduce some other tax instead. You can also reduce our entire, you know, our enormous deficit if you want to. So I don't think we should choose, yes, we do want a tariff or no, we don't based on the fact that it's a tax.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
We should think about the goal that we have. And if the goal that we have is to encourage people to find ways to make things here and then we do want that to show up in prices. And what we've seen historically is that when you actually do this, the result is that people do come make stuff here. And once people invest here, they can make it very efficiently. I mean, look at Japanese cars.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
They all used to be imported from Japan. It was the Reagan administration that basically forced Japan to send Honda and Toyota to come build cars in America instead. No one's walking around complaining that Toyotas and Hondas are too expensive. We're happy that we have them investing here and hundreds of thousands of jobs as a result.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Well, I think it's important to notice that there are kind of three different tariffs that he's pursuing. One is China. And, you know, he has at this point come in and put very high tariffs on China. They're getting up toward 50 or 60 percent. He has also endorsed Trump.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And this is a bipartisan position at this point that we should revoke what's called permanent normal trade relations, that we should sort of permanently say we don't We don't want free trade with China. China is an adversary. China is not a market economy. And so I would expect to see that trading relationship go downhill. And frankly, I think we should want it to go downhill.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
That doesn't concern me at all in terms of what the long-term strategy is. The second piece is the kind of global 10% tariff. And that's the piece that I think fits the view that I was describing at the beginning, that if we have a preference for making things in America, then we should want to have some sort of tariff that puts a finger on the scale.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And if other countries want to do the same thing, I think we should say that's reasonable. Tariffs at that level will create some friction that I think we should want in the system that encourages domestic production. It's not going to ruin the global economy or whatever else.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And then the third piece, which I think is the most complicated, is what they're calling these reciprocal tariffs, where they went country by country and looked at how big a trade deficit do we have with the country? How big is the imbalance? And the bigger that imbalance is, the bigger the tariff we're going to put on you.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And I think my interpretation is that that is clearly what I would call a negotiating tariff. What they're saying is, look, if we can get trade back to balance, we would love to get rid of these tariffs. We would love to have no extra tariff on you and have balanced trade with you. What we're not going to tolerate anymore is this situation where we have highly imbalanced trade.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And I think what you'll see and what will be in the best interests of other countries is they would much rather work that out and have balanced trade than have a trade war. That's better for them and it's better for us. is, look, we can have a big free trade zone of market democracies that all commit to balanced trade, that have very low tariffs, and that keep China out.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And that would be a much better economy for the United States. And I think it would be a very good arrangement for our allies as well.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Yeah, I think it's really interesting to look at how all the sort of what I call very serious people who spend their time pontificating about our politics, they usually say, oh, our democracy is broken. Politicians don't make hard choices. They won't accept costs or ask people to make sacrifices to pursue the common good. And here you have the Trump administration doing exactly that.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
They're acknowledging that there are costs to this, but they're saying it's worthwhile because we have very big challenges and it is going to take real effort to get out of them. And I think the last time we really did that was when Ronald Reagan came into office. We were in this period of what was called stagflation. Inflation was very high. Growth was very low.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And what Reagan and the chair of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, did was they shocked the economy. The interest rate went up to 20%, if you can imagine that. Unemployment went up to about 10%. The S&P 500 went down 40%. This was all early in Reagan's first term. And it actually took a long time to turn back around.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
By 1984, on Election Day in 1984, the market was lower than it had been on Election Day in 1980. unemployment was still above 7%, and Reagan won probably, I believe, the biggest reelection landslide since George Washington.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
I mean, if you explain to people what the problem is, what it's going to take to solve it, and then you actually do what you say you're going to do, and you can show that you're on the right track, I think that's what the American people want, and it's what we should want from our leaders.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
So I think the best resolution is that we get to balanced trade. And what that means is that trade is working the way it's supposed to, the way that we have sold it to workers all along, right? When you hear politicians or economists tell people we should have free trade, what do they say?
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
We're going to have better opportunities for better American jobs, making more things for the rest of the world. We're going to specialize in the things we can make best. Other places will specialize in the things they can make best. That all sounds great. I would love for that to be the case. That's not what we got.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Instead, we got a world where we stopped making things and those jobs and those factories moved to overseas. The rest of the world made stuff for us, but we didn't get to trade that for stuff that we made for the rest of the world. And that's not some weird fluke or magical effect. It's really because of policies that other countries choose. Policies
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
that they are pursuing because they want to make things, they know that making things matters, and they want to sell them into the American market. And so what I'd like to see us do is use these tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs for negotiations, to make it very clear that that kind of arrangement that was not good for Americans is no longer an option.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
If countries try to pursue that, they are going to see real consequences. But there is another way that would be better for them, and it would be better for us, and it would look like them changing their policies.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Instead of pursuing policies to try to take advantage of the U.S., to try to take the jobs into their countries, to grow by exporting into our country and not buying anything from us, what they should be doing is asking, what are the policies we can pursue that create balanced trade? Maybe that's like in the case of Japan. We're actually going to tell some of our companies and create policies that
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
lead them to go invest more in America. Maybe it's going to be they pursue policies to buy a lot more from America. There's a lot they can do if we make it so that that's what they want to do. And I think that should be the goal.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
So my best estimate, and actually we looked at this kind of before you got the biggest COVID inflation, because that obviously threw things off in a lot of ways.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
But if you take the kind of core basics of middle-class security, which I would define as health insurance, housing, sort of, you know, typical average housing, transportation, operating a car, being able to pay for tuition at a public university in your state, and affording the food that your family needs.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And if you ask how many weeks of work for the typical male worker does that take, in modern America now, it's well above 52. It's well above 60, in fact, which is a problem. They're obviously only being 52 weeks in a year. And it didn't used to be that way.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
If you go back and look at the 1980s, the sort of comparable package of stuff that you needed for middle-class security, you could buy with about 40 weeks of work.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Well, I think for one thing, it's really important to focus on what I would call the supply side. So, you know, tariffs obviously created incentive to come in and build more here in the United States. We also do a lot more to then help people do that. And some of that is things like better tax policy. We need to deregulation. We also need a lot of workforce training.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
I think education is one of the most important places that we can be doing a lot better. Right now, we have a model that sort of just says, look, we're going to try to get you into college. And we hope that works for you, but that's pretty much all we do. And the reality is that that does not work for the vast majority of people.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Either they don't go to college at all or they don't complete college, or even if they do, a large share can't find a job that's the kind of job that is typically for people with a college degree.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And so I think what we need is to invest much more heavily in other pathways that actually connect people to jobs that help cover the cost of their training, that put them into community college programs that actually give them real skills. And obviously that's going to be very good for them.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
That's going to ensure that those younger workers are getting pretty quickly to a place where they feel like they can start a family. And it's going to be incredibly important for the employers, for these companies that we're asking, please come build here. I'm not sure we can do that and then just say, but all we have for you to hire are college dropouts and English majors.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
I think it will speed along this transition if we have the right program so that we make sure we're preparing workers to be productive in this kind of economy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
Well, if you're talking about investments in the stock market, I think it's important to say that there is certainly a sort of adjustment going on here. I mean, everybody knows that globalization was very good for corporate profits. If the goal was to maximize corporate profits and telling companies they could you know, just shut down their American operations.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
They could stop dealing with American workers and they could just set up shop in China. There's no question that that drove a lot of profit and that drove a lot of appreciation in stock prices. And so if we're turning that around, if we're reversing that, we should expect that to have an effect on corporations.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
But just as it had a really negative effect on workers, I would expect this to have a much more positive effect on workers. And the reality is that if you look at the long term, it's not that whatever is good for corporations is good for America. It's that whatever is good for America is going to be good for corporations as well.
The Charlie Kirk Show
What the Trump's Tariffs Mean for You, Today and For The Future
And if we can get our house in order and actually have a more productive economy, a growing economy, and a healthier nation and a healthier society, I think in the long run, that's going to be plenty good for introduction in order first.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Thank you for having me.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Sure. I think the best way to understand it is that, you know, we went through a period of 30 or 40 years where conservatives just had way too much faith in markets. Just trust that you get out of the way and you're going to get great outcomes. And markets can give you great outcomes, but they don't guarantee great outcomes.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
And so conservatives have been seeing, especially over the last decade, a lot of the things we care about, things everybody cares about. Do jobs pay enough to support a family? Right. Are we too dependent on China for everything? Can we make computer chips in this country?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Markets were perfectly happy to give us really bad answers on those questions, and so conservatives are starting to say, well, wait a minute, we actually have to care about this, and we have to be prepared to do something about it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Yeah, I think that's right. The new writers are saying, actually, there are some things we really want to see win. And that's what politics is. What would politics be if you just pretended you sort of didn't care about anything? You'd sort of have a lot of the very uninspiring Republican politics of the last few decades, I would say.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I mean, for me to actually started working with then Governor Romney, like you said, he was conventional in a lot of ways. One of the issues I was responsible for with him was trade policy. And we brought him the very typical, here's what Republicans say about trade briefing. And he said, well, that's fine, but what are we going to do about China?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
And to your point about all the other conservative economists in the room, they were... what are you talking about? We don't do anything about China. If China wants to send us cheap stuff, we say, thank you very much.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Great Poupon! The gasps can be disturbing. Yes. To your point, there's a lot of religious fervor, frankly, on what I would call the old right about some of these ideas. And when someone says something very common sense, like, well, wait a minute, maybe an authoritarian communist government that's trying to hollow out American manufacturing, maybe that's not really free market. Right.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I was like, wow, that's a really important point. And I was the one assigned to go off and try to figure it out. And what I discovered was that on the right of center, really going back to the mid-1980s, there had just been no thinking about this.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I think, you know, I think on the on the right of center was the China problem was active even before COVID. Right. Because I think, you know, one thing and it's important to say this is a fairly recent conservative phenomenon. If you go back in the history of conservatism, even if you look at Ronald Reagan himself, Reagan was was a trade protectionist.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
He basically started a trade war with Japan because he did care about these things.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
And Reagan negotiated an outright quota that Japan, not even a tariff, Japan will not increase the number of cars it sends into America. And that's why we now have the American auto industry in the South. Honda and Toyota make American cars, essentially, because somebody like Reagan was willing to recognize... Trade is good if it's fair and balanced, but we're not going to be dogmatic.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
They did choose to go to states with nonunion labor. Right. The way that the unions were behaving at the time was one of the reasons that U.S. automakers were falling behind. That level of inflexibility was a real challenge, and that's also something that you saw Reagan really take on and confront.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
So I don't think there are a lot of people in the American South today who would say, boo, we wish these artifacts would come. It was an enormous gain. And the investments have led to much higher productivity over time. So I think that's the story of what we want to see more of.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I don't know what's going to happen. And I think that there has, you know, rightly been at this point a lot of criticism that the way that the Trump administration has been rolling a lot of this out is just leaving too many questions. That if you want to do this right, you need certainty and predictability, clear communication. All core values of the Trump administration. Fair, fair point.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
One of the interesting things about the Trump administration is that the team he has around him this time on the economic side, so Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besson, his chief economic advisor, the U.S. trade representative, he's really surrounded himself, I think, with a quite strong team that thinks consistently about this.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
And so, you know, that's something that... So... Does he ever, like, ask them? That is a fair question, and that's what I think everybody's waiting to see, is can we sort of get this moving in the right direction? Because it is important to say that the direction is important here. Right.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
You know, really, for 25 years, going back to when we let China into the WTO, we have pursued this model that says more free trade always, regardless of what happens to American workers, regardless of what happens to American industry. We just want the cheap stuff. And that has been really damaging.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Yes, the idea is that corporations are going to respond to incentives. And you go all the way back to Adam Smith and the wealth of nations and the idea of capitalism. You want people pursuing profit to do that in a way that is also good for the society. Where I think a lot of economists, and this is left and right of center, got it wrong was to think that's just... always the case.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
As long as they're pursuing profit, it's going to be good. And it's only going to be good if it's within certain constraints, if the things that are most profitable actually are things that are good for the country.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I think that's a very fair concern, and ideally it would be done through legislation. I think one of the things that's very encouraging is to see that we are increasingly now seeing a new bipartisan consensus that we do want to change this. I'm sorry, I don't know that phrase. It started when President Joe Biden essentially kept all of Trump's trade actions.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Everything that Trump did on China, Biden kept and then even extended some.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Well, it's only unpopular with some on the right. And I think it goes to where we started, which is this historical concern with the idea of sort of picking winners and losers at all.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
And a lot of concern that, you know, what's going to happen if government actually gets involved in giving particular benefits to particular companies? That being said, the CHIPS Act was bipartisan. I think there were maybe 17 senators. You know, J.D. Vance has been a supporter of the CHIPS Act. Right. And so, you know, I think, again, that's a step in the right direction.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I think you have to do both because if you only do the CHIPS Act kind of thing, CHIPS Act is great if you've got one thing that's really important. almost everyone agrees, you know... Well, there's steel and, you know... So this becomes a question now, right? Do we really want Congress now going through and saying, oh, well, now we need one for steel. Well, do we need one for aluminum? Maybe.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Well, do we need one for cars? Do we need one for airplanes? You know... That's both cumbersome and something that's very difficult to do well politically. Whereas one of what I think actually the benefits of tariffs is that they are quite blunt. The tariff is sort of, if done well, a much broader policy that sort of shifts the baseline.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
And so I think you need that if you want to shift the basic decision making that businesses are going to make generally. And if there's particular things you really care about, that's when you also want to come in and give them support.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
It's a fair concern. I think there's some truth to it that's not all bad when you talk about this new world order idea, which is that the United States has been sort of championing this liberal world order. where we have essentially taken it upon ourselves to, frankly, absorb a lot of costs from other people, right? So, in the trade world, it's not just China.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
It's also Germany and Japan and Korea. We are absorbing their production. They get the jobs.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Uh, I mean, in general? Yeah. In the last 30 years.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
No, no, no, no. This is a serious point. I appreciate the joke, but... But there's a reason you couldn't answer the question. Well, I don't know what we'd want them to do, because I feel like... Well, if we don't want them to do anything, then what are we maintaining the leverage for?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Thank you.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Thank you.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
in all sorts of ways.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
This is your old book. What's the new one called? It's called The New Conservatives. It's a summary of what we've been doing for the last five years at American Compass, developing the conservative economics of the new right, and it will be out at the beginning of June.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass
I'm going to tell them, because I called Jon Stewart a racist. I'm not sure that was smart.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
This is definitely not one of those moves, is it? I think that's been one of the most important pieces of all of this. And you've seen this even over the last couple of months. Treasury Secretary Besant going out and saying, look, the American dream isn't just cheap stuff. Look, we're willing to actually pay a short term price to turn this around. Yeah.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Look, just because it's not good for Wall Street doesn't mean it's not good for America. And what's so funny is that all the capital V, very serious people who spend their time on shows complaining about American politics, complaining about people like the Trump administration, this is all they've ever said they want.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
They want people making long-term decisions, making short-term sacrifices, thinking about what's actually good for the country. And now we actually have it. And what are they doing?
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
I just saw, you know, last night, Larry Summers, the Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary, Obama Treasury Secretary, leading left-of-center economist, literally goes out there and says, you can just take the damage in the stock market multiply it by five or 10. And that's the damage to America because whatever is bad for the stock market is bad for America.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
This is now the position the Democrats are taking while the Republicans are saying, wait, wait, wait, the national interest is not the same as the stock market.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And by the way, let's notice how bipartisan a lot of this actually is. When you actually look at – so Joe Biden keeps virtually all of Donald Trump's trade actions, everything he did on China. Democrats are complaining about Trump. Biden keeps basically all of it. If you actually look, the recommendations on China specifically now to go even higher pretty much exclude them altogether.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
That's bipartisan. House China Committee, bipartisan, also in the Trump platform. And then even if you look at this idea of the 10% global tariff, this is something that we've done a lot of work on and we're really pleased to get a first round of legislation introduced on it. The guy who introduced legislation is Congressman Jared Golden from Maine, who's a conservative Democrat.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
There is broad-based support among people who are actually focused on what's good for the country that we need to move in this direction. And ideally, I actually think getting Congress involved is really important. At the end of the day, if we want this to be credible, if we want it to be permanent, because we do want companies to succeed, we want them to succeed here.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And they need to know what the policies are going to be. They need to know they should place their bets on investing here. So I would love to see the administration push on this and Congress step up on saying this is the direction we're going. Let's actually codify this in law. And everyone knows that that's the plan.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Well, I think there are certainly some immediate costs, and I think it's encouraging that everyone has acknowledged that and sort of not tried to deny that they exist or claim that we can avoid them. I think going forward, the big question is how well can the administration get its ducks in a row essentially on settling everybody down, saying this is permanent,
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Communicating clearly, here are the conditions under which it will change. So if this is a negotiation, here are the things we're looking for. Here's what we will bargain with versus here's what's permanent.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
uh and then as i mentioned getting getting congress involved in as well the last piece i'd love to see the administration focus more on is is what we might call the supply side which is if if we want to rebuild in america we need to help make sure that that that can happen right we need to support the companies that are coming to invest here we need to do a lot of work retraining workers to be able to do these kinds of jobs and so i think
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Like the risk is we just say, OK, we had Liberation Day. Now we sit back and it's solved. And I think there's a lot can still go wrong. The second risk is that we say, OK, we had Liberation Day and now every day is a new chance to futz around with all of that. Right. I think that is a real downside risk. And then the upside is, no, there is actually a plan here.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
I think Trump's team on this is fantastic. Rubio at State, Besson at Treasury, Mirren, Council of Economic Advisors, Jameson Greer, USTR, obviously JD Vance. I think these guys get it. I think they're very serious and thoughtful about it. And I think if Trump sort of deputizes them to now translate this vision into into an actual operational plan, I think we could see a lot of success.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Tell us about it. Well, to your point, President Trump ran on imposing a 10 percent global tariff on putting 60 percent tariffs on China, on renegotiating our agreements with other allies. And this is now what they're going forward and doing. And, you know, I think we've seen over the last couple of months a bunch of sort of stops and starts as they've gotten going.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
I think there's still a lot of fair questions about where exactly they go now. Are we are these supposed to be permanent? Are we what are we actually asking other countries to do? Right. And so there's a long way to go on it. But the idea that this came out of nowhere or your point that you should be hysterical about it. I don't understand.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And I think the best way to realize this is, look, we've been doing that, you know, we jumped into this free trade thing a generation ago. We decided to embrace China. We've seen all the costs that that brought. If we're not happy with those things, if we wished we'd done it the other way. It's never too late to do it the other way.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Well, and this is the problem with how we did free trade. If you listen to the politicians and the economists selling free trade, they try to sell it as you Americans get to make things and sell it to the rest of the world, but that's not what happened. What happened with free trade was we opened up our market
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
We took the things we used to make here, moved them away, and now we get to buy a lot of things from the rest of the world. And that's what you see in our trade deficit. If trade was working well, I'd love to have free trade. I'd love to be buying all sorts of stuff from around the world, people around the world buying all sorts of stuff from us.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Well, what we got is we only got half of that deal. And it's the half that does not work for American workers. And I think that's where you see a huge part of what the Donald Trump movement has been all about and what he's acting on.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
I think the important thing to say is that this did not come out of nowhere. That if you were paying attention, I mean, I'm a relatively smart guy, I guess, but I was just listening to what they were saying, what it was clear they wanted to do. I wrote a piece back in February explaining that this was exactly what they meant by reciprocal.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Because the problem with reciprocal tariffs, you just hold up a mirror and do the same thing everybody else is doing, is tariffs aren't necessarily what they're using. So Japan's a great example. Japan actually has some of the lowest official tariffs in the world in terms of the tax you pay.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
but they have all sorts of policies that make it very hard to sell into the country, that make it much easier for their sellers to export to us. And so I think the president and his team are exactly right. What we're focused on is the deficit. That's what we want to fix. And so what we're going to do is we're going to create tariffs that look at how big the deficit is.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
The reciprocity, what's reciprocal is not you do a tariff, we do a tariff. If there's imbalanced trade, we are going to put tariffs in place Probably not. We don't want them to be permanent. We want them to lead you to change your behavior.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Well, I think there are two things here. One is that the good side of the equation is just much, much larger. So it's true that America is very strong in services. We should be clear, you know, you're talking about a lot of services provided by the, you know, knowledge workers, you know, financial services, technology services, right? that's a much, much, much smaller piece of the pie.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
So when economists say, sure, we have big goods deficits, but look at our great services surpluses, those do not cancel each other out at all, overall. The second thing, and this goes to why we care about the deficits, is that what economists got wrong for so long and we're finally catching up on is that making things matters. If you want to have a healthy economy, you need that industrial base.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
You need to actually have the manufacturing. If you want to have national security, you need to have the manufacturing. You want to have strong communities and good jobs for people all across the country, you need manufacturing, agriculture, mining, all of those kinds of industries. There's a social benefit to manufacturing. There's a huge social benefit.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And so look, if we were a country that was like crushing on manufacturing and didn't have any services, then you'd probably say like, well, actually we need to be focused more on the services.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
But if you look at how our economy has evolved over the last few decades, if you look at who's been left behind, if you look at what our challenges are, the challenges on the way that we hollowed out our industry. And so that's what this is all about is how do you reverse that?
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
I think that's definitely part of the calculation. And I would separate out that the 10% global tariff across the board, they're doing that sooner. I think the intention is that that's likely to be quite permanent, that that's not going to be negotiated country by country.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Those big tariffs targeted at where we have big deficits, I think it's absolutely right to interpret those as aim to start a negotiation. And what you just described that what countries came out and immediately do is say, oh, we'll drop our tariffs to zero. That's that that captures exactly why we didn't just want to do reciprocal tariffs.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
It would not have been good for us if the other countries just said, OK, we'll go to zero tariffs. And we said, oh, OK, great problem solved. And so what you're seeing instead is. Your point, okay, maybe that's their opening offer.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
What I think you're going to hear for the Trump administration and what I also think they need to do a better job communicating is, no, no, here's what we're looking for. Trade deficits don't just emerge out of nothing. They emerge out of a lot of the policy choices that countries make. And up until now, everybody said, well, this is just an American problem.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And what we're instead saying is, no, no, this is everybody's problem. If we're going to have free trade, everybody needs to do their part to solve it. And if we do do our part, if we do get the deficits down, then that's great. Then the tariffs can come down.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
I think that's going to be a big part of the solution. And I wouldn't even call it gifts. There's actually a very clear precedent for this. And it's actually something Ronald Reagan did. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan came into office, the Japanese auto market was crushing the American one. We were being flooded with lower cost Japanese imports. Big three was sort of on the verge of bankruptcy.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And Reagan basically, under a threat of big tariffs from Congress, Reagan got the Japanese to agree to voluntarily just cap They're imports. They said the number of cars that went in last year were just, that's it. No more, no increase in cars. Instead, what Honda and Toyota are going to do to keep serving the American market is go build factories in America.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And so the entire Japanese auto industry that we now have in the United States making investments here, employing hundreds of thousands of workers here, making the Toyota Camry actually the most American car on the road in terms of who's actually made the stuff in it, That was all a function of this kind of negotiation, right?
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And so I think that's exactly what we want to see is, look, we know that when other countries think it's in their interest to win industries from us, to export to us, they choose policies that do that. And we're shifting that equation. We're saying, no, no, what is now in your interest is to fix this and to get back to balance. And by the way, let's just be clear on how reasonable that is, right?
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
There's just like, oh, like the United States is now being the bully, right? we're not asking them to do anything that we wouldn't do too. We're not saying, no, no, no, now we want to be the exporter and you have to take all of our stuff instead. All we're saying is let's get rid of the distortions that have been put into the system. Let's get back to the system the way it was supposed to work.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Also, we have a lot of weight, don't we?
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
The United States has a tremendous amount of leverage. Even the 25% is an overstatement because it counts both the imports and the exports. Yes, it does. If you think about as a share of GDP, as sort of a share of our economy, it's closer to 15. And to your point, for a lot of other countries, it can be upwards of 50. If you think about how dependent certainly Canada and Mexico are,
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
on their relationship with us. And then if you even think more broadly about just the role, I think something else that's very important to the Trump administration is the security side of things and the role that we play in essentially paying for everybody else's defense.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
And so my assessment of what's going on here is that the Trump administration has said, look, this old world order where the US just sort of takes everyone else's stuff and pays for everything, that's over. We would like to have a great, strong alliance, economic and security, with as many market democracies as possible. But here are the requirements.
The Dan Bongino Show
America's Liberation Has Begun | Episode 14
Balanced trade, you pay your own way on defense, and we all agree to keep China out. And the United States, we absolutely commit to all of that too, but that's what we're looking for everybody to agree to. And if you're in, we're in, great. If you're not in, we actually do have things like tariffs that we're willing to put on the table.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
Sure. Well, I think the most important thing to recognize is that tariffs can both be an economic policy. Let's say, you know, we want to encourage domestic manufacturing. We want to try to reduce our trade deficit. Then we might want to have tariffs in place. But they can also be a negotiating tool, a tool of statecraft that just as we use sanctions, just as we even threaten military force,
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
We can threaten a country with a tariff. So it's important to ask the question, what is the tariff supposed to be doing? And then evaluate it on those terms.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
That's definitely a risk, and I think it's a challenge the administration is facing right now because for political purposes, you need to be signaling clearly to your domestic audience what you're doing and why. Obviously, there are costs also to tariffs. If you're asking people to accept costs, you need to explain why and what they're going to get out of them.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
Well, in some respects, you need a permanent policy. You need a change in just the baseline American economic strategy, which for decades now has been free trade. And so step one is that baseline shift that says, no, the default is now actually free We are going to use tariffs if trade is imbalanced.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
It's really important to signal to investors if the goal here is to change where capital gets deployed. And then third, it's really important to be clear to allies, to other countries that we do want to work with. If we are using tariffs to try to, in some cases, force them to change their behaviors, to say, we want to see changes in your policies that either keep China out or
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
that reduce your trade surplus with us, they need to know that so that what you're doing doesn't just look like kind of arbitrary ax wielding, but actually comes with a clear if this, then that.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
Well, look, I think the frustration is entirely natural and to be expected. I think the reality in the long run is that if you step back and look at this situation objectively, the countries that we want to be allied with and working with closely, countries in the Anglosphere, the EU, Japan, India, Korea, these countries, for very good reasons, have a very, very strong preference for
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
being allied to the United States and part of a US-led bloc over falling into China's orbit. And the US has a lot of room to run on being more demanding of what it looks like to be in our alliance. That being said, we should want to treat allies well and reasonably and fairly and to have good relationships, not extortionary relationships with them. And so I think the
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
there are ways that we can improve on what we're doing and that that communication really does matter. Because are there going to be costs and frustrations? Absolutely. But you don't want to make those any bigger than they have to be.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
I think the way to describe it is that we're making a different trade-off and we are reversing the decision that we made in the last generation, right? And so, yes, absolutely, there are going to be effect on equity prices. There could be an effect for a year or two on some of those top line economic measures.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
There are gonna be some effects on prices, but you're also going to get the side of the scale that goes up. You're going to get a lot more domestic investment. You're going to get a lot more economic opportunity in parts of the country that have fallen behind. You're gonna get a lot more resilience and security. And so nothing is free. The question is, what trade-off do you want to make?
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
And I think, again, this is where that communication, this time directed domestically, is so important.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
Well, one question is, how much change are we actually talking about in prices? Because the first thing to recognize, of course, is that the share of consumption that is these cheap imports is not that high, right? Only about 15% of our GDP is imports to begin with.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
And so when you think about even very substantial tariffs on imported consumption, it's nothing like what we went through over the past few years with across the board, 10% inflation in a single year hitting everything you're trying to buy. You're talking about a particular subset of products.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
And what you're really looking at is asking, well, how long would it take to make those things in the United States? And how much more expensive would it actually be to make them in the United States? Because one thing that we see is that when you actually do create the incentives to produce again in the United States, we do that quite well.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
I mean, one classic example is when, thanks again to the Reagan administration's policies, Japanese auto industry moved its production to the American South. I don't hear a lot of people running around complaining about how much, you know, more expensive Toyotas and Hondas are because they're made in America. In fact, there is no cost related problem with them being made in America.
WSJ What’s News
The Case for Trump’s Tariffs
So you can absolutely do it. I think what you want to have is a clear plan that that. corporations and investors can also respond to. And ideally, you want to phase these in so that you don't have tariffs charging people extra money faster than it is plausible to bring alternatives online.