The economic theory behind J. D. Vance

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According to the New York Times, it’s “The Ezra Klein Show. “

My God, what a week in politics. This weekend there was an assassination attempt that backs Donald Trump. I have the idea that this will change everything in the future. But on Monday, everything changed again, and Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. J. D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate.

There’s a lot to say about Vance. Vance is a very ideological choice, not a political one. If Trump was worried about the polls, if he thought he might lose, if he was looking for a vice president who could help him win in Virginia or Wisconsin, the only possible options were on offer. But in Vance he showed another kind of confidence. He chose the vice-presidential candidate who took full advantage of Trump’s impulses, his rhetoric, his political and personal logo to achieve a coherent philosophy of government.

Vance has done so in a way that I find frightening, like the deep distaste for democratic procedure and elections that he has shown since 2020, but he has also done it in a way that I find interesting, even important, such as the most serious form of economic populism that he advocates continued in the Senate.

I think many liberals don’t need to admit that this is going down. They must dismiss this as mere wishful thinking. But everything is happening here. If you watched the first night of the Republican National Convention, you’ll see the keynote speech delivered by Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. It’s surprising. And pay attention to O’Brien for a second.

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Some party members actively oppose unions. This will also have to change.

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The Teamsters and the Republican Party would likely disagree on many issues. But a developing organization has shown the courage to sit up and consider viewpoints funded through large think tanks.

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Senators like J. D. Vance, Roger Marshall, and representatives are among the elected officials who are, in fact, concerned about the plight of working people. And this organization is expanding and sowing concern among those who have monopolized our very failed formula in United States today.

Hearing a stadium full of Republicans applauding the idea of being a pro-union party?This is different. Something is developing here. Whether that changes or not, I don’t think we know yet. And by opting for Vance, Trump has given a lot of strength to the emerging faction.

On Friday, a few days before Vance’s nomination, I met with Oren Cass. Cass is interesting. He was Mitt Romney’s domestic policy director during the 2012 crusade, as orthodox a Republican economic philosopher as you can discover at the time. But then, after Romney’s defeat and Trump’s victory in 2016, Cass experienced this evolution by discovering an organization called American Compass, which has become a political nerve center for the party’s younger, more populist generation that criticized the Republican Party, which attacked the Republican Party. For being an anti-worker party, for having abandoned the others who vote for it, whom it claims to represent.

American Compass constitutes or speaks on behalf of any Senate Republican primary faction. But there are several young Republicans in the Senate, like Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, like J. D. Vance, who are pretty close to it, and who are part of this emerging faction.

That’s why I think it’s worth exploring what Cass tried to do here. He needs Republicans to become a pro-worker party like he and they describe it, which is markedly different from how Democrats describe it. Needs to see Republicans become a pro-union party. It’s not like you have Republican political pundits on the screen advocating for sectoral negotiations. It’s something new.

And Vance’s selection makes this verbal exchange much more applicable because it means Cass’s thinking is now much closer to the center of Republican Party politics. It is possible that soon, if Donald Trump wins, he will be in the White House, or at least in the vice president’s office.

But that doesn’t mean Cass’ idea is the only one. Look at Project 2025. It is an economically populist document. Look at the Republican Party. platform. The Republican Party is in the middle of an ideological war between factions. We still see him providing those giveaways to businesses, all this deregulation and tax cuts.

So it’s quite simple to ask if all this is genuine or if it simply puts a populist face on the same old agenda. And if it’s genuine, is what’s on offer here even a clever idea?As always, my email: ezrakleinshow@nytimes. com.

Oren Cass, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

So we’re talking here about the 2024 Republican National Convention. But I wanted to convey an excerpt from the 2012 Republican National Convention, when Mitt Romney won the nomination. And I wanted to know how you hear that now.

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– In the United States we are successful. We make no apologies for the success.

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However, at Bain we have not achieved it. But no one ever offers themselves in the real world of business. This is what this president doesn’t seem to understand. Entrepreneurship and creating jobs means taking risks, rarely failing, rarely succeeding, but trying hard. These are dreams.

It usually doesn’t happen exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. Et and then came back and replaced the world. He is the genius of America’s flexible business formula harnessing common creativity and talent. , and the industry of the American people with a formula committed to creating tomorrow’s prosperity, not redistributing today’s prosperity.

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You were Mitt Romney’s domestic policy advisor in that campaign. What do you think of this political message now?

Well, let me tell you, first of all, I’m relieved. I thought you were going to play around with Clint Eastwood and the chair a little bit.

That’s what I’m there for. It is one of the most surreal moments of my political life.

Yeah. Well, anyway, from there we just got more surreal, in a way. But it is a desirable clip. And one of the things that moves me the most is that he is completely drowned out by the applause. But what he describes as the secret to the flexible business formula is harnessing (I can’t forget the precise adjectives) ingenuity, productivity, etc. of Americans to build successful businesses. And I think that’s still totally correct.

I think what was so much missing within the Republican Party, adding in the message presented during the Romney-Ryan campaign, was to recognize that we had moved away from this system, that if you ask who is more successful in the American economy, whether it’s Steve Jobs at Apple or the executives at Bain Capital, the company failed to harness the strength of the American worker. He achieved this by avoiding the American worker.

One thing that moves me about this video and the rhetoric of the Republican Party of this era is that it is directed at someone in particular. The feeling was that we had come to denigrate businessmen, those who took threats, and business leaders. And now, when I pay attention to many Republicans, I don’t think their policies help us. But when I pay attention to them and when I pay attention to you, there has been an implicit shift, at least rhetorically, in terms of who is the vox populi, who is the ideal political voice.

I think this is surely true. And that’s true in the politics of the Republican Party’s base. This also applies to the message they need to hear.

Of course, it has been true that the majority of the Republican electorate were not business creators or marketers (that’s still just a small portion of the population), but those who weren’t weren’t necessarily as enamored of this message as other people might be. have thought . as experts and speechwriters seem to assume. And then, of course, it has become even more true.

If we look at the genuine alignment within American politics today, we see that more and more wealthy and knowledgeable layers of the population are moving to the left. And we see a lot of middle-class personnel moving to the right. a new political coalition to which the Republicans are heading. And I think conservatives have a much greater understanding of the truth of the genuinely demanding situations that the country is facing and the kinds of things that will not only need to be talked about, but that will be the subject of attention if anything is to be resolved.

My sense is that the replacement you have made (and some of the other people you are closer to politically, like J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley) has made the GOP’s vision of what Array , if anything, it is economic policy to be subordinate – what is downstream, what it seeks to achieve – has replaced.

So, in your opinion, in 2012, what was the interest of economic policy for Republicans? And what is the Republican faction that you are part of now that seeks to say what the meaning of economic policy is?

If you look back, in 2012, before Trump, Reagan, Ryan, the Republican Party, or whatever you want to call it, there was essentially this view that GDP was the goal, that we’re here to make the pie bigger, and that expansion is the end. And maybe if there’s a lot of inequality as we achieve that expansion, let’s do some downward redistribution. But we’re going to complain along the way.

And I think you’re surely right that this shift in thinking about trade, jobs, any of those issues, etc. , is based on the popularity that GDP expansion is a smart thing to do; I’m not a sprawler who needs to live in a log cabin, but that’s not the solution. And it’s not even a very smart indicator for many of the things that matter most.

One thing I have discovered is desirable and somewhat fortuitous: However, it was between the 2012 and 2016 elections that all the studies on deaths from depression emerged. This was the same time that David Autor’s studies on the China surprise and the consensus among economists that lax industry is a smart thing emerged, so of course industry lax with China was a smart thing, Despite everything it has been questioned through the It is true that, in fact, the relaxed industry with China has not been a smart thing. That’s one attractive thing about Romney. And what I wrote that was very educational to me was that he was actually very skeptical about the history of Chinese industry. And they sent me to do studies on why this wasn’t working well for other Americans. But this was considered a strange and unique exception. And the fundamental assumption was the understanding of the invisible hand, as the idea of ​​​​others Adam Smith spoke of the invisible hand, that is, there is a miraculous force that guarantees that when each one stays in pursuit of his own benefit, the public benefits as such. as much as possible. GOOD. The emerging tide lifts all boats.

And I think that’s something (in fact, to a large extent) that I took for granted and that has been empirically proven not to be the case. It’s been decades since this happened. And so I think that the replacement that has actually happened. This happened in my own thinking and – I think you’re right – that is the root of a lot of what is happening within conservatism, is the popularity of the ends to which they were focusing on, which can be broadly described in an The indistinct term, such as human flourishing, comprises many explicit elements.

And the main characteristic of life is one of them. But strong, solid communities, the formation of families, the ability of other people to build a decent life, regularly in the communities where they have lived and where their families have lived, to raise children, to make a productive contribution to their network, that It’s literally what matters. The objective is unfinished and we are allowed to claim that those things are objectives instead of just saying, well, everything that freedom and the market produce. It is the finish itself.

Senator Rubio has a very intelligent position on this matter, which is that the market or the economy is destined to be at the service of others and not others at the service of the economy. So it’s not just our right, but we believe it’s our duty to think about how we need to govern and govern proactively, to make sure that the market generates the kind of outcomes that matter most to us, even if it doesn’t. the exam as effective.

But let me check it out to see why you found it so provocative. Because I’m more liberal. I would describe the prevailing view among liberals at the time as pro-free trade, but while I was aware that there were poorly structured markets, there were other things: a massive shift from the source of income to capital at the expense of labor, and that source of income being reduced. Redistriyeted. No exactly perceive the shift from this idea, which seemed true to me then and still is true today, to the direction in which at least some on the right have gone, which is general scepticism. We are moving away from the point of global integration that we have experienced.

There’s a lot to unpack there. I think that, precisely as you described it, the progressive view tends to assume that market positions are smart about some things, but they may not work very well. This requires many interventions everywhere and with many tactics, either beforehand, in the hope of achieving fairer market position outcomes, or after the fact, to redistribute and compensate for inequitable outcomes. And I think the conservative view (in fact, mine) is that there will be some need for that, but that the most productive model, to which we deserve to aspire, as far as possible, is the one in which we establish market positions. so that they work well and that in some tactics the big structural problems are the most productive position to operate.

And that’s where one of the most important things we do at American Compass, actually to the center-right audience in particular, is that it’s not even necessarily a trilemma. It’s a pretty fundamental dilemma. Either you have to be prepared to impose restrictions on the US market so that we can have a flexible US market, or you leave the US market completely exposed to global forces and in the end you have to interfere everywhere. And so, in a sense, we prefer to focus on those big structural problems and see if we can solve them adequately.

Let’s anchor that in tariffs, because I think it’s useful to include that around a policy. Because, look, who tries to have the right to question the concept that markets are a natural phenomenon that arises from herbal law and works perfectly wherever they are?It seems that as long as the government doesn’t get in your way, you do. The work of the Lord. I thank you. I appreciate everything you’re doing about it.

But I think the classic way progressive economic thinkers approach the question is which markets are down and why. And what you’re saying is that a position where conservative reformers, populist conservatives like you, have to diverge, you say, well, we don’t need this fragmented package. We need to implement primary regulations that reposition the structure.

So a vital rule that would replace the design that you proposed, which Donald Trump has now proposed, is a 10% tariff on all imported goods, a tariff rate particularly higher than that of goods imported from China. I think for Trump it’s 60 percent. Start by explaining this policy to me.

I think it all starts with finding industry balance and whether or not it matters that we have an industrial deficit of about $1 trillion a year. And what that industrial deficit ultimately represents is a value of approximately $1 trillion in goods that are manufactured. for consumption in the U. S. market and that they’re not industrialized for products that we manufacture here for consumption elsewhere, but rather they’re industrialized because when you have a giant industrial deficit, when other people send you a lot more than you send them, it’s not sent to you for free, as a favor. In fact, you buy it on credit.

So, to a large extent, what we are returning, for example, are Treasury bills. We’re literally throwing back pieces of paper saying that the United States government will pay you, the taxpayers, at some point in the long run. You go back to corporate debt. You’re going to support entrepreneurial capital. You’re literally saying that here you can have our businesses and the long-term profits that come from them, etc. And we’re just going to consume these things now.

And hopefully, in some ways, as this description makes clear, it is a common, long-term fear about the adequacy of an economy and a nation. But in the short term, what we’re doing is taking what in a different way has been a demand for American-produced products and you’re just getting rid of them. All you are saying is that there is less demand now for products made in this country. This leads to lower demand for American labor. There is less desire to invest in États-Unis. And we will simply benefit from consumption anyway. Now, there are other people who say it’s fine. For a long time, the prevailing view among economists was that it was great, even left of center. And I think what other people are increasingly noticing is that this is a terrible model. It’s bad for American workers. This is bad for communities in large portions of the country where manufacturing, resource development, and elements of the physical economy are where they can be maximally productive.

This is bad for innovation because, in the long run, it turns out that we can try to make the iPhone designed in California and assembled in Shenzhen. But, in reality, in the long term, where production goes, so do studies and development. And you end up not being able to do it at all. And this has happened in gigantic portions of the U. S. economy with our trading base.

So if you look at this and say it’s not good, then you’re in a position to ask what we can do about it. And that leads you to start thinking about things like prices.

I don’t think there is one way to think about industries. I think it’s smart to make clothing in America. But I don’t think that, given an economy like ours, with a workforce like ours, it makes sense to take a look. believe in a world where most of the clothes Americans wear are made in America. I’d be interested to know when I finished this question if you don’t agree with that.

But let’s think, for example, about semiconductors. I absolutely agree that we need semiconductor production to take place much more than it has lately in the United States. Semiconductors are a massive global industry. They are of abundant strategic importance. If we lost to Taiwanese-made semiconductors, for example, we would be in deep trouble. And Taiwan is a very politically volatile country.

But the explanation for why we lost our dominance in semiconductor production is that it’s a confusing story. But a major component of the story is that it has become too expensive to manufacture products here. And the semiconductor source chain is incredibly complex. And it is unimaginable that everything would happen here. You have to import a giant amount of goods.

And so, at the very moment when we seek to recover semiconductor production through the CHIPS and Science Act, giving cash to teams like Intel to set up factories here, we are going to step in and tell them, too, that each and every component of what you are raising to manufacture semiconductors in the United States is going to charge 10% more because we are going to impose price lists on those products. And when I hear that, I think that’s going to be something smart. for anyone who needs to set up a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Canada or indeed Taiwan, because here we are creating a price surge to make complex products. Tell me why I’m wrong about what this means for, say, an Intel.

Well, I’ll start with your description of why we lost semiconductor production because it’s become too expensive to make things here, which I don’t think is true at all. The explanation for why semiconductor production has advanced at a significant pace is that other countries have provided large subsidies to attract and cover the prices of construction factories elsewhere.

So it is true that, speaking, it ended up costing more here. But it wasn’t a market force. There was no comparative advantage, as if the rocky outcrops off the coast of China turned out to be very smart places to make semiconductors, while Silicon Valley was not.

And the explanation for why I start with this is to say that I think it is literally vital to recognize that our fundamental style that we are learning in economics class, which is what is called comparative merit, where everyone is going to specialize in a merit. comparative is created, not discovered, depending on who invests in what.

If the United States makes the decision to manufacture semiconductors here, we would really have to do two things. Or we want trade policy, things like the CHIPS Act, but we’re also going to want policies that simply say if you want to serve, in the US market, we have to do it from the US, which may raise prices a little bit compared to others. places. And that can mean that the final cost of what is produced is higher, at least in the short term. I think we have to ask ourselves if, over time, you will charge less or more to do something in the United States.

So to specifically answer the question, when you say, well, maybe I’ll move on to do it in Canada, well, the answer is no, you won’t, because if you do, you’ll have to pay 10%. Anyway, the tariff when you make the payment to import the chip into the United States. So what you’re ultimately doing is saying: access to the US market, it’s becoming more favorable to be in the US market.

And sometimes, that means having to pay customs duties for some of your supplies. But it will also mean that other portions of the chain of origin will also move to the United States, because it is certain that Guatemala cannot have a chain of origin for semiconductors. from soup to nuts, but I still haven’t heard an explanation as to why. Why the United States can’t. Of course, the United States did this when it pioneered and evolved the semiconductor before allowing it to travel abroad.

Well, let me make a few observations on that. So first of all, I just need to say that I strongly disagree that it’s credible that we have a complex soup-to-nuts chain of origin for semiconductors in the United States. If other people read “Chip War,” which is, I think, the most productive book on this topic, the semiconductor supply chain is extremely confusing and fragile. And there is a lot of populism in the way those proposals are formulated. But what has been observed with wonderful cruelty in recent years is that other people do not like higher prices. . These are politically unstable.

What we’ve also noticed and what you’re talking about is that Americans like to have – and in many cases want to have – strong export-oriented industries. We want to have global leadership. And to the extent that we’ve made it very difficult for those industries to import what they want and then be cost-competitive when they export what they want to export, that’s going to cause a lot of anger among voters.

We are not going to take the country out of a globalized world where there are genuine benefits to participating and promoting globally. And, in particular, a single big surprise would prove politically complicated. So I’d also be very curious to know what you think about it.

It would be wonderful to have the best industry grades if they were balanced. If we manufacture things and send them in exchange for things that are manufactured and shipped to us, that’s the style of business we all thought we would adhere to. What I’m saying is not that we’re literally going to be a closed economy that manufactures everything and we can’t use Dutch ASML machines or anything else.

But I think it’s worth noting that this idea that we couldn’t do this, I don’t know why. There was a time when the nut soup semiconductor procedure was run in the United States because we had literally invented everything.

But then it is much simpler. I think that’s the answer to the question you ask. The semiconductors manufactured at that time were extremely simplistic compared to the hyper-advanced semiconductors that TSMC now dominates in.

If we take a look at what the United States has done repeatedly, industry after industry, in developing those technologies, we demonstrate an ordinary ability to innovate and expand the whole. And then we look away and say, well, that was literally our point of view. view. We don’t care if we succeed or not.

The most well-known quote on this topic is “Computer chips, potato chips: what’s the difference?  “It was in this political environment that we stopped doing all this. Not because it was too confusing for us to do so. It’s not because we weren’t the most productive at it. It’s because we didn’t care.

That is why I think it is vital to take a step back and recognize that in a well-functioning trading system, most of those elements would never have disappeared. You could argue that we may not have all the raw minerals that are used to make the fries. This may well be the case. But the idea that we cannot be technological leaders in the stages of the semiconductor production process when we still represent, among other things, 25% of GDP (of global GDP, 20%, 25%) I do not understand. to know why that would be the case.

To be very clear, my view is that the United States can indeed be a leader in many facets of those things, but taking seriously the complexity of the things we want to do and the cooperation between the chains of origin that is required to do them. – Seeking to gain leadership by increasing the costs we pay for the things we want to compete with, whether in terms of production and innovation in those areas, will be counterproductive.

And as you say, you are very informed by doing.

And so, if it is much less expensive to manufacture elsewhere, not only because the prices of hard labor are lower, but also because it is much less difficult to cooperate between chains of origin, etc. , we are not moving to return to that manufacturing . If we do not resume this production, we will not resume this innovation. And if we don’t get back to this innovation, we may not have the leadership that you would like us to have.

So I’m not saying we shouldn’t have leadership in those areas. I doubt that large-scale price lists can pull it off.

Yes, there is definitely a charge related to relocation and regaining leadership. But I think the two things I would say first about this is that the charge is really transitory and potentially short-lived. And I think a clever representation of that comes from the auto industry, where one of the quintessential representations of successful industrial policy, and not even price lists (but a genuine quota), in the 1980s, when Japanese automakers were not only manufacturing breakthroughs, but were on the verge of beating Detroit decisively. And Reagan has just negotiated a real import quota with the Japanese. You won’t matter: the expansion of imports will simply stop.

Now, what happened? Economists will tell you that Japanese car prices rose between five and 10 percent in the first few years. But most importantly, all Japanese automakers moved their production facilities to the United States.

Immediately, they obtained the meeting facilities. Shortly after, all their home chains were changed. Then they opened R centers.

For many, many years, the Toyota Camry was the top American car on the market, in terms of American in-vehicle content. So one could take a step back and say, wow, what a disaster. Look at how cuestan. de those cars have increased for a few years. But I’m not sure there’s anyone who would say. . . well, really, I know a few other people at the Cato Institute who would. So let me tell you that there are a lot of other people who would say: well, it was just a mistake that the Japanese auto industry now employs thousands of people in the United States, all those jobs, all those long-term innovations, et cetera. Well, we shouldn’t haven’t, because if you actually interfere in the market like that, you’re going to increase costs for consumers.

So that’s one point. The actual point is that it’s really important to keep this in mind, and I find it funny when other center-left people make this mistake because it’s the quintessential center-right mistake. I struggle with the other people at The Tax Foundation constantly talks about this. People who complain that price lists will increase costs behave as if price lists are simply inflating money. Tariffs are tax gains. What you are talking about is a tax whose effect is not entirely borne by Americans and, to the extent that it does, is a benefit to the public treasury.

So I think we want to have a much broader verbal exchange about what a tariff economy looks like, how it balances and who wins in the long run, because I would say that, in fact, it’s the ruling families that earn the most. . Instead of doing this very limited static investigation of the fact that there is a tariff, bananas are now 10% more expensive.

Oren, you’ve put me in a terrible position because there are a lot of things I need to ask you, but I also like to communicate about industry policies. And I struggle between the part of me that knows how to engineer a clever verbal exchange and the part that just needs to do it forever. I’m going to make another attempt at this. And you can have the last word on it. Then we’ll move on.

I have friends who are business economists. And the example of the automotive industry is interesting. And that pushes them to continue using bananas in other tactics of our verbal exchange because, as you know, the Japanese example is interesting. We made the decision that we had to use Japanese manufacturing. What we’ve created in this policy that you’re talking about under Reagan is extensive collaboration with Japanese companies. And we learned a lot from those companies.

We have proven Japanese inventions in production, logistics, and organizational processes. Since then there have been many books on how Toyota was managed as a company. And the five whys are still a tactic of the way Toyota was managed and talked about in the American business. tuition. So we’ve brought that in. And we learned a lot, as well as making a profit, from the fact that Toyota now had production facilities in the United States. At this time, we know that China is not only effective as a manufacturer because there is a lot of hard work and low wages in China. . As a manufacturer, they understood things that we didn’t. They’ve developed kinds of experience that we don’t have. They know how to do things that we don’t know how to do either.

One thing you can believe you are doing is a policy. What we need to do is get those Chinese EV production companies to work in the United States to get those factories up and running and do pretty much what we did when we were doing this with Japan and Japanese auto production in the ’80s.

To my knowledge, this is not Biden or Trump’s policy. They are in a much more competitive position compared to China. They need to see Chinese automakers weakened. They don’t need to have a foothold in the US market, even if that means having factories in the US market. Furthermore, we do not consider China’s manufacturing industry to be something we can simply receive information about. We do not consider that Chinese corporations have classes to teach us.

My political sentiment is that no one is saying: well, the genuine thing we are looking for here is to have Chinese electric cars. The companies that make their electric cars here at a low cost and very popular, that’s what we did with the Japanese. Are you saying that this is what we do, that this is where our politics are going?

And I think you’ve pointed out an attractive challenge. And the electric vehicle industry is the quintessential accurate representation. I just finished a great piece of work on electric cars for this very reason: the Japanese analogy fails when it gets to the point. where we don’t simply need BYD to set up American factories.

But you are the one in the Japanese analogy.

Sí. No would tie any knots in it. But surely you are right. There are things about China and United States-China dating that make it a lot harder. What we’re talking about, if we’re creating the incentive to succeed in the United States, is not to bring Chinese factories to the United States. It’s about creating that incentive and then allowing investors to figure out the most productive way to do it here, which will be very different, but given where we are in generation development, it’s potentially the most productive time to do it.

And maybe it’s just the free-market conservative in me speaking. But I believe that this is precisely the formula towards which we are heading. I don’t need to see us just pass by and observe to perceive this position and that position that we are in. A large subsidy must be given.

To answer your question, I believe that clothing is an area of innovation with ordinary potential. And I would like our policy to be this: you will charge more if you have to use foreign products than if you can use domestic products. Corporations in the free world, investors in the United States, are thinking about what to do.

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There are a lot of things that you’re proposing now, that others are proposing now, that if you squint might sound like Elizabeth Warren’s — not tariffs, but hard-work policies, for example — that are much closer to what liberals say. . for a long time. But I feel that that’s where a lot of things diverge, that when I read you and I read others in your field, what I hear is that we want to use economic policy to make the sole breadwinner of the family, but two: a circle of parents relatives who don’t have one or two children, but between three and five children, are possible again, especially, but not only, for many of those men in the Midwest for whom we are seeing quite negative results lately. How fair or unfair is this as a description of your goal?

I would say partly fair, partly unfair. What is surely correct is that I think you are making something very particular when I talk about the concept that human flourishing means that other people are able to build a decent life in their communities, make a productive contribution, and start and raise families. . Yes, we want this to be imaginable in the same way that most people, of course, say they want to do it, which is the style you describe: to be able to get married, have children and have a sufficient salary. . to help the family so they can choose how much they need one or two employees. And most importantly, you can have a parent at home with young children.

What I would say is very unfair is that I think when you start chiming in, we’re talking in particular about men from certain communities in the Midwest, etc. Adam Posen, who was president of the Peterson Institute, made a notorious quote a few years ago. For a long time the fear for the productive sector was. . . It was a fetish intended to keep white men from rural spaces in positions of power.

Whether white men in rural spaces have ever held such a position of strength is another question. But it’s not about race, gender, or region within the country. It’s about making sure other people have the ability to continue life. a path that they themselves say they should follow, and seeing that this only happens if you have an economy that allows you to maintain a circle of relatives with a single income. And if that’s a possibility, then you can do it and you have a There’s a lot of flexibility about it. But I don’t think we have that today.

The reason I’m focusing here is because I’m noticing things: This whole story of deaths from depression was about white men in certain areas of the country. Now it has been expanded. Actually, I don’t think he died of depression. I don’t think the evidence on this has stood up to what’s happening, but that’s where a lot of it was generated from.

And because the paintings that you and others make focus heavily on production and production and what happened to the decline of the fortunes of the men who lost their position as breadwinners, and by the way, this me worries. I don’t think it’s anything to delete. So when I say that, it’s not an attack. It just seems to me that the fear comes from somewhere and that the proposed policies are more explicit for a specific type of task whereas, say, if you were involved in families headed by black or Hispanic mothers, you would be much more involved about the tasks of the sector of services and whether they pay well or not, what kind of progress they have and how the programming works.

And I’m not saying that you or the other people you advise don’t care, but I hear a lot less about it. And going back to what I said earlier about Mitt Romney and Donald Trump and implicitly who we’re talking about, it turns out to me that we’re implicitly talking about the kind of people who say Vance was worried in his “Hillbilly” ebook. “Elegy”. And the political proposals go in that direction.

I do not think that is the right way to characterise the political calendar as a whole. I think he is indeed right: when we talk about globalisation, industrial deficits, etc. , we are notoriously communicating about manufacturing. It is not mainly because they are intelligent jobs that the family performs. They will be highly automated factories. I think they’re actually offering smart jobs to their families.

This is one of the reasons we care about them. But in my view, truly, a key explanation for why we care about those production jobs is that production and the commercial economy – let’s put it more broadly – are sometimes recognized, rightly, I think more often than not, as the basis for productivity expansion. It is much less difficult to achieve maximum levels of productivity expansion in output than in many parts of the service sector. And it is really thanks to the expansion of productivity in production that everyone can earn higher wages than everyone else. And so, a commercial economy as an anchor for productivity expansion and innovation, where you can achieve productivity expansion and then provide the anchor for local economies that can enjoy greater prosperity in the service sector, also, I think, at the end of the day, why production is such a vital area to focus on.

I think if you look at other parts of the political agenda, you’ll see a much higher concentration in the facilities sector again. So, to give you two examples, one is immigration policy. And I like to tease my progressive friends on this point. , because I don’t understand how you can talk about the strength of the staff or the higher salaries in the service sector or about this Hispanic mother that you just described in adopting the Democratic Party’s position on immigration. In fact, tensions in hard-working markets, especially in lower categories, are incredibly vital to raising wages in the service sector.

And then I think another area that you’re seeing a lot of attention on is, as you mentioned, some of those issues around paintings and how to expand an industry union movement and a style of arranged paintings that work as well as possible. vital sector. distributed facilities sector. And I think that’s a key argument in favor of a more sector-specific trading style.

The American style that we take for granted as a union, the status of Norma Rae at the table with a sign that says “union,” this concept that the organization pretends to be corporate across corporations, from plant to plant, from task site to corporations. A struggle in the offices, which, among other things, companies rationally resist: having a union if the competition does not have one is a real festive problem.

Choose your sector of activity. Let’s say you’re a janitor in New York. There won’t be a fight at your construction site or the janitorial company you represent over whether they’ll be unionized. There will be a janitors’ union.

And we can communicate all the pros and cons of that. But I think it avoids many of the worst and most dysfunctional aspects of our formula in the United States and, empirically, has shown much greater effects when used to empower and constitute. workers.

That’s why I think that if you’re talking about industry and tariffs, then yes, you’re temporarily talking about production jobs. But if you look at the schedule as a whole, I think it’s very transparent and comprehensive, and in intelligent faith terms. I think if you asked Senator Vance that question, he would tell you the same thing. He is deeply involved in salaries in the service sector for other people of all races and genders and how the staff behind the company are empowered. the staircase

I think it’s desirable that you and other members of the Republican Party have begun to take an interest in sectoral bargaining, which has been a policy view held for a long time by others like me and would have been last on my list in New York. So, on the one hand, there’s something going on. On the other hand, I wouldn’t take a look at Donald Trump’s Agenda 47 and say what I see is a holistic approach to the workforce of Hispanic mothers in the service sector. I think that would be an unusual argument, quite hostile to unions, and so on.

One thing that worries other people like me and that worries me even when I do performances like this is that in the economic policy of the Republican Party, you’re one of the other people I find most interesting, with whom I sympathize the most. But there would possibly be a magnitude of populist whitewashing, where there are other people who have a more holistic timeline here. And they are part of the coalition. But the parts where they are heard are not necessarily one’s parts.

You contributed to the bankruptcy of paintings, in particular in Project 2025. And this proposes a series of changes in pro-union policies. So I’d like to know your description because I’m clearly outside your coalition. From within, how would you describe the factional divisions that allow some of those concepts to cross the finish line and don’t allow, at least at this point, some of the others to occupy the front page of proposals or form one of those grand coalitions?documents?

Working on this has been a desirable pleasure because, as you said, the dynamics of the coalition are at the forefront. In fact, this is not the bankruptcy in paintings that I would write. But I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished. , because it is perhaps in the total task of 2025 that it deviates to the maximum from what has been the popular orthodoxy of the center-right for so long.

There are a lot of things there, to the point that, for coalition reasons, they had to present dissenting opinions. One of my favorites is banning a B. A. as a requirement in a job description, adopting the concept that staff deserve to have a voice and power, that we care about that, the concept of putting staff on corporate boards. I can move on.

I think that being said, as you can see, unions are not organized today. The unions are functionally arms of the Democratic Party in the sense that they raise huge sums of cash from a totally unorthodox staff organization – if at all, from a staff organization that is probably more pro-Trump than pro-Biden right now – and turns this into politics and money for the Democratic Party.

So, at the end of the day, I can’t blame the Republicans and the conservative movement for saying, only instrumentally, that we’re not going to do this. Trump is going to talk about what Trump is going to talk about. And so if you practice that the politically vital elements that Trump is focused on don’t fully align with that economic vision, I wouldn’t possibly argue with you about that.

But I think before the conversation, when you were characterizing this motion and thinking, I think you knew Senators Rubio, Vance, Cotton, and Hawley. And if you take a look at what they’re putting forward and, indeed, what they’re proposing in the form of legislation, I think it’s precisely that set of issues.

Just to give a few examples, Romney, Cotton and Vance are on a proposal to increase the federal minimum wage and require mandatory electronic verification. This is a quintessential example of wage expansion at the bottom of the scale, targeting immigration policy as a component of a proposal for constructive labor market adjustment.

Hawley, more broadly, has made a specific effort to seek greater interaction with unions. I just attended a speech he gave in which he essentially said it was time for conservatives to embrace unions and personal sector unions. Trump asks Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, to speak at the RNC. Senator Rubio has also done concrete things in labor matters. He and Jim Banks, who is recently a congressman likely to win Indiana’s Senate election in November, have proposed select models of employee representation, adding employee participation on corporate boards.

And then we can continue in all those domains. I think there are indeed attractive boxes on trade policy, others on immigration enforcement, others on non-academic avenues, which I think is an incredibly vital domain, so my factional research would be: First of all, Who is going to make policy in Congress if there is a Trump administration? And then what will happen after Trump? And on either front, I think what you’re seeing is that this precise cohort is the emerging leadership of not only the conservative movement, but also the Republican Party. And that’s what they’re talking about and that’s what they’re talking about and that.

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One of the reasons I’m interested in the paintings you’re doing (I’ve been for a while, but now it’s more applicable to me) is that when this comes out, we’ll know who Donald Trump is. the selection is. But all reports recommend that it is due to Rubio, Vance, and Burgum. And Rubio and Vance are. . . to the extent that someone is on their side in the Senate, Rubio and Vance are on their side in the Senate. So you could say that two of Trump’s three credible vice presidential candidates are very curious about American Compass. But I think you can say it more strongly than that. Then I realize, when I also communicate to the young Republicans, that something generational is happening here.

The other thing I’m going to throw you a softball about here is one of the reasons or one of the tactics that I feel like this is playing into is the sense that the liberal coalition’s design of who they target and who they serve. It is no longer true. And a huge hole that can be dug there.

And I saw it in the argument you made in your Times article about populism and elite failure.

So I’d like you to expand on that a little bit because I think one component of the opportunity that you see, and that Rubio and Vance and some of those others were talking about, is the concept that free market economics is not about what’s going on. Liberals think it’s about that issue, but it’s not about who they think it’s about or whether there’s a political opportunity there. So, do you mind making this review?

Well, thanks Ezra. It would be a great pleasure to do so.

To return briefly to the generational point, I think I am undoubtedly right. And in some ways, this is an ongoing procedure in conservatism that is a little confusing because of Trump’s presence.

If you think about 15- or 20-year periods where parties realign and replace their ideology, it usually starts with a bang. And this surprise usually constitutes a great electoral loss. It was Goldwater in 1964 that finally led to Reagan in 1980. It was then that Reagan crushed Mondale, which gave birth to the new Democrats and ultimately led to Clinton.

And I think all of these paintings will continue after 2016 to the right of center. And it would look much more familiar to analysts if Trump had lost. And a lot of those paintings are more about nature and construction, whatever comes up when the next generation takes over. And in a sense, this parallels what’s at the top.

And here’s how it is: When you say Rubio, Hawley, Cotton, Vance, it’s no coincidence that you’re also talking about a younger generation of Republican leaders. When you look at the orientation of all those under 40 in the Good, it is necessarily in this direction. I’m right on that threshold. And I guess I’m essentially a gray-bearded man.

An older millennial?

That’s right, an older millennial. For me, the appealing question is: What is my first political memory? And for me, it’s watching planes take off from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf in 1991, watching CNN, which means Ronald Reagan – the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War – is just in a history book. And this is not at all about minimizing its importance. But it is to say that when I think about political disorders, about the leadership of political parties, about the demanding economic situations of the nation, I think about the disorders and demanding situations of the 90s, 2000s and 2010s. And take a book of text from the Ronald Reagan Heritage Foundation and flipping through it to find the answer is absurd.

So I think generational replacement is almost inevitable in the post-Cold War era. I’m very pleased to see that this type of conservative economics is the path that other people are moving towards. And I think that’s what will continue. But there’s plenty of chaos, incoherent conflict, and factional fighting along the way.

So, I think that speaks to your point about the Democratic coalition, the Republican coalition. What I find particularly exciting and exciting about this scenario for conservatives is that moving in this direction offers the option of building a lasting governing majority. It is true that libertarians are lost and elegance is gained in the electorate of all races. But it turns out that there are 10 times as many posh electorate that is socially conservative and would simply like to hear anything practical about economics from the right than the libertarian electorate that brings their school diplomas and $7 latte to school. Democratic Party.

How much do the lattes you buy cost?

[LAUGHTER] Maybe lattes in those elite coastal markets are even more expensive now, especially when you step up soy milk and chia shots. Obviously, I no longer have my specialty.

Not going to cafes?

I’m not a coastal elite living in a big city. So, anyway, I can’t tell you what the costs are. But the fact is that, in theory, there may be an opportunity here for one or the other political party.

I just gave a speech at the National Conference on Conservatism, where I made this point. There’s a world in which Democrats take part of their economic message and mix it with something a little more practical about their progressive social issues. And we can only believe that they will be victorious.

The truth is that they are going in the opposite direction. And on the right you see at least the prospect of a conservatism that combines a social conservatism that appeals to a large number of working- and middle-class voters with an economic message that appeals to them as well.

Well, you described it in terms of a social divide. But when I read it, I see the hole as educational, and the complaint you make to the Democrats is that, whether or not they realize this is happening, their economic problems electoral politics have increasingly begun to serve the problems of a more knowledgeable society. Democrats see themselves.

yes, I think that’s true. So what I would say is that it seems to me that there are a lot of other people in the United States, maybe even most, who on those more social issues have a tendency to be more conservative, but who sometimes liked what they did. It was the traditional democratic message, more working class. But what we have today from the Democrats, despite some rhetoric, is a program that, at least in my view, is overwhelmingly aimed at the interests of a small, highly organized section of educated, high-income voters.

And so the quintessential policy package: If I think about the big fights that the Biden administration has chosen to pick, immigration policy is an example of that. A school policy that necessarily focuses on simply telling other people that they don’t have to pay. What they borrowed to go to university is some more detail. I think that the meteorological agenda, as a central point of trade policy, is some more detail of this.

Many people ask: well, that’s rarely what you talk about trade policy; that’s rarely precisely what Biden’s leadership is doing. I would say conceptually, to a certain extent, it is. But all of this is subject to this green agenda, which is accompanied by a set of prices and benefits that I don’t think translate very well into the maximum number of workers. And I don’t think they either. That’s why I think, when you take a step back and look at it, it’s very difficult to separate the priorities of the Democratic Party and the issues that they’re going to align on from what matters to the majority of Americans and, in fact, what matters. The focus is on those who are not doing very well financially.

However, when I look at the positioning of the Republican Party, and that includes things like the 2025 Project, I still see a lot of proposals for monetary deregulation. Project 2025 needs to get rid of regulatory authority for the monetary sector. it needs to particularly restrict the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I still see a lot of proposals to cut Medicaid very, very deeply and eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Even if you’re in favor of child tax credits, it was the Republicans. who let expanded child tax credits expire and have been very, very reluctant (though, again, not their faction) to find a way forward.

It turns out that there is still a Republican Party that has the old Reagan spending priorities and the old Reagan perspectives on regulation. And the Democratic Party – although it has, for example, an opinion on school loans that it didn’t have before – and my opinion for a long time has been that if you have to cancel the debt, you have to start. with medical school debt, which I think has much more to do with bad luck than school debt. But yet, the fact that it’s still very focused on negotiating pharmaceutical prices, looking to expand fitness subsidies and insurance programs, and expanding things within Medicare, the fact that there’s this old line of expense, it hasn’t replaced much.

Well, there is no war of words on the Republican point. And if I may call one of our wonderful statesmen, I am seeking, in a sense, to believe what could be, free from the burden of what was. What I’m describing is a long-term perspective for conservatives. And getting back to your point, it’s one that other people like Vance, Rubio and Hawley are also trying to make. J. D. is not heard. Vance talk about cutting rights and taking away access to healthcare, etc.

I think on the Democratic side, you’re right: Democrats are necessarily protecting and representing the most vital spending item on the agenda. I’m also not sure at this point how much that distinguishes them from the Republicans’ stance on this whole issue. . And that’s why I said very particularly that if I look at the fights that the Biden administration has chosen to choose, if you look at where the actual political conflicts are, where are you going to see a very different global conflict depending on the situation?party in power, the things that the Democrats, at least the Biden administration, seem to have literally planted their flag on are this set of things that are very vital to the other people that paint for the Biden administration, but not necessarily the ones that interest a critical mass of voters.

And I think the last thing to say about that (a really attractive position to see where the road lies, where we started doing a lot of paintings at American Compass) is the fiscal and budgetary issues. Because it seems to me that there is no doubt that, given the situation we are in now, we will have to reduce spending. And I think that’s something that will make sense in the country. It remains to be seen whether either party will be able to locate the correct position at this point. At least I’ve started to see some Republicans say we want to cut spending and raise revenue. I’ve yet to see a Democrat willing to acknowledge that, yes, some of the spending is passing through to have to go down. And this is where we move on to focus.

Actually? I have the impression that the Democrats recognize this. I have the impression that we act as if we fell from a coconut tree, to quote the wonderful stateswoman herself. Frankly, I feel like Democrats talk about it all the time. You walk into Mark Warner’s and ask him if he doesn’t think the expense will have to be broadcast someday.

I think Joe Biden would be perfectly content to enter into negotiations with congressional Republicans. I would bet money on that, genuine money, that if Mike Johnson wanted to walk up to Joe Biden and say, hey, I think our budget situation is out of whack. coup and we are open to a deal that reduces spending and increases taxes, Joe Biden, I would love to have those negotiations. While Donald Trump has a well-articulated policy here, which is that he needs to continue with his tax cuts. , who have collected billions of dollars and haven’t been paid most of it, or at least haven’t been paid the maximum in full, that’s one way of putting it, and you need to use some of the cash from the lists of prices we have. We are talking about the previous to an additional reduction in taxes on Companies.

This is a position where, since the arrival of the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, Oren Cass and Paul Ryan in 2012, things seem to have changed, and I can’t even tell you what Republicans think about debt and fiscal policy anymore . careful. This doesn’t seem to motivate anyone. And it turns out that Donald Trump cares a lot about tax cuts.

The suspicion Democrats have about Republicans, because this has been true for the lifetime of someone like me, is that Republicans need to communicate about fiscal irresponsibility. But once in power, the first thing they must do is reduce taxes.

So what I see when I look at the Republicans – and you can tell me if you think that’s the case – is a preference for making Trump’s tax cuts bigger, a preference for cutting taxes even more, and a preference for radically, or at least significantly, cutting taxes. increase defense spending. And actually, I haven’t heard anything that’s rarely old-school Paul Ryan style (let’s get rid of the Department of Education or something) about how they’re going to pay for this whole set.

Am I wrong, in your opinion?

I think you are a little bit. I would have agreed to this a few years ago and stipulated it about Trump as well. I haven’t heard anything monetarily guilty about. . .

But it is a vital requirement, because he is the leader of the party and the others are.

And I think we’ve made it clear a few times in this verbal exchange that what I’m communicating and what I’m sure of, sometimes speaking, is essentially what those members of Congress are postulating, where conservatism is headed. . . And in that sense, if you look at this specific issue, we’ve noticed a sea change, even in the last year, in the way the most prominent Republicans communicate about it.

That’s why Jodey Arrington, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has publicly stated that we want to put profits on the table. Tom Cole, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has publicly stated that we want to put profits on the table. Chip Roy, political director of the House Freedom Caucus, has said publicly that he is open to raising the corporate tax rate. Josh Hawley (I spoke of the speech he just gave about union membership) also pointed out in particular that the corporate tax cuts were a mistake, suggesting that we have a lower tax rate for corporations.

So it seems to me that recently there are genuine reasons to be confident that progress can be made in this area and that the 2017 edition of the fiscal policy led by Paul Ryan is not what the Conservatives’ long term will be.

But I’m struck by his comment about moving on to ask Mark Warner, to moving on to ask Joe Biden, because all that’s been analyzed given this openness that some Republicans have shown is: who are the Democrats?other side?

And just one example: we did an American Compass podcast interviewing Jodey Arrington and then also Ro Khanna, the Democratic representative. And it was desirable to interview Khanna about that because he simply said, no, I’m not really interested in cutting expenses. We may get more power in spending on physical care, by negotiating drug prices, and so on, but what I would do with that is invest it in more physical care systems without cutting spending at all.

Certainly in other Hill offices on the Democratic side that we’ve talked to, we’ve encountered the same thing, which is that I’m not literally sure what Mark Warner would say. You don’t need to speak directly for him. But how much spending relief might Democrats be willing to put on the table right now?

Unlike any primary policy I know of under the Trump administration, the Inflation Reduction Act was considered fully funded and even more so. They raised taxes to pay for what they wanted to do, and then they raised taxes a little more than that to get a positive score from the Congressional Budget Office.

So I think, first of all, there’s only one baseline outside of Covid stimulus spending, which I think was a very common scenario for all sorts of reasons. There is a fundamental trust that you deserve not to make the budget scenario worse and that you deserve to pay for what you do.

And then, and I’m serious, I probably wouldn’t speak for Ro. But I feel like I have smart care with other people like Warner, Tim Kaines, Ron Wydens, etc. Everyone feels very burned out, and so do their Joe Bidens, for that matter. They feel very burned by the Obama-era budget negotiations, where they feel they put too much on the table. And in the end, it was infinitely difficult to get the Republicans to fulfill their promises, so the procedure of hijacking the supercommittee began after all. And we had those stupid automatic discounts for years and years.

That’s what I’ve read about them, because I don’t think they’ve said anything more than what they’ve said, and all those other people, at other times, have approved all kinds of possible spending relief programs. I don’t think this is about reaching an agreement. I don’t forget that Barack Obama was open to raising the Medicare retirement age, which made everyone on the left angry with him, but in the end, Boehner couldn’t keep his promises. And Democrats’ view is that Republicans can no longer deliver on their promises on difficult votes in Congress. The benefits of participating in such processes, especially as the election year approaches, would therefore be quite small.

I would be very curious to see what would happen in the type of negotiations you are talking about. If you ask me why Joe Biden, which is another question, if you ask me why Joe Biden didn’t have interaction in a budget procedure. With Republicans, I think that’s an attractive question. But I don’t think President Johnson can deliver on his promises. And I don’t think Johnson pointed out the kinds of things that you’re talking about here.

I agree that other people like Vance and Rubio have expressed openness to a little more revenue, but I think there needs to be a credibility building operation there before other people take it seriously.

Yes, no. I totally agree. And we’ve just done a big deal on where we’re going on Earth with these things. And that’s precisely where we landed: here’s my 10-year adventure towards a balanced budget. Here’s their commission on this or that: it’s precisely the other way around. What is needed are those small exercises in developing credibility. Can we make $50 billion in profits and $100 billion in spending cuts, anything that actually makes one aspect take the other seriously?

I’m more confident than I have been in a long time that this could happen. And that’s due, as with other things we’ve talked about, to some of those adjustments on the right that I hope will continue.

Let me end here with a question about costs. One thing that you are very delicate about in your writing is that if you need to be a populist philosopher in economics, you have to take very seriously what the public thinks. And the public obviously knows it. Right now they need costs to come down. They care a lot about the amount they pay.

Many of those policies – even those I agree with, but others I disagree with, lists of values and drastic discounts on immigration – are seeing their value increase, on an ad hoc basis, for longer. To what extent has their thinking about politics and value traps been replaced, given the number of people who say that the most they expect from their politicians is for things to become less expensive again?

It didn’t replace my thinking much. The inflation of recent years has evidently been very damaging. In my opinion, this is rightly linked to some potentially very irresponsible political choices that have been made. And I don’t think that can be forgiven. And so I think that’s part of the existing thinking about what other people are feeling in recent years.

That said, it is clear that inflation has fallen. It is to be hoped that we will return to an era of stability of values. And I think it would be a mistake to infer from this delight that the right political programme is one that, above all, ultimately promises little value, because I believe that what still remains is an opportunity to be necessarily fair and to deliberately pursue a policy that leads to compromises. And this is something that has been missing from our politics for a long time.

And I quite believe that there is an opportunity right now – and it’s something we’re taking a lot of advantage of – especially within a populist framework, to be absolutely fair about the hole that we’ve dug over the last 40 years and about some of the things that we can and will have. What to do to get out of this hole.

And I think if it was understood that you were getting anything in exchange for your worth building up – that is, it wasn’t the result of bad policy or mistakes – it occurs because we are relocating because we are raising wages. For the ones who are suffering – I literally think there’s a political message to build around the fact that it is far more effective than maximum of what we’ve heard.

And certainly every survey we do concludes the same thing: when you honestly tell other people, here are the ups and downs of a tariff, one of the downsides of a tariff is that it increases value, this doesn’t decrease for tariffs. Values. But the concept of asking other people to pay what it’s worth for something is not foreign to our politics and, in fact, can be a very healthy component of a message.

Then I ask our last question. What 3 books would you present to the public?

I have an idea about this because I need to provide a set of useful and varied recommendations. So I have nonfiction. I read Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. And I have to admit that I am not far from that: the thousands of pages and 4 volumes. But I have been skeptical that a 4-volume, thousand-page biography can be, that is, interesting. And I have to say it’s phenomenal. Thus, “The Road to Power” by Robert Caro would be one of them.

For science fiction lovers, and especially if you want an audiobook for a long trip, I recommend “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. He’s the guy who wrote “The Martian,” which has been made into the movie with Matt Damon stuck on Mars, but this one is even better. And without too many spoilers, it’s an intrepid scientist and his alien boyfriend who save the world.

And finally, for those with kids, a glorious bedtime read-aloud: It’s called “The Green Ember. “My team gave it to me because they knew I love reading to my kids. And it’s about rabbits fighting with swords. Who could do anything more than that?

Oren Cass, thank you very much.

It’s great. THANK YOU.

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This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin. Fact Checking via Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our lead engineer is Jeff Geld, and the additional combination was done through Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones.

Our editor-in-chief is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, and Kristin Lin. We have the original music of Isaac Jones, the strategy of Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And a special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

transcription

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According to the New York Times, it’s “The Ezra Klein Show. “

My God, what a week in politics. This weekend there was an assassination attempt that backs Donald Trump. I have the idea that this will change everything in the future. But on Monday, everything changed again, and Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. J. D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate.

There’s a lot to say about Vance. Vance is a very ideological choice, not a political one. If Trump was worried about the polls, if he thought he might lose, if he was looking for a vice president who could help him win in Virginia or Wisconsin, the only possible options were on offer. But in Vance he showed another kind of confidence. He chose the vice-presidential candidate who took full advantage of Trump’s impulses, his rhetoric, his political and personal logo to achieve a coherent philosophy of government.

Vance has done it in a way that I find terrifying, like the deep distaste for democratic procedure and elections that he has shown since 2020, but he has also done it in a way that I find interesting, even important, like the most The way serious economic populism that he defends continued in the Senate.

I think many liberals don’t need to admit that this is going down. You must dismiss this as mere wishful thinking. But here everything is happening. If you watched the first night of the Republican National Convention, you’ll see the keynote speech given by Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union. It’s surprising. And pay attention to O’Brien for a second.

^ARCHIVED RECORDING^ SEAN

Some party members are actively opposed to trade unions. This will also have to change.

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The Teamsters and the Republican Party would likely disagree on many issues. But a developing organization has shown the courage to sit up and consider viewpoints funded through large think tanks.

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Senators like J. D. Vance, Roger Marshall and representatives are among the elected officials who worry about the plight of working people. And this organization is spreading and sowing concern among those who have monopolized our badly damaged formula in United States today.

Hearing a stadium full of Republicans applauding the concept of being a pro-union party? It’s different. Something is becoming here. Whether that changes or not, I don’t think we know yet. But there are factional fights within the Republican Party. And by opting for Vance, Trump gave a lot of strength to the emerging faction.

On Friday, a few days before Vance’s nomination, I met with Oren Cass. Cass is interesting. He was Mitt Romney’s domestic policy director during the 2012 crusade, as orthodox a Republican economic philosopher as you could find at the time. But then, after Romney’s loss and Trump’s victory in 2016, Cass experienced this evolution by discovering an organization called American Compass, which has become a political flashpoint for the party’s younger, populist generation that criticized the Republican Party, which attacked the Republican Party. . for being an anti-worker party, for having abandoned the others who vote for it, whom it claims to represent.

American Compass does not constitute or speak on behalf of a giant faction of Senate Republicans. But there are a number of young Republicans in the Senate, like Tom Cotton, like Marco Rubio, like Josh Hawley, like J. D. Vance, who are close to him. , which are components of this emerging faction.

So I think it’s worth exploring what Cass was looking to do here. He needs Republicans to become a pro-worker party as he and they define it, which is markedly different from how Democrats describe it. He needs Republicans to become a pro-union party. It’s not like I have Republican political pundits at the expo arguing for sectoral negotiations. It’s something new.

And Vance’s selection makes this verbal exchange much more applicable because it means Cass’s thinking is now much closer to the center of GOP politics. It is possible that soon, if Donald Trump wins, he will be in the White House, or at least in the vice presidency. president’s office.

But that doesn’t mean Cass’ idea is the only one. Look at Project 2025. It is an economically populist document. Look at the Republican Party. platform. The Republican Party is in the middle of an ideological war between factions. We still see him providing those giveaways to businesses, all this deregulation and tax cuts.

So, it is quite easy to ask if all this is genuine or simply a matter of putting a populist face on the same agenda as always. And if it is genuine, is what is proposed here even an intelligent idea?As always, my email: ezrakleinshow@nytimes. com.

Oren Cass, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me.

So we’re talking here about the 2024 Republican National Convention. But I wanted to convey an excerpt from the 2012 Republican National Convention, when Mitt Romney won the nomination. And I wanted to know how you hear that now.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

– In the United States we are successful. We make no apologies for the success.

[APPLAUSE]

But no one has ever accomplished anything in the real business world. This is what this president does not seem to understand. Entrepreneurship and project creation mean taking risks, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but striving hard. These are dreams.

It usually doesn’t turn out exactly as you imagined. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. And then he came back and replaced the world. The genius of America’s lax corporate formula is to harness the ordinary creativity, talent, and industry of fellow Americans with a formula committed to creating tomorrow’s prosperity, not redistributing today’s. Today.

[AUDIO PLAY]

You were Mitt Romney’s domestic policy adviser on that campaign. What do you think of this political message now?

Well, let me tell you, first of all, I’m relieved. I thought you were going to play a little bit with Clint Eastwood and the chair.

That’s what I’m there for. It is one of the most surreal moments of my political life.

Oui. Eh, well, anyway, from there, we just went to the surreal maximum, in a way. But it’s a desirable video. And one of the things that moves me the most is that he is drowned out in applause to the maximum. But what he describes as the secret of the lazy business formula is to exploit – I can’t forget the precise adjectives – ingenuity, productivity, etc. of other Americans to build those successful businesses. And I think that’s still true.

I think what was so lacking in the Republican Party, adding the message put forward during the Romney-Ryan campaign, was an acknowledgment that we had moved away from that system, that if you ask who has more good luck in the American economy, whether it’s Steve Jobs at Apple or the leaders of Bain Capital, the company has failed to harness the strength of the American worker. He achieved this by avoiding the American worker.

One thing that moves me about this video and the rhetoric of the Republican Party of this era is that it is directed at someone in particular. The feeling was that we had come to denigrate businessmen, those who took threats, and business leaders. And now, when I pay attention to many Republicans, I don’t think their policies help us. But when I pay attention to them and when I pay attention to you, there has been an implicit shift, at least rhetorically, in terms of who is the vox populi, who is the ideal political voice.

That’s surely true, I think. And this is true both in the political base of the Republican Party and in the perception of the message they need to hear.

Of course, it has been true that the majority of the Republican electorate were not business founders or marketers (that’s still just a small portion of the population), but those who weren’t, weren’t. We are not necessarily as enamored with this message as perhaps other people thought. as pundits and speechwriters seem to assume. And then, of course, it has become even more true.

If we look at the current genuine alignment within American politics, we see that more and more wealthier and more knowledgeable layers of the population are moving to the left. And we see a lot of middle class people moving to the right. a new political coalition that the Republicans are addressing. And I think conservatives have a much greater understanding of the truth of the genuinely demanding situations that the country faces and the kinds of things that will not only have to be talked about, but that will have to be addressed if anything is to be resolved.

My feeling is that the replacement you made – and some of the other people you are closer to politically, like J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley – made the Republican Party’s vision of what economic policy subordinate, if anything, to what is downstream of what it seeks to achieve: it has replaced.

So, in your view, what was the interest of economic policy for Republicans in 2012?And now what is the Republican faction of which you are a part that seeks to say what is the meaning of economic policy?

If you look back, in 2012, before Trump, Reagan, Ryan, the Republican Party, or whatever you want to call it, there was essentially this view that GDP was the goal, that we’re here to make the pie bigger, and that expansion is the end. And maybe if there’s a lot of inequality as we achieve that expansion, let’s do some downward redistribution. But we’re going to complain along the way.

And I think he’s surely right that this shift in thinking about trade, work, any of those issues, etc. , is based on the popularity that GDP expansion is a smart thing to do; I am not an enthusiast of the deexpansion that should be approved. and living in a log cabin, but it’s not the solution. And it’s not even a very smart indicator for many of the things that matter most.

One thing I have discovered is desirable and somewhat fortuitous: However, it was between the 2012 and 2016 elections that all the studies on deaths from depression emerged. This was the same time that David Autor’s studies on the China surprise and the consensus among economists that lax industry is a smart thing emerged, so of course industry lax with China was a smart thing, Despite everything it has been questioned through the It is true that, in fact, the relaxed industry with China has not been a smart thing. That’s one attractive thing about Romney. And what I wrote that was very educational to me was that he was actually very skeptical about the history of Chinese industry. And they sent me to do studies on why this wasn’t working well for other Americans. But this was considered a strange and unique exception. And the fundamental assumption was the understanding of the invisible hand, as the idea of ​​​​others Adam Smith spoke of the invisible hand, that is, there is a miraculous force that guarantees that when each one stays in pursuit of his own benefit, the public benefits as such. as much as possible. GOOD. The emerging tide lifts all boats.

And I think that’s something (in fact, to a large extent) that I took for granted and that empirically has shown that it wasn’t. It’s been decades since this happened. And so I think the replacement that has actually happened This happened in my own thinking and – I think you’re right – that’s the root of a lot of what’s going on within conservatism, is the popularity of the ends that they were focusing on, which can be broadly described in a The term indistinct, Like human flourishing, it comprises many explicit elements.

And the most popular curtains in life are one of them. But strong and solid communities, the formation of families, the ability of other people to build a decent life, regularly in the communities where they have lived and where their families have lived, to raise their children, to make a productive contribution to their network. . . That is literally what purpose importa. se intended to be and that we are allowed to claim that those things are purposes rather than just saying, well, whatever freedom and the market produce are ends in themselves.

Senator Rubio has a very intelligent position on this, which is that the market or the economy is meant to be at the service of others and not others at the service of the economy. So it’s not just our right, but we think it’s our duty to think about how we need to govern and govern proactively, to make sure that the market generates the kind of results that matter most to us, even if it doesn’t. the exam as effective.

But let me check it out to see why you found it so provocative. Because I’m more liberal. I would describe the prevailing view among liberals at the time as pro-free trade, but while I was aware that there were poorly structured markets, there were other things: a massive shift from the source of income to capital at the expense of labor, and that source of income being reduced. Redistriyeted. No exactly perceive the shift from this idea, which seemed true to me then and still is true today, to the direction in which at least some on the right have gone, which is general scepticism. We are moving away from the point of global integration that we have experienced.

There’s a lot to unpack there. I think, as you described, the progressive view tends to assume that market positions are smart about certain things, but they may not work very well. This requires many interventions everywhere and in various ways. either in advance, in the hope of achieving fairer market position outcomes, or after the fact, to redistribute and compensate for inequitable outcomes. And I think the conservative view (surely mine) is that there will be some need, but the most productive model, to which we deserve to aspire, to the extent possible, is one in which we configure market positions in a way that makes them paint well and that, in some way, the major structural problems are the most productive position. to operate.

And that’s where one of the main arguments that we make in American Compass, in fact to the center-right audience in particular, is to say that it’s not even necessarily a trilemma. This is a fairly fundamental dilemma. Either you have to be willing to impose restrictions on the U. S. market so that we can have a relatively flexible U. S. market, or you leave the U. S. market completely exposed to global forces and in the end you have to interfere everywhere. And then, in a sense, we would concentrate on those big structural issues and see if we can solve them properly.

Let’s anchor that in tariffs, because I think it’s useful to include that around a policy. Because, look, who tries to have the right to question the concept that markets are a natural phenomenon that arises from herbal law and works perfectly wherever they are?It seems that as long as the government doesn’t get in your way, you do. The work of the Lord. I thank you. I appreciate everything you’re doing about it.

But I think the classic way progressive economic thinkers approach the question is which markets are down and why. And what you’re saying is that a position where conservative reformers, populist conservatives like you, have to diverge, you say, well, we don’t need this fragmented package. We need to implement primary regulations that reposition the structure.

So a vital rule that would replace the design that you proposed, that Donald Trump has now proposed, is a 10% tariff on all imported goods, a tariff rate particularly higher than that on goods imported from China. I think for Trump, it’s 60%. percent. Start by pointing this policy out to me.

I think it all starts with finding industry balance and whether or not you care that we have an industrial deficit of about $1 trillion a year. And what that industrial deficit ultimately represents is approximately $1 trillion worth of goods being manufactured. for consumption in the US market and that they are not industrialized for products that we manufacture here for consumption in other places, but rather they are industrialized because when you have a giant industrial deficit, when other people send you much more than you send them you send, it’s We don’t send it to you for free, as a favor. In fact, you buy it on credit.

So, to a large extent, what we are returning, for example, are Treasury bills. We are literally handing back pieces of paper saying that the US government will pay you, the taxpayers, at some point in the long term. You go back to corporate debt. You are going to support business capital. You’re literally saying that here you can have our businesses and the long-term profits that come from them, etc. And we’re just going to consume these things now.

And hopefully, in a way, as this description makes clear, it’s a run-of-the-mill long-term fear about the adequacy of an economy and a nation. But in the short term, what we’re doing is we’re taking what in a different way has been a demand for products produced in the United States and you’re just getting rid of them. It’s simply saying that there’s less demand for products made in this country now. This leads to lower demand for U. S. labor. There is less desire to invest in États-Unis. And we will simply benefit from consumption anyway. Now, there are other people who say it’s okay. For a long time, the prevailing view among economists was that it was great, even to the left of center. And I think what other people are noticing more and more is that this is a terrible model. It’s bad for American workers. This is bad for communities in large portions of the country where manufacturing, resource development, and elements of the physical economy are the places where they can be most productive.

It’s bad for innovation because in the long run it turns out that you can try to do the same thing as the iPhone designed in California and assembled in Shenzhen. But in the long run, in fact, where production, studios and progression are going as well. And you end up not being able to do it at all. And this has happened in giant sectors of the U. S. economy with our commercial base.

So if you look at this and say it’s not good, then you’re willing to ask what we can do about it. And that leads you to start thinking about things like fees.

I do not mean here that there is a single way of conceiving industries. United States But I don’t think that, given an economy like ours, with a workforce like ours, it makes sense to try to believe in a world where most of the clothes Americans wear are made in United States. I’ll be interested to know when I end this consultation if you don’t agree with that.

But think, for example, of semiconductors. I absolutely agree that we need semiconductor production to take place much more than we have recently in the United States. Semiconductors are a massive global industry. They are of abundant strategic importance. If we lost to semiconductors made in Taiwan, for example, we would be in deep trouble. And Taiwan is a very politically volatile country.

But the explanation for why we lost our dominance in semiconductor production is that it’s a confusing story. But a major component of the story is that it has become too expensive to manufacture products here. And the semiconductor source chain is incredibly complex. And it is unimaginable that everything would happen here. You have to import a giant amount of goods.

And so, at the very moment when we’re looking to bring back semiconductor production through the CHIPS and Science Act, giving cash to teams like Intel to set up factories here, we’re going to step in and also tell them that each and every component that is imported to make semiconductors in the United States will charge 10% more because we’re going to impose price lists on those products. And when I hear that, I think it’s going to be a smart thing to do for anyone who needs to set up a semiconductor production plant in Canada or, really, Taiwan, because here we’re creating an increase in the prices of producing complex products. Tell me why I’m wrong about what this means for, say, an Intel.

Well, I’ll start with your description of why we lost semiconductor production because it’s become too expensive to make things here, which I don’t think is true at all. The explanation for why semiconductor production has advanced at a significant rate is that other countries have provided large subsidies to invite and cover the prices of construction factories elsewhere.

So it’s true that, speaking, it ended up costing more here. But it wasn’t a market force. There was no comparative advantage, as if the rocky outcrops off the coast of China turned out to be very smart places to make semiconductors, which is not the case in Silicon Valley.

And the explanation of why I start with this is to say that I think it’s literally vital to recognize that our fundamental style that we’re learning in economics class, which is what’s called comparative merit, where everybody’s going to specialize in a Comparative merit is created, not discovered, depending on who invests in what.

If the United States makes the decision to manufacture semiconductors here, we deserve to do two things. Or we want trade policy, things like the CHIPS Act. But we will also want policies that simply say that if you want to serve the American market, you will have to do it from the United States, which may also raise your prices a little compared to other places. And that would possibly mean that the final cost of what is produced is higher, at least in the short term. I think we have to ask ourselves whether, over time, it will be more or less expensive to do something in the United States.

So to answer the question specifically, when you say, well, maybe it will happen and do it in Canada, well, the answer is no, you won’t, because if you do, then you’re going to have to pay the 10% tariff. when you decide to import the chip into the United States, anyway. So what you’re doing at the end of the day is is: access to the U. S. market. In the U. S. , it is becoming more favorable to be in the U. S. market. U. S.

And this means that you will have to pay customs duties for some of your inputs. But this will also mean that other parts of the chain of origin will also move to the United States, because in fact Guatemala cannot have a complete semiconductor chain of origin. I have yet to hear an explanation as to why. why the United States can’t. Of course, the United States did this when it pioneered and evolved the semiconductor before allowing it to be moved overseas.

Well, let me make a few observations on that. So, first of all, I just need to say that I strongly disagree that it’s credible that we have a complex chain of origin of semiconductors that goes from soup to nuts in the United States. If other people read “Chip War,” which is, I think, the most productive way to get into a very productive book on this topic, the semiconductor supply chain is extremely confusing and fragile. And there is a lot of populism in the way these proposals are formulated. But what has been observed with wonderful cruelty in recent years is that other people don’t like higher prices. . These are politically unstable.

What we’ve also noticed and what you’re talking about is that Americans like to have – and in many cases want to have – strong export-oriented industries. We want to have global leadership. And to the extent that we’ve made it very difficult for those industries to import what they want and then be cost-competitive when they export what they want to export, that’s going to cause a lot of anger among voters.

We are not going to take the country out of a globalized world where there are genuine benefits to participating and promoting globally. And, in particular, a massive, one-off surprise will be politically sensitive. So I would also be very curious to know what you think.

It would be wonderful to have the best industry grades if they were balanced. If we manufacture things and send them in exchange for things that are manufactured and shipped to us, that’s the style of business we all thought we would adhere to. What I’m saying is not that we’re literally going to be a closed economy that manufactures everything and we can’t use Dutch ASML machines or anything else.

But I think it’s worth pointing out that we can’t do that, I don’t know why. There was a time when the soup-to-nuts semiconductor process was done in the United States because we literally invented everything.

But then it’s much simpler. I think that is the answer to the question you ask. The semiconductors manufactured at the time were extremely simplistic compared to the hyper-advanced semiconductors in which TSMC now dominates.

If we look at what the United States has done repeatedly, industry after industry, in developing those technologies, we demonstrate an ordinary ability to innovate and grow the whole. And then we look away and say, well, that was literally our point of view. We don’t care if we make it or not.

The most well-known quote about this is “computer chips, potato chips: what’s the difference?” It is in this political environment that we have stopped doing all this. Not because we find it too confusing to do so. It’s not because we weren’t the most productive at it. It’s because we didn’t care.

So I think it’s vital to take a step back and recognize that in a well-functioning trading system, most of those things would never have gone away. You can simply argue that we wouldn’t possibly have all the raw minerals that are used to make the chips. This may well be the case. But the idea that we can’t be generation leaders in the other stages of the semiconductor production process when we still represent, among other things, 25% of GDP (of global GDP, 20%, 25%), I don’t know why that’s the case.

To be very clear, my view is that the United States can indeed be a leader in many facets of those things, but taking seriously the complexity of the things we want to do and the cooperation between the chains of origin that is required to do them. – Seeking to gain leadership by increasing the costs we pay for the things we want to compete with, whether in terms of production and innovation in those areas, will be counterproductive.

And as you say, you are very informed by doing.

So if it is much less expensive to manufacture elsewhere, not only because the prices of hard work are lower, but because it is much less difficult to cooperate between the chains of origin, etc. , we are not going to resume this production. And if we don’t resume this manufacturing, we are not going to resume this innovation. And if we don’t embrace this innovation, we may not have the leadership they need.

So I’m not saying we shouldn’t have leadership in those areas. I’m skeptical about the option of imposing large-scale price lists for this.

Yes, there is indeed a fee related to leadership relocation and recovery. But I think the two things I would say first about this is that the position is definitely transitional and potentially short-lived. And I think a clever representation of that comes from the auto industry, where one of the quintessential representations of a successful industrial policy, and it wasn’t even price lists, it was a genuine quota, was the 1980s, when automakers Japanese cars were not only making advances, they were about to severely beat Detroit. And Reagan just negotiated a real import quota with the Japanese. They possibly don’t matter; the expansion of imports will simply stop.

Now, what happened? Economists will tell you that Japanese car prices rose between five and 10 percent in the first few years. But most importantly, all Japanese automakers moved their production facilities to the United States.

Immediately, they obtained the meeting facilities. Shortly after, all their home chains were changed. Then they opened R centers.

For many, many years, the Toyota Camry was the top American car on the market, in terms of American in-vehicle content. So one could take a step back and say, wow, what a disaster. Look at how the cost of those cars has been rising for a few years. But I’m not sure there’s anyone who would say. . . well, really, I know a few other people at the Cato Institute who would. So let me tell you that there are a lot of other people who would say: well, it was just a mistake that the Japanese auto industry now employs thousands of people in the United States, all those jobs, all those long-term innovations, et cetera. Well, we shouldn’t haven’t, because if you actually interfere in the market like that, you’re going to increase costs for consumers.

So that’s one point. The actual point is that it’s really important to keep this in mind, and I find it funny when other center-left people make this mistake because it’s the quintessential center-right mistake. I struggle with the other people at The Tax Foundation constantly talks about this. People who complain that price lists will increase costs behave as if price lists are simply inflating money. Tariffs are tax gains. What you are talking about is a tax whose effect is not entirely borne by Americans and, to the extent that it does, constitutes a benefit to the public treasury.

So I think we want to have a much broader verbal exchange about what a tariff economy looks like, how it balances and who wins in the long run, because I would say that, in fact, it’s the ruling families that earn the most. . Instead of doing this very limited static investigation of the fact that there is a tariff, bananas are now 10% more expensive.

Pray, you’ve put me in a terrible position because there’s so much I need to ask you about. But I also like to talk about industrial policy. And I struggle between the part of me that knows how to design a clever verbal exchange and the part that simply needs to do it forever. I’m going to do some other rhythm on this. And you can have the final say on that. So we’re going to move on.

I have friends who are business economists. And the example of the automotive industry is interesting. And that pushes them to continue using bananas in other tactics of our verbal exchange because, as you know, the Japanese example is interesting. We made the decision that we had to use Japanese manufacturing. What we’ve created in this policy that you’re talking about under Reagan is extensive collaboration with Japanese companies. And we learned a lot from those companies.

We have proven Japanese inventions in production, logistics, and organizational processes. Since then there have been many books on how Toyota was managed as a company. And the five whys are still a tactic of the way Toyota was managed and talked about in the American business. tuition. So we’ve brought that in. And we learned a lot, as well as making a profit, from the fact that Toyota now had production facilities in the United States. At this time, we know that China is not only effective as a manufacturer because there is a lot of hard work and low wages in China. . As a manufacturer, they understood things that we didn’t. They’ve developed kinds of experience that we don’t have. They know how to do things that we don’t know how to do either.

One thing you can believe is being done is a policy. What we need to do is get those Chinese EV manufacturing companies to work in the United States to get those plants up and running and do pretty much what we did when we were doing this with Japan and the Japanese automakers. production in the 80s.

As far as I know, this is not Biden’s or Trump’s policy. They are in a much more competitive position compared to China. They need to see Chinese automakers weakened. They don’t need to have a foothold in the US market, even if that means having factories in the US market. Furthermore, we do not consider China’s manufacturing industry to be something we can simply receive information about. We do not believe that Chinese corporations have lessons to teach us.

My political sentiment is that no one is saying: well, the genuine thing we are looking for here is to have Chinese electric cars. The companies that make their electric cars here at a low cost and very popular, that’s what we did with the Japanese. Are you saying that this is what we do, that this is where our politics are going?

No, definitely not. And I think you’ve risen to an attractive challenge. And the E. V. The industry is the best representation of this. I just finished a big assignment on electric cars for this very reason: The Japanese analogy fails when it gets to the point where we don’t simply need BYD to set up factories in America.

But you’re the one with the Japanese analogy.

Yes. I wouldn’t tie any knots. But surely you are right. There are things about China and US-China dating that make it much more difficult. What we’re talking about, if we’re creating the incentive to be successful in the United States, it’s not to bring Chinese factories to the United States. It’s about creating that incentive and then allowing investors to figure out the most productive way to do it here, which will be very different, but given where we are in generation development, it’s potentially the most productive time to do it.

And maybe it’s just the free-market conservative in me speaking. But I believe that this is precisely the formula towards which we are heading. I don’t need to see us just pass by and observe to perceive this position and that position that we are in. A large subsidy must be given.

To answer your question, I believe that clothing constitutes an innovation domain with ordinary potential. And I would like our policy to be: you will charge more if you have to use foreign products than if you can use domestic products. Today, the companies of the free world, the investors of the United States, are contemplating what to do.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There are a lot of things that you are proposing now, that others are proposing now, that if you squint might sound like Elizabeth Warren’s – not tariffs, but hard work policies, for example – that are much closer to what they say the liberals. . for a long time. But I feel that that is where many things diverge, that when I read you and I read others in your field, what I hear is that we want to use economic policy so that the only breadwinner in the family, but two: a circle of parents of family relatives who have not one or two children, but between three and five children, are again possible, especially, but not only, for many of those men in the Midwest for whom we are seeing quite negative results lately. How fair or unfair is this as a description of your goal?

I would say partly fair, partly unfair. What is certainly true is that I think you have hit the nail on the head in particular when I talk about the concept that human flourishing means that other people are able to build a decent life in their communities, make a productive contribution, start and raise families. Yes, we want to make it imaginable in the same way that most people, of course, say they want to do it, which is the style you describe: to be able to get married, have children, and have a sufficient income. Help the family choose how much they need one or two employees. Best of all, you may have a parent at home with young children.

What I would say is very unfair is that I think when you start coming in, we’re talking in particular about men in certain Midwestern communities, etc. Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute, said a few years ago that the concern about production was. . . It was a fetish for keeping rural white men and others in positions of power.

Whether white men in rural spaces have ever held such a position of strength is another question. But it’s not about race, gender, or region within the country. It’s about making sure other people have the ability to continue life. a path that they themselves say they should follow, and seeing that this only happens if you have an economy that allows you to maintain a circle of relatives with a single income. And if that’s a possibility, then you can do it and you have a There’s a lot of flexibility about it. But I don’t think we have that today.

The reason I’m focusing here is because I’m noticing things: This total death from depression was about white men in certain parts of the country. Now it has been expanded. Actually, I don’t do it in deaths from depression. I don’t think the evidence on this has shown what is happening. But that’s where a lot of this came from.

And because the paintings that you and others do are very focused on production and production and what happened to the fall in the fortunes of men who lost their position as breadwinners, and by the way, that worries me. I don’t think it’s like that. So when I say that, it’s not an attack. It just turns out to me that the fear comes from somewhere and the proposed policies are more vocal for a certain type of task, whereas, let’s say, if you care about families headed by black or Hispanic mothers, you would care much more about the tasks in the service sector and whether they pay well or not, what kind of progress they have and how the plans work.

And I’m not saying that you or the other people you advise don’t care. But I hear a lot less about it. And going back to what I was saying earlier about Mitt Romney and Donald Trump and implicitly who we’re talking about, it turns out to me that we’re implicitly talking about the kind of other people who say Vance was worried in his e-book “Hillbilly Elegy. ” And the political proposals go in that direction.

I don’t think that’s the right way to characterize the political calendar as a whole. I think that, indeed, you are right: when we talk about globalization, industrial deficits, etc. , we are obviously communicating about manufacturing. It is not mainly because They are smart jobs that the family does. They will be highly automated factories. I think they are actually offering smart jobs to their families.

This is one of the reasons we care about them. But in my view, truly, a key explanation for why we care about those production jobs is that production and the commercial economy – let’s put it more broadly – are sometimes recognized, rightly, I think more often than not, as the basis for productivity expansion. It is much less difficult to achieve maximum levels of productivity expansion in output than in many parts of the service sector. And it is really thanks to the expansion of productivity in production that everyone can earn higher wages than everyone else. And so, a commercial economy as an anchor for productivity expansion and innovation, where you can achieve productivity expansion and then provide the anchor for local economies that can enjoy greater prosperity in the service sector, also, I think, at the end of the day, why production is such a vital area to focus on.

I think if you look at other parts of the political agenda, you’ll see a much higher concentration in the facilities sector. Just to give you two examples, one is immigration policy. And I like to annoy my progressive friends with this, because I don’t understand how we can talk about the workforce or the higher wages in the service industry or about that Hispanic mother you just described taking the Democratic Party’s stance on immigration. In fact, hard-working markets, especially in lower grades, are incredibly vital for raising wages in the service sector.

And then I think another area where you’re seeing a lot of concentration is, as you mentioned, some of those questions about hard work and how to expand a hard work movement and a style of organized hard work that works well in the maximum sector. vital. distributed facilities sector. And I think that’s a key argument in favor of a more sectoral style of negotiation.

The American style that we take for granted as a union, the status of Norma Rae at the table with a sign that says “union,” this concept that organizing should be done from company to company, plant to plant, site to company. in the workplace, something that, among other things, corporations rationally resist: having a union if the competition doesn’t have one is a real holiday problem.

Choose your industry. Let’s say you’re a janitor in New York City. There won’t be a fight at your construction site or the housekeeping service company you represent over whether it will be unionized. There will be a janitors’ union.

And we can communicate about all the pros and cons of that. But I think it avoids a lot of the worst and maximum dysfunctional of our formula in the United States and, empirically, has shown much greater effects when used as a to empower and constitute workers.

That’s why I think if you communicate about industry and tariffs, then yes, you communicate temporarily about production jobs. But if you look at the calendar as a whole, I think it’s very transparent and comprehensive, and with intelligent faith. I think if I were to ask Senator Vance that question, I would say the same thing. He is deeply concerned about the wages in the service sector for other people of all races and genders and how the staff below are being given more strength.

I think it’s desirable that you and other members of the Republican Party have begun to take an interest in sectoral bargaining, which has been a political vision for a long time through other people like me and which would have been last on my list in I think there might be some Republican interest. So, on the one hand, everything is happening there. On the other hand, I wouldn’t take a look at Donald Trump’s Agenda 47 and say that what I’m seeing is a holistic approach to the hard issues. Hispanic Mom Workforce in the Service Industry. I think that would be an unusual argument, quite hostile to unions, and so on.

Something that worries other people like me and that worries me even when I do performances like this is that in the economic policy of the Republican Party, there is one of the people that I find most interesting, with whom I sympathize the most. But there may be a populist wash dimension, where there are other people who have a more holistic agenda here and are part of the coalition. But the parts where you hear them are not necessarily your parts.

You contributed to the bankruptcy of paintings, particularly in Project 2025. And this proposes a series of changes in pro-union policies. So I would like to know your description because I am clearly outside your coalition. From the inside, how would you describe the factional divisions that allow some of those concepts to cross the finish line and don’t allow, at least at this point, some of the others to get on the front page of the proposals or form one of those grand coalitions? documents?

Working on this has been a desirable pleasure because, as you said, the dynamics of the coalition are at the forefront. In fact, this is not the bankruptcy in paintings that I would write. But I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished. , because it is perhaps in the total task of 2025 that it deviates to the maximum from what has been the popular orthodoxy of the center-right for so long.

There are a lot of things there, to the point that for coalition reasons they had to present dissenting opinions. One of my favorites is banning a B. A. a requirement in a job description, embracing the concept that staff deserve to have a voice and power, that this matters to us, the concept of placing staff in corporate director forums. Maybe just move on.

I think that being said, you see, unions don’t exist today. The unions are functionally arms of the Democratic Party in the sense that they raise enormous sums of cash from a totally unorthodox staff organization; If anything, from a staff organization that is probably more pro-Trump than pro-Biden at this point. – and makes it political and monetary for the Democratic Party.

So at the end of the day, I can’t blame Republicans and members of the conservative movement for saying, just instrumentally, that we’re not going to get there. Trump is going to communicate about what Trump is going to communicate. And so if you believe that the politically vital things that Trump is focusing on don’t quite fit that economic vision, I probably wouldn’t challenge him on that.

But I think before the conversation, when you were characterizing this motion and thinking about it, I think you were rightly familiar with Senators Rubio, Vance, Cotton, and Hawley. And if you look at what they are doing and, indeed, what they are proposing in the form of legislation, I think it is precisely this set of issues.

Just to give a few examples, Romney, Cotton and Vance are on a proposal to increase the federal minimum wage and require mandatory electronic verification. This is a quintessential example of wage expansion at the bottom of the scale, targeting immigration policy as a component of a proposal for constructive labor market adjustment.

Hawley, more broadly, has strived to have more interaction with unions. In a speech he gave in which he essentially said it was time for conservatives to embrace unions and staff sector unions. But he notoriously works specifically with the Teamsters. Trump asks Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, to speak at the RNC. Senator Rubio has also done some concrete things in terms of work. He and Jim Banks, who lately is a congressman likely to win the Indiana Senate election in November proposed employee representation election models, adding employee participation on boards.

And then we can continue in all of those domains. I think there are indeed attractive charts on trade policy, others on immigration enforcement, others on non-academic pathways, which I think is an incredibly vital area, so my cross-factional research would be: first of all, who’s going to make policy in Congress if there’s a Trump administration?And then, what will happen after Trump? And on either front, I think what we’re seeing is that this precise cohort is the emerging leadership of not only the conservative movement, but also the Republican Party. And that’s what they’re talking about and that’s what they’re talking about.

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One of the reasons I’m interested in the paintings you’re doing (I’ve been doing it for a while, but it’s more applicable to me now) is that when they come out, we’ll know who Donald is. Trump’s selection is. But all reports recommend that it is because of Rubio, Vance and Burgum. And Rubio and Vance are; to the extent anyone is on his side in the Senate, Rubio and Vance are on his side in the Senate. So you could say that two of Trump’s three credible potential picks for vice president are very curious about American Compass. But I think it can be said more strongly than that. So it turns out, when I also communicate with young Republicans, that something generational is happening here.

The other thing I’m going to throw at you here is one of the reasons or one of the tactics why I feel this is being played out, is the sense that the liberal coalition’s conception of who it’s talking to and who it’s serving is no longer true. And there’s a huge hole that you can dig there.

And I saw it in the argument he made in his Times article about populism and elite failure.

So I’d like you to expand on that a little bit because I think one component of the opportunity that you see, and that Rubio, Vance, and some of those others were talking about, is the concept that liberal economics about what is liberals think it’s about that issue, but it’s not about who they think it is, or whether there is a political opportunity there. So, does it occur to you to make this criticism?

Well, thanks Ezra. It would be a great pleasure to do so.

Returning briefly to the generational point, I think you are surely right. And in some ways, it’s an ongoing procedure in conservatism that’s a little confusing because of Trump’s presence.

If we think about the 15 or 20 year periods in which parties realign and replace their ideology, they usually begin with a collapse. And this surprise regularly constitutes a major electoral loss. It was Goldwater in 1964 who, despite everything, carried Reagan in 1980. It was then when Reagan crushed Mondale that gave rise to the New Democrats and ultimately led to Clinton.

And I think all these paintings will continue after 2016 right of center. And analysts would find it much more familiar if Trump had lost. And a lot of those paintings are more of nature and construction, whatever comes up when the next generation takes over. And in a sense, this is parallel to what’s at the top.

And here’s how it is: When you say Rubio, Hawley, Cotton, Vance, it’s no coincidence that you’re also talking about a younger generation of Republican leaders. When you look at the orientation of all those under 40 in the Good, it is necessarily in this direction. I’m right on that threshold. And I guess I’m essentially a gray-bearded man.

An older millennial?

That’s right, a millennium older. For me, the appealing question is: What is my first political memory? And for me, it’s watching planes take off from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf in 1991, watching CNN, which means Ronald Reagan is. . . the fall of the Berlin Wall. , the Cold War, is simply in a history book. And this is not at all about minimizing its importance. But this means that when I think about the political disorders, the orientation of the political parties, the economic demands and situations of the nation, I think about the disorders and demanding situations of the 90s, 2000s and 2010s. And take a manual from Ronald Reagan Heritage Foundation and flipping through it to find the answer is absurd.

That’s why I think generational replacement is almost inevitable in the post-Cold War era. I’m very pleased to see that this kind of conservative economics is the path that other people are moving towards. And that, I think, is what will follow. But there’s a lot of chaos, inconsistent conflicts, and factional fighting along the way.

So, I think that ties into your point about the Democratic coalition and the Republican coalition. What I find exciting and exciting in this scenario for conservatives is that moving in this direction provides an opportunity to build a sustainable government majority. It’s true that you’re squandering libertarians while winning the electorate of the working class of all races. But it turns out that there are 10 times more working-class electorate that is socially conservative and would simply like to hear anything practical about right-wing economics than that of libertarians. electorate who bring their school diplomas and a $7 latte to school. Democratic Party.

How much do the lattes you buy cost?

[LAUGHTER] Maybe lattes in those elite coastal markets are even more expensive now, especially when you upload soy milk and chia shots. Obviously, I don’t have my specialty anymore.

Not going to cafes?

I am not a coastal elite living in a big city. Anyway, I can’t tell you what the costs are. But the fact is that, in theory, there may be an opportunity here for either political party.

I just gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, where I made this point. There is a world where Democrats take some of their economic message and mix it with something a little more practical about their progressive social issues. And we can simply believe that they will emerge victorious.

The truth is that they are going in the opposite direction. And on the right you see at least the prospect of a conservatism that combines a social conservatism that appeals to a large number of working- and middle-class voters with an economic message that appeals to them as well.

Well, you described it in terms of a social divide. But when I read it, I see the hole as educational, and the complaint you make to the Democrats is that, whether or not they realize this is happening, their economic problems electoral politics have increasingly begun to serve the problems of a more knowledgeable society. Democrats see themselves.

Yes, I think that’s true. So what I would say is that it seems to me that there are a lot of other people in the United States, maybe even most, who on those more social issues have a tendency to be more conservative, but who sometimes liked what they did. It was the traditional, more current, class-oriented Democratic message. But what we have today from the Democrats, despite some of the rhetoric, is a program that, at least in my view, is overwhelmingly aimed at the interests of a small, very small organization of voters. well-informed and with high income.

And so the quintessential policy package: If I think about the big fights that the Biden administration has chosen to pick, immigration policy is an example of that. A school policy that necessarily focuses on simply telling other people that they don’t have to pay. What they borrowed to go to university is some more detail. I think that the meteorological agenda, as a central point of trade policy, is some more detail of this.

A lot of people are asking: well, what are you talking about about trade policy?Is that precisely what the Biden administration is doing?I would say conceptually, to some extent, it does. But all of this is subject to this green agenda, which has a set of prices and benefits that I don’t think are transmitted very well to the maximum number of workers. And I don’t think they either. That’s why I think when you take a step back and look at it, it’s very complicated. to distinguish the priorities of the Democratic Party and the issues on which it is going to align with what most Americans care about, and indeed what matters. The focus is on those who are not doing very well financially.

However, when I look at the positioning of the Republican Party, and that includes things like the 2025 Project, I still see a lot of proposals for monetary deregulation. Project 2025 needs to get rid of regulatory authority for the monetary sector. it needs to particularly restrict the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I still see a lot of proposals to cut Medicaid very, very deeply and eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Even if you’re in favor of child tax credits, it was the Republicans. who let expanded child tax credits expire and have been very, very reluctant (though, again, not their faction) to find a way forward.

It turns out that there is a Republican Party that has Reagan’s old spending priorities and Reagan’s old perspectives on regulation. And the Democratic Party – although they have, for example, an opinion on school loans that they didn’t have before – and my view for a long time has been that if you need to pay off debt, you have to start with medical debt, which I think is much more due to bad luck than school debt. But nevertheless, the fact that he’s still very focused on negotiating pharmaceutical prices, looking to expand subsidies and fitness insurance programs, and looking to expand things within Medicare (the fact that this old line of spending exists) hasn’t really replaced much.

Well, there is no war of words on the Republican point. And if I may quote one of our wonderful statesmen, in a sense I seek to believe in what could be, free from the burden of what has been. Describing is a long-term future for conservatives. And going back to his point of view, it’s one that other people like Vance, Rubio, and Hawley are also looking to achieve. They don’t hear J. D. Vance talk about cutting rights and cutting access to health care, etc.

I think on the Democratic side, they’re right: Democrats are necessarily protecting and representing the most vital spending item on the agenda. I’m also not sure at this point how that differentiates them from the Republicans’ stance on all this. And that’s why I said very particularly that if I look at the fights that the Biden administration has chosen, if you look at where the real political conflicts are, where are you going to see a very distinct global conflict depending on how they go?? In power, the things that the Democrats, at least the Biden administration, seem to have literally planted their flag on are this set of things that are very vital to the other people who work for the Biden administration, but not necessarily the ones that a critical mass of voters are interested in.

And I think the last thing we can say about this — a really attractive position to see where rubber stands, where we’ve started doing a lot of paintings at American Compass — has to do with fiscal and budgetary issues. Because it seems to me that there is no doubt, in the situation in which we currently find ourselves, that we are having to reduce spending. And I think that’s something that will have meaning in the country. It remains to be seen whether either side can find the right position in this regard. At least I’ve started to see some Republicans say we want to cut spending or raise revenues. I have yet to see the Democrat in a position to recognize that, yes, some of the spending will have to be passed on. And this is where we will focus.

Actually? I have the impression that the Democrats recognize this. I have the impression that we act as if we fell from a coconut tree, to quote the wonderful stateswoman herself. Frankly, I feel like Democrats talk about it all the time. You walk into Mark Warner’s and ask him if he doesn’t think the expense will have to be broadcast someday.

I think Joe Biden would be perfectly content to engage in negotiations with congressional Republicans. I would bet money, genuine money, that if Mike Johnson wanted to approach Joe Biden and say, hey, I think our budget scenario is out of control and we’re open to a deal that cuts spending and raises taxes, Joe Biden, I’d love to. have those negotiations. While Donald Trump has a well-articulated policy here, which is that he needs to continue his tax cuts, which have cost billions of dollars and which have largely gone unpaid, or at least largely unpaid whole. , that’s another way of putting it, and he wants to use some of the price list money we were talking about earlier to reduce corporate taxes even more.

This is a position where, since the arrival of the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, Oren Cass and Paul Ryan in 2012, things seem to have changed, and I can no longer even say what Republicans think about debt and fiscal policy. care. This doesn’t seem to motivate anyone. And it turns out that Donald Trump cares a lot about tax cuts.

The suspicion that Democrats have about Republicans, because it has been true in the life of someone like me, is that Republicans need to communicate about fiscal irresponsibility. But once in power, the first thing they should do is reduce taxes.

So what I see when I look at Republicans (and you can tell me if you think so) is a preference for making bigger Trump tax cuts, a preference for cutting taxes even further, and a preference for radically, or at least significantly, cutting taxes. increase defense spending. And in fact, I haven’t heard anything that doesn’t fall into old-school paul ryanism (let’s get rid of the Ministry of Education or something) about how they’re going to pay for all this.

Am I wrong, in your opinion?

I think you are a little bit. I would have agreed to this a few years ago and stipulated it about Trump as well. I haven’t heard anything guilty from a monetary point of view of. . .

But it is a vital requirement, because he is the leader of the party and the others are.

And I think we’ve made it clear several times in this verbal exchange that what I’m talking about, and what I’m sure about in speaking, is necessarily what those members of Congress are running for, where conservatism is leading. Array And in that sense, if you look at this specific issue, we’ve noticed a sea change, even in the last year, in the way the most prominent Republicans talk about it.

That’s why Jodey Arrington, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has publicly stated that we want to put benefits on the table. Tom Cole, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has publicly stated that we want to put benefits on the table. Chip Roy, political director of the House Freedom Caucus, has said publicly that he is open to raising the corporate tax rate. Josh Hawley (I talked about the speech he just gave on union membership) also pointed out in particular that the corporate tax cuts were a mistake, suggesting that we have a lower tax rate for corporations.

So it seems to me that recently there are real reasons to be positive about the option of moving forward in this area and that the 2017 edition of the fiscal policy led by Paul Ryan is not what the long term will be for the Conservatives.

But your comment about going on to ask Mark Warner, about going on to ask Joe Biden, catches my attention, because all that has been analyzed given this openness that some Republicans have shown is: who are the Democrats? other side?

And just one example: we did an American Compass podcast interviewing Jodey Arrington, and then also Ro Khanna, the Democratic representative. And it was desirable to interview Khanna about it because he simply said, no, I’m not interested in cutting expenses. I believe that we can achieve greater power in spending on physical care, by negotiating the prices of medicines, etc. ; What he would do with that, however, is invest it in more physical care programs, without cutting spending at all.

Certainly, in other Hill offices on the Democratic side that we’ve talked to, we’ve run into the same thing, and that is that I’m literally not sure what Mark Warner would say. You don’t need to speak directly for him. But what is the spending cut that Democrats might be willing to put on the table right now?

Unlike any primary policy I’ve noticed under the Trump administration, the Inflation Reduction Act was considered fully funded and then some. They raised taxes to pay for what they wanted to do, then raised taxes a little more to get a positive score from the Congressional Budget Office.

So first of all, I think there’s only an external baseline of Covid stimulus spending, which I think was a very common scenario for all sorts of reasons. There is a fundamental trust that you deserve not to make the budget situation worse and that you deserve to pay for what you do.

And then, and I think this, I probably wouldn’t speak for Ro. But I feel like I have an intelligent concept of other people like Warner and Tim Kaines and Ron Wydens and so on. Everyone feels very burned out, and your Joe Biden, by the way. They feel very burned by the Obama-era budget negotiations, where they feel they have put too much on the table. And in the end, it was infinitely difficult to get Republicans to deliver on their promises. Thus began the procedure of kidnapping the supercommittee despite everything. And we’ve had those stupid automatic discounts for years and years.

That’s what I read about them, because I don’t think they said anything more than what they said, and all those other people, at other times, have approved all kinds of possible end-of-program relief programs. But they don’t believe he is there to reach an agreement. I don’t forget that Barack Obama was open to raising the Medicare retirement age, which infuriated everyone on the left, but in the end Boehner couldn’t keep his promises. And Democrats’ view is that Republicans can no longer deliver on their promises on difficult votes in Congress. Therefore, the benefits of participating in this type of process, specifically in the run-up to an election year, would be quite small.

I would be very curious to see what would happen in the type of negotiations you speak of. If you ask me why Joe Biden, which is another question, if you ask me why Joe Biden had no interaction in a budget procedure. With Republicans, I think it’s an attractive question. But I don’t think President Johnson can keep his promises. And I don’t think Johnson pointed out the kind of things you’re talking about here.

I agree that other people like Vance and Rubio have expressed openness to a little more revenue, but I think there needs to be a credibility building operation there before other people take it seriously.

yes no Totally agree. And we just did a lot of homework on where we’re going on Earth with this kind of stuff. And that is precisely where we land, here is my 10 year adventure towards a balanced budget. Here is your commission on this or that: it is precisely the other way around. What is needed are those small exercises to build credibility. Can we get in a room and actually do it? Can we get $50 billion in profits and $100 billion in spending cuts? serious?

I’m more confident than I have been in a long time that this could happen. And that’s due, as with other things we’ve talked about, to some of those adjustments on the right that I hope will continue.

Let me end here with a pricing related query. One thing you are very delicate about in your writing is that if you need to be a populist philosopher in economics, you need to take what the public thinks very seriously. And the public now obviously knows it needs to cut costs. They care a lot about the amount they pay.

Many of those policies – even those I agree with and others I disagree with, such as value lists and the drastic reduction of immigration – accumulate value on an ad hoc basis for a longer period of time. How much has your thinking about politics and price barriers changed, given how many other people say that what they need most from their politicians is for things to be less expensive again?

It didn’t replace my thinking much. Inflation in recent years has obviously been very damaging. In my opinion, this is rightly related to some very irresponsible possible policy choices that have been made. And I don’t think that will be forgiven. And so I think that’s part of the existing thinking about what other people are feeling in recent years.

That said, it is clear that inflation has gone down. Hopefully, we return to an era of value stability. And I think it would be a mistake to deduce from this delight that the correct political program is one that, above all, promises little value, because I think what remains is an opportunity to necessarily be fair and deliberately pursue a policy that reach compromises. And this is something that has been missing in our politics for a long time.

And I quite believe that right now there is an opportunity – and this is something that we are taking advantage of a lot – especially within a populist framework, to be absolutely fair about the hole that we have dug over the last 40 years and about some of the things that we can and will have to do to get out of this hole.

And I think that if it were understood that you were getting something in return for your accumulated value (that is, it was not the result of bad policies or mistakes) it would occur because we are reshoring because we are expanding salaries. For those who are suffering, I literally believe that you have to build a political message around the fact that it is much more effective than most of what we have heard.

And certainly, all the surveys that we do conclude the same thing: when you honestly tell people, these are the ups and downs of a tariff – one of the disadvantages of a tariff is that it increases the value – it does not decrease with tariffs. Rates. But the concept that other people deserve to be asked to pay something for something is not foreign to our politics, and in fact can be a very healthy component of a message.

Then I ask our last question. What 3 books would you present to the public?

I have an idea about this because I need to provide a set of useful and varied recommendations. So I have nonfiction. I read Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. And I have to admit that I am not far from that: the thousands of pages and 4 volumes. But I have been skeptical that a 4-volume, thousand-page biography can be, that is, interesting. And I have to say it’s phenomenal. Thus, “The Road to Power” by Robert Caro would be one of them.

For science fiction lovers, and especially if you want an audiobook for a long trip, I recommend “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. He’s the guy who wrote “The Martian,” which has become the movie with Matt Damon getting stuck on Mars, but this one is even better. And without too many spoilers, it’s an intrepid scientist and his alien boyfriend who save the world.

And finally, for those of you with children, a wonderful read aloud for bedtime: it’s called “The Green Ember. ” In fact, my team gave it to me because they knew that I like to read to my children. And it’s about rabbits fighting. with swords Who can do better than that?

Oren Cass, thank you very much.

It’s great. THANK YOU.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin. Fact check via Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our lead engineer is Jeff Geld, and additional mixing was done through Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones.

Our editor-in-chief is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, and Kristin Lin. We have original music through Isaac Jones, strategy through Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And a special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Produced through “The Ezra Klein Show”

When Donald Trump picked Sen. J. D. Ohio’s Vance as his vice presidential candidate, it excited populists and angered some business elites. Later that night, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention. In 40 years, the Republican Party has rarely had a strong relationship with unions,” O’Brien said. “There are some in the party who actively oppose unions; “That will have to change too,” he added, to loud applause.

[You can watch this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or anywhere you get your podcasts. ]

Something is here: a genuine replacement in the Republican Party. But at the same time, his official platform and the conservative policy document Project 2025 are riddled with the same old proposals for tax cuts, deregulation and corporate giveaways. Really extensive or superficial?

Oren Cass served as Mitt Romney’s domestic policy director during the 2012 presidential campaign. But since then, Cass has evolved; He founded the conservative economic think tank American Compass, which was related to J. D. Vance and other populist-leaning Republicans, such as Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton. In this conversation, we talk about what economic populism means to him, what it looks like in politics, and how tough this faction within the Republican Party really is.

You can pay attention to all of our verbal exchange by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Google, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Check out a list of eBook recommendations from our visitors here.

(A full transcript of this episode can be found here. )

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact check via Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our lead engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing done by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our Editor-in-Chief The boss is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music via Isaac Jones. Audience Strategy via Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

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