WEBVTT - Ezra Klein On the Legacy of Bidenomics 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:16.320 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.320 Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.640 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:29.400 Tracy, it's almost here. Yeah, we're almost to the November 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:30.040 FED decision. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.360 Okay, we are recording this on October thirtieth. Do you 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.000 think by this time next week we'll actually know who's won? 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:39.960 On the Wednesday, the day after. 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.080 You didn't continue my joke about how next week is 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:44.600 the FED decision. You just went straight to the obvious. Sorry, 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.120 that's okay, we're all fried. Obviously. 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:48.720 Payrolls data on Friday. 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.440 Yes, yeah, so by the time this episode comes out, 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:53.479 payrolls will have been out. But yes, there is a 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:55.720 lot going on right now. But one thing that's happening 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:56.400 is the election. 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:57.880 I can't keep track anymore. 0:00:57.880 --> 0:00:59.640 There's too much when people are listening to this. We're 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.160 gonna get out before the election. But yes, we may 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:04.280 know very soon who the next president of the United 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:04.800 States is. 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.840 But whatever happens, whatever happens next week with the FED 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:14.240 or with the election, it's clear that Biden is no 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:15.920 longer going to be president, right. 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.080 And I think it's like a real moment. We should 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:20.360 talk about that because I think to your point you 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:24.120 said it exactly, we may get a democratic presidency, Uder Harris, 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:26.760 we may get a Trump presidency, but we've done so 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:30.440 many episodes in the last four years, particularly around twenty 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:34.040 twenty two to twenty twenty one. Others might call it 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.760 a sort of post neoliberal turn, right, this sort of 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:38.440 industrial policy. 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.600 Turn of industrial policy, new supply side economic. 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.600 New supply side economics. And I don't know, Like, first 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:45.959 of all, I don't know what the legacy of any 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.320 of these programs will be. It it's too soon to 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:50.160 say are we going to be like great at making 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.120 chips and batteries and solar panels and all that stuff. 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.000 We also don't know if anyone will talk about this 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.240 stuff at all in the next administration. Was it just 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:01.480 like a one or two year thing where people got 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.040 excited about what I would say, policy adventurism, use this 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:09.040 effort to expand the care economy, childcare that's sort of fizzled, 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.960 but there's still maybe interested in that. But I don't know, like, 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:15.280 regardless of who the next president is, whether we'll see 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.040 more continuation of these ideas or whether we'll go back 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.239 to something that just sort of looks more like, I 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.160 don't know, something people would call normal. 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:24.120 I kind of like the idea that we went through 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:28.280 like a teenage experimental policy phase. That's the funny way 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:30.400 of looking at it. But you're absolutely right. I think 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.240 we should talk about what could happen to all of 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.960 this in the next four years and beyond. 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.560 Totally Well, I'm really excited to say because coming to 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.640 this big moment, we have the perfect guest. We're going 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.480 to be speaking with, Ezra Klein. He is the host 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.680 of the Ezra Kleines Show at the New York Times. Columnist, 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.800 famous journalist, done extraordinary things. Everyone knows his name, so 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.359 no need to add too much of an introduction. But Ezra, 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:55.519 thank you so much for coming back on Odd Lots. 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:57.080 Thank you for having me back on one of my 0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.440 favorite shows. And I do want to say that I 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:01.360 like your joke at the beginning, Joe, I thought that 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:01.880 was funny. 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:02.560 You caught it. 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.560 I appreciate it. No, it's okay, I said, it's been. 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.960 It brought me back to the self conscious nerdery of 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.000 the work block days, jokes that are really about how 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:12.919 boring we are. It's it's a beautiful form. 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.600 The most important thing still the FED decision and the 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.640 job support. Look, if I'm going to be honest, first 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.519 of all, I sort of admire political journalists or people 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:24.280 will really pay attention to this stuff because a lot 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:26.400 of it hurts my brain. So like the fact to 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:28.800 like go in and every day talk about it and 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.440 pay attention is something that and to take it seriously 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.160 is something I often find myself not having the stomach 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:36.480 to do. And so I'm probably like a little bit 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.360 less informed on the election than I should be. But 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.640 some of this stuff, what we call Bidenomics, IRA, the chips, ACKed, 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.520 et cetera. Is this important to U Kamala Harris? Is 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:52.160 this part of something that she talks about and sort 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:53.320 of conveys on the trail. 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:58.320 It's a good question. Any candidate, any politician, has the 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.280 policy areas that really move them, the things that they 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.880 think about and talk to people about when they're not 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:08.240 on the clock, so to speak. And Harris has a 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.040 bunch of those. She is amazing and committed and passionate 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.000 about abortion rights. She's in general very interested in rights, 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:20.240 speaking broadly right, She's a lawyer, a former da an 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.120 ag economics that I've done a fair amount of reporting 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:26.400 on this is just not the thing that she has 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:30.159 been highly attracted to across her career. So in a 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.240 way that is a little bit unusual if you have 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:35.599 been involved in Democratic Party politics for a long time. 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:40.360 She is coming in without being highly associated with one 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.120 or the other schools of thought. She's obviously been in 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:48.640 the Biden administration, but whereas Biden had incredibly clear economic 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.640 lanes and ideas in the Obama administration. It's worth remembering 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.480 that he brought on Jared Bernstein as his chief economist, 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:56.960 which was an unusual move. And Bernstein, who is of 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.440 course now on the Council of Economic Advisors, but he 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.839 was understood then as a quite heterodox economist, somebody who 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.480 is holding like the left flank of that against you know, 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:09.479 Larry Summers and Jason Furman and Peter Orzag and so 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:12.440 Biden was sort of associated with this more trade skeptical, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.800 you know, lunch pale economics, and Harris isn't really she's 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.520 not associated with like the theories of the Inflation Production Act, 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:21.760 although there's no reason to think she doesn't support them, 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.599 not highly associated with like the Chips and Science Act, 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.320 the sense of what moves her is not that well known. Now. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.160 One thing she has brought to the ticket, which we 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.599 had not heard before, is a real central focus, at 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:37.080 least rhetorically on housing supply, which makes sense. She's a 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.000 San Francisco politician, the sort of Yimbi movement and the 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.040 Democratic Party has gotten a lot bigger. The sense that 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.680 housing is the price right at a time when the 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.200 inflation rate has come down that you could really target, 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:50.120 and that it's at the center of a lot of 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:52.839 policy pathology in the country. I think that's real. So 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:55.279 she's bringing that. But yeah, the sense of she's not 0:05:55.400 --> 0:06:00.279 running as like the inheritor of the industrial policy legacy. 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.160 Well, she does talk a lot about the opportunity economy 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:07.520 and doing stuff to reduce inequality and things like that. 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.279 Is that just a rebranding of Bidenomics or do you 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.200 get the sense that it's actually a departure. 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.640 The opportunity economy has both never felt to me like 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:19.400 it's Bidenomics, although I do want to say I don't 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:21.360 think the biden administration has done a great job explaining 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.240 or selling what Bidenomics is either, and it's never been 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.080 one hundred percent clear to me. How much that's like 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.880 the idea from her team that she liked, versus how 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:32.640 committed she is to it. So, when Harris was in 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:37.440 the Senate, her big economic proposal was a significantly expanded 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:40.159 child tax credit, which she goes sponsored along with Senator 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.440 Michael Bennett, Senator Corey Booker. There were others on that 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.960 bill as well, and I think that some of her 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:48.800 economic thinking reflects sort of where Democrats were then. Right, 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:53.520 The opportunity economy is, I think closer in the way 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.000 it gets talked about to this sort of anti inequality push, 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:58.960 the sense to it that we should have bigger cash 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.880 transfer to young fanse Right, she's talked about having a 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.440 six thousand dollars credit in the first year of a 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.360 child's life. But I don't find the opportunity economy. I've 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:10.880 read her speeches, I've read her eighty page policy book 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.960 is something I can get my arms around. Every politician 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:19.400 says a support opportunity, so it doesn't quite tell you 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.600 what she doesn't support. Right, The key question with all 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.040 these people is which fights are you willing to pick? 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:28.880 So when Biden comes in in twenty twenty one, his 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:32.160 team is telling me they're saying publicly, we are going 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:35.120 to be the full employment presidency. Right. This is Jared 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:37.160 Bernstein had co written a book with Steen Baker about 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:39.960 full employment. They're going to run the economy hot. They 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.800 are going to spend They're going to make sure that 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.800 the wage gains we've been seeing for some years reach 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.120 the workers who they need to reach. That's true. You know, 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:50.400 even as they're dealing with the pandemic, they are going 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:52.920 to make sure that they don't undershoot on stimulus. Right. 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:57.040 This is a team very much forged by the Obama era, 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:59.360 to some gree the Trump era, in which the problem 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.360 was too little demand and the problem was that even 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.560 growth was not lasting for long enough to reach more 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:08.160 marginalized workers who weren't seeing you know, low income wage gains, 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:10.840 wage gains for black and Hispanic workers. So they come 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.920 in very clear on which mistakes they are not going 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:15.800 to make. They are willing to run the economy hot 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:17.640 with the risks that that might entail, which I end 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.960 up coming true, in order to not see the kind 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:24.720 of weak recovery that we've seen before. I would like 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.240 to know that answer for Harris and her team. Harris 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:28.840 and her advisors not to say that we have to 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:31.280 know it this second, because it is a really unusual 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.360 thing to have to create a national presidential campaign from 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.760 a standing start. But the opportunity economy thing, it doesn't 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.480 answer that question for me, who is Harrison not going 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.480 to be Which factions is she not aligning with in 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.120 the way that the Biden folks were not aligning with, 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.400 like the Larry Summers faction of the Democratic Party. That 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:50.240 question is open. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:52.920 So it occurred to me, you know, if we're talking 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.120 about Biden nomics, and you mentioned, you know, Biden has 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.240 long been advised by Jared Bernstein, who maybe a little 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.280 bit more sympathy to some of the heterodots thinking in macro. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.800 So there was the element of the fact that Biden 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.199 domics existed because Biden won and maybe this is how 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:09.520 he views the economy. But it's a little bit of 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.439 an incomplete story because so even though I lumped the 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.640 Chips Act into it, that was a bipartisan thing, and 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.960 there was interest in doing something on semiconductors before Biden 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.240 even came into office, I believe. And then you know, 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:24.800 you mentioned the Trump Eureau, which if we're talking about 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.080 some sort of turn or rethink on trade. I mean 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:31.040 it clearly started more under Trump than Biden. Why now, 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:33.920 like how much of it was? Like this is what 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.920 Biden is into, This is what Biden and his advisors 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.320 are into, versus there is some moment happening in the 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:45.040 US economy or US society that created this political impulse 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:46.960 to push in new ways. 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.080 I think this is a great question and an important 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.240 way to think about all these figures. So you could 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:55.800 ask what the principle in this case, the president or 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:58.680 the presidential candidate thinks. Then there's a question of what 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:02.160 their coalition thinks. Right, if it's Kamala Harris and a 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.080 Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, then what the Democratic 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:07.360 House and Democratic Senate want to do? What is happening 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:09.960 at the center of the coalition we think of as 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.160 a democratic party becomes really really important. Then there's a 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:17.800 question also of what kind of institutional power structure they're 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:19.880 going to face. Right, if it's Kamala Harris and our 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.120 Republican House and our Republican Senate, well, where the center 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.880 of the Democratic party is then matters actually less than what, 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.440 if anything, is in the Venn diagram between Kamala Harris 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.960 and Mike Johnson, and all of those are very just 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.720 different conditions which we should talk about and think about differently. 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.400 But I do agree strongly with something you're agenna, Joe, 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:44.040 which is there is a shift in the technonic plates 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:49.079 of economic policy, of policy broadly. So I'm very influenced 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.720 by this historian named Gary Gristal. He wrote a great 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:54.480 book called The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order. 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:56.600 Before that, he was known for working on the Rise 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:58.720 and Fall of the New Deal Order. And he's got 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:03.360 this whole idea about orders, orders being these structuring agreements 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.360 between the two parties, the shape what is taken for 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.280 granted in American politics and policy and what is not. 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.240 So he sort of describes this New Deal Order, which 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:13.840 is not just the new deals we think about it 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:16.840 under FDR, but it lasts from like nineteen thirty ish, 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.599 you know, when FDR comes in thirty two, to the 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.720 nineteen seventies when it sort of dies under stagflation and 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:25.079 the Vietnam War. But the New Deal Order is very 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:30.720 importantly concretized when Dwight Eisenhower takes control of the Republican Party, 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.600 not Robert Taft, and Eisenhower brings a new Deal into 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.320 something Republicans now support too, in order to fend off 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.360 the Soviet Union. They neither sort of neoliberal order, you know, 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.480 we think of Ronald Reagan and then later Bill Clinton. 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:44.240 With the era of big government is over. There's a 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:47.280 lot of deregulation, a lot of support of free trade, 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:50.360 a lot of talk about governmental inefficiency, moving to markets, 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:53.800 moving towards outsourcing, much more focus on the individual, and 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.680 that order sort of dies amidst the financial crisis. And 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.880 I do think Trump is a disruptive force who creates 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:01.920 some of the shape of an order that is emerging, 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:03.760 but we don't know which party will control it or 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:06.600 exactly what its structurre will be. But it's clearly feels 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.199 very differently about manufacturing and production. I think in the 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:12.800 way that those two orders were both related, first to 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.280 the power of the Soviet Union in the New Deal order, 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.160 and then it's weakening in its fall in the neoliberal order. 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:21.480 I think China is the great pressure on our politics 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.800 and has been for some time. Trump talks about that 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:26.480 very explicitly, But it is surprising then that Biden comes 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.160 in and doesn't revert to where Barack Obama was on China. 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.680 Biden goes further than Donald Trump. He goes further than 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.280 Donald Trump on gating technologies. He adds on more tariffs, 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.480 he keeps the Trump tariffs, and he uses China as 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.400 a spur of passings like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill the 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.320 Chips and Science Act, which are both very explicitly framed 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.160 as bills to help American compete with China in terms 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:53.200 of infrastructure and scientific development and semiconductor manufacturing. And of 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:55.720 course the IRA has a lot of bi American and 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.559 on shoring provisions. So I think China is a big 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:01.000 part of this. I think that there is a growing 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.360 sense that there are critical technologies like we just simply 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.040 need to make here, or at least have our friends make. 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:11.199 I think inflation and the broader affordability crisis heavily created 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.760 a sense that whatever was going on before, we were 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:16.200 good at making the price of consumer goods cheap, but 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.960 actually not good at making the fundamentals of a life 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.880 cheap right healthcare and education and home elder care, things 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.080 like that. And so there's something happening, right. It's Trump, 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:30.080 it's Biden, it's Harris, it's both coalitions. You know, they're 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:32.240 fighting over it. They don't have the same view of it. 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:34.199 But it's just a wild thing to me to watch, 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:36.320 you know, Donald Trump running saying he, you know, helps 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.440 save the Affordable Care Act, Right, Like, the locuses of 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:45.439 polarization are different. Now. We are polarized over the system itself, right, elections, democracy, 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:47.960 the freedom of the press kind of thing. But there's 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.280 actually a huge amount of ferment and confusion and uncertainty 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.720 about the policy consensus and like what is in and 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.920 outside of the things members of Congress might agree on 0:13:58.000 --> 0:13:58.800 or negotiate over. 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.840 Since you brought up China, it is kind of fascinating 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.920 to me that, like so much policy on both sides 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.120 of the aisle is framed in terms of very intense 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.920 competition with China or a looming threat from China. 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:27.560 Do you think the. 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.880 Policy evolution of the past eight years now would have 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:36.480 been possible without an external enemy to sort of catalyze action. 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.920 I don't, and I think this is a normal thing 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:44.200 for politics. I think we actually really underestimate how important 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:48.560 the external antagonist or comparator is to us, because it 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:50.800 isn't just the external enemy. I mean that turned towards 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.880 China as a real antagonist under Trump, that's been very, 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:56.960 very important. But if you go back a few years 0:14:57.000 --> 0:15:00.680 before that, you can just find members of Congress and 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:05.600 members with politically talking constantly about how our system is 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.840 gridlocked and it's a photocracy and we don't get anything 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.400 done and we can't build anything, and look at our 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.640 shitty airports, while over there in China, look how fast 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:17.920 we're moving, Look how much they're doing, Look how big 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.320 they're great. Their infrastructure is like, Look how effectively they're 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:25.680 building their manufacturing capabilities. Look how competent their government seems. 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:28.480 We don't talk about it in exactly those terms, but 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:30.680 I have come to believe, and you know, I was 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:32.760 on the show before to talk about abundance in this 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.520 sort of move towards ideas about building in American politics. 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.320 I think I'm part of this too, that I think 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:41.840 that there's been a real pressure on people in American 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:44.440 politics to think about what does it mean that America 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.000 has gotten so bad at building, at building public infrastructure, 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.000 at building homes, at building mass transit, at you know, 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:54.400 manufacturing critical things. And that comes from the pressure of 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.320 Chinese competition, right, not just Chinese sort of where it's 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.240 moved to the slightly darker form of competition. But be 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.280 even before that, this sense that we seem to be 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:06.720 able to innovate but not build, and they seem to 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:08.360 be able to build. I think John Arno will put 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.000 it this way, but not necessarily innovate, and you actually 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:11.720 need both. 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:14.440 This is actually a good pivot because right we talked 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.560 in the beginning about what might be the different emphasis 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.600 during a Harris administration. Obviously there's a very good chance 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:24.400 that we get a Trump administration. There's been noises obviously 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.800 about gutting the Inflation Reduction Act in some ways, but 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.680 I think it's ambiguous. There's a lot of jobs in 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.880 Trump areas, red areas that would be gone I think 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:38.240 without Inflation Reduction Act money, So I think imagine that 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:42.000 complicates the politics of that. And then furthermore, there is 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:45.320 what I would call maybe like a conservative or Republican 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:49.440 or right wing industrial strategy. There's obviously the China antagonism, 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:54.080 maybe much more explicitly about defense, tech, et cetera. But 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.160 how would you characterize how some of these things morph 0:16:58.400 --> 0:16:59.640 during a Trump administration. 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.120 I genuinely don't think anybody knows at all, And I've 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:06.200 been thinking about this a lot Over the past couple 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.159 of months, as I've been having a number of people 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.760 on the American First Movement as they like to call it, 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.800 on my show, and one thing I've noticed is that 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:19.200 the universal sense that Donald Trump, in his seventy eighth 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.080 year of life, running for his second term as president, 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.840 still doesn't really know what he believes or you cannot 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.160 know what he believes on any number of subjects, creates 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.640 an immense sense that he can be moved and shaped right, 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.639 that the competition going on behind him to wield governing 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.240 power in his administration is immense. I just had vivig 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.040 Ramaswami on the show, and I was so struck by 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:46.439 him really trying to push Trump and why I call 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.240 more traditionally conservative direction, right, you know, don't try to 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.159 take over the administrative state, try to get rid of it, 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.840 shutter these agencies. And he really sees Elon Musk as 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:57.320 an ally in that effort, so you can call it. 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:59.960 There's like this JD. Vance wing that is more national populace. 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:02.399 And then all of a sudden, here's like Elon Musk 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.400 and these like right wing billionaires and they have Trump's here, 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.280 and maybe what they want is something a little bit 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.399 more in between. In many ways, it looks more like 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.640 what other Republicans were doing with a much more nationalistic edge. 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.160 You know, whenever I talk to people about Trump's tariffs, 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:19.199 they say, has proposed the you know, universal Tarriffy like, Oh, 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.040 He's not going to do that. Trump's a negotiator, right, 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.880 He's just saying that to get maximal leverage in order 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:28.240 to run a really good negotiation. I mean, maybe maybe not. 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:32.920 You know, Project twenty twenty five is an internally contradictory document, 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:34.879 and then there are other documents floating around like it 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.320 that are contradictory to that. You know, Mike Johnson's just 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.800 said he would repeal Obamacare. I think that's probably unlikely, 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:43.600 But the idea that they might pull money out of 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.639 the IRA, it doesn't seem unlikely to me. There's going 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.480 to be a huge tax cliff everybody's going to have 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:50.479 to deal with in twenty twenty five, as you know, 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.560 trillions of dollars of Trump tax cuts come ready to expire, 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.960 and particularly if Democrats have any amount of power, there's 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:58.399 going to have to be a lot of negotiation with 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:01.000 them about what you do about that. It feels to 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:02.359 me like, at this point we should be able to 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.120 say better what Donald Trump will do. And I tend 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:07.000 to just take the guy at his word on his 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.000 policies and talk about the tariffs and what their effect 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:10.840 on the economy would be. But I will say that 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.560 if you're taking his movement on its own terms, that 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.239 is not how it is spoken about or treated. It 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:18.480 is spoken about like almost like it's a parliamentary system, 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:20.359 right like Trump will have to form a government and 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:22.679 inside the government will be different coalitional partners and they 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.120 will vy for influence and then eventually we will see 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:27.840 what the king does and like that almost more. Maybe 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:31.360 it's not parliamentary, maybe it's a monarchy model is much 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:33.399 more how everybody over there is acting. 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:36.320 It would be pretty funny if like the Senate or 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:39.440 the House started throwing paper and like insulting each other 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.040 the way they do in UK Parliament. I would watch 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.399 that on CSPAN es. Can we talk about the branding 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.560 of Bidenomics and you touched on this earlier, but it 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.640 does feel like the administration to some extent has had 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:56.160 difficulty messaging the success of the program, and I think 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.359 maybe in retrospect, the bet on full employment was isn't 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.400 the best one. It turns out that Americans really care 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:07.280 about inflation more than whether or not their neighbors have jobs. 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:09.680 Can you talk to us about that, like, why isn't 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:10.840