The Problem of Donald Trump: Implications to the Economy, Trade, and the Wall-Roundabout Economy: Oren Douthat and the New York Times

This does not mean that people haven’t tried. There are a variety of theories to explain Trump’s preoccupation with tariffs. Maybe he wants to make American manufacturing great again by bringing factory jobs back to the communities that have been badly battered by poverty. Perhaps he wants the revenue he generates from large tariffs to reduce deficits and help address the nation’s long-term debt. Or perhaps he hopes to make the United States a more export-driven economy by having the dollar weaken.

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. The fact that he has a long history of fraudulent activity and hostile litigation as well as frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers, and other people who worked for him is evidence that a deal with Trump is more than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other. Trump does not believe in mutually beneficial relationships or positive-sum outcomes. No matter what the situation is, someone has to win and someone has to lose. Trump, as we all know, is a winner.

From the New York Times. I am Ross Douthat and I have an opinion. And this is interesting times. Very interesting times, in fact, because just in time for the debut of this podcast, almost as if he planned it that way, Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the global economy as his tariff policy yields a stock market panic, rising economic uncertainty and fears of a recession. And to talk through the chaotic rollout of the tariffs, where this radical policy came from and what it might mean going forward, I’m joined by Oren Cass, who’s the founder of American Compass, a populist conservative think tank that has been arguing for some time for tariffs and for a changed American relationship to globalization and free trade. So, Oren, welcome to interesting times. Thank you. It’s fun to live in interesting times. I hope it is. It’s the moment in time when you and I are speaking that is the most important, as far as the show is concerned. The markets have been open for the third day in a row since Donald Trump announced the great liberation of America from the foreign yoke. The events that take place between now and Thursday morning may not be covered by this show. But we’re going to try and have a fairly high level discussion about the condition of the US economy, where the tariff debate enters in before we get into the Trump tariffs themselves, so that hopefully the conversation will still be of use, even in a future in which the audience knows more about how all of this plays out than we do. So that’s the plan. I want to ask a big picture question. A lot of people thought Donald Trump was lucky that he had taken over a very strong economy with low unemployment and a high stock market that was coming down after the Biden era. And with a sense of big technological breakthroughs potentially on the horizon. What are you saying about that story from your point of view? Anyone interested in radical or dramatic restructuring could be made interested in American economy in the year 25 years from now. I think it is necessary to distinguish the business cycle from the secular trajectory of the economy, since you described where we were in the business cycle quite well. I used the analogy of bumps in a downward slope. If you go sledding down the Hill, you can jump over a big bump in the snow and scream whee! And then you do still land even further down at afterward. For the last 50 years, I think we have seen that dynamic of the US economy. Obviously not in terms of overall GDP or economists favorite measure of wealth and material There are living standards. We can look at the well-being of the working family, their ability to achieve middle class security, and other social measures that are tied to economic opportunity and outcomes. We’ve seen real decay, and I think that helps to explain why, somebody like Donald Trump has become as successful politically as he has. And it’s a problem that has been decades in the making and is going to take a long time to turn around and recover from, but I think it would be a terrible mistake. Unemployment has been at the top of every business cycle for the last five years, which means that the problem is solved when unemployment is below 4%. The broader challenges that we have have not been altered by that. As you know, the US GDP has continued going up, so let us be specific about those broader challenges. And in fact, so has, to some extent middle class incomes, not just middle income, but working class incomes. They went up in Trump’s presidency. They went up in Biden’s presidency, even though inflation devoured them. And overall middle class Americans, just in terms of the numbers are meaningfully better off than they were in the 1970s. That doesn’t mean that captures something very important. There is something missing from those numbers. Yeah, I think there’s a few things. They’re missing. One is when you’re looking at these household income numbers, it’s important to notice, for instance, the extent to which they rely upon the household having two earners. They actually find themselves more dependent on government programs than they used to. And also, I think just the factor of rising inequality, which conservatives have traditionally traditionally Pooh poohed certainly in the last 40 years as long as you have more stuff than you did 40 years ago, you’re not supposed to have any right to complain about the broader shape of the society. A worker with no college degree has a much lower income than a worker with a college degree. One of the things that frustrates economists is that American compass is not the standard inflation measure, but it speaks to the reality of people’s lives, so it makes it hard for economists to be optimistic. It has become much harder for the typical worker to afford that. Certainly on one income. And so I think what we have is a problem where particularly for the right of center that has sold this idea that a rising tide lifts all lifts all ships embrace our model. And we all March forward together into the brave new future. Well, people are seeing instead is that some people got to March ahead into the brave new future. A lot of people did not. I mean, and for particular groups, maybe this is somewhat narrow, but I think it’s really important to look at something like young men, if you want to know how your society is doing and even very kind of optimistic groups like American Enterprise Institute. Their research shows that the young men, ages 25 to 29, really are earning the same or less than they would have been 50 years ago. And so I think it’s hard to sell that as a successful economy or one that’s likely to produce a flourishing society. So stipulating that there is a big debate about all these numbers, as you mentioned, the American Compass index of human flourishing is hotly contested and much argued over stipulated for the sake of argument, that there is some kind of stagnation here, especially for young men. What does trade have to do with it. What does trade have to do with it. If you give me a bit of patience, I have to highlight that other aspect of the economy that is gone wrong. We were discussing the broad statistics. I believe the deindustrialization of the economy has gone wrong. What we have seen really going back even into the 90s after NAFTA, but certainly after welcoming China to the World Trade organization, is a real hollowing out of the manufacturing sector. Loss of manufacturing has been a serious problem. That is at the heart of trade. Finding out how to make things more attractive in America is becoming a big and correct focus for policymakers. We have lost manufacturing jobs, so is the issue? One of the arguments you often hear is that American manufacturing is roughly where it has been for decades. We have been overtaken by China because of it’s status as a powerhouse. The American manufacturing sector isn’t dead. There are fewer Americans working in jobs in that sector. Do you agree with that. I think that’s approximately right. The collapse of the global economy, due to a flatlining in the manufacturing sector, weakens the American ability to keep up in all sorts of vital areas. As you said, this leads to a real loss of opportunity for people. There is a difference between a manufacturing job and a service sector job. In the time before Detroit, there were more people working in factories than there are now, and the Uc economy now has fewer of those people working in it. America is more prosperous than it was back then, and I think most people agree that global trade has led to lower prices in at least some areas for some goods. So what’s wrong with a world where someone works in a service sector job instead of a manufacturing job enjoys lower prices, and then beyond that, presumably the richer US economy can pay for an earned income tax credit or a larger child tax credit to essentially increase wages and give of premium based on the surplus of a wealthy society. Isn’t that better than a world where there are many more manufacturing jobs? I think it is important to say that there is nothing particularly valuable in the abstract about a manufacturing job. There are some notable things about manufacturing jobs and the manufacturing sector. One thing that’s very good about manufacturing jobs is where they tend to be located. We want a prosperous country that has good vibes across the country. Knowledge work that goes to big cities is not strength that can be found in other sectors. In many cases the facilities that people live in do not fit the requirement of being close to where people live. It is more likely that you will see manufacturing in places that do not have finance and technology. They provide an incredibly valuable change in that respect. A second thing that’s really nice about them is the kinds of people who tend to work in them and Excel in them. So for one thing, again, I would say, there’s nothing inherently important about a manufacturing job. It is nice to have a pluralism in our economy where people who prefer to be making things and doing that kind of work have good opportunities to. If you want to have good productive jobs that pay well, you should look for one that pays a good wage. Just empirically, what you see is that those opportunities exist, especially for people with less levels of formal education in the manufacturing sector. So while it’s true that the average manufacturing job doesn’t pay more than the average services job, if you Zoom in on one type of worker and look at for the types of workers who are working in manufacturing jobs, typically folks, let’s say without a college degree, what are the comparable service jobs they would otherwise have. The manufacturing jobs do tend to be better. But suppose you had a resurgence of manufacturing jobs right now, right. In 1985 manufacturing jobs would look a lot different, or even before the China shock. Because Yes, manufacturing jobs have even now have some of the features you describe. But we have passed through an age of automation and robotics. We are entering some kind of age of AI driven automation. And when I hear people talk about the factory jobs of the future, even people who are bullish on there being good factory jobs, it’s taken for granted that these are not actually the kind of jobs that a blue collar, a blue collar steelworker would have had in 1977. The argument is, well, these are actually better jobs. They require more skills, and are less backbreaking. Are they not doing the same things in the economy if that is the case? When I interviewed the vice president before he became the vice president, we talked about this issue. He spoke about how six or seven million American men who have dropped out of the workforce are vulnerable to addiction and family breakdown, and all of these things. Are those kind of people who are likely to be hired in the future to work in a highly automated factory? I believe that the answer is yes. One place that’s good. To understand what this highly advanced manufacturing will look like, we have to look at the CHIPS Act, where chipmakers are locating, and who they are hiring. And so if you look at TSMC locating outside of Phoenix, Intel locating in the middle of Ohio, Micron focusing on upstate New York, obviously those aren’t rural agricultural places necessarily. But they’re the kinds of places that otherwise have not been the beneficiaries of a lot of the other kinds of growth we’ve seen in recent decades. There is some kind of very skilled employment, and you can see that in the people they are hiring and how they are doing it. And I think it’s also a good thing to bring more people with those types of skills to those communities. There is a lot of mid-skill jobs you are seeing. The companies are working with the community colleges to give people the training they need to succeed. The technicians, let’s say, in these factories, you see a lot of partnerships with labor unions. We all know that the big tech companies need to build more data centers. Suddenly they want to learn how to work well with labor unions. So I think that’s all to the good. I think the caveat is unfair because the person who has been injured by deindustrialization should be the focus of the discussion. People in these left behind communities who are out of the workforce entirely are those the particular people who are going to be able to take these jobs. In some case, the answer is probably Yes. In a few cases, the answer is likely no. And I think we therefore have certainly a lot of other work to do to think about how to engage those folks. But what having this will do is make sure that the next generation has a lot more opportunity than this past one did. And so the fact that it doesn’t necessarily resolve every problem we have today, I think, is certainly not an argument against building in this direction going forward. Do you think there is a cost to overall GDP from using tariffs, and that you overstate the effect on GDP by suggesting that there is a cost for imports from outside the United States? It is now more viable to build factories in the US. The typical economist would have doubts about how this all works but they will be happy with the benefits. We are going to get into it in a minute. But they would say, but look, you’re the overall society is going to be somewhat poorer. Is that a trade off? We should be willing to make some points or fraction of a point off GDP to have more people working in upstate New York and Central Ohio. Well, so first of all, Yes, I think that is a trade off we should be willing to make. But I think when you’re asking, what. What does the effect look like? I would really separate the short run from the long run that there are absolutely short run costs associated with this transition. When we were talking about short run costs of globalization, economists just told us that the equilibrium model said that someday this would be for the best. It’s only when you’re talking about policies that are not their ideological preference, that they suddenly Zoom in and are focused very heavily on the immediate short run transition costs. I think short run costs are worth it, not only to the point that we might accomplish more, but also to the point that you’re making about GDP. I think they are worth it because they point toward a better economy in the long run. And so I think if we’re asking for the long run, looking across the next generation or two, what trajectory is the right one for the American economy. I absolutely think that we will be much better off if we make a commitment to reindustrialisation, rather than saying, well, according to the economic model, we should just be happy with everything being produced in China because it’s more efficient there and we get cheaper stuff. But there isn’t really from the age of globalization, I concede that relative to how the US economy was doing in the immediate post-war period, the age of globalization has been a disappointment. But it’s not like there is some counterexample where you say oh, the French practiced more protectionism, or the Germans or the Japanese, and their economies are in much better shape. Isn’t the US economy still in the best shape of any developed nation, of any big, rich, developed nation right now. It wouldn’t suggest anything about potential scenarios on the table. Well, so I certainly appreciate your point about the but for case. I think that you are correct. In a world where globalization has had a lot of costs, pro globalization fans will post a chart of GDP going up to say that GDP went up. So obviously globalization was great. When I think it is important to tell the truth, that if you look at performance during this period, it has been weaker rather than stronger. The US economy has been performing very well compared to other developed economies. That’s a function of a few things. One is there are a lot of other things that for all of America’s challenges, we still get right, whether that is in the flexibility of our economy, the way that we do embrace innovation in a lot of areas. Generally, it is a lighter regulatory environment. Those are all great things. At the same time and this kind of goes back to that question about the business cycle. I think if we step back and look at the indicators of social well-being and how the kind of typical working family is doing. Yeah, they do have more stuff. I do not question that. but I think there is a lot of very well placed frustration with the bargain that was struck with globalization. Do you think there’s a case for tariffs? We’ve been focused on manufacturing. There have been a number of other cases made about President Trump’s tariffs. One is pretty clearly linked to the rebuild manufacturing case. A national security case is what it is. It says, look, China is a great power competitor. It’s possible that a global pandemic originated in certainly it originated in China. It could have been from one of their laboratories. They could invade Taiwan. There’s all kinds of ways where we could have to. We already did briefly decouple and could have to decouple from them. It would be worth a little bit off GDP for us to have more of our supply chain inside the country. I assume that you find that argument somewhat convincing as well. I do. I would split the policy into two pieces because I think that it would be helpful to understand a lot of the policy going on in countries like the USA and China. I think it is important to do that. The decoupling side of things. That is where high tariffs on China are valuable. The other question is, what do we actually want to have made in the United States. As you frame the question, that is where it will go. Exactly right. The basic manufacturing case is just one of the many reasons that we talked about. I would make it better on the National security side. I think it’s really important to recognize that you can’t maintain a strong defense industrial base independent of a strong industrial base. We have tried to do that. We still need to make our own aircraft carriers, submarines, fighter Jets and so on. But the other stuff, it doesn’t matter because it’s not quote, national security. We have seen that there is not a stable equilibrium at that high end, end of the supply chain stuff. You should let all the basics go. Is that just a case for industrial policy of the kind the Biden administration tried to pursue? The substitutionary policies I am looking for do not take the hit from the growth hit from tariffs. And it seems like you could argue, well, we have a certain set of industries that aren’t technically part of the defense budget, but that we want more of in America. We want more chips and so forth manufactured in America. Shouldn’t we support those industries by making that a part of our spending program? Because we know the specific things that we want, instead of putting up General barriers around the world that slow growth. I am a very strong supporter of industrial policy. I think where we identify something in particular that is absolutely critical advanced semiconductors. It makes sense to have an industrial policy. I think the problem is that when you’re talking about a strong industrial base broadly, there isn’t some narrow set of most important things that’s all you have to worry about right. If you actually want to be an industrial power, you need first of all, the actual materials themselves. You have to know how to make the right tools for the job. The actual excellence in engineering that will lead to efficient production are things like machine tooling. And so it’s funny, I was just doing a discussion with Congressman Ro Khanna, who was making this exact point that we should have very narrow, targeted tariffs and be using industrial policy to figure out, to support the kinds of factories we want, because otherwise we don’t have a plan for the factories. I smiled because I think this gets at an interesting left right divide where the center is more confident that we can figure out all the things that are needed and then design a broad range of industrial policies to support them. I always emphasize that I actually see tariffs as the much more free market position, because, Yes, they are a significant intervention into the market, but they are a relatively simple, broad and blunt one. Once you modify the constraints so that domestic production is more attractive, you can leave more to the market to figure out what else we want to produce here. And how do we do that effectively. To support that with a broad, I would much rather see us pick a few things that we really matter for industrial policy. The condition of the policy is to promote reindustrialisation instead of looking to Congress every time there is another product that we need. What about the deficits? One of the arguments that, again, has floated around in the last few weeks is that tariffs are a way to raise revenue. Which they obviously are. The Uc has a big deficit problem. The global trading order is connected to the deficit problem. And it has to do with the strength, in part, the strength of the dollar relative to other currencies. People argue that a single tariffs will raise revenue and help cut the deficit. You don’t have to do a Grand bargain between Democrats and Republicans. That is very difficult. The president can do it. It is the only way a Republican president can raise taxes. I have heard people say that. Some people say it can be linked to some sort of global negotiation where countries come to the table and all agree to change how their currencies work, or something that helps us deal with our budget deficits. The difficulty there is that especially in the first case, if tariffs do what you want them to do, and lead to the reshoring of manufacturing, over time, they raise less and less revenue. A successful reindustrialize America tariffs won’t be a big revenue generator. So where do you see the deficit cutting stuff fitting into this. The idea that you could do a major restructuring of US debt is something that you do not buy. I think tariffs are a significant revenue raiser, so I guess the first thing I will say is. It’s just important to be clear on what your vision for the tariff is. If you propose a tariff as a negotiating tool and you say that we hope the country behaves the way we want, we hope we can take this away. When you talk about an actual permanent tariffs, you shouldn’t count that as long term revenue. Let’s take something like the kind of 10 percent global tariff that Trump seems to want to have as a permanent tariff that I think is a significant revenue raiser. It is worth keeping in mind that it will be for a long time, because the equilibrium you are headed towards is not one where we shut off trade. It is a situation in which there is a preference for domestic manufacturing. You are still likely to have a high level of trade with a 10 percent tariffs. The goal of permanent tariffs is not to achieve autarky and shut off trade. So I do think we should celebrate the role that they can play in raising revenue and also recognize how that therefore reduces the cost of the approach. Because I think one thing that really frustrates me when folks talk about all of the costs associated with tariffs is they tend to assume we’re collecting all this money and just setting it on fire. The budgeting process has been known to do that. Fair enough. It could be spent very poorly. If you think O.K hypothetically, you’ll probably be right. If we collect all the revenue, we can see that the deficits are lower, which means there is more upside. You were just talking about some of that. The flip side is you just mentioned is that some of these tariffs certainly that Trump is using do seem intended to be used for negotiation, with the goal not being that they are permanent, but the goal being that they bring countries to the table to reach other arrangements. And there, I think the most constructive agreements we’re likely to reach are around pushing toward balanced trade and around pushing toward getting China out of our markets. I think we can make a lot of progress there. I don’t think we’re going to solve our deficit problems through those negotiations. So this you have brought us to the actual tariffs, not the theoretical tariffs. And I’m going to put words in your mouth and say briefly that the Oren Cass preferred tariff program is one that specifically tries to isolate China generally imposes a 10 percent global tariff that is stable, persistent and compatible with global trade, and maybe include some other country specific tariffs related to negotiations. You could say that is what Trump has done. The tariffs on China are quite high. There is a flat rate. People have been arguing about the country by country tariffs. But I want “You to tell me because I read your take on the tariffs, and it seemed like it was very general praise wrapped around a pretty actually specific critique. Please tell me what you think is wrong with the way Trump is handling tariffs. That summary of my general views is quite good. I think the tools that the administration is using here are the right tools that can do a lot of good. The question is, how do you use them. I am concerned with what the administration has done, again, in this first few days after the announcement, where I believe one real issue is with phasing. It is important to be clear that you are doing these things and that you are telling the truth. But snapping them all in immediately imposes all the costs up front long before it’s plausible to expect anybody to have actually adjusted. So if you think reasonably, it’s going to take a couple of years to actually even if everyone starts moving today to actually be bringing new capacity online, domestically, to be moving supply chains. And so on and so forth. You want everyone to believe that the tariffs are going to be in place. They would do better to start moving immediately. Right now we do not have phase ins, so I think they are very important. The other one on the flip side is just the predictability and the certainty. You need a lot of clarity on O.K, what if this is going to be permanent and where we are going. People should plan around the ultimate end goal. I have articulated a goal that is close to what people in the Trump administration want, which is a large US centered economic and security alliance. Obviously, Mexico and Canada, obviously other core allies. We want to have low tariffs in that group. But unlike in the past, we have some conditions or some demands we want to see balanced trade within that group. So that we reshore and reindustrialize significantly in this country. All of these countries would like to remove themselves from China. And I think if we communicated that clearly, we said that’s where we’re going toward here’s what’s going to be permanent. And we’re phasing in that direction. Then there would be costs. The costs would be lower. If it were manageable, you could induce a lot of what you wanted. You would get more of the kind of investments that you are trying to make. These are things the Trump administration could still be moving toward. But it’s really important to actually get there. I think if we’re going to achieve the kinds of things that we’re talking about. And what about the country by country tariffs as they exist right now because there was the Trump administration used the rhetoric of reciprocal tariffs, which implied to most people that essentially we were saying, if you have x tariff on our goods, we will have the same tariff on your goods and we want to mutually then negotiate down from there. In practice, instead, the Trump administration has a formula seemingly that’s just designed around trade deficits, with other countries where if you have a trade deficit with us, we are putting a big tariff on you. And it seems to me pretty obvious that in a global economy, we’re going to have lots of countries that we have trade deficits with. Maybe we want to have trade surpluses with more countries. Fair enough. We are working towards that. But it seems completely bizarre to say any random country that has a completely different economy from ours if you’re not importing exactly as many American goods as you’re exporting to us, we’re going to tariff you. Isn’t that a bad idea? I think there are a couple of issues here. One is you can say it’s just can say it’s just daft. You could say it’s ridiculous. The idea of tariffs proportional to the size of deficits isn’t dumb. The idea of an end state where we balanced our trade with everyone is silly. That’s not what we need to be pushing toward. I wrote about the Trump administration pushing for these tariffs a long time ago and it was clear that they were pushing for them. And, look, maybe the word reciprocal is too confusing. And they should have called them proportional tariffs. It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. That seems like it would have been a good idea just putting that out there. If you just want to look at it from the other side, holding up a mirror to others might make sense, since the Trump administration is worried about deficits. If they’re concerned about the trade deficits, they should start with creating tariffs that are proportional to the size of the deficits, rather than a model that doesn’t respond to what they’re describing. And you’re right that in a healthy, balanced economy we could have surpluses with some and deficits with others. The reality is not our system. The system is unbalanced, which should be a red flag because the economists don’t see it that way. I think if you were. but but you were just telling me in the case against industrial policy from the right that the conservative, the free market oriented conservative would say, we’re not going to be able to micromanage which factories to build exactly which industries to support. We want to set something low and flat in tariffs that just encourages domestic manufacturing. It seems to me like the same has to be true with this country by country stuff. The idea that we’re going to be micromanaging the trade balance with Italy, Hungary, Turkey, India, Bangladesh to figure out how do we get them all back in balance, one that seems unworkable. And two, and this is something that just hangs over this whole conversation. It seem to fit in with the President of the United States. His particular obsession with the idea that from his perspective, all trade deficits seem to be bad, at least in the way he talks about it. The White House is working around a core Trumpian perception that if you have a trade deficit you will get ripped off, and everyone who is designing these policies is doing that. And that’s wrong. So you shouldn’t make policy on that basis. We might have the 10 percent Oren Cass tariffs and you might be aware of countries that are particularly abusive in their tariffs. You are going to be able to use actual reciprocal tariffs. Why would you embark on a project that seems destined to fail? So I agree with some of that. I agree that you have a point. And I think we said this I wrote that there are plenty of reasonable reasons to have bilateral deficits or surpluses, but you shouldn’t expect them to balance in every case. That is definitely true. I also agree with your point that for all of those is this workable reasons, the kind of global tariff is preferable to the reciprocal tariff model. The piece of the trade case that I am interested in and grappling with is worth engaging with. There is a question about how you get from here to there on the type of system that we want to move to, and this is why I think it is not fair. Let’s just as a thought exercise, stipulate we really do want a large trading bloc, relatively free trade therein and all of those countries to agree China is out. You do need the countries to change their policies. Some basis is needed for the negotiation. If you actually do want these countries to change their policies toward bilateral trade to the extent that they really are distorting the relationship, you do need to have something to bring to the table. And, the classic example that we always highlight at American Compass is a Ronald Reagan example. When the Japanese autos were flooding into the US in 1980, 1981, Reagan went to Japan under threat of heavy tariffs from Congress and got the Japanese to commit to self-impose a quota on cars from Japan and instead send Honda and Toyota to build in the United States. And I think it’s very hard to describe that as anything other than an enormous success, certainly for the US economy and frankly, for the US Japan relationship. But don’t you think the American government is only capable of doing that kind of thing. Right now, let’s say in the next few years. There are a number of cases with specific countries. You say there is a thing manufactured in our ally. We would like to see more of it in Germany. The thing is currently manufactured in Japan. We want more of that here. There’s this thing that our NATO ally turkey is doing, and we can do that. It’s beyond that. Like say, say we concede the Reagan approach worked. The Reagan approach was to have a long standing, complex relationship with a big, important country. You can get the goal you set to work by setting it. Again, the Trump administration is not doing that. It is right now setting out a plan where we’re going to be doing the we’re going to be trying to play Reagan and Japan with 137 countries around the world in the next five years, and obviously that’s not going to happen. Setting aside questions of competence and implementation. Yes, I think that is correct. So O.K, so what I’m pushing you towards and I we’re going to come down to two forward looking questions. It seems like all the critiques of the Trump administration are about how they went far, too fast. So trying to do a Japan style negotiation with too many countries at once, phasing in the China tariffs, too big, too fast, not enough time for markets and companies to adjust. So Trump administration went too far too fast. How do they get to the best case scenario. And so again we’re having this conversation in a moment in time, in this particular moment, there is some talk that the Trump administration could announce a 90 day pause for most of the tariff program, maybe not including China, but certainly for most of the world. Can you really pull off that kind of recalibration, where you walk certain things back, slowing certain things down at the same time, can you? Is it plausible that the market will ever trust this administration again, if it’s whipsawing between of wild tariff announcements and then walk backs. And so on. Is it possible for the Trump administration to walk back to a more sane tariffs policy than it has at this point? It’s a great question. The one thing I would add just to the criticism is I think there’s just communication matters here with allies, with the public, with markets. A lot of this is about understanding where you are going. That is a big piece where there needs to be more going on as well. I think that there is plenty of room to correct course. And something like saying the 10 percent global tariff is permanent and immediate, and we are asking Congress to pass a bill. Golden has introduced a bill that deals with this already. I think that would be great. I think saying, look, China is not like the other countries. This is where we’re headed with China. You have to get used to it. We are probably going 0 to 60 right away. Over two or three years, let us do this. That would be great. Fully credible. And by the way, again great legislation co-sponsored actually now by now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio to do that on China. They should do that. Get Congress on board, make it permanent. And then with the reciprocal stuff. First of all, I think at this point. And if they make that stuff permanent, they do have some credibility that they mean it. This is serious. There is room to say people are arriving at the table quickly. We appreciate that everyone is interested in resolving this. And so let’s put these on hold. And let’s put a deadline by which we need to see plans from people for what they’re planning to do and countries that don’t get with the program, get hit with half of this in six months. If they still don’t get with the program, they will be hit with both halves after six months. I think all of that could be perfectly consistent with what has been said so far and would be an enormous improvement in reducing the costs and increasing the potential benefits to finish up. What do you see as the worst case scenario here. I do not believe that the Trump administration will ride this exact policy mix all the way down into a recession, if you can indulge pessimists for a moment. I think there are many reasons to suppose that Trump won’t change his policies. I think we know enough about Donald Trump to suggest that that’s a possibility. I think you have conceded that the tariffs probably come with some cost to growth, but it is a small cost. So you combine that cost with extra costs added by Trump’s policies being non-optimal with a general atmosphere of dismay and uncertainty. There is uncertainty that is fair, and that yields, if not a recession, higher prices from tariffs and lower growth rates. The Republicans lost congress in the election. Legislation is not needed to make these tariffs permanent, they are unpopular and associated with Trump. There isn’t a president after Trump because he is associated with policies that are unpopular. And, if I may personalize it a bit right then the end of the story here is a Democratic president comes in, sweeps all of this away. No factories have ever been built because people didn’t believe the policies were permanent. The project of AmericanCompass and the project of OrenCASS is bound up in the Trump administration so it is blowing an opportunity for conservative governance for years and years. That’s my worst case scenario. The worst case scenario wouldn’t include American Compass. As long as is possible, American Compass will continue to work on policy. The 401(k) owners are angry until the angry, and they show up behind your snow-covered windows. I am concerned with two very serious concerns or drawbacks. The costs are the real ones. And I think to some extent we get tied up in the abstract of the talking points or the stock market the very real cost is actual harm to real people. If you load up costs that won’t benefit. I think the cost is that the American people don’t like this direction and the idea of reindustrialization is thrown out because they don’t think we can do better than globalization. I think that would be bad for the country because at the end of the day, I think we need to do something about it. I think that note of pessimism is a good place to end, because I’m feeling fairly pessimistic about this policy course at the moment. So thank you so much, Oren Cass, for joining us. We will see how things look soon enough. All right. Thanks for having me, Ross. Thanks, Oren.