Next, President Trumps populism and its potential lasting impact. The America Enterprise Institute talks with the university of chicago mulligan about the policies on trade, immigration, debt and deficit spendi spending. Hi, im jim of the american Enterprise Institute and welcome to our event. Ras trumpism pollism succeeded. The president has combined republican tax cuts and deregulation with more restrictions policies on trade and immigration. While the president s rhetoric has often been antielite, norm violating and sometimes inflammatory, hes won the support of the Mainstream Republican Party and lawmakers alike. What are we to make of his presidency . Have President Trumps economics been successful. Going forward what lessons should policy makers learn from the recent rise of populism on the left and right . Today ill discuss these issues with two great guests. Casey mulligan, professor of economics at university of chicago and chief of economists, of the counsel of economic advisors in the Trump Administration, to 2018 to august 2019. Youre hired, untold and the economic policies studies at aei, the author the American Dream is not dead, but populism could kill it released in february of this year. And here is how the event will go. To start out casey will speak for 10 minutes and mike will often a 10 minute response and after that, a Panel Discussion for a while and toward the end of the discussion about 10 45 were going to do a q a, so please submit your questions on twitter with the ask sei econ. With that, professor mulligan. Good morning. I have some slides to share during my presentation. So good morning, i really appreciate aei organizing this. Im going to economize your time today, but you can find a lot more in my new book and readers have been having fun and coming away agreeing somewhat that populism has some real s substance. Lets start with the definition of populism. Mike refers to pitting the people against the elites. And they are in air quotes, so whether theyre skeptical whether these groups exist. As i explains in my book, the elites do exist in my book and a slight exaggeration to say we know each other. And even in trump white house, the the pitting word suggests that the conflict is imagined or only manufactured by politicians. To contrary, this is a real conflict. People have been suffering from significant policy mistakes, which the elites do not acknowledge, let alone fix. In the short time today, ill give you a couple of examples. Drug overdoses tripled over 10 years and as various metrics in my books show, washington remains as oblivious than ever. Federal policy was unwittingly fueling this epidemic with, for example, subsidies, up and down the Prescription Drug supply chain. But at least in the years i showed you, illegal fentanyl did not loom large. During these years, and decades before, fentanyl would momentarily come into the u. S. Market and at the time people would say, our drug supply was getting poisoned, but the department of justice every time would beat it back. Then in 2013, without any acknowledgment as to what was going on with opioids, the attorney general did this. Most intense, where i had these mandatory minimum sentences i had to impose with nonviolent drug habits that they had and had to go to jail for a five year mandatory minimum or a 10year mandatory minimum and i didnt feel comfortable doing it. As attorney general holder announced he would no longer support mandatory minimums for low level drug crimes. Immediately here comes the fentanyl, showed record increases in the number of people using illicitly obtained. This is part of the american carnage that trump cited in his inaugural address which of course, deeply offended the elite. Ill go easy on michael at this point. Take susan rices book, the opening of the book, she talks about she heard say american carnage in his address and that was evidence, she says, of his unthinkable cynicism and ugliness and how our president was saying farewell to the moral universe, i quote her. 540 pages in that book, not one mentions opioid addiction and drug overdoses behind populism. Lets look closer at the address and at the monthly data. What did the president say in his inaugural address . Crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much potential. This american carnage stops right here, and right now. Very clearly, once we go back and look at what he actually said, hes referring to the drugs and the crime that have stolen too many lives early before the natural death. Now, i admit that the data, the monthly data are noisy, but it sure looks like the carnage did stop exactly when our president said it would. Now, the deaths did not go down to zero, but part of what happened, the new attorney general that the president put in rescinded the holder memo, although im concerned that some u. S. Attorneys are still following the holder approach. Trump campaign lobbied also against obamacares individual mandate and excessive regulation generally. The individual mandate is a classic case regular people had to suffer under a fundamentally flawed theory from the socalled experts. Another thing they tried to do is to force people with beer budgets to have wine tastes. I give many examples of the book, lets take small dollar loans. As jd vance explains in his best selling book about flyever countries. Small dollar loans can be a convenient product for poor people. Pay 40 50 for a short term loan to avoids hundreds of dollars in late fees penalties bank, landlords, et cetera. , but the Protection Bureau puts it in the formula and concludes moeb should be allowed to purchase such a service, never mind the 600,000 consumers who wrote begging to keep the loans, to help them pay, i quote, for rent, child care, food, vacation, school supplies, car payments, power, university bills, credit card bills, groceries, medical bills, insurance premiums and student educational costs. The last one that i want to show you with the little time that i have is how fda regulations protected generic drug manufacturers from competition. This is not a question of safety and efficacy because the formula in my generic drug has been in use for many years. The company rigged the system so they could charge brand name products for generic prices. President trump ended that beginning in 2017. This really hurt chinese and other Foreign Companies who had previously secured themselves special favors and israeli manufacturers stock crashed and the anl liz readily acknowledged what was going on and theres more competition in the market from generic drugs stemming from what fda began in 2017. Most important, consumers saw it, too. I show here that the consumer priorities index for Prescription Drugs and we see that it became negative for the first time in 46 years. Now, i understand that deregulation is a dirty word in certain circles that call themselves populous. Jim calls deregulation the standard republican fare. Well, trumps fda deregulation by itself translates into about 11 on Prescription Drugs generally which is a big deal, especially for low income families. I dont understand why any populous would want to reverse these savings and return to the Companies Privileges excessive regulation rated for them. Trumps many regulatory changes add up to real savings. These are my estimates of what it would cost to go back to running the regulatory states the way that president bush and president obama were. Ive broken down into five income groups, the bar here, the Lowest Income Group would face lower wages and higher expenses such as Prescription Drugs i showed you that total 15 of their income. That would be like doubling their taxes that they pay. The way i see it, trump has been a political entrepreneur who figured out how to ride populism into winning the biggest elected position in the world. And then achieving historic policy successes pursuant to some of his campaign promises. There are failures, too. And the subtitle of my book is successes and failures. So, maybe trump is the political versus of the blackberry, historical progress ultimately supplanted by something even better. What i can assure that is that the people continue suffer from policy mistakes and they know it, even while the elites to continue to fail to acknowledge and hiding, as i explain in my book, hiding evidence about their failures, resting rn real fundamentals, populism is not going away, even when trump does. Thank you. All right. Great. Now we have 10 minutes or so from the doctor. Apologies, i was muted. Thank you for that thoughtful presentation. Let me share my screen, so i can get that working, there we go. Okay. So, thank you again, dr. Mulligan for the thoughtful presentation and theres a lot there for sure and i would encourage everybody to buy caseys book. You can find it on amazon and other places as well, its very thoughtful and certainly worth your time and regardless of what happens next month, i think, i think caseys point that populism may be here to stay and that maybe there are other iterations of populism following President Trump is certainly a thoughtful thesis and how people interested in politics and policy would read. I would strongly encourage you to buy caseys book. My book, the American Dream is not dead, populism could kill it, i think you can tell by the subtitle that casey and i have different views, and thank you for thank you for everyone who will watch the video later on. Let me say, what is populism . Casey touched on this and quote me and i didnt hear caseys presentation before he gave it, i heard it for the first time and youll see the scare quotes around the people in the elite site. If id heard caseys presentation i might have taken those out. You know, let me give a threepart definition. Aggressively pitting the people against the elites, i think, is a key part of any definition of populism. This does not mean that the elites dont exist and the people dont exist, but it does mean that i think that the the economy is overdone by populous and populism, that the economy is less strong than the populists would let you believe. And on populism that the elites are rigging the system against the people, thats a common phrase you hear, Elizabeth Warren or senator sanders use, as well as the president. And finally, embraces pessimism, things are terrible, the trajectory is bad for the nation and for individuals. And an effort to close the country and to turn inward. Immigrants are the problem. Globalists are problem. Globalization is the problem. Were losing abroad and turn in on ourselves and we need to to that because things are really terriblement and so that i think is the way that i think about populism. So lets talk about trumpion populi populism. Its important to see which are p populism and why. When the president ordered scrambled eggs, thats not a populi populist, certainly things the president has done are populous and quite a few things that are. And the best parts of the president s agenda, he talks a lot about one in his presentation, which is deregulation. I think thats been successful. And the 2017 tax law, you know, particularly the Corporate Tax provisions in that law, i think, are very successful and the best parts of the president s Overall Economic policy agenda. I wouldnt include those as populous. I think that, you know, reducing the Corporate Income tax rate is something that romney would have done if he were elected. There would have been a lot of pressure on john mccain to do that if he were elected. Thats been a standard goal of republicans for quite some time. Deregulation, same thing. Find me a republican who doesnt think that the u. S. Economy is too heavily regulated. So those are certainly parts of the president s policy agenda and successful, but i wouldnt call them populous. Instead trade wars, attacks on domestic institutionings, attacks on basic norms, hostility towards immigrants, towards immigration, there, i think, those components of the preside president s agenda are pop list. In addition i would argue that the president enters the debate as well. And thats a big part of his presidency. So, maybe the component of the president s populist agenda that hes made the most progress on i think is the trade war. So lets take a look at that in a little more detail. I would argue that the trade war didnt work even on its own terms. The terms of the trade war are the terms that are used by democrats and republicans who support protectionism. Which is that theres this group of workers, these parts of the country that have been neglected by the elites and the elites are more interested in globalism and more interested in Overall Economic performance, which presumably will help them, than they are in manufacturing workers and manufacturing downs towns. So we need some protectionist policies in order to correct that imbalance. And even if those policies increased consumer prices, slow investment spending, slow Overall Economic growth, theyre worth it because they afford special benefit to this group of neglected workers, in this case, manufacturing workers or certain neglected regions of the country. You know, casey mentioned inaugural address, carnage and he mentioned them spread like tombstones across the nation. This is what were talking about. When the trade war began, wilbur ross holding up a can of campbells super and saying it would cost you 1. 5 cents or 2 cents than it otherwise would. The idea that we can spread the pain of the trade war over the entire nation and its really not going to be that bad. Its going to cost you an extra penny to buy your can of soup, but allow benefits to flow to the manufacturing workers who deserve special attention. The best piece of evidence im aware of that looks at this high hypothesis. They look at what the effect of the trade war was on manufacturing and they find that protection from import competition provided in isolation increase manufacturing employment. So, looking at that one component protection from import competition, actually does increase employment by 0. 3 under the measure that they use. But that, of course, is not all that trade wars do. Trade wars also increase the costs businesses face to purchase the goods that they need for protection, to purchase intermediate goods in the process and they estimate that that effect reduces employment by 1. 1 . So, even there, the the effects of the trade war on employment from increasing the cost ever intermediate goods is significantly larger than the positive effect from protection from imports. And of course, trade wars dont just happen. Theyre wars, theres a titfortat. You know, the president doesnt just impose tariffs and thats the end of the story, nations retaliate and they also took that into account. They into account protections from imports, immediate costs to production and titfortat and they find that overall, manufacturing employment was actually reduced by 1. 4 measure as a consequence of the trade war. Is he here again, the trade work didnt even work on the populist terms. For the trade wars the answer has to be no because the trade war hurt manufacturing workers, which is are the group that the president argued needed special takes and the trade war had other effects, as well. The reduction of imported goods that consumers could enjoy higher prices, and for fewer exports, which hurt export intensive firms, particularly farms, lower stock for higher default risk, which must be an accomplishment of the titfortat. Most of these are pretty well established. And those are pretty well establish established. The uncertainty from the trade war slows Business Investment which worked against the president s signature legislative accomplishment, which was the Corporate Tax reduction. The president encouraged investment with his right hand by reducing Corporate Tax rates and then discouraged with his left hand by starting trade wars. So the spillover effect, not only did trumpian populism not work, it reduced the effectiveness of the president s other objectives. A little example of this uncertainty, were doing this for the christmas season, a quote from the president. Lets go back to the summer of 2019 which seems like it was two or three years ago seeing all thats happened in the past few months. In june, the u. S. Proposing a is tariff on chinese imports and then agreed not to impose tariffs and start renegotiations with china and then the president changed his mind and a tariff on the 300 billion. And then a few weeks after were not going to do until after december. He said were doing this for the christmas season. Thats amazing after he told American People and businesses that the trade war would not have any adverse effect on them. This is the example of the kind of climate thats created when you enter into a trade war, how are businesses supposed to make Investment Decisions when theres so much uncertainty about what the trade policy regime would be. This, i think, undermined the success of the 2017 tax law, at least for now. But in addition, it undermined the argument that conservatives, analysts and that economists put forward, which is that businesses will respond to these and if we have a President Biden and he raises the Corporate Tax rate and people on the right and economists who are more in favor of free markets want to reduce the Corporate Tax rate again, theyre going to have a much harder time doing that because of the president s trade war. Let me just say a word about the populism over the longterm. I think that the key part of the president s populism has been to stoke, racial, ethic and religious animosity. This must have some effect on consumer spending, on business formations, and you know, particularly if its sustained over the longer term. The president has supported protectism and in fact, the post world war ii liberal international order, thats a direct threat to prosperity and those institutions and that regime have been the bedrock of prosperity on both sides of the atlantic for seven decades and by attacking it and by weakening it, the president risks threatening the foundation of that prosperity. And we think the rule of law and the cultures of reinforcing it. That the president has eroded the stronger economy by tagging the constitution and labeling them as an enemy and they have confidence in them. The president s hostility threatens it, and its just people that, of course, have a longer run, economic effect. The extent to which this damage occurred over the last four years, i think, is surprising and considerable. The extent to which it will be lasting, i think, is more of an open question, but all of this, i think, is problematic from an Economic Perspective and all of it, i think, flows from the president s populism. These are all manifestations of the populous impulse and inge that they contribute to my version which is the the foundation of the president s message as he referred to this president s inaugural address, american carnage, people have been doing tearfully and the country is or many parts of the country are planned. I think its just not at odds with the fact, its not in line with decades which is something i spent a lot of time on in my book. Wages and income arent stagnantment and its not rigged and capitalism is not broken. The president has argued on each of these points that i am wrong and i believe the evidence suggests that the president is wrong and that populists are wrong. You heard the same charges from the left as well. Senator sanders and senator warren. Buy the book, youll see. I believe we can be confident. Populism is pessimistic. Populism is and i think we should be optimistic. In fact, we should be and were not we can be open to the world and confident in the future and those arent just sentiments, we can be confident, we should be open and we are not at zero sum conflict because that it was the economic record shows. So, thank you for tuning in and i look forward to the discussion. All right, thanks a lot, mike. Well let casey respond, but i want to frame it. I believe what mike was saying, the parts of the trump populism had worked and good ideas are sort of republicanism, corporate and the parts of trump populism that were failures, the trade war and immigration, thats populism much that sort of reflects the things on the left a lot about, trade and sometimes immigration. So, casey, is mike right . The parts that you really love of trumpian populism just republican tax cuts and deregulation . No. Now, you i think if you look and someone should do word analysis of trumps speeches. Hes given a lot of speeches. I think youll find the individual mandate and Prescription Drugs coming in there way more than trade. If you take all four years together. Yeah, there have been periods of time he was more emphasizing than trade, but every other day hes bragging about getting rid of the individual mandate. Now you want to say thats a republican thing. Okay, i think it came from heritage, but whatever, whatever that people and i explained in the book, the way trump learned that the individual mandate was terrible and he should get rid of it as a leader of the people and not the elite, was to ignore what the experts were saying about how its needed for adverse selection and the terrible analysis and hes hearing it from the people, not from washington and i explain that in the book. Same with the Prescription Drug that you hear about that in washington, but again, theyre hearing that from the people. The Prescription Drug regulations were there in the Bush Administration and he had a brother that tried to run that trump beat handily. The opioid epidemic, thats bipartisan, and supply chains, a lot came from republican, and some of those who worked in the Bush Administration, i still in the Trump Administration and burying things about this. And these are things that theyve been doing. If republicans want to take credit, fine, but at least people got what they wanted. To the tariffs, i think, first of all, michaels way disproportionate on the tariffs, if you look at the amount of revenue involved with the tariffs, its one one of these deregulations, its fairly small. Do you remember the reagan trade war . I dont either. If you heard reagan talk about free trade, its so beautiful, literally brings tears to my eyes to hear reagan talk about trade. I explain in the book and once i wipe the tears away, and look at what reagan did, reagan as just as much protectionist as trump. Reagan is the iconic republican. He was so protectionist. What he did different and the reason there werent reagan trade wars, did he quotas, and he protected the industries with quotas, instead of tariffs. Extra money that people pay go to the Foreign Companies rather than america. Then it was japan and now its chinament it was japan and east asia that reagan was threatening protectionism, and quotas to try to deal with that. In his second term reagan got the japanese and some other Southeast Asian country to agree to some copyrights and so on. Same thing with trump. In fact, trump has a lot of the reagan people and the lead trade guy now. You have kudlow there from reagan. You have the speech writer, bring down that wall. He was there. So there are a lot of same people. Protectionism, i think, is a bipartisan affair that has been around long before populism. I should recommend, look at the tariff list, download the tariff list and look at whats there. The stuff youre talking about is tiny even relative to that list, we have a number of outrote prohibitions, around my entire lifetime where theres no populous president. You cant make pickup trucks in a foreign country. Theres massive tariffs on it. And obama and bush never dreamed about eliminating it. And we looked at the jones act. Bush, obama, reagan, they all promised the special interests that were going to keep that prohibition on importing services. Trump is the first one who has not promised to that lobby that he would keep it. As i explained in the book, he tried and so far failed to get rid of it. And hes not telling the special interest that they can keep that. So i think to settle this debate, i think we need to be grounded in whats actually said and whats actually what the policy policies are. And these are busy people. They have lots of things they say and lots of things they do, but i think as quantitative social scientists, we have ways to bring that together and i think youll see a different picture. Mike, do you agree that the trade war, maybe its good, maybe bad. Maybe its not nearly as important as what you make it out to be particularly versus so casey views as successes . No, i dont. You know, i mean, i let me offer an area of agreement. I agree with casey on the historical record that republican president s have imposed trade protections. That doesnt mean there were not ever protectionist policies put in place. That doesnt mean we had a tariff free world under president bush and president reagan and then all of a sudden all the tariffs popped up under democrats. But it does mean that they kind of protectionist global trade system that was in place decades and decades ago has come dismantling the system has been a bipartisan project. I think successive president s starting with president bush, president obama were more aggressive toward china and toward their trade practices. That was wholly justified, and i believe that if mrs. Clinton had won one in 2016 she would have been more aggressive toward china and president obama was, and that she shouldve been. If mitt romney were present in 2016 he wouldve been more aggressive towards china that president obama was. What makes the president stand out is his hostility toward that entire regime come his hostility toward free trade in general. Instead of rallying and international coalition, trading partners to isolate china and to crack down on chinas genuine legitimate trade abuses, the president and pose post tariffn our european allies and an post tariffs on our canadian allies, talked about pulling out of nato and all these things. The president was left without allies which is made his policies toward china much, much less effective than they could have been or then they should have been. The president s basic literacy about trade, not understanding what trade deficits are and what they are not, you know, his adherence towards mercantilist view of trade thats projected by all economists, or nearly all economists as i think then unique. These are distinctly populist elements of the president s approach to trade policies, that i dont think can be accurately characterized as being in keeping with the direction of trait bottles under president s of both parties, and that i think do represent an aberration from what weve seen, what weve seen previously. Do you have response to that, casey . I think we look at the numbers. I dont think youll see trump being an operation relative to reagan. As long as to distinguish tariff from quotas, you are not going to see a lot turkey threatened some come he didnt do the trick is that the quotas instead but i dont know an economist to like the quotas is much better than tariffs, lets give the money to the Foreign Companies. Thats why he didnt get a trade war. Reagan was giving money to the Japanese Company for this protect our domestic company. The japanese didnt fight back. Folks on the Reagan Administration have told me Japanese Companies came into the white house and asked for quarters and reagan gave it to them. I applaud trump i dont like protectionism but if youre going to do protectionism at least do it in a way that brings reverence towards the United States instead of the Foreign Companies. I want to get off trade just a second unless mike has something to say. I think a lot of people who think about populist policy, they talk about trade and the trade war and as someone who watched a lot of trump rallies back in 2015, 2016 my impression the trade was a pretty big part of trump not mix and also immigration trump economics get what you think trumps policies have been good ideas and would you like to see them continued and future administration reagan extended . Timesharing the screen here, picture from a comp of the president announcing his immigration plan. Unless anybody would wear of his plan essentially canadian and australian plan, which is emigration should be legal, not illegal and paste on Economic Contribution of the emigrants. That was his plan privately what the president said, he actually opened this road garden ceremony by saying citizenship is a most precious thing america has to offer. Privately he said that, too. He went the next step which really made and impressed me. He said we ought to be selling citizenship which of course was gary becker, what barry decker called his radical proposal Immigration Reform will be to have a fee for immigration. The president is a good politician and he knows hes not going to go out and try to sell that to congress, but the canadian and australian systems are point based system is kind of a central plan way to cut imitate what ntbased system would deliver. What a feebased. Congress income to do anything the president wanted integration so maybe you would say this is not that meaningful but this is his plan and this would be his chance to do demonstrative action by then substantive acts in his plan was the canadian australian plan which was an approximation to the gary becker plan. I was quite impressed with what the president does on immigration in terms of policy. In other rhetoric that isnt my area. Im a policy analyst, not the speech writer. I look at the substance and im pretty impressed. Are you impressed by the president immigration proposals or direction . I think in terms of the substance of that specific proposal i think there are a lot of questions about the details, but the basic idea that we should have, we should move a little closer towards a skillsbased immigration system and a little bit away from a familybased immigration system i system i think is completely sound. My own view is why not to vote, why just have significantly larger number of green cards of highskilled immigrants and just at that on top of what were already doing . Thats a reasonable policy goal. Again, the details of the proposal i think needed some work, but the deal of architecture philosophy behind it was really i agree with casey about that. I dont think we should judge the entirety of the president s work on immigration based on that one proposal. And again going back to the question whether trumpian populism has succeeded or failed, a big part of the reason why that didnt get any track is because the the president has o credibility on this issue because of his extreme hostility toward emigrants and toward immigration. The travel ban on people from some muslim majority nations set the tone early in the administration on this, and all the way up until the pandemic when the Trump Administration attempted to say to people who are here and student visas that he cant attend class in person just to go back to your home country, which was just outrageous. Public policy. The last four years have been littered with that type of thing. That hasnt stopped any momentum, in possibility of any meaningful legislation on immigration, while President Trump is president. Even on issues where the 30,000 foot structure at the the president is advocating is completely [inaudible] and so i would say has trumpian populism succeeded on immigration . No, it hasnt. Im sorry, has President Trumps no he hasnt. A big part of that is maybe even most of it is because of the populist elements of his posture toward immigration. In response, casey, or can we move on . I think we should move on. These are interesting subjects but we should treat them proportionally, not disproportionate by spin wholly on that. Another definition of populism in a policy that doesnt believe in constraints. Maybe not tradeoffs either. Republicans used to be very concerned about budget deficits, entitlements that is not been a big part of trumpian populism so far. Is that, what i continue to be a part of trumpian populism, we just dont worry about that and deficits, betsy worry for the other party when they get in our . I heard the president say the government revenue machine, we just spend that massive wheel a little bit faster. Hes not real concerned about the deficit. Now do you do that as the failure . I view that as a failure. Ultimately the fundamental here are equities. The problem with the big debt is your living it on the children and the grandchildren. I would want to take, put on my colleague top hat and take a more holistic view of generational policy here so code would factor into the. How are we treating the children versus the older people in those sort of tradeoffs. I do know he is that unusual in terms of generational inequity compared to past president on the whole but certainly in that specific area of Treasury Bonds and bills he would be. Putting the burden on future generations. Is this a a problem, the lak of interest or concern in the National Debt which used to be a big concern . I think its been a problem. Here i would [inaudible] you know, i think there is bipartisan concern about the debt and deficit. Its just never the number one concern that either party has. Of course its too President Trump significantly increase the structural budget deficit. He did that hand in glove with House Speaker paul ryan who, they very establishment traditional republicans, and there was not a lot of concern about that from the Republican Party at the time. The deficit went up significantly under president george w. Bush who established an additional Entitlement Program without a funding mechanism, and, of course, the e president , the deficit went up under president obama as well. This is a bipartisan issue. I think where populism shows up in President Trumps approach to debt and deficit, which is i think an aberration among republican president s, is the president enthusiasm for not getting projected future spin on Social Security and medicare. The romneyryan campaign back in 2012 at that on the Campaign Website as a goal, and, of course, speaker ryan in large part on restraining entitlement spending, and President Trump not only just ignored that and put it in the background but was quite vocal that he would not reduce spending on Social Security during the 2016 campaign. And then when he was actually in office in 2017, you know, continue to make a very courageous wasnt interested in cutting future spending on those programs. Maybe thats populism, maybe thats smart politics, maybe thats just honesty. I think that remains, thats another question, but i dont, i wouldnt give President Trump particularly harsh grade when grading on a curve on this, at a dont view this as a major manifestation of his populism. I have a question from twitter, and that is President Trump, if President Trump is defeat how will populism on the right change . Start with casey. Thats like asking, we got the blackberry, what is coming next . Are you ready for this one . Is at the iphone or something better. How is it better . I would be the billionaire if i knew exactly how to improve on it but i think populism will remain. They will look at trump closely and try to figure out what he did well and what can be improved. And to think its going to go back to the elites are making mistakes and theyre not acknowledging the mistakes and the people dont have to tolerate that. Most of my goals book i agree. Progress has been great for wide swaths of the pie caution but that people have to tolerate these kinds of mistakes from the people that elected they elect the people to do job and if theyre not doing it well and their subordinates are not doing well they were right to be angry and they are angry. The book is full of examples where the didnt do a good job for the individual make it was a terrible job. Opioid policies are a terrible job come continue to be a terrible job people are going to be upset with that. The next entrepreneur will figure out how to take on the elite and still try to do the job as president. Its that easy because the elite back. The elite are not stupid people, not powerless people. Its not an easy product to invent but im sure someone will invent a new and improved. How do you think populism on the right befalls . We talked a lot about trade. Im a little confused about what republicans think about trade on one hand they are talking about sort of decoupling the two economies but yet the phase one phrase in many ways more firmly integrated the two economies, make china a better place to invest, you know, more agriculture goods being i think he made a greater any other to address how does that populism on the right befalls in a post trumpcare . I guess the first thing i would say i think it does evolve. I think it involves a lot. A lot less than is commonly believed. I think the United States was on the cusp of extinguishing this populist flame when the pandemic yet. And and i would note that the Democratic Party nominated vice President Biden when it could have nominated senator sanders or senator warren come both of whom are populists. Who knows, but my guess is if the democratic primaries were held one year earlier when the economy was still weaker, and when the gains from the recovery had not reached at doing in the nation as strongly, that one of the populist candidates wouldve had perhaps more success. Theres a pattern and you see it over the last century, even longer, and you see it across democracies which is that when you have a big recession, that originate in the financial sector, and results in widespread hardship, you get a surgeon populism. You can measure that by the countries legislature and parliamentary systems. We saw this in britain with boris johnson, for example. And then as the recovery continues from that recession populism recedes, and population was receding in the United States, and now of course we had the pandemic and the economy is in terrible shape again. So my first answer to your question, as we recover from this recession, populism will may search again because we are in terrible shape but we get back to help the economy its influence will diminish. I do think to be some lasting elements of this. Some of those elements are good. I think that, and i hope that the Republican Party, because of President Trump, is more focused on providing Economic Opportunity to low income households and workers than it previously has been. That would be a good lesson. I hope its not just the white working class. I hope its the entire bottom 20 or bottom third of the income distribution, but i think that will be a positive Lasting Legacy of the president s populism. I think a hawkishness towards china will be something that justifiably should continue to be a part of the political right. Hopefully its executed better than the Current Administration has done. Unfortunately, i think the hostility toward immigrants and immigration is going to be, is going to have staying power on the political right. I think that will prove to the detriment of the United States. Go ahead. Isnt there something missing from the definition and mine that would make are definition about the elite versus the people. Then you were written calling sanders and worn populist pathology and is give more power to the elite over the people. Yeah, they dont see it that way. They dont see it that way but i understand your analysis of that. Either question from twitter. One thing i am asking this question for myself but its from someone from twitter. Its the in. All rules are off. Look, i dont necessary know about you casey or the president of what i hear a lot of sort of these sort of new trumpian populist policy people on the right, when they talk about the big elite policies, the two mistakes that come up over and over again are giving china permanent favorite trading status, then the 1965 immigration act which increased immigration to the United States from areas where over not getting a lot of immigrants. Do you view those as failures of elites and letting were immigrants into this country and helping china become a more integrative part of the Global Economy . There were elements the failure where was that coming from . There was a report the Clinton Administration did about nafta about what it did to the price of heroin, but its classified to you and i cant see the have buried those facts. There were elements of real costs to some of these trade arrangements that were not acknowledged. Does mean that were not benefits made but they are sleeping net benefit come to think that was a net benefit to china being a greater part of the Global Economy . Its hard to analyze. With japan to be easy say yes, because japan as a democracy come to the military. Versatile National Security part of it that is not my expertise, i cant really went in. It has to be weighed in. On immigration, im coming frm the university so you should listen to what im going to say, but the University Sector has been given a lot of special favors about immigration. You could understand whether people would say, you know, the academia hates us and the hate this president. Why are we giving you these special favors . So thats a a problem. Not that im against more immigration but when the immigration is doled out to special interests, the rights to immigration are doled out to special interests, that i would question and thats kind of what i see keeping the fuel going, even among Trumps Administration in terms of pushing against some of these old immigration plans and deals. All right. Mike, any final . Just to thank you for writing the book and everyone to an income fight. It is very thoughtful looking and these are obligated issues that admit quite a bit of reasonable disagreement and i would encourage everybody to read caseys perspective on it. All right. Casey, i did actually give you an official last, so this will be your opportunity. I agree with michael, and michael come to an address into the two books sidebyside. I think youll a lot more. Some is better than the parts, the sum is greater than the parts. So this issue is not going away so its worth learning about it. Invest in a. Great. Thats it for the aei event. Thanks for watching. Our live coverage continues this afternoon when the Brennan Center for justice holds a a discussion of reimagining the rule of law. Realtor from former new jersey governor Christine Todd whitman live at 1 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. You can watch a live on cspan. Org or on our free cspan radio app. Tonight in primetime Pharmaceutical Company executives discussed drug pricing before the House Oversight and reform committee. We will hear from the head of u. S. Novartis and International Executives about white people in the u. S. Pay higher prices than other countries. Thats tonight at 8 00 eastern here on cspan2. Morning issues begin in salt lake city. This is a universe of utah the venue for tomorrows Vice President debate with mike pence and kamala harris. Today they could wait for the debate inside. The university has offered a lottery for fewer than 100 students for proper spacing due to the coronavirus. Also getting ready moderator susan page, Washington Bureau chief for usa today. I honestly would tell you, i dont think when the dust settles in this election is going to be whether america becomes more republican or more democrat. Whether we are more liberal or more conservative, more red or more blue. I think the choice in this election with america remains america. And as jill biden tested from the moment he entered this race, its about the soul of our nation, who we are, what we stand for. And maybe, most importantly, who we want to be. Watch the Vice President ial debate between Vice President mike pence and senator kamala