Voters whether their concern about political division. Watch this program in entirety on our website cspan. Org. Now to a virtual discussion on governing priorities for the next president. Live coverage on cspan2. We welcome you to the second phase of our conversation following up on Nick Eberstadts lecture about our country which has seen more than its share of challenges and unexpected turns. Next lecture will be one starting point for this and another will be the simple fact we are less than a month away from a president ial election. The winner of that election, the person who takes the oath of office will face ordinary challenges both those created by the pandemic, many of which nick just discussed and those that have been building long before and require attention and action. That person will confront unusual opportunities in this strange moment. It helps the president think about those challenges and opportunities about how to prioritize them and ai has been engaged in a special project over the last few months. Our president had the idea of asking a number of our scholars who have expertise in different policy areas to offer advice to the president who takes the oath next year before we know who thats going to be. While the Election Campaign is still roaring in the background. That means they have to think about what its like to offer not to donald trump orjoe biden but to americas present. They have to consider not the goals of a republican or democrat but the needs of the nation. Obviously they do that as aei scholars so their Core Principles are clear. They care about keeping our Society Prosperous by defending the constitution, the market economy, the integrity of its institutions but by offering advice about how the president can advance these causes before we know who will win, our scholars have had to consider what issues, what challenges, what priorities should matter most and how all americans should think about them. The result of that effort is a collection of essays called governing priorities and its being published today by pei. Find it online at priorities. Org where you can read the essays or download the entire book. It will be available in print two. Nick eberstadt speeches the first chapter, others offer the president advice about how to strengthen the economy, think about our foreignpolicy threats, revitalize our governing institutions. Approach entitlements and taxes and help our cities recover. How to think about the Administrative State and responded to the political radicalism weve seen in the streets and more. So to unpack some of that advice and think about the lessons of nicks remarks just now, im joined now for a conversation by three of the other authors of chapters in that book and three of the people who are leading apis work to strengthen our country and respond to his problems. Michael strain is director of Economic Policy at aei, Corey Shockey is director of defense policy studies and ryan streeter is director of domestic policy studies and in their own work and through the work of their scholars there helping to chart americas path forward. Were going to start with a discussion about the peculiar moment our country is facing and then open it up to all of you as well to ask questions and drive our conversation. There are two ways you can post questions for our panel. If youre watching us on the live stream you can submit your questions in the q and a box next to the live stream on the event page or else email your questions to events aei. Org, dev events at aei. Org. Corey mike and ryan, thank you for getting together and begin with i wonder if i could invite each of you to maybe reflect on some of nicks remarks and also draw out some of the elements of your own advice to the president who takes the oath next year. Theres an enormous amount for us to learn from what nick said and an enormous amount of thrust to reflect on thinking about the challenges of anybody whos crazy enough to be what want to be president of the us in 2021. Was not cheerful lets say about the immediate economic prospects of our society. Hes very worried about the capacity of the economy to recover. Thats also the subject you take up in your chapter of the new book and you offer concrete advice. How do you think about that question now given the year we had . Where does the economy stand and how should thepresident approach it next year . Thank everybody for joining this panel discussion. I would like to conceptualize where the economy has been and where its going by thinking about a journey from a depression level catastrophe to a normal, severe recession. To a weak economy and then to a healthy economy. And we were in a depression level disaster in march and april. We had the Unemployment Rate above 15 percent, properly measured closer to 20 percent. We had annual rate of gdp growth of about 1 3. The economy track by about one third. At an annual rate. Household consumption plunged , exports fell, the economy really was in terrible terrible shape. To give this some perspective , about two years for the Unemployment Rate to double from five percent to its peak of 10 percent in the Great Recession whichbegan with the 2008 financial crisis. In the pandemic recession, the Unemployment Rate increased factor of four in just two months so this was a real disaster. We have left the kind of depression phase of this episode. And we left it a lot quicker than i guess many economists thought was possible so we are now in a bad recession but we are interritory thats much more familiar. And in some ways thats a comforting place to be because again, we were in such bad shape not so long ago. I think the next president regardless of who he is needs to first and foremost avoid doing things that will make the recovery slower and that will thwart progress. So we should not be raising taxes. In the economy, we should especially not be raising the Corporate Tax rate which would hurt and worker productivity and wages. That should be item number one to avoid of the kind of plausible sets of items. We should not be doing things that will slow the process adjustment. We are going to get to a healthy economy going to need from some industries to strike, or other industries to expand. In order for that to happen were going to need workers in capital to flow from the shrinking industries to the expanding industries. For example we dont need as many Movie Theater workers as we used to that we likely need more amazon delivery drivers so we should be not doing things to kind of gum up the works of that reallocation process and im worried that some of the policies might push us in that direction. And in addition to not doing things wrong and not getting in the way we need to continue to provide support to businesses and support to households so theres a lot we should do, a lot we should do the next president is going to have isa handful. Corey, in the economic sphere as mike suggests this is a moment of intense urgency and focus. In World Affairs its a little less clear exactly where to focus and in some ways this pandemic has put International Relations on hold but its also exacerbated some very Serious Problems that we face. After the president in 2021 about americas role in the world and the challenges of running our foreignpolicy. First and foremost, until we have a Pandemic Recovery plan, that americans are going to feel comfortable and confident with , theyre not going to careabout what else is happening in the world. And so the first thing at present needs to do and any party needs to do is have a plan that reassures americans that the future is manageable for them. To them caring about chinese aggressiveness. Before china started on the border with india. There degradations in the south china sea. Concerned about what russia and turkey are doing. These are all important questions Americas National security challenges for Americas National security. For a totally understandable reason americans arent going to care until the major thing that has destructed all of our lives. Is front and center in american policy. Also looming longerterm concerns that because of the pandemic were not going to be paying attention to. For most is getting americas longterm sustainable footing. Thats not an argument against pandemic stimulus spending. Absolutely not. But its an argument that by 2024, americas debt service is going to be larger than the Defense Budget. And its if not addressed over time,its going to crowd out all discretionary spending. Including the defense and Foreign Policy spending. And what needs to be done is put our debt service, our debt on a longerterm trajectory sustainable. Its going to require small choices now and in normas choices if we dont deal with it pretty soon. So those kind of longerterm challenges, thinking about how to iron out our policy for managing a rising and aggressivechina. Making better use of our alliance relationships. Those things are longerterm challenges but were also only a few good choices away from the United States being vital and vibrant in its defense and Foreign Policy. Ryan, in reflecting a littlebit about what nick said , our domestic policies these days often breaks down along the lines of what seem like culture, identity, but then in many ways its also a line of city and country which ithink was implicit somewhat in nicks remarks and in his focus. You devote a lot of attention to the situation of workingclass people in Rural America in some ways in suburban america. You argue in your own chapter of the governing priority selection that we need also to think about the revitalization of the cities without which a broader american revitalization isnt really possible and maybe especially for conservative its important to understand the ways in which cities are actually central to american vitality. How would you approach that question now if you were advising the president in 2021. Thank you all and its good to be with you and corey and mike here in my heartfelt congratulations to my colleagues Nick Eberstadt today. A great honor. Its important to think about our economy and our society also geographically and in an age of resurgent populism, when grievance politics is also kind of hot, its a be not popular to talk about the importance of cities but the ones that they just really are essential to our economy and to our culture. And about one percent of counties in america account for a third of gdp and about the fifth of our population. The vast majority of patents are produced in urban areas as well as a lot of entrepreneurial activity. Cities will continue to be important and its not especially helpful right now i think in metropolitan america against the heartland america. Rather i think we need to find ways to bring them together in meaningful ways and ill have something to say about that in a minute area so i think its important to note right now when theres been a lot of commentary about people fleeing the citys right now, especially in the pandemic and in the wake of urban unrest at the cities dont often talk about. New york, chicago, los angeles. People have been leavingthe cities for quite a while anyway. The situation that was gone through the summer over the last few months has probably accelerated that in a limited survey data that we have when people are moving during this era, its for the usual reasons. Jobs, family, opportunity and a lot of people have been moving away from these cities for some time. Where have they been going to mark at what i look at in my chapters to say that whenyou look at where people are moving to , you can start to derive the basic workings of a policy agenda for cities Going Forward. People have been leaving these large cities, the famous ones where movies are made for some time or places that are more affordable , places that have more reliable infrastructure, better schools and provide the kind of safety that people are often looking for and i find the three leg and stool at urban theorist joel compton writes about his helpful here. That successful cities have always been animated by commerce. They provided safety and projected power and also have had a strong of place. And i think people are generally for these things when you look over the last 10 years, the Fastest Growing cities in america by population , its places like seattle. Austin, denver, charlotte. The fort worth, these are places where people are moving for some of the reasons i just talked about. Just raw numbers over the past decade san antonio has added more population than los angeles has and fort worth has added more than new york has. People are looking for the kind of facility, safety, affordability and mix of opportunity those places bring. Its worth noting as people move from one place to another there not moving from one large city like new york to a place like nashville or austin. Theyre also moving from outlying counties near metropolitan areas so we have this phenomenon where people are leaving more dysfunctional places or better functioning city and also people leaving more stagnating places in the hinterlands for cities as well. And they generally tend to be moving to these places that provide that mix of basics that a lot of these places get right. Whatever their politics might be, its worth noting that the top 10 destinations for millennial movers over the past few years have been half of the states where those places have been our people without income tax so people are making decisionsfor these very basic reasons. And its worth pointing that out because weve seen this growth in urban dysfunction, particularly in strongholds of progressivism is our city and over the last generation been a big shift when you look at the situations of inequality in our cities so if you go back to 1980 and you look at the 15 most unequal cities in america only two major metros make the list. That would be places that have over 1 million people, new orleans and orlando and the other on smaller metropolitan areas and today the most unequal cities measured by the gap between the 90th and 10th percentile you see that allthe familiar faces on the left. San jose, sanfrancisco, los angeles, new york , washington dc. Weve seen this move toward greater inequality in classrooms out away from what might have been explained more by race even a generation ago and its in these places are particularly strong hold of progressivism and making more of an ideological observation and a partisan one there because a lot of the cities people are moving to our government by democrats but they have more political competition usually at the state and sometimes local level. Its on the seminars ideological setting for more practical policies like making housing more affordable to track people to those places. There is an interesting gauge of political competition that i should mention no is that there has been a partisan shift in the last years which is worth pointing out area when you look at the top 20 metro areas i relation right now, you have 16 mayors for democrats of those cities, three are republicans and one for an independent. Those same 20 cities in 1995 had 10 republicans and 10 democrats so youve seen a political shift of republicans away from cities and more dominance by democrats. And that is probably related to why we seen i think the better days of even conservatives depending on cities being a while ago when you look back to the half of the 1990s and you think between 1991 and 1996, you had a really the last time we had a wave of domestic policy for him like this. We have the introduction of the first voucher program. Public housing reform on a massive scale. The introduction of Community Policing as kind of a National Project and then of course welfare reform in 1996. These were done by democrats, these reforms were pushed by mayors and governors of both parties. But it was a time when i think the political competition of the day actually produced some good ideas so i talk about what maybe some of those ideas might look like Going Forward and i think theres a real need for policymakers to be thinking about what that means for cities and i get into that in my chapter and in this affordability can come from is a big deal. It really the responsibility for it the inequality we see in the cities i mentioned is because of local dynamics and the kind of urban overlords of those places and even a strong proponent of federalism like myself would now embrace certain federal policies in that regard in terms of tying federal funds to the ways in which cities for freeing up their hiring policies so we can have more housing and better prices. I think we need to relearn the lessons of committee policing. This is the time to accelerate school reform. I know everyones tired of having the kids at home and want them back in school this is a time where micro schooling, hybrid schooling, new ideas like giving charters to teachers within public schools, this is a time for education in our city to match the diversity and complexity of cities and i put out a few other kind of blue sky ideas like using the charter city concept him ethically to create more possibility for cities to address a wide range of concerns in ways that are better for their growth and safety and then also the idea of introducing new Regional Strategies to connect kind of outlying areas to their metropolitan center. So all to say i think theres a lot of hope in our cities that we havent been seeing lately because of all the problems and all the unrest that we have to read people are showing that cities are places by the way theyre moving to them. Weve been focusing on whats wrong with some of the cities that have been on fire and the places where we seen protests that have been hit hard by the virus. But when what we havent been spending a lot of time doing is looking at those places where people have gone and theres a lot thats right in those places, a lot that helps us understand that people wanttheir leaders in their country and i think we can build a good policy agenda. The next president in cooperation with governors and mayors and put together a good agenda on that front to really kind of overcome some of the stasis that was taking him of our cities and also get rid of some of the barriers that have hindered growth there. Class one of the themes you really bring out there and its also the theme of next remarks is that ultimately the driver of change have to be a change inPublic Attitudes. In a democracy, you dont get anywhere without Public Opinion behind you. And for those of you who want to improve things theres a real question about what the public is willing to accept and champion and aboutnow. And where publics views about politics are which would have to be a challenge for anyone in politics at thispoint and certainly for anyone who wants to be our president next year. There are ways in which expertise you brings to the table intersects with that question but ill start with you because i think there is a kind of careless isolationism has been adopted by people in both of our Political Parties now. In terms of looking at what the last 20 years have been about rid of these people thinking that was all a mistake, we got to stay out of this stuff without really getting much too what americas role in the world to be and what the costs are of changing them in some dramatic way. Does the American Public grasp the need for Global Engagement now and how do you make that case for in an engaged america even that sheer exhaustion that people feel in ourpolitics these days. Class its a great challenge. And youre right, that the public has no large appetite for big undertakings in foreign or defense policy. But its actually not a hard change for american leaders to make. But easier for american leaders to make thanfor leaders of almost any other country. The cause americans are outward looking at Americans Care about our values. There was just an article in the Financial Times yesterday about how the Prime Minister of zambia was pushing back against china, trying to create preferential treatment for chinese stateowned companies to have their debts repaid. That is a violation of the International Monetary fund rules for repaying better and its a small example it exemplifies two things. First, the way that a chinese dominated International Order would be very different from the american order that was created after 1945 and second , how the american lead order isnt actually much of a burden for americans to disdain because its so beneficial to others that they assist in it. That is that zambia is challenging chinas ability to create a different kind of rules for the order. And thats a great secret of american excess. Its actually not a very hard sell to americans that the current order is beneficial for our security and our prosperity. We built it that way. And youre not going to let the orders that follow it if the United States doesnt remain engaged. Work with our friends and allies to sustain, to prevent russia or china or other others who dont share our interest and dont share our values from changing the order into something less beneficial for us and less prosperous for us. Mike, if were on the subject of important responsibilities it might be hard to argue for we should talk about deficits and debt. Our colleague jim cabrera as a chapter in the book which again, people can find priorities. Ai. Gov and an important argument about what kinds of entitlement reform make sense now that i wonder how you would now begin arguments or entitlement reform. Itseems like its been abandoned by both parties. The only issue in which weve seen bipartisanship in the last two years has been we shouldnt pay any attention to entitlement. How would you advise a president who wanted to take that out in a responsible way . Where do you start givenwhere the public seems to be . I think you start by acknowledging that economists have updated their views. I think on how much debt the United States can carry and by acknowledging that a lot of the concern that was voiced after the financial crisis and the Great Recession and the policy response to that that there would be some sort of a greek style debt crisis didnt come to fruition. Conceiving of this, conceiving of the debt as a problem that is a kim to a bear at your front door thats going to charge into your house and hurt you and your family i think is not the right way to conceive of it. Instead its more of a problem of termites in the foundation of your house. Its not going to get you one day. Instead, over a period of time its going to gradually weaken the foundation of your house and in stretching the analogy maybe too far , the foundation of the economy so i think making the case in that way , though its more accurate from an Economic Perspective and also i think myself more plausible to a skeptical public, it admits a certain kind of policy response. What we need to do is put the trajectory of the debt to gdp ratio to inflect it from going up. You have it be going down. We are on track by the year 2023 to have a larger debt to gdp ratio than at any point in us history and is predicted to go up and up and up. That is bad just because we didnt have a financial crisis in 2011 doesnt mean that we can continue to regulate massive amounts of debt and that it wont have an impact on our economy. It will, it will reduce investments, it will reduce productivity and workerswages. I think cory is right that its a threat to national security. There is always the rest of some sort of a crisis. Theres always therisk of inflation. Being driven by, its a problem and its a problem that we can solve that the way to solve it is by making changes to our and and programs, most especially Social Security and medicare to the structure of our tax revenue. Though that small changes today can kind of regulate into large changes in debt projections. And can allow the debt to still be large but the shrinking overtime as a share of the economy rather than growing. This is a major problem. Its one of the biggest problems facing the United States. Its not a problem thats going to set the house on fire tomorrow the sooner we start tackling this the better. And i believe the next president should start tackling it immediately. Ryan, if youre thinking about one underlying challenge on any of these kinds of questions as policymakers is how to deal with the simple fact of the intense polarization of our political culture now. How to deal with that is of course the subject of my own chapter in the book which talks a little bit about political and institutional reform how should we understand thatunderlying polarization itself . Is the public as polarized as the politicalclass of the United States . Do we know about how americans think about each other across party lines. Maybe tell us about the work aei is doing to think about Public Opinion and build on many years of work of extraordinarily by Karlyn Bowman and others that were developing into acenter on Public Opinion. Its a great question. The short answer is yes, we are very polarized on the narrow questions read if you ask a question what were not people would be upset if their child came home dating a trump supporter trump opponents, people temperatures slayer and they expressed that to pollsters in Public Opinion researchers so yes, if allyoure doing is serving peoples Political Attitudes right now, youre going to see in america as incredibly polarized much more than we were a generation ago. On continental questions like that when you actually probe more deeply and that is one of the reasons we started this new survey center here at aei is to look at communities in a much more granular way and to look not to exclude politics but to look beyond and how people are doing. You discover that there are a lot of things that tie us together still. Despite the fact that we have seen any of these kind of secular things that nick referred to in his thoughts that are disturbing in terms of trends within households, trends within faith, all those things are real. The same time when you look at whats going on at the Committee Level you find it there still is some really strong confidence in what i would call a range of american institutions that we find that the American Dream is still alive. Mike has written entire books about this. Our survey work shows for most americans of every demographic category people still believe that you can get ahead and have a better life, however you define that in this country and we find people are animated by visions of the American Dream that have to do with having Strong Family life and being able to enjoy your freedom to its fullest extent. Its not about having a higher income than your parents did so i think theres a lot of confidence in that. People remain confident in their local leaders even if theyve lost a lot of trust internationally people drive a stronger sense of identity just an average terms from their community and city where they are and they do their political ideology so i think there are a number of things that tie people together throughout their lives which are school, communities where they are, the politics locally often is not as vicious as it is on twitter and nationally and theres a lot that we can learn from that and we can actually take some hope from some of the things we are finding and ask people about what they spend their time thinking about, what they spend their time doing and how it affects their outlook and theres more optimism about their and the media who cover it and those of us in classes like to talk about clicks where going to start to turn questions in just a few minutes and you can pose a question right in the q and a box if youre watching us on the live stream or email it to devevents aei. Org but theres an important distinction between changes that have been brought about by the pandemic that will pass with the crisis and changes that maybe have been revealed by the pandemic that are here to stay and are going to transform American Life in some enduring ways. Those things will never be as they were before. I wonder how you think about the Us China Relationship in the context and more to the point how the president shouldthink about it in 2021. Did the experience of the pandemic somehow change the way we are to approach china and beyond that , is the next president inevitably going to approach china in the way we have in the last two years. Weve hardened our senseof china as an adversary and is that you here to stay and should be . I think that view is here to say and i think it should be because what has changed just not in america but International Attitudes about china is the Chinese Government behavior. It predates the pandemic but the pandemic really cast a bright spotlight on the unreliability of Chinese Government information. The willingness of the Chinese Government to put their own population at risk and international populations at risk in order not to admit the mistakes that they are making. That predatory nature of chinese behavior. Just since the pandemic started, china has lashed out militarily towards india, towards several other countries and that has been, chinese behavior has been moving that way since at least june things the consolidated power but for example Dan Blumenthal and zach, two of aeis experts argue that it happened earlier than that. And the great thing about american policy towards china is that we created an opportunity for china to opt in to the security and prosperity of the existing order. And we held that responsible a holder possibility open for a very long time. Nearly 2 decades until china demonstrated that not only does it want Something Different but it wants to change the rules and institutions of the International Order in order to dominate it in ways the United States doesnt favor. European countries dont favor. Countries everywhere dont favor. The only thing thats actually i think holding back , has been holding back is more a policy that contains china more overtly by the United States and other countries. Its that systemic since weve lost faith that our values are universal. That Everyone Wants the privileges and the liberties that americans have demanded and secured for themselves. And what the rise of a more assertive and dangerous china is reminding americans, europeans, africans, Latin Americans and asians is that the truth that we hold to be self evidence are just american truths. And that this Chinese Government poses a threat to them. All of us need to hold hands and find creative ways to counter. Thank you. Mike, a related question in your domain, the pandemic and response to it and certainly had the economy like an earthquake. What last from this. We had what is changing about our economy or about the governments role in the economy you think isnt easily going back as opposed to crisis measures that will be withdrawn when its over and will be back where we started. My expectation is that Economic Policy will look pretty similar after the pandemic. As it did before. Most of the governments major responses to thepandemic have already expired. The 600 will supplement standard state provided Unemployment Benefits expired in late july. The Paycheck Protection Program expired in early august. I think thats those were the two big things the government did. Direct checks to households, the 1200 checkswere mailed out. We haventdone that again. The fed is taking extraordinary actions but they are doing a lot with what they have done in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and those measures, the truly extraordinary measures that subsided. Last time i expect they will this time as well. The economy i think could look different but of course the economy is always changing. Its maybe that this was the kind offinal blow , to Movie Theaters. Will be able to sustain. It may be that people are more comfortable and more used the Online Shopping and having Home Deliveries that we may see the Movie Theater sector shrink. We may see Home Delivery sectors expand but those types of sectoral reality, those types of expansions and contractions happen all the time. It may be people like Outdoor Dining and restaurants and do more of that. Thats just the kind of standard process of adjusting to changing consumer tastes that successful businesses and gave in. I dont expect to see some changes. I think that a lot of people who used to wake up in new york or washington on a monday morning and fly to los angeles for a one hour meeting and fly back may just do that will resume. So i would expect to see marginally less business travel. I dont think that the travel is in any sense a thing of the past but if we saw a 10 percent reduction in business travel, a 10 percent increase in working from home. These sorts of marginal changes surprise me but i expect that the economy will kind of put this in the Rearview Mirror and get the dust off his feet and get back to what it was doing. Ryan, obviously the pandemic has had transformative effects on how americans live their lives more generally. What do you think its changed about the american way of life over these past seven months that may not go back so easily whether in Higher Education peoples choices about where to live. Other arenas within your domain where it seems like weve lived through is going to be a change for the duration western mark. I have a lot of confidence in people to kind of go back to the lives thatthey were leading , not that im just rooting for normality or normalcy again but i do think that depending on how long it takes for us to have the kind of effective medical interventions that were all hoping for, things could actually snap more quickly. I think that things kind of on the policy lens mystically could really be changing. It is team also some of my comments earlier, weve seen leading up to the pandemic a growing awareness of the role of local leaders in driving up the cost of housing and making life very affordable in some of our cities and i think 20 years ago when you sit here and washington dc and have a discussion about the cost ofhousing , i know we can turn to subsidies thats been changing for the last 10 years as people have looked at the way in which rules are written locally is allowing others to stay in and its made some of this inequality askedsort of knew that i was talking about urban inequality. So i think what weve seen kind of the unrest in our cities is shining brighter light on the cold ability of our leaders at the local level and im hopeful this could go either way theres a tendency for a lot of our urban leaders to cast about for national culprits for problems that are under their jurisdiction to control whether its the police or the cost of housing or whether its the quality of their school but activists pandemic and then the unrest that we saw this summer following the killing of george floyd that we now have a brighter light on whos responsible for that stuff and i think that opens up the door for some creative maneuvering and it comes to policy and i think that on the primary tools months theres real changes here as well. I think im a Great Research that some of our education scholars are doing here at aei tracking will be useful and i fear there were going to see some real disparities emerge that will again, china light on what the nature of equality and place of some of these school districts, the role it played in children having someserious learning declines in some places and other places seeing that they did just fine and i think its going to raise a lot of questions. About School Policy at that level and as you mentioned lastly and ill wrap up is i do think Higher Education has been sort of primed for disruption. Its already been started. Weve been talking about this for a couple of years watching these problems we had with the cost of Higher Education and then the outcomes of Higher Education now that people have been doing Remote College life now for a while, were going to start to see some of these middling universities really struggle to square the circle now where theyve been able to get away with the cost and i think its going to be harder for them to do that afterwards area is going to be a landscape or a lot of disruption. Let me follow up on that also and draft some beans appearing in our audience questions. Beyond the pandemic last few months has been very disturbing signs of radicalization in American Life. Protests that began as a response to Police Abuses and quicklyescalated in some places into riots. It had turned out to be in some respects enacted to a Broader Movement to portray American History is rooted in injustice and in evil, movement thats been close enough rate of inquiry on campuses. This is clearly spreading beyond campuses and innocent working a struggle over our countrys core identity and moral purpose. Ryan, i wonder how you speak about. You ended up on higher ed and this is in some ways entered on higher ed but read well beyond. How do you about the dangers and opportunities of this moment. How serious is the risk, what might be done and is there a role for the president and other policymakers really doing anything about this knowledge area. I am concerned about the things that you just mentioned since you mentioned higher ed i would say that we have reason to be concerned about the climate on a lot of our campuses. Cancel culture that there is the opposite of what were supposed to be doing on University Campusesand its a real force. I would say its a uniquely unit american phenomenon to you see some of this in other countries. But not for that extent. And im still puzzling over why that is i do think the fact american universities have overspent on beating up nonspeaking aspects of the campus has contributed to that. Creating offices whose job it is to create the conditions for campus unrest which you dont see across the pond in europe or the uk to the degree that we have here so i think theres a real challenge there and i think the role of the president is probably limited but i think the president can talk about these things and call out hypocrisy where he seesit. And look at other creative ways for federal policies to actually hold universities accountable for what they say theyre doing is to create an environment for free and open exchange which in many cases theyre not doing. The change mainly has to come from within and by calling attention to hypocrisy on our University Campuses thats one way to get there and im encouraged that we do have associations with University Faculty coming together saying we want to reclaim areas of Free Expression and open and honest inquiry in our university and the league of heterodox and these other organizations has helped their butt is going to be incumbent on University Leadership to do the kinds of things that the university of chicago and others followed on so not just put out statements but give cover to their own faculty to do the things they need to do without being canceled. Corey, one of the things that the rest riots and responses have pointed to that you said a lot about over the years which is able military relations. Weve seen a lot of talk about the use of military and domestic Law Enforcement, even some careless suggestions about the military and forcing the results of the election if things dont go well or being sent into cities to keep the peace. It is the state of Civil Military relations now . Is this something that concerns the top brass or the president next year . It is something that concerns the military leadership and he absolutely should be something that concerns thenext president. Further president , as a second term or Vice President biden neglected. President trump has violated a lot of the norms of Civil Military relations. And of the role of the American Military in society. In the United States is normative, not legal so president from giving Campaign Speeches to military audiences. The suggestion of militarizing policing, those kind of things are actually very detrimental to the American Military itself. Because if admiration the American Public has for the military is due largely to do things. First, is one of the few remaining conveyor belts for people to become middleclass americans. The second, because it stays out of our domestic political debate. And what we see from the survey data is that when the American Military is thrust into politicized roles, that endorsement of political candidates like the commercial Trump Campaign made in the last couple of days featuring the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. That actually doesnt change voting behavior, but does diminish the respect they have for the American Military as an institution. So is not for the military itself. The American Military does have legitimate roles in Law Enforcement as it does in disaster relief, but those roles are principally in support of civilian elected civilian officials in particular governors and mayors and what some of president from policies have been during the course of the protests have been to try and associate the military with his preferred policies and to impose those on requested on other elected officials. Governors and mayors in particular. And thats actually a terrible position to put the American Militaryin with respect to its relationship to our broader civilian society. Mike, i want to put you to you a question that come from john salad a and is about trade. The question is really whether there has been a meaningful change in Public Attitudes rounding trade and also whether concerned about china and intellectual property that have weakened public support for free trade in a way that mikes indoor. And in an odd way with bipartisan resistance to pretrade although Public Opinion about it is has actually become more positive towards pretrade over the last four years. How do you see the day of the trade debate at this point . I think its become complicated. Trade has always been controversial and we always find counted on the Republican Party to advance freetrade much of the Democratic Party has wanted to resist that. But democratic president s have tried to advance freetrade from president s clinton to president obama. I think it remains an open question whether secretary clinton and one in 2016 you would have pursued tee but president , obviously did not. Theres going to be a faction of republicans who have learned, who think they learned lessons from the trump years and who will be hostile to pretrade, who will attempt to advance an industrial policy for the United States, who will really try to engage in an effort to restore Manufacturing Capabilities of the us companies from foreign nations and back to the United States area my guess is that that will have a limitedpurchase. I expect that there will continue to be concernedabout trade with china. I hope and expect that there will continue to be a lot of thought put into how to get china to be a better actor in International Trade and other on the world stage generally. China is a bad actor and they need to be pressured to change some of theirpractices. Just because we may not want factory in china doesnt mean that we should want it in michigan. Maybe we want in vietnam area maybe we want somewhere else in southeast asia. Maybe we wanted in mexico. The basic economics that have driven Us Manufacturing plants to lower wage nations havent changed. Yes, it may be more difficult and objectively less desirable to have a manufacturing capability in china but that doesnt mean it will necessarily come home and efforts to provide tax incentives to get some of that activity come home i think will have limited success. We learned a lesson from the president s policies on trade. Those policies did not work. By the president on metrics, we are now seeing record trade deficits. The president expected his trade wars would reduce the trade deficit. They havent succeeded in that area even by the narrow standard of whether or not the president s trade policies helped manufacturing , we can conclude that the policies did not. The best data name suggests manufacturing employment actually decrease as a consequence of the president trade wars though not only did we see less variety of goods and services for americans to purchase, not only did we see price increases of consumer goods, but we actually saw employment in the industry we were trying to protect go down. As a consequence ofthe trade war. So my hope is that we learn that these sort of protectionist policies not only dont work but are often counterproductive in and we dont continue to pursue them. On a related set of questions, an important theme next talk has to do with what we would probably think of as a question of mobility which is has obviously been essential for us today and will be all the more so as we go forward. This point given what weve learned in recent years where we seem to be in the lake of the economic implications of the pandemic, how do you think about a mobility agenda for thecoming years . Whats most crucial when it comes to helping people rise from the bottom in American Society . Thats a big question and there are a number of answers to it because its complicated but also because its a couple and which starts with the word mobility is self in a more geographic sense. Its important to understand a lot of people experience upward mobility by being able to hopscotch through the labor market. Even within their own area where they live and need to have the ability to move closer to where that opportunity is and take advantage of the tools it takes to take advantage of that opportunity through training and what have you so i think one of the big challenges that we have is that people are kind of stuck in place more than they should be and is the lower income people were the most immobile because when you are living in an area that suffers economic collapse you pick up and go somewhere else. After birth and its not so much the case anymore. In fact theyre the least mobile population so finding ways to get people closer to opportunity involves a couple things one is the affordability and that kind of thing that has to be done at the local and state level and copied from one local state level to another and there are tools the federal government has to support that. I also think our approach to Workforce Development at least as federal policy is littered with all kinds of problems and should focus on two things. One is better data for consumers and people can understand whats growing in the area where they live and where they can go to get trained for that particular opportunity , whatever that type of job is. Its easier to find the best Thai Restaurant in your neighborhood and to figure out where the hottest jobs are where you live but we just need to make those more democratically available to people and secondly, making the uses of our federal funds in this area aimed at helping people finish that training. For a lot of people looking to up their skills and experience a step up on the ladder they need a lot more flexibility in their training. They need to be able to not just show up but get training in a way that affects their lives. How do you think the work of ai scholars and the work of our Broader Community of policy thinkers around public life can play a constructive role in strengthening the country in the next few years . Where in your particular arena of expertise do you see the greatest opportunities for our sort of work to make positive change . And a sense, are you most excited about . Yet, listening to ryan talk about the democratization of Data Accessibility really struck home for me because in the foreign and Defense Policy Team we are engaged in a big undertaking, 18 of us who are defense experts are working together with two other organizations and other think tanks and war on the rocks to which is an online defense journal to develop the spots where to democratize access to expertise on the Defense Budget we are creating an anonymous database and Software Tool that will allow congressional staffers, journalists, my mom to have an easy interface that allows them to think about Defense Strategy how that translates into forces and operations and how that translates into budget because the biggest problem we have and defense policies, whether it is on the wars or on the Defense Budget, is public apathy and making expertise more accessible in this realm is a great way to make people more engaged and thinking about whether we should still be in afghanistan after 20 years or not and how do you manage an aggressive rise in china and what do we need to do differently than we are doing now and helping people have the tools to the engaged in that conversation and a serious way is the work i most excited about with foreign Defense Policy Team has underway. Wonderful. Micah, similar question to you. Where do you think we can do the most good in the next few years . I think a lot of the will come from the things we typically do providing firstclass policy analysis, providing firstclass policy recommendations. I think we will be in for a busy time of at least a year or two, no matter who wins the election in the area of Economic Policy is the government attempts to figure out policies that help get the economy back on track. Here at ai we will play a really foundational role in offering advice behindthescenes and in public and in doing analysis and trying to figure out what makes sense and what are the best to pursue and what bad ideas would be. In addition to that coming off the last several years and this relates to previous question there is a real need to speak to the foundation of Economic Policy and whether didnt use to be. Why is it important to get the debt under control and why is it important to address the budget deficit and why is freetrade good . Why do protectionist measures not work and why are they counterproductive . Why is it important to have an environment with low marginal tax rates given that what are other things we can do to raise needed tax revenue besides hiking up the Corporate Tax rate or imposing punitive taxes on wealthy americans. These sorts of questions that people take for granted and didnt need answering 15, 20 years ago. I think they need answering again. Those answers need to take into account our current world in terms of situation and that is one particular answer to your question that i think is important. Ryan, and your domain what are you excited about for the coming couple of years . Dynamism. I like the fact that weve got a number of scholars here at ai that are not ready to give up on the notion that this is a country where it is possible to make, create and build new things and envision a future that does not exist and Start Building it and i know that word dynamism creates a dyspeptic response on both the left and right now and if you dont like dynamism i dont know, maybe but this notion that the rewards to innovation, not just at the high r d levels or on the silicone fallacy space but in grassroots committees you can make and build the own thing and that means the person has been an employee for 20 years and can start heralding if she wants to and at some particular point when shes ready to do that. This is something fundamental to who we are as americans and has lost the content in our ability to produce dynamic environments up and down the socioeconomic ladder is worrying and im not ready to give up on it and i know my colleagues are many in the same vote and were a unique institution in that regard. Our policy is more important than ever to restore that hope because if that hope is gone its a different country than the one i grew up in. Amen. Thank you for that. If i could take a quick moderator prerogative im excited about the work were doing to revitalize american constitutionalism and in the next few years will have enormous opportunities with the new generation of judges in efforts to strengthen congress that ai will be right in the middle of and we have a huge opportunity to improve our country and build on all of what all three of you said and that doesnt bring us to the end of our time. Thank you very much to the three of you for a great conversation and thank you to all in the audience for joining us and for nick, wonderful and for this discussion you can find the new collection of essays and advice to the president at priorities. Ai. Org and you can find all the work of ai scholars on the full range of Public Policy questions facing our country at ai. Org. A mentor American Enterprise is a community of scholars and staff to understand ourselves as part of a Larger Community community of engaged and interested citizens who want the best for our country or eager to ask to defend what made america strong and prosperous and good and take on the problems that are facing. Thank you all for being part of the community and thank you for joining us today today President Trump holds a Campaign Rally in iowa was capital of des moines. Live coverage begins at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Secretary of state mike pompeo held a News Conference where he discussed a range of topics including the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan. Relations with china and former secretary of state Hillary Clintons emails. [background noises]