What happened to economic conservatism?

Make Me Smart September 7, 2023 Transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah, let’s do it.

Kai Ryssdal

Why not?

Kimberly Adams 

Hello, everyone. I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks, everybody, for joining us on this Thursday, I believe it is the seventh day of September.

Kimberly Adams 

Indeed it is. And so by now, you know that Thursdays we have started this thing where we’re listening back to audio from some of the big stories of the week. And so we have a few audio clips lined up. And we’re going to get to what was said in those clips. And what was left out. So let’s start with the first one.

Austan Goolsbee

You know, I’m I’m happy to join any weed party that you want, we’ll sit out in the lawn and and get as deep as we need to. My basic view has been, you can’t change your target until you’ve hit your target.

Kimberly Adams 

I was cracking up when I heard that interview.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh my god, I’m not even sure he realizes what he was saying maybe he was saying it in person intentionally. And he’s just being sly about it. I mean, he’s hip enough to know, that was Austan Goolsbee, the president of the Chicago Ded. Today on Marketplace, we we had a long chat about interest rates in this economy where he thinks it’s going what the Federal Reserve needs to do. And I had asked him as sort of a kicker to our conversation about about, you know, the Fed deciding when they’re going to be done raising interest rates, I said, Look, why don’t you just change the Feds target for inflation, which is 2% now, which they haven’t been able to hit even in good times, they were below 2%. And now they are having a really hard time getting back to 2%. And I said why don’t you just change it to three and call it a day? And he said and the setup for the question is I said I don’t want to get too weedy on this, but why don’t you just change it to three and he went on with the weedy conversation. And he said, you know, you got to get there before you you got to get there before you can call it a day. So that was that was awesome. He goes but he’s a good guy.

Kimberly Adams 

I have to say I respect that this idea. It’s like you know, it, it’s easy to change the you know the goalposts move the goalposts when you haven’t, you know, reached it and move it closer, you know, so it’s easier to hit the goal, but harder, you know, once you’ve made it to then say okay, was this really the best goal in the first place. So I get that.

Kai Ryssdal

Totally fair.

Kimberly Adams

Okay, before we get to this one, I actually want to set it up a little bit, because this is a piece of it’s a kind of lengthy clip from an interview that I did today with Mary Ann Madeira, who’s an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University. And I was doing a story about sort of where things stand with the United States and the European Union when it comes to our trade tariffs, especially on aluminum and steel. And when I started reporting out the story, I was looking at just sort of state of play and how Biden is still basically keeping up with the Trump tariffs. But something interesting kind of came out as I was talking to people, which is this idea that even though we still have the same steel and aluminum tariffs, whereas under the Trump administration, they were sort of tied to volume and the value of the steel and aluminum and trying to sort of engage in these protectionist measures for US manufacturers. Now, the Biden administration seems to be trying to shift it to link the quotas to how that steel and aluminum is produced. Because it’s such a carbon intensive thing, it contributes a lot to global emissions. And so they’re kind of shifting what the focus is in terms of how they’re limiting exports, which kind of by default, serves to preference the United States and the EU. So with all that setup, here’s the here’s a clip of tape.

Mary Ann Madeira

The EU and the US have a shared objective of addressing carbon intensity in global steel production. and the EU in the US have adopted much more costly carbon reduction technologies that do reduce the carbon intensity of steel produced here and in the EU, but it also raises the cost of our steel and of European steel. So by linking carbon goals with trade rules, they can achieve this double objective of pressuring other countries to reduce their carbon intensity and at the same time, helping our products be more competitive.

Kai Ryssdal 

I think it’s so interesting actually, the idea of of combining climate change and carbon reduction with tariffs, right? And it’s sort of the thing that needs to happen. Sort of a whole system’s approach, if we’re going to get anywhere. I mean, look, that’s a really small example. But when you think about number one, the carbon intensity of steel, and number two, how much steel there is in global trade, it can turn into a big deal. And also the idea that we’re still having these freaking tariffs and trade wars is just nutty. But that’s a whole different podcast.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, and it’s and it’s funny, because remember, those were under Section 232, those steel aluminum tariffs, which were supposed to be about national security. And people gave Trump a lot of grief over, you know, whether the protectionism aspect of it was really national security. And so now there’s even more questions about if is limiting carbon emissions, really enough justification to fit within that national security framework. So I imagine this is not the end of this one. All right, so now we have another piece of tape, let’s go.

Carlos Del Toro

This is playing Russian roulette with the very lives of our servicemembers by denying them the opportunity to actually have the most experience combat leaders in those positions to lead them in times of peace and in times of combat.

Kai Ryssdal 

So that was a guy by the name of Carlos Del Toro, he’s the Secretary of the Navy that was on CNN, talking about my favorite senator, the senior senator from Alabama Senator Tuberville. I was being ironic there. And Senator Tuberville is old on, what is now approaching 300 senior military nominations. It’s interesting because the Pentagon is kind of going on the offensive, if you will, Secretary Del Toro and also his counterparts, the Secretary of the Air Force and the Secretary of the Army had a piece in The Washington Post the other day, calling out to Senator Tuberville for damaging national security. There was a great piece in also the Washington Post, actually, during the month, about the acting commandant of the Marine Corps, and the really significant strategic changes that the Marine Corps needs to make that the new guy can’t do because he’s not officially the new guy. It’s just it’s just really pathetic also, I will I will say and if I can editorialize a little bit, so Tuberville was on, God I can’t be, he was interviewed in the halls of Congress. It must have been Manu Raju on CNN because Manu is everywhere. And he was asked about his hold. And and Tuberville said, we, something along the lines of we need to get woke out of the military. We have people on aircraft carriers writing poetry. So first of all, poetry has a long standing tradition of the United States Navy, but it’s also a long standing tradition in militaries everywhere. I point, you know, farther back from the First World War and in Flanders Fields, you know, in Flanders Fields, the poppies blow, right. I mean, come on. Anyway. That’s unbelievable.

Kimberly Adams 

I think it’s also worth noting how unusual it is for the Department of Defense to so openly challenge a sitting senator in such a sort of cohesive way. No, go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal 

The other thing no, I was just gonna say the other thing that’s interesting is now that slowly, very, very slowly and too slowly, to be honest with you. Other Republican senators are starting to say, Hey, Tommy, it’s time to give it up. Lindsey Graham, the latest, Lindsey Graham was like, let’s bring these to the floor. We’ll do it and we’ll vote on him one by one if we have to. So maybe there will be some progress. Don’t know. Last one before we go.

Mike Pence

So today I asked my fellow Republicans this in the days to come. Will we be the party of conservatism? Or will we follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles? The future of this movement in this party belongs to one or the other. Not both?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, so this is obviously former vice president and GOP Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence. He was speaking at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, about the fundamental schism in the Republican Party right now over what the party is going to be. And I haven’t really heard anybody as high profile as him throw down the gauntlet in that way. And this is related to short cultural issues and social issues and things like that, and politics and how we run the country, but also to economic issues, because a lot of the sort of traditional conservative values have to do with economic issues. And you hear very little about economic conservatism these days because they’ve been fully pushed to the back seat by all of the social and cultural issues that have done that are dominating the party at the moment, which I know from talking to a lot of people at conservative think tanks is driving them batty. You know, they really wish that Republicans and conservatives could kind of detach themselves from some of the social and cultural issues and the cult of Trump to actually deal with some of these more fundamental conservative economic values that are getting harder and harder to talk about because all the oxygen is getting sucked out of the room.

Kai Ryssdal 

Totally. Like, just for instance, when was last time you heard anybody talk about Paul Ryan, who was for a very long time…

Kimbelry Adams

Oh, my Gosh yeah.

Kai Ryssdal

The apostle of economic conservatism, right. That was his whole. And he’s just kind of vaporized? Because there’s, as you say, there’s no oxygen left in the room. Right.

Kimberly Adams 

And remember that big ambitious speech, he gave that time on poverty and the conservative approach to addressing poverty. And there was a plan with details for how conservatives could, you know, use conservative economic values to address poverty in the country? And we haven’t heard anything like that in years. Not a peep. Yeah. So it will be interesting to see where the party lands if the polling numbers are any indication in terms of where pen stands versus where his former boss stands. I think it’s leaning populism at the moment. So yeah. All right. That is it for today. Please, please, please, please don’t forget to join us tomorrow. It’s going to be our 1,000th episode. It’s going to be a party. It’s going to be fun. We’re gonna have special cocktails, we’re gonna have special drinks. We’re going to have special games, and it’s going to be just a special edition of economics on tap. The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 Pacific 6:30 Eastern, and if you miss it, you will be sorry.

Kai Ryssdal 

Go and if you haven’t already, sign up for the newsletter widget before midnight and you will be on the list for the surprise free gift which you may want to have handy for a 1000th episode celebration. We’re just saying sign up at marketplace.org/newsletters just saying.

Kimberly Adams 

Today’s episode of Make me smart was produced by Courtney Burgsieker with assistance from H Conley. Audio engineering by Charlton Thorp. Elen Rolfes writes our newsletter and our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kai Ryssdal 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of digital around here.