A NEW VOICE IN THE CROWD

China presents a vastly different challenge from anything America has confronted before. The United States economy has never been as deeply dependent on an oppositional government the way we are with China. We have outsourced significant portions of virtually every important supply chain to China. America has even lost its manufacturing capabilities to make aspirin, penicillin and a lot of essential antibiotics. Chinese Communist Party leaders are fundamentally similar to its old emperors. In 5,000 years of Chinese history, it has never seen the development of democracy, or the development of an independent judiciary. China is not a “rule of law” society and views the law as an instrument for keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power. It has neither a civil society or an independent press. And today, they are leaning heavily on their technology sector as a tool to enable a type of “techno-totalitarianism.” So explain Dean Cheng Senior Research Fellow, Asian Studies at Heritage Foundation, where he oversees Chinese security and economic issues and, Klon Kitchen who leads technology policy at Heritage Foundation as Senior Research Fellow for Technology, National Security and Foreign Policy We are learning that we have big problems with China. Join me as I talk with Klon and Dean about how we work our way through this mess. We will, but as they say, “it’s going to be complicated.” #China

“There is more to life than economic freedom. And there is more to economic freedom than economic freedom. A society that attempts to maximize everyone’s freedom at every moment will fail miserably in preserving individual liberty and limiting government over time.” What is missing from our policy debates is a distinctively conservative approach to economics. So argues my guest Oren Cass, founder and executive director of American Compass, whose mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation's liberty and prosperity. Also joining me is Wells King, the research director of American Compass. Cass points out that the libertarian right and the progressive left have polarized our political debate, with one side favoring fewer government programs and less regulation, while the other advocating more, and that there is a more attractive middle course. “Neither prioritizes the traditional structures of family and community that provide the foundations of a flourishing society, or the capacities that a nation must nurture and sustain to remain strong. Consensus views across the political, business, and academic elite have enormous blind spots, from the dangers of globalization, to the costs of a college-for-all education system, to the value of belonging to a particular place. At home, the data on collapsing families, shuttering communities, stagnating wages, and declining life expectancy are well known. Abroad, America’s capacity to protect and advance its national interests is likewise waning.” Making these our priorities would form the bedrock of a return to what Henry Clay called the “American System” and a distinctively conservative guide to statesmanship and economics. This is a fascinating take on today’s policy debates. Well worth a listen. And well worth taking a hard look at.

The outbreak of the CoronaVirus has created a health crisis. But federal, state and local governments’ reactions to this challenge - however well intentioned - have created an economic crisis that will linger past any recovery from or stabilization of the spread of the disease. The economy’s been broken and government action cannot bring it back, only alleviate some of the pain. It’s the private sector that will provide lasting solutions to restoring a vibrant America. Of course businesses will play a significant role, but often overlooked is how our civil society non-profit institutions will also be making a big difference. Joining me to talk about this are Lawson Bader CEO of DonorsTrust which directs donor dollars to highly promising conservative and libertarian nonprofit groups throughout the country and Tracie Sharp CEO of The State Policy Network which works with public policy and activist groups in all 50 states. They are leaders of the newly formed Growth and Resilience Project resiliencenow@donorstrust.org, which is bringing together donors to fund civil society solutions to the problems brought about by the CoronaVirus. Tracie and Lawson have some of the best windows into what's working and what isn't working throughout the United States. One surprising conclusion that we reached is that are actually good reasons for optimism. As Tracie points out, “after the Black Plague, a renaissance occurred” and a silver lining to this pandemic may be that we rethink a lot of our institutions, the way we do things. For example, schools have been shut down, and it's forced a lot of people into either homeschooling in the case of K-12 or computer-based, Zoom-based classes in the case of colleges. There’s over 100 of these kind of solution ideas on the State Policy Network website spn.org/coronavirus of private, voluntary action that really show America at its best. “We’re seeing neighbor helping neighbor.” This is where philanthropy can step up and help really alleviate the suffering that's going on, get our economy going again, and getting people back to work. #COVID-19 #Philanthropy #Economics

“Millions of Americans are taking prescription and over-the-counter drugs made in China and don’t know it and neither do their doctors. These are prescription drugs in the legal supply chain that are distributed to U.S. hospitals, sold in corner drug stores and grocery store pharmacies, and distributed to military hospitals and clinics around the world,” explains Rosemary Gibson. We cannot make aspirin in the United States. We cannot make penicillin in the United States. Nor can we make generic antibiotics. China’s aim is to become the pharmacy to the world, and it is on track to achieve it. Join me as I talk with Rosemary Gibson, author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine” and Frank Gaffney Vice Chairman of the Committee for the Present Danger: China about the existential risks posed by the United States’ dependence on China for drugs and essential healthcare supplies. “And I'm sure you may have seen the statement from the Chinese government media actually threatening to withhold drugs and to throw the United States into the ocean of hell of coronavirus. And there were threats before, but this the most brazen.” “So, here we have a situation where you have a global pandemic and the whole world depends on a single country for those core chemicals to make critical drugs.” If China shut the door on exports of medicines and their key ingredients and raw materials, U.S. hospitals and military hospitals and clinics would cease to function within months, if not days. China produces 10% of our generic drugs but more critically, almost 90% of the core chemicals and drug ingredients are controlled by China. The Global Pandemic is bringing home many unpleasant truths and this is one of the harshest. Learn more here. (We had some technical issues with the Zoom app, I occasionally couldn’t hear Rosemary or Frank. But the subject matter is so timely and vital we’re going ahead with publishing our conversation.) #China #Coronavirus #COVID-19

This week I sought out Arnold Kling to learn more about some of his innovative ideas to deal with the health, economic and social fallout from the Covid-19 crisis. Arnold, who blogs at arnoldkling.com/blog, author of “Specialization and Trade” and “The Three Languages of Politics” and with a PhD in Economics from MIT is one of America’s more original and penetrating thinkers. Some of what we talk about: “Masks and Scarves” How do we know that we are getting the right data and smart science from our health authorities? We’re relying on computer models, not real world experiments. The best evidence we have of what slows/halts the virus spread, is what’s happened in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Rather than lockdowns, they have limited the disease’s spread by allowing people to go to work and school wearing surgical masks that help prevent sick people from infecting others. If the purpose of social distancing is to keep sick people from infecting others, you could accomplish the same thing by mandating that everyone wear a mask and stop killing the economy with the blunt instrument of lockdowns. “Less Fiscal Stimulus, Instead Overdraft Protection” Mandated stay at home lockdowns have shuttered the U.S. economy creating personal and business liquidity problems. We’re not in a typical business-cycle recession that requires fiscal or monetary stimulus. The solution: every bank account in the U.S., personal or business, would have added to it a line of credit, at low interest, backed by the federal government. “It would work like government-backed overdraft protection. It’s administratively about as simple as you could get and gets relief directly to those who most need it.” “Normal is not an option” “We have to resist the temptation to benchmark the future economic outlook against “normal,” where normal means what would have happened had the virus never appeared. Pre-crisis, our patterns of specialization and trade were optimized for efficiency at the expense of fragility. Expect supply chains, especially in our trade with China, to have a lot more redundancy and to be less driven by cost minimization. So do we end up with a smaller new “normal” economy or a different economy? “I think a different economy. I like to use the analogy of the Second World War as an example of what's the economic precedent for this? So the Second World War we had to reallocate a lot of resources very quickly, both getting into the war and then at the end of the war as these millions of troops, the GIs come home and the factories no longer need to produce tanks. It was amazing how rapid and how relatively painless that readjustment was. That aspect makes me fairly optimistic.” #Economics #Big Ideas #Politics

Join me as I talk with economist Steve Moore and Dr. Jay Richards about the health and economic crisis created by the coronavirus. And how to respond without all of our freedoms and civil liberties being trampled. Yes we need to move decisively to address the virus. But by focusing too narrowly on just disease control, we risk losing much or most of what makes America great. As always, I learn a lot from Jay and Steve. For example, I had thought the coronavirus death rate comparable to that of the seasonal flu, but Jay explains it’s more complicated than that. And as Steve explains, the tradeoffs are much more complicated than simply “kill your grandma or boost the Dow Jones Industrial Average.” We explore the many policy proposals driven by partisan politics, China’s role, the World Health Organization, the Left’s agenda, and what this crisis mean for President Trump’s re-election prospects. This is a fast moving issue with a lot of moving parts. Steve and Jay do a great job putting this all into perspective. #Economics #COVID-19 #China #Politics