00:00:11.000Get involved with turning point action at tpaction.com.
00:00:14.000We're also joined by Robert Lighthizer, who has some really insightful commentary on free trade and the destruction that our trade policy has initiated over the last 20 or 30 years.
00:00:55.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:02.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:25.000It's one of the orthodoxies you are not allowed to challenge of neoliberalism.
00:01:31.000Our next guest did challenge it, and the author of the, he's the author of the book, No Trade is Free, Changing Course, Taking on China and Helping America's Workers by Robert Lighthizer.
00:02:50.000And in his endorsement of the book, President Trump said, if you want to know what we're going to do in trade in the next administration, this is the place to look.
00:03:04.000But it's very much consistent with his ideas.
00:03:07.000And he and I have, you know, we weren't friends before the administration, but we were ideological brothers for decades on this issue of trade in China.
00:03:22.000In D.C., prior to President Trump's arrival, it was a nonstop celebration of the importation of plastic from China, the re-domiciling of critical industry overseas.
00:03:33.000And in fact, when I first got my start in conservative world in politics, I was told free trade is the greatest thing ever, free trade is the greatest thing ever.
00:03:41.000And I was inundated with pamphlets and seminars and think tanks that I now know are funded by a lot of companies that do benefit from the kind of massive labor arbitrage that has occurred over the last 20 or 30 years.
00:03:54.000Of course, trade can enrich a country, but also not every trade deal is made the same.
00:04:00.000There's some things you should make domestically.
00:04:02.000And also, probably a good idea to have an industrial policy so that you don't have to worry about your enemies making vitamin C or critical infrastructure.
00:05:02.000He took very important steps to put tariffs on the entire world when we had a trade problem.
00:05:06.000You look at Ronald Reagan, who I worked for as a deputy back when I was about your age, I should say.
00:05:14.000In any event, he took a very, very populist, defend America approach on trade.
00:05:22.000He stopped Japanese cars from coming in and stealed from around the world and did semiconductors and motorcycles and all kinds of other things.
00:05:31.000And then you find yourself, and this is the answer to your question: you find yourself in the early 90s.
00:05:39.000We have Bill Clinton in the White House.
00:05:42.000There's a kind of a sense that it's the end of history.
00:05:54.000The American way of life is going to perpetuate throughout the world.
00:05:59.000And everyone's going to be happy and sing kumbaya.
00:06:02.000The only thing it ignored was human nature, right?
00:06:05.000So kind of implementing that notion of kind of, you know, this kind of elitist notion that we've won, three things happened in the Clinton years in those 90s.
00:06:17.000And by the way, all of them with substantial Republican support.
00:06:23.000None of them would have the Republican Party.
00:06:26.000But so first of all, they passed NAFTA, which was a mistake and hurt American workers.
00:06:32.000Then they passed this great, implementing legislation for the last great trade round called the Uruguay Round.
00:06:39.000And there they created the WTO, the World Trade Organization, which was a mistake and really hurt America.
00:06:45.000And then the trifecta of stupid was completed when, on the way out the door, as he puts the last piece of furniture into the van, leaving the White House, Clinton gets the Congress to pass and a lot of Republicans to vote for him to pass this permanent most favored nation for China.
00:07:06.000And then the two decades that follow, let's say a decade and a half up to President Trump, we saw millions of jobs leave, tens of thousands of factories leave.
00:07:17.000We saw small towns like the ones that I'm from in Ohio and all across the country dilapidated.
00:07:25.000You saw these so-called rise of these so-called deaths of despair.
00:07:29.000You saw the breakdown of the family, the breakdown of community.
00:07:33.000You saw all of these horrible results of this very, very failed policy from the 90s, which I would say sort of a hubris, you know, kind of a policy.
00:07:51.000And we went from having a policy that was kind of okay, kind of not okay, to one where we had hundreds of billions of dollars of trade debts every single year.
00:08:02.000Yeah, but they said, Robert, I would always say, oh, no, it's a capital account surplus.
00:08:05.000They would always have a spin when you're like, oh, it's a trade deficit.
00:08:09.000And they say, well, it's a capital account surplus because now somebody is doing the work for you and you get it for less.
00:08:14.000And this was ingrained in those of us in the younger ranks of the conservative movement.
00:08:18.000So just about two minutes here, Robert.
00:08:20.000Can you talk about, though, the capital flows from major corporations to the preferred think tanks?
00:08:26.000You know, for years, Heritage, Cato, they would always not, there would be mandatory celebration of free trade on demand.
00:08:37.000And by the way, Heritage Now is very much on our side.
00:08:40.000Of course, but for years, they were the cheerleader for years.
00:08:43.000Look at, I thought, Charlie, well, all these people right down the road, they were basically funded by large corporations who made money importing and then bred this false, this false theology of free trade.
00:08:59.000That's precisely what that was the dynamic.
00:09:01.000And by the way, it was the dynamic all the way through the Trump administration.
00:09:05.000We fought those same people every time we tried to help our workers.
00:09:10.000And just you could, one of Donald Trump's longest-lasting legacies, regardless of how this next, you know, his candidacy, is it was a thought crime, Robert, to even utter a question against free trade.
00:09:24.000You were considered to be anti-intellectual.
00:09:26.000You were considered to be against economic theory.
00:09:29.000And what happened is there were some very, very well-paid, I mean, you know, these people, economists, that were really just kind of corporate shills that, yeah, okay, they would go to supply and demand and capital account surplus and they would be able to defend things through a very abstract and theoretical lens.
00:09:44.000But then as soon as you'd commit the crime and noticing, like, hey, Southeast Ohio is poor.
00:09:49.000Like, oh, no, no, no, actually, it's great that they have dollar generals and opioids.
00:09:52.000Don't you understand that we get all this stuff for less?
00:09:56.000There are other things to factor into your trade policy than whether or not you get a textile for 50 cents instead of $1.10.
00:10:09.000I want to ask you about that, the title, because that is considered to be a provocative statement.
00:10:14.000And I do agree, though, the traditional DC think tanks on the right, the center right, they are no longer nearly as enthusiastic to express their free trade views because they know they're going to get slammed that neoliberalism is no longer popular with the American people.
00:10:31.000And boy, Donald Trump did a really fabulous job of challenging that.
00:10:39.000America is the first nation in history founded on the idea of a natural God-given rights and on political principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence of liberty, equality, and limited government.
00:10:50.000That's what my friends at Hillsdale College want you to join them in remembering our founding principles on our nation's birthday this July 4th.
00:10:57.000You can do so by taking three simple steps.
00:10:59.000Go to charlieforhillsdale.com and sign your pledge to read the Declaration on July 4th.
00:11:04.000Then read the Declaration on the 4th, either on your own or with your family and friends.
00:11:09.000Look, I'm going to take this pledge, and I hope you will too.
00:11:12.000If we are going to save our country in its current crisis, we need to remind ourselves, our children, and our fellow citizens of the founding principles that are a source of America's greatness.
00:11:22.000When you sign your pledge today, you'll receive a free commemorative copy of the Declaration of Independence from our friends at Hillsdale College.
00:12:03.000There is that notion, but also the notion that we are, free trade is a philosophy that basically emphasizes consumption, materialism, not values, and not production.
00:12:20.000And what we like as conservative is we believe that there is an intrinsic value to work and that that's what keeps families together.
00:12:30.000And I always say, Charlie, I want a country where kids are proud of their parents because they work.
00:12:37.000You know, my dad is foreman at the factory or whatever, whatever it is, and where the parents then are hopeful for the kids.
00:12:45.000And, you know, for America, manufacturing and the jobs that it spits out is the middle class for the 60% of the country that's not college graduates and for a number of the other ones, too.
00:12:59.000So what I was doing was kind of, you know, just making the obvious point that when you think about it, trade is never free.
00:13:06.000And it's certainly, there is no free trade.
00:13:08.000No country practices free trade in the world.
00:13:27.000I mean, so like, let's be very honest, Robert, 30 years of these ideas, favorite nation status, we're almost on the third, no, about 20 or 25 years.
00:13:37.000I mean, so you're right, no trade is free.
00:13:39.000Do most people in DC, do they ever just stop and say, hey, this has actually made us poorer and our outcomes for health are going down and drug use has gone up.
00:13:50.000And yeah, we have homes that are twice as big, filled with three times as much garbage with half as many people in them.
00:13:57.000And we have piles of plastic that we never use that we ask people to give away.
00:14:02.000And so the last 20 or 30 years, it's actually rather damning our industrial policy.
00:14:11.000The effect on families and communities.
00:14:14.000And in addition to your point about this capital account, this nutsy bird thing about that, which another time we ought to probably address that heads-on.
00:14:22.000But we have also transferred since about 2003 about $16 trillion worth of the value of our assets, America's equity, debt, and real estate overseas.
00:14:38.000All, as you say, in return for the third television set in your basement.
00:14:48.000I think it's one of the gate contributions of Donald Trump was that people are starting to figure it out and Republicans particularly are starting to figure it out and realize that this is free trade is not about conserving anything.
00:15:12.000The Treasury Secretary has arrived in the past hour here in Beijing over the next four days.
00:15:18.000She's expected to meet with President Xi Jinping's new economics team, many of whom are not familiar to her or to the Biden administration.
00:15:27.000She's going to discuss with and consult with the U.S. business community, as well as communicate directly what Treasury has described as areas of concern with the Chinese.
00:15:40.000In addition to that, she's going to be speaking about global challenges, as you had mentioned, such as climate change and debt distress in poor nations.
00:15:49.000Robert, climate change, your response.
00:15:53.000So basically, I'll just give you the short version of what you just saw.
00:15:58.000She's going to go there and say, we will continue business as usual, transfer more of our wealth, more of our jobs, the well-being of more of our communities to you, China.
00:16:09.000And in return, all we ask is that you make a promise you won't keep to do something about another theology in 20 years.
00:16:29.000We have to keep on challenging these neoliberal pro-importation of plastic consumption Republicans.
00:16:35.000They're doing such damage to our country.
00:16:37.000We're going to have you back on, Robert, for an entire hour to dive into this because there's so many complexities and including the historical aspect of how we, all this, where did these ideas come from?
00:16:47.000Well, we can blame McKinsey and the consultant class, General Electric and others that were the cheerleaders and the designers of the deindustrialization of America.
00:17:11.000Fact check me, look at NAD and see what it could do for you.
00:17:14.000Well, look, I take NAD every single day.
00:17:16.000Strong Cell is a scientific breakthrough in cellular health replenishment that combines NADH, CoQ10, and marine collagen to boost your body's cellular function.
00:17:25.000I personally take Strong Cell every day, and so do a ton of Kirk listeners.
00:18:24.000I've operated scores of businesses, several businesses.
00:18:27.000Took a company public last year, got listed on NASDAQ in the energy space.
00:18:30.000And I've been an elected official locally for the last 10 years.
00:18:35.000In the last six, served as mayor of this community.
00:18:37.000It's a top 20 city by population in the state of Utah and have, you know, have quite a bit of accomplishments there that we've been able to do.
00:18:46.000And I think I've not just walked or talked the talk, I've actually walked the walk as a conservative, and people know what they're going to get electing me.
00:18:53.000So tell us, our audience, why are you deciding to challenge kind of the darling of the Utah ruling class, Mitt Romney?
00:19:03.000Because Massachusetts does not need a third senator.
00:19:26.000And clearly, I mean, his voting record, his preference, his policy preferences just, yeah, they emulate that section of the country, really not Utah.
00:19:37.000And that's what I'm hearing is I'm going around.
00:19:38.000We've built quite the coalition already.
00:19:41.000You know, scores of mayors, county commissioners that are endorsed our campaign.
00:19:45.000We've got the fraternal order of police, represents 70% of all law enforcement state of Utah, 5,000 cops.
00:19:50.000They've endorsed a number of other conservatives.
00:19:53.000They've recognized that I am the only conservative in the race and that Mitt's record that we've called out, I mean, five years ago, he put together a video and said, I will fight for Utah every day.
00:20:49.000So primarying a sitting senator is kind of not against the rules, but that some people would consider to be a little bit rambunctious, right?
00:21:00.000So tell us kind of the operating calculus, because what I understand from Utah culture, it's, you know, very respectful, you know, don't speak ill of the, you know, the senior senator type thing.
00:22:46.000So now somebody can, I say, buy their way on the ballot.
00:22:49.000If you got 60% of the delegates previously, like Mike Lee did back in 2010, you were automatically the Republican nominee for the general election.
00:22:58.000Since 2014, after the passage of the Senate Bill 54 in Utah, somebody can gather signatures and force their name on a primary ballot.
00:23:06.000And I expect that's what Mitt would do.
00:25:33.000And Michael Lee just proved that initially this last year.
00:25:35.000But do you see that in Utah that there's a demand of, hey, we want a senator who is better, is more articulate and at least espouses these Mormon LDS beliefs of strong family, especially with all this trans stuff.
00:25:52.000I mean, your governor, in my opinion, has just been perplexing on some of this stuff, at least from looking at it from afar.
00:25:59.000I'm sure there's a demand in the LDS world for that, right?
00:26:04.000And I don't think it's just in the LDS world.
00:26:07.000I think people generally, they want somebody who is bold, a bold conservative that can articulate conservatism and not be afraid to stand up to that.
00:26:17.000And that's what I believe I've demonstrated over the last 10 years in elected office.
00:26:20.000I mean, throughout my lifetime of career.
00:26:21.000But in the last 10 years in particular, I stood up, I said no to mask mandates, to vaccine mandates as a mayor.
00:26:28.000I said, look, my law enforcement, my police department is not going to enforce this stuff.
00:26:33.000With Biden trying to use OSHA as a means to force down vaccine mandates on people, we have a lot more than 100 employees in our city, so we were maybe going to be subject to that.
00:26:44.000I've taken a very strong stance with these types of things.
00:29:05.000Just when you thought the government would stop trying to take over health care, Senator Bernie Sanders, that socialist Marxist communist, is pushing something that is no good.
00:29:14.000I'm urgently asking you to support the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste to stop the Senate from passing the Sanders Bill S1339.
00:29:22.000It would raise the price of prescription drugs by making it harder for pharmacy benefit managers to continue to save an average of $1,000 per year for 275 million Americans just like you.
00:29:31.000Bernie Sanders, he is a sneaky commie.
00:31:18.000You know, talk just about philosophically what, if you were to say a type of senator there currently is in the Senate that you would be most like, who would that be?
00:31:26.000Oh, I think Mike Lee is a good senator that we want.
00:31:46.000Well, and I obviously harmonize with that.
00:31:49.000Mike Lee has been great and super helpful and a fighter.
00:31:52.000And so going to D.C., you know, it tends to change people.
00:31:56.000What guarantees can you give that you will stay strong and principled and not become a Mitt Romney if you were to win?
00:32:03.000And that is a problem, you know, and I've seen that happen, unfortunately, to some people.
00:32:08.000And I think my response to that is take a look at what I've done in 10 years.
00:32:12.000I've been in elected office for that period of time.
00:32:15.000I don't believe that I've ever done anything contrary to what I said I would do.
00:32:20.000I have not been shy to stand up for things like we talked about earlier with respect to governmental overreach at the federal level.
00:32:26.000I've stood up for the craziness going on at schools.
00:32:30.000I mean, as a mayor, we don't fund in Utah the schools or set the curriculum, but we handle things such as all the resource officers, the crossing guards.
00:32:38.000And I have a school safety roundtable meeting that I lead out on every single year.
00:32:44.000And all the inappropriate materials that have been going on in schools, I had to stand up and fight back on that just this last April.
00:32:51.000And so people, I think they know what they're going to get.
00:32:54.000I've demonstrated that, again, I walk the walk and not just talk the talk.
00:32:59.000And that is something that I would continue to do in D.C.
00:34:50.000The size scope burden of the government on the lives of average everyday Americans is just out of control.
00:34:55.000We need somebody that's actually demonstrated they can cut taxes, as I've done, and innovate and actually lower cut spending and improve governmental services, but lowering costs at the same time.