Latest / Trumponomics / Rahm Emanuel’s Recipe for America is Getting ‘Back to Basics’

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Rahm Emanuel’s Recipe for America is Getting ‘Back to Basics’ · Trumponomics

0:00
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
0:08
Speaker 2: I believe the moment the American dream becomes unaffordable and
0:11
Speaker 2: inaccessible is exactly when our democracy becomes unstable.
0:23
Speaker 1: I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg,
0:26
Speaker 1: and this is Trump Economics, the podcast that looks at
0:29
Speaker 1: the economic world of Donald Trump, how he's already shaped
0:32
Speaker 1: the global economy, what on earth is going to happen next?
0:38
Speaker 1: And this week it's a conversation with Rahm Emmanuel, a
0:41
Speaker 1: longtime Washington operator. He's also been White House chief of
0:45
Speaker 1: staff for Congressman mayor of Chicago, and President Biden's ambassador
0:49
Speaker 1: to Japan, and now, by all accounts, he's thinking about
0:53
Speaker 1: running for president. We're recording this on Thursday, the thirtieth
0:56
Speaker 1: of October, and any one of those parts of his
0:58
Speaker 1: resume would give me plenty of reason to have Ram
1:01
Speaker 1: and Manuel on the show. But I'm going to focus
1:04
Speaker 1: here on the alternative to Trumpanomics that the Democrats need
1:07
Speaker 1: to offer to have a chance of retaking power in
1:10
Speaker 1: the next few years. The root cause of the fraught
1:13
Speaker 1: state of American politics, Rahm says, is that the American
1:17
Speaker 1: dream has become unaffordable, out of reach for the majority
1:20
Speaker 1: of families. Democrats need to confront that head on, But
1:24
Speaker 1: how in a country that no longer seems to be
1:26
Speaker 1: able to countenance tax increases? For example? He also thinks
1:31
Speaker 1: President Trump's China policies have been costly and wrong. The
1:34
Speaker 1: President is now back from his Asia tour, but how
1:38
Speaker 1: exactly would the former ambassador to Japan have done things differently,
1:41
Speaker 1: especially now that China seems, if anything, to have gained
1:43
Speaker 1: the upper hand. So that's plenty, But given his very
1:49
Speaker 1: close association with Chicago, I also can't help wondering what
1:53
Speaker 1: Rama Manual thinks about the way that American cities have
1:56
Speaker 1: been thrust to the center of President Trump's efforts to
1:59
Speaker 1: pumme up Democrats, ordering troops to Portland, Los Angeles, Washington,
2:03
Speaker 1: and Chicago and threatening to withhold funding for New York,
2:07
Speaker 1: for example. Partly it's about stoking confusion and chaos in
2:11
Speaker 1: traditional Democratic strongholds, but there's a sense in which the
2:15
Speaker 1: President is also trying to weaponize a divide between rural
2:19
Speaker 1: and urban parts of America that's been building for a
2:22
Speaker 1: while and has not necessarily been good for Democrats. Rami
2:26
Speaker 1: Manuel I've talked far too much, but you can hear
2:30
Speaker 1: there's a lot I'd like to hear you talk about.
2:32
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining trump andomics.
2:34
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for having me.
2:41
Speaker 1: We will get onto your vision for an anti trumpnomics.
2:44
Speaker 1: You know, economic policies that can get Democrats elected. But
2:48
Speaker 1: first that issue about cities. I mean, Democrats have to
2:51
Speaker 1: navigate what President Trump is doing and threatening right now
2:55
Speaker 1: to do in American cities. What's the smart way to
2:58
Speaker 1: respond to that.
3:00
Speaker 2: Well, let me push back on one thing in that introduction.
3:03
Speaker 2: It's not about an anti Trump. Everything I'm trying to
3:06
Speaker 2: do is about being a pro American. Fair enough, it's
3:09
Speaker 2: a very different flavor. It's not just a critique. But
3:12
Speaker 2: I think the American people I don't I'm not usually
3:14
Speaker 2: a glass half full kind of guy, actually know what
3:17
Speaker 2: we're doing right now is fundamentally wrong to the future.
3:21
Speaker 2: I think if you think about twenty twenty eight in
3:23
Speaker 2: the presidential but also about what you want to do
3:25
Speaker 2: with it, this is about who can articulate about fighting
3:29
Speaker 2: for America, not just fighting against Trump. If you look
3:31
Speaker 2: at what I've talked about on education, housing, a national
3:34
Speaker 2: industrial policy, these are all about fighting for America not
3:38
Speaker 2: fighting against Trump.
3:39
Speaker 1: That's a fair point.
3:40
Speaker 2: B to the core question about cities. This is a
3:44
Speaker 2: political strategy as well as it is anything else. Now, look,
3:48
Speaker 2: there's both a good and a bad. Thirty of the
3:51
Speaker 2: largest metropolitan areas in America are seventy five percent of
3:55
Speaker 2: all your GDP. I used to joke as mayor of
3:57
Speaker 2: the City of Chicago, the metropolit the Chicago area is
4:01
Speaker 2: the twenty first largest economy in the world. We could
4:04
Speaker 2: join the g twenty. It's not that exciting. I've been
4:07
Speaker 2: to the meetings. I wouldn't go, but that's how big
4:09
Speaker 2: the Chicago economy is. Now. If you want to compete
4:12
Speaker 2: and win, you don't bash the economic engines of your country.
4:17
Speaker 2: The negative side of that is, well, there's a concentration
4:21
Speaker 2: of economic growth and possibility. It's also to concentrate it.
4:25
Speaker 2: This is an attempt which is all part of Donald
4:27
Speaker 2: Trump's strategy. It's reliant dealing with our common challenges, divisions
4:31
Speaker 2: and drive them. He said it, so you're not looking
4:33
Speaker 2: for me to interpret. Goes to a funeral for Charlie Kirk.
4:37
Speaker 2: I hate my enemies, goes to Iowa, says democrats hate America.
4:41
Speaker 2: You and I are doing this interview the same day
4:43
Speaker 2: that they announced that they're going to create a unit
4:45
Speaker 2: within the deal with civil disobedience in cities. So to me,
4:49
Speaker 2: this is about division, This is about his politics, and
4:52
Speaker 2: it has nothing to do with helping strengthen America.
4:55
Speaker 1: On the cities, certainly the leaders don't feel that what
4:58
Speaker 1: they needed was troops. But when there is a sort
5:02
Speaker 1: of lack of trust there that the president is taking
5:06
Speaker 1: advantage of that, when the big cities cry foul and
5:11
Speaker 1: say we need help with this, but we don't want
5:14
Speaker 1: help with that, there is a lack of sympathy out
5:16
Speaker 1: in the broader country.
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Speaker 2: Well, I think I start from a different perspective. The
5:21
Speaker 2: American people prefer order versus disorder. Under Joe Biden, the
5:26
Speaker 2: disorder was an uncontrolled border that looked way out of
5:30
Speaker 2: control with people bring and the federal government looked like
5:32
Speaker 2: it didn't give a rats here. Donald Trump has moved
5:36
Speaker 2: the disorder from the border into himself. If you think
5:39
Speaker 2: for a moment, the American people who don't live in
5:41
Speaker 2: Chicago or don't live in Portland, like the fact that
5:44
Speaker 2: people are wearing chemical masks, shooting tear gas at fellow
5:48
Speaker 2: residents of the city of Chicago or Portland or I
5:52
Speaker 2: disagree with your political assessment. Now do I think over
5:56
Speaker 2: the last twenty years the urban elite have rubbed people's
5:59
Speaker 2: faith seeing that they are superior. Well, I've been talking
6:02
Speaker 2: about that for the last twenty years, and you all
6:05
Speaker 2: have finally caught up that we were walking around. I
6:08
Speaker 2: can't say it on your podcasts, but like that we
6:11
Speaker 2: were superior on a host of things economically and culturally,
6:16
Speaker 2: and we had a disdain for the way other people
6:19
Speaker 2: live their lives. That's a different issue. Then you have
6:22
Speaker 2: what's coming to you. Then we're we have every right
6:24
Speaker 2: to throw tear gas?
6:25
Speaker 1: Are you?
6:26
Speaker 2: And I would argue that's not Stephanie, work with the
6:28
Speaker 2: American people are I'll back that up with data.
6:31
Speaker 1: And just on a practical level. This is the last
6:33
Speaker 1: one on this. No one's going to listen to the
6:35
Speaker 1: economic prescriptions of the Democrats. If the president has succeeded
6:38
Speaker 1: in fostering the idea that there is a crisis on
6:42
Speaker 1: American streets, even if he has created that crisis, even
6:46
Speaker 1: if he's fermented that violence, if it's there, he could
6:50
Speaker 1: well be successful in sort of making people feel that
6:52
Speaker 1: there was a crisis that needed special measures.
6:55
Speaker 2: Quote unquote, let me get it this way, dear my view,
7:00
Speaker 2: Democrats hate what he's doing. Independent voters, swing voters, on
7:04
Speaker 2: affiliated voters by either party are uncomfortable with an untethered,
7:09
Speaker 2: unchecked Donald Trump. So the more that corporate America, the
7:13
Speaker 2: Supreme Courts, and the repose in Congress play complicit to this,
7:17
Speaker 2: this is not going to work. And I have enough
7:19
Speaker 2: data to show that that that's exactly what's happened in
7:22
Speaker 2: every election since twenty twenty four. All the skills and
7:26
Speaker 2: qualities that you think make Donald Trump appealing politically work
7:30
Speaker 2: against it in government.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So the economic diagnosis that you would have that
7:35
Speaker 1: you think would be a winning strategy and indeed good
7:38
Speaker 1: for America in the next few years. Yeah, that comes
7:41
Speaker 1: to No, you're right when I say anti trumpenomics, I
7:44
Speaker 1: just mean it's just a neat phrase. I actually do mean,
7:47
Speaker 1: what's a better economic strategy, what's your diagnosis, what's your
7:50
Speaker 1: cure everything?
7:51
Speaker 2: I'm being a jerk, that's all right.
7:53
Speaker 1: Your reputation, your reputation precedes you.
7:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the new thing is I'm aware now that
7:59
Speaker 2: I'm okay.
7:59
Speaker 1: The first step that's at least the first step.
8:01
Speaker 2: Well one is I believe the moment the American Dream
8:05
Speaker 2: becomes unaffordable and inaccessible is exactly when our democracy becomes unstable.
8:10
Speaker 2: It's not a coincidence. That is housing gets out of reach,
8:13
Speaker 2: college education gets out of reach. People aren't saving for
8:17
Speaker 2: their retirement, their one illness away from Chapter eleven bankruptcy,
8:20
Speaker 2: and only ten percent of the American people have access
8:23
Speaker 2: to it or their kids have access to the American dream.
8:25
Speaker 2: Where you associate with the American dream is when you
8:27
Speaker 2: have all the politics of resentment and instability in the
8:30
Speaker 2: political system. So to me, both good economics as well
8:34
Speaker 2: as good politics restore the confidence and the accessibility of
8:38
Speaker 2: the American Dream. Starts with home ownership. I would just
8:41
Speaker 2: say this upfront, and Amy and I became empty nesters.
8:44
Speaker 2: The idea that we can get a mortgage for retirement
8:48
Speaker 2: home is insane. You have young families trying to start
8:52
Speaker 2: off on the American Dream. They can't get a down
8:54
Speaker 2: payment or a mortgage for their first home, and I,
8:58
Speaker 2: in my position in life, get a mortgage deduction, which
9:01
Speaker 2: means other people are covering my butt. This is crazy,
9:04
Speaker 2: and there's things you can do along the way. I've
9:06
Speaker 2: worked on on healthcare, I've worked on retirement security as
9:11
Speaker 2: mayor of the City of Chicago. If you've got to
9:12
Speaker 2: be average, we made community college free. Seventy five percent
9:15
Speaker 2: of the kids that took it with a first in
9:17
Speaker 2: their family now and to finish high school, but to
9:18
Speaker 2: go to college. To me, there's a serious of things
9:20
Speaker 2: you could do where the building blocks of the American
9:24
Speaker 2: dream become affordable again. Over the last thirty years. It
9:28
Speaker 2: did not happen over Tunald Trump. All of us accepted it.
9:31
Speaker 2: The ladder got pulled up. Everything from home ownership to
9:35
Speaker 2: college education, to retirement security, to healthcare. The ladder got
9:39
Speaker 2: pulled up, and we were comfortable as long as our
9:41
Speaker 2: kids were comfortable. And everybody has a right to be
9:44
Speaker 2: pissed off. And as I jokingly say, paranoid people have
9:48
Speaker 2: enemies too. This system is rigged against your success. You're
9:52
Speaker 2: not paranoid. And I've spent a good time in my
9:55
Speaker 2: career trying to undrig the system. I'm now for rigging
9:58
Speaker 2: it on. Behalf of the family that work hard, play
10:00
Speaker 2: by the rules. Number two. This is a passion of mine.
10:04
Speaker 2: But I happen to think It's also true if you
10:05
Speaker 2: go back through the five great periods of economic growth
10:09
Speaker 2: in American history, there's one constant education reform and education
10:13
Speaker 2: accessibility Langrand College's GI bill universal high school education. The
10:19
Speaker 2: idea that we got a report card two thirds of
10:21
Speaker 2: our kids cannot do reading a mathic grade level, and
10:24
Speaker 2: now the president, not a governor, has spoken up is
10:26
Speaker 2: a crisis. Our kids are failing and our adults are
10:30
Speaker 2: failing their kids. Three Which is the kind of goose
10:34
Speaker 2: that lays the golden egg. Your research universities that are
10:37
Speaker 2: the envy of the world. You said, declared war on cities.
10:41
Speaker 2: You're declaring war on the golden goose. Get back AI, semiconductors, biotech, etc.
10:49
Speaker 2: Take the quantum, Take all the twelve major areas that
10:53
Speaker 2: China's declared war out America and fundamentally fund them to
10:58
Speaker 2: where we go back to four percent of our GDP
11:02
Speaker 2: is in research dollars on the public sector side, not
11:04
Speaker 2: counting private into the core technologies that are going to
11:08
Speaker 2: determine who owns the future. And we have a great
11:13
Speaker 2: resource need to be reformed, a great resource that we've
11:16
Speaker 2: decided to declare war on. Ala Harvard mit Ala Stanford, etc.
11:23
Speaker 2: Rather than invest in it. Fourth, what can't be aied
11:28
Speaker 2: out or outsourced, etc. Fundamentally invest in America's modernization of
11:36
Speaker 2: its infrastructure. Fifth, as it relates to illegal immigrants, there's
11:40
Speaker 2: no wall high enough that I'm not for, and there's
11:42
Speaker 2: no enforcement at the workplace that I'm not for, including
11:46
Speaker 2: the employers that hire people illegally. Now, let's reform our
11:49
Speaker 2: legal immigration so it reflects the twenty percentury. No firing people,
11:54
Speaker 2: want to come to this country, want to get a
11:56
Speaker 2: green carried, want to become Americans. Is self inflicted rules,
12:00
Speaker 2: you're illegal, you cross illegal. As a guy that created
12:04
Speaker 2: Operation Gatekeeper for President Clinton, forget about it. Illegal is illegal.
12:09
Speaker 2: The guiding principles for immigration reform or a nation of
12:13
Speaker 2: emigrants and a national laws or respect both. I probably
12:17
Speaker 2: left a ton of stuff out. It's another five. I
12:20
Speaker 2: think that those are the five things I would do
12:23
Speaker 2: to get America out of neutral movement.
12:26
Speaker 1: Your point about the universities, because it overlaps with something
12:28
Speaker 1: we said before. My colleague Shawn Donn a very great
12:30
Speaker 1: peace about this. We underestimate how much universities have been
12:34
Speaker 1: part of the economic revival of a lot of big
12:36
Speaker 1: cities that had been and de industrialized and other things.
12:39
Speaker 1: So it's also it's kind of hurting his President Trump's
12:42
Speaker 1: industrialization and agenda. I mean, what he's doing to universe.
12:45
Speaker 2: I don't I don't mean to cut you off, but
12:48
Speaker 2: it would not be in a manual I did. But
12:50
Speaker 2: take a look at the President did a conference in
12:52
Speaker 2: western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh area about AI and the data. So
12:56
Speaker 2: you know, you look twenty years ago, fifteen years ago,
13:00
Speaker 2: we talked about the de industrialization of America and because
13:04
Speaker 2: of energy production Carnel emailon in Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh,
13:09
Speaker 2: and you look at what they've done in the investment.
13:12
Speaker 2: You can take an old steel plant and make it
13:14
Speaker 2: a data center or a producer of major kind of electricity.
13:19
Speaker 2: And now you have known the reindustrialization but the economic
13:22
Speaker 2: opportunity for that area that twenty years ago you would
13:24
Speaker 2: not be writing about. You'll be talking about the jobs
13:27
Speaker 2: and the factories that are losing. And you can't talk
13:29
Speaker 2: about the revitalization of Pittsburgh or emails not mention at
13:34
Speaker 2: least in the first three fattuses, or the University of
13:37
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh for that matter.
13:38
Speaker 1: So you could revive a lot of that research. That
13:41
Speaker 1: the core government funding research is not actually a big
13:43
Speaker 1: money in the scheme of things, but education, reforming education,
13:47
Speaker 1: and transforming infrastructure that is big money. In the case
13:51
Speaker 1: of infrastructure, it was actually done, I mean an ex
13:54
Speaker 1: generational supposedly, certainly the biggest in a long time. Infrastructure
13:58
Speaker 1: bill passed by President didn't seem to move the needle.
14:02
Speaker 2: Two things. One to say, I want to get back
14:04
Speaker 2: to this because it relates. I happen to think robotics
14:07
Speaker 2: is going to be essential to the future. Carnegie Mellon
14:10
Speaker 2: leads the country. My guest lecture at MITEAM just got canceled,
14:14
Speaker 2: but there's no doubt that Carnegie Mellon leads it. You
14:17
Speaker 2: could make Carne Mellon the core of your funding at
14:20
Speaker 2: the federal government for robotics. With University of Ohio, Michigan
14:24
Speaker 2: and mik you could do a consortium and say, Okay,
14:27
Speaker 2: here's going to be what the guaranteed stream, here's where
14:29
Speaker 2: we want to see you invest. You've got to bring
14:30
Speaker 2: public private dollars in and we want to see X,
14:33
Speaker 2: Y and Z. Now they did do stuff on infrastructure,
14:37
Speaker 2: you know, Donald Trump, I will say this in his
14:39
Speaker 2: first term called it for Infrastructure week every week. Now
14:42
Speaker 2: the new thing for his infrastructures canceling projects rather than
14:45
Speaker 2: promoting them, and nobody's called it out. He's decided not
14:48
Speaker 2: to invest in America's competitiveness, but to literally cut it off.
14:52
Speaker 2: But there's things that have to be done, not just
14:55
Speaker 2: in rural but in small town America, both on the
14:57
Speaker 2: infrastructure and the education. You look at it a small
15:00
Speaker 2: town in America, A community college, a hospital, unfortunately a prison.
15:06
Speaker 2: Those are the economic opportunities, and we need to make
15:09
Speaker 2: the investments, both in the infrastructure and the workforce that
15:13
Speaker 2: make that an attractive place. Would a data center, a
15:17
Speaker 2: new production of alternative energy or old energy?
15:21
Speaker 1: But are you going to need money? I mean, on
15:23
Speaker 1: that you might be able to get some private funding.
15:25
Speaker 1: But on the education, I mean you are talking about
15:29
Speaker 1: some costly interventions in the economy to make the American
15:33
Speaker 1: dream more affordable. How are you going to do it?
15:36
Speaker 2: Well? Yes and no. I'm going to be going down
15:39
Speaker 2: in a couple months to Mississippi. They have a what's
15:41
Speaker 2: called the Mississippi Miracle. They went from forty ninth on
15:44
Speaker 2: reading toninth. Now, either they did really well or basically
15:48
Speaker 2: everybody else did really bad. They did it over a decade,
15:52
Speaker 2: so you can basically redirect it and get better results
15:56
Speaker 2: and not continue to spend money on failure. Now it
16:00
Speaker 2: relates to spending other types of infrastructure. There's a trillion
16:04
Speaker 2: dollars there. Spend it, make it, and force it out.
16:07
Speaker 2: Democrats got so preoccupied with the rule making they never
16:13
Speaker 2: got the results.
16:27
Speaker 1: The criticism of Democrats is they didn't get stuff done.
16:30
Speaker 1: And we know, one of the things that's been a
16:32
Speaker 1: sort of distinguishing feature of President Trump ever since he
16:35
Speaker 1: kind of came more onto the scene in New York
16:37
Speaker 1: in the nineties was this sort of sense of you know,
16:40
Speaker 1: I'm going to get stuff done. I'm going to get
16:42
Speaker 1: this ice open that had been closed for a long
16:45
Speaker 1: time because the city was stupid. And you sound like
16:47
Speaker 1: you just constantly wanting to go back to that that
16:49
Speaker 1: you're channeling and reminding people of all the times that
16:52
Speaker 1: you've got things done. One of the things that you
16:54
Speaker 1: helped to get done was actually quite a kind of
16:56
Speaker 1: historic deficit reduction plan in the first Clinton administration, which
17:02
Speaker 1: seems almost inconceivable. Now, how would you do that just practically,
17:05
Speaker 1: because we certainly haven't seen that for a long time,
17:07
Speaker 1: including under Biden.
17:09
Speaker 2: Three things. One, the budget gets balanced and he doesn't
17:12
Speaker 2: get enough of them applause. Because George Herbert Walker Bush
17:16
Speaker 2: forty one showed leadership and broke his promise and raised taxes,
17:21
Speaker 2: got elected saying read my lips, and he got unelected
17:24
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two because he broke in ninety one.
17:27
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton comes in in nineteen ninety three building on
17:31
Speaker 2: that progress. That's fair, and in ninety three there's no
17:34
Speaker 2: Republican support, passes the deficit reduction and raises.
17:39
Speaker 1: Revenue and raises taxes on the higher earners.
17:42
Speaker 2: And you could argue that that piece because it wasn't
17:44
Speaker 2: felt economically like it did in the second term or
17:47
Speaker 2: in the back end of the first term, et cetera.
17:50
Speaker 2: Starts the deficit on a massive reduction. Interest rates get
17:54
Speaker 2: also massively cut. Third, underappreciated, totally separate is the the
18:00
Speaker 2: Internet boom in productivity is just taking off. So you
18:03
Speaker 2: had a kind of the cocktail of ninety one, ninety
18:08
Speaker 2: three and Internet all together lead to this now the
18:14
Speaker 2: Dirty Little Secret. And I can tell you an anecdote
18:16
Speaker 2: from it. The Dirty Little Secret was in by nineteen
18:19
Speaker 2: ninety seven, the budget was going to be balanced, whether
18:21
Speaker 2: you had a balanced budget agreement. I stood in the
18:24
Speaker 2: back of Erskine Bowl's chief of staff's office with Bob Rubin,
18:27
Speaker 2: and Bob was against this. He was against a balanced
18:30
Speaker 2: budget agree because I see no reason to do this.
18:33
Speaker 2: It's going to be balanced. I said, Bob. There's an
18:35
Speaker 2: old rule in Chicago from Richard J. Day. When you
18:38
Speaker 2: see a parade, get your Brittanna, get in front of it.
18:40
Speaker 2: And I said, we're going to get political credit in
18:43
Speaker 2: the same way that the Berlin Wall was going to
18:44
Speaker 2: come down. Whether George Bush did anything so that happened,
18:48
Speaker 2: that's a build up. The answer to your question, I'd
18:51
Speaker 2: passed immediately a rule in Congress, and Congress were passing
18:56
Speaker 2: never can interest on the debt exceed defense a budget? Oh?
18:59
Speaker 1: Is that the Neil Ferguson rule. He's credited with saying
19:02
Speaker 1: that's when you stop being a great power.
19:03
Speaker 2: Read the article very persuasive. So here's what Republicans like
19:07
Speaker 2: defense spending. I'm all for it because I actually think
19:10
Speaker 2: it's important as a detern to China. So here's the rule.
19:13
Speaker 2: Never can interest on the debt exceed your defense budget.
19:17
Speaker 2: And once you create that discipline like ram Rudman Hollings
19:20
Speaker 2: did in the past, you will start to see deficit reduction.
19:23
Speaker 1: Or you'll start to see a president that's trying very
19:25
Speaker 1: hard to increase defense spending faster than the debt bills
19:28
Speaker 1: going up and also push down interest rates by taking
19:31
Speaker 1: control of the federal reserve. I mean, that's what it
19:33
Speaker 1: also incentivizes.
19:35
Speaker 2: Also, it could be the way to force the Congress
19:38
Speaker 2: deal with unlike some people that talked about deficit reduction
19:41
Speaker 2: but never did Bowl Simpson actually deal with revenue.
19:45
Speaker 1: Anyone sensible looking at the budget, looking at a six
19:47
Speaker 1: percent of GDP budget deficit in a booming economy. It's
19:50
Speaker 1: booming in terms of the level of unemployment and other things, right,
19:54
Speaker 1: Anyone looking at that would say there has to be
19:56
Speaker 1: a tax increase in America's future. But anyone looking at
19:59
Speaker 1: Congress for the asked well for a long time, would
20:01
Speaker 1: say there was no chance of that. And looking at
20:04
Speaker 1: any presidential candidate, frankly.
20:06
Speaker 2: That's why I think Republics haven't done anything on tariffs.
20:09
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has raised taxes on everybody. It just calls
20:12
Speaker 2: the terraffs.
20:13
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that gets us very quickly. We're going to
20:14
Speaker 1: run out of time. But I do want to ask
20:15
Speaker 1: you about the China policy. And one of the difficult
20:18
Speaker 1: things about pivoting away from Donald Trump's China policy is actually,
20:22
Speaker 1: and Jason Furman pointed this out on the podcast a
20:24
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, that you will have those tax revenues
20:27
Speaker 1: coming in better or worse from Donald Trump's tariffs that
20:31
Speaker 1: are non negligible and quite hard to just say goodbye to.
20:35
Speaker 2: True.
20:36
Speaker 1: So what are you going to do? What is the
20:37
Speaker 1: China strategy under your plan?
20:39
Speaker 2: First of all, the idea that it's down to tariffs
20:41
Speaker 2: is not no disrespect is it's more complicated. On't mean
20:45
Speaker 2: to say that we're our podcast. It's slightly more than
20:48
Speaker 2: a thirty seconds answer. There's a couple of things. I
20:51
Speaker 2: think forty percent of our imports into the country, our
20:56
Speaker 2: products are going to our own manufacturing capacity. Take the
21:01
Speaker 2: tariffs off of those, you're actually killing manufacturing jobs, not enhancing.
21:05
Speaker 2: There's nothing you've done to enhance America's competitiveness on the
21:09
Speaker 2: industrial base by taxing or putting a tariff on a
21:13
Speaker 2: product that goes into our own ultimate assembly and manufacturer. Two,
21:20
Speaker 2: you have to be more strategic, and it relates to China.
21:22
Speaker 2: It's not just about tariffs. I happen to think what
21:24
Speaker 2: the President just did is a failed effort. Dealing with
21:29
Speaker 2: China is both with military, geostrategic, political, and economic understand fundamentally,
21:36
Speaker 2: which America has been late to the game. The Chinese
21:39
Speaker 2: Party leadership and President Jip specifically decided in twenty twelve
21:43
Speaker 2: that America is not a strategic competitor, but a strategic adversary.
21:47
Speaker 2: They actually do need to do harm to us. I
21:50
Speaker 2: think President Trump has been naive to think that he
21:53
Speaker 2: can get along with Putin and g They actually are
21:56
Speaker 2: trying to put our head under and he doesn't appreciate that,
22:00
Speaker 2: understand that, or is responding to the threat level. Third,
22:04
Speaker 2: both from the universities and science and technology to the
22:08
Speaker 2: training of a workforce that has to actually have an
22:11
Speaker 2: education to compete and win at any level. Fourth, investing
22:15
Speaker 2: in the capabilities of america twenty first century infrastructure to
22:19
Speaker 2: move twenty first century economy from data to trucks and
22:23
Speaker 2: everything between. And then fifth on the tariffs all they
22:27
Speaker 2: do for you as it relates to China, as we
22:29
Speaker 2: kind of figure out how to move away is you
22:33
Speaker 2: have to decide where your choke points are and fundamentally
22:36
Speaker 2: invest in them. That's what the whole critical minerals and
22:40
Speaker 2: magnet production is about. That there is take a deep
22:44
Speaker 2: research look at the supply chain, every choke point that exists,
22:48
Speaker 2: understand we're behind, and then invest in it over the
22:51
Speaker 2: next five years. Now g is upfront about this, don't
22:55
Speaker 2: be naive, and you have to be understand. He wants
22:58
Speaker 2: a dominant China where everybody's dependent on China and China's
23:01
Speaker 2: independent of everybody else, and we have to move with
23:04
Speaker 2: a strategy where America is integrated with everybody else and
23:09
Speaker 2: everybody else is dependent on us.
23:11
Speaker 1: We have I mean as a nation actually since the
23:14
Speaker 1: second Kids administration. I mean that same year that we
23:16
Speaker 1: had a budget surplus two thousand was also the time
23:18
Speaker 1: that we were negotiating to have him China into the WTO.
23:23
Speaker 1: We have leaned into being deeply dependent on China, much
23:26
Speaker 1: more dependent than we perhaps needed to be. When you
23:30
Speaker 1: talk about extricating it, I think it's Donald Trump's learning.
23:33
Speaker 1: It's pretty hard to say, oh, we'll get divorced in
23:35
Speaker 1: ten years time, and I'm really firm about that. But
23:37
Speaker 1: what we've got to live together in the meantime.
23:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know, you, step, I
23:42
Speaker 2: know a lot of divorced people that live in the
23:43
Speaker 2: same house, just separate rooms.
23:46
Speaker 1: It's also saying, as you just said, that there are
23:49
Speaker 1: sworn enemy, that they are determined to destroy us. But
23:52
Speaker 1: by the way, can we have you know, can we
23:53
Speaker 1: have another bit of mineral earth?
23:55
Speaker 2: One of the things I learned being ambassador of Japan.
23:58
Speaker 2: What they say is not what they mean. You got
24:00
Speaker 2: to find it. But she tells you the world is
24:04
Speaker 2: to be dependent on China, and China is to be
24:06
Speaker 2: free of the world independent. He's very upfront. Now, either
24:10
Speaker 2: you can say, oh, that's just for domestic consumption or
24:13
Speaker 2: act as that threat intents. Now, I believe the big
24:18
Speaker 2: mistake of the last twenty to twenty five years was
24:22
Speaker 2: allowing business interests to control our national securities related to China.
24:27
Speaker 2: They were not a voice at the table. They were
24:29
Speaker 2: the voice at the table, and they should have been
24:32
Speaker 2: slapped and put in their place. And that was a
24:36
Speaker 2: huge mistake. And when g said and the Chinese leadership said,
24:41
Speaker 2: we're going to replace America and we're going to do X,
24:45
Speaker 2: Y and Z, as it relates to the world's dependence
24:48
Speaker 2: on China. That's a big opportunity. And when China decides
24:53
Speaker 2: to crush your steel industry, you're a luminum industry, your
24:56
Speaker 2: auto industry. That's an opportunity for America. Come into the
25:00
Speaker 2: rescue of South Africa, Brazil, Mexico. They are doing things
25:05
Speaker 2: in their industrial manufacturing because the President g is leaning
25:08
Speaker 2: so hard on the dominance of manufacturing for its economy
25:12
Speaker 2: because other parts of it are failing. That's our opportunity.
25:16
Speaker 1: And that kind of suspicion of globalization, or at least
25:20
Speaker 1: the globalization that was dominated by the sort of business
25:23
Speaker 1: interests of America as opposed to other things. That's going
25:26
Speaker 1: to outlive President Trump.
25:28
Speaker 2: Do you think what's gonna be with us for the
25:30
Speaker 2: next thirty years. Look, globalization was a success if you
25:35
Speaker 2: had what you and I have and our kids have.
25:37
Speaker 2: I don't know whether they are kids are okay. I
25:39
Speaker 2: have three kids. They're the twenties to the armed forces,
25:43
Speaker 2: et cetera. They all went to good schools and they're
25:45
Speaker 2: all on their way doing well, et cetera. That was
25:48
Speaker 2: the success. The opportunities of globalization were not equally shared
25:52
Speaker 2: and the risks associated with globalization were not equally shared.
25:56
Speaker 2: Globalization wasn't a mistake, it's what we didn't do, and
25:59
Speaker 2: we were aware of that was the mistake.
26:01
Speaker 1: You do sound like and you've made no secret that
26:04
Speaker 1: you are someone who's thinking about running for president, and
26:06
Speaker 1: some would argue that you've already decided. But if there
26:09
Speaker 1: is a question in your mind, what's your biggest question
26:11
Speaker 1: in thinking about running, regardless of whether you know obviously
26:14
Speaker 1: the primary process will be what it is, But in
26:17
Speaker 1: terms of actually being a candidate, what's the question that
26:19
Speaker 1: you need to resolve in your mind.
26:20
Speaker 2: To those that don't know, Squat, it's not actually a business.
26:26
Speaker 2: That's a professional decision. It's a very personal decision. I've
26:30
Speaker 2: lived a full life. I'm the son and the grandson
26:33
Speaker 2: of two immigrants. My kids are now on their way.
26:36
Speaker 2: They're making their own path, their own journey, their own success,
26:40
Speaker 2: their own failure, and they're incredibly supportive of me. But
26:44
Speaker 2: I have to make a decision I run for president.
26:47
Speaker 2: What does that do to their lives? It's not going
26:49
Speaker 2: to be the same. So look, I know my professional
26:51
Speaker 2: I figure that out. How to restore the primacy of
26:55
Speaker 2: the American dream to the American people. So it's not
26:58
Speaker 2: just Stephanie and romskits. What does it take? Because I
27:02
Speaker 2: think it both has an economic and a political souve.
27:05
Speaker 2: And then there's a personal thing. And you know, my
27:08
Speaker 2: greatest teacher was my mother and father, and I take
27:11
Speaker 2: being a parent very seriously. I know we're not supposed
27:14
Speaker 2: to talk about it.
27:14
Speaker 1: I know, talking about politicians talking about their kids all
27:18
Speaker 1: the time, I wouldn't worry about it.
27:19
Speaker 2: Oh, I think, yeah, But I've been around them longer
27:22
Speaker 2: than you have. So that's the decision I'm going to make,
27:25
Speaker 2: and it's going to something I'm gonna make with my
27:27
Speaker 2: children and my wife.
27:28
Speaker 1: If you do run, is your strategy to just not
27:30
Speaker 1: let anyone else get a word in?
27:32
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's a habit that's been true for everything
27:34
Speaker 2: I was trying to image in a debate. I was
27:39
Speaker 2: trying to be economical with you, which is why, you
27:42
Speaker 2: know Henry Kissingder once said, do you have any questions.
27:44
Speaker 1: For my answers? Quite say, rom Emanuel, thank you so.
27:47
Speaker 2: Much, Thank you very much, appreciate it.
27:57
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Trumponomics from Bloomberg. It was hosted
27:59
Speaker 1: by me, Stephanie Flanders, and I was joined by the
28:02
Speaker 1: former White House Chief of Staff and Mayor of Chicago,
28:05
Speaker 1: among other things, rahmim Manuel. Trumponomics was produced by Samasadi
28:09
Speaker 1: and Moses And with help from Amy Keene, and the
28:12
Speaker 1: sound design was by Blake Maples and Kelly. Gary Sage.
28:18
Speaker 1: Bowman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts and please to help
28:22
Speaker 1: others find this show, Trumpanomics, please rate it and review
28:25
Speaker 1: it highly. Wherever you listened,