Latest / Hoover Daily Report / Hoover Daily Report | June 17, 2026

Transcript

Hoover Daily Report | June 17, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

• 0:00
  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
• 0:03
  Freedom. It's Wednesday, June 17th, twenty twenty six.
• 0:06
  Today, Maurice Obstfeld argues that the only byproduct of the Trump
• 0:10
  administration’s trade agenda is numerous, costly disruptions. The Free
• 0:15
  Speech Unmuted team explores a bizarre case that asks whether sending a
• 0:19
  digitally altered, sexually explicit image of a cartoon character to a public
• 0:24
  officeholder is protected speech or a heinous crime. And David L. Leal explores
• 0:29
  whether the UK’s local council elections last month can hint at what is to come
• 0:34
  for future parliamentary elections.
• 0:36
  Trump’s Quest to Deform International Trade.
• 0:40
  Writing in Freedom Frequency, UC Berkeley professor and former chief IMF economist
• 0:45
  Maurice Obstfeld argues that contrary to Trump administration arguments, the data
• 0:50
  show that international trade has not unfairly harmed the United States. In
• 0:55
  fact, the postwar trade system has benefited both America and other nations
• 0:59
  by evolving a mutually beneficial trade and financial network responsible for
• 1:04
  unprecedented economic growth and human improvement worldwide. Today, the US
• 1:09
  administration’s mercurial use of tariffs and its hunt for scapegoats leads not to
• 1:14
  the proclaimed “rebalancing” of the world economy but to costly disruptions,
• 1:19
  including driving away America’s trade partners and feeding uncertainty about
• 1:24
  the dollar’s future role. The “America First” approach amounts to wasted
• 1:29
  resources and a rejection of time-tested principles of converging prosperity.
• 1:34
  Shrexting: Free Speech or Criminal Harassment?
• 1:37
  Free Speech Unmuted hosts
• 1:39
  Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer tackle one of the strangest First Amendment
• 1:43
  controversies imaginable: whether sending a sexually explicit image of Shrek to a
• 1:47
  politician can constitute criminal harassment. Using an Ohio case involving
• 1:51
  a blogger and a state senator as their starting point, they explore the
• 1:54
  constitutional boundaries between protected offensive speech and criminally
• 1:58
  punishable harassment, the rights of unwilling listeners, the special status
• 2:02
  of public officials under the First Amendment, and how courts have struggled
• 2:06
  to adapt decades-old free speech principles to an era of texts, emails,
• 2:10
  and smartphones.
• 2:11
  AI, Politically Motivated Violence, and “Conflict Entrepreneurship” in Congress.
• 2:15
  In a Q&A published at Defining Ideas, Visiting Fellow Sean Westwood explores
• 2:20
  electoral reform, AI’s impact on American politics, and issues such as partisanship
• 2:25
  and polarization. He spoke to the Hoover Institution’s Chris Herhalt about his
• 2:30
  recent work exploring the impact and media coverage of politically motivated
• 2:34
  violence, how AI agents are now capable of turning polling on its head, and the
• 2:39
  rise of what he and his colleagues call the “conflict entrepreneur” model of
• 2:43
  conduct in Congress.
• 2:45
  The Fed’s Fiscal Trap.
• 2:46
  In this week’s Grumpy Economist Weekly Rant, Senior Fellow John H. Cochrane
• 2:51
  examines one of the hardest challenges facing the Federal Reserve under Kevin
• 2:56
  Warsh’s leadership: what happens when fighting inflation collides with
• 3:01
  America’s fiscal reality. Cochrane argues that raising interest rates is never
• 3:06
  politically easy, but today’s high debt makes the problem much more difficult.
• 3:11
  With debt near 100 percent of GDP, higher interest rates mean higher interest costs
• 3:16
  for the federal government. Cochrane warns that unless Congress is willing to
• 3:21
  raise taxes or cut spending to cover those costs, monetary policy alone may
• 3:26
  not be enough to bring inflation down. The deeper issue, he argues, is the
• 3:30
  growing pressure on the Fed to support government borrowing in moments of fiscal
• 3:36
  stress, crisis, or war—a problem that will require clearer thinking about how
• 3:41
  monetary and fiscal policy should interact.
• 3:43
  The Historic and Irrelevant May 7 UK Local Elections.
• 3:47
  In a new essay for Defining Ideas, Senior Fellow David L. Leal examines the
• 3:52
  aftermath of Britain’s May 2026 local elections, which saw major gains by
• 3:56
  Reform UK and wins by the Green Party and regional parties, while Labour and the
• 4:01
  Conservatives suffered setbacks. Although many commentators have portrayed the
• 4:06
  results as evidence of a dramatic political realignment, Leal argues that
• 4:10
  the reality is more complex.
• 4:12
  Looking across England, Scotland, and Wales,
• 4:15
  he assesses the performance of the country’s major and minor parties, the
• 4:19
  role of protest voting, and the limitations of local elections as
• 4:23
  predictors of future parliamentary outcomes. As Britain approaches the June
• 4:27
  18 Makerfield special election, Leal urges readers to separate electoral facts
• 4:32
  from political hype and take a longer view of the country’s evolving political
• 4:37
  landscape.
• 4:37
  Featured Hoover Publication.
• 4:39
  DeepSeek AI and the Great Talent Competition: An Update.
• 4:42
  Senior Fellow Amy Zegart and research assistant Emerson Johnston continue to
• 4:47
  track the composition and output of AI researchers at DeepSeek AI, China’s most
• 4:52
  prominent AI firm. Their latest review shows that its pool of talent publishing
• 4:56
  research is growing, and less of it overall is made up of talent trained in
• 5:01
  or ever affiliated with the US.
• 5:03
  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Wednesday, June 17th, twenty twenty six.
• 5:07
  Each weekday, we bring you research, analysis, and commentary focused on
• 5:12
  public policy, national security, and the ideas shaping American society and
• 5:16
  government.
• 5:17
  The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is grounded in constitutional
• 5:21
  principles with a commitment to sustaining the safeguards of the American
• 5:25
  way of life.
• 5:26
  Thank you for listening.
• 5:27
  For links to all the articles and interviews mentioned today, visit
• 5:31
  hoover.org slash, HDR.