Speaker 1: Welcome to the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: I'm Joy Pullman, the executive editor here at the Federalist.
Joining me today is David Bratt. He is the senior
vice president of business Relations at Liberty University and the
former congressman from Virginia.
Speaker 1: David, welcome, Hey.
Speaker 3: Thanks Joy, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Let's first, I mean, so you're economics professor, long before
you were political representative. So let's kind of go into
your major field of economics. A lot going on there
in the economy right now. I would love if you
would just start out. I'm getting a lot of questions
from my normal, you know friends, my everyday friends, kind
of about the tariff situation because I think most a
mayor Americans, even if they're intelligent, well read educated people
who pay attention to the news, which is already maybe
ten percent of the country, I think even those kinds
of people are not super familiar with the tariff game, you.
Speaker 1: Know, how they are used in policy.
Speaker 2: Because, of course, the last forty plus years you know,
of our lives have entailed in this country offshoring, lowering
the tariffs on other countries, and basically getting played by them.
So could you just start here about as an ECON
professor giving our audience a one oh one on the
current tariff war. How we got here and how you
think that's going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, the federalist I like a lot of the
folks on your team, and the ones I don't like,
I don't know yet. And so you guys do a
good job educating people. And so the problem with the
tariff debate is the assumptions going in. Right, in economics,
you got to make assumptions going into the making models,
and one of the huge assumptions is you have perfect competition,
et cetera, and smooth functioning marks and whatever. That could
not be further from the truth anymore, Right, And so
you know, I'm on the War Room and on some
other shows here and there, and I get my free
market friends getting heart palpitations when they hear me lately,
and I just tell them, I say, you know, when
it comes. I love Milton Friedman and Milton Friedman's logic work.
Forty years ago, when there was still the hope of
downsizing and bringing federalism right, the federalist federalism back into
play right, downsize in the federal government and state local Unfortunately,
now you got markets that are characterized by the Magnificent seven.
Our top seven big tech firms, et cetera make up
forty percent of the S and P five hundred. Right, So,
for folks who don't know the S and P five hundred,
that's a big stock market.
Speaker 3: Most of you are all invested.
Speaker 4: In that, and seven firms make up forty percent of
that stock index. And then on top of that, the
US right now is characterized by monopoly all over the place,
which is the worst outcome in entry level econ one
oh one. The best outcome is when you have a
bunch of firms on the supply curve and a bunch
of demanders on the demand curb. And they call that
perfect competition, and that market structure gets your lower prices
and more variety and all the good properties. Right, So,
right now we have monopolies. Just think of the major
industries in your head, and if big comes up in
any of them, it's not good. Big automotive, big pharmaceutical,
big banking, big financial, big government, big agriculture, big healthcare.
Speaker 3: You know, just go through.
Speaker 4: It's big, right, and the left wants it to be
big because they can put their thumb down on it.
Speaker 2: And I'll interject quickly that I just during the lockdowns
that the majority of Americans because of the big business
jab mandate, you know, the majority of Americans are working
for one of those big countries. Like you said, we
went from many, many, many many companies everywhere, regional, you know, local,
but now it's a really monopoly market. And that's really
where I learned that whoa, this is a different country
than I thought it was.
Speaker 4: Right, No, it is, and if you google down or
explore the data and now you'll find the same thing.
And then unfortunately that the same thing is kind of
true on the international front. There is no free trade whatsoever, right,
so all markets. I did my dissertation on economic growth
following a Nobel Prize winning paper Solo and man Q
at Harvard, and that model for.
Speaker 3: The country to be included, they had to use.
Speaker 4: The price system, right, because if the price system doesn't work,
you can't do economics because we use prices as measures
of information.
Speaker 2: So you're saying, if the places don't actually reflect value,
then there's market is like, it's not an accurate You're just.
Speaker 4: Not even you can't do ecmodity, no numbers. So I'm
just trying to give some sense of how off this is.
And then when you come to tariffs. I got some
free trade friends in high level, high level donors, high
high level, the highest level. If I told you the names, uh, politics,
et cetera. And I asked them the question. I said,
do you think it's possible to do free trade with
a communist, totalitarian surveillance state called slave empire?
Speaker 3: Right, slave empire? How could you do free trade?
Speaker 4: And they think it's possible, we can do fred free
trade and they don't have to. And I'm like, well,
I don't know what that's called, but that's not free trade.
Speaker 1: And then I'm your slavery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole thing is frigged, just.
Speaker 1: Off sharing the slavery.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: And then finally the G twenty the richest twenty countries,
you know, and we're you know, with that crew they
all have.
Speaker 3: And I'm not making this up right.
Speaker 4: So Trump came out with his tearf list that's highly
correlated with the size of the trade deficit, and uh okay,
so the press or palpitations, but they missed another list
that came out from Bank of America, the World Bank
in PwC that had all the g Twenty countries have
two to three hundred percent tariffs against US, higher than
we have on them two times to three all of them,
and we're the smallest.
Speaker 3: We're at the bottom of the chart.
Speaker 4: They're all posted on Bratt Economics, on Getter and on
x if you want to go, bore yourself to sleep
at night.
Speaker 3: But that, in a in a nutshell is just a
kind of an introductory to tariffs, right, and that's why work.
Speaker 2: They're taxing the things that we sell to them, but
we're taxing at a far less rate, or we had
been things that they say to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what can you explain? What? How?
Speaker 3: What does that matter?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people who say the trade deficit
doesn't matter. You know, we're getting cheap stuff. It's better
for us. We're we're you know, we're increasing in our specialization. Right,
We're offering them higher value services, right, and they're offering
us lower value you know, cheap trinkets. So you know,
or if people you know want the stuff, it's good.
Speaker 1: Right. So what's the response to that? How is this
bad for us?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No, Well, if you read the economics book, just
the two sentenced answer is that you have winners and
losers from trade and comparative EVANGELI that stuff, and you're
supposed to take care of the losers right with the
rewards that went to the winners. Well, that has never
happened in US history. And the one thing also is
we used to have these people called liberals. I like
liberals right at the federalists. You know, you're almost kind
of quasi liberal, and I am too, you know, with
James Madison and Adam Smith, John Locke, some of these
guys were considered, you know, historically liberal because the room
word is liberty.
Speaker 3: Right, and so you know that sets you up.
Speaker 4: But the basic problem is that we've lost five million
manufacturing jobs over the past thirty or forty years and a.
Speaker 3: Country named China.
Speaker 4: Our intelligence agencies law track of China, and so we
gave them every benefit, every advantage. We've let them build
up huge trade deficits, and now they're a threat to us.
And if you don't know that, you know, go look
up a document in nineteen ninety nine called unrestricted warfare.
And by unrestricted warfare they mean unrestricted from their side.
What they're going to do to you will make your
stomach crawl and when you read that document and then Shijiping.
You know, I won't bore you to tears with all this.
But a year ago he gave his famous speech in
front of the CCP, and he said, we're going full
on Marxist Leninist. We're getting rid of no economic reforms,
and we're getting rid of all China stuff in China,
meaning you're going to get rid of Buddhism and Confucianism
and peace and harmony, no need for that stuff. Right,
not to mention Christians and Wigers and whatever, right, other
minority religions. And so why does it matter this irregularity
in trade, which who's getting what?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So we get the goods from them, and then we
give them capital, we give them pieces of paper dollar bills, right,
and then they get to go around the world investing
in things.
Speaker 3: At the same time the US is not investing in things.
Speaker 4: And capital equipment is what we need to produce economic growth.
Speaker 3: So trade and manufacturing.
Speaker 4: Is highly correlated with a lot of good things like
capital investment and innovation and research and development and all
that kind of stuff. And so we have a forty
year deficit of all of those things. And when you
don't put capital in the hands of your people, their
productivity goes down. And so the leading guy in the
world on that is named Bob Gordon. He's at Northwestern University.
I doubt he's a wool Room Posse member, and he's
cited by every macro growth economist there is. And he's
got a nice chart that I also have posted with
productivity trend productivity going down for the last seventy years.
Speaker 3: It was at five or six and then three or four.
Now it's at two.
Speaker 4: And that two matches precisely the Congressional Budget Office projection
for economic growth for the next thirty years at two percent.
Speaker 2: In that mass, it does not basically reflect for normal people.
Productivity basically is your wages, right, so you don't have
any value able to you know, you earn a marketplace
what you can put out that other people are willing
to buy. So if it's a higher value, you get
higher wages. I mean ideally, of course the market is
really rigged. But if it's lower value, get lower wages.
So you're saying, so if we have low productivity, we
have low wages for our people.
Speaker 4: By definition almost it's by definition you haven't put capital
in the hands of your worker. So they're not productive,
they're not making as much per hour.
Speaker 2: So you get to say capital in their hands means
you know. So I'm thinking, so my son has a
long lowing business, right, if he were to grow it,
he would need like a shed to store his bigger equipment,
or to buy bigger equipment to have you know, et cetera,
et cetera. So but if he doesn't have access to capital,
he can't grow his business. He's still to be working
hour by hour, low end jobs rather than you know,
being able to hire people, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Just he's got an old nineteen thirties mower,
one of those things with the things right, and you
can mow a lawn in you know, five hours, right,
and if you get a lawnmower, you can mow it
in one and a half hours. Yeah, And if you
get a big writer mower, you can mote in twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 4: So that that's what you know, Henry Ford, I mean
the assembly line or whatever. That's your classic kid. So
we're not talking about financial capital. I'm talking about physical capital. Okay,
So that's that's the big deal, and three things cause
economic growth capital is one, and just the basic stats
on that. China has one hundred trillion of capital, the
capital stock, the total amount of capital, the.
Speaker 1: Money available to invest in large things production.
Speaker 4: No, no, nope, the total capital equipment to make stuff. Okay,
so they got a lot of capital equipment, think of equipment.
Speaker 2: And the US talking warehouses, you know, robots, transportation, Yes, yes, and.
Speaker 4: The US only has seventy trillion dollars in total capital.
We're a bigger economy, we're richer, we're older, we should
have way more than them. As a result of all that,
China's doing five trillion a year in uh, manufacturing. The
US is only doing half of that two and a
half trillion in manufacturing.
Speaker 3: Wow. So Trump is a savvy business guy and he's.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. Who put
us in this ditch? And so he's trying to get
us out of the ditch. And all the complainers you
can complain, it's not optimal tariff, aren't the optimal economic
you know, harbor. I'm going to measure my harbor or
triangles determined perfect efficiency. Okay, well, you go do that,
but you got to explain to me the policy you
have ready to put into place to bring manufacturing and
equipment back for the US.
Speaker 5: People are able to put Gucci on layaway. Watch Dout
on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris
helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and
how it affects your wallet. Luxury brand Gucci has partnered
with a firm to offer tailored monthly payments for buy now,
pay later. If you can't afford Gucci, that's okay, but
don't do this. This won't end well. Whether it's happening
in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Be informed. Check out the watch Dot on Wall Street
podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: So I always think, you know, so as someone who's
involved in hiring people, and you know, my dad's a
businessman as well hiring people. I know that the cost
of hiring a person you have to add thirty percent
on top of what you're actually paying them to comply
with government regulations, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I do think one of the reasons that.
Speaker 2: The US is less competitive is we have a very
sclerotic and over top heavy bureaucratic system. I would love
to be able to pay my employees thirty percent more
right now, instead of sending it off to the federal government.
How much do you think that's a factor as well?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right in there, right.
Speaker 4: And the three variables that are roughly speaking, that cause
economic growth are capital and then second what you just said,
human capital, your educated workforce. And in Chicago, the Illinois
Public Policy Institute or whatever has studies shown the literacy
rate for the poor kids in Chicago is twelve percent yep,
twelve percent can read, eighty eight percent illiteracy totally.
Speaker 2: So how much do you think those people are going
to be contributing to our society?
Speaker 1: They don't even have the capacity.
Speaker 4: The opposite, right, they're going to be draining. And that's
not a moral statement. I believe all people are made
in the image of God, right, So I want the
best for those kids, of course.
Speaker 3: So I'm so.
Speaker 4: Ticked off of these teachers' unions and these schools who
are not given. We're paying plenty, We're paying twenty thousand
dollars on APAs.
Speaker 2: As well as frankly low expectations for parents, you know,
I mean, I don't have to.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you agree with me on that.
Speaker 4: Yes, no, absolutely, we we've just and again, where's where
are the liberals? They've all turned into leftists. The liberals
used to care about the kids, and they cared about
no wars, and they cared about labor right, and maybe
they had different solutions than conservatives would have, but at
least they cared about you know, the least of these
to use biblical language. And then the third piece that
causes economic growth is technico logical growth, and that were
the envy of the world, but they're the problem is
it's monopolized.
Speaker 3: Like I talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: Was that the third thing I was going to ask
you about that yeah your tree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, technological growth. And that's hard to measure.
Speaker 5: Me.
Speaker 3: That's a good, that's a good.
Speaker 4: That's economists don't know how to measure it, so they
use they use proxies, or they'll take economic growth, uh,
and then they'll take the results of capital and human
capital out, and what's left they'll assume.
Speaker 3: Is technological growth.
Speaker 4: Or you can try to proxyate with you know, like
miles of fiber octic cable. The amount of our research
and development spent in aggregate across the country. Uh, just
other proxies for what what causes technological growth?
Speaker 3: A number of.
Speaker 4: Computer chips produced, you know, this is kind of in
a cross country setting. So those proxies will help get
at you know that.
Speaker 3: But it's very hard because.
Speaker 4: Technology, the technicook definition and that it's just knowledge, it's measure.
Speaker 2: So I'm wondering why and it says third item rather
than hold into the other two.
Speaker 1: And you're saying it kind of is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, and you want that that technical knowledge gets
embedded in capital and in people. And you know, the
Bob Gordon story is kind of funny. And people back
when the cell phone was going to produce all this
massive economic growth in the dot com bubble, and they said, Bob,
don't you see technology everywhere? And he said, yeah, it's
all over the place, see it everywhere except in the data, right,
So that there was a little blip in productivity, but
not not sustained.
Speaker 2: Well, I think now our tech is actually making us
stupider and worse at productivity because think about how many
hours a day we you know, on knowledge workers like
me and you have to spend on email.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, because every day I actually try.
Speaker 2: To think about my ratio if I call like points
on the board, and points on the board is like
actually getting accomplished, like shippable you know, an article, something edited,
a podcast, like some you know item that's going happening,
rather than you know, the communication churn back and forth. Right,
you know, nobody sees it anyway. Some of the course
has to happen, but why does it have to take
four hours? Everybody wants to know that.
Speaker 4: And for those who have to, you know, the stock market,
for example, sell a positive you know, cheerleading game.
Speaker 3: The AI is going to be the wonder of the world,
I hope so.
Speaker 1: But again I feel that way about it as well.
Speaker 3: It's not in the data yet.
Speaker 4: We all hope it does something great, but we don't
know which way that breaks.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: And so in this whole tariff picture, you know, there's
obviously been a lot of media scare mongering, and I mean,
I mean every single one of us, all the normal
people I talk to, including me. You know, we've all
been through four years of historic inflation. You know, our
budgets are really you know tight. Try and put food
on the table for our kids, make sure that they
have medical care when they need it, et cetera. You know,
that makes people really nervous, and so there's been you know,
I think the media fear mongering really feeds something that's
already you know, already sore, really has riven a sore spot.
But however, I will say, we just had you know,
news out I believe it was today, or that inflation
has under the Trump administration while he's doing all of
this tariff negotiation, fall into the lowest level in more
than four years. So again, you know, I remember still,
you know, when everything was fifty percent cheaper in the
grocery store. But I do appreciate the fact that inflation
has not continued to increase at a record pace. So
what do you think do you think that has any
information to offer about you know, people's fears about the
tariff thing, you know, the tariff war maybe driving up prices,
or do you think it's still too early to tell
it's just a really small data point.
Speaker 3: Well, no, it's an important day to point.
Speaker 4: And I googled you guys ahead of time just to
see what's hot at the Federalist. I was very happy
to see that already out. So whoever compliments to whoever
did that. But yeah, you know, this guy's falling inflation's creating.
Inflation was twenty percent under Biden. You never heard a
word four years.
Speaker 1: It's more than twenty percent.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I memorized all my grocery buy prices and it's
at least fifty percent more.
Speaker 4: No food, all that higher whatever. But you know, just
on average, the market rasket whatever.
Speaker 1: Our home values doubled in three years.
Speaker 2: Ridiculous, yeah, right, no housing, right stuff, and therefoses and
it hasn't come back down.
Speaker 3: And that's due to the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 4: By the way, government spending triggers it, and then the
Federal Reserve does not have to accommodate all that spending,
and they did. And so it's a little ironic right
now that the Federal Reserve will not accommodate Trump's tariff policy.
That they have a dual mandate, right, stable prices and jobs.
And so Trump is the one that's trying to bring
the American worker jobs. There's going to be some ripples,
you know that's coming. So Trump told the Fed, you know,
print me some money in the short run. You printed
it for every other reason right under the sun. For
two trillion dollar deficits every year. They accommodate. The seven
to eight financial crisis, they accommodated the crooks. No one
went to jail. That's what got us this populous revolution.
Most likely variable and so no, there's.
Speaker 3: Good news on that front.
Speaker 4: On the tariff front, right, they're supposed to jack up prices,
and then the mainstream media is the culprit. They are
just doing disinformation.
Speaker 3: By the day.
Speaker 4: A month ago, they were making the analogy that the
stock market is down like nineteen twenty nine, for real,
I mean they were saying this, it's just like the
Great Depression, the markets down year on year, the market,
and it's in finally the news today the markets are
up on the year, right, So they're not down, they're
up a little bit. And you know, go verify all that.
People need to get economically literate and get their kids
economically literate so they can't get fooled again and again
and again.
Speaker 2: Well you know, I will say, however, it always makes
me nervous to have the government printing money because we're
already you know, the money printing has been just incomprehensibly high,
right from basically you know, my lifetime the last but
twenty years have been you know more, you know since Obama.
Speaker 1: Basically it's just been never ending.
Speaker 2: So can you kind of talk about how people I
think it's difficult for people to become financially literate or
know how to make wise decisions when you're in an
economy in which so many things are fake inflated this
I mean, you know, like you said, you know, you
have big businesses and big financiers. You know, there's a
minority of small people owning the vast majority of the
stuff and all of the wealth and et cetera. So
how is like a normal average person supposed to trust
the market?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: No, you know, uh, you know, what will be a
reliable way to provide for the needs that you have
in life in a responsible manner.
Speaker 4: Well, the way to do that is through the political process,
and you turf out anyone that's voting for seven trillion
dollar government budgets.
Speaker 2: Well, I think people, I mean, I agree with you,
but you know, you know that has been obvious for
the last twenty years, and we still have I mean,
that's the entire period of time in which Congress hasn't
given us a budget. We literally have no regular budget
process for the last almost twenty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so voters.
Speaker 1: Are not giving us that Congress.
Speaker 4: No and that people keep voting that those back in Exactly,
they don't do a budget, then they make it too high,
and then they do the Pelosi budget, and then you know.
Speaker 2: All put all of their friends and all their campaign
donors and basically ninety five, you know, ninety percent of
them are in a and so you know, everybody walks
off while our economy continues to you know, run towards
the clift yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and don't trust. Don't trust any of it because
most of it is not good.
Speaker 3: Right, they were supposed to do the Trump agenda.
Speaker 4: The Trump agenda is roughly speaking for the working class
America first. And when you go look at the tax
cuts and they're going to say, oh, the average American
family got x and x x and thousands of dollars
of savings.
Speaker 3: Don't trust that.
Speaker 4: What they probably did is take the total number divided
by the total number of people.
Speaker 3: I'd say, on average, this is it. But that ain't
the deal, right.
Speaker 4: You want to find out what did the middle person get,
what did the media median person get? In the middle
And I'm not too optimistic there, and so you put
your finger on it. With the donor class, they've gotten everything.
They're getting the spoils of the seven trillion dollar budget,
and then they're getting the tax cuts as well. And
that's what's got the American people restless right now. And
I'm pro growth, pro capital, pro tax cuts, always have been.
But if the rich, the fortune five hundred and the
Magnificent seven, they haven't said a word about spending. They
haven't said a word. In fact, they're trading into China
still while China implodes. There's a video going out right now.
G is in some deep kimchi or whatever the China
equivalent is.
Speaker 1: You mixed your Asians.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That's my creat food talking to me.
Speaker 4: But anyway, the he there's a video out yes day,
massive hailstorms going off, and she may have lost it.
And then the problem is who's waiting in the wings,
even more hardline or not. And so their economy has
been cracking for the past five years with his trade
tariff war is really cracking. Ships aren't shipping, people are
not getting their job. There's there's riots and protests.
Speaker 3: In the streets.
Speaker 4: Go out to YouTube and confirm what I'm saying, and
it's widespread, it's not here and there, And now there's
this new idea that she's lost the decree of Heaven
or whatever they call it. Yeah, the mandate of Heaven. Correct,
that's a good thing about hanging out with you smart
people at the Federalists. This is a fun interview.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, right, so, I mean, I know you
know that China, right, it projects a very a lot
of power, and it does have a lot of capacity,
as you noted all the manufacturing ability.
Speaker 1: That it has that we have eroded ours. But also
you know, people who pay attention to.
Speaker 2: China are aware that, you know, a lot of their
they falsify their numbers, you know, they do.
Speaker 1: I mean they have.
Speaker 2: I mean, to have a communist society is to have
a corrupt society. So that's a lot of transaction costs
and bureaucracy that's.
Speaker 1: Embedded into the system.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Then then you have the.
Speaker 2: Whole problem of you know, you have to basically buy
people's silence or you know, terrify it out of them,
which is another really.
Speaker 1: Expensive thing for a government to do.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of strategic weaknesses that are a
part of their system. And we tend to see the
more positive things, you know, while they hide the negative things.
Speaker 1: But I guess I've always.
Speaker 2: My thought about that has always been kind of like
the United States is in a similar position, with maybe
different structural risks and different structural assets and advantages. So
we're kind of, you know, in a situation where you know,
which hulking be behemoth with major structural internal problems is
going to you know, come out and triumph in the end. Yeah,
and you know the word, it's not clear which one
that's going to be.
Speaker 1: But as an American, of course, I.
Speaker 2: Want the United States to do better and obviously win that,
especially just for the sake of you know, that it's
better for the world that we do that, even though
we're not perfect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well no, And I think the evidence is tilted
heavily toward the US win. And the evidence for that
is when Trump goes around the world, the second most
populous country is India. Under mody, there are buddies. Now,
Saudi's today is our buddies. Everybody's given us free planes.
Speaker 1: Right to the because we can't build them.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, great to know.
Speaker 3: That was the first part of my lecture. Now I
got to give.
Speaker 4: I went to seminary thirty five years ago, so I
got to you know, you got to give the pastoral
side and give you faith and hope as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well go ahead, And I mean, well, I guess
I always wonder about what do you think are kind
of the you know, so Trump has this big, huge
mess of a situation, right, you know, he wants some
liquidity that the Federal Reserve won't give him, even though
we give it to other people. He has to basically
remedy you know, forty years of if not more, you know,
major cultural and economic and social problems.
Speaker 1: He's got four years to do it, maybe only.
Speaker 2: Two because you know what I was about to say,
he won't have maybe Congress in the midterms, and then
I thought, well, what good is congress?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: You know, what is that the matter?
Speaker 2: They can't even pass a budget or do anything else. So,
you know, so what what's your play? You know, what
do you think are the things that he can do
in an extremely precarious situation, you know, to kind of
help the good things happen and tamp down, you know,
with the United States, for example, sitting on a tsunami
of unfunded liabilities, you know, among all kinds that we
don't have the manufacturing we've saw, we saw the supply
chain in the national security risks with all the COVID stuff.
You know, So, what what's the major play that you
think is necessary in order to kind of help the
United States not collapse?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, this time around, I think he did his homework
and sharpen the pencil, and he's picking the biggies, right.
You always want to go for the low hanging fruit first.
So he's doing the tariff piece, which causes the ripples.
And I don't like money printing either, and it was
but it was just more of a comparative thing, right,
like why won't the Fed ease a little or just
signal they can even just signal, right, you know we're there.
Speaker 1: You're more fake trillion dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I know exactly. And so that's the hard piece.
Speaker 4: But then he's got the energy pieces moving in the
right direction, and.
Speaker 3: Then Congress of course won't do the right thing on that.
Speaker 4: In the budget, they're still they got legs of five
years on all the Biden clean stuff, not all, but
most of it. So you got the energy piece, and
then you've got the regulatory piece, and then you've got
the healthcare piece, and then the lawfare piece.
Speaker 3: Is blocking them.
Speaker 4: But he's got a lot of the major you know,
sectors in the economy, and then he's downsizing the federal government.
The doge did have some I think significant, at least
symbolic effects, like us AID showed. Right. We a lot
of times the conservatives make charges, they're called conspiracy theorists.
But now we got receipts right across the board of
the State Department's CIA, FBI cut out in the media,
cutouts in the Protestant Church, the Jewish, the Catholic Church.
There's receipts on all of it.
Speaker 3: And it's not small. It's in the hundreds of millions each.
And so.
Speaker 4: The fact that the American people now know that, you know,
that gets back to some of you know, the institutions.
There's a guy in Economic growth there he Dug North,
won the Nobel Prize for his work on institutions, and
they really matter. And if you lose trust, right, and
we leave religion out of the picture, that Judeo Christian
West gave us the central defining issues, which we they're
still there, but they you know, Trump could work on
those a bit more right. The the the first and
probably most important idea is that we're all made in
the image of God. And then if you're a government.
James Madison went to Princeton Seminary, roughly speaking, wrote the Constitution,
studied Hebrew. He was the first graduate student Hebrew. And
in the Hebrew text that you got the fall and
human nature ain't good. So how would you structure a government.
You'd separate powers every which way. Right, So on the
one hand, we're made in the image of God. On
the other hand, we're falling. You build the architecture, do
the rule of law. Moses is prominent. I was in
the Congress. Moses is the number one lawgiver up there
in the pantheon. And we need to get back to
some of that and all the founders. This was not
a cliche. This republic was founded for a moral people.
The invisible hand of Adam Smith only works right with
a moral people. That doesn't mean he got to be
a bunch of Puritans and you know, judgmental Pharisees or whatever.
Speaker 3: It just means.
Speaker 1: That's just a smear. I kind of like the Puritans.
Speaker 3: I do too. I'm a Prebeterian.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever read Albion Seed, but
you know that's uh. It looks through kind of the
four founding kind of ethnic groups of early America, and
it made me really like the Puritans a lot, would
you know.
Speaker 3: Run right? Well? They One of.
Speaker 2: My favorite things was this is totally rando, But I thought,
why did the peer entertains do that? They when a
young man and women were courting, they put you know,
them in a sac which with a board tied between
them and let them sleep all night together.
Speaker 1: He's like, that doesn't sound very Puritan, but we're you know,
but they have also some very lovable traits.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, one of them is called putting off consumption
instant gratification for the long term of good of your
country and your kids. And the Black Church used to
be iconic and the grandparents would work three jobs to
get one kid through college and they did it, and
and the same with the Hispanic Catholic Church, et cetera. Right,
but there used to be that, you know that that
Protestant work ethos and boy, we're losing that and that's
tied to that character piece. And if you lose that piece,
you know, Why am I on the planet? That's Socrates.
You don't even have to be religious?
Speaker 3: Who am I? What is man? Why are we on
the planet? Right?
Speaker 4: I mean, just the basic questions we're not answering, and
Kate to twelve, you're not allowed to ask the questions
or you go to jail.
Speaker 3: I think these days.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of.
Speaker 2: People going to jail now thanks for ridiculous reasons. Well,
I'm trying to think what I'd like to talk about
as we close off. There's a lot of I mean,
there's a lot of good stuff going on on economics.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess I would think.
Speaker 2: I guess this is a slight switch from the economics topic.
But something I think that you're close to and I
wanted to ask you about, which.
Speaker 1: Is you know, Trump can't do all of it alone.
Speaker 2: We've been trashing Congress during this podcast for a very
good reason, you know, but you know, really to get
generational changes in place to really reverse a lot of
the institutionalized, chronic problems of the United States, it's going
to take you know, people being elected at multiple levels
and working with him.
Speaker 1: You know, he can't do this alone.
Speaker 2: So and I think a lot of the time, you know,
I mean, the Trump administration really in a way different
from administrations for against at least since Reagan, if not before.
Speaker 1: He brought into power a lot of.
Speaker 2: The Republican base and the activist types against the wishes
of the party establishment.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, you know, is it that he's getting
bad advice?
Speaker 2: But often when he endorses people for running for seats,
some of them are really great picks, but some of
them are just entrenching the same system that he's fighting against.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well you really have to get warriors the
folks that you pick.
Speaker 4: And even then, you know, you got the Freedom Caucus
thirty or forty, and we used to get stink eye
from everybody, right, the two hundred over sitting and that
we got, we got the eye every five seconds.
Speaker 3: Now Trump's saying and.
Speaker 4: A lot of those people are the popular kids on
the block, right, it just makes me gag.
Speaker 3: I just I'm just like, you gotta be kidding me.
They were boot licking the leaders.
Speaker 2: They all like took off their you know, heal helmets
and put on their Trump shirts.
Speaker 3: And their hats. They're talking good, but they're not voting good.
Speaker 4: And that rips right, and So the the main problem
that I that I do see that is solvable. And
you look at my evidence for this is Trump took leadership,
ran on an agenda, and one on that agenda, and
he carried a lot of people with and then what
does Congress and the Senate do?
Speaker 3: They're gutless.
Speaker 4: And now at election time because everybody's looking at the
midterms right every and everyone's chicking.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're going to lose.
Speaker 4: Well, you want to know why we lose? Because the
House and the Senate doesn't have an agenda. They're not
following the America First agenda. They won't publish it. When
you see what's in the tax bill, you're going to
see why. Probably I hate to be that that's.
Speaker 1: Right the voters. I'm excited about that.
Speaker 3: Then I know that's a rough statement.
Speaker 4: And so if you look at what's in this package, uh,
predominantly the majority is not going to be middle class driven.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be the Trump agenda.
Speaker 4: And if people unpack the donor connections, they're not going
to be happy campers. And so that's why they don't
want to publicize it. But they have to at least
going forward make some promises. A b. C. Right, Trump,
it was pretty clear. It was the inflation, and then
it was the border invasion, and then it was.
Speaker 3: The Endless Wars.
Speaker 4: Those were the big three and just every day boom
boom boom. Where's the House on any of them? And
then where are the governors on any They won't speak
on any of this stuff. And there's your hint, right,
And these people that want to be president if they
haven't been beating the drum on it now, no way,
Jose right and the Dems.
Speaker 3: You know, we're taking it to the Republicans.
Speaker 4: All political views on my own, but the Democrats is
like fighting against Santa Claus, right, And I shouldn't even
say Santa Claus because a lot of those Santa Clauses
want to destroy and bring the They think the central
problem of America is our exceptionalism and they want to
bring us down some notches. And so the illiteracy rates
in the inner cities fine, right, making lower incomes. Fine,
We don't have a leadership position in the world. Find that,
you know, we don't deserve it. We're a bunch of
you know what, You'reuropean males who've you cursed the earth
and so you know, if that's your view, it ain't
my view. Where the first batch of Puritans that got
human rights came uniquely only out of Judeo Christian West
in Western Europe at a particular time, and the rest
world still doesn't have human rights in trined and the
Marxists don't believe there are human rights right and so.
Speaker 3: We need to get.
Speaker 4: You know, if not a contract, you know, a new
Gingrich contract with America. We got to run on something.
And I'm creedle, I'm Presbyterians, like creeds. I like the
Republican creed. There's nothing wrong with the creed except no one.
Speaker 3: Follows it right.
Speaker 4: And we need just two or three promises that are
big that the American people want to hear, and then
we got to do it and follow through on it,
and then Congress fool will be in for fifty years
because the left's back in AOC and Bernie right now right,
and they're backing drug trafficking, a wife abusing.
Speaker 1: This is for real prescription crisis.
Speaker 3: Backing now right, and we're losing to them.
Speaker 4: Folks, Hello, right, Hold your people accountable. That's the best
thing everyone out there listening. Hold your congressman, woman, senator accountable,
hold them accountable every day. Well.
Speaker 2: David Bratt is the senior vice president of business Relations
at Liberty University and a former US Congressman. We're going
to be actually seeing each other in person a couple
of days here, May twenty second, at the Lucas Estate
in Indianapolis, Indiana. If any of our readers are readers,
any of our listeners are in the area in the Midwest,
you should come join us. You can find information about
that event at the First Principles Forum dot org. I'm
on the board of that organization. Doctor Bratt, thank you
for your time today. Thanks for joining the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 4: You bet if I also can join. And we're having
a CEO summit at Liberty University October fifteen and sixteen,
so you business folks please join us at that as well.
Speaker 3: Thank you to Joy and the Federalists and what a
great show.
Speaker 1: All right, listeners, that's a wrap. You know.
Speaker 2: The tagline be Lovers of Freedom and Anxious for the Fray.
Speaker 1: I heard the fame voice the reason
Speaker 3: And then it faded away.