The interview can be viewed at NTD.
I gave this interview at CPAC 2025. At this point, it should be obvious to everyone that unrestricted global “free trade” with the Third World has completely destroyed America’s economy, undermined her national security, and emasculated a once proud and productive people.
The prime driver of these bad outcomes is the “offshoring vicious cycle”. Basically, American companies relocate production abroad because the cost of doing business is (often artificially) lower. This is because foreign countries have access to:
- plentiful cheap (sometimes serf-like) labor;
- disgustingly lax environmental regulations (which is causing an ungodly epidemic of toxic plastic pollution in our global water supplies, including microplastics in the rain);
- and foreign governments often subsidize industries in the short run, with the aim of establishing pseudo-monopolies in the long run (think “dumping” and all the other trade tricks that China has used to eviscerate American industries).
This creates an inexorable incentive for factories to relocate. The ones that do not are either diminished to the point of irrelevance or leave at a later date. Since 1979 America has lost ~7 million manufacturing jobs, and at least as many jobs which depended on them. This is because manufacturing is an anchor industry which supports service industries—sort of like a mine or rich farmland.
Job loss has led to wage stagnation & a spectacular decline in purchasing power. This has caused all sorts of negative outcomes ranging from people being forced to leave the towns they grew up in, either to find work or because the houses are too expensive, to a shift in the American diet from healthy (but expensive) foods like steak & butter, to less nutritious options like chicken & (poisonous) seed oils. Americans are poorer & less healthy than ever before, in large part because of the offshoring vicious cycle.
Tariffs are an easy fix to these systemic problems that President Trump can institute right away, without any delays from Congress.
