October 21, 2025 • 46 mins
Joe Balagtas, a former senior economist at the White House's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) and professor of agricultural economics at Purdue joins colleague hosts Todd Kuethe and Chad Fiechter in this episode of the Purdue Commercial AgCast. Balagtas shares his unique experiences working at the CEA during the Trump administration and his role in providing the President with critical economic information. He provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his daily life, the stress and fulfillment of working under extreme pressure, and the lessons learned which he brings back to academia. The conversation provides insight into the importance of having specialized economists in policymaking and the dynamic nature of the White House during significant events like the trade war and COVID-19 pandemic.
Podcast provided by Purdue University's Center for Commercial Agriculture. For more economic and farm management information, visit us at http://purdue.edu/commercialag.
Slides and the transcript from the discussion can be found at https://purdue.ag/agcast199.
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Check out all of our Purdue Commercial AgCast video interviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0sw5w6odSS111rbY1glHw
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You're listening to thePurdue Commercial AgCast.
(00:02):
I'm Todd Kuethe, professor herein the Department of Agricultural
Economics, part of the CCA.And I'm joined by my co-host...
Chad Fiechter, also a professorof agricultural economics.
We go around and have a bunch ofconversations with people to try to
understand the ag economy, or understandag's role in the broader economy.
We've had a lot ofconversations with people.
(00:22):
We get to ask them questions.
Doing this podcast gives them an excuseto say yes to us asking these questions.
But it's also nice for us'cause we get to learn a bunch.
And we thought the kind of audiencewe have, they also like to learn.
That's why we also release them, right?
Yeah.
You're about to listen to acolleague of ours, Joe Balagtas.
And Chad, why don't you just tellus again how we broke our only
rule we made for this podcast?
(00:44):
Yeah.
Okay.
So, the rule that Todd'sreferencing is that we weren't
gonna talk to other academics.
We wanted this to be aconversation with people who have
experiences different than ours.
However, Joe's had a very uniqueexperience and that is, he worked
for the Council of EconomicAdvisors for the White House during
Basically the end of the first Trump term.
(01:06):
He was gone before Biden was sworn in.
That's right.
But it was in that interim time.
He worked for the Council of EconomicAdvisors as a group that does research
and information to benefit the President.
So a lot of it is evaluating policyproposals or if the administration has
(01:29):
a question about what's going on inwhatever sort of sector of the economy.
And they have differentexperts for different areas.
And Joe covered agriculture.
Sort of like a conversation we had withNate Kaufman from the Kansas City Fed.
Yeah, you're right.
How the Federal Reserve kind of always hasa, a couple of ag people around so they
can understand how it fits into everythingelse or how the ag sector works.
Right.
So the Council of EconomicAdvisor similarly has almost
(01:50):
always has an ag person.
Purdue was kind enough to give him alittle space to go do that for a year.
It's nice 'cause he brings and allthis experience and information back.
Plus he represents us there, right?
And gets to meet some reallyinteresting, and talented people
that are experts in other areas.
But we wanted to sit down with Joe 'causewe wanted to learn how's the White House
actually work from your perspective,from somebody that works in it?
(02:12):
When it relates to the agriculturesector and economic policy.
So similarly, we had aconversation with Matt Erickson.
And the Matt and Nate ones,you can go back and listen.
They, they're up already.
We had conversations with MattErickson, what is an ag person like on
the Hill trying to pass legislation?
How does an ag committee work?
We were like, oh, we shouldget similar talk to Joe.
We would not have found out as muchas we would like to know about Joe's
(02:35):
time in Washington without it beinglike, help us learn for this podcast.
But I think that this is symbiotic,like we're using the audience,
of we think two, three, to haveconversations with people like Joe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we started this with one listener.
We did.
Now we're up to two, three.
Two, three.
We might have six.
By the end of this show episode, it's thatgood that we could double our audience.
(02:57):
I think you should definitely enjoy it.
Listen, tell your friends and colleagues.
Spread it around.
If you liked the conversation, ifyou've liked what we do with our time
here, if you find it enjoyable, I'llgo back, listen to the other ones.
Also we got, more lined up andwe got a whole fall schedule of
people we're hoping to interviewand get some information out there.
(03:19):
Today we're introduce yourself for us.
Say hello to the audience.
Hello audience.
I'm Joe Balagtas.
We have a tradition thatsometimes works on this podcast.
Mm-hmm.
Our audience is, drivinga combine or a tractor.
Maybe they're just driving in the car.
and they're imagining thisconversation in their minds.
So, Chad and I, in our firstpodcast, we mentioned that,
(03:40):
Chad's been told he looks like
Lorenzo Llama.
Yes.
Lorenzo Lamas, a young Lorenzo Lama.
Not a current.
It was also, my hair was a little bitlonger and I think it was driven by that.
Yeah.
We'll see what you get nowwith a little bit shorter hair.
I've been, I was told I lookedlike comedian Tom Segura.
So I almost thought you lookeda little bit like, and I'm
gonna draw blank on this name.
(04:01):
Who is the actor?
He was in Close Encountersof the Third Time
Dreyfuss.
Richard Dreyfuss.
Wow, that's awesome.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
You posted a picture of you and yourfamily and I commented that I didn't know
Catherine was married to Richard Dreyfuss.
I'll take it.
(04:22):
That's good.
Yeah.
I'll, I'm gonna use that one from now on.
I've been told I looklike Richard Dreyfuss.
So Joe, for our listener ispicturing, this conversation, tell
him a little bit, what celebrityhave you been told you look like?
So we can picture that in our minds.
I've been here, what, 20 years now, andthis is early in my career at Purdue.
I went to the co rec to work out.
(04:43):
As I was walking out, there's a groupof high school volleyball players.
There's a high schoolvolleyball tournament.
And as I walked through the door,through these group of kids, I heard
over my shoulder somebody say, andthis is gonna date me a little bit.
The student said, Hey look, it's Yao Ming.
And I thought it was both offensiveand hilarious at the same time.
(05:06):
It's both of those mostly 'cause youdo not look like Yao Ming in any way.
One, you're not seven feet tall.
I'm not seven feet tall.
Two, you're not famously aChinese basketball player.
No.
Of any height.
I also impressed that itwas high school students.
I would've said elementary for you tolook like you, you look more like Yoa Ming
the shorter the person observing this.
That's true.
(05:27):
But if they were like roughly your height
Yeah.
Then,
Were you on a hill?
No, I was just walking on the door.
Ok.
Alright.
Were you, uh, the top half of twopeople in a trench coat looking like a?
Anyway, I think we've gone asfar as we can with that one.
We should talk about whatwe came to talk about.
Yes.
So the reason, Joe, we invited youto come in is you had an interesting
(05:50):
role for a year as an ag economist.
You worked at the Councilof Economic Advisors, which
is part of the White House.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Sure.
So summer of 2019, I went on leavefrom my job here at Purdue, to work at
the CEA, Council of Economic Advisors,in D.C. Basically, Purdue loaned me,
(06:11):
to the Council of Economic Advisors.
I was there for 18 months.
Working on agriculture and tradeand a bunch of other stuff.
Okay.
So, we'll take a step back.
You work for the President, right?
So it's in the White House.
Correct.
So the Council of Economic Advisorswas created, I think it was '47, just
after World War II, to be economicconsulting agency for the White House.
(06:38):
And about how many economists are therefor the Council of Economic Advisors?
So the council itself istypically three people.
A chair, and two othermembers of the council.
Under those three, there's maybe10 to 12 senior economists.
I was a senior economist that coverthe span of the global economy.
And then there's probably 20junior economists and interns
(07:03):
that do almost all the work.
So the Council of Economic Advisors is inthe Eisenhower Executive Office building
the EEOB, which is, to me a French lookingbuilding right next to the White House.
Directly west of the WhiteHouse, on the White House campus.
And that was amazing, right?
Just going through WhiteHouse Security every day.
(07:24):
On my way to work.
Right.
And then, and then
Did you go every day?
In the office?
Oh yeah.
In the office, every day.
Even through most of the pandemic.
I think we are the lastpeople working in person.
Seriously.
In June of 2020, at the height of COVID,I could walk down, I lived near Chinatown,
which is a mile east of the White House.
(07:46):
I could walk down themiddle of the street.
All the way to work.
Nobody else was there, was desertedbecause of COVID, and we were in person.
Yeah.
So anybody who's listening athome that is not familiar with the
Eisenhower building, I would encouragethem to go on Google Image search.
It's my favorite building inD.C. At least I've never been
on the inside, but the outside.
The best looking building in all of D.C.
(08:06):
It's beautiful.
I don't know how to des,I'm not an architecture guy.
How would you describe it?
No, no.
It looks sort of Frenchy.
Old, old, old, timey andformal and beautiful.
It looks like it should havebeautiful gardens all around.
Like almost like a palace in a way.
I think it's more attractivebuilding than the White House.
Is any part of visualizing theWest Wing, the show West Wing
(08:27):
appropriate for where you worked?
So the West Wing is the partof the White House closer to
the executive office building?
It's separated by the WestWing and the EEOB are separated
by a driveway, essentially.
And there are people shuttlingback and forth that driveway into
the West Wing on the regular.
(08:47):
So, tell us a little bit, howdid you end up working at CEA?
What was the path that sort of,how did you get that opportunity?
So let's talk about whatthe CEA does, right?
Oh, start there.
The, the CEA
Joe, you should host this podcast.
The CEA provides information on theeconomy to the President, right?
And it was created to be staffedby government economists on leave
(09:11):
from places like the USDA or
Department of Energy or
et cetera.
Yeah, right.
Um, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Treasury.
Commerce.
And then also from academia.
Academic economists, experts inparticular fields, who go and give their
time to the White House, to make surethat the President is making decisions
(09:32):
with the best information possible.
And you were there as anagricultural economist.
You only have 10 senioreconomists covering the economy.
Most of them are experts in theirfield, labor, trade, et cetera.
Agriculture's a tinypart of the U.S. economy.
So if you're only gonna pick 10economists to cover the whole economy.
(09:53):
You might think, oh, maybe don'tpick an agricultural economist.
But it's so specialized, right?
You need someone to cover agriculturethat knows the institutions.
So there's typically an ageconomist on that staff.
Not always, but typically.
That was my experience, likewhen I worked at the USDA.
Right.
We had people frequentlythat would do spells in CEA.
(10:14):
Yeah.
Because particularly like, Ithink it's seasonal, right?
So like if there's challenges relatedto food or agricultural production
or something, that it gets moreincentivized to have somebody with
that specialization there, right?
And are you typically,were there 18 months?
I was there, it was a 12 month appointmentthat extended for another six months.
At the end of the firstTrump administration.
(10:36):
So you were so good that they werelike, we can't let Joe leave now.
We need him at least another half a term.
That's what I like to tell myself.
Did you think of yourselfworking for the President?
Like, 'cause you span too,so did you think of yourself
You're in the White House,a political building, right?
Everybody in there is political.
Almost everybody there is onTeam Trump or on Team Biden or on
(10:59):
team, whoever the President is.
And that's just how theWhite House works by design.
I wasn't really on Team Trump.
I wasn't on team anybody.
I'm an economist and I don'thave strong policy positions.
I just do analysis.
So when I was invited, the firstconversation I had interview, uh, I had
with the chief of staff was, well, I'mreally not on board any particular policy.
(11:22):
Is that a problem?
And she said, absolutely not.
We want people to provideobjective facts, information,
knowledge from the literature.
So the President has that, right.
And as long as you're not likeout there, you know, marching
against the President, we're good.
This is an not totally, but that'sobjectively what it's supposed to
(11:44):
be doing, is to be an objectiveanalysis of the economy, to provide
information to the president.
That's That's how the CEA is designed.
Now, of course, people who havestrong political leanings might not
be willing to work for the presidentof the, of, of who's, who's espousing
parties that they don't ag uh,
Sure.
policies that they don't agree with.
Right.
(12:04):
So, republican presidents tendto have conservative leaning
Mm-hmm.
economists on the CEA.
Democratic presidents tend to have liberalleaning economists on the CEA and so on.
Okay.
But the CEA really does stand out in theWhite House as relatively nonpolitical.
Okay.
And that's both the, again, by designit's a strength, but it's also a weakness.
(12:26):
So everybody else in the White Househas strong political position, policy
positions that they're pushing for.
And the economist is the nerd in thebuilding saying, well, actually, right.
It makes you really unpopular.
I mean, do you kind of feel like that,like you're a little bit of like.
Oh, absolutely.
If they see you out, there're like, yeah..
Yeah, let's not invitethat guy to the meeting.
And then the things that the CEA does,one of the things I know is that there's
(12:49):
the annual, like it believe it's annual,the economic report of the president.
Correct.
So you would contribute somesection of that report that's under
your purview or expertise, right?
Yeah, correct.
Were you there when they did the,when it was the superhero report?
Do you know what I'm talking about?
So this is what a nerd I am.
So I, I sometimes read this, but therewas like a year where they had all these
(13:10):
thank you's and they thanked all theinterns, and then they listed the non
superhero name of a various superhero.
So it'd be like.
We're thanking, Clark Kent and,
I think one of the ERPs, they'recalled, one of the ERPs had some
of those Easter eggs in them.
Yeah.
For people to find.
(13:30):
But you gotta be a nerd economistto be reading those thinking.
So you just told on yourself, Todd.
That's what we're here for.
That's my role in this podcast team.
Chad is the Lorenzo Lamas.
I'm the nerd, Dreyfuss.
Let's talk a little bit abouthow you got to be on the CEA.
how did you end up with this job?
The idea is you need someone withspecialty in agriculture to be there.
(13:52):
It's a relatively small worldof us ag economists that work on
policy, who you could draw from.
And somebody in their Rolodex had my name.
Right.
And so in fact, I had an agreementwith Rob Johansson, who was Chief
Economist at USDA at the time.
He said, Hey, we have an interestin having you in the CEA.
So presumably they would've called RobJohansson, we need an ag Economist,
(14:15):
and he would've thought of, here'sthree to five people that I think would
be a good fit or something, right?
Yeah.
Correct.
And then you're in that set.
Correct.
I've done policy work and stuff.
The connection was actually onedegree of separation apart from Rob.
So Rob actually called Jason and I don'tknow if he asked Jason, Jason Lusk,
Who was our department head
at the time.
I don't know if he asked Jason andJason and said no, or if he asked Jason
(14:38):
for names and Jason gave him my name.
But either way, I should thank Jason.
You apply for it like a regular job?
Like you had to write a cover letterand give your resume or what we call CV?
Yeah, there are interviews.
This was a pretty informal interview.
The Chief of Staff, DJ Nordquist, atthe time, called me up once we realized
that there was interest on both sides.
(14:59):
She called me, there'sa 30 minute interview.
They had my CV and I was hired.
For everybody who doesn't know our world.
Largely we're just judged based ona piece of paper that lists out our
accomplishments around academic outputs.
Right.
So you're a known commodity.
It's not like you're just bumbling around.
(15:19):
People, people have a lot.
You've written some papers that covertopics that the council would care
about or maybe given speeches togroups that the council are trying
to reach or even interact with thestakeholders that they would value, right?
Yeah, no, that's right.
It's an honor to be askedand to serve on the CEA.
It's a feather in the capof Purdue, for me to do it.
That's why Jason and the dean at thetime, Karen Plaut, were happy to let
(15:44):
me, you know, they granted me leave.
Yeah, like the rest of us wouldhave extra classes to teach or
You guys picked up theslack while I was gone.
So thank you for that.
So you are the ag economist ofthis group of like 10 to 12.
You said 10, right?
10 economists.
Yeah.
Ish.
10, 12. So these other people are alsoeconomists, but you don't know them.
(16:04):
Like you're showing up first dayof work to like meet these other
economists who are, on paper at least,also as expertise in their area.
Right.
What was that like compared toworking with just ag economists?
Like the people that, likeyou're used to work where we all
care about this subject matter.
And now you're maybe the only onethat does, what was that like?
Well, so it's a little bit intimidating.
(16:26):
Because there are a lot ofsmart people in the White House.
In general, not just the CEA, alot of really smart, high energy,
driven people in the White House.
A lot of people who know how governmentworks, you know, and I walk in
there as an academic and I reallydon't know how government works.
Well, you do know how likecommittees and emails work.
That's the thing that,academics learn, right?
Like, oh, here's howyou schedule meetings.
(16:47):
We're pretty good at that.
Turns out we're not verygood at that, right?
I learned at CEA.
But yeah, it's a little intimidating.
It turns out people are, youknow, it's a small group.
People have to work together well.
One thing about CEA very differentfrom our scholarly work, we publish
stuff without our names on it, right?
So it's really team effort, right?
Everything that goes outis the White House, right?
(17:09):
And not Joe Balagtas for the White House.
If you did all the analysis, wrote allthe words, your name's not gonna show up.
This is not the job for someonewho wants individual glory.
Not really.
There's individual glory thatyou build a reputation and
say, oh yeah, I remember Todd.
He did this and let's bring him in asecretary in the next administration.
Something like that.
Oh, is Joe teasing his next move here?
(17:30):
Oh, no, not,
But is that a thing though?
Is that, like, is there, are therepolitically motivated economists
who, that would be one of thereasons you would want to be on CEA?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Right.
And so there are people at CEAright now, or in the White House
right now, who had a job in thefirst Trump administration, right.
Who now have a better job in theTrump administration because they
(17:52):
were there, and they were good team.
They're team players.
They're productive.
Right.
And they proved theirworth and, and they're
What would be a better job?
Then, I think that's subjective.
Right?
Okay.
So I, I honestly, for a yearand a half, it was great work.
I wouldn't wanna make a career out of it.
Okay.
It's really stressful.
It's very different than thetype of work we do here at
(18:14):
MM.
in academia.
I loved it while I was there.
I was very glad to comeback to Purdue though.
So let's get to our listener.
That person's favorite part of thepodcast, which is walk us through a day.
You walk the empty streetsfrom your apartment to the, uh,
the post apocalyptic
Yes.
streets of D.C.
Um, no, they were apocalyptic.
Oh, that it was not supposed yet.
(18:35):
It was still apocalyptic when we started.
So first of all, whattime are you going in?
Pretty flexible.
Eight ish.
Okay.
I'd be in.
Every now and then there'd bea early meeting and I'd go in
earlier, but it's more regular.
Hours were more regularthan I hold here at Purdue.
What's a typical day look like?
How do you spend your day?
Yeah.
So at any given moment, any givenday, I might have three or four
(18:59):
projects that I'm working on.
Some of them are regular, right?
So I was in charge of the IndustrialProduction and Utilization Report,
monthly report that comes out of, the Fed.
And whenever that came out, wewould get a early peak at it,
(19:20):
24 hours before it was released.
I'd write a memo with my team, andsend that to the President so he knows
what the news is gonna be the next day.
This is probably be the bigtakeaway and this is how
Yep.
various people are gonnareact to that information.
That's right.
Memo, like, you know,two or three bullets.
Right.
Here's what you need to know, Mr.President, about industrial production
in the country over the last month.
(19:42):
Do you think the President read it orsomebody who works for the President?
Who are you writing this for?
So that report was written forthe President and anyone else who
would be in the Oval Office withhim when it was shared with him.
Okay.
Right.
Did he read it?
I don't know, maybe.
I think somebody before the Presidentdecides what's newsworthy and what's
(20:02):
important for him to, to read.
Someone in the filter of, 'causehe's gonna get these things
handed to him all day long.
Right.
And so if there's some big breakingnews in industrial production, that
memo might come across his desk.
Are you in a group?
So like there's some portion of yourday then where you're like just reading
in isolation in your desk, right?
That's right.
But then there's some part where you'regonna get together with your colleagues
(20:25):
and say like, well here's my take on this.
Here's what jumped out to me.
Right.
You say it's a mix of sort of likemonastic alone time consuming information
Correct.
then breaking it down with other people.
Yep.
And for those regularreports, I'd be the lead.
I'd read the industrial production report.
I'd draft a memo, like bullets,and I'd give it to a junior
(20:48):
economist, Troy Durry in this case.
Think of junior economists as reallybright, early 20 something people that
drive Washington D.C. They might havea master's degree in statistics, but
probably like, international relationsor public policy or something like that.
The best description I ever heardabout D.C. was from, the newsman,
(21:10):
Brian Williams, who started his careerin D.C. and he said, it's a town full
of earnest, former student councilpresidents, driving Honda Accords.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's who runs a lot of the actualgroundwork in Washington, from the Senate
to the White House, to the agencies,even the political parties themselves.
And I'm here, I'm bright, I'm gonnawork on... Matt Erickson, previous
(21:31):
guest on the podcast did a littletime in that kind of world, right.
Troy would draft the memo, itwould come back to me and I'd
say, yep, that looks good.
Let's send it on.
And then did you present any of thestuff, like verbally, not just in
writing, like would you go in and briefthe President or a team of people?
I never briefed the President.
Mostly, I would brief theChair or one of the members.
(21:53):
And either the chair or the memberwould go to the Oval Office and
present the work to the President.
If you were politically motivated andyou wanted to work for a President, would
that be sort of a next natural step?
You were in a senior economist in theprevious administration and now it
just makes sense for you to move intothis Chair 'cause you have more, do
you have more influence as the Chair?
(22:14):
Oh, absolutely.
Maybe that the current chairs, are therecent chairs, that I could think of, some
of 'em worked in CEA as senior economists.
Right.
Well, here, here's an exampleof someone who I know that was a
chair is, Austin Goolsby, who's the
Oh yeah.
President of, Chicago Fed, right.
Yep.
Correct.
And so he has that experience.
(22:36):
He brings that experience to theFed and thinking about how they
interact with policy and stuff.
Tom Phillipson was chair towardsthe end of my time, or in the
middle of my time at the CEA.
He started as a senior economistand was promoted to chair.
Who's, who's doing the promoting?
Yeah, probably White House Chief of Staffand other people close to the President.
(23:01):
So if you make the President unhappywith your take on industrial production
in the United States, can he be likewhoever wrote this, get rid of 'em.
Yeah.
I'm not sure it's that... When Iwas there, I wouldn't think so.
Right.
I don't think people were afraidto, disagree, or to provide views
(23:24):
that might be seen as unpopular.
I think that was fine.
You know, one thing we workedon, getting back to tasks.
Starting pretty much the whole time Iwas there, we were working on trade,
in particular trade with China.
I arrived summer 2019, so the tradewar was already on, and we spent
a lot of time working on, movingtowards a trade agreement with China.
(23:48):
Got it.
Right.
And so CEA was producing a lot of workshowing that uncertainty around trade
policy, trade policy uncertainty wasreally costly for the U.S. And that
an agreement that gets rid of thatuncertainty would be a good thing.
And that was unpopular, right?
Among certain people in the White House.
(24:09):
Now did you have access to muchinformation that you could not
access now as a professor, orwere you basically looking at
around the same sources of data?
Same reports?
Yeah.
No, there's data there at the CEAthat I can't get anywhere close to.
One is we got early access, earlypeaks at official reports, right.
(24:32):
So, you know, before the BLS monthlylabor report comes out, we see
that 12 hours before it comes out.
Are you in a rush of like, Igotta get everything I can out
of this in the next 12 hours?
Yeah, so you gotta bereally careful, right?
You have access to incredible data andsome of it's sensitive and you just gotta
be really careful how you handle it.
(24:52):
There's all kinds of, yeah.
People respond, right?
If I send an email from myWhite House email address to
USDA, you get immediate answers.
People in private sector respondduring the, you know, when the COVID
pandemic kind of blossomed in Spring2020, credit card companies and other
(25:14):
companies tracking economic activityjust gave their data to the White House.
Right.
Seriously.
To help the White House figureout what the heck was going on.
Cause because one of the problems, andwe talked about this, we had Nate Kaufman
on who works at the Federal Reserve,there's a lot of good economic data, but
it can come in kind of slow or late, likethings are collected through surveys.
Yeah.
You know.
You, you get people's observations,but then you gotta process that.
(25:36):
It can take a while.
Right.
Like with the credit cards, you canmaybe get close to instantaneously.
Oh, people are going like,you were there in COVID.
Right.
So people are going back to restaurants,'cause the number of like sit down
restaurant, receipts is like doubled.
Exactly.
Another question is that like, how dowe know if you're doing a good job?
How are you evaluating beinggood at being a CEA economist?
(25:59):
Like what, what, what determinesthat or who determines that?
The members will let you know, right?
If you're being useful.
And they might let you know verbally,like, you know, Joe, get on board.
And I think I was told thisonce or twice by the Chair.
Meaning like we need more out of you?
We need different things out of you?
(26:19):
What were they meaning?
So I didn't love how some of the phaseone trade agreement was coming together.
I voiced my opinion.
I said, I'm not sure that'sa great way to do it.
And I was told, you know, get onboard.
Okay.
This is happening.
We want you to measurewhat's gonna happen.
Adjust.
But they listened, right?
And they said, yeah, we weretaking that into consideration.
Thank you very much.
(26:41):
So you're spending your day reading,writing, thinking about the economy.
How long is your day?
Are you there?
Do you leave at five?
Are you there in the evenings?
Is this like a lot of time.
It's a lot of time, right.
So I learned really, reallyearly that you never leave your,
your, white House phone behind.
So I went for a run on a Saturdaymorning, like two or three weeks
(27:03):
into my stint at CEA, and I cameback and my phone had blown.
And they're like, Joe, where are you?
We need you in the White House right now.
Right.
So you get, you're kind of always on call.
And there were plenty of dayswhen I went home at 5:00 PM.
Um, so it's it's kinda real.
Were you coming insometimes Saturday, Sundays?
Oh yeah.
Oh wow.
Interesting.
Yeah.
(27:23):
That's definitely not your typicalprofessor the pace of life.
It is so different thanour university jobs.
So you didn't have meetingsto plan a meeting for when
you would have your meeting?
No.
Whatever kind of thing.
No, things are really, yeah,
Like we're gonna do this next fall.
Let's get together in April tofigure out when we should meet
this summer to do this fall thing.
You know, there's this sense, um, atleast here in, I think in general, uh,
(27:48):
but certainly those of us who thinkabout how government works and government
policy, there's, there's this caricatureof really inefficient government.
The White House is anything but efficient.
The people there are really busy and theymove quickly and they're not inefficient.
Right.
I've never, there are nomeetings without an agenda.
(28:09):
And if we're done with the agendaitems, 30 minutes later let's
close shop and go back to work.
So I think what Joe's trying tosay is this podcast would not fly
No.
at the White House.
Definitely not.
This is productive activity.
I don't
Wait, can we go back?
'Cause I had a questionthat I've been holding onto.
So you wrote these memos.
Can you think of a time when somethingyou wrote like you heard later, like,
(28:33):
do, do you have any examples of like,
You could clearly tell that
the White House had consumedwhat you had put out.
I think the signing of the phase onetrade agreement was a win for the
CEA, in the sense that we were focusedon trade policy uncertainty, right.
(28:55):
There's a study from the Fed thatsaid trade policy uncertainty
knocked a point off of GDP in 2019.
Wow.
It's a big, really costly.
And so getting that agreement was,I'm not claiming credit for it.
But CEA was reallypushing for an agreement.
(29:17):
When that happens, are you like, there'snot a lot of moments in our jobs, there's
a few moments, right, papers get accepted.
Students do well, right.
Where it's like, oh, that's nice.
That feels nice.
Like, is that what you feelwhenever the agreement gets signed?
You're like, ah, we, that was good.
Yeah.
Was there ever a desire to likepop champagne with the colleagues?
We got it.
(29:38):
Yeah.
No, I think, and that was one of 'em.
Maybe a couple othersthat I can't talk about.
Yeah.
Back to you, Todd, the tasks and thingsyou're working on, thinking about it
as being a professor, how many of thosethings are sort of like predictable flow?
Like you kind of know thatreport's gonna come out?
Sometimes there's like that kind of a,and how much of it is just like you're
(29:59):
putting out the fire of the dead.
So there's this regular rhythm.
That's a good point of, monthly reports.
The annual report, the economicreport of the President
that's got a regular schedule.
Medium term projects that you mightbe working on, regulatory review.
That's all, pretty predictable.
On any given day, you're gonna get acall that says, Joe, we're working on
(30:21):
this, food box program and we need toknow, what the economic impact is or
what demand for, you know, what therate of food insecurity is in Florida,
and how this might affect that.
And we need the answerby, 5:00 PM Tuesday.
Or tomorrow.
That stuff could fill upquite a bit of your day.
So, I wasn't able to go visit Joe whilehe was there because it was COVID, but
(30:43):
there would be times where if I said like,Hey Joe, I wanna come out to visit you.
You'd say like, don't come this week.
This other week might bebetter or something, right?
Yeah.
Or you can predict it a little bit.
Yeah, that's right.
I know I agreed to host youfor a West Wing tour, Todd.
You know, but there's this crisisand we need to find, PPE, you
know, fixed PPE supply chains sothat hospitals have rubber gloves.
(31:05):
Right.
And I just can't get away.
So, sorry.
See you later.
So it's, it's hard to envisiona world where economists are so
valuable and needed in a crisis,like relative to like firefighters.
So when you went on the run and yourphone's blowing up, like can you
give an example of like, what is itthat they need you for so desperately
(31:28):
that there's a problem with youbeing out and away from your phone?
We, we weren't saving lives so much.
Most of the crises are moreinternal like, the President is
traveling to, North Carolina.
And, you know, 36 hours before histrip, a hurricane blows through.
(31:49):
that wipes out a bunch of agricultureNorth Carolina or in Virginia.
You know, give us four bulletpoints that the President has to
know when he visits North Carolinaabout agriculture in North Carolina.
So he's not showing up and be like,you've ruined a lot of orange groves
here in North Carolina, so you can beinformed as to what the problem is.
That's helpful.
(32:09):
And then COVID createddifferent types of crises.
Actual crises.
Yeah.
Those were, external crises,
if there was, rumors of a new wave orsomething, and then you're like, well, we
got to get some analysis of this on the,we can't wait till next week to correct.
But it is, I don't know whythat's interesting to me, but it's
interesting to me that there couldbe like these crisis driven research.
(32:31):
You guys and I, we do researchwith a really long time horizon.
And some of us work on papersthat take years, from inception
to publication, or decades.
We also tend to studythings that have happened.
So what was the effect of thisfarm bill on this group of farmers?
What you're doing in CEA is like,this could happen if this happened.
(32:52):
What's gonna happen?
Or we're just figuring out what the extentof COVID mean, you know, the pandemic
means, and there's a bunch of strawberrygrowers in Florida who suddenly,
have to plow up fields or something.
Right.
Man, you were there a weird time.
It was a crazy time.
Wow.
Trade for sure was crazy.
And then COVID was, you know, oh,that's the other thing about CEA.
(33:13):
So, because it's a small group,and we have to expand the whole
economy, I was working on a lotof stuff that wasn't agriculture.
Working on PPE supply chains, theeconomics of PPE supply chains and so on.
Is there a part of you that wants togo back sometime when it's boring?
Like if you got a similar call fromthe future chief economist like Joe,
right now, there's nothing going on.
(33:34):
Can you come, just hang out?
And it is, the excitement ispart of, is certainly is one
of the perks of it, right?
It was a really good change ofpace for me, you know, 15 or 18
years into my academic career.
And then the other question that weask everybody is talk about what sort
of constrains you or what, like limitsthe CEA from being as good as it could?
(33:58):
Like is it just literally like, Iwish we had six more people here.
Or I wish our days were an hour longer orthere's some piece of the economy I wish
we could actually measure better than.
What limits your ability to be?
Yeah.
I mean, more brains, morepeople, is always better.
But again, it's only 10.
So that you work with what you got?
(34:19):
I don't know.
I'm looking at this current White Housewondering if the focus on, loyalty,
part, one important job of the CEA, andothers in the White House, is to say,
you know, what this isn't a great idea.
Or the here are the costs of thisthing, right, that you're proposing.
(34:41):
And, for any President, you know,getting that information is important.
They might disregard it, right.
We're not politicians.
There's lots of good reasons whysomebody might pursue a policy that
have nothing to do with cost benefitanalysis, as we economists do it,
right, but it's important for themto have that information so that
they, they're aware of the costs.
And when they say, no, look, I'mgonna pursue this policy because,
(35:04):
you know, I need to vote fromSenator so-and-so from Alaska.
Yep.
So we've talked a lot about CEA, butare there similar other groups at
the White House, like in terms of.
Are they getting advicefrom non-economist?
Like is there a science policy councilor are they just basically CEA?
(35:24):
There is a science policy council.
It's called Office of Scienceand Technology Policy.
There is a Purdue colleagueat OSTP, when I was there.
On the economy, there's also theNational Economic Council, which is
really the driver of economic policy.
Kevin Hassett is now the chair of NEC.
He was chair of CEA and he wasrolling out just as I got there.
(35:49):
They're more political.
So you guys were kind of thenerds that would crunch the
numbers behind policy decisions?
Not necessarily as muchlike advocating particular,
We were not advocates.
Correct.
And again, that's by designand that's a feature, it's a
bug if you wanna be popular.
Right.
And if you wanna have power, right,if you're not, if you're not a
(36:12):
cheerleader, then, then, then, uh,
Like it sounds like me or Chad shouldn'tbe the National Economic Council
'cause we want to be cool and popular.
Do you guys have strong policy positions?
We do.
The more mundane the policy is,the more I have like I've got a lot
of opinions right now about parentteacher organizations at schools.
I've, at times in my life reallycared about, how you allocate
(36:34):
intramural fields among club sports.
Basically, the more mundane andsmall it is, the more it's like,
I'm gonna call out procedure.
But like what we should do aboutinternational conflict among other
countries, I don't have a lot of opinions.
Part of me, while I was there wishedI had had my own strong policy
positions that I could advocate for.
(36:55):
And I saw some of my colleaguesdo a little bit of that.
There's one guy, StevenBraun, who is at CEA now.
He's been at CEA, I think sincebill Clinton's first term.
Oh my goodness.
Wow.
And he's the lead macro forecasterfor CEA and a huge piece of
White House economic information.
(37:15):
Right.
So he has been at CEA longer thanyou have studied economics at all?
Through Republican and Democratpresidents and just has a lot of wisdom.
I once heard him tell thecautionary tale of the CEA
economist who wants to advocate.
And he was talking to a high schoolgroup that was touring the CEA.
He said the CEA is thenerdy kid at the lunchroom.
(37:40):
And that's our role.
And that's what we do best.
And every once in a while, one of thosenerdy kids will try to be a popular kid,
right, and it works for a little while.
But it always turns bad, right, italways ends up bad for that kid.
And maybe for the other nerds as well.
Well, 'cause also you live here in town.
So you lived 18 months away and youwere working kind of like insane hours.
(38:08):
Pretty insane hours.
It was interesting.
So I have three sons.
That fall of 2019, my oldest sonwas starting his senior year in
high school, another one in highschool, and then a younger one.
The high schoolers did not wanna move.
So Arlene, my wife, stayed withthe boys here in West Lafayette.
And I originally thought, well, I'll justgo find an apartment and I'll shuttle
(38:31):
back and forth every other weekend.
That turned out to be a lot of travel.
So I ended up, ended up to be more likeevery month-ish or so I'd come back.
In a way I ended up having more time formyself even though I was really busy.
Because I didn't have a wifeand kids waiting for me at home.
You could also like, I'm gonnapush dinner back 45 minutes.
(38:52):
And nobody
Yeah.
Right.
Be like, well, but then there'sthis practice and you gotta get,
I didn't have to shuttleanybody to practice.
I was setting you up for thepotential to be like, wow,
thanks for your service, Joe.
You really did as a service.
And then you flipped it around andnow our listener is not impressed.
Maybe they're like, nowI need to get a job at
CEA.
CEA.
And get a little me time.
(39:12):
Yeah.
What I'm saying, Chad, is right nowwith a bunch of kids, little kids in the
house would be a great time for you toleave and spend a year in Washington D.C.
Well, you said, on a Saturday morning runand I was like, get away from my phone.
Oh, it's, that's usuallynot what I'm worried about.
No.
I feel like we'veexhausted Joe pretty well.
We have.
(39:32):
So, we always wrap up with some lightningquestions, some, some quick answers.
So these will be like, we gottaget just your brain simple.
So I'll start with a classic one.
When you're working at the WhiteHouse, the White House gets a
time machine that you can onlyuse for professional purposes.
You can't use it for recreation.
It's just to make you betterat being a CEA economist.
(39:55):
When are you going towith your time machine?
Ooh.
Maybe a farm crisis.
Early eighties.
That would be a fun time to be workingon agriculture in Washington D.C.
Yeah, you can go back
Man, good answer.
That's at least in my top 20 answers.
You got a report coming out.
They're calling you in.
You're working extra hours,but you're getting hungry.
(40:18):
What are you going to eat?
Where are you gonna gograb something real quick?
The White House is on this island.
There's not a lot of greatretail close to the White House.
You have walking across the streettakes 30 minutes 'cause you have to
leave the building and go throughsecurity to get back in and so on.
So it's a little bit of a hassle.
And you probably can't justorder like a GrubHub to like
(40:40):
bring something to your desk.
They don't really deliver.
There's a mess hall in the, in the bottom,in the basement of, of the executive
office building that had just okay stuff.
D.C. has these lunch places,you'd know them, Todd, that just
make sandwiches and salad bars.
Yeah.
Or like a pay by the pound salad bar.
Exactly.
Yeah.
But there are a couple sandwichplaces that are really good.
(41:01):
And there's one, oh, just on theother side of Lafayette Square.
That made that roasted a couple turkeysevery day and made turkey sandwiches.
And if I had, again, 45 minutes to getaway from my desk for lunch, I, that,
that's a, that was a pretty good option.
Okay.
The White House similarly can issue youa magic wand, just to use for work, and
(41:24):
learn something that you can't otherwise.
Right, so you get this data, you get thesereports, you talk to people, but like
there's still something you're missing.
But now with this magic wand,you can know that thing.
What's the one thingyou're gonna use that,
What would be make me a good economist?
I don't know, maybe some, machinelearning skills or something like that.
(41:44):
I would've used the wand forunderstanding true preferences.
So the large language model doesn't get mecloser to why did you make that decision?
The like, the true why?
Yeah.
If I could know things
Or maybe you could learn,
If you really wanna be powerful,if you want to go to Washington
(42:05):
and sort of wheel power, it'snot clear economics is the tool.
I think it's law probably.
Seems like lawyers are the onesthat pull the levers more than
economists, unfortunately, for us.
Okay, so, I'm not legally telling youthat you could do this or should do this.
Good caveat.
If they were going to close the CEA.
(42:27):
It's done forever, but they're gonnalet all former CEA employees come
in and grab one thing to take asa souvenir to have at your house.
What are you taking from theWhite House or CEA stuff?
What would be your memento?
So, the White House had these umbrellasthat would stand at the doorway, um,
(42:52):
facing at, of the executive officebuilding, facing the West Wing.
So if it were raining andyou had to go to the White
You don't wanna get your suit wet?
You grab an umbrella and they're likevery nice, White House umbrellas.
And I almost thought I should just grabone and keep walking and take it with me.
And I never did.
And now I wish I had.
Oh, that's a good one.
(43:12):
Man.
I feel like now we know what to get, Joe.
Oh, that's true.
Now we know the perfect.
Yeah, exactly.
I actually bought a White Houseumbrella from the gift shop.
There's a gift shop in theexecutive office building.
Uh, but it's just not the same.
Right.
It's,
You wanted one of the used ones.
One with history.
Like the real ones.
(43:33):
Yeah.
Like having a black market.
This umbrella is this could, this couldhave been used to cover the hair of
name dignitary who came through theWhite House when it was raining one day.
Right.
Well, Joe, thank you for being so
Thanks, Joe.
generous of your time.
We learned a bunch.
It was good to talk to you.
Thank you
.Thank you again for listening to our conversation series here on AgCast.
(43:55):
I hope you learned a lot about theWhite House and economic policy
in the agriculture sector from theperspective of the Council of Economic
Advisors, a group that some of youmaybe have never heard of before.
It's another opportunity forpeople with a PhD in economics.
Joe talks about the people who aredoing the analysis and then bringing
it to Joe to sort of sign off.
Those are all people witha master's in economics.
(44:16):
So this is, also an interestingalternative career path.
It's an interesting mix of peoplethat are on it for a very long time.
That's their career.
Or you have people that sortof come in for a season.
Or for a brief period basedon the information needs of
the White House at the time.
We should also remind listeners thatwe have that great podcast with Nate,
Nate Kaufman, the Kansas City Fed.
If you haven't listened tothat one, it's really good.
(44:38):
And then that one was followed by
Oh, that was Brant.
Brant.
We talked about ag tech.
We got the chance to really find outwhat the heck actually is ag tech.
Yeah.
Which I think we ended up withmore questions than answers.
Y Yeah, I know, but like, I now feel likeag tech to me feels like a real thing.
Where before it was always just likesomeday this could happen, right.
There's like science fiction, buthe shows like, no, no, it's science.
(44:59):
Like it's, it actually exists.
And so that was interesting.
And, and then we had Joe Suttleson to talk about, large scale
investments in the ag sector.
Which is a follow up from conversationwe had with, Kyle Maple and Petro,
who is also on a previous podcast.
They also kind of work in that world.
One of the things about Joe,because I've been thinking about
the conversation we had with Joe,is he, he's real practical, right?
(45:20):
Like he's trying to make stuff work.
We're talking about investment at ahigh level, but then he's also the guy
that just has to make things work andstand between money and practicality.
Yeah.
And trying to get I don't know howlong people can use the analogy of
Green Acres till it's just outdated.
But it's like you're trying to talkto both Wall Street and farmers.
And get them to understand each other.
(45:42):
Is that the premise of Green Acres?
So the guy with the Green Acres waslike, it's this rich city dude that buys
a farm and it's like fish outta water.
But Beverly Hills is the opposite, whereyou get this sort of like country guy and
now he's living in with the high society.
I kind of feel likethat's what I'm living.
Yeah.
Except you're not a hillbilly.
It's flat as a pancake whereyou're from that rights.
That's true.
No.
You would be, I thinkyou would be a hay seed.
(46:02):
Or a hick.
Yeah.
I don't know which one of theseare offensive, but I feel like
hillbilly to me, now this is 'causeI'm from the Ozarks, hillbilly
implies topological variation.
But I guess you couldbe a Midwestern redneck.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, according to Jeff Foxworthy,anybody could be a redneck.
Yeah.
It's just matters likehow you use the high dive.
(46:26):
If you think we could learn fromyou and you happen to be coming
through Purdue, let us know.
'Cause we would love to learn more.
Thanks for listening.
Make sure to subscribe, tell yourfriends, and come back next month.
You're listening to thePurdue Commercial AgCast.
(00:02):
I'm Todd Kuethe, professor herein the Department of Agricultural
Economics, part of the CCA.And I'm joined by my co-host...
Chad Fiechter, also a professorof agricultural economics.
We go around and have a bunch ofconversations with people to try to
understand the ag economy, or understandag's role in the broader economy.
We've had a lot ofconversations with people.
(00:22):
We get to ask them questions.
Doing this podcast gives them an excuseto say yes to us asking these questions.
But it's also nice for us'cause we get to learn a bunch.
And we thought the kind of audiencewe have, they also like to learn.
That's why we also release them, right?
Yeah.
You're about to listen to acolleague of ours, Joe Balagtas.
And Chad, why don't you just tellus again how we broke our only
rule we made for this podcast?
(00:44):
Yeah.
Okay.
So, the rule that Todd'sreferencing is that we weren't
gonna talk to other academics.
We wanted this to be aconversation with people who have
experiences different than ours.
However, Joe's had a very uniqueexperience and that is, he worked
for the Council of EconomicAdvisors for the White House during
Basically the end of the first Trump term.
(01:06):
He was gone before Biden was sworn in.
That's right.
But it was in that interim time.
He worked for the Council of EconomicAdvisors as a group that does research
and information to benefit the President.
So a lot of it is evaluating policyproposals or if the administration has
(01:29):
a question about what's going on inwhatever sort of sector of the economy.
And they have differentexperts for different areas.
And Joe covered agriculture.
Sort of like a conversation we had withNate Kaufman from the Kansas City Fed.
Yeah, you're right.
How the Federal Reserve kind of always hasa, a couple of ag people around so they
can understand how it fits into everythingelse or how the ag sector works.
Right.
So the Council of EconomicAdvisor similarly has almost
(01:50):
always has an ag person.
Purdue was kind enough to give him alittle space to go do that for a year.
It's nice 'cause he brings and allthis experience and information back.
Plus he represents us there, right?
And gets to meet some reallyinteresting, and talented people
that are experts in other areas.
But we wanted to sit down with Joe 'causewe wanted to learn how's the White House
actually work from your perspective,from somebody that works in it?
(02:12):
When it relates to the agriculturesector and economic policy.
So similarly, we had aconversation with Matt Erickson.
And the Matt and Nate ones,you can go back and listen.
They, they're up already.
We had conversations with MattErickson, what is an ag person like on
the Hill trying to pass legislation?
How does an ag committee work?
We were like, oh, we shouldget similar talk to Joe.
We would not have found out as muchas we would like to know about Joe's
(02:35):
time in Washington without it beinglike, help us learn for this podcast.
But I think that this is symbiotic,like we're using the audience,
of we think two, three, to haveconversations with people like Joe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we started this with one listener.
We did.
Now we're up to two, three.
Two, three.
We might have six.
By the end of this show episode, it's thatgood that we could double our audience.
(02:57):
I think you should definitely enjoy it.
Listen, tell your friends and colleagues.
Spread it around.
If you liked the conversation, ifyou've liked what we do with our time
here, if you find it enjoyable, I'llgo back, listen to the other ones.
Also we got, more lined up andwe got a whole fall schedule of
people we're hoping to interviewand get some information out there.
(03:19):
Today we're introduce yourself for us.
Say hello to the audience.
Hello audience.
I'm Joe Balagtas.
We have a tradition thatsometimes works on this podcast.
Mm-hmm.
Our audience is, drivinga combine or a tractor.
Maybe they're just driving in the car.
and they're imagining thisconversation in their minds.
So, Chad and I, in our firstpodcast, we mentioned that,
(03:40):
Chad's been told he looks like
Lorenzo Llama.
Yes.
Lorenzo Lamas, a young Lorenzo Lama.
Not a current.
It was also, my hair was a little bitlonger and I think it was driven by that.
Yeah.
We'll see what you get nowwith a little bit shorter hair.
I've been, I was told I lookedlike comedian Tom Segura.
So I almost thought you lookeda little bit like, and I'm
gonna draw blank on this name.
(04:01):
Who is the actor?
He was in Close Encountersof the Third Time
Dreyfuss.
Richard Dreyfuss.
Wow, that's awesome.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
You posted a picture of you and yourfamily and I commented that I didn't know
Catherine was married to Richard Dreyfuss.
I'll take it.
(04:22):
That's good.
Yeah.
I'll, I'm gonna use that one from now on.
I've been told I looklike Richard Dreyfuss.
So Joe, for our listener ispicturing, this conversation, tell
him a little bit, what celebrityhave you been told you look like?
So we can picture that in our minds.
I've been here, what, 20 years now, andthis is early in my career at Purdue.
I went to the co rec to work out.
(04:43):
As I was walking out, there's a groupof high school volleyball players.
There's a high schoolvolleyball tournament.
And as I walked through the door,through these group of kids, I heard
over my shoulder somebody say, andthis is gonna date me a little bit.
The student said, Hey look, it's Yao Ming.
And I thought it was both offensiveand hilarious at the same time.
(05:06):
It's both of those mostly 'cause youdo not look like Yao Ming in any way.
One, you're not seven feet tall.
I'm not seven feet tall.
Two, you're not famously aChinese basketball player.
No.
Of any height.
I also impressed that itwas high school students.
I would've said elementary for you tolook like you, you look more like Yoa Ming
the shorter the person observing this.
That's true.
(05:27):
But if they were like roughly your height
Yeah.
Then,
Were you on a hill?
No, I was just walking on the door.
Ok.
Alright.
Were you, uh, the top half of twopeople in a trench coat looking like a?
Anyway, I think we've gone asfar as we can with that one.
We should talk about whatwe came to talk about.
Yes.
So the reason, Joe, we invited youto come in is you had an interesting
(05:50):
role for a year as an ag economist.
You worked at the Councilof Economic Advisors, which
is part of the White House.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Sure.
So summer of 2019, I went on leavefrom my job here at Purdue, to work at
the CEA, Council of Economic Advisors,in D.C. Basically, Purdue loaned me,
(06:11):
to the Council of Economic Advisors.
I was there for 18 months.
Working on agriculture and tradeand a bunch of other stuff.
Okay.
So, we'll take a step back.
You work for the President, right?
So it's in the White House.
Correct.
So the Council of Economic Advisorswas created, I think it was '47, just
after World War II, to be economicconsulting agency for the White House.
(06:38):
And about how many economists are therefor the Council of Economic Advisors?
So the council itself istypically three people.
A chair, and two othermembers of the council.
Under those three, there's maybe10 to 12 senior economists.
I was a senior economist that coverthe span of the global economy.
And then there's probably 20junior economists and interns
(07:03):
that do almost all the work.
So the Council of Economic Advisors is inthe Eisenhower Executive Office building
the EEOB, which is, to me a French lookingbuilding right next to the White House.
Directly west of the WhiteHouse, on the White House campus.
And that was amazing, right?
Just going through WhiteHouse Security every day.
(07:24):
On my way to work.
Right.
And then, and then
Did you go every day?
In the office?
Oh yeah.
In the office, every day.
Even through most of the pandemic.
I think we are the lastpeople working in person.
Seriously.
In June of 2020, at the height of COVID,I could walk down, I lived near Chinatown,
which is a mile east of the White House.
(07:46):
I could walk down themiddle of the street.
All the way to work.
Nobody else was there, was desertedbecause of COVID, and we were in person.
Yeah.
So anybody who's listening athome that is not familiar with the
Eisenhower building, I would encouragethem to go on Google Image search.
It's my favorite building inD.C. At least I've never been
on the inside, but the outside.
The best looking building in all of D.C.
(08:06):
It's beautiful.
I don't know how to des,I'm not an architecture guy.
How would you describe it?
No, no.
It looks sort of Frenchy.
Old, old, old, timey andformal and beautiful.
It looks like it should havebeautiful gardens all around.
Like almost like a palace in a way.
I think it's more attractivebuilding than the White House.
Is any part of visualizing theWest Wing, the show West Wing
(08:27):
appropriate for where you worked?
So the West Wing is the partof the White House closer to
the executive office building?
It's separated by the WestWing and the EEOB are separated
by a driveway, essentially.
And there are people shuttlingback and forth that driveway into
the West Wing on the regular.
(08:47):
So, tell us a little bit, howdid you end up working at CEA?
What was the path that sort of,how did you get that opportunity?
So let's talk about whatthe CEA does, right?
Oh, start there.
The, the CEA
Joe, you should host this podcast.
The CEA provides information on theeconomy to the President, right?
And it was created to be staffedby government economists on leave
(09:11):
from places like the USDA or
Department of Energy or
et cetera.
Yeah, right.
Um, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Treasury.
Commerce.
And then also from academia.
Academic economists, experts inparticular fields, who go and give their
time to the White House, to make surethat the President is making decisions
(09:32):
with the best information possible.
And you were there as anagricultural economist.
You only have 10 senioreconomists covering the economy.
Most of them are experts in theirfield, labor, trade, et cetera.
Agriculture's a tinypart of the U.S. economy.
So if you're only gonna pick 10economists to cover the whole economy.
(09:53):
You might think, oh, maybe don'tpick an agricultural economist.
But it's so specialized, right?
You need someone to cover agriculturethat knows the institutions.
So there's typically an ageconomist on that staff.
Not always, but typically.
That was my experience, likewhen I worked at the USDA.
Right.
We had people frequentlythat would do spells in CEA.
(10:14):
Yeah.
Because particularly like, Ithink it's seasonal, right?
So like if there's challenges relatedto food or agricultural production
or something, that it gets moreincentivized to have somebody with
that specialization there, right?
And are you typically,were there 18 months?
I was there, it was a 12 month appointmentthat extended for another six months.
At the end of the firstTrump administration.
(10:36):
So you were so good that they werelike, we can't let Joe leave now.
We need him at least another half a term.
That's what I like to tell myself.
Did you think of yourselfworking for the President?
Like, 'cause you span too,so did you think of yourself
You're in the White House,a political building, right?
Everybody in there is political.
Almost everybody there is onTeam Trump or on Team Biden or on
(10:59):
team, whoever the President is.
And that's just how theWhite House works by design.
I wasn't really on Team Trump.
I wasn't on team anybody.
I'm an economist and I don'thave strong policy positions.
I just do analysis.
So when I was invited, the firstconversation I had interview, uh, I had
with the chief of staff was, well, I'mreally not on board any particular policy.
(11:22):
Is that a problem?
And she said, absolutely not.
We want people to provideobjective facts, information,
knowledge from the literature.
So the President has that, right.
And as long as you're not likeout there, you know, marching
against the President, we're good.
This is an not totally, but that'sobjectively what it's supposed to
(11:44):
be doing, is to be an objectiveanalysis of the economy, to provide
information to the president.
That's That's how the CEA is designed.
Now, of course, people who havestrong political leanings might not
be willing to work for the presidentof the, of, of who's, who's espousing
parties that they don't ag uh,
Sure.
policies that they don't agree with.
Right.
(12:04):
So, republican presidents tendto have conservative leaning
Mm-hmm.
economists on the CEA.
Democratic presidents tend to have liberalleaning economists on the CEA and so on.
Okay.
But the CEA really does stand out in theWhite House as relatively nonpolitical.
Okay.
And that's both the, again, by designit's a strength, but it's also a weakness.
(12:26):
So everybody else in the White Househas strong political position, policy
positions that they're pushing for.
And the economist is the nerd in thebuilding saying, well, actually, right.
It makes you really unpopular.
I mean, do you kind of feel like that,like you're a little bit of like.
Oh, absolutely.
If they see you out, there're like, yeah..
Yeah, let's not invitethat guy to the meeting.
And then the things that the CEA does,one of the things I know is that there's
(12:49):
the annual, like it believe it's annual,the economic report of the president.
Correct.
So you would contribute somesection of that report that's under
your purview or expertise, right?
Yeah, correct.
Were you there when they did the,when it was the superhero report?
Do you know what I'm talking about?
So this is what a nerd I am.
So I, I sometimes read this, but therewas like a year where they had all these
(13:10):
thank you's and they thanked all theinterns, and then they listed the non
superhero name of a various superhero.
So it'd be like.
We're thanking, Clark Kent and,
I think one of the ERPs, they'recalled, one of the ERPs had some
of those Easter eggs in them.
Yeah.
For people to find.
(13:30):
But you gotta be a nerd economistto be reading those thinking.
So you just told on yourself, Todd.
That's what we're here for.
That's my role in this podcast team.
Chad is the Lorenzo Lamas.
I'm the nerd, Dreyfuss.
Let's talk a little bit abouthow you got to be on the CEA.
how did you end up with this job?
The idea is you need someone withspecialty in agriculture to be there.
(13:52):
It's a relatively small worldof us ag economists that work on
policy, who you could draw from.
And somebody in their Rolodex had my name.
Right.
And so in fact, I had an agreementwith Rob Johansson, who was Chief
Economist at USDA at the time.
He said, Hey, we have an interestin having you in the CEA.
So presumably they would've called RobJohansson, we need an ag Economist,
(14:15):
and he would've thought of, here'sthree to five people that I think would
be a good fit or something, right?
Yeah.
Correct.
And then you're in that set.
Correct.
I've done policy work and stuff.
The connection was actually onedegree of separation apart from Rob.
So Rob actually called Jason and I don'tknow if he asked Jason, Jason Lusk,
Who was our department head
at the time.
I don't know if he asked Jason andJason and said no, or if he asked Jason
(14:38):
for names and Jason gave him my name.
But either way, I should thank Jason.
You apply for it like a regular job?
Like you had to write a cover letterand give your resume or what we call CV?
Yeah, there are interviews.
This was a pretty informal interview.
The Chief of Staff, DJ Nordquist, atthe time, called me up once we realized
that there was interest on both sides.
(14:59):
She called me, there'sa 30 minute interview.
They had my CV and I was hired.
For everybody who doesn't know our world.
Largely we're just judged based ona piece of paper that lists out our
accomplishments around academic outputs.
Right.
So you're a known commodity.
It's not like you're just bumbling around.
(15:19):
People, people have a lot.
You've written some papers that covertopics that the council would care
about or maybe given speeches togroups that the council are trying
to reach or even interact with thestakeholders that they would value, right?
Yeah, no, that's right.
It's an honor to be askedand to serve on the CEA.
It's a feather in the capof Purdue, for me to do it.
That's why Jason and the dean at thetime, Karen Plaut, were happy to let
(15:44):
me, you know, they granted me leave.
Yeah, like the rest of us wouldhave extra classes to teach or
You guys picked up theslack while I was gone.
So thank you for that.
So you are the ag economist ofthis group of like 10 to 12.
You said 10, right?
10 economists.
Yeah.
Ish.
10, 12. So these other people are alsoeconomists, but you don't know them.
(16:04):
Like you're showing up first dayof work to like meet these other
economists who are, on paper at least,also as expertise in their area.
Right.
What was that like compared toworking with just ag economists?
Like the people that, likeyou're used to work where we all
care about this subject matter.
And now you're maybe the only onethat does, what was that like?
Well, so it's a little bit intimidating.
(16:26):
Because there are a lot ofsmart people in the White House.
In general, not just the CEA, alot of really smart, high energy,
driven people in the White House.
A lot of people who know how governmentworks, you know, and I walk in
there as an academic and I reallydon't know how government works.
Well, you do know how likecommittees and emails work.
That's the thing that,academics learn, right?
Like, oh, here's howyou schedule meetings.
(16:47):
We're pretty good at that.
Turns out we're not verygood at that, right?
I learned at CEA.
But yeah, it's a little intimidating.
It turns out people are, youknow, it's a small group.
People have to work together well.
One thing about CEA very differentfrom our scholarly work, we publish
stuff without our names on it, right?
So it's really team effort, right?
Everything that goes outis the White House, right?
(17:09):
And not Joe Balagtas for the White House.
If you did all the analysis, wrote allthe words, your name's not gonna show up.
This is not the job for someonewho wants individual glory.
Not really.
There's individual glory thatyou build a reputation and
say, oh yeah, I remember Todd.
He did this and let's bring him in asecretary in the next administration.
Something like that.
Oh, is Joe teasing his next move here?
(17:30):
Oh, no, not,
But is that a thing though?
Is that, like, is there, are therepolitically motivated economists
who, that would be one of thereasons you would want to be on CEA?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Right.
And so there are people at CEAright now, or in the White House
right now, who had a job in thefirst Trump administration, right.
Who now have a better job in theTrump administration because they
(17:52):
were there, and they were good team.
They're team players.
They're productive.
Right.
And they proved theirworth and, and they're
What would be a better job?
Then, I think that's subjective.
Right?
Okay.
So I, I honestly, for a yearand a half, it was great work.
I wouldn't wanna make a career out of it.
Okay.
It's really stressful.
It's very different than thetype of work we do here at
(18:14):
MM.
in academia.
I loved it while I was there.
I was very glad to comeback to Purdue though.
So let's get to our listener.
That person's favorite part of thepodcast, which is walk us through a day.
You walk the empty streetsfrom your apartment to the, uh,
the post apocalyptic
Yes.
streets of D.C.
Um, no, they were apocalyptic.
Oh, that it was not supposed yet.
(18:35):
It was still apocalyptic when we started.
So first of all, whattime are you going in?
Pretty flexible.
Eight ish.
Okay.
I'd be in.
Every now and then there'd bea early meeting and I'd go in
earlier, but it's more regular.
Hours were more regularthan I hold here at Purdue.
What's a typical day look like?
How do you spend your day?
Yeah.
So at any given moment, any givenday, I might have three or four
(18:59):
projects that I'm working on.
Some of them are regular, right?
So I was in charge of the IndustrialProduction and Utilization Report,
monthly report that comes out of, the Fed.
And whenever that came out, wewould get a early peak at it,
(19:20):
24 hours before it was released.
I'd write a memo with my team, andsend that to the President so he knows
what the news is gonna be the next day.
This is probably be the bigtakeaway and this is how
Yep.
various people are gonnareact to that information.
That's right.
Memo, like, you know,two or three bullets.
Right.
Here's what you need to know, Mr.President, about industrial production
in the country over the last month.
(19:42):
Do you think the President read it orsomebody who works for the President?
Who are you writing this for?
So that report was written forthe President and anyone else who
would be in the Oval Office withhim when it was shared with him.
Okay.
Right.
Did he read it?
I don't know, maybe.
I think somebody before the Presidentdecides what's newsworthy and what's
(20:02):
important for him to, to read.
Someone in the filter of, 'causehe's gonna get these things
handed to him all day long.
Right.
And so if there's some big breakingnews in industrial production, that
memo might come across his desk.
Are you in a group?
So like there's some portion of yourday then where you're like just reading
in isolation in your desk, right?
That's right.
But then there's some part where you'regonna get together with your colleagues
(20:25):
and say like, well here's my take on this.
Here's what jumped out to me.
Right.
You say it's a mix of sort of likemonastic alone time consuming information
Correct.
then breaking it down with other people.
Yep.
And for those regularreports, I'd be the lead.
I'd read the industrial production report.
I'd draft a memo, like bullets,and I'd give it to a junior
(20:48):
economist, Troy Durry in this case.
Think of junior economists as reallybright, early 20 something people that
drive Washington D.C. They might havea master's degree in statistics, but
probably like, international relationsor public policy or something like that.
The best description I ever heardabout D.C. was from, the newsman,
(21:10):
Brian Williams, who started his careerin D.C. and he said, it's a town full
of earnest, former student councilpresidents, driving Honda Accords.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's who runs a lot of the actualgroundwork in Washington, from the Senate
to the White House, to the agencies,even the political parties themselves.
And I'm here, I'm bright, I'm gonnawork on... Matt Erickson, previous
(21:31):
guest on the podcast did a littletime in that kind of world, right.
Troy would draft the memo, itwould come back to me and I'd
say, yep, that looks good.
Let's send it on.
And then did you present any of thestuff, like verbally, not just in
writing, like would you go in and briefthe President or a team of people?
I never briefed the President.
Mostly, I would brief theChair or one of the members.
(21:53):
And either the chair or the memberwould go to the Oval Office and
present the work to the President.
If you were politically motivated andyou wanted to work for a President, would
that be sort of a next natural step?
You were in a senior economist in theprevious administration and now it
just makes sense for you to move intothis Chair 'cause you have more, do
you have more influence as the Chair?
(22:14):
Oh, absolutely.
Maybe that the current chairs, are therecent chairs, that I could think of, some
of 'em worked in CEA as senior economists.
Right.
Well, here, here's an exampleof someone who I know that was a
chair is, Austin Goolsby, who's the
Oh yeah.
President of, Chicago Fed, right.
Yep.
Correct.
And so he has that experience.
(22:36):
He brings that experience to theFed and thinking about how they
interact with policy and stuff.
Tom Phillipson was chair towardsthe end of my time, or in the
middle of my time at the CEA.
He started as a senior economistand was promoted to chair.
Who's, who's doing the promoting?
Yeah, probably White House Chief of Staffand other people close to the President.
(23:01):
So if you make the President unhappywith your take on industrial production
in the United States, can he be likewhoever wrote this, get rid of 'em.
Yeah.
I'm not sure it's that... When Iwas there, I wouldn't think so.
Right.
I don't think people were afraidto, disagree, or to provide views
(23:24):
that might be seen as unpopular.
I think that was fine.
You know, one thing we workedon, getting back to tasks.
Starting pretty much the whole time Iwas there, we were working on trade,
in particular trade with China.
I arrived summer 2019, so the tradewar was already on, and we spent
a lot of time working on, movingtowards a trade agreement with China.
(23:48):
Got it.
Right.
And so CEA was producing a lot of workshowing that uncertainty around trade
policy, trade policy uncertainty wasreally costly for the U.S. And that
an agreement that gets rid of thatuncertainty would be a good thing.
And that was unpopular, right?
Among certain people in the White House.
(24:09):
Now did you have access to muchinformation that you could not
access now as a professor, orwere you basically looking at
around the same sources of data?
Same reports?
Yeah.
No, there's data there at the CEAthat I can't get anywhere close to.
One is we got early access, earlypeaks at official reports, right.
(24:32):
So, you know, before the BLS monthlylabor report comes out, we see
that 12 hours before it comes out.
Are you in a rush of like, Igotta get everything I can out
of this in the next 12 hours?
Yeah, so you gotta bereally careful, right?
You have access to incredible data andsome of it's sensitive and you just gotta
be really careful how you handle it.
(24:52):
There's all kinds of, yeah.
People respond, right?
If I send an email from myWhite House email address to
USDA, you get immediate answers.
People in private sector respondduring the, you know, when the COVID
pandemic kind of blossomed in Spring2020, credit card companies and other
(25:14):
companies tracking economic activityjust gave their data to the White House.
Right.
Seriously.
To help the White House figureout what the heck was going on.
Cause because one of the problems, andwe talked about this, we had Nate Kaufman
on who works at the Federal Reserve,there's a lot of good economic data, but
it can come in kind of slow or late, likethings are collected through surveys.
Yeah.
You know.
You, you get people's observations,but then you gotta process that.
(25:36):
It can take a while.
Right.
Like with the credit cards, you canmaybe get close to instantaneously.
Oh, people are going like,you were there in COVID.
Right.
So people are going back to restaurants,'cause the number of like sit down
restaurant, receipts is like doubled.
Exactly.
Another question is that like, how dowe know if you're doing a good job?
How are you evaluating beinggood at being a CEA economist?
(25:59):
Like what, what, what determinesthat or who determines that?
The members will let you know, right?
If you're being useful.
And they might let you know verbally,like, you know, Joe, get on board.
And I think I was told thisonce or twice by the Chair.
Meaning like we need more out of you?
We need different things out of you?
(26:19):
What were they meaning?
So I didn't love how some of the phaseone trade agreement was coming together.
I voiced my opinion.
I said, I'm not sure that'sa great way to do it.
And I was told, you know, get onboard.
Okay.
This is happening.
We want you to measurewhat's gonna happen.
Adjust.
But they listened, right?
And they said, yeah, we weretaking that into consideration.
Thank you very much.
(26:41):
So you're spending your day reading,writing, thinking about the economy.
How long is your day?
Are you there?
Do you leave at five?
Are you there in the evenings?
Is this like a lot of time.
It's a lot of time, right.
So I learned really, reallyearly that you never leave your,
your, white House phone behind.
So I went for a run on a Saturdaymorning, like two or three weeks
(27:03):
into my stint at CEA, and I cameback and my phone had blown.
And they're like, Joe, where are you?
We need you in the White House right now.
Right.
So you get, you're kind of always on call.
And there were plenty of dayswhen I went home at 5:00 PM.
Um, so it's it's kinda real.
Were you coming insometimes Saturday, Sundays?
Oh yeah.
Oh wow.
Interesting.
Yeah.
(27:23):
That's definitely not your typicalprofessor the pace of life.
It is so different thanour university jobs.
So you didn't have meetingsto plan a meeting for when
you would have your meeting?
No.
Whatever kind of thing.
No, things are really, yeah,
Like we're gonna do this next fall.
Let's get together in April tofigure out when we should meet
this summer to do this fall thing.
You know, there's this sense, um, atleast here in, I think in general, uh,
(27:48):
but certainly those of us who thinkabout how government works and government
policy, there's, there's this caricatureof really inefficient government.
The White House is anything but efficient.
The people there are really busy and theymove quickly and they're not inefficient.
Right.
I've never, there are nomeetings without an agenda.
(28:09):
And if we're done with the agendaitems, 30 minutes later let's
close shop and go back to work.
So I think what Joe's trying tosay is this podcast would not fly
No.
at the White House.
Definitely not.
This is productive activity.
I don't
Wait, can we go back?
'Cause I had a questionthat I've been holding onto.
So you wrote these memos.
Can you think of a time when somethingyou wrote like you heard later, like,
(28:33):
do, do you have any examples of like,
You could clearly tell that
the White House had consumedwhat you had put out.
I think the signing of the phase onetrade agreement was a win for the
CEA, in the sense that we were focusedon trade policy uncertainty, right.
(28:55):
There's a study from the Fed thatsaid trade policy uncertainty
knocked a point off of GDP in 2019.
Wow.
It's a big, really costly.
And so getting that agreement was,I'm not claiming credit for it.
But CEA was reallypushing for an agreement.
(29:17):
When that happens, are you like, there'snot a lot of moments in our jobs, there's
a few moments, right, papers get accepted.
Students do well, right.
Where it's like, oh, that's nice.
That feels nice.
Like, is that what you feelwhenever the agreement gets signed?
You're like, ah, we, that was good.
Yeah.
Was there ever a desire to likepop champagne with the colleagues?
We got it.
(29:38):
Yeah.
No, I think, and that was one of 'em.
Maybe a couple othersthat I can't talk about.
Yeah.
Back to you, Todd, the tasks and thingsyou're working on, thinking about it
as being a professor, how many of thosethings are sort of like predictable flow?
Like you kind of know thatreport's gonna come out?
Sometimes there's like that kind of a,and how much of it is just like you're
(29:59):
putting out the fire of the dead.
So there's this regular rhythm.
That's a good point of, monthly reports.
The annual report, the economicreport of the President
that's got a regular schedule.
Medium term projects that you mightbe working on, regulatory review.
That's all, pretty predictable.
On any given day, you're gonna get acall that says, Joe, we're working on
(30:21):
this, food box program and we need toknow, what the economic impact is or
what demand for, you know, what therate of food insecurity is in Florida,
and how this might affect that.
And we need the answerby, 5:00 PM Tuesday.
Or tomorrow.
That stuff could fill upquite a bit of your day.
So, I wasn't able to go visit Joe whilehe was there because it was COVID, but
(30:43):
there would be times where if I said like,Hey Joe, I wanna come out to visit you.
You'd say like, don't come this week.
This other week might bebetter or something, right?
Yeah.
Or you can predict it a little bit.
Yeah, that's right.
I know I agreed to host youfor a West Wing tour, Todd.
You know, but there's this crisisand we need to find, PPE, you
know, fixed PPE supply chains sothat hospitals have rubber gloves.
(31:05):
Right.
And I just can't get away.
So, sorry.
See you later.
So it's, it's hard to envisiona world where economists are so
valuable and needed in a crisis,like relative to like firefighters.
So when you went on the run and yourphone's blowing up, like can you
give an example of like, what is itthat they need you for so desperately
(31:28):
that there's a problem with youbeing out and away from your phone?
We, we weren't saving lives so much.
Most of the crises are moreinternal like, the President is
traveling to, North Carolina.
And, you know, 36 hours before histrip, a hurricane blows through.
(31:49):
that wipes out a bunch of agricultureNorth Carolina or in Virginia.
You know, give us four bulletpoints that the President has to
know when he visits North Carolinaabout agriculture in North Carolina.
So he's not showing up and be like,you've ruined a lot of orange groves
here in North Carolina, so you can beinformed as to what the problem is.
That's helpful.
(32:09):
And then COVID createddifferent types of crises.
Actual crises.
Yeah.
Those were, external crises,
if there was, rumors of a new wave orsomething, and then you're like, well, we
got to get some analysis of this on the,we can't wait till next week to correct.
But it is, I don't know whythat's interesting to me, but it's
interesting to me that there couldbe like these crisis driven research.
(32:31):
You guys and I, we do researchwith a really long time horizon.
And some of us work on papersthat take years, from inception
to publication, or decades.
We also tend to studythings that have happened.
So what was the effect of thisfarm bill on this group of farmers?
What you're doing in CEA is like,this could happen if this happened.
(32:52):
What's gonna happen?
Or we're just figuring out what the extentof COVID mean, you know, the pandemic
means, and there's a bunch of strawberrygrowers in Florida who suddenly,
have to plow up fields or something.
Right.
Man, you were there a weird time.
It was a crazy time.
Wow.
Trade for sure was crazy.
And then COVID was, you know, oh,that's the other thing about CEA.
(33:13):
So, because it's a small group,and we have to expand the whole
economy, I was working on a lotof stuff that wasn't agriculture.
Working on PPE supply chains, theeconomics of PPE supply chains and so on.
Is there a part of you that wants togo back sometime when it's boring?
Like if you got a similar call fromthe future chief economist like Joe,
right now, there's nothing going on.
(33:34):
Can you come, just hang out?
And it is, the excitement ispart of, is certainly is one
of the perks of it, right?
It was a really good change ofpace for me, you know, 15 or 18
years into my academic career.
And then the other question that weask everybody is talk about what sort
of constrains you or what, like limitsthe CEA from being as good as it could?
(33:58):
Like is it just literally like, Iwish we had six more people here.
Or I wish our days were an hour longer orthere's some piece of the economy I wish
we could actually measure better than.
What limits your ability to be?
Yeah.
I mean, more brains, morepeople, is always better.
But again, it's only 10.
So that you work with what you got?
(34:19):
I don't know.
I'm looking at this current White Housewondering if the focus on, loyalty,
part, one important job of the CEA, andothers in the White House, is to say,
you know, what this isn't a great idea.
Or the here are the costs of thisthing, right, that you're proposing.
(34:41):
And, for any President, you know,getting that information is important.
They might disregard it, right.
We're not politicians.
There's lots of good reasons whysomebody might pursue a policy that
have nothing to do with cost benefitanalysis, as we economists do it,
right, but it's important for themto have that information so that
they, they're aware of the costs.
And when they say, no, look, I'mgonna pursue this policy because,
(35:04):
you know, I need to vote fromSenator so-and-so from Alaska.
Yep.
So we've talked a lot about CEA, butare there similar other groups at
the White House, like in terms of.
Are they getting advicefrom non-economist?
Like is there a science policy councilor are they just basically CEA?
(35:24):
There is a science policy council.
It's called Office of Scienceand Technology Policy.
There is a Purdue colleagueat OSTP, when I was there.
On the economy, there's also theNational Economic Council, which is
really the driver of economic policy.
Kevin Hassett is now the chair of NEC.
He was chair of CEA and he wasrolling out just as I got there.
(35:49):
They're more political.
So you guys were kind of thenerds that would crunch the
numbers behind policy decisions?
Not necessarily as muchlike advocating particular,
We were not advocates.
Correct.
And again, that's by designand that's a feature, it's a
bug if you wanna be popular.
Right.
And if you wanna have power, right,if you're not, if you're not a
(36:12):
cheerleader, then, then, then, uh,
Like it sounds like me or Chad shouldn'tbe the National Economic Council
'cause we want to be cool and popular.
Do you guys have strong policy positions?
We do.
The more mundane the policy is,the more I have like I've got a lot
of opinions right now about parentteacher organizations at schools.
I've, at times in my life reallycared about, how you allocate
(36:34):
intramural fields among club sports.
Basically, the more mundane andsmall it is, the more it's like,
I'm gonna call out procedure.
But like what we should do aboutinternational conflict among other
countries, I don't have a lot of opinions.
Part of me, while I was there wishedI had had my own strong policy
positions that I could advocate for.
(36:55):
And I saw some of my colleaguesdo a little bit of that.
There's one guy, StevenBraun, who is at CEA now.
He's been at CEA, I think sincebill Clinton's first term.
Oh my goodness.
Wow.
And he's the lead macro forecasterfor CEA and a huge piece of
White House economic information.
(37:15):
Right.
So he has been at CEA longer thanyou have studied economics at all?
Through Republican and Democratpresidents and just has a lot of wisdom.
I once heard him tell thecautionary tale of the CEA
economist who wants to advocate.
And he was talking to a high schoolgroup that was touring the CEA.
He said the CEA is thenerdy kid at the lunchroom.
(37:40):
And that's our role.
And that's what we do best.
And every once in a while, one of thosenerdy kids will try to be a popular kid,
right, and it works for a little while.
But it always turns bad, right, italways ends up bad for that kid.
And maybe for the other nerds as well.
Well, 'cause also you live here in town.
So you lived 18 months away and youwere working kind of like insane hours.
(38:08):
Pretty insane hours.
It was interesting.
So I have three sons.
That fall of 2019, my oldest sonwas starting his senior year in
high school, another one in highschool, and then a younger one.
The high schoolers did not wanna move.
So Arlene, my wife, stayed withthe boys here in West Lafayette.
And I originally thought, well, I'll justgo find an apartment and I'll shuttle
(38:31):
back and forth every other weekend.
That turned out to be a lot of travel.
So I ended up, ended up to be more likeevery month-ish or so I'd come back.
In a way I ended up having more time formyself even though I was really busy.
Because I didn't have a wifeand kids waiting for me at home.
You could also like, I'm gonnapush dinner back 45 minutes.
(38:52):
And nobody
Yeah.
Right.
Be like, well, but then there'sthis practice and you gotta get,
I didn't have to shuttleanybody to practice.
I was setting you up for thepotential to be like, wow,
thanks for your service, Joe.
You really did as a service.
And then you flipped it around andnow our listener is not impressed.
Maybe they're like, nowI need to get a job at
CEA.
CEA.
And get a little me time.
(39:12):
Yeah.
What I'm saying, Chad, is right nowwith a bunch of kids, little kids in the
house would be a great time for you toleave and spend a year in Washington D.C.
Well, you said, on a Saturday morning runand I was like, get away from my phone.
Oh, it's, that's usuallynot what I'm worried about.
No.
I feel like we'veexhausted Joe pretty well.
We have.
(39:32):
So, we always wrap up with some lightningquestions, some, some quick answers.
So these will be like, we gottaget just your brain simple.
So I'll start with a classic one.
When you're working at the WhiteHouse, the White House gets a
time machine that you can onlyuse for professional purposes.
You can't use it for recreation.
It's just to make you betterat being a CEA economist.
(39:55):
When are you going towith your time machine?
Ooh.
Maybe a farm crisis.
Early eighties.
That would be a fun time to be workingon agriculture in Washington D.C.
Yeah, you can go back
Man, good answer.
That's at least in my top 20 answers.
You got a report coming out.
They're calling you in.
You're working extra hours,but you're getting hungry.
(40:18):
What are you going to eat?
Where are you gonna gograb something real quick?
The White House is on this island.
There's not a lot of greatretail close to the White House.
You have walking across the streettakes 30 minutes 'cause you have to
leave the building and go throughsecurity to get back in and so on.
So it's a little bit of a hassle.
And you probably can't justorder like a GrubHub to like
(40:40):
bring something to your desk.
They don't really deliver.
There's a mess hall in the, in the bottom,in the basement of, of the executive
office building that had just okay stuff.
D.C. has these lunch places,you'd know them, Todd, that just
make sandwiches and salad bars.
Yeah.
Or like a pay by the pound salad bar.
Exactly.
Yeah.
But there are a couple sandwichplaces that are really good.
(41:01):
And there's one, oh, just on theother side of Lafayette Square.
That made that roasted a couple turkeysevery day and made turkey sandwiches.
And if I had, again, 45 minutes to getaway from my desk for lunch, I, that,
that's a, that was a pretty good option.
Okay.
The White House similarly can issue youa magic wand, just to use for work, and
(41:24):
learn something that you can't otherwise.
Right, so you get this data, you get thesereports, you talk to people, but like
there's still something you're missing.
But now with this magic wand,you can know that thing.
What's the one thingyou're gonna use that,
What would be make me a good economist?
I don't know, maybe some, machinelearning skills or something like that.
(41:44):
I would've used the wand forunderstanding true preferences.
So the large language model doesn't get mecloser to why did you make that decision?
The like, the true why?
Yeah.
If I could know things
Or maybe you could learn,
If you really wanna be powerful,if you want to go to Washington
(42:05):
and sort of wheel power, it'snot clear economics is the tool.
I think it's law probably.
Seems like lawyers are the onesthat pull the levers more than
economists, unfortunately, for us.
Okay, so, I'm not legally telling youthat you could do this or should do this.
Good caveat.
If they were going to close the CEA.
(42:27):
It's done forever, but they're gonnalet all former CEA employees come
in and grab one thing to take asa souvenir to have at your house.
What are you taking from theWhite House or CEA stuff?
What would be your memento?
So, the White House had these umbrellasthat would stand at the doorway, um,
(42:52):
facing at, of the executive officebuilding, facing the West Wing.
So if it were raining andyou had to go to the White
You don't wanna get your suit wet?
You grab an umbrella and they're likevery nice, White House umbrellas.
And I almost thought I should just grabone and keep walking and take it with me.
And I never did.
And now I wish I had.
Oh, that's a good one.
(43:12):
Man.
I feel like now we know what to get, Joe.
Oh, that's true.
Now we know the perfect.
Yeah, exactly.
I actually bought a White Houseumbrella from the gift shop.
There's a gift shop in theexecutive office building.
Uh, but it's just not the same.
Right.
It's,
You wanted one of the used ones.
One with history.
Like the real ones.
(43:33):
Yeah.
Like having a black market.
This umbrella is this could, this couldhave been used to cover the hair of
name dignitary who came through theWhite House when it was raining one day.
Right.
Well, Joe, thank you for being so
Thanks, Joe.
generous of your time.
We learned a bunch.
It was good to talk to you.
Thank you
.Thank you again for listening to our conversation series here on AgCast.
(43:55):
I hope you learned a lot about theWhite House and economic policy
in the agriculture sector from theperspective of the Council of Economic
Advisors, a group that some of youmaybe have never heard of before.
It's another opportunity forpeople with a PhD in economics.
Joe talks about the people who aredoing the analysis and then bringing
it to Joe to sort of sign off.
Those are all people witha master's in economics.
(44:16):
So this is, also an interestingalternative career path.
It's an interesting mix of peoplethat are on it for a very long time.
That's their career.
Or you have people that sortof come in for a season.
Or for a brief period basedon the information needs of
the White House at the time.
We should also remind listeners thatwe have that great podcast with Nate,
Nate Kaufman, the Kansas City Fed.
If you haven't listened tothat one, it's really good.
(44:38):
And then that one was followed by
Oh, that was Brant.
Brant.
We talked about ag tech.
We got the chance to really find outwhat the heck actually is ag tech.
Yeah.
Which I think we ended up withmore questions than answers.
Y Yeah, I know, but like, I now feel likeag tech to me feels like a real thing.
Where before it was always just likesomeday this could happen, right.
There's like science fiction, buthe shows like, no, no, it's science.
(44:59):
Like it's, it actually exists.
And so that was interesting.
And, and then we had Joe Suttleson to talk about, large scale
investments in the ag sector.
Which is a follow up from conversationwe had with, Kyle Maple and Petro,
who is also on a previous podcast.
They also kind of work in that world.
One of the things about Joe,because I've been thinking about
the conversation we had with Joe,is he, he's real practical, right?
(45:20):
Like he's trying to make stuff work.
We're talking about investment at ahigh level, but then he's also the guy
that just has to make things work andstand between money and practicality.
Yeah.
And trying to get I don't know howlong people can use the analogy of
Green Acres till it's just outdated.
But it's like you're trying to talkto both Wall Street and farmers.
And get them to understand each other.
(45:42):
Is that the premise of Green Acres?
So the guy with the Green Acres waslike, it's this rich city dude that buys
a farm and it's like fish outta water.
But Beverly Hills is the opposite, whereyou get this sort of like country guy and
now he's living in with the high society.
I kind of feel likethat's what I'm living.
Yeah.
Except you're not a hillbilly.
It's flat as a pancake whereyou're from that rights.
That's true.
No.
You would be, I thinkyou would be a hay seed.
(46:02):
Or a hick.
Yeah.
I don't know which one of theseare offensive, but I feel like
hillbilly to me, now this is 'causeI'm from the Ozarks, hillbilly
implies topological variation.
But I guess you couldbe a Midwestern redneck.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, according to Jeff Foxworthy,anybody could be a redneck.
Yeah.
It's just matters likehow you use the high dive.
(46:26):
If you think we could learn fromyou and you happen to be coming
through Purdue, let us know.
'Cause we would love to learn more.
Thanks for listening.
Make sure to subscribe, tell yourfriends, and come back next month.
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