Viewer Mail: The GoodFellows Answer Your Questions

What are the economic and geopolitical effects of President Trump's imposition of tariffs on America's trading friends and foes? In an episode devoted solely to viewers' questions, Hoover senior fellows Sir Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster delve into the certain volatility (and uncertain logic) of Trump's tariff maneuvers, what the future holds for the European Union, institutional decline within the U.S., plus what if any parallels between historical periods past and present (do all roads lead to Rome or Richard Nixon?).

Also discussed: the uniqueness of a hybrid American republic/empire, "sleeper" nations that might emerge as powerhouses by 2050, and recommended biographies for secondary-school readers. Finally, as this month marks GoodFellows' fifth anniversary, the three fellows reflect on what they've learned over the course of gathering online and in-person for 150-plus shows.      

Recorded on April 10, 2025.

 

Episode Transcript

>> Male Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can you walk us through your thinking about why you decided to put
a 90 day pause?

>> Donald Trump (00:05):
Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out
of line.
They were getting yippee, you know, theywere getting a little bit yippee, a little
bit afraid, unlike these champions,because we have a big job to do.
No other president wouldhave done what I did.
No other president.
I know the president,they wouldn't have done it.
[MUSIC]

>> Bill Whalen (00:25):
It's Thursday, April 10th, 2025, and welcome back to GoodFellows,
a Hoover Institution broadcast examiningsocial, economic, political, and
geopolitical concerns.
I'm Bill Whalen.
I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow.
I'll be your moderator today.
And guess what?
I have all three good fellowsin the House with me today.
And our good fellows are, of course,Sir Niall Ferguson, an eminent historian,
the economist John Cochran, and formerPresidential National Security Advisor,

(00:49):
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.
H.R. andJohn are all Hoover senior fellows.
So, gentlemen, we set up this showa few weeks ago to be a mailbag.
We asked our viewers for questions.
They more than rewarded us.
I'd like to thank everybodywho bothered to write in.
If we didn't get to your question,I sincerely apologize.
Just too many questions andtoo little time.
That said, we have a big news story ontop of us as well, which is tariffs and

(01:11):
the world economy,
the United States future relationshipswith its allies as well as China.
So we're going to try to wed the two.
So let's begin by giving you twoquestions related to tariffs and
then let's get into it.
So the first question,bear with me from John.
It's a little lengthy, but he writes,president Trump seems to be basing his
belief in use tariffs, at least in parton economic results from his first term.

(01:33):
I'd like to hear the goodfellows,especially John,
discuss how the US Economy did sowell during Trump's first term.
Even though he imposed tariffs,was it that other economic factors were so
good that they overpoweredthe negative impacts of these tariffs?
If so, what were those factors andwhy would this time be different?
And let's couple that, Niall, withthe question from Will in London, UK, who
writes, are Trump's tariffs effectivelya way of denuding China of economic,

(01:56):
manufacturing and military power?
Gentlemen, have at.

>> John H. Cochrane (01:59):
[LAUGH] Here we go.
Well, let me start small.
Why did they not cause somuch damage the first time?
A good principle is that the economicdamage of a tax is proportional to
the square of the tax rate.
So small taxes applied to a few countrieshave much less damage than large

(02:21):
taxes applied to lots of countries andthis one clearly is designed to blow
things up in a way that the lastones were more tentative.
Yes, many other causes were in there and
the economy could have done evenbetter without the tariffs last time.
But I think this one isclearly much bigger and
I think we'll get to is how itis a disaster economically and

(02:45):
even worse politically andeven worse in terms of foreign policy.

>> Bill Whalen (02:50):
Nice and quick, Niall.

>> Niall Ferguson (02:53):
So let's use numbers because John likes them.
So do I.
It's true that President Trumpraised tariffs in his first term,
but not by much.
Let's ask what the averagetariff rate on US imports was.
Well on the year in the yearhe got elected, it was 1.55%.

(03:19):
So 1.55% by the end ofTrump's first term was 2.85.
So tariffs went up.
They mostly went up on China and onparticular categories, steel and aluminum.
This was not a huge trade shock and
in that sense we can see why tariffswere not a significant headwind.

(03:42):
The tailwinds to growth that the Trumpadministration did in his first term
were much more potent, particularlythe combination of the tax cuts of 2017,
the deregulation which really wasa an important part of the story, and
an environment in which there waslow inflation, high employment.

(04:03):
The tariffs were not a major variable.
The second Trump term isa completely different story.
We're having this conversationless than 24 hours after yet
another U-turn in a tariff policy.
Since Trump's inauguration, there havebeen multiple increases in tariffs and
changes in direction.

(04:23):
Trade policy uncertaintyis at some all time high.
But let me bring bringit back to the number.
What's the average tariff rate?
If President Trump had stuck withthe plan that he unveiled last week in
the Rose Garden, the famous Liberation Dayplan in which so called reciprocal
tariffs were imposed on multiple tradingpartners and Everybody was on 10%,

(04:48):
then the average tariff rate would haverisen to something like 22 or 23%.
That's to compare with 2 point somethingpercent at the end of Trump's first term.
So an order of magnitude larger,or to put it a different way,
you'd have taken the average tariffrate back to where it was in 1909.

(05:10):
Today, after the April 9th U turnwhich took all the reciprocal
tariffs away again or at leaststayed their execution for 90 days,
we're still looking at an averageeffective tariff rate on imports
around about where it was at the timeof the 1930 Smoot Hawley tariff Act.

(05:31):
So this is a massively largershock than anything that
was contemplated in the first Trump term.
And that is why we have seensuch convulsions in financial
markets in the last several days.
And just to finish the point, we'renot out of the woods because a 90 day

(05:52):
stay of execution is a shorttime in which to negotiate what,
70 plus bilateral trade agreements, whicheven if they're all successfully achieved,
still leave you at the 10%across the board tariff rate.
And we'll come back to this in the show,the US And China are still on a massive
collision course with the tariff rateon Chinese imports to the United States

(06:17):
now far above 100% as a result ofmultiple increments by President Trump.
So that's the answer to the question.
This is a completely differentballgame from Trump One.

>> John H. Cochrane (06:28):
Let me just exploit my short answer full
time to pile on to what Niall said.
Even the average tariff rateunderstates the damage,
because you want the averagesquared tax rate, tariff rate.
So the 125% is worse.
That does more damage than the onesthat are less than the average benefit.

(06:50):
You know, stuff in Walmartis going to double in price.
That's a big deal, and it's a bigshock to Trump's base when we get to
the political andforeign policy ramifications.
Just think about what that's goingto do to Trump's political support.
And the other thing Niall mentioned,it's beyond just the tariffs.
So there's the economic damage of tariffs,there's the political and

(07:12):
foreign policy damage.
But the uncertainty effect is somethingthat we really should take for granted.
Suppose you're thinking aboutbuilding a factory, and that factory,
you wanna do what Trump wants you to do.
You wanna bring, I don't know,showing sneakers back to the US or
something silly like that.
Well, the viability of thatproject depends on the tariff.
And it takes five yearsto build the factory.

(07:33):
You'd be a fool to build it now.
Who knows what's going to happen,you know, within five years,
the next Democratic president could issueexecutive orders under national state of
emergence and get rid of the tariffs.
So the economic damage,just the perspective of the tariffs and
the huge uncertainty is goingto cause major economic damage.
H.R.>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I was gonna say,
does John and Palo Alto havea question for H.R. in Palo Alto?

(07:56):
[LAUGH]>> John H. Cochrane: I'm ready to needle
H.R. on H.R., how's that economicstatecraft working out for you now?

>> H.R. McMaster (08:03):
[LAUGH] Hey, it's a really good study.

>> John H. Cochrane (08:06):
We had fun talks about careful tariff policies, and
this is what you get when youstart playing that field.

>> H.R. McMaster (08:12):
It's a really good study.
But apparently nobody,you know, in the White House or
the administration read it for sure.
But hey, hey,this could have happened in Trump 1.
It easily could have happened in Trump 1,because, you know,
President Trump is disruptive.
He's had this long held sense ofaggrievement that we've been taking
advantage of.
We need big adjustments, you know, in,in the, in the, in the trade balance,

(08:33):
especially in goods.
That's, that's his big report card,you know, and, and
this is what people likePeter Navarro fed him.
But, you know, what we did in the firstTrump administration is we said, okay,
hey, what's the objective?
What's the goal is as, as, as the,as our listener said, hey,
does this have to do with China or.
Well, yeah, it actually, you know, that'swhat we said is if the problem's China,

(08:55):
if the problem is that China,
we don't want China to havecoercive power over our economy.
We don't want China to be able to atrophyfurther our industrial base that,
such that it has big nationalsecurity considerations.
We don't want them to be able to controlcritical supply chains that allow
them to disrupt our economy or todisrupt our ability to secure ourselves.

(09:18):
I mean, if that's the problem, then, hey,and what I would say to President Trump is
if we shoot all of our alliesto get to China, China wins.
And then Gary Cohen andI would be take turns jumping on, on, on,
on the tariff or the blow up this tradeagreement grenade that was being rolled
into the Oval Office like every other day,you know, by, by Peter Navarro.

(09:41):
But now, you know, President Trump'sa hell of a lot less patient.
We tried, you know what wedid in this case, we said,
okay, if these are the proposalson trade or on trade agreements,
let's get the Presidentinto the Roosevelt Room.
We want to go across the Roosevelt Room.
And we said, okay,what is our objective, Mr. President?
Well, based on that objective,this is a course of action, but

(10:03):
it's probably going tobe counterproductive.
And by the way, you've got thisgreat trade rep, Bob Lighthizer,
who understands your agenda.
He agrees with your agenda.
Let's give him a shot at that, you know.
But now my sense is there is no kind offormalistic decision making like this
going on and what you're getting isjust erratic decision making based on

(10:23):
partial information.
And this is why the objective is soobscure too, right?
We've heard so
many different objectives associated withthese various actions in the military.
When you have this kind of disarray,you call it order, counter order disorder.
And I think that's whatwe've got going on.
And the President's a hellof a lot less patient.

(10:44):
He's less patient.

>> John H. Cochrane (10:46):
It's not, there's a process thing and
then there's a sort ofa big picture thing.
This is the classic answerin search of a question.
Tariffs are the answer.
And then we're wandering around thinking,what does it mean to China?
Is it eliminate bilateral trade deficits?
Does it restore?
I don't know what the hell it is.
But I think this is a verygood point on decision making.
When you find yourself witha predetermined answer, and

(11:07):
you're searching around forthe questions, and it changes every day,
obviously something chaotic is going on.

>> Niall Ferguson (11:13):
Well, Will's question was, are Trump's tariffs effectively a way
of denuding China of economic,manufacturing and military power?
So I think in somepeople's minds they are.
But let's just ask the question,how exactly?
So if you impose a barrier,which in effect these very high tariffs

(11:37):
are on Chinese exports to the UnitedStates, what does that do to China?
Well, it's certainly painful, butlet's remember that only 16 or
17% of Chinese exportsgo to the United States.
I'm basing that on the 2021 data.
And it's about 19% of US imports.

(12:00):
It's a bit of an understatement though,
because a much larger proportion thanthan before the first Trump term of
Chinese exports to the United Statesgo via third countries.
And so the first socalled trade war of 2018, 1920,
really just rerouted Chinese exports sothat they would stop off in Vietnam or

(12:23):
in Mexico or in India beforethey reached the United States.
But they were still ultimatelyChinese exports to the US.
And US importers actuallydidn't use any fewer Chinese
components in the thingsthat they were making.
And it's important to recognize this,I don't think many people do,

(12:46):
to end the US reliance on Chinesecomponents and capital goods.
This is an important point.
It's not like we're importingsneakers from China anymore.
This is not an importantpart of the trade flow.
The Chinese are way up the value chain andthe Chinese make capital goods now.
So if John Wants thatfactory to get built.
He'll actually need Chinesemachinery to build it.

>> John H. Cochrane (13:07):
Exactly.

>> Niall Ferguson (13:08):
Make way more capital goods now than-

>> H.R. McMaster (13:09):
Hey, this is
an important point.
Just quickly on this, on trans shipmentlike this, this is why you're getting
a lot of the tariffs on, on allies,a lot of the blanket tariffs.
I think what you're going to seeare sectoral tariffs next, you know,
on copper or whatever, you know what,or pharmaceuticals maybe.
And, and, and I think a big part ofthe bilateral trade negotiations are going

(13:29):
to be to address the transshipment issue as,
as well as you kind of rules of origin,which is associated with that as well.
So, yeah, I think you're goingto see this continue to evolve.
And it's Chinese overcapacity,and dumping, and
then transshipment ofreally critical materials.
And I know John hates the thing.
It's overcapacity, okay?

(13:50):
I'm sorry, man, but that's.

>> John H. Cochrane (13:52):
They're better than we are.

>> H.R. McMaster (13:53):
It's meant to drive American critical businesses out of
business.
And so, butthat's what he should address, right?
Not, not do the, you know, kind of theblanket approach that he's taken so far.
But what, what.
One of the impetus behind a lotof the blanket tariffs is
the transshipment issue.
And it's important to highlight that.

(14:15):
Niall, thanks.

>> John H. Cochrane (14:16):
I think we're making a mistake here, though,
of imposing our questionon Trump's answer.
This is not clearly stated.
It's not clearly stated as anything, but
this is not a geopolitical competitionwith China set of tariffs.
Because, you know, really, why does,why does 125% tariffs on Chinese
bicycles have anything to do with ourgeopolitical competition with China?

(14:40):
It is mostly about a theory that this
will improve the Americaneconomy somehow or other.
And that is just a fallacyof the flat earth level.
We've understood since the 1750s thatcountries that are open to trade do better
than countries that tryto wall themselves off.
The tariffs are doingto us what sanctions,
what we do with sanctionsto other countries.

(15:02):
You know,when we're sanctioning other countries,
we're trying to stop themfrom importing things.
We're trying to stopourselves from importance.
If tariffs were a good idea,then states should have tariffs,
cities should have tariffs.
We've understood that that is a terribleidea economically for a long, long time.
And I think a, a lot of this isnot narrowly focused on China,
which is one question to which sometariffs might be an answer, but

(15:27):
is in this attempt to drive.
They're explicit about it.
We want zero trade balances,
zero goods trade balanceswith each individual country.
That's completely nuts.

>> Bill Whalen (15:37):
Okay, we have a lot of questions to get to, so I'm gonna,
unfortunately, do a littleshort shrift on tariffs.
But I want to do onemore question on this.
Let's make it an exit question foryou gentlemen.
David and Beverly Hills writes,this one's for Neopa.
Let's make it for all three of you.
Do you think Trump's messyapproach to tariffs and
overall handling of economic and foreignpolicy is diminishing the strength of
the vibe shift that looks so promising inthe first month of Trump's current term?

(15:59):
And let me tackle Onto this question,if we're looking at 90 days,
a 90 day reprieve on the tariff,that's 12 more weeks of this.
So tell me what the world's going to looklike in the next 12 weeks leading up to
July 8th.
Whatever the magic date is for,for the 90 day freeze.

>> Niall Ferguson (16:13):
This is an easy one because I remember writing about the vibe
shift just after the election and
making the point that it would endthe minute Trump became president.
Because then we'd go from the kindof fantasy world of Mar a Lago to
where he was king to the realworld where he was president.

(16:34):
And one of the points I made towardsthe end of that vibe shift piece was
that there would be a Gotham Citypolicy to this new administration.
And sure enough,the problem about Trump unbound and
compared with the Trump thatHR Worked with, he is unbound and
unconstrained in this second termis that he can do the things that,

(16:58):
that HR Gary Cohn andothers were able to stop him from doing.
And the, the extraordinaryprotectionism that we've seen,
which took even me by surprise.
I thought they would get to tariffsin the second half of the year and
they would prioritize other things,but in fact,
Trump has decided to go all in onthe tariffs in the first hundred days.

(17:20):
This is going to have such adverseeconomic consequences already, even with
the reversal of April 9, that it will veryquickly filter through to the US economy,
not just in the form of higher prices,which voters are not going to like,
because that was one of the reasonsthat they voted the Democrats out on

(17:41):
November 5, butalso because jobs are going to be lost.
There are companies all over the UnitedStates that are going to start shedding
labor because they are simply notgoing to be able to go through with
the investments that theyplan to go through with.
And that is already happening at thehighest level with the big tech companies
canceling data center projects.
It's going to go right down to smallbusinesses that had purchased orders for

(18:05):
next Christmas from China.
The toy business is still a heavy,heavily reliant on China.
Those businesses are in deep troublebecause they cannot afford to pay
the tariffs on the ordersthat they already put in.
So the vibe shift endedthe minute he was sworn in.
I knew that would happen.
But I think Trump's popularity, which is,you know, it's been drifting downwards

(18:28):
the approval rating, as usuallyhappens when a president sworn in.
But it's gonna nosedive whenthe economic consequences of deep policy
uncertainty make themselves felt,not only in inflation, but
I think more importantly,in the labor market, it's gonna get ugly.
And you know what?
Even now, it's very, very hard toundo the dam that has been done in

(18:52):
the past week for the reason thatJohn gave this uncertainty is toxic.
The threat of tariffs ona Smoot Hawley level.
Who would ever have thought we wouldhave tried something so reckless,
given the memory of what the Holly tariffswere associated with in the 1930s.
But that's what he's been able to do.

(19:12):
And, yeah, the vibe shift is about togo in a very different direction, and
the vibe is going to be a bad vibe.

>> John H. Cochrane (19:18):
So I think the vibe shift did not end the minute he won
the election, and that's the tragedy.
So let's focus on the political.
And then I jumped in because Iwant to ask the question for
HR of the foreign policy consequences,which I think are worse.
The vibe shift was doinggreat until the tariffs came.
And there was all sorts of great stuffcoming out of the Trump administration.

(19:40):
Executive orders savingus from energy suicide.
Executive orders saving usfrom AI regulation suicide.
Just yesterday, there was an executiveorder reversing the tit for
tat bans on shower heads.
We now can get shower headsthat actually wash you.

>> Donald Trump (19:55):
In my case,
I like to take a nice shower totake care of my beautiful hair.
I have to stand in the shower for15 minutes till it gets wet.

>> John H. Cochrane (20:03):
For the next four years, until the Democratic president
comes in and puts the executiveorder on shower heads again.
This was sort of a great start, butit needed to be institutionalized.
We needed Trump to succeed politically sothat these things became permanent.
And, of course, now they won't.
I think you're exactly right.
When the economic damage comes,
when everything at Walmart coststwice as much as it does now,

(20:26):
when the economy tanks, Trump's politicalpopularity is going to tank, too.
And not just the vibe shift, butthe ability to get things done.
The rats will start leaving the sinkingship quickly, and that will be kind of
the end of all the things we had hoped forout of a Trump presidency.
And back we go again.
So that political damage is.
I think now there mightbe a silver lining here.

(20:49):
You said Trump unconstrained.
We are still slightly a nationof checks and balances.
We are still.
We do not elect a king every four yearswho rules by executive order, by decree.
In fact, these tariffs are strikingly.
Well, I'm not a lawyer, butthey look darn illegal.
It's taken under a nationaldeclaration of national emergency.

(21:10):
What?Where's the national emergency on Bicycle
imports from China, please.
Or, or, or imports from France.
Congress should, you know, when the damagehappens and the rats start leaving
the sinking ship, hopefully Congresswill take back some of its authority and
we'll get back to not beinga country of executive orders or

(21:32):
the courts will say, this is all crazy.
I mean, Trump is not unconstrained.
And the extent to which you're constraineddepends on your political popularity,
which may.
Well, which will tank if,if the economy tanks and foreign policy.
So really, this, I think,is the largest one.
We have just pissed offeverybody around the world.

(21:52):
You can bully people to dowhat you want once, but
then when China blockades Taiwan, you wantto get on the phone and say, you know,
we'd really like you to help help usenforce this sanctions on China and
stop buying cheapelectric cars from China.
Everyone around the world is going to say,yeah, boy,
now you're calling, asking for favors.

>> Bill Whalen (22:13):
You had a question for HR, John.

>> John H. Cochrane (22:14):
That was the question for hr.

>> H.R. McMaster (22:16):
This is what bugs me, right?
So, hey, like, news flash, like,Donald Trump's disruptive, okay?
Everybody knows that, right?
But, but what's sad about this is,you know, he's so
disruptive that he disrupts himself and hebecomes the antagonist in his own story.
And so, you know,this what bugs me so much.
Like, I mean, I think I wake up every daynow and I'm, like, a little bit agitated.

(22:37):
Like, why am I agitated?
Missed opportunities.

>> John H. Cochrane (22:39):
Yes.

>> H.R. McMaster (22:40):
So, you know, focus on what the real agenda is and
put together in a reasonable policy andthen build coalitions around that.
How about,like a positive agenda with Europe?
Right?Hey, what is Trump about?
Deregulation, you know, economic growth,you know, energy security.
Hey, that sounds likethe Draghi Report to me, right?
I mean,that's a positive agenda with the eu.

(23:03):
Now, do you have grievancesassociated with, you know,
unequal access to their markets andeverything?
Hell, yeah.
But negotiate those,you know, Canada, Right?
Canada.
Really picking on Canada.
I mean, I mean, gosh, you know,there's a very positive agenda there, too,
which is in the area of energy dominance,missile defense, the golden dome.
How do you have a golden dome if you can'tshoot down missiles over the Arctic,

(23:26):
which is where they come from?
You know, sothere's an Arctic agenda with them.
There's a strengthening North Americandefense broadly, all right?
I mean, there's so much positive.
But, you know, I'm reminded,you know, of Oddball in,
in Kelly's Heroes when he says, hey,enough with the negative waves, Moriarty?

>> Male Speaker 1 (23:44):
Why don't you knock it off of them negative waves?
Why don't you dig howbeautiful it is out here?
Why don't you say something righteous andhopeful for a change?

>> H.R. McMaster (23:56):
You know?
I mean, we need.
We need more, some positive waves here.
You know, and, and, and, andstop missing opportunities.

>> Bill Whalen (24:04):
Okay, let's shift to foreign affairs.
A question from Andrea andLuxembourg, who writes keen to hear
a discussion on the future of Europe andthe European Union as an institution.
Is the continent destined to descend intogeopolitical and economic irrelevance?
Can the EU project survive as a peace andeconomic project?
Niall, you're closer to this.

>> Niall Ferguson (24:22):
Enough.
This, this is a very hotlydebated topic within
the Ferguson household with my wife,Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
very skeptical aboutthe future of Europe and
my take being somewhat more constructive.
Her view is that Europe hascrossed a certain threshold,

(24:44):
particularly with immigration,
that has created a real instabilitythat will be hard to overcome in terms
of the lack of cultural cohesion,the problem of radical Islamic.
And she's also a skepticthat European institutions
are capable of adapting to the new world.

(25:04):
I take a somewhat contrarian view,but you should know that we've been
arguing about this for many years,certainly since the Brexit debates.
She was a leaver and I was a remainer.
I think the European Union gets a badpress in the US where there's a tendency,
especially I notice, in Silicon Valley,to say, Europe, it's a museum.

(25:27):
We don't really have any use for it.
All they do is manufacture regulations.
But if one actually spends time in Europe,which in my experience Silicon Valley
folks don't, except perhaps on vacation,you realize that really the European Union
has surprised to the upside whenthey created a single currency.
Most economists can't rememberif John was one of them, but

(25:48):
certainly eminent figures such as MartyFeldstein predicted that it wouldn't last,
that it wasn't an optimal currency areaand it would at some point blow up.
Well, guess what?
Still here,even after the global financial crisis,
European integration has continued.
New members have been added.
NATO, which is the security arm of Europe,

(26:10):
might well turn out to be viablewithout the United States,
though it will involve, andHR will agree with this massive investment
in defence capability to createEuropean strategic autonomy.
But that's what they're talking aboutdoing right now in the face of successive
crises, going right back to the financialcrisis, then through Covid,

(26:33):
the war in Ukraine, andnow the crisis that Trump has created.
The tendency has been forEurope to integrate more, not less.
And Britain's exits actually made Europeanintegration easier because Britain was
the one country that really didn't believein creating a United States of Europe.
So my contrarian view, andI'll get hell at home for saying this,

(26:53):
our good fellows is that Europekeeps surprising upside.
And now that it's doing rearmaments,
and now that Germany in particular isinvesting in its defense capability,
I think we might be surprisedby how positive that is for
the German economy and indeed forthe Eurozone economy as a whole.
So that's my contrarian view.

(27:14):
Hate on me now.

>> Bill Whalen (27:16):
HR. >> H.R. McMaster
I think it's just important to considerwhat the European Union was for
at the beginning, right?
And, and really it was an answer to,to what, you know,
Churchill had predicted after World War IIis, hey, it's just going to be more
of the same in Europe unless we dosomething fundamentally different.
I think when the EU has problems,it's when they set, you know,
they become too ambitious.

(27:36):
And I think what you're going to seefrom a defense perspective, you know,
is that within NATO in particular,you're going to see
subgroups within NATO that increase theircooperation on defense and security.
So think about really the Nordic states,the Baltic states and Poland.
That's a group that really sees the threatfrom Russia is really geographically in

(27:58):
a very good position for that kind ofcooperation to strengthen deterrence and
so forth.
So, you know, I think it's just,
we just don't want to expecttoo much of the European Union.
We should maybe be happy withwhat they were able to achieve.
They should be happy themselves.
And I think when they get into trouble iswhen they begin to assert the sovereignty
of citizens within sovereign states whodon't want their fate determined by

(28:20):
faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.
And, and that was the whole, you know,
that that was the impetusbehind the Brexit movement.
And it's why there is this certainfeeling of kinship, I think,
between those who are deep Europeanskeptics and those in the, in the U.S.
who are maybe on the, on kind of,I don't even know how to describe them,

(28:41):
but kind of the retrenchers,the economic nationalists.
There is this kind of ecosystem thatexists internationally now between
European skeptics and, you know,what some people call the alt right.

>> John H. Cochrane (28:54):
I'm a European optimist, Park,
because I'm always an optimist.
And I actually,
I love visiting the museum part ofEurope as well as my European friends.
I see possibility in Europe.
Europe from an economic point of view.
Their tragedy is they stopped growing 10years ago and the US left them behind.
And you look at numbers,the average European is,

(29:17):
is 40% worse off thanthe average American.
So this is a real big difference in,in living standards.
But Europe has figured that out.
The Draghi report, which Niall Mentioned,said slap in the face, guys,
we've overregulated this thing todeath and overtaxed that to death.
Now Draghi, Europe has some ways tofigure out, you know, Draghi said,

(29:37):
what we need to do is borrow a lotof money and throw it at stimulus.
We tried that guys, it didn't work.
But the institutional reform part,let me advertise that I have a book on
the euro coming out in June which takesa deep look at one institution and
says actually it was setup very thoughtfully but
has run into some problems andneeds institutional reform.

(30:00):
So is Europe capable ofinstitutional reform?
Are democracies capableof institutional reform?
And I think the answer has to be slowly,but yes.
Now the institutional reform youclearly need in Europe is something
like what the US went through.
We had an Articles of Confederation whichmaintained a lot of state sovereignty and

(30:21):
didn't work.
And then we had a constitution whichformed an effective government.
The European Union level governmentis set up as this very distant
technocratic rule spewer outer,sorry for that dramatically,
but very distant fromthe average citizens.
So they, they do need to think abouthow to fix their institutions so

(30:43):
their institutions are capable of reform.
And, and the, you know, the,the limits on speech in Europe, you know,
people getting thrown in jail forwhat they post on the Internet.
They actually, France actually threw a,
a right wing politician in jail tostop her from being elected next.
You know, those are,are very worrisome trends, but

(31:03):
the average European citizenis growing skeptical and
they are realizing what the damage oftheir catastrophic energy policy was.
They're realizing theircatastrophic immigration policies.
So I think there is hope for reform.
And in the same way as the US thatafter trying everything else,

(31:24):
sooner or later we'll do the right thing.
Let us hope that both oursocieties aren't so stuck in,
in obviously dysfunctional institutionsthat they're unable to fix them.

>> H.R. McMaster (31:34):
Just a quick story.
About a year and a half ago, I was walkingthrough Mayfair with Stephen Cotkin
on a chilly evening, andhe goes, hey, is this decline?
If this is decline, I want more of it.

>> John H. Cochrane (31:48):
Wait, this is an important thing.
When you look at numbers like 40% GDP,every country in the world,
when you go down the Champs Elysees orthe Central,
even whatever the central street in Lagos,Nigeria is looks.
Pretty nice.
But economics is about numbers.
It's about how many people live that nice,nice lifestyle versus how many people.

(32:08):
What's the economics is really aboutwhat does the average person live in?
And in, you know,the US you live in a pretty big house and
you got a pretty big truck.
I just went to Japan.
Lovely country.
Walking down the central streets of Tokyo.
It's clean and clean public toilets,and everything looks wonderful.
And then you look around at how big of ahouse does the average person live in and

(32:32):
what kind of car.
Many of them don't have a car at all.
Do they get to drive?
And that is important toaverage people's lives.
Not just what the Gucci store looks like.

>> Niall Ferguson (32:41):
Though, to be honest, John, if you look past those metrics and
ask about, say,public health life expectancy,
the US Data are terriblein some of those domains.
And we've actually seen a decline in,in life expectancy.
So, you know, the problems that wesee that beset middle America are so

(33:01):
often discussed when we're trying toexplain populism, the rise of Trump,
that there are no,no mass deaths from opioids in, in Japan.
The problem barely exists in, in Europe.
I could go on.

>> John H. Cochrane (33:13):
So they, they enforce laws on things like that.

>> Niall Ferguson (33:16):
There are some important.

>> H.R. McMaster (33:17):
That's what we need, ma'am.
We need more sushi andless Popeyes Chicken.
That's what we need.

>> John H. Cochrane (33:23):
Also, you forget America is a very diverse country.
If you look at Swedes in America,
they have this better lifeexpectancy than Swedes and Sweden.
So no other country tries to deal with thekind of diversity that the US Deals with.

>> Bill Whalen (33:39):
Let's move on with this question from.

>> Niall Ferguson (33:40):
Rock and I'd love to go further down that road.
Let's save it for another episode.

>> John H. Cochrane (33:44):
Yeah, I agree.

>> Bill Whalen (33:46):
Thank you.

>> H.R. McMaster (33:46):
I'm just glad you guys are stopped.
You're not talking about math anymore.

>> John H. Cochrane (33:51):
Public health people shooting each other and, and, you know,
eating themselves to death and so forth.
It's.It's not a.
It's not a.
We don't have a public health system.
But yeah, that'll be moving.

>> Bill Whalen (34:01):
Moving on.
Okay.A question from Rockenzerk, Sweden.
He writes, president Trumprecently suggested that, quote,
there are methods in which you can do itwith regard to running for a third term.
Some might fear that with the Republicanappointed Supreme Court, checks and
balances are gone.
Others call January 6th and Doge's accessto the federal payment system a coup
during the election it was said Kamala'svictory would lead to lawlessness and

(34:21):
institutional collapse.
What is going on here?
How resilient are the institutions,the United States,
more than the will ofany elected president.
Rock, if you're listening,
I'd point you to the Hoover InstitutionRevitalizing American Institutions
initiative, which is something veryimportant to Condoleezza Rice,
our director.
But, Niall, let's talk fora moment about American institutions.

>> Niall Ferguson (34:40):
Well, it's a good question to ask,
to take the specificquestion of a third term.
Yes, there are indeed mechanisms you'dhave to repeal the relevant amendment,
and that's a constitutional amendment,
which is a very difficult thing to do andI think is about 1% probable.
So that that's not going to happen anymore than Canada is going to become

(35:04):
the 51st state.
And I think we just fileit under Trump trolling.
And this is part of his MOto say extreme things, and
then you're kind of glad when somethingless extreme happens or grateful.
Perhaps that was part of the rationale forthe trade brinkmanship.
I think there's a broader question atissue, which is how far the norms, which

(35:28):
are an important part of a constitutionalorder, are being undermined.
And I would argue, andI've argued for some time,
that both parties have beenundermining these norms.
Both parties, for example, have, I think,tried to use the legal system for
political ends in ways that are differentfrom what we saw in the past.

(35:51):
I think the Constitution was brilliantlydesigned by the founders to prevent
the typical way in which a republicdescends into either anarchy or tyranny.
And it's worked for nearly a quarterof a millennium successfully.
And I think it will work again,
despite the bad instincts thatpoliticians on both sides have, and

(36:15):
specifically despite Donald Trump'sstrange impulses to be an imperial figure.
My sense is, last thing I'll say,
that the hubris of this early100 days will be followed,
just as the Greeks would have expected,by nemesis economically,
in terms of popularity,in terms of political legacy.

(36:39):
And the Constitution won't seriously betroubled much beyond 100 days, precisely
because the president's already donea lot of damage to his political brand.

>> Bill Whalen (36:51):
Yeah. So, John, he asked about resiliency.
That is a stress test.

>> John H. Cochrane (36:55):
Well, I want to echo what Niall said.
The norms and checks andbalances are frank.
The lawfare is one of the thingsthat I found outrageous.
And just little things likepresidents now routinely pointing
at the Supreme Court justicesduring State of a Union speech or
the harassing of the Supreme Court,

(37:17):
the dirty tricks the Biden laptopembroglio in the last election,
all sorts of misuse of the government andfraying of norms.
It's very important to be able,that you be able to lose an election.
That's the key to democracy and,and more and more it's, you know,
you're in trouble if you lose.

(37:39):
Businesses ran to Washingtonthe minute the election changed sides.
So running a business is more andmore politicized.
These, these are not good things.
But as far as, you know,Trump and, and the fourth term.
Yes, but I, I would,
I would point out that everyone'sgotten into this as a technicality.
Could he seize power despitea tremendous unpopularity?

(37:59):
No.
This sort of thing would only happenif he had a 70% approval rating.
Everybody in the countryreally wanted him to stay and
we were collectively looking for a way.
If he was 30% popularity becausehe tanked the economy and
spiked off a 1979stagflation due to tariffs,
everybody's going to be running awayfrom him and politics is in the end.

(38:23):
Do you have support or not?

>> Bill Whalen (38:25):
Hey, turn your moment to be optimistic.

>> H.R. McMaster (38:28):
Well, I, I agree with Niall and, and John.
I of course I worry about the militaryprofession and the degree to which I think
both political parties have endeavored topull the military into partisan politics,
which we have to just have hands off,right?
And I'm talking obviously about the,
the Biden administration's advancing whatI would call radical DEI agendas, which is

(38:49):
equality of outcome instead of equalityof opportunity, as well as, you know,
various manifestations of postmodernistand critical theories in which, you know,
you valorize victimhood and you judgepeople by various identity categories and,
and the degree to which they fit intooppressor or oppressed and so forth.
That's destructive, you know,to the warrior ethos and

(39:11):
to the professional military ethic.
I just hope that the correction is not,you know,
the cure is not worse than the disease.
And, and in correcting those efforts toadvance, I, I would call political or
social agenda within the militaryinstitution should be removed,
but not at the cost of trying to havelike these loyal loyalty tests or, or to,

(39:32):
to consider military officers who servedunder the previous administration is
somehow, you know, biased politically,which they are not.
So anyway, I think the militaryprofession is going to be okay because of
the professionalism of our,of our officer corps and our soldiers and
non commissioned officers,servicemen and women.
And I think the message to reallyleaders in both political parties is

(39:57):
man hands off,stop trying to drag the military in.
To kind of the vortex, [LAUGH] Thatis spitting Americans apart from each
other in just about every walk of life,including business, as John mentioned.

>> Bill Whalen (40:10):
Well said.
A question from Rick in Arizona.
He writes, what periods in history,economic, political and chronologic
history, most closely correlate to that ofthe United States in its current times?
Coupled with that, are there otherperiods in the history of Western
civilization to which you draw attentionas being worthy of consideration as
possible outcomes tothe current world situation?
Similarly, Sir Niall.

>> Niall Ferguson (40:30):
Well, as you may have figured out,
I'm at the University of Austin this week,and I've been teaching some of
the freshman students here, and one ofthe things I'm teaching them is the.
The origins of historiography.
We're reading Polybius and readingTacitus, and the part of Tacitus Annals
that I've assigned is the part in whichTacitus describes the final years

(40:55):
of Augustus's reign and the accessionof Tiberius as his successor and
what is fascinating about the textis that Tacitus deplores the way
the institutions of the Republic decayedimperceptibly into those of the Empire.
And he blames this on the kindof moral failure of the elites,

(41:16):
their readiness to besuborned by Augustus,
and then to acceptTiberius as his successor.
So if you want to kind of just keepyour mind focused on the dangers
to any republic,
it is very well worth reading about howthe Roman Republic descended into empire,
because as I keep trying to encourage thestudents to see if there wasn't a day when

(41:38):
Augustus said, I'm the emperor,the Republic's dead, that never happened.
He just said, I'm Prince's first citizenbut all the institutions of the Republic,
including the Senate,continued to operate.
As Tacitus says, it was a sort ofmoral decay of the elites that
allowed this death of the Republicimperceptibly to happen.

(41:59):
So that's gonna make you feel nervous.
The good news is Americans havebeen worrying about this more or
less since the founding.
And one of the best things about thiscountry is we're always worrying about
being Rome and as long as we're worryingabout it, it's probably gonna be okay.
The other analogy which I'm reallyinterested in is this Nixonian analogy
where subliminally or perhaps consciously,

(42:20):
Trump is doing a lot of very Nixonianthings or trying to do them.
They're kind of very blunt instruments,this is like the Nixon shock of 71, but
it's really crude andit's probably gonna backfire.
It's like, I wanna do a reverse Nixonwith Putin and split him away from China,
except I don't thinkthat's gonna work either.
And by comparing us with the 70s, you getthe good news that the 70s were a period

(42:42):
of disorientation,of economic underperformance,
when it seemed like the United Stateswas losing its primacy.
It was just an interlude.
And the United States bouncedback starting in 1980.
So those are the kind ofanalogies I think about a lot.

>> Bill Whalen (42:58):
Niall, that's Nixon 68, over my shoulder right there.
No, Henry Kissinger,he's not on the scene yet.
But HR what period inhistory would you choose?

>> H.R. McMaster (43:05):
You know, I think it's, it's really helpful to, to think about how
other periods in history reflect kindof the geopolitical landscape of today.
And there's a superb essay that waswritten in 2014 by a great historian,
Margaret Macmillan,called the Rhyme of History.
You can find it on the Brookings website.
And in it, she compares kindof the emergence of the China,

(43:26):
Russia alignment tothe early 20th century,
in which you saw the dangers of a fighton the continent about who could,
would dominate what great geopoliticaltheorists of Spikeman and
Mackinder called the world island.
And so I've been thinking about thatperiod of time as well as the work

(43:49):
that Sir Michael Howard did in a bookcalled the Continental Commitment,
because in this book he arguesthat a failure for Britain, for
the United Kingdom to commit tocontinental security because of other
priorities associated with the empiredid not commit sufficiently and

(44:09):
a world war resulted.
And I think we're seeing debates thatevoke that kind of that same period or
an analogy to that period in connectionwith this drive toward retrenchment and
deprioritizing Europe forother theaters, for example and
now the U.S Is in the positionwhere we're debating whether or

(44:29):
not we should maintain ourcontinental commitment.
And I think if we don't,
we're going to increase the dangerof an even larger war in Europe.
What we're seeing today is the firstmajor war in Europe since the end
of World War II.

>> Bill Whalen (44:45):
John Cochran, historian, by osmosis.

>> John H. Cochrane (44:47):
[LAUGH] I hang out with historians,
which is always a great pleasure.
Yeah, the obvious onesare we've always worried about,
the end of the Roman Empire.
Isn't it said that all men thinksabout Rome once a day, the end of
the Ottoman Empire, the slow declinein sclerosis, of the United Kingdom.
And we're always worried about that,but yeah, I think periods of reform.

(45:09):
Let's get ourselves hopeful by alsothinking about periods when great
nations fell into decay andthen were able to reform themselves.
Yes, how Reagan followed, followedNixon and Carter is a good example,
in the U.S in the Roman Empirethere were good and bad emperors.
Even as we moved on into empire,I remember cycles of things falling

(45:31):
apart and then then a good emperorwould come in and fix things a bit.
So even Rome was able toreform under the empire.
And we got our republics have alwaysbeen been good about one thing,
the transition of power andgetting rid of the bad guys.
We've been voting out incompetence formany elections for

(45:51):
a while, not really voting in.
We've never been that greatat technocratic expertise,
the good emperor was always good at that,but
then was immediately followed bya civil war and a bad emperor.
But I think times we should study and
this is more of a question becauseyou guys know the history better, but
times when countries have faced problems,faced stagnation and

(46:14):
then been able to reform theirinstitutions in a positive way.
The economic, the other historicalanalogy I'm looking for
this is largely a question becauseI'm not coming up with the answers.
But you guys know the history better.
This whole tariffs business,was there ever a country that
decided to go it alone toput up tariff barriers for

(46:36):
national security even we'regoing to do it ourselves so
that we're the national security state andthat this has worked out or
have large barriers and with a focus onnational security just led to stagnation.
I think a lot of Latin American countriesput up a lot of trade barriers,

(46:57):
often citing national security.
And boy, that car industry in Bolivia isnot turning out the way I think it did.
India lived under trade barrier,import substitution,
we'll make India great again.
We'll build cars in India,go look at those cars.
I can't think think of a successfulcountry living under large trade barriers.

(47:20):
I can think of many periods inhistory when where was the most
prosperous society atany moment in history?
What was the United kingdom in the 1800s?
What was the Netherlands in the 1700s?
What was Venice in the 1400s?
It was always the one that was open anddoing the most trading.

(47:42):
So that's the other historical.

>> H.R. McMaster (47:43):
I think this is what's great about history.
You have to be sensitive to continuity andchange.
Right, and so what Carl Beckersaid is that memory of past and
anticipation of future shouldwalk hand in hand in a happy way.
And I think what's changed,
what's different is you have a massivestatist mercantilist economy.
Interacting with ours in a way thatperverts that economic discourse in a way

(48:05):
that I think might be unprecedented.
I don't know, I mean, I mean, Niall,you're the economic historian,
but I think this is where it kindof falls apart, is just China.
China is an aberration.

>> John H. Cochrane (48:18):
But so what?
The free market UK was faced with statistmercantilist, France, Germany, Russia,
and everybody else.

>> Niall Ferguson (48:25):
And let's not forget the United States,
which was a protectionist country formost of its 19th-

>> John H. Cochrane (48:30):
Grew despite,
clearly despite that protectionism,not because of it.

>> Niall Ferguson (48:34):
Yeah, I mean this makes the argument hard because you know,
the British regime in the 18th centurywas also a, a regime without free trade.
Britain only became a free tradeempire really beginning in the 1840s.
And in the same waythe United States embraced free
trade after it had becomedominant economically.

(48:56):
So there is an argument and the Chinesemake it, I always hear it when I go there,
that we're just doing what you did and
actually now we're much more ofa liberal economy than you realize.
This is the debate that you have.
If you go to China right now and talkabout automobiles, the Chinese will argue
very heatedly that their automobilesector, which is now world beating,

(49:18):
is a result not of state subsidies andprotection, but of rampant cutthroat
competition where about 100 companieshave been a complete free for all to
see who can build the most affordable andbest EV with BYD currently winning.
So the great thing about doing this kindof economic history is that it immediately
complicates your just so story that,you know, free trade all was good.

(49:42):
China, very mercantilist.
It's not as simple as that.
I could even muddythe waters on Latin America.
I mean, look at Brazil.
Brazil is a very big economy with asignificant diversified industrial sector.
It didn't do that witha free trade regime.
So Bill, give us another questionbefore we disappear into the darkest,
deepest waters of economic history andconfuse ourselves.

>> Bill Whalen (50:05):
I'm going to give you a series of questions that we
call the lightning round.
[SOUND]>> Male Speaker 2: LIGHTNING ROUND.
[SOUND]>> Bill Whalen: All right gentlemen,
first question comes from MH in Akron,
Ohio, who writes the United states will be250 years old in 2026 Sir John Glubb in
his 1977 essay The Fate of Empires,studied at least 11 empires and
found 250 years to be the averagelength of national greatness.

(50:27):
What's the GoodFellow's opinion?
And Niall, why don't you tell us whoSir John Glubb was, AKA Glub Pasha.

>> Niall Ferguson (50:33):
Glub Pasha was for many years essentially the British
military expert running the armedforces of the Kingdom of Jordan.
He was war hero of the first World Warwho had a distinguished career but
it was in the Middle east asthe commanding officer of the Arab Legion

(50:55):
that that he played a key role.
One of those classic imperialcareers in which a man like Glub,
who was from the north of Englandwould spend his entire life in
the Arab world andbecome better known there than at home.
By the way, the essay is great and
I'm really grateful to the listener forsuggesting that we read it.

(51:18):
There's an answer to this question whichI worked out long before I knew about
Glubb's essay.
There's no such thing as an average empirebecause the distribution of empires
completely not normal that thereare immensely long lived empires like
the Roman Empire which is definitelymore than a 1000 years in duration.
And then there are empires like Hitler'sthat are incredibly short lived because

(51:42):
they kind of self destruct.
And so to talk of an average 250year span is completely misleading.
They're just not normally distributed.
And that means that it doesn't meananything that the United States is, is.
Is approaching its 250th birthday.
In any case the United Statesis a republic.
It's questionable whether it atsome point became an empire.

(52:02):
I think it did butthat was relatively recent.
I mean the soonest you can reallyI think refer to it is late 1890s.
At any event it's not a 250 year oldempire even if that was a meaningful
benchmark.

>> Bill Whalen (52:17):
What day you, John?

>> John H. Cochrane (52:19):
To riff on Niall's don't believe in averages, yes,
this is a fat tailed distribution.
What you want to know is is theprobability of failure a function of age.
Sorry to be mathy on you, but that'sthe way we think about these things.
Are older empires more likely tofall apart than younger empires?
And I think no dysfunctional empiresare more likely to fall apart.

(52:43):
And yes the US is is verystrange in this range.
We are not an empire.
When did any empire voluntarily leave or
in this case voluntarily cutitself off from the world?
Very strange behavior for empires.
And lastly,national greatness is I think overstated.

(53:06):
We want to leave in a live in a peacefulworld and we have the hubris to think that
us running it makes it a more peaceful andprosperous world.
But the Netherlands lost itsnational greatness a long time ago,
it's still a very pleasant place to live.
So I'm a little worried about empire forthe sake of empire
rather than empire forthe sake of peace and prosperity.

>> Bill Whalen (53:30):
Now, HR Benjamin Franklin comes to mind, what did he say?
A republic, if you could keep it.

>> H.R. McMaster (53:34):
Well, absolutely, and I think that's what's different for us,
is that I would argue we're not an empire.
Maybe we could save this argument foranother day.
We don't stay placeswhere we're not wanted.
And I think what's differentabout us is the radical idea of
the American Revolution,that sovereignty lies with the people.

(53:54):
And as a result, we have,I think, a tremendous capacity for
self correction and for self improvement.

>> Bill Whalen (54:02):
All right, a question from Alexander in Pira Pira, Umu, Washington.
Yes, I had to look up that pronunciation.
I'm not up on my area apparently.
He writes, if you had to bet on oneunexpected country becoming a future
global power by 2050,who would it be and why?
HR why don't you go first?

>> H.R. McMaster (54:19):
Well, you know, I'll say two, and it's really not unexpected.
It could be India.
But of course, there's been a broadliterature on this in recent years
about India's problems andhow difficult it is.
So it's a country withtremendous potential and
also has a lot of obstacles in its wayin terms of achieving that vision.
And then I'll say something, you know,I've been thinking about lately is

(54:42):
what does Turkey look like after Erdoganand maybe after his wing of the AKP party?
I think Turkey, just based on its gifts ofgeography and its strategic location and
the degree to which it's important asa transit country for energy and so
forth, Turkey has tremendous potential.
And we'll see if after Erdogan,it can grow its economy more effectively,

(55:04):
ameliorate some of its internaldifficulties and play,
I think, a really critical role for the,
for the Eurasia and the rest of the world,Middle East, so forth.

>> Bill Whalen (55:15):
John? >> John H. Cochrane
versus economics, because thoseare two very different things.
And one is the desire for military power.
I mean, you want to place bets,
you got to place your betson China as the most likely.
But as you look around the world,look at all the surprises economically.

(55:36):
South Korea after World War IIwas desperately poor.
Who would have thunk that they would grow?
So Japan had its economic miracle.
Singapore, a nice comparison, lookedessentially like Gaza in about 1960.
And Singapore now has about doublethe GDP per capita of the United States.

(55:57):
The potential forrapid One to two generations.
Spectacular economic growth liesall over the place in the world.
Europe could do it andrejoin the US and pass us.
India could do it.
The economic model is fairly simple andstraightforward.

(56:17):
It's just a lot of people with vestedinterests lose along the way and
stand in the way.
And who knows,maybe Milei's Argentina will be the one to
embrace free markets, free people,open trade, innovation,
low regulation andwill be the Singapore of the of the 2050s.

(56:37):
Okay, the old major power by 2050.

>> Niall Ferguson (56:39):
From your lips to God's ears, John, one would love to see
Argentina finally break out of thatmultidecade period of underperformance.
You're right that China's the obvious one.
And indeed I worry that many ofthe things that are currently being done
by the United States will makeChina's rise more, not less likely.

(57:01):
You know, it's worth reiteratingsomething you alluded
to earlier is US trade policytowards China in effect.
Chinese sanctions on the United Statesimposed by the United States.
If you think about it that way,
you can see why we might inadvertentlyhelp China into the number one position.
I'm not sure they can do it on their own,but if we help, it's possible.

(57:22):
I come back to a paradoxical answerthat put me in mind of Henry Kissinger.
Towards the end of his life,Kissinger said to his great amazement,
Ukraine had proved itselfto be a European power and
it had established itself in militaryterms in ways he had not foreseen.
If Ukraine can ride out the next year,it's possible that Ukraine could surprise

(57:46):
us all because it is the experimentallaboratory of the war of the future and
they have done very, very well consideringthe massive odds against them.
So I'm gonna go out ona wild GoodFellows limb and
say by 2050 we'll be talking about Ukraineas one of the great European powers and

(58:07):
marveling at how few people foresaw thatapart from the great Niall Ferguson.

>> John H. Cochrane (58:12):
I just wanna follow up on what Niall and H.R. said earlier.
There was a vision we've talkedabout previously on GoodFellows of
global trading blocks andit's our block versus the China block.
By blowing up our block, we are sendinga lot of people into the arms of China.
You want to ask Colombiawhether it should buy

(58:33):
Ford F150s or BYD amazingly cheap cars.
It's a big ask to say youneed to join us right now and
especially after pissing people off.
This could drive a lot of people intotrading relationships with China.
It's not about exports to the US Anymore.

(58:54):
China would be delighted to export,export to Latin America, to India,
to Africa, to Europe, to Russia.
And by cutting ourselves off,we may well be helping that global,
the global trading blocks I think it wasHR Envisioned may well be an America,
a US Trading block, andeverybody else with China.

(59:15):
And that would reallybe counterproductive.

>> Bill Whalen (59:17):
Our final mailbag question comes from Jonathan in Houston, Texas.
He writes,
I'm a high school sophomore looking ata career in the government in some way.
I recently read Plutarch's Lives forschool,
and I'm interested in whatbiographies y'all would recommend.
And yes, he wrote y'all.
All right, Niall,pick a biography for Jonathan.

>> Niall Ferguson (59:32):
Well, as I'm just down the road in Austin,
you're welcome forthat question, it's a great one.
I think that wonderfulTom Holland has a new translation
of Suetonius just coming outthat will be a must read.
I can't wait to get my hands on it.
And it will follow nicely on from whatyou're already reading, can I recommend my

(59:55):
favorite of all historical biographies,Robert Blake's Life of Benjamin Disraeli,
one of the most elegantlyproduced of all biographies and
a wonderful insight into one of the mostquirky figures of the 19th century,
man who is in all respects really,except observance, Jewish, who became
the British prime minister and one ofthe great founders of modern conservatism.

(01:00:17):
It's a beautiful book.
And we can all, Americans,even yes, Texans,
can learn from the life of Disraeli.

>> Bill Whalen (01:00:24):
HR, pick a book, and the Chuck Bedargic biography does not count.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:00:28):
Yeah, I've got it right here behind me,
I don't know if you can see it, The BinaryBiography, last of the 60 Minute Man.
But hey, it's the 250th anniversarythis year of the United States Army,
who is a year olderthan our Republic even.
And so it's quite a commitment.
But I've been rereading Ron Chernow'sWashington, which I recommend.
And, but if you want to write abouta real scrapper, you know, and, and

(01:00:51):
probably one of the best combatgenerals in the Revolution,
Don Higginbotham's Daniel Morgan,American Rifleman.
And, and when you read aboutDaniel Morgan's life, you will just,
you'll just be amazed at the broad rangeof experiences, his leadership ability.
And I think, you know, maybe we don't winthe revolution without Daniel Morgan,

(01:01:12):
you know, in terms of the impact that hehas broadly, the British should never have
let him out once he was capturedin the attack on, on Quebec.
But hey, just for our listener, reallyquick, because it's a great question,
he made me think of Jeffrey Rosen's bookcalled the Pursuit of Happiness, and
it's about how classical writers on virtueinfluenced the founders of our republic.

(01:01:33):
And I think he'll enjoy that and it'llbe a bridge maybe from what he's reading
now into the,into the Washington biography.

>> Bill Whalen (01:01:41):
Okay, John Cochran, drum roll please, you get the last word.

>> John H. Cochrane (01:01:45):
Man.
Well, since poor Jonathan thinkshe wants a career in government,
[LAUGH] what can we recommendto change my topic.
I'm currently listening to Steve Kotkin'swonderful biography of Stalin,
which of course I have torecommend cuz I'm listening to and
we're watching Wolf Hall series on PBS.

(01:02:06):
Wanna understand cutthroat politics?
Literally, that period is a good one.
But if you're going to go to Washingtonand work in government, understand
politics, of course, Robert Caro'sbiographies of Lyndon Johnson are a must.
And then you'll really understand howpower works, or did in that case,
in the American government.

>> Bill Whalen (01:02:24):
All right,
there's actually one last question thatcomes from Bill in Palo Alto, yours truly.
What Bill wants to know is,do Niall, John and
HR know that we have just passedthe five year mark for GoodFellows?

>> Niall Ferguson (01:02:34):
Once the public health crisis is under control and
we suddenly realize we fired the bazooka,you can't unfire a bazooka.
HR will confirm this.
HR I want to really drawon your military expertise.
Once you've fired a bazooka, you can'tput the shell back in, am I right?

>> H.R. McMaster (01:02:49):
That's correct, and that's the same for tank rounds also.

>> Niall Ferguson (01:02:53):
Well, that's the problem.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:02:54):
I would say it is more of a tank round than a bazooka.

>> Niall Ferguson (01:02:57):
Yeah.
Yeah.

>> Bill Whalen (01:02:58):
Gentlemen, this is episode number 152.
Who'd have thought it?
So, question to each of you,beginning with you, John,
tell me one thing you've Learnedin the 5 plus years of doing this.
Other than hair styling and lighting and
microphones and all that kind of stuffthat people don't see behind the scenes.

>> John H. Cochrane (01:03:16):
I just gotta say, I so
much enjoy these weekly chatsbecause my colleagues are wonderful,
but they're very busy and sofinding them at Hoover is hard.
And when we just get together,we tend to throw things around.
So sitting down with you guys andhaving a focused, thank you,
Bill, conversation anda frank exchange of views and

(01:03:39):
the things we disagree about,I learned from you guys every day.
And I hope you're finding thatinterchanges as useful as I'm finding it.
And my,how time flies when you're having fun.

>> Bill Whalen (01:03:52):
HR Are you having fun?

>> H.R. McMaster (01:03:54):
I'm having a lot of fun.
I mean, I'll tell you,what I've learned is how damn fortunate
I am to be at the Hoover Institutionwith all of you and our colleagues.
I imagine that our listeners are committedlike we are to lifelong learning.
I learned so much from thesediscussions and just being, you know,
being at Hoover and at Stanford and, andhey, love you guys and damn, you get,

(01:04:16):
you get better looking every year,you guys, I'll tell you.
Can't believe it's been five years.

>> Bill Whalen (01:04:21):
What say you Niall?

>> Niall Ferguson (01:04:24):
I've learned that when you're trying to navigate
the constantly shifting seas ofour world history in real time,
one of the best ways to doit is with a good crew.
If I'd spent the last five years justtrying to figure this all out on my own,
it would have been much harder.

(01:04:44):
But we've been forced by the formatof Goodfellows to meet regularly and
exchange ideas, and we've alwaysdone it in a spirit of friendship.
But we've never hesitated to disagreewhen there have been disagreements, nor
have we hesitated to change ourminds when the facts have changed.

(01:05:06):
So what I've learned is, andit seems to me of general
applicability that youneed to have discourse
between equals to navigatein a really stormy sea.
If you're just sat there as a CEO, it maybe yes men around you, you don't know.

(01:05:28):
There are no yes men on Goodfellas.
Because the four of us are alwaysequals and we can correct one another,
we can disagree with one, orwe can correct ourselves.
And that's what I've learned.
It's extraordinarily valuable,and there's not enough of that.
There's not enough of this kind ofconversation going on in America.

(01:05:49):
If we had more of it andless social media hysteria,
think the country would be makingbetter decisions collectively?

>> Bill Whalen (01:05:57):
You know what I've learned in the last five years?
That I am a freeloaderof the highest order.
Why is that?
Because I sit here as the moderator.
You know what a moderator does?
He tries to keep time,which I generally fail at.
He writes copious notes, Niall, butit goes into post production, don't worry.
But I sit here andI listen to you guys and I learn.
So let's do the math here.
If I've been doing about150 of these shows,

(01:06:19):
that's over 1500 hours ofwisdom that I benefited.
So I've learned God knows how mucheconomics from John and history and
geopolitics andnational security from Niall and HR.
And I thank you gentlemen forthe education,
I know our viewers feel the same.
So let me thank our viewers for hangingin with there with us for five years.
I'd thank our crack marketing teamhere at the Hoover Institution for
coming up this in the first place.

(01:06:39):
Our director, Condoleezza Rice forbeing a champion of the show as well.
And we hope everybody enjoy watching thisis enjoying it, and who knows how long
we'll keep going, maybe another fiveyears from now, time will tell.
So behalf on the Goodfellows,Niall Ferguson, Sir Niall Ferguson,
John Cochrane, HR McMaster,all of us here at the Hoover Institution,
we enjoyed today's show.
We'll be back in a couple of weeks.
Until then, take care.
And as always, thanks for watching.

(01:07:08):
If you enjoyed this show andare interested in watching more content
featuring HR McMaster, watchBattlegrounds also available @ hoover.org.