S7E4: Tariffs

Foreign.

This is Larry Lessig. This is episode four of season seven of the podcast Another Way conversation I'm having with a high school friend, Trump supporter Ben Hepburn. The topic today is tariffs. And to introduce the conversation, I just want to make sure that it's clear that the tariff question is not just a simple black and white question. There are plenty of times when it makes sense to have a tariff. And so I'm not advancing in the argument or discussion. We're going to have on this podcast the position that there should never, ever be tariffs. But what there should be is a clear policy reason for the tariffs, and there could be two. So one idea would be to raise tariffs so that manufacturers find it profitable to produce in America the things that are now produced outside of America. This is the strategy behind the thought that we could revive domestic production, manufacturing production, if we could just raise the prices enough to make it profitable to do it in America. Because without those tariffs, it's extremely difficult to compete with much cheaper economies like China or Vietnam or the like. So this theory, of course, would result in prices being higher, but the argument goes, at least we'd have more domestic manufacturing employment. Okay, now a second reason you might strategically decide you're going to raise tariffs is that you might use it to induce other countries to reduce their tariffs. You could say, look, we're going to have tariffs at the same rate you do. So if you have a 30% tariff, we're going to have a 30% tariff. If you have a 10% tariff, we're going to HAVE a 10% tariff. Our tariffs are going to be reciprocal. And what follows on the second strategy is that if the other country reduces their tariff, you reduce yours. Okay, now that strategy is a pretty good strategy for the purpose of driving down tariffs generally so that all countries have as low as the lowest tariffs that they domestically could survive with. And so that strategy would make sense if your objective is to eliminate tariffs or reduce them as much as possible around world. Okay, now the point to recognize is those two strategies are inconsistent. You can't have as an objective raising tariffs to induce domestic manufacturing and simultaneously say you're going to lower tariffs in order to reduce tariffs around the globe, because it makes no sense that you would raise tariffs expecting people to invest when those people realize you'll just lower the tariffs in order to get other countries to lower theirs too. So this is the core problem, the puzzle with this strategy that the President has been pursuing. This episode was recorded before the extraordinary reversal of President Trump last week. And so therefore recorded before we saw the tariffs put off for 90 days. And who knows what will happen in 90 days, whether they'll be returned or not. This has been an era not of consistent, stable policy, but chaos. Okay. And then finally, the question that I'm going to push in this episode a little bit harder than I have pushed in other episodes is what do we think the real purpose of these policies is? Is, is the purpose as campaign ads that President Trump had on television before the election. Is the real purpose to advance the interest of the average American, or is there another purpose that's not about the average American? Okay, so stay tuned for this conversation with Ben Hepb.

Ben, welcome to our fourth conversation. And as I, as I was saying, I think this is kind of the perfect conversation to try to build some understanding here, because, you know, we're in the middle of a pretty significant moment. It is April 7th. So the President announced his tariffs last week, and there was a pretty substantial reaction across the world into the markets, and the markets have collapsed and people are anxious about the rising prices. And as all of this is happening, I'm just wondering, how are you viewing it? What do you think about what's going on?

My thoughts, Larry, are

things.

Something had to be done. Our debt was climbing. And I, I look at it as a, a way that President Trump is actually trying to change something. Right or wrong. He's trying something, and I look at it and what I listen to, you know, those guys say, and I'm trying to understand it just like everybody else, is that the manufacturing has left the United States, and we're trying to get that back. I, I try to do my due diligence and reading into this stuff and researching it. I've actually done more of this political stuff since I've started talking to you than I have, obviously, before. I see other countries have a tariff on us, but we don't have one on them. And I also see the countries, as of today, some of the countries are trying to talk, now they're negotiating. So I see that all as a good thing. And I realize that people are upset about their 401ks. I was upset about that in 2001 or 2021 when pandemic and everything hit. I get it. But then I changed some stuff, and mine is doing okay. I went to a less aggressive and I went to more safer investments, and mine is actually up, you know, eight grand since the beginning of the year. Now, I haven't checked it today or anything like that, but I went to safe, some safe Investments. And I know there's always a risk, and I think that's what people are kind of forgetting that there's a risk in this stock market. You know, if I give you 1000 bucks and tell it to put it in your pocket for your year, you got a thousand bucks. If I tell you to put it in the bank for a year, you know, you get 1%, maybe 10 bucks or whatever. But if you put it in the stock market, you may have, you know, another 500 or another thousand, depending. But it's. It's still a gamble, it's still a risk. And I see this as something that hopefully turns out to be positive again. You know, me, Larry, being the glass is half empty, half full, I'm looking at this as something that needs to be changed. So I look at what, you know, President Trump and his group has. Have done, and I'm kind of pleased with it. I know other people probably aren't. We talked, we talked before about, like, this, this doge and, you know, coming up with all this stuff. That doesn't mean that, you know, they're going to save us all kinds of money, but they are looking into it, and you can't. You can't save money. You can't change things unless you actually look into it. So I applaud that part of it. I realized that I think government is too big, and I like the fact that they're trying to decrease it, decrease regulations. So, although there's some things I don't, you know, I'm not happy about, obviously, I wish the stock market would make us all kinds of money, but I'm okay with what's going on at this point because, you know, I. I had to go through this kind of stuff in my life where you make choices and you say, man, this is going to get tough. You know, I went from a house in Montoursville to a farm in Lolsoc, and the price difference was incredible. You know, and my dad reminded me that, you know, if you buy this farm, you may not be able to get ice cream at the end of the day. And I think that's where I'm coming from. I don't know if that makes sense to you, Larry.

Well, so it feels like, yeah, you know, at the level of generality you describe it, it sounds fine. Got to change things, got to deal with the deficit. But what's striking about the tariffs is that most everyone who knows anything about economics says that this is not going to deal with the deficit, it's just going to increase Prices for ordinary people. I mean, a tariff is a tax. It's a tax on ordinary people. The Tax foundation estimates the average tax increase is going to be at least $1,900. And that's before calculating the retaliation, which now we see China is retaliating, and Trump is saying he's going to increase it by 50% if China doesn't back off, then China's not going to back off because China's bigger than the United States. And so we're going to see this increasing spiral. And the consequence is just going to be to raise prices for ordinary people. And as you raise prices, you shrink the economy. And as you shrink the economy, the deficit's just going to go up. So to the extent you've got one guy out here, Donald Trump, saying this is my great idea, and literally every other economist in the world saying this is the worst possible idea you could have, and the whole economy around the world collapsing, I guess the question is, at what point do you say maybe this was not such a great idea? Maybe in fact I should listen to some other people, given that might not know the best about how macroeconomics works. Is there some point at which you would think it ought to be the sort of thing he would think?

I think at some point, yeah. I think we're. Wait, I think we're too early yet. I don't know. I know you're. I know you're into the economics part of it, Larry, and I'm not questioning because I certainly respect you and I, your opinions and your thoughts and how things work. But from an agricultural standpoint, I've looked at this stuff and sometimes it doesn't make much sense to me, the tariffs, you know, and how things are being exported and imported in agriculture. I get that. I do. I understand. At this point, I'm willing to say I'd like to see what happens here and how it works. And if nothing else, I see a lot of communication between these countries. But I also see, you know, I went back and I looked at old clips, Barack Obama saying that this isn't a fair practice, that, you know, these tariffs that, for example, China's putting on us, you know, at 35% and we're not charging anything and blah, blah, blah, all these things. I listened to some clips on Nancy Pelosi, very young Nancy Pelosi, as a matter of fact, and she was saying that this can't go on. We cannot do this, you know, this terrorist and our manufacturing leaving this country and going to other countries. And I, I applaud you know, Donald Trump and trying to get the manufacturing back, you know, and the funny thing about this, Larry, is I went back to my high school years and I remember this Larry Lessig campaigning for John Himes. Do you remember that?

I do remember that.

And I remember, I remember the little pickle you had, right, with the Hines on it. So I remember things about you, Larry. And I, like I said, I'm very proud of all the things that you've accomplished. But the one thing that really hit home to me was when the Heinz Manufacturing took their company out of Pennsylvania, I believe it was, and took it overseas. And that to me kind of was like, I remember back then thinking, what a piss. What a piss pot, you know, great country. He took his company overseas because we could, they could make more money. It was about greed and it was about getting that company to a foreign country where they didn't have to pay as much. We didn't have to do this. We didn't. It was cheaper to do everything over there, take the product, do all that stuff. And at that point I thought, you know, why? Well, it was money. And the Heinz comp. The Heinz family had a lot of money, right? And I see it as, you know, even, you know, Donald Trump was, was talking to John Deere and saying, look, you take those factories to Mexico, we're going to put such, you know, tariffs on you guys. We're not, you're not even going to sell your stuff back here. And I applaud that. I mean, it is about keeping, trying to keep manufacturing here. I don't like the fact that we get all of our drugs from other countries, you know, antibiotics and so many other things from other countries. Why don't we produce that here? Or at least perhaps not all of it. I get it, but I know, like in agriculture, you know, sometimes we don't produce enough soybeans, for example, and we're, you know, going down to South America and Brazil and different climates and so on, or we have a bad growing season here. So we're, we are importing, you know, and it does drive the cost of it. If they have a great year, it's going to, you know, lower the cost here. And so I get all that. But I also applaud, you know, Donald Trump and trying to get those manufacturing jobs back here. And I'd like to see that happen. I would like to see that happen. And again, Larry, I agree with you. It's not going to be an easy task. It may cause people to pay more in the short run. But I've always been about the long run, and that's where I'm looking at it.

Yeah, so that's fine. I mean, I'm not an extremist on tariffs. I mean, there's some people who say zero tariffs all the time, all the places around the world. And I agree that sometimes you've got countries that are engaging in unfair labor practices. They don't care about their environment. They subsidize in ways that make unfair competition. And so you could say there are particular places where you ought to balance things out. And maybe China is a particular place. But what Trump has done here is across the board. And there are two things about that. But the one thing I want to be focused on, to make clear, because I think it's really important if the strategy is we're going to raise, we're going to impose tariffs to drive these companies to locate their manufacturing back in the United States. Just think practically about that. You say to a company, we're going to have tariffs on you. If you want to avoid those tariffs, you're going to build a factory in the United States. So they're like, okay, fine, we'll plan on building a factory in the United States. Well, you know, you're not going to build a factory tomorrow. It's going to take five or 10 years to build a factory. Or, you know, let's say it takes just three years to, like, stand up a factory and get things going. So that means it's rational for you to move your factory back in the United States to avoid those tariffs, so long as you think those tariffs are going to still be there. Okay, so if that's true, then switch to the other channel. And what Trump and his team are saying, what are they saying about all these tariffs? They're saying these countries are coming to us and they're asking us to negotiate to take away the tariffs. Well, if they start negotiating to take away the tariffs, then no company is going to be investing in the United States on the assumption that the tariffs are going to be there. They're going to sit back and say, okay, well, just wait until they get their deal straight. If they're going to negotiate and take away the tariffs, we're not going to spend all this money to have a more expensive plant in the United States than we have in Europe or wherever else we have our plant. And so my point is the policy. He's shooting himself in the foot. He's either got to say, this is the way it's going to be for the next five years and don't come to us and try to negotiate. Or he's got to say we're going to negotiate to make sure tariffs are low for everybody so that if you've got 0%, we'll have 0%, if you've got 10%, we'll have 10%. Okay. That at least is trying to get down to as low tariffs as you want, but you can't do both. You've either got to say one, we're going to try to force manufacturers back in the country so tariffs are going to stay the way they are, or number two, we're going to negotiate to try to get tariffs lower everywhere. And that's not going to get any manufacturing back in the country, it's just going to lower tariff prices everywhere. So between those two, I mean, it sounds like you believe he's doing manufacturing. But I take it you see why the strategy of saying we're going to negotiate down with the other tariffs is just going to work against that strategy.

Oh, absolutely, Larry. You know, I look at it and I say, well, you know, in three and a half years or three plus years, Trump's going to be gone and the new guy comes in and then they can undo everything that, you know, the President did the last time. And I get that, please, I do, I understand. And I certainly see that point where like you said, you know, we're negotiating tariffs and different things. And I guess one of the things that I, the thing that I like is the fact that they're talking. And obviously this is beyond, I think this is beyond most people. You know, like you said, the micro and the macro economics and different things like that. I just think it is very complicated. And of course, I don't know what the answer is totally. But I do know something has to change. And maybe it's not this business, maybe it's something else. But in my mind at least it's an attempt to try to change things. And I certainly understand your arguments where like you said, if you're going to negotiate and then you're going to change things, I still say this is a heads up to people saying, hey, look, if we start manufacturing in the United States and we get that, you know, that's going, then we have better jobs for the US and so on. And you know, to me that's all trickles down. I don't know if I'm explaining that correctly. But you know, everybody wants to make a good wage. But how do you make a good wage when you're mowing people's lawns or doing service jobs, you know, that, that is not, I don't know, building a, building an economy that's going to last. Right. And they making us so that we're not quite dependent on everybody else's. And you know, and again, if we have other countries that are doing this, like, you know, like the people in Russia before the Ukraine war, I mean, like you said they were, they were still going to, you know, bathroom and outside restrooms. You can't ask them to be poor forever. You can't say, hey, because we're trying to cut down on emissions, we're not going to put power plants there for you guys. Sorry, that's not going to happen. You know, I've heard, I've heard the, one of the guys from, I think it was the British Parliament say that it's, it's not the rich people or the countries that are going, it's the poor people that are going to keep fighting for all this stuff to get their countries better. So I don't, I, like I said, I can. The one thing you probably noticed about me, Larry, is I can certainly see everybody's point. I'm not sure which one is the best, but the one thing I will say is I like the fact that, you know, Trump is mixing some things up and trying and bringing people to the table to negotiate. Now, I don't know, you're certainly making great points to me as well. I know the cost of oil has started to drop, I think, in the last couple days. So that's a positive thing.

Yeah, there's been positive things maybe about it. But what's striking to me is if I said to you, okay, here's Trump's great idea, he's going to impose a sales tax on everything we buy and he's going to take some of that money and he's going to give it over to companies to subsidize them. Manufacturing in the United States. If I describe the policy, policy like that, would you, would you think it's a good policy?

Well, I'd have to see some numbers. I mean, just in saying that I don't know exactly what.

Well, let's say he said the average tax increase will be $2,000 a family.

Right.

And we're going to take this money and we're going to hand it over to, you know, John Deere so that John Deere manufactures in the United States.

States.

I'm just trying to frame on the idea of taxing. I thought that Republicans were particularly allergic to the idea of Taxing. So the idea that I tell you I'm going to impose a tax on the average American, I would think would trigger a kind of. Whoa, whoa, whoa. And this is not just a liberal saying this. Even Ted Cruz has gone to the floor of the Senate now and said, a tariff is a tax, and it is a tax principally on American consumers. And the Wall Street Journal has called it the dumbest policy that you could possibly put forward. So, I mean, we can all say it's a good thing to try and shake things up, but I just wonder, maybe not every shaking things up is a good thing because some of them are going to really screw the average American. And, and a $2,000 a year tax to subsidize manufacturers seems like the sort of thing that is going to hurt a lot of ordinary Americans.

Right. And I said, I can certainly understand that. Again, I'm looking at, I want to say I look at the long term and hope that there's better days. And I realize that this is not good. I get it. I also get it that the deficit is just increasing. And what do you do with that? I mean, I'm not blaming Democrats, I should say I am blaming Democrats and Republicans alike for this deficit. Everybody seems to get in office and just spend, spend, spend. I don't know when was the last time when someone was in there and said, hey, we have a balanced budget. We're not spending any more than we're taking in Bill Clinton, Was it Clinton?

Yeah, Clinton actually got the deficit down to zero, and they were worried it was going to go, there's going to be a surplus, and the economy kind of screws up when you have surplus. So, in fact, if you look at the deficits of the history of deficits, we've seen this pretty striking pattern since Reagan. Basically, Republicans come in, the deficit gets run up. Democrats come in, they drive it down. Republicans come back and drive it up. Democrats come in, they drive it down. So, I mean, everybody has contributed to the fact that the net debt has gone up, but I don't think you can pin that on Democrats. I think it's, in fact, the opposite. But on this particular policy. So here's the last thing I just want to. This is a story which I just read, which is just really freaking astonishing, but I think that goes to this question of, like, how much trust should we have in this policy? Policy. So Trump has been talking about tariffs forever. His first campaign, he talked about tariffs. And it turns out the origin of him talking about tariffs, this is a story told in Vanity Fair was before, when he was just becoming a candidate, he said to his son in law, Jared Kushner, I need to figure out my economic policy. I need you to find me an economic advisor. And I think I kind of the idea of terrorists, but let's get somebody in to talk about it. Jared Kushner sits down on Amazon and he just starts going through the covers of books about economic policy. And he comes to a book called Death by China. And he thinks that sounds cool. So he gets the book, and it's by an economist named Peter Navarro. And he calls up Peter Navarro, and Peter Navarro comes in and Navarro's pitching him on the idea that tariffs are the great solution, the great way to make America great again. So they buy the idea of tariffs. Now, if you look at the book, in fact, if you look at all of Navarro's books, Navarro cites an economist named Ron Vera, V A R A. And this economist, Ron Vera, is the one who's done the numbers to demonstrate that tariffs are actually going to be good for the economy. And it's a quite striking conclusion because again, like, I studied economics at Penn, and this is something I know something about practically no economist would say that across the board, tariffs are a good idea. Like, that's what we thought in the 19th century. We learned something since the 19th century. That's what we thought. That's what Hoover thought. In the middle of the Depression, he imposed the Smoot Hawley tariffs. It drove the economy off the cliff. But Ron Vera, the economist that Peter Navarro cites in his book, has these papers that ostensibly demonstrate that tariffs are a good idea. Turns out Ron Vera is a made up person. In fact, if you take Navarro's name, and it's an anagram on Navarro's name, and Navarro made up this guy and made up these papers to say that this was the greatest policy in the world. Just a flat out lie. And he started emailing this email from Ron Vera, from an email account called Ron Vera to all the journalists in the beginning of the last Trump administration, telling them that tariffs were a great idea until one of them from Vanity Fair discovered that it was totally made up. There's no such person. So when you hear a story like that, when I read the story, I was like, oh my gosh, this is kind of terrifying. We have a decision driven by made up articles that's basically thrown the economy off the cliff around the world. And seems like somebody, namely like Congress, ought to stand up to this person and say, look, we're not convinced that this policy makes Any sense at all. And nobody's. Neither is any economist. Maybe we should not be doing this.

Right. Yeah, that's disturbing. No question about it. And I, you know, I don't have a comment for that, Larry. I mean, I'm listening to you. I believe you. I don't have an issue with what you're saying. I certainly can understand that. And maybe it is terrible. But I guess one thing that's always in the back of my mind is, why are these tariffs in place in the first place? If they're, if they're bad, why are other countries putting tariffs on us? And I think this gets back to what maybe this. Guys like us that are, you know, here in the, you know, the middle of the. Of the country. When I say country, I mean rural areas, you know, where we're farming and we're saying, why. Why are we carrying all these other countries? Why are they able to get money from us? And, and, you know, sometimes I feel like that when I go, I don't know, to town or when I was teaching in school, you know, everybody knew I had a farm. Everybody. Hey, Mr. Heppard, can you roast a pig for us as a farmer? Fundraiser? Okay. I just got that the other day. You know, can you do this? Can you do that? And you know that you're always looking at the person that has maybe a little bit more and, and saying, you know, hey, can you help us out? Can you help us out? And I, and I get that a lot, you know, whether it's wounded warriors, for example, or whatever. You know, people are coming here and saying, can you help us with this or can you help us with that? And I, and I'm constantly wondering why, you know, maybe people are, why do you think I have so much that I can do this? You know, but they see, they see 30 pigs in the barn and they say, why can't. Why can't you just give us one of those? You know, And I, and I look at that from the United States, and I think that was one of the things that, that people liked about Donald Trump and the fact that he was saying, you know, people have taken advantage of us and we're going to stop that. And I think that's where that tariff thing comes in. And it certainly, in my mind, makes it somewhat all right to try it.

Well, but what do you mean, taking advantage of us? I mean, look, let's just think of you and me. You run a farm. You make lots of stuff. I am a law professor. I don't make many things I write a book every couple years, but that's about all I do. Okay, so if you and I were to trade, like, I'd come to your farm, I'd give you a bunch of dollars, you'd give me, you know, I don't know what you'd sell me. Some beef or something, like, whatever you make, I would buy. And if you came to me and you said, okay, I'm gonna buy your book, you'd give me 25 bucks once every five years. All right? So between you and me, from Donald Trump's perspective, you're ripping me off. Cause you're selling me all these products, but you're not giving me money for my products. You know, but you would say, well, you don't have anything that I want. You know, I don't want to sit in a law professor's lecture. That's just not what I want to do. So I'm getting what I want, and you're getting what you want. Now, I remember when I was in high school, I listened to, you know, I used to be a conservative way back in the day, right? I remember listening to Milton Friedman explain this. And so what? And I remember this, him giving this lecture, and it was so, so powerful. So he said, look, back in those days, we worried about the Japanese in cars. They don't worry about that much anymore, but, okay, they worried about the Japanese cars. And he said, look, if the Japanese are selling cars to Americans, but they're not buying cars from Americans or not buying other stuff from Americans, what the Japanese are saying is, look, give us some dollars and we'll give you some cars. And so we give them dollars, and they give us cars. Now what are they going to do with those dollars? You know, you can't buy things with dollars in Japan. The place you buy things with dollars is in the United States. So they're going to take their dollars to the United States and they're going to buy stuff with it. And if they don't buy stuff with it, if they just put it in their. In their drawer or in their bank, then in a sense, we've gotten these cars for nothing because they've just taken our dollars, but they're not doing anything with it, so they're not taking any of our goods with those dollars. So the point Friedman was making is it's just kind of an illusion to think that anybody's taking anything from anybody. They're just deciding what we have that they find valuable. And if they don't find enough valuable with their dollars, then they'll take their dollars and give them to somebody else so those people can use those dollars to buy stuff from us. But every dollar is only going to be valuable to buy things from us. So this whole idea that they're ripping us off, I just don't get it. I mean, it's just people deciding what they want to buy and what they don't want to buy. You might say they're ripping us off by imposing tariffs. So, like, if you're producing wheat and Canada imposes a tariff on wheat imports, okay, Canada is raising the price of wheat, so you're not going to sell as much wheat in there. And this is, again, why you might say we ought to be trying to get zero tariffs everywhere so that we can just let the free market reign. But if the free market rains, I guarantee you manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the United States. Free market reigns. They're going to go wherever they're cheapest, and that's not going to be the United States. So what do you mean when you say that they're ripping us off? What's the sense in which you feel like it's unfair?

I get that. So basically, what you just said about the week, we can't. Or cars, you know, you can sell your cars over here, but you will not take our cars over there or at such a high value that you. We're not going to be able to do that. And I get that. And I, and I maybe ripping off is, is not the correct word, but like the free market. I understand, I understand that. Sure. But when, when are you going to educate your people and say, listen, if you want, if you want a high income, then you're going to have to buy merit, you're going to have to suck it up and you're going to have to buy. So I go back to this whole thing with the minimum wage. You know, everybody's fighting for a higher minimum wage. Well, at what point does the person who has no qualities or experience, why shouldn't they start out at the lower level like we have right now? And instead we want everybody to be at 15 and then it's going to be 20. And of course, it always drives the prices up? So I get it, Larry. I mean, there's no, it doesn't seem to be any perfect solution to this stuff. And, you know, I know that, you know, right now you're on, you're on tariffs, and I get that. And I understand that. And I don't know that necessarily. I understand, you know, economics the way you Do I think the tariffs obviously are. You're trying to protect your own country, though, aren't you? Isn't Canada. And that's fine, but is it. Is it a free trade then? Is it like, oh, no, we're not going to buy your stuff, but you can buy ours. Right? And I get that to a degree. But when it's not a free trade, I mean, I don't know, is. So you're saying that like Barack Obama talking about that he was wrong. I mean, I know.

I mean, some things that he was talking about, I don't think he was wrong about, because again, you've got particular things the government might be doing that creates an unfair trading environment. So we might say we don't like the idea of subsidizing people to pollute the environment. If the reason your stuff is so cheap is that you're not protecting the environment, you're dumping stuff into water or you're dumping pollution into the air, we're not going to allow you to get that subsidy. We're going to create a tariff to cover the difference between it would cost if you actually cleaned up your mess and what you're actually charging. And so that's why I say I'm not an absolutist about it. I understand targeted tariffs to achieve a particular purpose, but the thing to be worried about is that typically what tariffs are doing is responding to the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. It's basically, you've got the steel manufacturers, but we come from Pennsylvania. You know, the constant push the steel manufacturers did to have tariffs to protect them from all this foreign competition. And of course, Pennsylvania is an important state. So presidential candidates are keen to try to make the Pennsylvania happy by talking about protecting steel.

But the people who pay the price

of higher steel aren't as well organized as the steel companies are. They don't have lobbyists. So when you've got to pay more for every product that has steel in it, because we've basically subsidized steel manufacturing in the United States, you don't take some of that money and hand it over to a lobbyist to defend us against the steel companies because you know it's not worth it. So it never gets done. So the point is like, yes, there's a reason. I can give you a theoretical reason why I think it's could make sense, but I'm giving you a practical reality that most of the time that you see these tariffs, you see them because of the corruption of our political system and other political systems, you see Them because they've got enormous power, especially in the context of campaign finance power. They've got basically the ability to do whatever. Talk about the minimum wage. When you and I were in high school, the minimum wage was. So let's say we graduated in 79. The minimum wage was $2.90. The inflation adjusted minimum wage is about $12 $11.94. So that $2.90 in 1979 is equal to $11.94 today. The minimum wage today is $7, I think, 25 cents. So the minimum wage has gone down over time, not adjusted at all. So I mean, we could argue whether it should be, it could certainly be too high, but it's kind of hard to believe it's too high right now given it's fallen in real terms. Since 1979.

Right, yeah. I mean, I don't know what the fair, what is the fair price, but I guess I see kids coming out of high school with no experience wanting 15 an hour or whatever it is, $20 an hour and having no clue, like you and I, working for three bucks an hour. Right. And just, you know, no concept of what it takes to be, to, you know, work from nothing. Absolutely. A little bit to a little bit more and you know, keep going up, up that scale. People want everything now. And, you know, I find it a little, it's just hard for me to take all this stuff, I guess, and, and you know, deal with it. I, again, I, I think the corruption in the government is, is tremendous. And I guess one of the things that I'm hoping that all this stuff does, that Trump is stirring up, he continues to say things about, you know, corruption and so on, is, is that they, we start to break some of this stuff down. And I get it, maybe the tariffs are the greatest thing and you know, we should continue and, and so on, but the corruption is what bothers me. And you know, there doesn't seem to be any end to that. And I don't know.

Well, you know, we, we're work. This is the thing I've been working on for 18 years now. And you know, and one of the biggest dimensions of the corruption is the super PACs.

Right. You and I have talked about that, I think in that three hour discussion we had. Yeah. And I, and I, I can't agree with you more. I mean, I, I cannot agree with you more. I'm part of the, the Farm Bureau, you know, and we have lobbyists for agriculture. And I sit back sometimes and I scratch my head and I think is that that the right way to go. But then again, I look at it and say, well, someone's got to speak for the farmers, because we don't have a. We don't have a farmer down there going, hey, this is, you know, what we need or how we need it or whatever. And I understand that part, too. It's just very frustrating that these people that are in charge are making tons of money, you know, that you go in, you know, like me, if I would go in with my, my assets right now, you'd say, oh, well, you know, maybe Hepburn with everything has a million dollars, but I would come out in 15 years and I'd be, you know, $270 million in my bank account. That's not right.

Be nice, though.

It would be nice, but I don't think it's going to happen. But then again, I've never, I never wanted that, Larry. That's not something that I want. Yes, I'd like to be able to pay all my bills. Yes, I'm, I'm comfortable and all that, but I'm not looking to have millions and millions of dollars in my bank account. I'm looking for my, you know, my family to be healthy, you know, I'm looking for them to have, you know, good lives and be able to, you know, take care of them. And I probably spoiled them a little bit. I've given them too much. Right. Because I'm sure maybe not you, but me, I started out in an apartment, you know, and then I bought a fixer upper, and then I bought a farm that the electricity was taken out of. I mean, that's, you know, it was grown over, buildings were collapsing and so on and so forth. And that's where I started where all my kids are starting out with, wow, this is a really nice house. This is a nice house. You know, your first house was a really nice house, you know, and I'm happy for her. I'm happy for them. Yes. You know, but it's. It's frustrating. So I, I understand where you're coming from. I do. I. I think, however, if I have one bitch. I think that the things that are going on right now from the Democratic side doesn't warrant me. It doesn't help me to understand them. Right.

So what do you mean by that?

Well, I feel like there's so much anger, you know, what do they call the Trump derangement syndrome? I see them attacking Teslas. I don't think that's Republicans. I don't think that's conservative. Attacking Teslas and Burning charging stations. You know, you see that and you see the. I don't even know where to begin with the. What do they call them things they throw?

The.

The cocktail.

Yeah.

Where are they getting this stuff? I mean, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get the. The. Even this. This. This stuff. I know you're experienced at Harvard right now, some anti. Semitism and, and, you know, Jewish people and all that. I. I'm like, I could care less whether you're, you know, Jewish or whatever. It's the character.

You.

You talk to me. I'm not going to protest. I've never been in a protest, Larry. I'm hearing. I'm 60, 63 years old, and I've never protested anything. And I don't know, it's kind of fun.

You should try it.

Am I missing out on something right before.

I mean, you know, before time's up?

Right.

Just do it once.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be protesting, but, you know, I don't see that. I don't like that. I don't. And I got a great. I got a great guy who's a county commissioner Democrat, and we joke about a lot of things. He's a basketball player, I'm a wrestler. So that. That gives you the friction right there, right? But I said to him the other day, I said, can you tell me what is the difference between a Republican corner and a Democratic corner? He laughed. He said, you know, I've asked that question. He said, the only difference is the amount of money you pay on the funeral. And I'm like, he never really did tell me who spends more of those are probably Democrats. But he said, that's it. And he said, I agree with you, Ben. And here is. Here's a guy I think is really down to earth, and he's a good guy, and he's. And he's had his Democratic Party tell him. He said, when I was, you know, running, he said, I want to be able to work with whoever's across the aisle. I want to be able to work with Republicans, Republican, it doesn't matter who's there. And the Democratic Party told him to stop saying things like that. Don't say that. And that's where I come. That's where I'm coming from, you know, because I have a history of that, Larry. You know, like, I didn't join the union when I was in. Was a teacher. I didn't agree with their policies. I didn't align with their policies. And then they would always come to me and say, well, Ben, I was one of the holdouts. He said, ben, why don't you come join? I said, who's your president? And they would look at me and they would hesitate to tell me because I would say, he's the laziest teacher in that school and he's your president. And they go, we know, but, you know, he's the one doing the job. I said, I can't get behind you. I'm sorry. I can't get behind some of this stuff because I know you and I have talked about the character. You know, I get Donald Trump's character. I get it. I understand. The only thing that I, I don't like that part of it, but I do like the fact that he's willing to mix things up. And, and I hope it doesn't ruin it. I hope it doesn't. I hope it all pans out to, to make everything better. And maybe Larry, maybe the next Democrat comes in next year, in three years and fix. Has to fix everything. Maybe it's Larry Lessig. I don't know.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, well, it's not going to be Larry Lessig, but, you know, there's a. It's good evidence. It's going to be needed. But look, I mean, you can't criticize the Democrats in that way because Republicans are just the same. All the politicians have adopted this idea that the way to get things done is not to talk to the other side, and that's just the end of democracy. It's terrible. It's just absolutely terrible. So we agree about that. I just think we ought to agree it's a problem going both ways. Going both ways. But I think that the, the real challenge is figuring out what we should be hoping this president's going to be pushing for. And the thing that, when we talked before the election, that I was most anxious about is whether this guy really cared, as he said he did, for ordinary people. Is he going to push things for ordinary people, or is he going to push things for his kind of billionaire buddies? The, that astonishing picture of the inauguration where the guy standing behind him were all the tech billionaires. I mean, it's never been like that. Right. Usually you have, like, other members of, like, you know, his party or his family or something, but there they were, you know, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, even Tim Cook from Apple. It was just astonishing. But then, you know, so that's why I think this tariff thing is so important here. You've Got tariffs that are going to raise the cost. That's a tax on ordinary people. Then they're saying they're going to, you know, they're trying to cut all this money from the government, which is basically just breaking the government. You know, it doesn't take much to break shit. And like Elon Musk is pretty good at breaking this stuff. So, you know, for example, he comes in and he tells the Social Security office, we're going to shut down the telephone lines to call in if you've got a problem. And instead he said we're going to do all that stuff online. Well, you know, you're an 80 year old grandmother and there's a problem with your Social Security, you're not going to go online and deal with the problem online. You know, you need to be able to talk to somebody and if you can't call them, you got to go down to the office. Well, the office, they're closing all the offices so that there's fewer and fewer of these offices. So here's the most important, like entitlement and that's a terrible word because we all pay into it. You paid for it. Here's the thing that they're supposed to be delivering and they're cutting costs to make it so it no longer functions. And why are they cutting costs? So that they can justify this tax cut that's coming along. And the tax cut that's coming along. The Latest estimates say 68% of that tax cut is going to benefit the richest 20% in America, 80%. You know, the next number is 17% for the second richest 20% and then 10% for the third and 4%, 4% for the fourth and 1% for the fifth. So this tax cut is a huge benefit to the wealthiest in America on top of increasing taxes through these imports. And I just find it so hard to look at this and say this is a guy who's out there for you. I mean you, not you necessarily, you personally, but the ordinary American, which is what they promised. It just seems the money has gotten him focused on how do I help the people with the money. And that's not you or me, Ben, that's somebody else.

I agree with you. I, I mean like I said, I, I listen to the news too and I hear conflicting reports. Like I, I think I was watching CNN the other day and, and you know, they, they had a guy on there that was, was saying, you know, some of this stuff and, and it's going to help any. And then, you know, you're you're telling me it's not going to help. And you. And you look at other shows or other things, and. And, you know, you hear all these different facts. And I remember I'm kind of reminded of that one guy who. Who throws all these facts out, and he goes, and if it's not true, it should be. And you're like, you just listen. I just listen to all that stuff, thinking you were telling me the truth. And it's like, if it's not true, it should. Should be. And I'm like, oh, my God. You know, and. And what do you.

What do you.

What do you believe? I mean, it is. It is just so hard for me to understand all this stuff that they want me to believe. And I don't believe, and I don't believe it. You know, and. And I get it. You're asking me, Larry, to say, oh, the tariffs are absolutely wrong. And I get it, okay? And I. And I can say, larry, I. I trust you, and. And I could say that, but then I'm asking you to believe me that when I say women, you know, deserve their own sports and transgender should be in there. And I'm thinking probably Larry's going to agree with me.

Well, we're going to. We're going to have a conversation about that sometime. But I think what's really important about that one is, you know, just the proportion of, like, how significant is this in the world? Right?

So.

So it was a huge issue in this last election. But you ask, is that really the biggest issue that we've got? If you look at the average income of Americans, the average worker income since 1976 has not gone up at all. At all. It's only the richest who've gotten better off since 1976. If you think between couple people in transgender sports versus not white. Why are we talking about transgender sports when we have all of these other really important things to talk about? And the answer to that is that this is what gets people going so that this is how they start voting. So you distract them from the important issues, and then they won't notice how you're screwing them. Right? That's the dynamic that you see in politics all the time.

You're right. And I asked that particular question with this, like, I told you, this county commissioner, Democrat, I said, would you please take time and sit down with me and explain to me what the difference between a Republican and a Democrat is? And you know what? His first thing out was this transgender. You know, he was saying, you know, if we would just Leave this transgender thing alone and back up, you know, and things would be better. And I think you're right when you say that it divides us, you know, but again, I'm looking at some of those things and going, I don't agree with those things. And yet people are sitting there and they're fighting wholeheartedly for that. And like you said, why are we saying, hey, income's a little more important than this whole transgender issue or some of this other stuff that we're looking at? Why aren't we looking at that? And why is this transgender thing even an issue? I mean, done, you know, Or. Or even, like Elon Musk. Here's. Here's the other thing. I don't. One of the things I don't understand. He's. Everybody's calling him a Nazi, and everybody's calling, you know, Trump a Nazi and all this stuff. And I'm. And I'm sitting here and I'm going, did I miss out? I thought, basically, the Nazis punished or, you know, persecuted Jewish people, other religions, other people. It. I don't know. It's Trump and Elon, are they doing that? And it's like, why are you calling the Nazis? You can not like them. You can say, I don't like the way they're thinking. I don't like the way they're doing. But why are you using these such terrible names on these people? And that doesn't help. That muddies the water as well. And, you know.

Well, Elon's a complicated story. Story. He comes from South Africa. He comes from South Africa. If you ask his dad, what his dad said is that Elon has always been a white supremacist. That's who he is. And he came to America and he faked it in Silicon Valley because nobody in Silicon Valley would have anything to do with that. Then he does that ridiculous salute, which looks like a Nazi salute, and he never denies it's a Nazis. But I don't think that's what you should indict him, because whatever kind of awkward movement he makes while he's giving a speech in front of thousands. But what he has done self consciously is endorse a party in Germany called the AfD, the Alternative for Deutschland. The AfD is the Neo Nazi party in Germany. They are plain spoken neo Nazis. They're not allowed to call themselves Nazis because that's illegal in Germany. But they are absolutely pushing policies that are about white supremacy. So I don't think it's unfair to say, what the hell? Like, are you or are you not? And the fact that he hasn't said, yeah, yeah, no, I think all this. I'm not going to support a Nazi party or neo Nazi party. And I'm, and I'm going to be very clear about the fact that I don't believe in white supremacy. Supremacy. The fact he's not done that, I think it says, you know, you kind of created your own mess here. You know, so we know, of course, that the, the white supremacist movement in

the United States that, you know, has been ginned up by so much of

the stuff on the Internet. Those guys, you know, if you remember the march in Charlottesville, those guys were, were chanting, Jews will not replace us. Jews will not replace us. It, it's an awkward position for them because they don't, you know, obviously there's a very strong support with Netanyahu, so they're not going to say that sort of stuff. But it's not pretty, it's not a pretty picture. I don't think anybody should defend, like, what's going on on the far right because it's not things that I remember believing when I grew up with you. I mean, you know, we were not racist. We didn't, you know, we had a school that had relatively few African Americans in it. But I don't remember this ever being the sort of thing that any, anybody would have, you know, would have said or defended back then.

I agree with you. I mean, I, yeah, working with my job and I worked with autistic kids, and he definitely is autistic of some sort. I mean, yeah, some of their emotions, some of the things they say and some of the things they do are just different. Right. I'm not, they're not, they're not wrong. They're just different. And, and, you know, that's why I've always treated them. But again, you know, some of the stuff that I, I, I'm, I'm on both sides. You know, I'm like, you don't need to say that crap. And I mean, I've, I kind of feel like I'm attacked most of the time when I get on social media where these people are just bashing whoever jump, whoever voted for Trump or, or, you know, how can you think this? And how could, and I, and Melanie, Tom, Melanie Silvani. I don't know if you remember her. She was our class.

Yeah, of course, of course.

I just ran into her the other night and she was, you know, she was befriending people because they were just bashing her so hard. And she's like, I didn't deserve that, or I don't, you know, and she said, the hate is just incredible. And I get it. You know, you might.

I get that. But there are a lot of people hurting, a lot of people who, Who've been kicked out of their jobs for the government, who had been, you know, and, you know, there's a. The economy is not good. You know, egg prices are not any lower. And so people are angry. And when you've got a billionaire standing on a stage with a chainsaw saying that he's going to cut up the government, and then he's upset, he's hurt because people don't like him anymore. It's like, what are you talking about? You're talking about destroying our government. Destroying. He thinks Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. He wants to shut down Social Security. They're destroying Medicaid, Medicare. And people are pissed off by it because they don't think people actually believe they voted for it. And if you look at the latest polling, says ask, how is he handling his job? He's negative 10 on that. How's he channeling the economy? Negative 15. International trade, negative 18. Cost of living. Negative 27. Henry Incompetent, 20 points. Majority thinks he's incompetent, handling the economy. 25% point. Majority saying he's incompetent in his downsizing of government. So, like the world, you know, America's looking at him and saying, this is not going like we expected. And I think it's fair because, you know, he said the thing he'd do coming in is make the world better for ordinary people. Well, breaking the government is not making things better for ordinary people. Prices have not gone down. You know, a lot of things that make a lot of rich people happy, but not the things that he. I think he was pro. I think that's the frustration. And I don't support violence. I certainly don't support. I didn't support the January 6th violence. I don't support the violence, you know, against Tesla owners. I'm a little vulnerable because I have a Tesla. I bought it in 2018. We had to put a sticker on it that says, we got. We bought this before we knew it's a dangerous thing to drive around in a Tesla. But, yeah, I think that's all bullshit. Nobody should be doing that stuff. But I, I don't think they're wrong to be angry, because there's a lot to be angry about.

Well, yeah, but it's a controlled Anger. I mean, I'm. I'm angry. You know, I'm on the flip side of some of this. Larry, you gotta understand, egg prices don't affect me. I. I just been picking the eggs.

Yeah, you make your eggs out here,

you know, and, and the meat prices and stuff have been up, and, you know, I'm, you know, making a little bit more money finally on some of the stuff. I just, I just took lambs to the market today to try to hit the Easter market, but in a goat. So, you know, I don't know I'm pleased with. With that, but again, am I supposed to be upset? Because that is going to raise the price in the, in the grocery market for you guys. But at the same time, I feel like I'm finally getting a fair price for all the work that I've done, because this is not a. I, you know, these lambs are not like, okay, it's not a week work. You know, it's six months to. And, you know, cattle are, of course, longer, but, you know, and then for me, I can work six months and I can lose a cow here or there, and all of a sudden, I'm just breaking even. Part of that is good for me, I guess, in a way.

Yeah. Hell, yeah. I mean, you shouldn't feel any hesitation being proud of that. You work hard, you ought to earn what the market's going to bear. That's fine. That's totally fine. Now, if the governor of Pennsylvania came in and said, hey, we're going to pose a 25% tax on all lamb sales, I think you'd rightly be pissed off, even if he said, we're going to use this to attract manufacturers because 25% tax on lamb is going to reduce the number of people wanting to buy lamb. Right. And so that's going to hurt you directly.

And I don't know what the answer is, Larry. You have to have some type of manufacturing back into this country. And I mean. And did the. Did the guys that were in charge, and I hear this from Trump, the guys that were in charge before blew it, so to speak. You know, they didn't enforce some of these rules, which, I don't know, you know, try to keep those people there? You know, I criticize the leadership in our schools and our education because of that very thing. You know, what are you doing to, you know, make it better, get these kids better educated, get them to, you know, want to stay in school? And I, And I felt like in my 36 years of teaching ag, that's exactly what I did, I did for the long term. I did for, let's get these kids life skills, you know, that help them in the long term. Like, you know, for example, identifying the hamburger comes from a cow and not a pig or you know, simple things like that that people don't, don't understand, you know, but we did, you know, meat cutting and you know, all the stuff that you're going to use every day. And the kids, some of those kids, that's the only reason they came to school, you know, they came for ag class and you know, and, and that's what I mean by long term. And sometimes, man, it was a struggle, you know, when I first started and I kept saying this is for the long term, this is for the long term. And you know, finally it made out. And same thing with this farm when you come in here and there's no electricity in the house because, you know, it had been abandoned for so long that they took the transformers out. And you know, I'm asking my wife and you know, I got two little kids at the time, hey, just, just hang in there, just bear with us, stay the course. We're going to, we're going to make it work, you know, and all of a sudden there's electricity in the house and then, you know, all of a sudden some of the rooms are painted. You get, and so on and you know, you keep, then you put the addition on and, and so on. I mean, for me, I had a bulldozer running back here 16 hours just to get it leveled up the way it is now, you know, But I mean, you know, so I understand, I understand and I, and I'm thinking that it's not going to be easy to get this country back on track. And I still don't know how you ever get rid of whatever our deficit is. Trillions of dollars. I mean, that's beyond my comprehension mentioned, Larry. Sometimes I have a hard time or had a hard time, you know, getting rid of a thousand dollar debt, but it's mind boggling.

Yeah, that's all of our debt too. It's, it's, it's huge. Okay, we gotta, we're trying to be disciplined on our time and we're out of time. So we have a lot more to talk about, but we're not going to talk about it today. So, so grateful. So fun to talk to you, Ben. And how are the twins doing?

Twins are doing great. They're growing like weeds. Everybody's. We got number 13 and 14 on the way now. Oh my gosh yeah, one of our son, our son down in Florida's got a baby girl on the way and my youngest son has a baby on the way, but too young to tell what it is. So 13 and 14 are on the way. Just as long as they're healthy, that's, that's all that matters, you know. So everything's good here. It's starting to green up. I'm sure it's, you're a little bit behind us up there, but things are starting to leaf out here, but we're starting to green up and things are going to get moving here pretty quickly as far as farming goes.

It'd be fun to see.

So that was the conversation with Ben Hepburn, Episode four about tariffs. Next we will turn to a discussion about the rule of law, something that obviously, as a law professor, is the focus of much of my work. And eager to see Ben's reaction because the truth is, I'm not sure I can understand how we could find disagreement here, but let's see if we can. These podcasts are produced by Equal Citizens Us and physically produced by Josh Elstro of Elstro Productions. You can find us on the web at Equal Citizens Us. And there's a place there for giving feedback and ideas and suggestions and an opportunity, if there are others who want to engage in this discussion, to try to understand whether we can find common ground in this time of enormous polarization to enter into that conversation. We'll see. We'll see what's possible. It's hard in the world of full time jobs to find the space for the job of citizenship, which is what this is. Grateful for your listening. Stay tuned for the next episode out.