Fareed Zakaria

And will Trump, too, go down in history as the great grifter administration?

The scale of what he's doing and the nakedness, the openness with which it's happening is breathtaking.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

This is Freakonomics Radio.

We'll be right back.

Fareed Zakaria's most recent book is called Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.

So he takes a long view of geopolitics.

I asked him to summarize US foreign policy over recent history and what it will take to break some bad foreign policy habits.

Do you think nationalism on average is beating out globalization at the moment or it's just interrupted it?

Oh, not at all.

Are you surprised the oil shock hasn't been even steeper than it's been?

But additionally, the U.S.

has been producing a lot more oil and gas over the last 10, 12, 15 years generally, but the export numbers from the U.S.

in the last couple months have just spiked through the roof, yes?

Can you explain why our federal government allows sitting politicians to freely trade stocks and companies over whom they have obvious influence and non-public information?

The level of self-dealing and grifting, let's call it, in the Trump administration is astonishing to a lot of people, including many people who voted for him.

What do you make of it?

I'm especially curious if you see parallels to other leaders in recent or ancient history.

Putting Trump himself and his family aside for a moment, do you feel the U.S.

is in, let's call it a secular decline?