Robert Lighthizer
speaker
237 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Robert Lighthizer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Solar panels, we could go through all of these various things, nuclear energy, all of these things where we have lost, not only lost our lead, have basically fallen out of the competition.
But very importantly, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which is this wonderful institute that's supported by the government of Australia but also private sector people, they track 64 what they call critical technologies, 64. The United States is behind China in 57 of the 64. And these are things like AI and robotics and the kind of things you need.
And if you said, well, where were we 15 years ago? we were behind in three. So you've seen this deterioration during this period of hyper-globalization or hyper-free trade or huge trade deficits. You've seen us actually fall behind technologically. But the fourth and by far most important ramification of this process is we've seen a real increase
deterioration in the quality of life of our working class people, right? So the United States, two thirds of American workers have a high school education only, two thirds. So it's not like we're talking about some fringe group on the side. This is the heart of who we are. We have seen these people lose their jobs. We've seen their wages stagnant for 25 years.
There was a bump in Trump one, but we're basically back where we were. You've seen them actually have shorter lives. Angus Deaton and Anne Case did a book, He called death a despair that demonstrated that these people now live on average about eight years shorter lives because of alcohol and drugs and suicide. To give you an idea, when I was young, that differential was probably about a year.
And now it's eight years. We've seen they are poorer. We've seen despair increase. We've seen devastation. You don't have to drive very far in America to see devastated communities. All of this, the result of this failed attempt at globalization, this failed attempt at at free trade.
And another aspect of it is we have seen not only our workers been treated very badly, but the distribution of wealth in America has gone just like this. It's one of the great things about America for me, particularly growing up, but I mean, even you, you're younger, was this notion that we're all middle class. Now, we weren't always really, but we thought of ourselves.
The very, very rich would—you know, they were them, and nobody cared about them. And then the very, very poor— There weren't very many. Sorry for—but most—you know, 80 percent of us thought we're middle class. And I went to Catholic schools, and we had people with—and nobody that was really rich, because Asheville, Ohio, but—
But there were people who were relatively well-off, people who weren't, and there wasn't any big difference.
They all ate at Denny's. They all went to the same clubs. They all played Little League together. They all thought of themselves as having about the same chance of success. Which is an important point. Now what we have for the first time in American history, the top 1% has more wealth than the middle 60%. It's never happened before.
We find kind of combining these thoughts, and we get this from Angus Deaton, we find for the first time starting in 2000 when this explosion took place in hyperglobalization, we find that American children can no longer expect to live longer than and be richer than their parents. That was what we all thought. We're going to be better off than our parents and we're going to live longer.
That is no longer true. And I could go through one data point after another. If you look when I was in high school – The top 1% had about 30 times as much wealth as the person in the middle. Now it's 72 times as much wealth.
Absolutely no question. That's what happens in other countries. Absolutely no question. We have this sense that we're immune. I don't agree with that. And this... These crises that I've talked about, this transfer of wealth, the technology, the slow economic growth, but mostly the effect on our working people. That is why Reagan was elected, very beginning of this. And we can talk history of that.
And it absolutely is why Donald Trump was elected president. Reagan had these so-called Reagan Democrats that we all remember that. That was the beginning of those people because that was when we sort of reached the peak. By the time we got to the 2000s, these people were a movement, this populist movement, and they are the reason that Donald Trump is where he is. And to his credit—
Donald Trump talked about this and worried about this issue since he was 35 years old. This is not, this is the, in my opinion, the essence of Donald Trump. Donald Trump's essence is we're getting, he says we're getting ripped off. Our workers are getting screwed. It's not because they're lazy or stupid. It's because we have a bad system that is hurting them, and it's destabilizing the country.
And all of these are data points that kind of make that point. And once you realize that, you realize you have to do something, right? The purpose of the economy, first of all, obviously, is national security. But after that, it's to distribute data. resources and wealth so that most Americans live the best lives they can live. And we have lost that. We have just plain lost it.
So I would say, first of all, that I say the Wall Street Journal, they have editorialized against me by name more than 30 times.
Yeah. So, well, we have that in common too. I say they have the diversity, the editorial page has the diversity of opinion protocol of somewhere between Pravda and the People's Daily.
It is their view and they keep it. So why did we get to this stage? To some extent, it was kind of misguided. To some extent, it was wealthy people pushing it because it was good for them. I'm not one who subscribes to the view that it was people trying to hurt America. I think it was – They just didn't care one way or another whether they didn't care, for example, who owned America.
They didn't care what percentage of our global wealth ended up in the hands of our working people. Those were not metrics. What they cared about was price optimization and how much we could consume. And that's the opposite of what people like you and I believe in. Conservatives and a lot of labor Democrats believe we have to worry about values and preserving what's great in America.
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