Tyler Cowen: The Graduate Student Crisis Destroying Academia
episodePreviously titled “Academia's Darkest Secret: The Graduate Student Crisis... | Tyler Cowen” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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How do tariffs affect smaller economies like Canada?
There's plenty of truth, mistruth, and speculation about tariffs. Now from the perspective of an economist in the United States, by the way I'm from Toronto, so this affects both of us. What do you make of the proposed tariffs?
Well, Trump has inconsistent words on the matter of tariffs. He says he loves tariffs, and if you listen to him going back to the nineteen eighties, he's quite keen to have higher tariffs. So at first, as you know, he threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and then he pulled back the threat. As we're recording today. This morning in the middle of february two thousand twenty five, the He threatened reciprocal tariffs on all countries putting tariffs on American goods. Virtually all economists, myself included, think that tariffs are a mistake. They do not help the distribution of wealth, they make your economy less efficient, they make prices higher, they hurt innovation, and consumers have somewhat lower standards of living.
We would all make exceptions for what are called cases of national security. So if a nation needs to build its own ships or drones If they would have some kind of protectionism to make that possible with domestic industry. At least in principle, there's an argument for that, but otherwise typically economists believe in zero tariffs, and so do I. So I'm against all of those Trump trade policies.
So the Wall Street Journal said that it also has or will have job creation inefficiency. So for instance, the machine washing tariffs cost something like eight hundred and fifteen thousand per job created, something like that, and then there'll be a domino price effect where even untariffed goods will increase in price. So do you broadly agree?
Very much agree. Keep in mind we're putting tariffs on intermediate goods that are inputs into our own production. So to that extent it's a tax on US producers. And it's just bad for US job creation, US wages, US business.
Well, what will the consequences if these tariffs do get implemented? Now there are a variety of proposed tariffs, so there are a variety of potential futures, but make some prediction over the near term and then the next four years.
Well there's so many proposals floating around early in the Trump term. I do think if the United States puts tariffs on goods from Canada, most of the losses are borne by Canadians, not Americans. So to me that doesn't make it any less bad. But in many of these situations the larger country in essence has more bargaining power than And it's the prices in the smaller country that adjust more. Uh it's still a bad idea, and the United States gains nothing from it, and that's not even getting into the questions of wanting to be nice to one of your very best allies and neighbors. Uh in terms of specific predictions, I don't think it's the end of the world, but you have a stock market that's somewhat lower.
In the short run, an inflation rate that's somewhat higher. Real wages go down by some fraction of a percentage point? But there's just some costs and no real gain, is the the best way to put it.
What are the costs and what are the gains of Canada becoming a fifty first state?
Well, that's a huge question. It seems to me that y there's more than one state in our neighbor to the north, but I don't think Canadians at all want it, and I don't think Americans want it. So why do it? I think Trump has a perfectly legitimate point when he says Canada is not meeting the NATO agreed target of spending a certain percentage of GDP on defense, and Canada should change it. I agree with that one point. I don't really agree with any other part of it. Uh most Americans don't want Canadian voters and most Canadians don't want American voters. So let's be separate countries, compete with each other in a friendly way, cooperate. That's how it's been for a long, long time. And I see no good reason to change that.
How serious do you take those statements of Canada becoming a another part of the United States?
I don't know. I've never met Trump, so I think one possibility I'm not saying it's true, but it's a hypothesis is
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How do tariffs affect smaller economies like Canada?
0:00–18:13
2
What are the consequences of tenure on academic risk‑taking?
18:13–34:13
3
How is AI changing research, grant applications and peer review?
34:13–50:56
4
Why is the graduate‑student crisis a threat to academia?
50:56–1:00:18
5
What is meta‑rationality and how can scholars cultivate it?
1:00:18–1:13:01
6
How do stamina and grit differ in high‑performing academics?
1:13:01–1:26:56
7
What role does mentorship and networking play in a post‑AI world?
1:26:56–1:33:26
8
What practical advice does Tyler give to students and early‑career researchers?
1:33:26–1:33:56
Speakers
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