Political Economy with Jim Pethokoukis

Today on Political Economy, I talk with Derek Scissors about what the Trump Administration’s newly-declared tariffs mean for US-China relations and what to make of today’s economic uncertainty. Derek is a senior fellow here at AEI, where he focuses on US-Asia economic relations. He is the chief economist of the China Beige Book [https://www.chinabeigebook.com/] and previously served as a commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is also the author of the China Global Investment Tracker [https://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/].

Today on Political Economy, I talk with Mark Warshawsky about the state of the Social Security system as we size up some of the reforms currently on the table.

The arc of human history is a story of economics. Social values, human behavior, and the defining events of history are all woven into this field that seeks to explain how and why societies prosper — and why they often don’t. Today on Political Economy, I talk with Andrew Leigh [https://www.andrewleigh.com/andrew] about the economic lessons we miss in history class and what we gain from a basic understanding of how our economy works. Leigh is a member of the Australian House of Representatives and serves as the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, and Treasury. His 2024 book, HowEconomics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity [https://www.amazon.com/How-Economics-Explains-World-Humanity/dp/0063383780], is the latest of his 11 books on economics, leadership, and public policy.

Today on Political Economy, Michael Strain [https://www.aei.org/profile/michael-r-strain/] and I discuss the key challenges currently facing the American economy; namely, the growing debt burden, lingering inflation, the market response to tariffs, and general uncertainty. Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy here  at AEI. He has published dozens of articles in leading academic and policy journals in addition to his 2020 book, The American Dream is Not Dead [https://www.amazon.com/American-Dream-Not-Dead-Populism/dp/159947557X]. He is a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy [https://mccourt.georgetown.edu/] and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor [https://www.iza.org/].

Energy, transportation, housing — pro-growth advocates from Washington to Silicon Valley are calling for a revival of American infrastructure. They say, “It’s time to build.” One massive problem, however: decades of environmental regulation, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, have slowed these efforts to a snail’s pace, if not halted them altogether. Today on Political Economy, I talk with James Coleman [https://www.aei.org/profile/james-w-coleman/] about the kinds of policy reforms need before we can build. Coleman is a nonresident senior fellow here at AEI. Concurrently, he is also a scholar of energy law at the University of Minnesota, where he specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He previously taught law at Southern Methodist University [https://www.smu.edu/law], the University of Calgary [https://law.ucalgary.ca/], and Harvard Law School [https://hls.harvard.edu/].