Transcript
KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – February 15, 2025
The Jacobsen Group with Jon Jacobsen · Mon Feb 17, 2025
Who used all the Wi-Fi?
Ah, apartment life.
Bad Wi-Fi, mystery laundry piles, and a roommate who says, I'll Venmo you.
Maybe 2027 deserves an upgrade.
Coming August 2027, Four Lakes Properties introduces the brand new Union Station Apartments, furnished in-unit washer and dryer.
Internet included a great central downtown location, one to five bedroom apartments, and no double occupancy fees.
That's less adulting and more actually enjoying where you live.
Union Station Apartments, now leasing from Four Lakes Properties.
Wait, we have a washer and dryer in the apartment?
apartment?
Who used all the Wi-Fi?
Ah, apartment life.
Bad Wi-Fi, mystery laundry piles, and a roommate who says, I'll Venmo you.
Maybe 2027 deserves an upgrade.
Coming August 2027, Four Lakes Properties introduces the brand new Union Station apartments.
Furnished, in-unit washer and dryer, internet included, a great central downtown location, one to five bedroom apartments, and no double occupancy fees.
That's less adulting and more actually enjoying where you live.
Union Station apartments, now leasing from Four Lakes Properties.
Wait, we have a washer and dryer in the apartment?
If
you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.
You can hear us on the radio statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.
We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.
And Alexa knows how to find us too.
It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.
This is a special edition of the Jacobson Group, recorded on Friday, February 7th, 2025, on the campus of Ottawa University in Kansas.
The Great Tariff Tussle was presented by the Quartney Institute and featured Professor John Jacobson versus Dr. Russ McCullough.
The great tariff tussle with Jacobson pro-tariff, McCullough anti-tariff.
The introductions were made by Ottawa University's Dr. Peter
Jacobson.
So the first phase is opening statements.
And in this part of the debate, the affirmative, that being done from color, will go first.
They each present a pre-written speech, and that time count is about four minutes.
The timekeeper will indicate to them when they have 30 seconds left, and then cut them off into four minutes.
Phase two, then the negative side, Professor Davidson will go first.
And he'll present a rebuttal to the opening remarks made by the affirmative side for us.
And then the affirmative side will have the chance to go second and offer his or her bubble.
Each of those will be four minutes.
Phase three is our crossfire section.
That's when the affirmative side answers the negative side rather, level questions at each other, arranged in any manner, and will sort of allow Russ and John to self-govern that.
But that's going to be a total time period of eight minutes.
And then the audience is given time to ask questions about to 16 minutes.
And finally, phase four, we have closing remarks where each party is able to summarize their points, not bring up new arguments in theory.
And in that case, Professor Jacobson will go first, and then Professor McCullum will round out each with two minutes.
Does that make sense?
OK.
With that being said, we'll go ahead and get started with phase one.
So Professor McCullum, you can start your four minutes.
All right.
Well, I just wanted to thank John for those words.
Really, they're too kind.
Milton Friedman is a super one of my heroes.
So, you know, I'm trying to emulate that type of thing here and do what's good for the good word of economics out of the masses.
So I really appreciate you all for coming tonight.
And hopefully we can put on a good show and maybe learn a little bit and have a little bit of fun.
So, all right.
Our timekeeper is Catherine, our graduate assistant.
And so she's going to be keeping tabs on us and cutting us off when we need to.
And she'll be raising a hand at the 32nd mark if I'm going too long.
But we'll see what happens.
So ready?
All right.
terrible.
Come on.
Are you kidding me?
We can't raise prices like that.
The bad thing about tariffs is that they hurt the poor the most.
That's what's really disgusting about it.
You know the fat cats can always find ways to pay for things and shelter things and get things, but it's really the poor who get disproportionately hurt by tariffs.
A tariff is a tax on imports.
So when we are buying stuff from China or Guatemala or Europe, it is those things that
raise the prices.
So they come to the border.
If there's a 20% tariff, they have to pay more.
Well, that raises price at the cash register for you.
Now, you might be thinking, and some of you are, but us, Americans will create more jobs and will have more stimulus for American companies.
Well, here's the bad part.
The American prices go up to
So imagine that if Corona has a 20% tariff coming from the border and they have to raise their price of Corona, that raises the price of beer in general because there's not as much price competition for Miller and Budweiser.
Our American companies don't have the same competition that they did before, and we're having less Corona and less Modelo.
coming across the border, and so there's increase in prices in general.
So all prices tend to go up.
take
on beer because I like
beer,
but it's
all across the board.
Think of all the things.
It's so detrimental to think about all of the various things that are connected to the global markets now.
Why did it start?
In 1947, there was the general agreement on terrorism trade.
And it was a wonderful thing that has had unprecedented growth for the United States being the leader in free trade around the world.
And so that has contributed to the growth of the economy.
When I say growth in the economy, those of you who haven't been in my class, that's growth in income.
That's prosperity.
That's raising people out of poverty.
So in places where there are no tariffs, they are generally more prosperous.
So most of the developed nations joined this group, led by the United States over the years, to not do tariffs.
They basically, it was called the general agreement on tariffs and trade, saying, hey, let's just all agree that tariffs are stupid, and we're going to raise prices for everybody.
So let's just both not do them.
And so if we start to look at evidence around the world,
We see that the countries who maintained tariffs are at lower living standards than where we're at in the United States and other developed countries.
So to impose tariffs and somehow think that that's helping America and American consumers and maybe more specifically less lower income American consumers, it's just not there.
The data supports not doing that.
So to use tariffs as a tool to get there is crazy in my opinion.
So our companies, we have some of the greatest companies in the world because of trade.
And so sometimes people point to the trade deficit that we don't buy as much from other, or we buy more from other places than what they buy from us.
It doesn't matter.
The principle of comparative advantage says that we have resources in the United States that are best used here to make things that we're good at.
What are we good at?
We're good at
Machine driven things.
We're good at computer.
We're good at scientific elements in the economy.
We lead the world in all of these areas.
And that's what's been very profitable and generated higher incomes for Americans over time.
And we have been able to purchase things that are less capital intensive, less machine intensive, less education intensive from other countries.
But guess what it did for them?
30% reduction in poverty around the world with people living on $2 a day
It's been a win-win situation.
It's not like we won at their loss.
Thank
you.
intellectual firepower put together, assembled together in my room since Thomas Jefferson died alone for breakfast.
Both tariffs are necessary.
Tariffs are good.
Tariffs are as American as apple pie.
Tariffs were the founding block of our nation's economic policy from George Washington's first term until essentially the end of the Cold War.
One of the first bills George Washington signed
was a terrorist.
Henry Clay, the great orator, terrorist.
Abraham Lincoln, terrorist.
McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, terrorist.
General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, terrorist.
Even Ron Reagan, who's called by the Keto Institute, the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover, terrorists are American.
They're still used today.
Almost 20% of every single import that comes in is tariff to an extent.
That means Barack Obama and Joe Biden have embraced a policy of tariffs.
I'm a golfer.
I carry 14 golf clubs in my bag.
One of them is a sandwich.
I use it once around maybe twice around if I hit two sand traps.
I use that club 2% of the time.
But I need that sandwich in my bag for emergencies.
We need terrorists as an emergency.
Terrorists work.
Terrorists allow us to utilize the best summer steel process that help America gain primacy in the steel industry, in the industrial revolution, and in the gilded age.
We lost that when we granted communist China most favored nation training status.
And we saw what happened.
during COVID with the supply chain shortage, we saw what happened now with China utilizing production using slave labor, working with gain of function research irresponsibly, monopolizing the semiconductor and computer chip market, asserting hegemony in the entire region, threatening her neighbors.
Now, we needed for national security
And we need it to help the poor because, frankly, many of the poor people in these foreign countries are being exploited at cheap wages that are then products that are dumped here in the United States that has ravaged our industrial base and killed our cities like Detroit, and Gary, and Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.
They've never recovered from that.
The death, the disease, the despair that occurred there.
So terrorist protect our domestic industries.
They help reduce our trade deficits.
They're a very powerful and fostering free trade.
They're very good at contributing to government revenue.
We balanced our budgets for a century and a half using tariffs.
We encounter a deficit randomly by an imposition of further tariffs.
They also build burgeoning industries in our economy.
No question that we need to rebuild steel, computer chips, and our pharmaceuticals.
During COVID, our antibiotics, all of the medicines that you would use for your children someday were at the behest of China.
We did not have that being manufactured here in the United States.
So if you really think about pricing, we're not really talking about the efficient cost of cheap labor.
There's a huge human cost to that.
And so as we go forward in this debate, we're going to ask you to
Think that we should make America make things again, and a terrorist is the
key
to do that.
Throughout history, terrorists have been extremely successful.
If only
as negotiating tacticals, bargaining chips, artful dealing, modus operandi, expanding the overton window, as we say.
All the terrorists do is win, win, win.
In justice, I speak of our own history.
We have witnessed the mere threat of terrorists is having the zealot in effect of Canada, opening up markets, and fortifying the southern border, having profited and then enriched
for decades by the protective nuclear umbrella at the United States, allowing them to produce things more cheaply.
We have seen the threat of terrorists encourage Mexico to fight cartels and to secure their northern border.
We have even seen the threat of terrorists encourage Panama to honor its treaty on the canal, secure the rescue hostages in Venezuela, and rig about cooperation in El Salvador.
to hold dangerous criminals.
Terrorists reallocate to arrive at the truly efficient price of products, taking the common good into account, so as to make trade not just free trade, but fair, in order to allow Americans increasing opportunities for dignity and employment, safety at home, all the while not having to be quadriggers in evil, such as what are going on in Iran and China.
or we reduced our trade barriers to them.
Is it better to die in chiefly or to live justly?
In an era of truth and lending, truth and advertising, is it not time also for truth and pricing?
In the words of academic economists, Oran Kax, of the Votted American Conference, when we recognize things in the market, that market prices are not taking into account.
And whether that is pollution of various forms or in this instance,
I would argue the value of making things.
The fact that domestic industrial capacity has enormous implications for a labor market, for an economy of national security, none of which market prices are going to consider.
If we say actually we need to insert a wedge into that price, it is going to reflect the cost of these benefits.
Yes, there will potentially be an effect on prices.
We just don't call that a sales tax and say that it's going to be inflationary, except if we, for ideological reasons, don't like tariffs.
And then off we go down that historic path.
So I do think that precision of language is actually really important.
And I think the way that we have to understand tariffs is as a recognition that making things does matter.
And if making things doesn't even matter, if domestic production matters,
Then in fact, the market price in which we just buy cheap, subsidized stuff from China is not the efficient price.
It is not the one that's actually going to maximize welfare, growth, or any of those things economists talk about in the long run.
Hey, let's make things again in America.
Let's make things again.
Terrorists are good for this country.
They protect our industries, they correct imbalances, they help us to make better, more quality, long lasting products.
They reinvest in our infrastructure and services, they negotiate better deals, aid in our domestic security, identify the true efficient price, and address unfair trade practices, all the while encouraging companies to make America make things again.
The funny thing is, I agree with some of those things, but strongly disagree with using tariffs to do it.
So he mentioned golf, right?
He's got 14 clubs in his bank.
What using a tariff is like to go golfing is to bring a baseball bat.
Bring a baseball bat to play golf.
You're bringing the wrong tool, right?
So if there's other ills that are harming our country of border control or infrastructure and a number of the things that he brought up,
You're bringing the wrong tool, and that tool is a dangerous one.
I am okay with tariff threats, but actual tariffs hurt people.
It will hurt your bottom line.
The last estimate I saw from the tax foundation was 142,000 jobs as people start to reallocate around and shrink in size
With lower income and lower growth, lower sales, you don't need as many people to work for it.
And so it starts the great shrinking of America.
If we were to start to impose tariffs and become a country showing that we can be insulated from the rest of the world through the use of tariffs, we will be in tough times.
And it won't be a little slump.
It'll be a 10-year slump.
And it won't recover.
And you know what the answer is going to be?
If these terrorists actually go through, the next person is going to get elected on.
We got to get rid of these terrorists.
And it's going to be so obvious because the income and prosperity of average Americans and poor Americans is going to flop.
And the reason is you can't bring a baseball bat to play golf.
It's the wrong tool to bring.
Some of our greatest companies have begun because
there wasn't any tariffs in place.
If they need to buy inexpensive components from a different country to build some of the electronics and gizmos that we like, they're able to do it.
We're able to freely trade with our brothers and sisters around the world.
The United States recognized this early on, and that's what this country's been built on.
Apple pie?
Yeah.
It's something that's been around.
It still tastes good.
But we got nice big apple fritters now.
We got a lot more tastier things because all of the things that we've been able to do to branch out from apple pie.
So apple pie is great, but now we can have apple pie and apple fritters and apple juice and apple cider and apple donuts.
All of that innovation and technology is at least a part due to the fact that we haven't imposed tariffs over time.
To tax,
things come across the border will stifle America, stifle the American dream.
So, tariffs are terrible.
It hurts our poor.
It hurts the poor people around the world.
Again, 30% drop in poverty over time just from opening their borders.
In my class, some of you who are in here, we did the trade game.
And just by allowing countries to trade freely with each other, increases prosperity.
It increases happiness.
And so the ability to do that, the ability for entrepreneurs to start a new business and not just sell to Americans, but to be able to sell to Canadians and to sell to Mexicans and to sell to people in Europe and all over the world is a tremendous advantage for us Americans and has worked so well over the years.
So my big thing is don't bring a baseball bat to the golf course.
There's a lot better tools that we can do to hit those issues head on.
They are important issues.
I'm not denying that.
We just don't want to bring the wrong tool or the wrong club to play the sport.
Thank you.
At this point we move to phase three of our debate which is the crossfire question section.
Again there will be eight total minutes for the two debaters to ask questions of one another.
I'll allow them somewhat of self-governance unless it gets out of hands.
Once that's done, we'll be doing audience Q&A, so be prepared with your questions.
So Dr. Yes, sir.
You've admitted that terrorists do sometimes work, at least the threat of terrorists.
The threat, but not the terror for some.
Now, currently, we just saw in the last week a lot of movement with terrorists
as a tactic bringing about some economic news for the United States.
Let's take a walk down memory lane here.
We have 20% essentially grounded, you can fact check this, of all of our current imports coming in our tariff to an extent.
And that helped too through the Biden and Obama administrations.
Are you arguing that we should even go more dramatically and even erase what
The good democratic presidents were arguing for, along with the Republicans, for a tariff base to help with our national sovereignty so we can develop steel and have our pharmaceuticals and our microchips here.
Is there not some merit in following what Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan did in not going for a bottom line figure
but going for a national security and domestic jobs frontier.
The press can't be immediately quantified, but nonetheless works toward an efficient price.
Do you like cheese?
I like cheese, but I like to eat it with a spoon and not a baseball
bat.
So the items that he's talking about that have maintained tariffs have had tremendous lobbies in Washington to maintain some protection.
So there's no doubt that tariffs will protect certain industries.
So this last round of tariffs that was most recent during Trump 1.0 that continued on with Biden.
Biden didn't overturn it was the steel tariffs.
And so the steel industry loved it and maybe a few pennies were spread out among us.
The costs were there but
These industries have had kind of a long that's that's one example of one that hasn't been a long-standing Protection of certain industry and that's more of a fault of our political process than it is Good sound economics, and so I would be all for those terrorists also going away so we can get some cheaper cheese
There's good
cheese around the world
after the contrary that we are in a situation now where we have aggressive Communist Chinese hegemony which spends its neighbors Japan
Taiwan, Hong Kong, even New Zealand, even Australia.
We are held hostage in many ways right now.
Could we make military items?
Can we have charge of our own pharmaceuticals?
What about our semiconductor chips?
At some point from a national security standpoint, when you have an aggressive competitor,
who is co-opting the very items that you need for your existence.
Doesn't it become a national security issue at that juncture to essentially make them pay a fair price?
Remember, the Chinese are doing this for slave labor.
They're forcing it, Uighurs and concentration camps to make these items.
Children are slave labor making various items for them.
We know that they were irresponsible and we exported the gain of function research to them.
We probably shouldn't have exported that.
Is there a point where we can live cheap and die and it would be better to live
justly
and live more in domestic tranquility?
Dr. McCullough, the question, the ravages
of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Gary, Indiana.
We lost 20 million manufacturing jobs.
Hold on.
Let me jump in here already.
So this
is crossfire.
So I think I'm well within
my bounds
here to jump in.
Listen, the COVID taught us one thing, that the supply chain and dependence on China was probably a little too heavy.
But here's the deal.
A lot of people didn't die because they didn't have toilet paper.
Or because our chips in our car, you know, we have slowdown manufacturing of Chevy trucks or something.
Nobody was dying.
We got that turned around.
The market corrected itself.
We found other pathways.
What's been going on since COVID?
There's been new developments of new industries in different countries.
And so now we've learned to diversify, right?
So this is what I teach in personal finance class, too.
When you take your investments, you got to diversify.
You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.
We had too many eggs in the Chinese basket, and we've learned from that.
And so by having these items more diversified in production throughout the world, that national security argument, while it might hold water in the first three months or six months or something, it doesn't hold water in the long term.
And I think it'll ultimately reduce our freedoms and reduce our incomes and lead to the poor.
Do you have a question or us?
No, I was responding to his question.
No, I know you were
okay.
I do have a question but Why would you use tariffs to hurt consumers?
Instead of if the border just to pick out one issue is the border.
Why would you use a tariff?
Why would you think that would be more effective than?
increased police or something at the border a different tool
because economics is always
the weapon that people respond to always follow the money.
Iran was nowhere near nuclear power when all the countries agreed to essentially terror from blocking nuclear materials from going into Iran.
That worked.
It, in many ways, would reduce costs, Dr. McCullough.
I permanently believe the terrorists that were imposed
through our nation's first 150 years, totally paid for our budget.
We did not have an income tax because of the tariffs and duties income that we had.
While we opposed those, that gave our folks the ability to compete fairly and freely against dumping and building these nascent beginning industries.
The cost during COVID was rather severe.
When I served in the legislature, there were some acute supply chain shortages.
There were computer chips in motor vehicles that simply could not be hand.
Okay,
those days of tariffs that you're talking about, those days are gone.
That's when the national budget was about 3% of the gross domestic product, our national income.
Right now, that spending is at like 20-25%.
And so our deficit, our imports coming in might amount to, let's say, $4 trillion.
If we put 100% tariff, that still wouldn't pay our bills in the United States.
It's actually impossible for us to be in the same position we were 100 years ago with somehow being able to effectively pay and lower income tax at our current level of spending.
Now, I think you might agree that maybe we could
lower spending, but I don't know if that's in the cards or not.
It would be an incremental increase in revenue though.
All things being equal, if we went from basically the 20% base that we have now to a higher base, that would bring substantial revenues in.
All things aren't equal because when we raise price, students, what happens to the quantity you want to buy when you raise price?
But
you're not really raising the price.
What you're doing is you are putting a duty
on the product that's incoming is set an artificially low price due either to dumping or exploiting the poor people in those countries.
I would say it's an act of social justice to ameliorate them by taxing the perpetrator and then people in America.
Okay, take what he said and it's
just the opposite.
It will hurt them.
Oh, and we're out of time.
Okay,
so
we've now moved into the audience Q&A.
We'll have 16 minutes for audience Q&A.
You can direct your questions to either Professor Jacobson or Professor McCullough or both if the question is for both of them.
Maybe
you run that
around.
Yeah, so the plan will be I'll run this
mic around and then Professor Jacobson will share with Professor McCullough and so I'll start going around and see some questions.
Who used all the Wi-Fi?
Ah, apartment life.
Bad Wi-Fi, mystery laundry piles, and a roommate who says, I'll Venmo you.
Maybe 2027 deserves an upgrade.
Coming August 2027, Four Lakes Properties introduces the brand new Union Station apartments.
Furnished, in-unit washer and dryer, internet included, a great central downtown location, one to five bedroom apartments, and no double occupancy fees.
That's less adulting and more actually enjoying where you live.
Union Station Apartments, now leasing from Four Lakes Properties.
Wait, we have a washer and dryer in the apartment?
If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.
You can hear us on the radio, statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.
We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.
and Alexa knows how to find us too.
It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.
This is for Professor Jackson.
Are you advocating for like a whole global threat, or just on countries like China, Mexico, and Canada?
I think you have to be targeted and tactical, largely, precision, surgery, obviously.
There are some nations that do not deserve most favorite nation training status.
Iran and China or the Korea would be three of those.
But I think your question is very excellent because we're getting right down to the reason we need to impose these is precisely to help with income inequality in these foreign countries where the people are so taken advantage of when they're paying slave wages to people and we're buying their products so cheaply does not that prick our social conscience.
into saying maybe the efficient cost isn't buying the byline cheap product, maybe for the common good and for total freedom of our neighbors worldwide, we need to take that step of maybe paying a smaller price right now for what is socially just.
Is it too much to say, as Orton Cass said, that if domestic security and our national sovereignty is important
How can you put a price tag on that?
When do we sell out our own people here for 30 pieces of silver?
There's more than silver involved here.
And so I think your question is excellent because you're looking at the macro standpoint.
There are many nations that regularly trade freely with us that these nations that we're talking about putting tariffs on are the very nations
that are putting 50 and 75% tariffs on us.
I agree in free trade.
There should be, in a perfect world, everybody get along.
But the reason we have to impose some of these maybe 20, 25% tariffs is because the very nations that we're slamming them on are imposing 50 and 75% tariffs on us.
Folks, camera will have very little in the camera from here without a huge tariff.
Same thing with China.
You have to literally build factories in China and build new residents in some of these places.
That's the cheese again.
So our cheese will be a lot cheaper.
I just wanted to comment because it's a good one that you know whether they're targeted.
So it kind of comes back to the baseball bat in the golf club.
But here's the deal.
If we impose a tariff
Americans lose.
Americans lose through higher prices of foreign products, but also higher prices of American products like I talked about.
But what's worse and what's likely is what's called a tit for tat strategy.
What I do to you, you do to me.
So Justin Trudeau mentioned that he was going to do that in Canada, for instance.
We put on 20%, they put on 20%.
What happens then is that the losses are even more.
America even loses more.
And so since you praised me for following Milton Friedman, Milton Friedman once said,
we should unilaterally decrease tariffs, even if our competitors don't, because that makes Americans better off.
So the logic works the opposite way, too.
We don't want to go one direction.
Is it going to argument, and I'll show you the Milton Friedman said, that even the Swim Holly tariff did nothing to really cause the Great Depression.
And our income back then... How about the next question?
Let me just finish one more.
Without our young man over there who asked about strategic tariffs.
You have to put tariffs on for polluters.
We have massive pollution going on in some of these
countries.
And labor standards.
Again, these people have no labor union protections.
They're working more cheaply.
And they're charging our people 75% tariffs to do business in their country.
I'm a lawyer.
It has to be just.
You can't say we're going to give away the farm and that it costs us 75% to go reclaim their neighborhood.
We're going
to move to the next question.
And for us, if you want to, when it's your term of might, you can also address that at some point.
I have a question about, you mentioned that it will hold water tariffs for three to six months.
Do you think that
short term tariffs would
be good?
There's no such thing as a short term tariff.
So once that
is in and people start to adjust their expectations, it's not gonna do.
So the longer term thing is when people realize that it's here to stay and they start adjusting the long term decision making.
In fact, we were just talking with a graduate today that visited my class, Jacob Michael, and I asked him at lunch with Dr. Jacobson over here, what did he think for his private equity firm would be the worst?
And he said the tariffs, they've already not done deals
because of the threat of tariffs even.
It creates more uncertainty.
They have to price that uncertainty in the market.
It's already causing problems and it hasn't even been imposed yet.
Now, I'm still the threat thing, like I said, but if it goes into place, I'm not in it.
But this is Schrodinger's cap here, Dr. McCullough.
If you can threaten it, you have to be able to follow through with it.
It's like a poker game.
Who knows who's blocking?
Who knows who's not?
But you have to have not just the potency.
But the actuality, we all learned that in philosophy class.
And again, in this juncture, we've got to build this home.
What we're saying, if we're totally free trade and anti-terror, is that we have to lower our guards and let them bring in all of their dumped products at artificially low prices, often off slave labor in nations that pull it up heavily.
Well, at the same time, if we want to introduce our products
And to their country, they made it absolutely impossible for us to compete in their large markets.
That is a rigged mox game against American people.
And when I look at the people from Gary, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan, and Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, and our destroyed manufacturing base, and the tens of millions of lives that were ruined here with disease, and death, and despair, we can do better.
We can do better.
And we can build the economies and the nascent industries here that give us more sovereignty and the long run.
I care more about the American poor than the other countries poor.
My philosophy, Professor Partner Dr. Clark, who couldn't be here, has this permissible partiality.
So it's OK for me to want to care more about the people close to me.
And so I'm going to give them priority first.
for you is, what's the series to do this terror against China?
What's to stop us from simply flying from somewhere else instead of making it
here?
That's a great good question.
And I want to say I agree with Dr. McCullough in caring for the poorest near you, perhaps more.
And that's why I invoke immediately before that Cleveland, and Kerry, and Pittsburgh, and Detroit.
The problem right now is that many of these other countries don't make these products.
Literally, China and Taiwan and Hong Kong, who China has potential designs on, they've got the corner on the semiconductor and computer chip market.
There were cars, literally, that the auto dealerships in the Midwest during the COVID-spliting crisis literally had no cars in the last.
They could make the car in Detroit, they could make the car in Tennessee, they couldn't get the semiconductor chips from China.
Young mothers that needed antibiotics for their children, people who needed certain specialized drugs to treat cancers, were having supply chain disruptions because China was the only nation making those pharmaceuticals.
Guys, this is life or death.
These are life and death situations.
You cannot allow an aggressive competitor a corner on your infrastructure and health care products that literally mean the life and death of your society, your culture,
industry.
Baseball
bat.
It might be life or death, and I'm not going to dispute that, but it's the wrong tool to use.
Another question?
Great.
So you keep saying it's like we're going to make a magical magical.
It's not right to what are the right tools, because Professor Jacobson was up to the right amount of money spent on national security and peace.
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
So, hitting the problem, so let's say border control.
Beefing up our own patrol, possibly.
purchasing, building a wall, doing other security checks, basically hitting things that are direct on rather than this indirect tax on imports to do it.
Now, it's a great threat.
And so if we have a president that comes off kind of, wow, this guy might just do it, it's kind of brilliant move.
I'm not gonna deny that.
But if he goes through with it, and actually does it, it's super detrimental.
So it's like we're playing with that.
So to
have
that go through, like I said, the threat of it, I'm okay with, but it's got to stop there, and I'm not sure it's going to stop there.
And so another policy of...
helping the poor or something rather than to threaten the tariff if they're not doing it to you know restrict trade of that country which we've done in the past so we won't take products if they don't show that they're not using slave labor or child labor or something like that so rather than wielding this this tariff around as as the tool I think it's a dangerous tool and if
If it gets pushed, if push comes to shove and we're in a corner and it gets put into place, it's going to be really bad for the United States.
And it's going to be a hard one to dig out of.
Thank you, Dr. Prokof.
Sharon, that's a great question.
I think it's an existential question if we do not tariff.
When we have a tariff, a worldwide tariff, on any weapons-grade material, including radioactive,
going into Iran from 2017 to 2021.
And when we put economic tariffs on Iran, they were starved, they were broke, they were on the ropes.
When we rescinded that policy, we saw what happened on October 7th, a year and a half ago.
Terrorists can say lies existentially by wielding the baseball bat
economically because October 7 wouldn't have happened if we had had those strict terrorists in place against
Iran.
And
how do you think that would affect our low-income people?
That's an excellent question.
And what I would tell you is the biggest driver right now of health care costs is a medical-industrial complex.
And part of our problem has been that there have been tariffs internationally, even involving medicines and the ability to get medicines.
Right now the regulatory environment in the United States is such that we are disallowing cheaper medicines to coming into the United States.
We also have regulatory people in the United States that are suppressing certain medicines that other nations are freely distributing effectively curing their people.
So it's a very complex issue and right now what you see is
There's been a great deal of corruption in the big pharma industries.
Many of them are offline and the real critical problem we have right now is we have nations that are doing gain of function research in bio labs.
risking the release of another accidental pandemic escaping from a lab.
Again, they're not under labor standards.
They're not under pollution standards.
They're not under the regulatory standards, Olivia, that we have here in the United States.
We've exported those out freely to our own death and destruction.
There are some things that need to be done in the United States that should not be exported out.
Gain and Function Research is one of those.
And if you freed up the regulatory market here and made big pharma, not big pharma bills across the river, and they dump on us and sell their pharmaceuticals at a tenth of what they're charging us here, that also is not fair trade.
So you need to use the weapon against that bad behavior as well.
And that weapon's not that baseball bat.
reduce the restrictions that are in the pharmaceuticals, that the big lobbies in Washington, those are the things that keep those costs high.
We don't have freedom to purchase our drugs from other places around the world.
And so things like the Federal Drug Administration has held that up, go directly at the problem, don't use tariffs to do it.
Okay, this will be the final question.
We've got about two minutes left.
This
one is for us.
Is there anything to be said that tariffs could combat the consumerism problem in the United States and overconsumption that we generally see?
No.
So consumerism, I mean the idea of materialism or consumerism, you know, it's kind of like greed.
It's not going to go away.
I don't think a tariff making things more expensive
is
going to lower that human nature.
I would argue simple nature to want to consume more and more.
And so people have to have themselves a check.
And what a tariff does is it lowers incomes for everybody, as I've argued, leaving us in a worse position.
And so I think similar to like if we raised the price domestically by law, if we had extra taxes,
It wouldn't help that issue as well.
And so the tariffs would just be less of an impact visually because we're doing it on the foreigners, but I don't think it would address that issue.
Yeah, Chairman, that's a really good question.
I would say this.
The American people, when left to last resort, always do the right thing.
During the Civil War in America with high tariffs, part of that argument economically was about tariffs.
Despite paying some higher prices during wartime, people like my great-great-great-great grandfather enlisted in the Illinois Infantry and Mr. Lincoln's Army to go down to Kentucky to free the slaves.
He contracted typhoid by the end of the war, was rammed as progressive as life,
also may receive the pension from Benjamin Harrison, but he believed that some things were more than just the bottom line dollar.
In World War II, when Nazism crushed America, we saw the American people sacrifice together with tariffs, paying a slight behind price, but nonetheless, girting through it.
There could be some
price increases with tariffs.
But I want to argue they're not imposed prices.
They're really the actual efficient price that we have not justly been incorporating into our pricing mode right now to the detriment of our poor, disaffected manufacturing base in America and to the detriment of our national security and sovereignty.
Thank you.
All right.
We are at our final section of our debate.
In this part of the debate, each candidate will provide their closing statements.
Reminder, each closing statement is supposed to be two minutes.
So closing
statements, each closing statement, two minutes.
And who goes first?
I'm up.
All right.
Well, we've come to a close, and I just have to say thank you, John, for trying to defend a really undefendable physician.
It's tough.
You did as best as anybody could.
But it's pretty simple, isn't it?
If we raise prices, you get hurt.
Other people get hurt.
There's unimaginable impacts to the supply chain and little things.
If we're bringing eggs to market, where did that egg cart come from?
Where did the driver come from?
Where did the truck and its machinery, all of the parts in our global economy
usually over 50% of the things we buy that are made in America, aren't really made in America because the parts and components are coming from other places.
I mean, it would be so detrimental to have across the board tariffs or tariffs even on individual countries, any sort of tariff period hurts Americans.
If those tariffs are reciprocated, which they usually are by the other country, Americans are hurt even worse.
So just don't do them.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. McCullum.
We've got to go to terrorists.
We've got to embrace them more thoroughly.
Chinese car costing $10,000, American car costing $15,000.
Chinese car built with slave labor, no pollution standards, no worker rights, dumping into America, flying the American market.
That's going to test the unfair when they will not allow our products to enter their country.
That's grotesquely unfair.
So the way you do it is you slap a 5,000 tariff on them.
Both automobiles are now $10,000.
What that does is it gyms up demand in the United States.
It revitalizes our urban areas.
It creates jobs in all of these industries, jobs, tax revenues, everything.
This was the American policy from George Washington through Lincoln through Eisenhower through Kennedy even Biden and Obama recognized 20% tariffs the resolution says Terrorists are bad for America.
Well, that's
a
universal statement
all
terrorists are not always bad for America Some tariffs are absolutely necessary for
our national
security and for the economic health
of our people.
It worked last week alone.
The beginning of tariffs with five different countries brought about behavior that is good for America.
Let's make America make things again.
Vote negative.
Vote negative on the proposition.
Tariffs are terrific.
Thank you.
This is when our graduate assistant, Chris Suviano, is going to give up our QR code for our exit survey.
So
just a reminder,
the exit survey has two, well,
several
things on it, but the
two
really important ones are that you have an opinion before the debate, which is either the affirmative, which
was in an
alternative terrible, or the negative, which would imply that that statement's not true, but then
you
also want to get your after debate opinion.
And be sure that your first opinion matches what your opinion was on your opening survey if you were here when you took that.
If you weren't here, then you could just fill it out as if this is the first time.
So we're getting that up right now.
And while you do that, I'm going to come around with some potential giveaways.
Just a
second.
I got to grab them.
All right.
So Peter's going to do some giveaways.
I just wanted to mention
that we've got this beautiful plaque for those of you if this is your first Wartney Institute event by attending six Institute events you can graduate as a Wartney Institute scholar and so we have an event coming up that's been advertised you're going to see some emails on it called the immigration dilemma we kind of brought up border control a little bit tonight and so we have a reader and we are going to spend basically
a day, not quite a day, but ten to five talking about it.
I know that might sound boring, but we're gonna pay a hundred bucks.
When's the last time you came to school and got paid a hundred?
I'm gonna give you a hundred dollar bill, in fact.
It's gonna be a hundred cash.
And so Sharon's been in there, Jesse's been in there.
You can talk to some other people.
It's a lot of fun.
And so we have a good discussion.
It's really a discussion.
It's not a lecture from the professors or anything.
It's just you all had read some material.
And you come in and we discuss it, we get a nice lunch, and we get to go out for dinner as well.
And then that'll count towards you becoming a Gorton Institute scholar.
Who's ready for some t-shirts?
Woo!
All right, so this is pretty simple.
How's it going to work?
If you want a t-shirt, throw your hand out.
Chris is not going to send them to whoever we think deserves t-shirts.
Who
looks deserving?
Oh, they're standing!
There's deserving!
Look
at that!
Alright,
so...
While we're waiting for the tabulations here as well, Peter's got maybe a few more goods.
I wanted to give another plaque.
This one is to Professor John Jacobson.
This says that he's a distinguished speaker.
So when we have somebody come in, we really appreciate people that come in and participate in our events, even when he has to take a position that's as rough as supporting tariffs.
So thank you, Jen.
This is very nice of you, Dr. Jacobson.
Round two, Chris
will be thrown out hats, and we throw out the shirts.
All right,
so let's
see.
You
guys
asked great
questions.
Thank you for the outstanding quality of the questions.
I appreciate it.
Hey folks, I'd like to just introduce the most distinguished person in the room.
Dr. Grohmore and Dr. Urbanoz.
Thank you guys.
Okay, so I told you about the immigration dilemma.
That QR code, you guys kind of have first dibs.
I haven't sent it out to the masses yet.
It is limited to about 16 seats.
So if you want to do that, we've already had some people sign up that have been with our group before.
So that's what we're going to be discussing.
And it is Saturday, March 1st.
So make sure you don't have it's not game day for you or something.
But if you'd like to sign up for that, please do.
And you can be a part of the group and get a t-shirt, lunch, and dinner as well.
All right.
Dr. Jacobson is tabulating the results.
It should be in here shortly.
So let me use this time to say April 11th is another opportunity.
We're going to bring seven universities, six universities to us, seven including us, to Ottawa to compete in what we call PPE League.
And so we have some former people in here with Quinn and Sharon and Cole.
I don't know, maybe there's somebody else in here.
And so the group does a commercial.
It has a video game competition and a policy case competition.
It's a lot of fun.
And then this time we have special guests coming in from around the United States.
We have two special speakers coming from the Free Market Road Show.
And so we'll have a nice dinner.
It'll be hosted right here.
And we'll have that on April 11th.
All
right, John
just gave me the results.
He said he counted 150 people here.
That sounds pretty strong, but are you sure?
Are your eyes okay?
Just two rounds of H and multiple.
It's very easy.
I can't thank you enough.
This is one of the biggest events we've had, so I really do appreciate you guys coming out and showing your support.
I know you've got a lot of things to do with your time and appreciate you being here.
Okay, before we unroll the final numbers here, guys...
This is a great honor.
Also, I say the best for last.
But you know, the
the head man of all is here tonight, Dr. Asutsui.
Let's give a big round of applause.
Dr. Asutsui, this is leadership.
These guys in green and in mesh with the student body on a Friday night in an academic pursuit.
This is everything good and pure and decent and great about
I know
he's not afraid to speak and I just have to.
I'm not sure if he pulled out his phone and did the QR code so I'm going to let him speak to the issues and see
what the doctor is doing next.
I did look at the ball but I didn't fill it out
honestly you both did a great job this evening.
You both made your cases extremely well.
This is what
Higher education is all about.
Is wrestling with difficult issues in a thoughtful and civil way?
Is bringing all the mind power you can, all the data you can, it doesn't necessarily mean having a slam dunk answer.
Because even though they made their cases as if it's black and white, we know the real world is often gray.
And hopefully you will use this as an example
because this kind of intellectual engagement will serve you in whatever job you do in life, will serve you as a citizen as you make decisions about politics and the nation's future, will serve you in finding yourself and your identity.
So I couldn't be more thrilled with all the people here.
I think 150 might be right, you know.
This is incredible.
I want to thank you for being a part of this and I want to
encourage you to continue to be engaged in discussions about the economic future of our nation and our world.
Because, honestly, for all I love, Rossi and I are aging out
here,
right?
And you are going to be the next generation.
You need to have a voice in the world.
You're going to live in, and you're going to lead.
Thanks so much.
Thank
you, Bill.
Thank you, Bill, for your support.
All right, looks like Peter's up.
So, this is a tough one.
We had people change their minds on both sides, but by a margin of
unknown
size, the winner is Professor Jacobson.
Now, as a reminder, and actually it's the first time we've mentioned it tonight, the general debate decorum
is that the people on stage oftentimes take viewpoints that are not identical to their own in real life.
My suspicion is Dr. McCullough in real life has a little bit more close to Dr. Jacobson and Dr. Jacobson is a little bit more close to Dr. McCullough on this issue.
So this is a reminder as you go away from this toxinine, the purpose of debate is always that you take sides and sometimes you
defense sides that you don't support.
And so I would encourage you, if you have an interest in either of the professors or both of the professors, complete unfiltered positions on this, I recommend stay after the debate, catch them after class, talk about these issues with them because I think both of them will give you an even clearer picture of what they believe.
So thank
you all for
joining us tonight.
Any
last comments for us?
No, I think that's it.
Congratulations, Dr. Jacobson.
You changed more minds.
I'm sure there had to be like 70% believe me though, right?
And they just he changed a few more minds.
Is that what
happened?
Dr. McCullough is a national treasure.
And someday, someday when the book is written, he will be there with Arthur Laffer and Milton Friedman and Dr. Walter Williams.
I can assure you that.
Peter Jacobson
is a better man, and a better husband, and a better father, and a better author, and a better in life than I am.
Thanks to my loving, gracious wife who's hiding there in the corner.
Wave, wave babe, she's in her sweats.
Deborah, a loving, gracious Deborah.
I met on campus 43 years ago this month up in Ola, Nebraska.
Seriously, and what Dr. Jacobson said about debating,
I clearly have a more nuanced take.
And in prep for this, I listened to your brilliant word me podcast on terrorists.
And you and Professor Clark were missing out.
And you have some more nuanced takes too.
So I think Peter nailed it as he always does.
You're basically saying you cheated.
I did show prep and do diligence.
Like every good lawyer and radio host does show prep and do
diligence.
All right, guys.
Thanks for coming.
I appreciate it.
Have a good night and a safe weekend.
You've been listening to a special edition of the Jacobson group featuring the Great Tariff Tussle, which was recorded at Ottawa University on Friday, February 7th.
Professor John Jacobson took the pro-tariff position.
Dr. Russ McCullough took the anti-tariff position.
The moderator for the event from the Guartney Institute was Dr. Peter Jacobson.
Listen for another edition of the Jacobson Group next Saturday morning at 7.30 on News Talk 1540 KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.
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