Has the Republican Party abandoned free trade?

0:00Support comes from wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global, your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Choose wise. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart, get wise, visit wise.com. Season C's apply. If you have one of the buildings we've got so much over regulation here in the United States, that quite frankly you'll have to go through about 14 state, local and federal jurisdictions to get permits. That could take several years and then off that you'll invariably have to have third-party litigation from people who nimby's not my backyard, the environmental's who don't want manufacturing at all because they affect the government and the other side. We've made the environment here too difficult for manufacturing and we've lost over 85,000

1:03manufacturing jobs since President Trump has become president largely due to tariffs. Again, I don't agree with them when they focus on protectionism as a solution to our problems. I look at the horrific regulations we've created right here in Washington that have prevented us from having a strong manufacturing base. Welcome to Hub Dialogues. I'm your host Sean Speer, Editor at Large at the Hub. I'm pleased to be joined today by Andrew Hale, a senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom and former Heritage Foundation Insider. We discuss the fracturing of the conservative consensus on limited government and free trade, the rise of post-liberalism within the Republican Party, and what these changes mean for American politics in Canada, US relations. The episode's part of an ongoing collaboration between the Hub and the New North America initiative at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. From the shifting ideologies of the new right and the new left in the US, this multi-month series will bring Canadians inside debates

2:06on trade, globalization and power. They're likely to shape America's policy direction and indeed Canadian interests for years to come. The next voicelier is mine in conversation with Andrew Hale. Andrew, thanks for joining us at Hub Dialogues. You can so much for having me. It's a pleasure. Yeah, I've been really looking forward to this conversation, Andrew. There's so many questions that I want to put to you to help situate the current public policy debates occurring in the United States, but as importantly to understand the longer term intellectual and political trends and how they may affect Canada, US economic relations. If you'll permit me, I want to start backwards if that makes sense. I want to give you a characterization and have a chance to affirm it or reject it. Previous guests in the series have argued that the post-cold war economic consensus has broken down and that new and increasingly heterodox ideas are

3:08vying for the center of gravity of American political economy. But my sense at the work that you were doing at advancing American freedom kind of rejects that premise, that you're more inclined to defend the central commitments of the post-cold war order, free markets, open trade, limited government and American global leadership. Is that a fair description of where you stand? Yes, it is. I would say that President Trump when he got elected in 2016 and took office in 2017, that really was a sea change because we had this liberal order and there have been an unbroken change, this Reagan being for free markets and free trade. Even Trump wasn't that disruptive because he was guiding his trade and economic policies by Ambassador Robert Leihhizer, although as a protectionist, he's someone who is a lawyer who did things by the law book. But Trump too has been far more chaotic because there have been different people there in his White House. For example, Peter Navarro's there and Peter Navarro was very much neutralized by President Trump

4:14in Trump's first term and kept out of the USMCA the Cosmon negotiations to Peter Navarro's anxiety. Ambassador Leihhizer didn't return and I'm told that President Trump found him very restricting because he kept him going down the legal route of 301's and 232's and the various legal tariff authorities opened him. He never went down the sort of Aiepa of imposing an Aiepa tariff which of course the Supreme Court declared illegal. Navarro doesn't seem to be terribly concerned about the law and it's very badly advised the President to go down Aiepa and of course he was the first person in the White House before others had to go through Senate confirmation. He was an announced statutory role and he was there before a lot of other people like Scott Beesent and more cool heads got into the White House and he advised the President to get for this 25% tariff immediately against Canon Mexico and that came out that was an outgrowth of two things. It was now growth of the fact that he didn't like trade in general. He doesn't believe in trade between the United States and in other countries. He's aligned with the coalition for Prosperse America which is most extreme protectors outfit. Navarro himself is a left wing Democrat

5:18from California stood for Congress ran as a politician for the Democrats. Thank you didn't get elected but then of course you have to look at the fact that he wasn't allowed to be a part of the USMC negotiations and some people have lived in the House of wounded feelings and he has ever since Trump won and he very much sees attacking Kusma, USMC as a means of ripping up Ambassador Robert Lighthizer's golden legacy whom he doesn't like and it's sadly some people are as petty as that but remember what President Trump said about USMC in his first term. He said it was the greatest FTA in human history and Lighthizer went to Congress along with Pompeo and said that it was the gold standard and free trade agreements and he was even offered to Theresa May as a model free trade agreement for the United Kingdom. So sadly the messaging has changed now. Trump says it's a very bad deal but that was not the messaging in Trump one so it's different people in the administration now and then of course there's this growth of post-liberalism which comes in with JD Vance. Yeah well let's take that up because I take your point that a personalist policy as it's often

6:18said but I think there is a conventional wisdom that the rise of President Trump signals a deeper fracture with the ideas and policies that predate him that what sometimes gets characterized disparagingly is neoliberalism to describe everything from free trade to deregulation to globalization etc is going through a process of scrutiny on both the left and the right and and let me put that to you because from your vantage point what are the aspects of the post-cult war consensus whatever one calls it that are worth defending and what aspects are worth revisiting in light of new and emerging issues and challenges. Well that's I'm glad you asked that question because there's a number of things that are happening on the right and I know you said you know secular changes well actually when I was working at the Heritage Foundation you know I

7:20post came from government worked in government both in the United Kingdom government the U.S. government and I came into the Heritage Foundation and it really was being transformed when I arrived by Kim Roberts into a sort of sectarian organization and look there are sectarian organizations in Canada and the United States but this is not what the Heritage Foundation used to be it was started as a free market free trade organization by Ed Fulner and J. Van Andel of course I had the J. Van El position at Heritage and he was a former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and he was basically trying to not just get Heritage to Jettison it's free market free trade history and sort of follow whatever the latest fad was on the right but also he was very much a Catholic and tegrilous and that's very you know J. Van has adopted that sort of moniker and that this is not anything this is no slur upon mainstream Catholics because many my Catholic friends and there's Catholic thought people like John Zermak who of course is called this Catholic Sharia and he's a devout Catholic so this Catholic and tegrilous movement which is very much under the umbrella post

8:24liberalism and they basically want to rip up the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a theocracy and that's where of course I think it from what I would see is we're going into Republican Gilead territory to invoke you know a market at with the Hanman's Tale but there has been this broader movement on the right called post liberalism and these are the J. Van's people and I think post liberalism emerged from books by Patrick Deneen a former traditional conservative who's now shares platforms with vans and others and argues that the U.S.A. is the product of fringe and it's cut off from the broader stream of western civilization and basically they believe the U.S. Constitution and the America that came out of it is totally individualistic which spawned things that they don't like like gay marriage abortion transgenitism and they're all in any other results of the American Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and this is what Patrick Deneen argues in his book why liberalism failed and in his subsequent books and so I think that's where we need to start we look at the where they're coming from the idea that we have

9:27as our Constitution says in this great republic natural god given rights then enable us to run our own lives without interference from government I think that is something to celebrate I do not believe that the government should impose a religion on the citizens and this was a good innovation of the U.S. Constitution but post liberals like Patrick Deneen believe these are bad innovations so I think that's a clear indication where we are on the right with people like vans and remember Trump's preferred think tank is the America first policy institute they provide one third of the cabinet 84 of the most senior level positions and hundreds of them into lower level positions now that I would not put them in the post liberal category because that's very much Trump's think tank funded by Brooke Rollins and and they they've been you know they've been writing the policies for the administration they they're certainly not Catholic and Tagrelis by any search imagination and they don't for example see appear to be very interested in social conservative policies many people I know there for example are gay but then of course if you look at more post little

10:31organizations like what the Heritage Foundation has become intercollegiate studies institute or the Claremont institute they would be very much under the sort of post liberal umbrella and they're much very much on the vans side so the mega thing is somewhat divided between Trump and vans from my perspective I take all those points and I agree that there are some who are making maxi-list arguments against liberalism small-levelism root and branch but there are critiques of the political economy of the past 40 years or so which are narrower that that the U.S. pursued free trade too dogmatically that the efforts to expand economic and political relations with China proved to be a failure that there was too little attention paid to the need to maintain some industrial capacity not just for economic reasons but security ones I guess

11:33the question for you Andrew and I I pose this to you as someone who full cards on the table is predisposed to market liberalism are there any aspects of the critique of the past 40 years or so say of the kind of Reaganite paradigm that you think are worthy of of our attention and an adjustment versus some of the more outlandish and and as you say frankly illiberal claims that are being made by some of those critics oh and I actually you know like when it comes to tariffs and trade I feel I've really woken up in the Democrat Party of Jimmy Carter Walter Mondale in this new world I mean let's remember that JD Vance was a center for only two years who worked with Elizabeth Warren to attack business political called them about three years ago the new power couple and if you look at JD Vance's economic viewpoints they're almost identical to the Democrat Party platforms of 1980 84 and 92 now what I would also say is that I think see a lot of parallels with the 1930s

12:42for example you know young people are finding it more difficult to buy a home they're not experiencing the postwar boom that our parents and grandparents experience and I do see some harping back to the 1930s in the 1930s we had the smooth holy tariff act which of course turned the depression to the great depression we had Charles Lindbergh who is visibly antisemitic I would see a Nick Fwentis or a Hassan Haassan Piker be a modern version of that we had the America first committee which was isolationist protectionist and a populist we had a socialist like Huey lost there too long of Louisiana and people of course as they experience economic uncertainty then identify certain minority groups that they want to blame their problems on and we're seeing certainly seeing that with the rise of antisemitism and Jewish people which is very sad I discussed that yesterday on New York radio but so the point I'm making is that I don't actually think that it's something to blame the Reagan

13:43years for I feel for example that we've had a problem on both sides of the aisle we have racked up historic levels of public debt and just this week the that public debt reached 40 trillion were paying 1.4 trillion annually on the interest of that debt and that is debt that will be burdened on younger people who will have to go and pay for older people so seeing a huge generational divide of younger people paying more and more taxes to pay for older people out of for so security and I'll finish with this if you got rid of every government department in Washington except the Pentagon and the entitlement programs you'd only take off one trillion of that national debt and so I don't blame the Reagan years for that I blame people here in Washington who basically they see for example when you talk about social security or the need to tackle the debt they see a long-term problem but they they want long short-term solutions and anyone who dares talk about touching social security it's it's political suicide particularly with older voters

14:44so I actually look up on other things I'll fit I will finish with this manufacturing if you have want to build them we've got so much over regulation here in the United States that quite frankly you'll have to go through about 14 state local and federal jurisdictions to get permits that could take several years and then off that you'll invariably have to have third party litigation from people with nimbis not my backyard the environmentalists who don't want manufacturing at all because they affect allegedly on the environment and even the arborist side to others so that like I said we've made the environment here too difficult for manufacturing and we've lost over 85,000 manufacturing jobs since present Trump has become present largely due to the tariffs so again I don't agree with them when they when they focus on protectionism as a solution to our problems I look at the horrific regulations we've actually created right here in Washington that have prevented us from from having a strong manufacturing base yeah you're point about the rise of debt is well taken the US national debt has essentially

15:44doubled over the past decade or two so these are not just historic decisions these are very much live and in contemporary ones you set out a persuasive case that the prescriptions being advanced by some of these voices a more status economic agenda would likely exacerbate the problems that they've identified rather than help them and I I'm persuaded by that argument and I suspect a lot of our listeners and viewers are but it does prompt the question Andrew as someone who broadly supported the political economy of the past 30 or 40 years as as I said earlier as I do why do we seem to be losing the intellectual battle what explains the rise of these alternative arguments that seem to be funding residents in the White House in Congress and other halls of of power across the Anglo-American world well you've touched on a very good point yes the

16:47protectionist and certainly the maggot people have won the the arguments and we've been we've not on our side we've not been as good at at that for example if you look at a paper which all of your viewers can just google it's called help for the heartland it's a national bureau of economic research paper by David O'Thor it shows that all those people in the rust belt and the working clause who move their voting demarcation from democrat republican to vote for president trump in 2016 were the people who were most adversely affected by the by the trump's terrorsness first term particularly people in downstream industries but actually when I've actually done my own focus groups and talked to people in the rust belt I say then what do you well first of all can you define a tariff and most often not they can't they don't even know what a tariff is but I say well what do you think of when you see it here of a tariff the word tariff and and other studies have have reinforced this they'll say oh I think of a flag I think of patrickes and I think of taking back our jobs um and so basically you were absolutely correct that the uh mega side has definitely

17:49won the trade sorry the messaging war but I think now that the messaging war uh is is shifting I think that some of the reality has caught up with this I I recent polling show that 44% white males without university degrees now believe the tariff tariffs are damaging to them and I do not support them now that was a key demographic in 2016 for president trump and they really held with president trump even in the last general election in in in uh 2024 um they're now basically have seen prices rise the administration has had to make a tacit vision that that has affected the prices of of of products in the shops that's why we had price relief lost year on tomatoes coffee beef and other products because they had to admit that people were concerned about these rising prices because americans are paying 90% of the tariffs we're paying those um so again the tariffs are not popular and people are seeing the effects of those in their daily lives so I think that the actual message more shifting in president trump is at historic lows he's even now less popular

18:49than Richard Nixon yeah um now tariffs and protectionism are of course a major expression of these tensions or fault lines between say classical liberals uh and what sometimes gets characterized as the the so-called new right um but another difference is on the broader subject of what you might characterize as economic efficiency the traditional argument was that free markets and open trade allocate resources more efficiency more efficiently rather lower costs even if particular industries or communities lose out in the process the new right in its most honest form seems to accept that their ideas involve higher costs unless economic and supply chain efficiency in exchange for protecting uh industries jobs and enhancing uh national resilience i recall for instance in july 2025 uh then candidate for vice president jade vans talked about living with higher costs

19:55if it meant uh more manufacturing jobs in the united states is that characterization the right way to think about the trade-offs here in your mind andrew and if so what's the free market argument to the case that we have to just live with less economic efficiency in the name of protecting americans and protecting uh american industry well i don't think jade vans is is he's not an economist and i don't find him very knowledgeable of of economic theory and a lot of things uh he has real fringe economics uh in him by calling for example the us dollar not be the world's reserve currency which would be physical suicide for the us i really find him a fringe person as i said he was only in congress for about two years um uh he's an extreme economic isolationist and most of the post liberals are um they are extreme protectionists um i for example was speaking to

20:56charles bin wa who runs the trade program at pewna varo's favorite think tank coalition for across miss america he's a Canadian living in florida he said emphatically he didn't want to see any trade between can in the united states canada should just grow local and buy local anyone the us do the same um these people just don't understand trade i mean for example there are more apples produced in the state of washington little on argan or upstate new york or new english just that one state we could that we could pop not possibly consume here in the united states we must export i've been talking to uh congressman from south carolina who have massive port production in their state there's there's so much port being produced we couldn't possibly consume it here we must export these people do not understand that we also need to export our goods as well and that's a key to our economic success but if you look at for example these extreme protections and then juxtapose with president trump president trump is willing to use tariffs to bully nations like canada into bad deals and they shouldn't accept those bad deals but vans and his credit is crowd fundamentally believe

22:00in tariffs they fundamentally believe for example if you take for example our industries need cheap intermediate goods and they they've been our industries have been very successful by taking in its cheap intermediate goods from broad to use one example we would not for example produce rope here in this country with people we would just have a machine do that and have one person or two people manage the machine so i'd rather get rope from a gsp country um and they can make rope and that we could focus on building high end uh manufactured goods and let other uh less developed countries produce legacy products that we don't want to make here and americans want to work in more high tech jobs we don't have a lot of americans who want to work in in those factories for example if you look maybe several generations ago some of my friends you know one of my friends that oh my my grandmother worked in dress factory in pennsylvania but then my my my father didn't want to work there and and and now went to university and got a different job so a lot of americans don't want to work in that sort of romanticize uh mill town uh experience that they people they made out

23:06of experience but sort of romanticize about the past there's a lot of rap if i read ambassador robber lighthouses book and i'll finish with this there's a lot of romanticizing about the mill town that he grew up in that it really no longer exists it's no longer economically viable uh point well taken um but as you know all politics is local as uh as it's often said and there is well documented analysis showing that the that the base of the republican party has shifted uh from a college educated suburban median voter to an increasingly uh working class voter in the periphery who may be less instinctively supportive of market economics and open trade and limited government and more skeptical of corporations and trade uh and the ideas that uh that undergirded the past 40 years or so of american political economy in that sense Andrew how much of this what's the what's the

24:12uh direction of causation uh is the republican party voter coalition becoming increasingly working class and downscale because of the ideas that people like jade vans are advancing or is it the other way and if so if it's the latter should we anticipate that uh these ideas and policies continue to be advanced by republican politicians in a post trump era i see it differently because i see for example jade vans not being able to maintain the broad coalition that present trump has created so present trump is not doesn't have a religion doesn't have an ideology he was remember he was the donor to center hilly clinton's campaign he spent most of his life as a registered democrat he saw an opportunity to take the republican party because it was available to him he could he could he could he could take that over just the way the democratic socialist america you know can't beat the democrats as a third party so they're going to try to take it over and we're seeing that happen right now on the left so trump takes over the republican party um to quote one of

25:17a hedge fund manager who's a friend of president trump said to me trump said my voters are um socially conservative working class people who want big government to take care of them well that's not where traditional republicans are but he's also brought other people to that coalition i was at mara loga and there was a huge jamboree that president president trump melani were hosting for evangelical christians and it was very interesting i you saw people who when he came in the room they had the mood music and people start to cry reach out and try to touch him and and i was talking to them i said well so what do you think of him they're like oh he was chosen by god he's a devout christian he's a born again christian they told me um not sure i believe in that one i don't i'm sure trump wouldn't believe that but he's willing to use those people and he's he is let's face it he is an entertainer he's someone who had a reality television show star he's someone who we've seen in our telephone screens and home alone he had what he was numbing for an emi as i've said he had to what two television programs he's an entertainer and he's someone that people he's going beyond politics he's not a politician by background so he's an entertainer that's basically

26:20come into the political world and create this broad coalition as soon as the evangelicals were leaving marlaka what i noticed were a whole group of log cabin republicans were were arriving now they have absolutely nothing in common with the evangelicals but again the mood music they're crying they're reaching out they're they're here worshipping him there's this cult of personal worship going on which populism lends itself to that and see you got these disparate groups there all over this umbrella and i just don't think this young man like jade vats who's particularly unlikeable person not very media friendly we've shown it's clearly we've seen through the uh iran war negotiations he's punching above his belt i just he could potentially get the republican nomination but i can't seeing him with a general election here's the the trump card if the democrats are going to put up bad candidates they should be doing so well right now but as we've seen with putting up gram platinum and main there's over six billion in trade between candidate and main alone i was dining with season uh call in several months ago before gram platinum was scandals came out and

27:23she said i she thought just because of the trade uh and and and the trade war that this was going to have to be hugely damaging to her and she was think this might be her last term and then the democrats come with these ridiculous camp candidates you know i know one of the females that was assaulted by gram platinum the nazi talked to the all the bizarre stuff he's put out on on social media uh like i said the democrats have basically managed to shoot themselves in the foot when this midterm election should be theirs to win and it really depends if they want to put up garbage candidates against these sort of feeble candidates on the republican side yes there's no doubt that the democrats seem determined to snatch uh defeat uh from the jaws of victory um but let's come back to your your broader work at advancing american freedom because so far we've talked about the ideas and impulses that animated the american right in general and the republican party in particular in the pre-Trump era we've talked a bit about the ideas and arguments that uh seem to be animating

28:26it today uh you've uh set out your critique of uh the the present form of of american politics being played out by uh some people in and around the trump administration um and you are home at advancing american freedom uh a organization that seems determined to uh to advance the case for a different and better uh type of political economy uh in a post trump era why don't you talk a bit about your mission about your work uh and how you're feeling about your efforts today I'm feeling very very positive because uh there's also been a lot of I think misinformation out there in the press and it really came through to me when I was recently interviewed by the New York Times and we were talking about for example project 2025 which was a lot there was a lot of me exposure on that and they and and I said to them look I said you know that was originally geared

29:28towards ronda santis it was launched at the heritage foundations 50th anniversary party um the bi kevin robert's with ronda santis he was supporting descendants at the time um they're both catholics and that was really where his his little his lie uh and that's fine um and then of course santa s didn't win the um uh the primary in trump one all of a sudden kevin robert's deleted his anti trump uh post on x about in january six and trump's adultery and then of course suzy wiles and chrysalis of yours saying look we had nothing to do with this book um we're working with afpi and regrawens uh and she was not a part of the afpi i was never a part of this uh never one of you a part of that umbrella and and but uh uh uh kevin robert's and paul dan's just couldn't shut up and they kept going on pressing things like this is the second revolution it'd be bloodless of the democrats let it be and those are things that the post liberals are saying now about a little stuff uh why don't you re-found this country and suzy wiles and chrysalis to be to recall in the heritage foundation saying shut up we don't have anything to do with you trump's never read that nine out of plus page book stop and really what was happening was you were seeing the heritage foundation um

30:34trying to sort of you know be a part of the winning team but realized they'd actually back the wrong candidate and now when i was talking about that with the new york times i was saying oh that's not really the prevailing narrative the narrative was that it was the heritage foundation that sort of created uh maga was behind maga and was the shadow government and i said no no it's actually afpi america first paul since you'd unlike heritage they don't put great big banners down the side the building they're very very discreet it's difficult to get invites to their events and they as i've said provided one third of the cabinet eighty four of the most senior level positions and hundreds to mention lower level positions and they're writing the policies and people who are leaving the administration are i've known several of them have now a lot of them have gone back into afpi so then what we read about in the press versus what's happening in reality is not always the same thing and that's something i learned by being right there having a front row working in those organizations a couple more questions uh you've been so generous with your time as advancing american freedom carries out this work to rebuild a consensus in favor of personal freedom and individual liberty um

31:39how do you how do you do that uh what must you acknowledge what must you change what arguments do you have should you be should be non-negotiable like what does a kind of post trump conservative political economy synthesis look like well to be clear um and i think this is important dimension because this was a huge uh catalyst um lost july a year over year ago uh your go last month ed fuller died he was the founder of heritage foundation and he also sat on the board of advancing the america freedom where i work now now he was obviously deeply upset by where kavan robberts had taken the organization uh and you know but like i said he was one person the board but he was a lost reflect or we're we're free uh restraining influence on the heritage foundation board of trustees and as soon as he died in july um we were all in mourning but people at the heritage foundation saw that as an opportunity i'm talking about the post liberals and some of their

32:40worst elements came out at that point and this led to 75 people leaving since last october and over 293 people have left since 2021 since pre so kavan robberts became president heritage foundation so massive turnover i did not leave the heritage foundation and come to af because of any policy disagreement i was still fighting the case for free trade and free markets because i'd say look we've been for that since our founding it was difficult for us to disagree with me and also these people were just trying who were trying to give me to shift didn't really understand economics and um and basically we're just trying to latch on to the latest fat and and try to get close to power for personal advancement um so i but i left because i'm not willing to entertain any sort of argument about what for example whether or not the holocaust happened or not and i was having colleagues say that to me i gave a presentation on free markets and free trade to a group of young people at the heritage foundation and remember most of the experienced in senior

33:40stuff of left and were left with people most people were there under the age of 30 and so then said to me oh that was really interesting that you um that was very interesting presentation about free markets free trade we had no idea that you were Jewish to which i responded i'm not Jewish but i i like Jewish people well why would you say that oh because you're for free markets and free trade there all the globalists and the globalists are the Jews and i think as your listials will know that's a dog whistle for Jews the term globalists and that's actually one of the most overused terms in kevin robert's very limited lexicon um and so that wasn't helped by the fact that he always blames the globalists for all of america's problems so this sort of break up at the heritage foundation really exposed a deeper problem on the right which we've also seen on the left of the anti-sentimentism as far words on the left but it's it's there on the fringes of the right tuna taken over the heritage foundation and then of course there was the misogyny scandals which are beyond the pale the hiring of scott yenne who is published at clairemont that meant to be paid

34:41more than women uh that um women shouldn't have engineering degrees etc all the sort of sexism and will start was there there was a really disturbing thing which i think we need to explore i was not on ex before i came to the heritage foundation i was an on instagram or any of these these sorts of uh social media outlets and i remember one of my colleagues trying to argue that the holocaust didn't happen i said is this something you gleaned off facebook and they said no no it's it's here in my they said facebook's for old people in their 30s were on instagram and tiktok and we're following you know kandis oeans and nick fentis and tucker carlsson and and look it's right here on my phone and i'd say well look perhaps you should get your history from from uh books and libraries and and and not social media so there was a lot of that going on and when i raised those concerns with management they didn't seem to be terribly concerned and now that people like me have left uh the experts and people you know who are qualified they've been replaced with sort of you know grifters who are influencers and people who want to

35:44follow that sort of garbage and social media and get it reinforced through algorithms and i think that's a problem we have on both the left and the right with these sort of extreme things that being promoted and quite frankly i don't even think that nick fentis and kandis oeans and tucker rlsson or even has on piker on the other side and others actually believe the stop they're saying i think they're just doing it for clickbait and it's being reinforced by algorithms and we've got a lot of jaded people coming out of that uh penultimate question uh we've talked a lot of advice president vance as a proxy uh for the post libel ideas as you put it uh he's clearly somebody with uh long term political ambitions are there political actors andrew who you think are particularly capable of advancing the ideas and arguments that you and your colleagues that advancing american freedom uh tend to associate with there are loads of people that are very very good they've called out all of the problems that i have actually uh talked about they've you know

36:44rick scott just called out antisemitism i think over the weekend uh ted kruz has been very very good uh there's lots of good people on the right um i think that jade vance be more concerned about people who want to take his crown because i think he's quite vulnerable right now because uh the ron war negotiations have shown him to be real innocent abroad and someone who's punching up his belt and i think the person who might vie for his crown on the sort of you know post libel right would be someone like josh holly uh and and and that's someone who i think that he needs to worry about um because he is a he went to the nat con conference he was very i was there when he gave his speeches he's very much says he's a christian nationalist and very much of that ill not not a Catholic antagonist but definitely a christian nationalist and someone who basically wants to control how much interest banks can lend on loans he's pro union he wants big government along as christians and conservatives run it um and that's exactly where misery is right now used to be a blue dog state but when the democrat party went socially liberal uh they want their sort of left democratic economy

37:45with jesus on top they want social conservatives so that's kind of where that's where he needs to be and that's i think that's the person jade vance needs to look over his shoulder at uh fassing final question um and let me teat up this way we've spent a lot of the conversation talking about really interesting and nuanced fault lines on the american right um precisely because you have this unique institutional and on the ground experience uh that i think as given our listeners and viewers a window into uh where the debate is headed uh in the coming years and how that debate resolves itself will obviously have big implications for canada which is where i i want to close uh if you're a Canadian policymaker business leader or or civic leader and you're observing some of these trends what what should we anticipate uh where do you think things are headed how can canada in effect uh protect itself from the political fallout of these types of debates just as we were exposed in

38:51in recent years well i was harry sin having lunch with the president commerce bank she asked me where is this all going to land and i'm afraid you know sometimes you just can't rationalize crazy what it does show us that canada cannot be so dependent upon the united states as your former boss steven harpers said this year canada needs to control its own seize uh land and sky you need to diversify your training partners um i i've been talking to uh trade negotiators from other countries and e.u and elsewhere saying look we're just trying to get the lowest uh terra fright possible from the beast president trump and then the longer term we've got to actually find more reliable trading partners and look whilst the united states is declaring a trade war against the entire world china saying we're open for business i think what this administration is doing is very destructive it's it's helping china and china certainly won the the trade war since liberation day and what's the us left with bashing canada bashing mexico bashing our european allies because they have less lever jopers uh then china say in terms of critical uh minerals etc um it's it's very sad it'll take

39:56us decades to repair the relations that this administration is damaged with our friends and allies candid and provocative andrew hail senior fellow advancing american freedom thank you so much for joining us at hub dialogues it's been a pleasure thank you so much this episode was brought to you in partnership with the new north america initiative at the university of calgary's school of public policy be sure to check out other installments in the series you can do that right now on our website triple w dot the hub dot ca support comes from wise the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world your life

40:58is global your money should be too some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers don't be fooled extra costs often hide and bloated exchange rates choose wise you can send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on google that's how millions save billions on hidden fees be smart get wise visit wise dot com season c supply