Has this been a problem, Mike, the lack of interest or concern in the national debt, which seemed to be a big concern when it was smaller?

Strain: Yeah, I think it’s been a problem. I mean, here, I guess I would let the president off the hook a little bit. I think that there’s bipartisan concern about the debt and deficit, but it’s just never the number one concern that either party has. Of course, it’s true that President Trump significantly increased the structural budget deficit, but he did that hand in glove with the House Speaker, Paul Ryan, who is a very establishment, traditional Republican. And there was not a whole lot of concern about that from the Republican Party at the time. The deficit went up significantly under President George W. Bush, who established an additional entitlement program without a funding mechanism. And of course, the deficit went up under President Obama as well. So this is a bipartisan issue.

I think where populism shows up in President Trump’s approach to the debt and deficit, which is, I think, an aberration among Republican presidents, is the president’s enthusiasm for not cutting projected future spending on Social Security and Medicare. The Romney-Ryan campaign back in 2012 had that on their campaign website as a goal. And of course, Speaker Ryan made his reputation in large part on restraining entitlement spending. And President Trump not only just ignored that and put it in the background, but actually was quite vocal that he would not reduce spending on Medicare or Social Security during the 2016 campaign. And then when he was actually in office in 2017, he continued to make it very clear that he just wasn’t interested in cutting future spending on those programs.

Maybe that’s populism, maybe that’s smart politics, maybe that’s just honesty. And I think that’s an open question. But I wouldn’t give President Trump a particularly harsh grade when grading on a curve on this, and I don’t view this as a major manifestation of his populism.

If President Trump is defeated, how will populism on the right change? Let’s start with Casey.

Mulligan: That’s like asking me, “We got the BlackBerry, what’s coming next?”I don’t know. It would be something better. But how will it be better? I mean, I would be a billionaire if I knew exactly how to improve on it.

But I think populism will remain. Politicians will look at Trump closely and try to figure out what he did well and what can be improved. It goes back to the fact that elites are making mistakes, and they’re not acknowledging those mistakes. And the people don’t have to tolerate that.

Most of Michael’s book I agree with. The progress has been great for wide swaths of the population. But that doesn’t mean that people have to tolerate these mistakes from the people they elect. They elected people to do a job, and if they’re not doing it well, they have a right to be angry. And they are angry.

My book is full of examples where they didn’t do a good job. The individual mandate was a terrible job. The opioid policies have been a terrible job and continue to be a terrible job. And people are going to be upset with that, and the next entrepreneur will figure out how to take on the elite and still try to do the job as president. It’s not easy, because the elite fight back. I mean, the elite aren’t stupid people. They’re not powerless people. So populism is not an easy product to invent. But I’m confident that somebody will invent a new and improved one.

Mike, how do you think populism on the right evolves? For instance, I’m a little confused about what Republicans think about trade. On one hand, they’re talking about decoupling the two economies, but the phase one trade deal, actually, in many ways, more firmly integrated the two economies and made China a better place to invest with more agricultural goods being shipped. So particularly on trade — but also any other issue you want to address — how does that populism on the right evolve in a post Trump era?

Strain: The first thing I would say is I think it does evolve, but I think it evolves a lot less than is commonly believed. I mean, I think the United States was on the cusp of extinguishing this populist flame when the pandemic hit. And I would note that the Democratic Party nominated Vice President Biden when it could have nominated Senator Sanders or Senator Warren, both of whom are populists. My guess is that if the Democratic primaries were held one year earlier, when the economy was still weaker, and when the gains from the recovery hadn’t reached everyone in the nation as strongly yet, that one of the populist candidates would have had perhaps more success.

There’s a pattern, and you see it over the last century, or even longer. You see this pattern across democracies: When you have a big recession that originated in the financial sector and results in widespread hardship, you get a surge in populism. And you can measure that by seats in the country’s legislature and parliamentary systems. We saw this in Britain with Boris Johnson, for example. Then, as the recovery continues from that recession, populism recedes. And populism was receding in the United States. But now, of course, we have the pandemic, and the economy is in terrible shape again.

So my first answer to your question is, I think as we recover from this recession, populism may surge again because we’re in terrible shape. However, when we get back to a healthy economy, its influence will diminish. But I do think there will be some lasting elements of this. Some of those elements are good. I think — and I hope — that the Republican Party, because of President Trump, will be more focused on providing economic opportunity to lower-income households and workers than it previously has been. That would be a good lesson learned. I hope it’s not just the white working class. I hope it’s the entire bottom 20 percent or bottom third of the income distribution. But I think that would be a positive, lasting legacy of the president’s populism.

I think a hawkishness toward China is going to be something that justifiably should continue to be a part of the political right. Hopefully, it’s executed better than the Trump administration has done. But I expect that will last. And then, unfortunately, I think that hostility toward immigrants and immigration is going to have some staying power on the political right. And I think that will be to the detriment of the United States.

Mulligan: Michael, is there something missing from your definition and mine? Because our definitions are about the elite versus the people, but then you were calling Sanders and Warren populists, but their whole policy agenda is to give more power to the elite over the people. So what gives?

Strain: Yeah, they don’t see it that way. But I understand your analysis of that.

Casey, when I hear a lot of these new Trumpian-populist policy people on the right — when they talk about the big elite policy mistakes — the two mistakes that come up, over and over again, are 1) giving China a most-favored-nation trading status and letting them be part of the global economy in 2000, and 2) the 1965 Immigration Act, which increased immigration to the United States from areas where we weren’t getting a lot of immigrants. Do you view those as failures of elites, letting more immigrants into this country and helping China become a more integrated part of the global economy?

Mulligan: Well, there were elements of failure. I mean, where was the fentanyl coming from? There was a report the Clinton administration did around NAFTA about what that did to the price of heroin, which is classified — you and I can’t see it. They buried those facts. So there were elements of real cost to some of these trade arrangements that weren’t acknowledged. That doesn’t mean there weren’t benefits. Maybe the benefits are bigger.

Do you think it’s still a net benefit to have China being a greater part of the global economy?

Mulligan: It’s hard for me to analyze. Well, Japan would be easy for me to say, yeah, because Japan’s a democracy, and it doesn’t have a military. There is a whole national security part of that which is not my expertise, so I really can’t weigh in, but it has to be weighed in.

On immigration, I’m coming from a university, so you shouldn’t listen to what I’m going to say. But the university sector has been given a lot of special favors around immigration. And you could understand why the people would say, “Academia hates us, and they hate this president. Why are we giving you these special favors?” And so that’s a problem.