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How did Donald Trump win America?
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There are many explanations for this, all of which have some amount of truth to them
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but cannot account for the entire truth on their own.
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One explanation is that America has many bigots and misogynists who were empowered by social
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media and exhilarated to find a candidate who validated their deepest instincts.
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Another explanation is that a vote for Trump was really a negative vote against the other
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side, against the ghastly Hillary Clinton and all those smug elite liberals.
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A third explanation, one that I wrote a column about, which is linked on this podcast page,
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is that Trump happened across a simple formula.
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Explain the complex problems of the people of America with simplistic solutions that
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sound intuitive and appeal to their instincts.
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In other words, he told simple, attractive stories.
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That Donald Trump is a bullshitter is true, but what you should keep in mind is that he
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did not win in spite of his bullshit, but because of it.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Borma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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In today's episode, I want to tackle one of the simple stories that Donald Trump told
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Middle America had allegedly stagnated for decades and there was great worry about jobs.
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Now the reasons for these are complex as are the solutions, but Trump chose to ignore what
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the truth might be and tell a simple story with two parts to it.
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Part one, your jobs are going because immigrants are coming and taking them.
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Part two, your jobs are being shipped overseas.
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With these two stories, he made immigration and outsourcing the villains and these stories
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appeal to his audiences because hey, it's a natural human tendency to find someone else
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In today's episode, I want to talk about these two villains of his, immigration and outsourcing.
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My guest for this episode is a very dear friend of mine, Gaurav Sabnis.
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Gaurav and I have been friends since the early 2000s when we were both early bloggers.
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I wrote a blog called India Uncut and Gaurav wrote a blog called Vantage Point.
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He was based in Mumbai then, but he now lives in New York where he teaches marketing at
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the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.
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I've always found Gaurav incredibly insightful on economics and politics.
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In fact, he out geeks me on both those subjects and I'm delighted that he's finally a guest
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Gaurav, welcome to the Scene in the Unseen.
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Great to be on the show finally.
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Gaurav, before we get to talking about the specifics of immigration and outsourcing,
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I want to start off by asking you, was there really a jobs crisis in America?
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And it's one of these things that you can view from one side or the other side.
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So if you look at it in terms of unemployment rate, so right after the 2008 crash, the unemployment
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rate did go up, but it never really crossed into like the Great Depression days or it
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never crossed beyond, I think something like 10 or 11% and by the time Trump became a candidate,
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it was down to about 5%, so it was down to historic lows.
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So there wasn't really a job crisis.
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The perception about job crisis is more about underemployment than unemployment.
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So people think that they should have a better job or people think that they should be getting
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But just objectively speaking, the rhetoric didn't gel with the reality in my opinion.
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So essentially it's not that there weren't jobs to go around, but that the jobs that
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were there, people weren't happy with their salaries or the scope or whatever.
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And especially you hear about small town America where people felt that, you know, salaries
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hadn't gone up relatively speaking for generations and they didn't necessarily have better lives
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And I remember David Remnick on his New Yorker podcast asked Bruce Springsteen about this.
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He asked Springsteen that, hey, all the small towns in America that you wrote all your so
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great songs about voted for Trump.
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So what happened there?
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And his answer was that, no, I mean, the problems were real and no one was paying attention
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And Trump might have had the wrong answers, but he was the only guy who actually spoke
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And I think we were talking about this earlier about how a lot of this is a function of the
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1950s, which were an aberration in American history because the rest of the world had
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been devastated by World War Two.
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America was the only one that had the resources and was untouched.
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So they just dominated all kinds of industries, including manufacturing.
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So back then in the 50s, you could just finish high school, finish class 12 and then get
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a job which would give you a very comfortable upper middle class, upper middle class kind
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But what happened was in the late 60s and 70s, as the rest of the world started catching
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up, it just made more economic sense to manufacture stuff overseas.
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So these jobs started disappearing.
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And there's the book by JD Vance called The Hillbilly Elegy, which also goes into this
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that it's it was more a function of that unusual period of prosperity in the 50s.
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So it's because of that unusual period in the 50s that people are now assuming there's
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a decline in small town America and that's why they want to make America great again.
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But it doesn't gel with the reality of economics and just how you get the most return on investment
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And America having won the Cold War for capitalism is now seeing how capitalism works and a lot
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of people are not liking it.
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So this disaffection, what is it a consequence of really?
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I mean, I think we both agree and you're going to describe in detail why Trump's simplistic
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answers of immigration and outsourcing appear to have some sense to them and aren't exactly
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And was this sort of decline of their dominance?
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I mean, you spoke about the 50s, but the generation that voted for Trump today probably wasn't
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alive then or doesn't remember the 50s and the nostalgia for a period when America was
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great when they talk about make America great again, was not the 50s.
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But I'd imagine the 70s or 80s.
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And what has changed since then is there's been a lot of globalization and there's been
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a lot of, you know, America has become more and more a country of immigrants and these
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But given that there is some decline, if it is a decline that has led to underemployment
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and not unemployment per se, what would you say are the causes of that decline?
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Yeah, I think part of the reason is that the rest of the world is catching up.
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So with India and China, you have like almost three billion people with a growing middle
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class, growing infrastructure.
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Similarly, you had Japan in the 70s, 80s, if you remember the original bugbear was Japan
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In fact, Trump in the 80s when he was flirting with running for president was an extremely
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anti-Japan guy, even though now he pals around with Shinzo Abe.
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So I think part of it was inevitable.
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I think it's just the natural progression of the global economy and how capital or resources
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get most efficiently allocated.
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I think part of it was that.
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So let's go on to these two stories one by one.
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And the first story is immigration, where the story is, hey, Mexicans are coming over
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the border and taking away your jobs and we really have to stop them and we really need
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to send them back as many as we can and then your jobs will be fine, which was of course
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an appealing narrative.
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What's your take on this?
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So I like to say that anti-immigrant sentiment or the desire to pull up the ladder after
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immigrating here is as American as apple pie and baseball.
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In fact, it's even older.
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So for example, in the early days of the American Republic, Benjamin Franklin and others wanted
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to control immigration from Germany.
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They said that Germans are uneducated, uncouth people and they will destroy our country,
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After that, it was the Catholics, the Irish, the Italians, the East Europeans.
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So in the mid 1800s, there was actually a party called the Know Nothing Party whose
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entire platform was exactly what Trump and Bannon and all these guys are talking about
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today, except today they're talking about Muslims and Asians and Mexicans.
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And at that time it was about the Irish and the Italians and Catholics, etc.
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So part of it, I think Bill Bryson wrote in one of his books that there has been this
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continuous feeling that immigration until my generation and my parent generation was
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amazing for America and immigration after my generation is bad and it's just destroying
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So I think part of it was just a revival of that old trope.
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What I find disheartening is that that trope had gone away for about three or four decades.
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So you remember Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to a bunch of undocumented immigrants in the
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80s, working with Democrats and Republicans together.
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John McCain when he ran for president was very honest about these jobs that we just
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He said, I'll tell you very honestly, these jobs are never coming back.
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We just need to figure out what else to do, how to still keep our economy growing.
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And the thing is we were like, we as in America was not ready for an adult telling us the
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simple truth that those jobs aren't coming back.
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So it's easy to then blame it on immigrants and NAFTA and trade deals and so on.
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So you always want to find a scapegoat when you don't want to accept the truth.
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And this is almost a scapegoat that appeals to our instincts in the sense that I think
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this distrust of the other is something that is in a sense hardwired into us, which is
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why this narrative keeps popping up through the generations.
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So at some periods of time, like the last few decades, like you pointed out, it might
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be subdued in the political discourse, but it's always waiting to break out.
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And I mean, the easiest thing to when things are not going well for you is always to blame
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somebody else and if they are not your own people, quote unquote, then that kind of becomes
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So would you say at some level, the anti-immigration rhetoric at its heart was driven more by this
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distrust of the other rather than pure economic reasons, which were only a rationale for it?
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And like you said, it's very basic human nature, this distrust of the other, you see it in
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In Bombay, you have Shiv Sena that over the years has picked different others to bash
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and then build their brand and they keep going from stem to stem.
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So I think a lot of it was that it's okay if immigrants come from Norway, for example.
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That's what Trump said, right?
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If somebody's ever been to Norway, I don't know why you would want to come to the US
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But yeah, he's like, it's okay if we get somebody from Norway or Finland or Europe, but he doesn't
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want people from what he calls the quote unquote, shithole countries, which ignores the very
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basic fact of immigration that any immigration is always going to be from a poorer place
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There is no reason why it should go in the opposite direction.
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Somebody from UP comes to Mumbai because UP is not doing as well and Mumbai is doing a
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So that's just how immigration works.
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And when you start fearing the other, you forget these basic facts about this is how
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things have been happening for years.
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And one of the points always made against immigration, what seems on the surface, what
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is sort of the scene effect and not the unseen effect is that, hey, immigrants come away
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and take jobs and therefore locals don't have jobs.
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What's the unseen part of this?
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So the unseen side of it is sort of the opposite of what they are saying when these anti-immigrant
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people say that they are taking away our jobs.
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The unseen side is immigrants usually do jobs that nobody else wants to do.
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So there is the immigration crisis in America today, in my opinion, is the opposite of what
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Trump and these guys are saying, because I think there is a labor shortfall.
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And people who work in the high tech industry as well as the lower end jobs like collecting
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fruit and cleaning crabs, et cetera, there's a huge shortfall there.
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So that's why the industry is worried about how the anti-immigration rhetoric is going
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So the unseen side is that immigrants do jobs that nobody else wants to do and they keep
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the engine of the economy running.
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If you stop them from coming, then you will push yourself into a different kind of recession
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without realizing why that happened.
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And, you know, just to use a Bombay analogy, since we've both lived here for a while and
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we first met here, in fact, is that if you think, you know, among a certain class of
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people is fashionable to talk against immigration or talk against slums, for that matter.
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That's where immigrants first come when they enter the city.
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That's their entry point.
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And but the truth is most of the middle class who might have buys at home or watchmen for
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their building or drivers or whatever, where do you think they come from?
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Because the local supply cannot fulfill that demand.
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That is why there are people coming from poorer places like UP, as you pointed out, or Bihar
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And because it's a positive sum game, that's a damn good thing because everybody benefits
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and the extra value that their employers get are also plowed back into the economy.
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I mean, if you did not have these immigrants coming in and doing these jobs, you would
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essentially have to be paying more for the same stuff that you're paying for now.
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So on the one hand, you want immigration to stop.
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But on the other hand, you still want to pay, let's say, one dollar for an avocado in the
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U.S., which if the guest workers or immigrants don't pick those avocados or transport them,
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then you'll have to pay five dollars for an avocado instead of one dollar.
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So give me a sense of how the immigration debate is sort of playing out in the U.S.
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Yeah, so like I said, until Trump came along, immigration was one of those rare issues on
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which there was, broadly speaking, bipartisan consensus, as in the moderate Republicans
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Both saw immigration overall as a good thing, and the only disagreement was about what to
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do with what they call illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants.
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So what exactly to do about them?
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So for example, in the final days of the George W. Bush administration, there was this bipartisan
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effort by Ted Kennedy and John McCain to come to push through immigration reform so that
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these people who are undocumented can be taken care of and the number of high tech visas
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And it seemed like everything was going fine until Trump came and just upended the whole
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So in the last couple of years, I've seen much more anti-immigrant rhetoric.
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In fact, just yesterday a video went viral of this lawyer in Midtown Manhattan ranting
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at women for speaking in Spanish saying that my taxes are paying for your welfare, which
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by the way is factually incorrect, but it's in that place where it's that age old anti-immigration
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Nobody's really talking about facts or nobody's talking about the real world consequences.
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For example, I sent you a link about this story from Maryland where a huge part of the
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economy depends on seafood like crabs and lobsters, oysters, etc.
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And the labor force that cleans these crabs and makes them ready for consumption are all
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guest workers from Mexico.
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So for about two decades, they come during the season, they work on the docks cleaning
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seafood and then they go back very legally.
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The Trump administration came and just changed that policy so that now the crab industry
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in Maryland is suffering because there isn't enough immigrant labor.
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So crab prices this summer will be through the roof.
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And what I found ironic in that story was one of the guys who's suffering was like,
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oh, I'm still a Trump supporter.
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I just hope he does something about my situation.
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I think otherwise he's right on immigration.
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He just needs to take care of my crab business, but I still support it.
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It's kind of a not in my backyard kind of mentality right now when it comes to the anti-immigration
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Until it does come to your backyard.
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I mean, that's a great story and it shows exactly the unseen effects of getting immigrants
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You've got the immigrants out of there.
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This means there'll be fewer crabs, therefore crabs will be more expensive.
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Fewer people will get those crabs and the value that is not saved would have gone into
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something else and you won't see that non-spending not happening because hey, that's the unseen.
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And you know, what was earlier a positive sum game where everybody benefited has suddenly
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changed and become something else.
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And the essential truth about civilization that most people don't note is that immigrants
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All great cities have been built by immigrants in one fashion or the other.
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Later you say, oh, they're not immigrants.
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But at the start, everyone's an immigrant, great cities, great countries are all built
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And if you look at the data, the funny thing is that the best local economies in the US,
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the states and towns that are doing the best economically speaking, have the lowest unemployment,
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have the lowest crime, are all cities and states that have the maximum number of immigrants.
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And the poorest socioeconomic indicators are all in states where there are hardly any immigrants.
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It's all primarily Caucasian population.
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So that's the irony that if you look at the facts, the facts say that if you let in immigrants,
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it will create more jobs, it will create more wealth, it will make everyone happy.
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But somehow that sentiment just keeps coming back of blaming everything on them.
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And now that Trump has actually been in charge for a decent amount of time, is that sense
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changing or are people wedded to that narrative now, those who were when they elected him?
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Yeah, I think those who were wedded to that narrative are still wedded to it.
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Those who are opposed to it are even more opposed, like those who were pro-immigration
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people like me are even more convinced that these policies are not great.
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And one thing about Trump is that he's doing exactly what he said.
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So a lot of people thought, oh, this guy doesn't know anything, he's a novice, he's just a
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showman, he'll go to the White House and then just chill, he won't do anything.
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But maybe because of its special interest groups and people who have influence over
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him, he's actually carrying through on all the things he said, like the ban against immigration
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from some Muslim countries, shutting down intake of refugees, these, he actually put
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forth a plan in which he wanted to cut down legal immigration by about half.
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So we're not even talking about the illegal hordes supposedly pouring over the border,
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but legal immigrants like qualified engineers and doctors and all that, they want to cut
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So something that has kept the American economy going, even after the decline of manufacturing,
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they want to shut that down.
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I think it's early enough that its broader impact has not been felt.
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I think that's why people are still on board with him.
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But I think as it starts having an impact on the economy, hopefully people will learn.
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And as with things with the economy, sometimes it's hard to even prove causation, for example.
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There might be various things going wrong in any case and people will say, hey, this
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wasn't because of Trump's policies.
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But I'm intrigued by something you said a little earlier and I want to follow up on
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that, where you said that people assume that Trump would not carry out these kinds of policies,
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but maybe because there are interest groups and whatever, he has more or less gone down
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What did you mean by the interest groups?
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Because I thought his anti-immigration rhetoric fits in with the rhetoric of a demagogue who's
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telling a simple story and appealing to people's worst instincts.
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But what are the interest groups that would want immigration to not happen?
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So when I say interest groups, I'm not talking about like lobbying or businesses, saying
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there is this son of soil, nativist movement that has managed to corner the primaries markets.
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If you want to win the nomination of the Republican Party, you essentially need to only convince,
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let's say about 10% of the electorate, which is very passionate to come out and vote for
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Because most people don't vote in primaries.
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Most people don't vote in general.
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So that interest group, which is focused on this particular policy of being against immigration,
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being against foreign trade, pushing through this idea of white ethno-nationalistic state.
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So all these things, those are the interest groups I'm talking about.
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So not the lobbying or business interest groups.
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Right, I got it, and that's a little scary because then it means that these radical fringes
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have a disproportionate influence on the party because they may be small in number, but one
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because they are much louder, they've got Trump's attention and they seem to be more
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And secondly, because they influence the primaries in the way that you mentioned, that they just
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have to get the passionate people and people on the fringes are always more passionate
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to come out and vote and therefore they're reshaping the whole Republican Party despite
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being just a fraction of the party and that changes the entire political landscape.
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And that's what has been happening for the last couple of years.
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You know that election in, was it Alabama, where there was this guy who was accused of
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And first the party said, okay, we are not going to support him.
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Trump also said that no, he should step down and let somebody else run instead.
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But once these again, what I call interest groups of the alt-right or whatever you would
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like to call it, they still kept hammering that no, he's our guy.
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And then the Republican Party came back and rallied around him.
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He still lost fortunately, but that was very telling that they first ran away from him
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and then they ran back towards him despite all these horrible things that he said and
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So, Gaurav, before we move on, let me just go back to one of the objections which various
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people raise against immigration and which you alluded to, and I think Milton Friedman
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also raised it, though I disagree with it, which is a welfare argument where they say
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that, look, a free immigration and open borders are all okay in a country which is a completely
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free society and with free markets and all that.
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But if you are a welfare state, which the US is to some extent, then you have tax dollars
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going in to support immigrants who are there illegally.
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What would you say about this?
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Yeah, and it's a sentiment or idea that I also agree with.
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So I would not like it if my tax dollars were going to fund some immigrants' welfare.
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The only problem with that, at least in the US context, is the US welfare state is much
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more carefully crafted than, let's say, Western European welfare states.
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So according to the law, you cannot get welfare if you are an immigrant.
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Forget being an illegal immigrant, even if you are a legal immigrant.
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So for example, my wife's parents came here about 30 years ago and for the first 10 years
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or so by law, they did not really qualify for Medicare or Social Security.
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In fact, anybody who's working even today in the US as an immigrant on, let's say, H1B
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is paying for Social Security taxes, but they won't get the benefits from them because
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the laws and regulations and control mechanisms in place stop that from happening.
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And most people don't realize that.
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Most people just buy into the simplistic narrative that immigrants come and get to welfare.
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And then the second part of it is they do pay taxes.
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I think we've talked about this in the past on other forums that immigrants, even illegal
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immigrants, are paying taxes, even if they're not paying income taxes, they're paying sales
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So if they get some basic services, like, for example, public schooling, it's not exactly
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welfare that they are getting, they're just getting the services that they are indirectly
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And on the whole, people are putting in much more than they get, which I think is inevitable
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in anyone's relationship with the state.
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I mean, people who make this argument, I think make the same fallacy as those people who
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say that overpopulation is a bad thing, where they look at people as a burden and not as
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And I would just cite Julian Simon here and say that people are, quote, the ultimate resource,
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unquote, and that every individual always puts in more than he takes out.
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And this is especially in relation with the state, where illegal immigrants are paying
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all kinds of taxes because they are consuming all kinds of things and there are sales taxes
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And like you said, and so I don't think that, you know, that it's a case that this argument
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doesn't apply to the U.S. because of the way the system is structured.
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I think this argument doesn't apply anywhere.
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Human beings are a resource.
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If there are more people and greater economic networks, everybody benefits.
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Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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So at a broader level, that point is very true.
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But I was just saying that additionally in the U.S., there are rules that specifically
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stop you from getting welfare if you're an immigrant.
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American politics is incredibly fascinating.
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And I'll do a separate show with you at some point.
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Let's move on sort of to the second part of Trump's story about jobs, which is protectionism.
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I mean, him being a protectionist, but which is outsourcing, whereas the narrative he tried
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to sell was that, hey, you guys are losing your jobs that aren't enough good jobs in
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America because they're being outsourced.
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And the fact of the matter is that some of the decline in these jobs is because of globalization,
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which we all know is a really good thing.
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It's again a positive sum game.
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But the nativist arguments would be that, no, it's not because we are losing these jobs.
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And what do I care about people in China or India or Philippines or wherever?
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What's your take on that?
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And this is again something that has been around since maybe at least the 70s or 80s
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when the Japanese economy started improving.
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So America used to dominate the auto industry, for example, the biggest market for cars and
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also the biggest producers.
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And then Japan rebuilt after World War Two and then Toyota and Honda started doing well.
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Then Korea and then you have China and India also doing well.
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So as a result, you have some jobs, which once you could take for granted in the U.S.,
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being done by people overseas because it just make it simple dollars and cents.
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It makes sense that you want to lower your costs.
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And net net that benefits everyone.
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Like if you are able to manufacture a product for cheaper somewhere else, then that creates
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extra capital that can then create other industries or that can create other businesses.
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So that's like economics 101.
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But again, it's protectionism is similar to the anti-immigrant sentiment tied to this
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hate of the other or the foreign.
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And that's why those two have gone hand in hand in the last couple of years.
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And the scene effect from the point of view of say a worker in small town America is that,
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you know, these jobs are being shipped overseas because they're cheaper for the evil capitalist
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entity that is shipping them overseas.
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But the unseen effect always is that they bring greater value to the consumers who are
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The companies shipping them abroad are saving money and perhaps not shutting down because
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they were able to save that money.
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That value is brought back into the economy and consumers get cheaper goods because of
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So if you buy a good today for $10, which would otherwise be $12 if it was for, you
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know, done by local jobs, you might not buy it at all.
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Or if you do, you're saving that $2 and the $2 in value, which is created by the saving
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goes back into the economy and create jobs.
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And it's a positive sum game.
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And unfortunately, here again, people often tend to have, you know, they don't put the
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consumer at the center of this market process.
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They look at other elements of it, but the consumer should always be at the center and
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the value that he is saving, which goes back into the economy.
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And most people don't get this.
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We've had until recently, we had leaders who talked about this, that trade is good and
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NAFTA is good, so you had Bill Clinton, then after that you had George Bush.
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The last two guys who ran for president and lost John McCain and Mitt Romney were also
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Like they were the adults in the room who were telling the electorate that no, trade
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is good and this is how the economy grows.
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They fought an entire Cold War for this after all and have created this world order of free
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market economy and foreign trade and everybody has benefited from it.
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But suddenly we have this pushback from people who don't see that the benefits outweigh the
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And this, you know, what you said about putting the consumer front and center, I find that
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interesting because the show I like called South Park, which has, which takes on a lot
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of social issues, often from a libertarian angle.
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And then this episode about the hate for Walmart, like everybody hates Walmart because Walmart
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comes in and it destroys the local economy.
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So in that episode, they go and they try to kill Walmart and then they find out the heart
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of Walmart, it's a mirror.
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That is the point they are making that Walmart does well because of you, because you the
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consumer wants the cheapest goods and that helps everyone.
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That's why Walmart is doing well.
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That's why NAFTA is good, that's why foreign trade is good, but we don't realize that it's
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a mirror at the heart of this entire machine.
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And we are the economy, the choices that we make give the economy its direction.
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What you said about, you know, again, politics is very interesting because just going back
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to that, the Republicans have been the ones who are always for trade.
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The anti-free trade voices, which were earlier just lone voices, so to say, came from the
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far left of the Democratic Party.
#
Like for example, I think Bernie Sanders' views about trade are very similar to Trump's.
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Oh yeah, trade and also some aspects of immigration.
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So he's not exactly a pro-immigration guy as well.
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He makes the right noises and all my left wing friends hate it, especially my Bernie
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fan friends hate it when I say this, but I'm like there's more that Bernie Sanders and
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Trump have in common than you would think.
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They always hate somebody saying that, but yeah, on immigration, on trade, things like
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these, they are, it's very difficult to tell the two apart.
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It's just that one guy is a lot more boorish and vulgar and the other guy is much more
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affable, charming, but at its core, they have the same ideas on these, on these issues.
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Yeah, and partly because the populist ideas are simple stories and therefore therein lies
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Now you'd earlier said about immigration that even though people thought about Trump
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that, okay, he's going to chill out in the White House, in your words, and not really
#
bother about these, he's actually moved forward with his anti-immigration policies.
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But with protectionism, one would think it's the other way around because at the end of
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the day, pretty much every corporate interest group would look to its own interests and
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their interests lie in outsourcing.
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So they would not let Trump do anything that harms him.
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So how is that going in terms of protectionism?
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Has he been able to implement anything we should be worried about?
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Protectionism he hasn't so far, but he wants to.
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Now protectionism is this one weird thing that he's been obsessed with for 40 years.
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So I don't think he has too many principles, but this is one principle he holds very dear
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I guess because from a zero-sum view of the world, it just makes sense that if others
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are winning, we must be losing.
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And because he's not a typical politician, I don't think he cares about the legacy.
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I don't think he cares about the party.
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He just wants to do what he thinks is right.
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So there's no leverage that businesses have over him other than maybe hoping that Congress
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legislatively stops him.
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But he has been talking about like, NAFTA, he wants to renegotiate NAFTA.
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He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was a bad deal, which by the way, everybody
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else was also agreed on, even though it's a good deal for the US economy, but they pulled
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out of it and the drumbeat against it was so intense that even Hillary Clinton, who
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at one point supported the deal, decided that it was politically expedient to say that,
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yes, yes, we should pull out of that Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was essentially a deal
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that would give US the access to these East Asian markets at lower tariffs that they right
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now don't have access to.
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Those countries already have access to the US market.
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So it was literally the US was the one that was benefiting the most from that deal, but
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the simplistic anti-trade and protectionist rhetoric is so easy to sell that they pulled
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So I think that is one thing he did on day one that has hurt the economy.
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But you're saying any of the other guys would also have done that because it was politically
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expedient and because that that was a popular decision to make.
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Might have done that for sure.
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And many times politicians will say something but not follow through on it.
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I think Hillary Clinton might have stayed in it, you know, in the Clintonian way of
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trying to have your cake and eat it too.
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I think she might have stayed in the deal even though during the campaign, she said
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that we should leave it because she was Secretary of State when it was being negotiated.
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So she knows how useful it was.
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Her husband crafted NAFTA, which is the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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So I think she would have found a way to maybe stay in it.
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There's no way to tell for sure, but yeah, Trump doesn't really care about these things.
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So my question is with the things that Trump is doing on immigration and protectionism
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and both of us are really on the same page, we agree that these policies are harmful.
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So my question is, what kind of effects will they have?
#
And supposing the next president disagrees with Trump on all of these things, can they
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be easily reversed or are we causing irreversible damage which will harm us?
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And I don't need to specify what I mean by us, because I think all our economic fates
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are in a way tied together.
#
So if the US economy suffers in some way, the effects of that are felt everywhere.
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Yeah, I mean, I alternately feel optimistic and pessimistic on this, where I think sometimes
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I feel we have entered globally this phase of anti-immigrant sentiment of protectionism
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where everybody is now just going to put up walls and undo all the work of the last few
#
decades and sometimes I feel that Trump is just an aberration once he is literally the
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only guy at the top, like at least amongst politicians who believe in this.
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So once he moves on, let's say even Mike Pence is not exactly a protectionist or is not as
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much of an anti-immigration guy, neither is the Republican leadership in Congress.
#
So I'm hoping that once Trump goes away, things will slowly return to normal.
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But like I said, I alternate between optimism and pessimism.
#
I mean, the other argument is that look, Trump got to the top because he caught something
#
in the culture, he appealed to something in the culture and that includes these nativist
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instincts and this anti-immigration and anti-outsourcing feeling.
#
So even if Trump himself goes, once those ideas and those sentiments are there in the
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culture, somebody else will come along to cater to them.
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And it's very likely that that can happen.
#
And in this instance, I'm hoping that special interest groups from business side are able
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It's like one of those rare sides when I'm hoping the lobbies win.
#
Right, because their interest appears to coincide with ours for this one.
#
Because there are some things you have to do that are much more complex for your economy
#
or for your country to do well, which are not always easy to sell in a soundbite or
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But as long as enough people at the top are on board with it, hopefully things will go
#
back to the way they were.
#
So I'm going to ask you a tough question here for which it's unfair of me to ask you this
#
because I myself don't have any answers, but of course I don't have the depth of knowledge
#
We both agreed that these two answers that Trump offered to the decline in jobs or the
#
underemployment crisis, as it were, are wrong answers, that immigration is hugely beneficial
#
for an economy in many, many unseen ways and some seen ways, and globalization is good
#
on the whole and the American people themselves benefit from it.
#
But so my tough question to you is that if you are in Trump's place and you have to craft
#
an answer for those people in middle America saying that, you know, why don't I have jobs
#
as good as my parents did?
#
What is your sort of, I mean, I know it's a very complex question and it's a multifactorial
#
thing, but broadly, what is it that a politician can say in such a situation?
#
Which is the truth and not just, you know, the sort of stories that Trump was telling.
#
I think that's what John McCain tried to do and I think Mitt Romney as well, where they
#
said that, listen, this is the reality, we live in a global economy and those jobs are
#
not coming back, but we have better jobs and better industries today.
#
I guess it's always much better to be a knowledge-based or service-based economy than a manufacturing-based
#
economy, it just makes logical sense.
#
So we've had politicians sell that in the past and we do it in a charismatic way.
#
And those ideas don't sell.
#
I mean, have adults in the room actually come to power saying those kind of adult things?
#
Yeah, in the sense that you had Bill Clinton who crafted NAFTA.
#
So he was this centrist Democrat, right?
#
Before Bill Clinton and all the other leaders of the Democratic Party were much more leftist.
#
Bill Clinton came and ruled in a much more centrist way.
#
Part of it was because of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress, but…
#
But did he campaign as a centrist or did he govern as a centrist?
#
They're very different things.
#
He did campaign as a centrist as well, I believe, especially in his re-election for sure, but
#
I think even his rise in the early 90s or 1991 or 1992 was running as a centrist, saying
#
that we need to move beyond these socialist Democrats, which he did successfully.
#
Gaurav, normally I end my episodes by asking my guests, you know, what are they hopeful
#
about and what are they fearful about, but you've already, I think, sort of answered
#
Gaurav, paraphrase what you said and if you have something to add to that.
#
What you're fearful of is that people are building walls across the world.
#
There is an anti-immigration sentiment, there is a protectionist sentiment, not just in
#
the US, but elsewhere, especially where authoritarian figures have taken over in the US and Hungary
#
and Turkey, even in India, and you're worried that we might all be shutting ourselves off
#
and becoming more insular, which would have seemed unthinkable 10 years ago when globalization
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And what you're hopeful about is that, hey, it's only Trump right now in the American
#
There's no one else who really feels like this and it's an accident of history.
#
Is there something you'd like to add to these or have I managed to paraphrase you
#
I mean, I think that pretty much paraphrases it and like one more thing I'm optimistic
#
about is that the US political system is designed with checks and balances and opportunities
#
So unlike in India where once you get into power, you have a lot more structural advantage
#
to keep perpetuating that power, in the US it's easier to course correct relatively speaking.
#
So I'm hopeful that in November, the Democrats will take back at least one house of the Congress
#
and then act like a check against Trump's anti-immigrant and anti-trade policies.
#
Your point on how it's relatively easier in the US to course correct is a hopeful note
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for you because you're in New York, but not so hopeful for me because I'm in Bombay.
#
Gaurav, thanks so much for coming on the show.
#
It should have happened long ago and I hope it keeps happening in the future.
#
It's great to be on the show.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, then go to sceneunseen.in, the homepage of
#
the scene and the unseen.
#
I have done previous episodes on immigration with Shikha Sodh Dalmia and on protectionism
#
In those episodes, we went into the philosophical and economic arguments against restricting
#
immigration that is for immigration and against protectionism that is for free trade in quite
#
Today, we spoke more in the American context of what Trump has done.
#
So check those episodes out.
#
Also, if you enjoyed listening to Gaurav, you should follow him on Twitter.
#
He is at Gaurav Sabnis, at Gaurav Sabnis one word.
#
And you can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
Thank you so much for listening.
#
If you enjoyed listening to the scene and the unseen, check out another hit show from
#
Indusworks Media Networks, Cyrus Says, which is hosted by my old colleague from MTV, Cyrus
#
You can download it on any podcasting network.
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get in with other poor souls like her.
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The journey, though daunting for this youngling, will have some comfort because she has downloaded
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You can see more of her species on ivmpodcasts.com, your one stop destination where you can check
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out the coolest Indian podcasts.
