Ezra Klein On the Legacy of Bidenomics
41:28 Share

Direct lending has been one of the most dynamic areas of the private alternative space these last few years, having grown massively as a source of capital for both corporate borrows but also a financial sponsors that have kept going from strength to strength and have that private capital to Foster the growth that they have .

been experiencing for leading alternative investing insights. Listen to speaking of alternatives from P, G, M.

you made IT through all the stars and stops of your tech business. And when you're with M, X, business platform, you can cut on a network of benefits to keep going, including access to over one thousand dollars in business and travel value. And thanks to five times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked on M X travel to com, you and your pluton engineers can get rewarded for working in the cloud.

That's the powerful backing of american express term supply. Learn more at american express. Dog comes such M, X business. Bloomberg audio studios.

podcasts.

radio news.

Hello and woke up to another episode of the odd lots podcast. I'm joe went .

thought and i'm to see all .

away traces almost here. We're almost to the november fed decision.

Okay, we are recording this on october third. Do you think by this time next week will actually know who's one on the wednesday.

the day after you didn't continue my joke about how next week is the fed decision? You just want strikes at the obvious. That's okay. We're all fried.

Also payroll data on friday? yes. yeah.

So by the time this episode comes out, payroll will have been out. Yes, there is a lot going on right now, but one thing that's happening is the election.

I can't keep check in any more. There too much what .

people are listening to this. We're going to get this out before the election. But yes, we may know very soon with the next status.

But whatever happens whatever happens next week with the fed or with the election, it's clear that biden is no longer gonna president, right?

And I think it's like a real moment. We should talk about that because I think, to your point, you said IT exactly. We may get a democratic presidency under heroes.

We may get a trump presidency. But we've done so many episodes in the last four years, particularly on twenty two, twenty twenty one. Others might call IT the sort of post neal liberal .

turn right, this sort of industrial policy.

industrial policy econo I don't programs will be at, is soon to say, are we going to be like great at making chips and batteries and solar panels and all that stuff? And we also don't know if anyone will talk about this stuff at all in the next administration was IT just like a wonder two year thing where people got excited about what I would say, policy adventurism. There is this effort to, uh, expand the care economy, child care, that sort of fizzled. But there's so maybe interesting that, but I don't know like regardless of who the next president is, whether we'll see more continuation of these ideas or whether we'll go back to something that just sort looks more like I don't know something people would call Normal.

I kind of like the idea that we went through like a teenage experimental policy phase. That's a funny way of looking at IT. But you are absolutely right. I think we should talk about what could happen to all of this in the next four years and beyond.

And well, i'm really excited to say because coming to this big moment, we have the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking with ezra client. Here's the host of the eza.

Kline showed new york times calmness. Famous journalists don't extraordinary things. Everyone knows the names. So no need to too much of an introduction. But israel, thank you so much for coming back on outlet.

Thank you for having me back on one of my favorite shows. And and I do want to say that I like a joke at the beginning, joke.

I thought that was funny. You can't IT. I appreciate. Okay IT brought me back .

to the self conscious nurturer of the long blog days. Jokes are really about how boring we are. It's it's a beautiful for me.

the most important thing still, the fed decision and the jobs report. Look, if i'm going to be honest, first of all, I sort of admire political journalist. S are people really pay attention to this because a lot of IT hurts my brain.

So like the best, I go in and everyday talk about IT and pay attention to something that and to take IT seriously as something I often find myself not having the stomach to do. And so i'm probably like a little bit less formed on the election then I should be. But some of this stuff, what we call bind nics ira, the chip sec did set up up. Is this important to a comment, Harris, this part of something that he talks about and sort of conveyed on the trail is a .

good question. Any candidate, any politician, has the policy areas that really improve them, the things that they think about and talk to people about when they're not on the clock, so to speak. And Harry says a bunch of those.

He is amazing and committed and passionate about abortion rights. She's in general very interested in right speaking broadly right. He is a lawyer, a former D A N G. Economics that i've got a fair amount of reporting on. This is just not the thing that he has been highly attracted to across her career.

So in a way that is a little bit unusual, if you you have been involved in democratic party politics for a long time, SHE is coming in without being highly associated with one of the other schools of thought. She's obviously been in the biden administration, but whether biden had incredibly clear economic lanes and ideas in the obama administration, it's worth remembering that he brought on jared bernstein as his chief economist, which was an unusual move, and who is, of course, now on the council economic advisors. But he was understood ted then, as a quite heterodox economists, somebody who is holding the left flink of that against, you know, Larry summers and Jason ferman and Peter orsak.

So biting was sort of associated with this more trade skeptical lunch pale economics. And Harris isn't really she's not associated with like the theory of the inflation reduction act, although there's no reason to think you just support them. Not highly associated with like the chips and science act. The sense of what moves her is not that well. no.

Now one thing he is brought to the ticket, which we had not her before, is a real central focus, at least rhetorically, on housing supply, which makes sense the same for the scope politician, this of in bean movement in the democratic parties goten a lot bigger of the sense that the housing is the Price rate at a time when the inflation rates come down, you could really target. And that is at the center of a lot of policy pathology. And the country, I think that's real. If she's bringing that, we have the sense of she's not running as like the inherit of the industrial policy legacy here.

which he does talk a lot about the opportunity economy and doing stuff to reduce inequality and things like that. Is that just a rebranding of bynes s or do you get the sense that it's actually a departure? The opportunity economy .

has both never felt to me like it's bym ics. So although I do want to say I don't think the by demonstration done a great job of explaining or selling with byron omics is either, and it's never been a hundred percent clear to me how much that's like of the idea from her team that he liked versus how committed he is to IT.

So when he was in the senate, her big economic proposal was a significant expanded child tax credit, which he goes sponsored along with, and a Michael benet at a court Baker. There are others on that bill as well. And I think that some of her economic thinking reflects sort of the democrats were then right, the opportunity economy is, I think, closer in the way IT gets talked about to this sort of anti inequality push, the sense that that we should have bigger cash transversly Young g families, right? cheese.

Talk about having a six thousand dollars dit in the first year of a child's life. But I don't find the opportunity economy. I read her speeches. I've read her at page. Policy book is something I can get my arms around.

Every politician says a support opportunity, so IT doesn't quite tell you what he doesn't support, right? The key question with all these people is which fights be willing to pick. So when the biding comes in, in two thousand and and twenty one, his team is telling me they're saying publicly we are going to be the full employment presidency, right? This is jar.

Bernstein had covered a book with the team Baker about full employment. They're gonna run the economy hot. They're going to spend. They're going to make sure that the wage gains we've been seeing for some years reach the workers who they need to reach that true or even as are doing with the pandemic, they are going to make sure that they don't undershoot on stimulus rate.

This is a team very much forged by the obama era, some of the trump h era, in which the problem was too little demand and the promise that even growth was not lasting for long enough to reach more marginalized workers who were renting, you know, low income wage gains, wage gains for for black and espanol workers. So they come in very clear on which mistakes they are not going to make. They are willing to run the economy hot with the risks that, that might enable, which end up coming true in order to not see the kind of weak recovery that we've seen before.

I would like to know that answer for Harris and her team. Harrison, her advice is not to say that we have to know this second, because IT is a really unusual thing to have to create a national presidential campaign from a standing start. But the opportunity economy thing IT doesn't answer that question for me. Who is here is not going to be which factions is SHE not aligning with in the way that the biden folks were not aligning with, like the very summer's faction of the democratic party.

That question is open. So IT occurred to me. You know, if we're talking about dynamics and you mention biden is a long been advised by gerard bernstein, who may be a little bit more sympathetic to some of their heterodox thinking in mro.

So there is the element of the fact that byng ics existed because by and one and maybe this is how he used the economy, but it's a little bit of an incomplete story because so even I lumped the chips act into IT. That was a bipartisan thing. And there was interest in doing something on semi conductors before liden even came into office, I believe.

And then, you know, you mentioned the trump era, which if we're talking about some sort of turn or rethink on trade, I mean, he clearly started more under trump than biden. Why now? Like how much of IT was like? This is what biden is into.

This is what biden advisers are into versus there is some moment happening in the U. S. Economy or U.

S. Society that created this political impulse to push in a new ways. I think this .

is a great question and an important way to think about all these figures. So you can ask what the principle, in this case, the president or the presidental candidate thinks. Then there's a question of what their cocos tion thinks, right? If it's commonly Harris and the democratic house and the then what the democratic house and democratic extent want to do, what is happening at the center of the coalition. We think of this democratic ty becomes really, really important.

Then there's a question also of what kind of institutional power structure they're na face, right? If it's comment Harris and our republican house and our republican senate well where the center of the eem craic party is that matters actually less. Then what, if anything, is in the one diagram between coma Harris and mike Johnson? And all of those are very just different conditions, which we should talk about the thing about differently.

But I do agree strongly with something you're going to show, which is there is a shift in the technical ic plates of economic policy of policy broadly. So i'm very influenced by the historian an he had a great book called the rise and fall of the new liberal order. Before that, he was known for working on the rise and fall of the new deal order.

And he's got this whole idea about orders, orders being these structuring agreements between two parties, the shape, what is taken for granted in american politics and policy, and and what is not. So he sort of developed the this new deal order, which is not just the new deals we think about IT under f dr, but last from like one thousand nine hundred and thirty when fd r comes in, in thirty two, the one thousand nine and seventies when IT sort of dies under inflation and in the vietnam. But the new deal orders is very importantly concretizing.

When White icon hour takes control, their publican party, not robber cafe and ice and hour brings a new deal into something public. Is now support to in order to fend off the soviet union, they even sort of the a liberal order. You know, we think a romal reggae and then later build clinton with the arab big government is over. There's a lot of deregulation, a lot of support of free trade, a lot of talk about governmental inefficiency, moving to markets, moving towards outsourcing, much more focused on the individual and that order so to dies and it's the financial crisis. And I do think trump is a disruptive force who creates some of the shape of an order of IT is emerging.

But we don't know which party will control IT exactly what it's structure will be, but it's clearly feels very differently about manufacturing and production, I think in the way that those two orders were both related first to the power of the soviet union in the new deal order and then it's a weakening and its fall in the the new liberal order. I think china is the great pressure on our politics and husband. Sometime trump talks about that very explicit.

But IT is surprising then that biden comes in and doesn't revert to wear brock obama, what is on china? Biding goes further than on trap. He goes further than on trump.

On gating technologies, he adds on more terrace, he keeps the trump terf, and he uses china as a spirit of passing like the bypass and inflections, bill the chips and science act, which are both very explicit, framed as bills to help amErica compete with china in terms of infrastructure and and scientific development and and semicolon manufacturing. And of course, the ira has a lot of by american and an ongoing ing provisions. So I think china is a big part of this.

I think that there is growing sense that there are critical technologies we just simply need to make here, or at least have our friends make, I think, inflation and the broader affordability crisis heavily quitted a sense that whatever was going on before, we were good at making the Price of consumer good, cheap, but actually not good at making the fundamentals of a life cheaper, right? Health care and education and and a home elder care, things like that. And so there's something happening, right? It's trump, it's bin, it's Harris, it's both coalitions.

You know the fighting over IT, they don't have the same view of IT. It's a wild wand saying save the affordable right like that, the locus of polarization are different. Now there we are polarized over the system itself, right? Elections, democracy, the freedom, the press kind of thing. But there's actually a huge amount of fermat and confusion and uncertainty about the policy consensus and like what is in and outside of the things members of congress might agree on our negotiate over.

What do you see on the horizon, uncertainty or opportunity? Whatever you see at p gm, we can help you rise to the chAllenges of today when active investing and disciplines risk management are needed most, drawing on deep expertise across the world's public and private markets in pursuit of long term returns. Our investments shape tomorrow, today, pursue your tomorrow with P, G, M, A leading global asset manager.

This is the add by Better help what comes to mind when you hear the word gratitude. Maybe it's a daily practice, or maybe IT feels hard to be grateful right now. Don't forget to give yourself some things by investing in your well being. Better help is the largest on mind therapy provider in the world, connecting you qualified professionals via phone, video or message chat with the gratitude flow visit Better helped up com to learn more and see ten percent of your first month that's Better help H L P dot com since you .

have brought up china IT is kind of fascinating to me that like so much policy on both sides of the aisle is framed in terms of very intense competition with china or a looming ing threat from china. Do you think the policy evolution of, you know, the past eight years now would have been possible without an external enemy to sort of catalist action?

I don't. And I think this is a Normal thing for politics. I think we actually really underestimate how important the external antagonist or comparator is to us because IT isn't just external enemy. I mean, that turn turns china as a real antagonist under trump. That's been very, very important.

But if you go back a few years before that, you can just find members of congress and members of politically talking constantly about how our system is gridlocked and it's a photocells y and we don't get anything done, and we can build anything. And look at our city airports well over there in china, look how fast or moving, look how much they're doing, look how big great their infrastructure is like look how effectively they're building their manufacturing capabilities, look how competent their government seems. We don't talk about IT in exactly those terms, but I have come to believe, and you know, I was on the show before, to talk about abundance in the sort of move towards ideas about building in in american politics.

I think i'm part of this too, that I think that there has been a real pressure on people, american politics, to think about what does that mean that amErica is got? So about the building at building public infrastructure, at building homes, building mass transit, at the manufacturing critical things. And that comes from the pressure of chinese competition, right? Not just chinese, sort of where to move to the slightly darker form of competition. Even before that, this sense that we seem to be able to innovate but not build and they seem to be able to build, I think, john, are little put at this way, but not necessarily innovate.

And you actually need both. This is actually a good we talked about what might be the different emphasis during a hair administration. Obviously, there's a very good chance that we get a trump administration.

There's been noises obviously about budding the inflation reduction act in some ways, but I think it's ambiguous. There's a lot of jobs in trump areas, red areas that would be gone. I think without inflation reduction act money.

So I think magine that complicates the politics of that. And then furthermore, there is what I would call maybe like a conservative or republican or write wing industrial al strategy. There's obviously that china antagonism maybe much more explicitly about defense tech insider. Um but how would you characterize how some of these things north during a trumpet administration?

I genuinely don't think anybody knows at all. And I do think about this a lot over the past couple months as i've been having a number of people on the the american first movement, as I like to call IT on my show. And one thing i've noticed is that the universal sense that Donald trump, in his seventy eighth year of life running for his second term as president, still doesn't really know what he believes or you cannot know what he believes on any number of subjects, create an immense sense that he can be moved and shaped, right?

That the competition going on behind him, yeah, to wield governing power in his administration is a sense that just had the veg masi on the show and I was so struck by, you know, him really trying to push trump and you know why I call more traditionally conservative direction, right? No, don't try to take over the administrative state. Try to you get rid of IT, shut of these agencies.

And he really sees elon mosque as an alien. That effort, you can call this like this advance wing that is more national populist. And then all sudden, here's like you on mosque and these like, right when billionaire s and they have trumps a air.

And maybe what they want is something a little bbi more in between in the way that looks more like what other republicans were doing with a much more nationalistic edge. Whenever I talk to people about trumps terrace, they say he's proposed the, you know, universal tera. Oh, he's not going to do that.

Trump s and negotiator, right? He's just saying that to get maximum leverage in order to run a really good negotiation. I mean, maybe maybe not.

You know, he project twenty twenty five is an internally contradictory document. And then there are other documents, floating ground like IT, that are contradictory to that. You know, mike Johnson s just said he would repeal obama care. I think that was probably unlikely, but the idea that they might pull money out of the ira doesn't seem unlikely to me. There is going to be a huge tax Cliff.

Everybody he's going to have to deal within twenty twenty five, as you know, trillion of dollars of trump tax cuts come ready to expire and partially of democrats have any amount of power is going to have to be a lot negotiation with them about what you do about that. IT feels to me like at this point we should be able to say Better what Donald trump do. And I tend to just take the guy at his word on his policies and talk about the terms and what the effect on the economy would be.

But I will say that if you're taking his movement on its own terms, that is not how IT is spoken about or treat IT IT is spoken about like almost like it's a parliamentary system, right? Like truly have to form a government. And inside the government will be different coalition partners and they will vie for influence.

And then eventually we will see what the king does. And like that almost more, maybe no parliamentary, maybe a monarch model is much more. How everybody over there is acting IT .

would be pretty funny if like the senate or the house started throwing paper like insulting each other the way they do in U. K. Parliament, I would watch that on sea span as there can.

We talk about the branding of by omics, and you touched on this earlier, but IT does feel like the administration to some extent has had difficulty messaging the success of the program. And I think maybe in retrospect, CT the bet on full employment wasn't the best IT turns out that americans really care about inflation more than whether or not their neighbors have jobs. Can you talk to us about that? Like why isn't IT resonating more?

It's hard for me to know the counterfactual here, right? What if joe biden was sixty five years old, possessed of the exploit tory and communication power the joe biden had when he was sixty five years old? Would he have been able sell by dynamics in a different way, particularly given the focusing event of a second presidential campaign, right when the twenty twelve campaign is happening? Bark obama for part of that campaign is trAiling that romney. What happens over the course of that campaign when unemptied is quite high, by the way, I mean, to you, above eight percent for much of that period.

What happens in that campaign is that obama and this team and bill clinton of the dnc convention are able to sell the obama economic worker, tell a story about IT, that even though the becoming wasn't looking that good yet, was a story of recovery, a trave all that we did and averted, and and that story telling worked by and just was not able to story tell. I mean, not during his presidency, I would say, and very much not during his campaign. And so the question of what would have happened if someone had really tried to make the case for dynamics, we really tried to use the artillery of a presidential campaign, the money the sr.

Gets, the convention to make. That case is hard to know. Obviously, by in ends up stepping aside, the party is from computer Harris and Harris, I think, in a way that is wise, but is the lower risk path, but also does not try to sell by in topics right, does not come in and try to turn around where people are on this right.

He talks about what he is going to do to lower Prices. SHE talks about how much oil and gas that has been produced, but he doesn't try to make a giant argument about how biden omas has set the structure for not an infrastructure week, but in infrastructure decade or muli decade project, and how we are going to be building factories at this wild pace in amErica on and and on. And we are just at the beginning, and how much of bidding ics industry in innovation and how we are trying to have these industries of the future here, like bike omics.

I mean, if somebody he's writing a book this very much about the need for liberalism build around building and invention. Bionics is very much built on building an invention. I have my places I wish had gone further, or I don't think it's, do confront what actually makes IT so hard to build an invent in america.

You know, permanent reform, procurement reform and you know paperwork and brocky and so on. But at its core, IT is really like we are going to make things in the real world. And then the things we need that we don't get have like Green hydrogen and we're to pump a bunch of money into venting, and that's going to be the basis of the next generation of economic prosperity.

That is not a story Harris tried to tell. Harris has tried to run much more the way a sort of generic democrats wood SHE is not wanted. And I think again, there's probably a lot of political wisdom in this, but she's not want to try to run as a the defender of the biden record. He's wanted to to the extensive can without seeming this loyal run is something new because people are not very happy with the bite and record. And SHE is not herself, joe biden, and is not actually yoked to IT in the way he is.

This might be actually just another version of the same question that Tracy asked. And maybe the answer again is that. The counterfactual would be different if biden were sixty five years old, but he appeared at the picket line for G.

M. And in imagine lunch pale economics, which we associate with people taking their lunch pail to work in a factory. Specifically, there are a lot of factories going up.

And yet IT does not seem that biden is particularly popular, even among union members. Maybe, maybe the counter factual, whatever certain. Ly, not, you know, this is the big crisis of the democratic party.

The weight working class in center of, is the theory of the case wrong, is the theory that if I stands on the picket lines and does is a bunch of stuff to build factories like that, that will improve the democrats standing among the lightweight king class. Was that never of the theory? Is that just something that was never actually part of the political calculus? Is IT just about politics? Like what do you see is going on there?

I think IT is hard to say because again, I can't run the counterfactual of like the sixty five year job in. But I think you have to look at this and say the series and look very good. It's not just being on the pic line and do that much for him.

They bailed out the teamsters and they need to get the teamster endorsement right. They're directly bail out the teams sters, right? So forget like what you have to communicate this.

You should just be able to communicate to the union, right? We did the thing you wanted us to do, like gave your pension plants of big help in hand. And the teamsters didn't endorse him. Part of the loss of the working class for democrats, I think democrats always want the loss of the working class, the White working class, to be about economic materialism.

The answered democrats want to hear on that because this is the answered they would most like to respond to, is that you're losing these voters because you have straight ed too far from a more progressive fire and brimstone classroom. AR economics. And i'm not tell you that's not part of IT.

IT very well maybe, but IT doesn't fit the story as we're seeing IT very well. Let me buy by the the left of bill clinton, who did Better with a White working cost, and by, in his way to left to Michael to caucus, who also did Better among the White working class than joie has. And you know, the class realign nant, or the alignment in this country IT has a lot to do with culture.

IT has a lot to do with senses of who belongs and who doesn't, with views people have on immigration, views that they have on religion, right? You know, identity is very complex. And we are at sort of all levels, still a much more post material of society than left often wishes.

At least our politics was because on to see if if the politics could just be reduced down to who is going to do Better for the working class in terms of, you know, who's going to get the tax credits and the tax rebate and who's going to a get health care and you know who's going to stand up to big that never going to have a really, really, really good argument, right? I mean, people can always say they should move further left, but man, they are really quite a bit for the left, and they were a couple years ago, and quite bit for the left then the republicans ARM. But if you look around, IT just doesn't actually seem to track that.

So maybe you should do all those things because they are good things to do, right? You should walk the pick line because walking the big line is a good thing to do. You should raise in the minimum wage because raising the minim wage is a good thing to do. But the sense you're going to kick off this policy feedback loop where by being more pupiled to your economics, you change who is voting for you in a dramatic sense, we're just not seeing IT. And I think that this put the burden is on supporters of his theory to explain like why we're not seeing IT if indeed IT works.

Bonds are back and so is all the credit P G M fixed incomes monthly podcast series. From the latest trends to long term perspectives, you'll get timely fixed income insights from leading economists, research annalists and investment professionals, whether you're new to bones or a season investor tune into all the credit, whether you get your podcasts, this podcast is intended solely for professional investor use. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Got a business problem. There is a ted talk for that stay updated on everything business on ted business, a podcast hosted by columbia business school professor module aco a. Every week, sh'll introduce you to leaders with unique insights on work, answering questions like how do four day work weeks work to? Will a machine ever take my job? Get some surprising answers on ted business wherever you less in the podcast.

we've obvious been focused on domestic issues in this conversation. But of course, the us. Is the world's biggest economy, and IT does not exist in a vacuum. And one thing i'm curious about is your take on, I guess, the international legacy of bid nics because to some extent, you know, the emphasis on building things in america, building out strategically important industries and things like that, IT has generated tensions with some allies like in you know.

this is a place where I think it's hard to say until things play out for longer. I don't know that. I think there is a huge international legacy to bidding ics at this exact moment, right? Countries during this period to be going through lot of inflation.

There's been russian invasion of ukraine. There's the war that israel curtly waging in gaza now. And love on there is so much going on in the world that the question of how the by administration is doing .

the Greens subsidies just doesn't strike me as something not everyone is real.

Trump comes back in. I think that the main thing people will think about job in that that has been through is the amount of attention and intention bite in put into nurturing alliances, to being aligned with our partners, to trying to work these disputes out, but also to standing together where amErica can in, and the bon to on against russian aggression on climate, right? There's a million things, but y've been putting, like, endless work into the alliances.

I just don't buy that the industrial policy is just that big of a story of by demonstration and foreign policy. The china stuff, I think is the china side of things to me is I don't want to call the it's obvious ly not an uncovered story. But if you ask me what has surprised me most about the bite administration, it's been how hawk, kish and competitive with china they had been, how they went further than double trump.

They did things he did not do, things he really am in ways didn't even imagine doing when using the speeches of people like jack Sullivan have given, right? There's a real sense that the old model failed and that is all needed to be thought. And they're out there rethinking IT, right? I mean, and they've been willing to do this even when he does, I think, have real conflict with other goals in their agenda.

On the one hand, they want to have a rapid transition to electric vehicles. We can have our climate if you don't. On the other hand, you've put a what is that one hundred percent tariff on chinese select c vehicles even though they're cheaper and there are, you know, good cars and you could bring them in and accelerate th Epace o f t he E.

V. transition. So that's a place where they have found the competition of china trumps something they have often spoken of as a very, very high priority, which is the decarbonising and clean energy transition. So what theyve done china to me, and the way that they've taken, what trump began almost intuitively and made IT into a structured policy that has a sign of not just of the republic and part dump trump, but the democratic party under job ad in that feels like a very big shift that will have very far reaching consequences.

So we've been talking a lot about industrial policy, and the inflation reduction acted so forth. But before the inflation reduction act existed, there was a package called build back Better and build bag Better. Had hundreds of billions of dollars allocated towards the care economy, childcare and pricker garden and paid family leave and all of these things.

And that's ultimately the big chunk that didn't make IT into the inflation reduction eck. And we know these things, paid family leave, universal child care of some sort, their big deals particularly well for a lot of people, but also for a lot of influential people in the democratic party. Specifically, what was the constraint? I mean, i've seen things that like other all these different groups involved and they can ordinate.

Some people say you just like the legislation was sort of battle and workable, maybe was just the money. Why didn't the care economy part make IT in in your view? And is that something that would, do you think, likely to come up next the next time the political stars align? Dc.

I have a very simply answer to this. And IT rimes with snow mansion is .

a really that simply IT is that simple?

Look, there are a lot of problems in the k economy side of the bill. There's a great piece by Rachel box about the kind of crazy interest group politics around IT. I think a lot of bits of the care economy said that, that we're not that will designed right.

You can hand pick this to death. IT didn't pass because they didn't have the votes, and they end the votes because they had a fifty, fifty senate split. And very importantly, the je mansion was not on board, right, and that was not his priority.

And in a way, in the end, I think IT wasn't exactly very at least compared to climate right in in terms of what the democratic coalition retire. The climb ate investments for more pressing to them than the care economy side. Now if you mentioned to say, yes, they've got in Christian cinema maybe bright, and you you can maybe name like one, two or three members of the senate who wouldn't save that down.

But I think they could have got in something out of the care economy package if jo magine had been more open to IT, right? Maybe not everything, but something. So they didn't have the juice in the senate to pass that.

I mean, I actually think it's really as simple as that. Now i've mentioned that said i'm open to this, but this bill, and this was a period of the negotiations, were like this. And I have to go back and look at what made IT into this version of IT.

But I don't remember how big the original bill back Better was. But this appeared what IT looked like mentioned, I do one point eight trillion, or maybe one point two trillion, right? There are different.

There is a lot of different things floated. And IT was like, how much the climate investments could you keep in? How much of the economy where could you keep in? And a lot different menu's were offered. And depending on what the the constraint of the senate had been, you can imagine different menu's having been proposed. And then the question how you choose and like how you like have the deal the disappointment of some of the groups since that coalition that would become very silent, but in the end, mention was no on the care economy .

and that were killed to do you have a sense of continuity or lack of IT in the next four years? And what I mean by that is we've started all these big projects with like multiple cade time lines, right? And some of them are gonna finished for years and years and years and years.

And whether, you know Harris comes in or trump comes in IT IT. Seems like there's there's a question mark over how these programs are gonna run. I guess to sum me up, my question is like how much of this is locked in?

I think that if trump comes in, it's not clear to me how much is locked in. I mean, some of IT is I only get rid of everything in the I R. A.

Or the bipartisan infrastructure building up in rid of chips and science act. But I think IT is not impossible. They would get rid of quite a bit of ira that, that money might go towards tax cuts or something else. If it's paris, I think IT is locked in.

And I think you should expect that a high administration will be stocked with many the same people that by in administration, I think that if you imagine who might have been appointed in a bide in second term, I don't think those appoints will look very different that the ones Harris will make SHE is not shown, as far as I can tell, any actual clear signal that he thinks that the appointments or the ideological direction on the set of issues should be radical, different then where it's been in the bite in her administration. You know she's known to have a very good ability ship with Janet yEllen. If you look at who's been coming in to sort of help create her economic policy as people like brian this and mike pile or key members of the biden team, if you look at the sort of people seem to be advising her, it's all the same people.

If you look at the sort of signal SHE sending about what he wants to do, it's very, largely similar things. Biden is a very coalition politician. He had his own views, but he was also governing from the center of the democratic coalition. There is also a very coalition politician.

I think one of the things we don't know about her, and the different people I think are joking to try to define about her, is what her relationship will be with some of the more left groups and figures who wheeled more power in the by administration that people expected them to, which is one reason, by the way, that when there is always pressure on by, in to step, he was backed up and reinforced by bern, sander's, by aoc. And members of the squad like that was very surprising that that was who was rilling for biden. But in a way, IT wasn't because they'd actually been enormously favored in terms of the body administration, right in in terms of the kinds of people pointed were very much in the sort of elias with born wing of the party.

Biden had a very friendly relationship with the left, and he gave them a lot of power. Is that the coalition government, he actually an economic policy, ran not be quite nose where Harris will be on that on the one hand, when you ran in twenty, twenty, just terrible, sad note of the groups. And he ended up taking all kinds of positions that she's had to back off from in this campaign.

On the other hand, in this campaign, she's backed off from positions like bending fracking or defunding the police with absolutely no ill effects in terms of her political coalition for, as anybody can tell. And so the sense that know he seems to be friendly or maybe the business community than biden was, to me, it's very hard to know how all that will net out. She's actually have to make these decisions, which right now, I think the entire democratic party is giving her a pretty big pass on positioning in order to beat Donald trump.

But you know you could see or either being a little bit more kind of a business than a little bit less like in this relationship to say the body and was one of the party and biden was, you can hear, governing in the exact same way. And you could also imagine, really, that is like what chuck humor thinks to be the center of economic policy in the democratic party is ultimately what matters here. This all seems like very possible outcomes to me as you're client.

That was so great. Thank you so much for coming back on a lot. The perfect guest at the perfect time ahead of the election, and I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. You ve got to come back on when you're when you're on your podcast book tour.

When is your book come? I will definitely, I will come .

back on of IT what want to? Thanks, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

Tracy, I really like that conversation. Just a very good I D guess seems that no, we don't do a lot of like electoral yeah tics, the show. But IT is also true that we've gotten dozens and dozens of episodes in the last few years directly downstream from politics and from political changes. So it's like we can't like just pretend to exist a vacuum that doesn't exist.

I'd like no, of course, on one thing I hadn't like considered that much or hadn't focused on is the coalition aspects that if he brought up like not just for trump, who, you know, we know he has a lot of advisers and depending on who's talking to him, you know, he kind of seems to change his mind, but also on the harassed de, I haven't realized that.

No, it's true. I mean, there's a lot there, first of all, as a sort of eluted to this. But one of the chAllenges of trying to fight out what will trump do under his administration is figuring out who actually speaks for because there are a lot of various organizations.

The herit institute put out project twenty twenty five, then trump disappoint ted. There are a lot of organizations that would like to be the mouth piece for whatever trumpet economics are. And I think it's still highly T V D. Who actually gets that. And so you know this sort of.

you know, it's funny just on this point there is a gold man sex note that like literally just hit my inbox while we were recording this and they're talking about after trump and you know trump has said sixty percent on chinese imports, but gold man is going ahead and they're like, actually we think it's going to be tiered across product categories and it's gonna like this.

They're sticking .

their neck out. Yeah, I don't know. Like there's always a temptation to try to like formulate some policies because many of them are so unclear or to some people, unbelievable.

The other thing I think that was interesting to in that conversation was I like hearing ezra's take sort of on the rise and fall of different ideological, and not by partisan. So the idea that new idealism to some extend was a bipartisan project after F, D. R. Neo liberalism. You know people called that was a regan and bush and clinton thing I said. And so the idea that like from trump starting in twenty sixteen through biden through twenty twenty four, you know, we can talk about byng ics, but there is also some other shift happening right now that makes sort of electoral analysis a little bit unclean in terms of others going to be a pivot every year.

The bay partisan infrastructure act is that could .

exactly that in the trip take you like, which tom cotton of architects there was like a big thing for him, republics. All these things are a little more muted.

yeah. Well, this time next week will be interesting, certainly. Uh, shall we leave at there to leave at there? This has been another episode of the all lots podcast. I'm Tracy alloway. You can follow me at Tracy .

elway and I G I, though you can follow me at the store. Follow our guests as recline. He's at as recline and check out the as reclined shell.

Obviously follow our producers, charman rud riz at charman orman, dh. Bennett, a dash butt and kill Brooks at kill Brooks. Thank you to our producer, moses. Under more of lots content, go to bomberg dog come sash allots. We have transcripts of blog and a newsletter, and you can check about all of these topics twenty four seven in our discord, discord dut gg flash outlets.

And if you enjoy all lots, if you like, IT, when we kind of touch on politics, but also try not to please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a bloomberg subscriber, you can get all of our episodes absolutely add free. You will also get our new daily news letter. All you have to do is find the bloomberg channel on apple podcast and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

Got a business problem. There is a ted talk for that stay updated on everything business on ted business, a podcast hosted by columbia business school professor module acol a every week sh'll introduce you to leaders with unique insights on work, answering questions like how do four day work weeks work to? Will a machine ever take my job? Get some surprising answers on ted business wherever you less in the podcast.