By: AIF Staff
Washington, DC – Earlier this week, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was a featured guest on Betting on America, a podcast produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The podcast, hosted by CSIS’ Navin Girishankar focuses on how partnerships between government and business are shaping the global tech race and positioning America for success.
As part of an in-depth conversation on the economic and public policy challenges facing the U.S.A. in the 21st century, Speaker Ryan discussed geopolitical competition, artificial intelligence, and how America’s debt risks limiting economic growth.
The full podcast is accessible here and excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s responses follow.
Digital ecosystems & limited economic growth fosters distinct versions of populism:
“We went through the Great Recession, and we had pretty slow growth after that. Real income growth for the lower income quintiles was not good, people were slipping behind, and then we had a bunch of inflation on top of that, so clearly there was a good precondition for economic populism to begin with [in 21st century America]. In Europe, it is a little bit different because they have economic stagnation in addition to big migration patterns.
The one thing that makes this time and this era so different is digital media, social media, the fact that you can monetize polarization, and the fact that we as citizens, as people, as individuals live our lives in our own algorithmically-derived cul-de-sacs, reinforcing our biases and positioning us mentally against others in our society and in our world. And that is fertile ground for populists.
There are two different kinds of populism running through the country right now. There’s the left-wing populism, which is coming from the progressives and the Democratic Party, and that is woke or “wokeism,” which is an orthodoxy that they’re trying to enforce. It is obviously popular in some corners, though it’s not broadly popular, but it’s going to last a long time because it is tethered to an ideology. [Populism on the left] is tethered to a collectivist, left-wing ideology.
The populism on the right side is less ideological, less rooted in principle, and more of a reactionary populism. It is really tied to the cult of personality around Donald Trump. The populism on the right is a little more situational and a little more temporary than it is on the left, because if you have a populism that’s not tethered to principles or to certain policies, it runs its course pretty fast.”
Sharing perspectives on President Milei’s governing philosophy in Argentina:
“I was very impressed with this guy. He reminds me of a lot of my old economics professors. I studied Austrian economics in school. [President Milei] was an Austrian economics professor. I’m a huge Hayek and Mises guy….. Milei has done a fantastic job of attaching very important, irreducible, primary principles with public policy solutions and has made them popular. He just won a resounding second election to put these reforms in place in Argentina.
Argentina used to be a very serious country with so much potential—and it still has all this potential— but it got ruined for an entire generation by the Peronistas and everybody else. And now, they’re trying to pick themselves up off the floor and Milei [is trying to execute on] populism rightfully understood and properly applied to core principles. So, [principled populism] can happen. It does happen.
The populism that’s running through America on the right and in Europe is much more of a big government, post-liberal, identity-politics populism that I think is dark. I don’t think it works, and it just doesn’t solve the problems that we’re seeking to solve for people in this country.”
Learning lessons on trade:
“I’m not afraid to call myself a free trader. I am. I think where the free-traders like me made mistakes along the way were — one, China entering the WTO. At the time it seemed like the smart, right move to give them liberalized economics in the hopes that they were going to pursue liberalized politics and political rights. That didn’t happen. Xi came in after Wu and we know what happened. We made a miscalculation there in hindsight.
And two, the other problem that we, free traders, made was we didn’t sufficiently enforce our trade agreements. When other countries cheated, we let it go and we needed to do a better job of that. We needed to make the WTO actually work to stop cheating. And so, those institutions lost their credibility because we didn’t do what we should have to enforce those trade agreements.
Having said all of that, that doesn’t mean you discard free trade, right?…
What has happened is we have mercantilists in government. The Democrats always had a protectionist, mercantilist angle because of unions, but now the establishment of the Republican Party, which is President Trump and MAGA, they’re very mercantilist. I think it produces a view of economics and of trade where it’s a zero-sum game, where there’s a winner and there’s a loser. I just don’t see things like that. I don’t think life is like that. I don’t think economics is like that and trade is not like that.
The reason people voluntarily trade with one another is because they both benefit from it. It’s win-win. It’s positive sum. And that win-win, positive sum game can make everyone better off. Specialization, customization, comparative advantage, all those things work….
So, I think we just have a choppy, bumpy road ahead of us on trade. I think the tariffs are a mistake. I think that trading with our allies and working with other democracies to write the rules of the 21st century global economy and to join forces to take on the tyrannies like China, Russia, and the rest, is a far better position to take than what we have right now.
We’re going to lose market share: 96% of the people in the world are in all the other countries. That means if we want to have a mature, growing economy, if we want to bring manufacturing jobs back, we can’t just make and sell stuff to ourselves. We have to sell it to the rest of the world and if we’re not getting trade agreements to open up those markets, we’re going to lose because all the other countries are getting trade agreements with one another.”
Despite DOGE’s missed opportunity, technology will help solve our fiscal challenges:
“I had high hopes for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). What disappointed me most about those guys was these were the PayPal guys and so, of all the people who could come in and help digitize government records and government payment rails, it was the PayPal guys.
I wanted to see the modernization and reorganization of government effort come through and instead, they went after USAID and other stuff. They didn’t deliver on what I thought was their unique talent set, which was to help fix a lot of these antiquated 20th century systems that still plague our federal government.
Not that there’s a free lunch here, but I think technology and markets can solve a lot of these [fiscal] problems and I think [technology and markets] will be part of the solution to preventing a debt crisis while still maintaining our very precious American social contract.”
Stablecoins & fighting for digital dollar dominance:
“I’m very excited about the stablecoin law that’s been passed. I think this is a huge boon for America, for America tech dominance, but most of all, it’s a boon for the dollar…
Thankfully, we’re never going to do a CBDC. I think it would be a big mistake for us to have our own central bank digital currency. A stablecoin is different. It maintains a two-tiered system. It is private providers providing a private currency…. It’s money that is tethered to the dollar. It can’t be surveilled. Your government can’t do something to you, right? And in basket case countries that have bad currencies, like in Latin America, it’s a way to have sound money.
I see the digital currency wars coming as the digital dollar, through the stablecoin producers, versus the digital RMB [of China]. It’s Team Freedom versus Team Tyranny, and I like where Team Freedom is….
Because we have Silicon Valley, because we have the dollar, because we have all this amazing blockchain technology, I think we’re winning this race. Again, we will stub our toes and lose this race if we ruin our bonds and ruin our dollar by having a debt crisis and not getting our fiscal house in order, but if we get that done, I think we’re going to win this thing.”
Winning the race with China:
“Here’s why our system is better and here’s why our system is going to beat the Chinese: We have the rule of law. We have private property rights. We have deep and liquid capital markets. Oh, and by the way, we have talented people in this country, and we bring talented people into our country….
If we have the best and the brightest, we have the rule of law, and we have private property rights and deep liquid capital markets, the innovation that’s going to come with freedom like that is going to beat the state central-planning any day. I just have confidence in that system.
So, I do agree with decoupling on a lot of stuff with China, not the entire economy— as that would be dumb and ridiculous and needlessly make us both poor—but on sensitive, national security adjacent technologies or critical things like medicines, you need to decouple and you need to have your export controls.”
Riding out the storm of polarization:
“We’re in a bit of a partisan doom loop right now. I’m an old House of Representatives’ guy and when you’re re-drawing Congressional district boundaries in the middle of a decade, that’s about as partisan as it gets. So, I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
My thesis on this is the populism that we see on both sides: The NatCons with the blood and soil populism doesn’t work. It’s illiberal. It grabs onto identity politics. It’s big government. It’s ineffective. It grabs on to identity politics.
Both of these populisms are morally relativistic populisms. What really horrifies me as a traditional conservative the most is that, during my entire career if you asked me the biggest problem I thought we were facing as a country and that I fought against as a conservative, it wasn’t the debt or China. It was moral relativism and now I am seeing both political parties practicing and amplifying moral relativism. That’s very disheartening and it takes us down a really bad road.
And so, my hope and my thesis at the end of the day is these types of populism that are predicated upon moral relativism, predicated upon identity politics and polarization, they don’t solve problems. And the American people are going to get tired of being promised solutions and seeing nothing being delivered. They are going to get fatigued with no problems being solved and with hating each other….
I think there is going to be soon a hunger for problems being solved and people not being hated. It will be an anti-polarization and an inspiring, pro-growth, optimistic, inclusive brand of politics – actually, like Milei in Argentina, as an example – that is popular and predicated upon principles and bringing solutions to solve problems….. We just have to get there. We’re not there now. We’re not going to be there in a couple years, but I think we’re going to get there….
The funny thing about this is: We know what we need to do to fix these problems…. We collectively as a country, can fix our problems, and that’s the great thing about America. Most other countries need some other country to do something for them to get what they need. We don’t need that.
We can solve all of our problems as Americans inside of our own country, within our own political system. We have all that we need to do it. We just need to get better politics, and I think that realization will eventually dawn on us and we’ll get there.”
Ryan is a current Trustee of the Center for Strategic & International Studies.