Press Release

By: AIF Staff

London, UK – This morning, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan talked with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua in a wide-ranging interview about his advice for executives as they think about a potential 2^nd Trump or Biden term, the future of the U.S. economy and the U.S. tax code, and the 2024 election. Video of the interview is accessible here and some excerpts of Ryan’s responses follow.

2024 Election is “too close to call”

“I’m here in London as Vice Chairman of Teneo, a CEO advisory firm, and we’re basically advising our clients who see a lot of unpredictability on the horizon and they’re trying to scenario-plan for which way various governments are going to go.

It’s a little easier to predict here [in the UK], than it is in my country which has a razor-thin polling margin in our election. It’s just hard to determine who’s going to win the election [in the U.S.] so therefore, you have to scenario plan for two very different potential administrations.

I think it’s just too close to call. If you really want to look at it, this thing is tied in polling and will be going into the election. This is probably the likeliest of scenarios because, right now, Trump is polling at his peak and Biden is polling below his peak performance and let’s just assume Democrats come home at the end of the day, as they typically do, so it’s probably going to be a few hundred thousand voters in about five or six states that will determine the outcome of this election. My state of Wisconsin is one of those. Trump won it by 25,000 votes out of 1.61 million cast in 2016 and then in 2020, he lost it to Biden by 20,000 votes. It’s just that close and this is where campaigning makes the difference.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the new swing voter in America which is a suburban college-educated swing voter and let’s go back to Wisconsin, for example. Out of 1.61 million cast, 53,000 Wisconsinites — that’s what we call ourselves — in the suburban parts of Wisconsin didn’t vote for Trump but voted for every other Republican on the ballot and then 20,000 of those 53,000 voted for Biden giving him the 20,000-vote margin of victory that he got.

It’s just that close. It’s probably going to be Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.”

The future of tax and trade policy

“On tax policy, personally, I think [a Trump Administration] would be much better and a lot of executives see it that way, because you have to remember that the tax law we wrote in 2017, the individual side of that tax code has many expiring provisions, some of which hit small and medium-sized businesses, and then we have some corporate provisions like the research and development tax credit and expensing provisions, those are all up for grabs.

The next presidency will help determine what happens there, so Trump’s going to be more pro-business on taxes. Biden is proposing to get rid of those things. And then, when it comes to tariffs, Trump is proposing a lot of tariff increases. Biden hasn’t reduced the Trump tariffs. He’s continued those tariffs, but I don’t think he’s proposing a whole new range of tariffs with respect to everything but China. On China, you basically have a bipartisan consensus.”

Concerns about nominees’ inaction on fiscal policy

“One of the reasons why I’m frustrated, like many Americans, about our choices for President is neither is proposing to do anything about the coming debt crisis in our country. Our debt is already as large as our economy. It’s going to go nowhere but twice as big as that. And so, we have an entitlement problem which is these entitlement programs are going bankrupt by the end of the decade and no one’s proposing to solve that.  We have to get ahead of that, otherwise we’re going to have a debt crisis in America and it’s not inconceivable to have a treasury auction failure in a short period of time — like in the next 6-12 months probably after we’re done cutting interest rates….

Right now, both of our candidates for President aren’t proposing to do a single thing about it. I think the only shot we have, given the political reality, is an entitlement commission but one with teeth that requires Congress to vote on it.  

I served on the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which was the last time we had one of these things, and it could be ignored by the President and Congress, and it was. So, you have to have an entitlement commission that says Congress is going to have to vote on this, up or down, no filibuster, no amendments, and then hopefully you have a President that’s willing to accept its results provided they’re substantial. That is, in my opinion, the best way we get out of this, short of Congress actually doing its job and fixing this problem in a way that gets us out of the ditch.

Uncertainty is the biggest challenge for business leaders

“I think uncertainty is the number one problem. There is so much uncertainty. There’s geopolitics. There’s NATO. There’s Ukraine. There’s Putin. There’s conflict with China. You have a war in the Middle East and then also, by the way, you have a bunch of tariffs that are being proposed, so you just don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what anti-trust laws are going to look like if Biden gets a second term. Is he going to double down on a lot of regulations? You just don’t know.Not to mention all the geopolitical risks that are outside of any government’s control so that’s what CEOs are trying to prepare for.

You tell them to just be nimble and prepared for: Here’s what Door Number 1 looks like. Here’s what Door Number Two looks like. You want a contingency plan for both scenarios.”

Future of the Republican Party

“Well, I am still a Republican, of course. I consider myself an anti-establishment Republican. Trump has taken over the Republican Party and it’s really a populism without any anchor to principles.

I’m a big believer that you want your party pledging fidelity to a set of principles and policies that solve problems, versus a person, and I don’t think a personality-type populism is durable, so I do think at the end of the day, our party, like we have in the past, will have a big discussion about what we stand for, what are our ideas, what are our principles, and who are the best people capable of carrying those ideas forward.

That’s not the conversation we’re having right now but if Trump wins, he’s a one-term president. He cannot have a second term because he already had one, so I just don’t think it’s durable and I think we’re going to have to have a real calling as to what we stand for and if he doesn’t win, that conversation happens sooner rather than later.”

Stablecoins as a mechanism to help avert a debt crisis

“I think blockchain has a lot of use cases, so what I proposed the other day is that we should advance stablecoin legislation because stablecoins actually create a lot of new demand for US debt. We talked just a minute earlier about potential Treasury auction failures, well, it would be nice if we created more demand for our debt and if we had a law, which there is bipartisan support for in Congress, to advance stablecoins, I think that helps put the dollar in the digital world.  It helps give people, who have bad currencies in some counties, digital dollars, and it creates new demand for our debt. So, I think there are a lot of good, interesting and exciting use cases for blockchain and for Web3, stablecoins are one of them and I think it actually helps solve some of our fiscal problems as well.”

By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – Earlier this Spring, Paul Ryan was the featured guest on The Armstrong Wiliams Showwhere he discussed the challenges of moral relativism and polarization in a digitized world and the major domestic and international issues dominating American politics.

The wide-ranging interview, accessible here via The National Desk , featured Ryan talking extensively about the challenges posed by our $34 trillion national debt and the economic conditions heading into the 2024 election. Excerpts of Ryan’s responses, edited lightly for clarity, follow.

The growing problem of moral relativism

“I think the biggest problem is this sort of rise of moral relativism. This notion that there are no fixed truths… And one of the offsprings of moral relativism, which is now ubiquitous in society, is identity politics and this is what concerns me about what our political system these days is.

The political class sees identity politics as the fastest, most sure way to win elections, but it’s at the expense of the long-term cohesion of our country. Identity politics, by definition, means we must divide. We must lump people into categories and into groups so that my group is bigger than their group so I can win this next election. And so that, to me, is a real cultural problem we have in society.

We can fix a lot of this by fixing some of our bigger policy problems. We can reduce the anxiety that gives rise to identity politics if you don’t have a debt crisis, if you have a secure the border, if you make our communities safer by cracking down on crime, and by doing the things we need to do to fix these problems. But at the end of the day, if we as a free, self-determining society – one that is embracing diversity of views and thoughts — can’t agree on just objective facts, which we’re being challenged to do these days because of all this digital moral relativism, that’s going to make it really hard for a free society to exist and this is what the tyrants are betting on.

They’re betting that America and that democracy will relativize itself into self-immolation. Now, I think they’re wrong and I think we will get it back because that’s what we do: We regenerate as a country. We regenerate as a free people because of our free enterprise system and the innovation that comes with it. I think we will have better technology and better successes and stronger economic growth than the tyrants who are betting they can run their countries better than we can run ours collectively together…. I think we’ll get there, but it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Who do you support in 2024?

“You know the answer to this question. I didn’t support [former President] Trump the last time. I wrote-in a Republican.

The problem for me is I’m in the camp with 70% of Americans who want neither of these people as our presidential choices. I don’t support Biden because of policy, and I don’t support Trump because of character.

I’m not a party leader anymore. When you’re a party leader, you also represent the members of your caucus. You help them in their political futures and careers, and you have to think differently and act differently as a party leader because you operate on a consensus. I’m out of government. This is not a new position for me. It’s one I’ve had since 2020.”

The new meaning of R.I.N.O.

“The definition of RINO is different than what it used to be. No one called me a RINO when RINO meant a moderate Republican because I’m a conservative Republican. Ten years ago, RINO meant if you are a liberal or a moderate Republican, you were a RINO, a Republican in Name Only.

Today, it means one thing and one thing only: Do you pledge fealty to Donald Trump or not? If you pledge fealty to Donald Trump, you’re a Republican in good standing. If you don’t, you’re a RINO and so, I’m proud to have that label if that’s what it means these days. It doesn’t bother me in the least.”

Standing with Ukraine matters

“I am a passionate believer that we need to pass this Ukraine supplemental. It’s a fraction of our defense budget, like 3%, and what are we getting?

We’re helping confront one of our greatest adversaries in Russia. We are not putting a single boot on the ground and this supplemental will help us rebuild our defense industrial base, which definitely needs to be rebuilt for our own sake and survival, while we defend democracy.

And don’t forget, there’s a China angle here as well. If Xi Jinping sees us cutting and running and losing our nerve to defend democracies and defend Ukraine, he’s going to take a run at Taiwan. If he thinks he can outlast us or that we will politically polarize ourselves to the point where we are not defending democracy or defending Ukraine, then he’s going to be more tempted to make moves that are against our interests.

More to the point, back to Putin, if we do not supply Ukraine with the weapons that they need to defend themselves and to defend their democracy, what is to stop Putin from going into some other countries?…

So, we should pass this. I know it’s controversial, but it really shouldn’t be because if we don’t support Ukraine and Ukraine implodes, Putin is going to take more territory. He is not going to stop at Donbas. He’s not going to stop at Crimea. He’s going to go into other countries and then we have a serious problem on our hands.

At the same time, if we support Ukraine, we show that democracy can stand the test of time and that democracies support themselves through thick and thin. Xi will think twice, we will protect NATO, we will rebuild our defense industrial base, and we will keep our troops at home – that’s what supporting Ukraine does today.”

Immigration reform and the reality of the filibuster:

“Every Republican wants to secure our border and I would argue there are some Democrats who want to secure our border, yet you can’t get these bills passed… I was a party to 3 attempts at immigration reform and every single one of them started with first securing the border. The challenge with this issue is it’s not a fiscal piece of legislation so you can’t use reconciliation, so it’s subject to a filibuster, which means it must get 60 votes.

Another way of saying it is it has to be bipartisan because it’s almost never that one party has the House, the Senate, the White House, and 60 votes in the Senate. It almost never happens. It happened once for the first year and a half of Obama’s presidency, and so that means you must make it bipartisan. Every one of these attempts at immigration reform, which starts with border security, falls down for various reasons because both parties can’t agree on the details of the legislation.

So, to secure our border, to do it legislatively, you have to pass a bill out of the House. The House Republicans did that with H.R. 2. It secures the border. The Senate has a filibuster, and it can’t pass a bill that does this.

If we do two issues in the next handful of years, we’re going to have a great century in America: Fix our immigration laws, which starts with securing our border, and get our debt under control by reforming our entitlement programs. We have yet to get the political consensus between both houses of Congress and the White House to get those things done and those are haunting us.  Those issues are big problems that have got to get solved and that have haunted us for decades.”