A Conversation With Elizabeth Warren - P. Krugman
I knew and admired Elizabeth Warren’s work long before she became a senator. Back in the day she was a law professor with a special interest in rising rates of personal bankrupcty. Her book The Two-Income Trap, about how the stresses of families trying to get their children into decent schools pushed many over the brink, was a revelation. So was her dissection of the role of consumer fraud in the financial crisis.
She has been remarkably effective since transitioning into a political and policy-making role, too. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her brainchild, has been a huge success story — which is why Trump and Musk are trying to kill it.
She was able to make some time for me Thursday. Here’s our conversation; transcript follows:
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/a-conversation-with-elizabeth-warren
snip
Paul Krugman
It's been a much more exciting week in Washington than I would have liked it to be for this interview, because I'd like to talk about issues that are close to your heart. But first, reactions to Wednesday’s Rose Garden speech, the Trump tariff announcements.
Elizabeth Warren
So let me set the table just a little bit. I think that tariffs can be a useful tool in the economic toolbox. Right now in the United States, if you have a prescription filled, there’s a 9 out of 10 chance that it was manufactured overseas, probably in Asia, and that even if it was manufactured in India, most of the ingredients came from China.
You know, that's a pretty dangerous place for us to be. We get into some back and forth with China and all of a sudden there are no antibiotics for little kids with ear infections. So that can be a place where you put tariffs in place because you want to build a supply chain here in America. You're targeted about it, you know what you're trying to do, and you do it. You follow through and you make it stick.
Donald Trump's attempt at tariffs is just dumb. It's broad. It makes no sense. What do we gain by putting a big tariff on lumber from Canada, except that the cost of building a new house goes up?
Paul Krugman
Yeah.
(cont'd at the above link)
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