On this 'liberation day' I'm reminded of Norm's clip about going to war ... with the World.

Maybe just start with a hemisphere or some ripe continent spoiling for a fight and see how that goes first.https://t.co/Qque9xdxQ2

— Marchmaine (@Marchmaine) April 2, 2025

I take your point; Part 3 is where the votes are.

But the reason why Cass (and others) are at least interesting to follow is that the goal of Economic Policy shifts for them *isn't* a friend/enemy reward/punish model... it's a game referee model and the goal is to stop ignoring rules infractions because they benefit the current order (in the short term)... changing the rules *always* causes some disruption somewhere. Changing the rules stupidly (as Cass is implying about Trump) will bring about more and stupid disruptions (and by implication - somewhat unnecessary).

But in the end, the point isn't tariffs or no-tariffs, its addressing the lies about the rules - and who benefits from them.

It's not the very best Jon Stewart clip... but as far as digesting a pretty boring speaker (Cass), it has some value.

I think JB is wrong about McCain/Romney and I don't think he's GHWB... so let me see if I can break it down by the good 'ole stool analogy.

Leg 1: Economics/Libertarians
* He's explicitly taking down the Free Market fundamentalists... Markets are good, but markets are basically all about games/rules/incentives. There is no invisible hand.

Leg 2: Foreign Policy/Neo-cons
* He's explicitly acknowledging a multi-polar world order, and the goal isn't maximal containment, but strategic alignment; which means honey/carrots/sticks and the willingness to use whichever is needed. Pax Americana comes with duties from those who participate. But the era of hegemony is over and over-extension will lead to losing our allies in the medium term.

Leg 3: Social/So-Cons
* He's not a bootstrap conservative; he thinks the 47% has been ill-served by the economic policies of Leg #1 and that arbitraging labor *isn't* a comparative advantage in trade; the market should have rules that benefit families and the state has a role in making policies that protect and advance civil society.

None of those things are 'conservative' in the old Republican synthesis kind of way.

But, what Steward missed (this is pretty common) is that challenging the old consensus doesn't mean that the Left's solutions are vindicated -- he's got different ideas from Romney/McCain/Clinton/Obama/Pelosi/Trump/McConnel that he's peddling.

Basically everyone thinks he's wrong about everything, but from different angles. And that's ok.

I think the premise that someone like Cass is working with is that Trump and Musk *aren't* on-board. This isn't a Trump/Musk explainer.

Folks like Rubio have flirted with these non-orthodox ideas (they go broader than simple tariffs) but as Cass says, Politicians are lagging indicators -- they rarely lead the way. Cass mentions a few other folks on the economic side with whom I believe he has a direct line.

So yeah, that's what makes some of the Stewart interview 'funny' to watch, Cass doesn't have a mission to trash Trump... so he just let's Stewart's jokes roll over him... and he's pretty clear that he thinks Trump/Musk are not competently executing whatever plan it is they think they are executing (that's the point of the article). But his audience isn't Trump/Musk/McConnel or any of the Old Republicans or MAGA cultists... he explicitly says the targets are 40-under.

Post-Trump is pretty explicit in his by-line...

Come for the Jon Stewart fun, stay for the autistic nerd talking about the new-center-right economic policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgEQeLR-M0g

To me, Cass is interesting for his Pre-Post-Trump positioning...

I think he fumbled a couple answers ... I don't think he quite gets across his message that NATO doesn't have to be destroyed to become renewed/reordered effectively (it kinda gets tacked on at the end after he meanders a bit); and I think he's too circumspect 'implying' what he pretty much says, which is that the Trump Admin is poorly run and even if you enact some policies that *could* be good, if you do them haphazardly and without a clear outline of what other countries can do to amend behaviors to bring trade into alignment... then you aren't doing good policies at all. Or, per usual, the Trump Admin undermines everything it touches. It's pretty clear that his long-term Post-Trump objective is tied to younger parts of the party... but he doesn't define his future goals as either supporting Trump nor directly taking Trump to task for botching things up.

He addresses this second point directly in this essay (probably written after the interview, I assume) where he critiques the administration for not articulating the point, direction or correction behind tariffs. So, if you were looking for a steelman on the Point/Purpose of Tariffs if handled by a competent administration, this is your article.

https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/americas-three-demands

As a supervillain origin story, he tells how he was the guy tasked by Mitt Romney(!) to look at the China trade policies... and turns out, there was a bit of a gap between theory and reality. This is before (I think) Autor's China Shock came out. So out of the Romney Bain Capital labs ...