Chicago Booth Review Podcast Trumponomics: Could Trump’s Dealmaking Damage the Economy?

Randall S. Kroszner: There's always going to be theatrics as well as substance. And actually, I've been surprised they have been able to have as much of an impact as they have because there's always a discussion of fraud, waste, and abuse and government and how we can reduce that and we have to improve government efficiency. But it's been interesting that it's been a more targeted approach. Here's a particular agency and we don't think this agency is doing the right thing. So the first step, again, getting back to Art of the Deal, is shut it down. And then it's like, well, then you get pushback about it. Well, maybe there were some things that we really don't want to stop at doing. And so, Rubio, as the acting head of USAID said, "I'm not shutting it down. I'm just going to stop a number of the functions that it's doing."

Hal Weitzman: The first few weeks of the Trump administration have seen the President demonstrate how he approaches negotiations with threats of tariffs, how he closes down government departments without warning, and how what is stated as policy in the morning, could be overturned by the afternoon. What effect could all this have on the US economy? Welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, where we bring you groundbreaking academic research in a clear and straightforward way. I'm Hal Weitzman. Today, we're continuing our Trumponomics series in which we give you the Chicago Booth Review perspective on the White House's economic policies.

Chicago Booth's Randy Kroszner is a former member of both the President's Council of Economic Advisers and the Board of the Federal Reserve. What does he think the chances are that the administration can successfully pursue its economic agenda and what effect will it have on the US economy? Randy Kroszner, welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Randall S. Kroszner: Great to be with you.

Hal Weitzman: Now, of course, we're here to talk about Donald Trump's economic policy, which is, let's face it, a moving target. Anything we say could be moot almost pretty much as soon as we've said it, right? But in general, could you describe, is there an economic strategy there?

Randall S. Kroszner: I think the strategy there is really to boost US growth, and that can be done in a whole variety of ways, short-term and long-term, there may be some trade-offs that come in. Obviously, there could be some pain or negatives that come with tariffs, but I think the motivation is for ultimately, to have a stronger US economy. Obviously, there are a lot of debates about whether you would achieve it through that, but if you try to put the pieces together of, let's say, lower taxes on investment, so generate more investment growth, more productivity growth, try to make sure that we have a labor market that is solid.

And now obviously, there are debates about that of whether reducing immigration is going to make the labor market more or less solid. Obviously, it'll make it a little bit tighter, but what's the best approach to that? There's been discussions about whether you would allow more people in with high skills. And again, there's a debate about that, but I think the focus is on growth. And so I think all of these different pieces are about growth and income, and people feeling prosperous. Now, whether it all fits together, we'll have to see over time, but you can see how deregulation, government efficiency, lower corporate taxes are all pieces of that puzzle.

Hal Weitzman: It sounds so logical and rational when you describe it, Randy, but it looks so chaotic. And so, if we start with tariffs, which have been really the biggest story of the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, they haven't really been an economic tool per se. They've been a short-term negotiating tactic, mainly thinking of Canada and Mexico and border issues, which are not strictly speaking, not traditional economic issues. But I wanted to ask you, they've been used as this negotiating tool. We'll put them in place, then we'll immediately rescind them, all within 24 hours. Is there a chance though, and looking at the China tariff, which seems to be cooking for a longer period of time, could we be, in general, during this second Trump presidency, heading into a longer global trade war where tariffs go up, globalization kind of goes in reverse a bit?

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, you do remember that President Trump has said tariff is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. And I think he means that. Remember, he's created a Department of External Revenue so that he needs revenue. He knows that because he wants to reduce corporate taxes and he doesn't want the deficit to explode. So I think there will be higher tariffs and revenue coming from trade taxes in some form or other because he needs some form of revenue from that. But it's also, that's one objective, but there's another objective, which is exactly what you mentioned. It's negotiation to get particular things. And so, you threaten something like tariffs to get something in return. And it looks like that has at least been somewhat successful, initially. We have to see exactly what happens. But one of the objectives that the administration has is about border security and reducing immigration.

Another objective is about reducing fentanyl flows. And that's really quite tragic and we have not been very effective at that. Now, you could argue this may be not the most effective way to do that. It may not be the best way to do it. It may have other negative consequences, but it has both the revenue piece as well as the negotiation piece. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're going to go back and forth a lot because you'll see, well, there are other objectives that are there, whether it's immigration, fentanyl, et cetera. But I do think that there will be an increase in tariffs in general because that's a source of revenue. And I think people forget that. You have to remember before we had the income tax that came up in World War I, that was the main source of revenue that the federal government had. And obviously, the President has talked about McKinley and McKinley tariffs. So he has that in mind. Even if there is an important negotiation piece of it, there's also an important revenue piece.

Hal Weitzman: So there is a revenue piece, although I guess we could discuss where that's kind of a consumption tax. So we could argue about, or we could discuss where that money is going to come from. It maybe called the Department of External Revenue, but it may actually come from consumers who are going to end up paying those, effectively paying that tax. But I'm just wondering if in response, so one of the reasons that they tariff on Canada got reversed was because Canada immediately said, "We'll ramp up tariffs. Presumably China will do the same." If that were to be replicated around the world, then the EU and other large economies, what effect would that have on the US economy? What effect would it have on the global economy? And some of our partners, for example, European Union, their economy is quite weak right now. China.

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, yes. And again, this comes back to why is it such a beautiful word for the President? Because the US economy is just much less open than other countries. Not that there are more trade barriers, but trade is a much smaller part of GDP. Imports are about 15% of GDP. Exports are about 10% of GDP, so a total of about 25%, about a quarter of US GDP. But if you look at a country like Germany, that's going to be something like 80 or 90%. If you look at Singapore, it's going to be more than a hundred percent. It's really much, much bigger for other countries. Mexico, for example, Canada. So it is something that may cause pain domestically, but he's chosen a negotiating tool that's going to cause more pain to someone else. And so if you're going to be negotiating, and that's really goes back to The Art of the Deal.

I mean, people say, "Oh, we don't know what Trump is doing." You go back to that book, he outlined exactly his approach to things. So yes, we've never seen this in a government context, but if you go back and read The Art of the Deal about how he negotiates, how he thinks about negotiation, this is actually very much a part and parcel of that. And it's no surprise he's going to pick something that, yes, it may cause us some pain, but it'll cause more pain for others. And so, I think if you play at the scenario that you just described where there are increasing trade barriers growing globally, that's going to have a relatively more negative effect elsewhere than here. It's not good for the globe to have very high trade barriers overall, but it's on a relative sense, the US will be hurt less. And so if you're going to negotiate, you do want something that's going to cause more pain to someone else than to yourself.

Hal Weitzman: One of the patterns that we saw with tariffs was they were put in place and then they were withdrawn. As you say, that was a negotiating tactic, not necessarily done with an economic end in mind, but some other end of border action or something. So the rhetoric has been different from the action. I mean, the tariffs were put in place, but they weren't really put in place. It was a threat. Do you anticipate that might be... I mean, I'm trying to remember The Art of the Deal. Would you anticipate that might be the way that economic policy will work, that there'll be kind of threats, but maybe the action will be different?

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, I think not just on economic policy, but a lot of other-

Hal Weitzman: Sure.

Randall S. Kroszner: ... kinds of policies. So I think he would like to give consistency for investment incentives that are very much part of what happened with the Trump tax reforms back in his first presidency. And so, I think he thinks that that's important to give that kind of stability for economic incentives. But when you're negotiating these other things, he's willing to be much more flexible and make a threat on this, a threat on that. And again, picking something that's going to be relatively more painful for someone else than for the US. But as I said, I do think that the President does want revenue and so I do think that there will be tariffs. Exactly where they will be and how they will hit, that's going to be part of the art of the deal.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Would you be concerned about the effect of all this uncertainty on investment on markets, on the economy in general? Because there is a sense, even though we'll all get to studying The Art of the Deal again, but there is a sense that even within the administration, it's not entirely clear what's going to happen tomorrow or this afternoon. So that has an effect on how companies think about employment, how they think about growth, and how traders work on the financial markets and everything else. Would that be a concern, that all this kind of bluffing and negotiation actually has a real effect on the real economy?

Randall S. Kroszner: It definitely is a concern. I think, I mean, President Trump in his first term was one of the very few presidents who used something like the stock market as a benchmark of how he was doing. Most presidents don't want to do that, and although the President hasn't really spoken about that specifically since he's become president the second time. You know that he has an eye on that and his people have an eye on that. And obviously, with the tariff back and forth, you saw a lot of tumult in the markets and also markets turning down when the tariffs were proposed.

It's possible that that had some impact in addition to the responses by Canada and Mexico on the decision to reverse those because I think the President is very sensitive to that and wants to make sure that it's an environment where you're going to get growth, you're going to get job creation, and so you can't have too much tumult. One of the things that I think will happen is that over time, the markets will get a better feeling for the art of the deal kind of approach and see through that. The challenge is that they could become too sanguine and think, "Oh, well, he'll never actually impose any tariffs." And I don't think that's the case, as I've mentioned.

Hal Weitzman: Right. [inaudible 00:12:32]. I suppose just the negotiation requires you to do it at some point, otherwise it's always a threat. And then as you say, it's always discounted in which case it ceases to have any power.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yeah, no, exactly. People often ask, "Well, is it just a negotiating ploy?" And in order for it to be a negotiating ploy, it can't just be a negotiating ploy because if people see through that, then no one is ever going to respond. They just say, "Oh, okay. [inaudible 00:12:57]."

Hal Weitzman: So in your mind, we'll definitely have tariffs at some point. It's just a question of when and how much.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yes, yeah. And I think that's clear with China because there haven't seen any pullback on China, but I think those are more expected, and I don't think they've had as much tumult in the markets. Now, the President had talked about putting 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada before, so it's not like that came out of nowhere. But-

Hal Weitzman: And those have not gone away. They're on pause.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yes, they're on pause, 30-day pause, and the markets are going to have to work through that. Then the individual sectors that'll be most effective have to work through that. And then of course, and we saw this also under the first Trump administration, the way countries will respond is not something that's across the board, but try maximum pain points. So where is it that will be the maximum pain point on the US that Mexico can have an impact? Same thing for Canada. Obviously, the auto industry is a key sector there. And so, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty about, in the auto sector, and it'll be very interesting to see how the auto firms react to this as well as the markets react to the auto firms reacting.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Now switching gears, but continuing with this theme of partly economy and partly other things going on. We've heard a lot, haven't we, about Elon Musk and DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency that apparently just closed down USAID unexpectedly? I mean, again, this is partly about, I guess attacking the deep state or rooting out those who are doing their own kind of thing against government policy and partly about actually trying to be more efficient. But do you think though, given your experience in Washington, will they actually have a serious effect on government spending or is it mainly the political aim here?

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, I mean, there's always going to be theatrics well as substance. And actually, I've been surprised that they have been able to have as much of an impact as they have because there's always a discussion of fraud, waste and abuse in government and how we can reduce that and we have to improve government efficiency. But it's been interesting that it's been a more targeted approach. Here's a particular agency and we don't think this agency is doing the right thing. So the first step, again, getting back to Art of the Deal is, shut it down. And then it's like, well, then you get pushback about it. Well, maybe there were some things that we really don't want to stop at doing. And so now Rubio, as the acting head of USAID said, "I'm not shutting it down. I'm just going to stop a number of the functions that it's doing."

And so I think you're going to see a lot of that kind of thing of the extreme move first, then getting the feedback of like, "Oh, my goodness, this is really costly." Or, "Oh, my gosh, people are going to die because we're not getting the HIV medications out to them." We shouldn't do that. And Rubio explicitly said there's an exemption for anything that is life-threatening, but it'll be kind of that bold step forward. And then what do we learn? What's problematic, we'll pull back from that. So I think you're going to see a lot of that, but I've been surprised that they've been able to do it as much as they have so quickly and we'll see what happens.

There've been proposals about the Department of Education, other parts of the government, and once again, this is something that President Trump has talked about this for a long time. He doesn't like the Department of Education. He's talked about closing it down. I don't think all the functions can be eliminated. And also, obviously, Congress has to play a role in this, but it's a way of saying, "We're going to not do business as usual. Because this is government, we're not going to run government as usual. We're going to try to perhaps run on a more business-like basis or cut out some of the functions."

Hal Weitzman: So what is the economic, I mean, can you really save much money doing that?

Randall S. Kroszner: So yes and no. So if it's just reducing the number of federal employees, no, you're not going to save that much relative to the total budget. But let's say if you rethought the way that you did procurement in the Department of Defense, that could have an enormous, enormous impact. There's an excellent book called, Unit X about the attempt to have the Department of Defense be a little bit more like Silicon Valley and connect more with Silicon Valley. I mean, I think we've seen this now, particularly in the war in the Ukraine, very inexpensive drones can have much more of an impact than multi-centi-million dollar defense systems or other systems.

If we can get a procurement process that comes into, let's say, something like Department of Defense that is much more sensitive to that and is much more tech-savvy, that's where the big savings come. Saving some money on foreign aid in the US budget, that's not going to, I mean, it's tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, but in the US budget, it's not going to make that much difference. But if you can really rethink procurement, especially in something like the Department of Defense, then you have real dollars-

Hal Weitzman: Do you think DOGE will really go there, though? Because it does seem to be a little bit more focused on ideological purity right now than real savings of the kind that you're talking about.

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, you have to remember, it hasn't been around for that long, and so go for some quick wins, get some support behind it, and then the things that are going to take more study, do that over time. Because you wouldn't want to just disrupt the defense procurement process just like that, just cut off all defense procurement, or at least from my perspective, I think that would be much more dangerous than if you're going to experiment to see what you need to do, how things are going to react. Do it in one of these areas where it's less likely to have that impact. Although, as I said, there were life-threatening things that were related to what USAID and foreign aid were doing that I think they've pulled back on, that I don't think they fully understood the consequence of.

Hal Weitzman: If you're enjoying this podcast, there's another University of Chicago podcast network show that you should check out. It's called, The Pie. Economists are always talking about the pie, how it grows and shrinks, how it's sliced, and who gets the biggest share. Join host Tess Vigeland as she talks with leading economists about their cutting-edge research and key events of the day. Hear how the economic pie is at the heart of issues like the aftermath of a global pandemic, jobs, energy policy and much more.

So Randy, in the first half, we talked about The Art of the Deal. We talked about tariffs and government efficiency. Let's move on to talk about the dollar, something perhaps that's harder for the US government to control. I think I'm right in saying that the first time that Donald Trump became president, the dollar was much weaker. Also, inflation was much lower. So there was a very different environment now, dollar's strong and has strengthened considerably since he got elected. He, himself, has said he wants a weaker dollar. He said it's tremendous burden on US companies. What practically can he and his government do to weaken the US dollar?

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, one of the challenges is, getting back to what we're talking about with tariffs, is generally when you impose a lot of tariffs, that tends to strengthen the dollar rather than weaken the dollar. And so [inaudible 00:20:15].

Hal Weitzman: So that's one thing people have talked about these contradictory aims.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yeah, there's a tension there. One of the things that the president obviously has talked about is lower interest rates. And if you were to reduce interest rates, that's likely to weaken the dollar. I think because of the strength of the US economy and that we're pretty far from, well, we're getting towards, but still far from the 2% goal, I don't think we're going to see interest rates coming down substantially or quickly. That would be something that he can't directly do, but that the government could do that would affect the dollar. But when you have a strong economy and when you have threats of tariffs and interest rates relatively high compared with other countries, it's hard for the dollar to move down much.

Hal Weitzman: Right. And even without tariffs, I mean, if you want to improve exports, and that was one of the main thrusts, right? Develop manufacturing or improve manufacturing, make it more competitive, then it's hard to do if you have a strong dollar, right? A strong dollar obviously makes it very hard for exporters to be competitive.

Randall S. Kroszner: And so I think that's also one of the reasons why the offset is thinking about deregulation and lower taxes. And so trying to reduce the tax burden on companies and also trying to reduce the regulatory burden. That's part of the offset that's there. Also, it's been interesting to hear this talk about a sovereign wealth fund, so to try to provide more funding. There's also obviously been a lot of discussion about lower burdens on the financial sector to make it easier and less costly for financing to occur. So again, there are these trade-offs. Sure, a number of the parts of the program will lead to a stronger dollar, but to strengthen the ability to export, if you can have higher productivity growth, you can have lower cost of investment. If you can have lower regulatory costs that can help to offset some of the higher-

Hal Weitzman: Do you think it'll work? As you say, there're a lot of different contradictory aims, which means there is either going to be a wash or there's going to be winners and losers in some of the things you want to do. Plus, as I say, we're starting at a time when dollar is strong. Europe and China are relatively weak, so this is not a great time to have that aim when, as you say, it's contradictory to other things you want to do.

Randall S. Kroszner: And so that's why I think you have to look at all the pieces together. And so, I don't think that the President cares about the strength of the dollar in and of itself.

Hal Weitzman: Sure.

Randall S. Kroszner: I think he cares about it as an impact on US jobs, US manufacturing, et cetera. So he can work on these other areas that could help to reduce some of the negatives of the stronger dollar. But I think just given the weakness in the rest of the world, I just don't see there being a very strong push down in the value of the dollar anytime soon.

Hal Weitzman: You mentioned taxes?

Randall S. Kroszner: Yes.

Hal Weitzman: [inaudible 00:23:19] taxes, which is going to be a huge issue this year. Right now, we're not focused on it, but the tax cuts that were brought in under the first Trump administration 2017, those are due to expire this year, right? They included all sorts of provisions for expensing items, tax breaks for expenses. They included lower corporate tax rate, of course. Do you expect now that Republicans are in charge of Congress, those tax cuts will be extended? Will they go even deeper? There's some talk about corporate rate being brought down more. And then, what effect would that have on US massive deficit estimate that would increase the deficit by four and a half trillion dollars over the next decade?

Randall S. Kroszner: So a lot of aspects to that. So let me try to break it into a few pieces. So I do think that the, it's no surprise that President Trump would want to maintain the tax reform that he put in from before. And he has talked about going even further because other countries have continued to cut corporate tax burdens. New Zealand is, I just saw a report about, they have always had low corporate taxes. And now, they've said they're kind of out of whack because they haven't reduced theirs when much of the rest of the world has reduced theirs. So you have to think about that on kind of an internationally, international competitive basis. And so, you can see why there may be a push to reduce taxes further.

And so, if you look back at the analysis that has been done by some of my colleagues at Booth, they found that the expensing provision was very effective in stimulating investment because we've seen much more investment in the US over the last few years than in much of the rest of the world. Now, there was also a discussion that they would pay for themselves. I don't think that analysis did not suggest that they would pay for themselves, but if you're really trying to boost investment and then get productivity growth, that those types of provisions seem to be very effective. Obviously, this is a-

Hal Weitzman: Just on that, maybe that's a way of measuring it, is just whether increased investment. Forget about whether it paid for itself. That's something else.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yeah, so-

Hal Weitzman: Maybe you don't care about government revenue, you care more about private investment.

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, I think you want to care about both because you want to think about the cost of getting that and there may be alternative ways, lower cost ways to get that same outcome. But that is one way to do it. Gets back to our discussion from before. President wants to get revenue from different places, not just from the, not in the corporate realm. So maybe from external revenue as he calls it, as an offset. But also I think that number that you quoted doesn't have the so-called dynamic scoring part of it.

So the President and his advisors view is that if you have a really robust investment environment, you get productivity growth, you'll get more economic growth and that'll have an offset. Now, I haven't heard a discussion that it'll pay for itself. I'm not sure that it will pay for itself, but it may not have... If you get substantially higher growth, you'll get more tax revenues. And although it's unlikely to pay for itself, I think that 4 trillion dollar number may be a so-called static estimate that doesn't take into account the potential positive growth impacts.

Hal Weitzman: But it will have some effects on deficit, presumably.

Randall S. Kroszner: For sure. And so, that's why I said the President thinks a lot about different sources of revenue. He doesn't want to burden the corporate sector as much, but he knows he's got to get the revenue for somewhere. And that's one of the reasons why I think we will have tariffs.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. But I mean, do you expect tariff revenue to...? Well, I guess we don't know.

Randall S. Kroszner: I don't think they're going to be sufficient to do the full offset, but we'll also have to see. We haven't gotten a concrete proposal yet for exactly what the proposed change to the tax code will be. That'll come in the next month.

Hal Weitzman: I mean, some Republicans do really care about the deficit or at least say they do. And so, I suppose, is there any chance that the reckoning will come for that US deficit anytime soon?

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, certainly, I think Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary, as well as the President and his advisors will be very, very concerned if interest rates start spiking up because of concerns about the deficit. I think one of the reasons why he chose someone with a market's background as the Secretary of Treasury is someone who would be aware of these kinds of issues. Remember, Scott Bessent was involved in breaking the Bank of England and thinking about where weaknesses in government policy or inconsistencies in government policy, might be attacked by the private sector. So I think, again, that's something that the President felt was a good background because he wants to make sure that he's got someone there who's thinking about these issues.

Will the private sector be concerned about this combination of things? Will it lead to higher interest rates? And so, will he be able to fashion a package that he wants without getting the bond vigilantes to come back in? I don't know about that, but he, I think, has consciously chosen a treasury secretary who understands that and will think about that. And they're going to see, as we can see already with the tariffs, there'll be proposals, there'll be pullbacks, there'll be learning that goes on, both from market reactions and sort of what can be gotten as part of the art of the deal.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Finally, I wanted to ask you about deregulation. There's this executive order that went out that said that the federal government has to remove 10 existing regulations for every new one. Again, as you said earlier, this is the kind of thing that governments always say. They want to cut red tape, but there's already a lot of discussion that this is probably not very meaningful because you could just remove not very important regulation like guidance and then put more regulation that's significant in place. And in fact, I think there was a less, maybe it was a five-for-one or something in the first Trump administration that basically didn't do very much. Do you think there's really going to be any progress in cutting red tape and where would that actually make a difference to the economy?

Randall S. Kroszner: I think DOGE and the President are very serious about that. I think you're right. It's sort of a five-for-one or ten-for-one, that's a very nice rhetorical flourish. But substantively, what is a regulation? Is it a line of, in the federal code book? Is it a formal piece of legislation? So I don't think that's the right way to attack it. I think it's more to think in terms of the substance of, what does this mean for ability for firms to do what they want to do, which is produce. We've seen, I think, some aspects of this with respect to the discussions about financial regulation. So that's an area that could have an impact. So if you substantially increase the cost of banks making loans or of the private sector being able to provide funding, that will have an impact. And I think there's been a lot of research that have shown, at least in terms of cross-country research, countries that have well stable, so well-regulated, but not excessively burden.

Financial sectors do tend to provide more credit growth, which fuels investment, which fuels productivity growth, which fuels overall growth. So that's an area where, if I were to pick one area where you're going to think about really trying to streamline regulation, make it effective, obviously, you have to have a stable financial system. You could say, "Okay, get rid of all regulation, and then it's much cheaper to provide credit." But that's not going to give you long-run growth. You want a stable financial system, a well-regulated, sensible financial system, but one where if there are a lot of excess burdens that don't really pass a cost-benefit test, you want to take those back.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Is there something specific you have in mind for the financial sector that you think would really make a big difference?

Randall S. Kroszner: So I think they're trying to look very carefully about the... Well, for example, there was a proposal that had been put out to substantially increase capital requirements. And I think it's very clear that the administration would not be putting in people in place who would think that that's appropriate. And so I think looking carefully about, well, where do we get the cost-benefit trade-off right? And that's something that would be excellent if DOGE did more of that. And if we got our agencies to say, "This is really a core part of what we do." Think about the cost and benefits. Think about, sure, there can be some stability benefits, but are they really worth the candle? Are there so many costs associated with it that it doesn't make sense?

Hal Weitzman: The Biden administration had a much more of a focus on antitrust, didn't it? And the expectation is that that, there will be that focus. Now, do you expect there to be a lot more M&A for that reason?

Randall S. Kroszner: Well, I think it's really important to remember that some of the antitrust suits against Big Tech started under Trump. And the recent Google antitrust suit was a Trump suit, not a Lina Khan suit. And JD Vance had said, when asked, "Who might you keep from the Biden administration?" He said, "Well, I think Lina Kahn's doing some very good things."

Hal Weitzman: Lina Khan, who's been Head of the Federal Trade Commission, of course.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yes, Head of [inaudible 00:32:37].

Hal Weitzman: And is seen as sort of the person who's been pushing antitrust.

Randall S. Kroszner: Yes. And particularly against Big Tech. So I think we'll have to see how that's going to play out. But if you look back to the first Trump administration, it wasn't that all clear on mergers and all clear on Big Tech. There was a reckoning. And we've seen that now with the Google antitrust case, which was brought through by the Biden administration, but was started, and the ideas behind it, and the ones that succeeded with the courts, were the ones that were set by the Trump antitrust authorities.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Well, Randy Kroszner, as I said, this is a moving target, so I hope we'll have you back to talk more about Trumponomics and The Art of the Deal. But for the moment, thank you very much for coming on the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Randall S. Kroszner: Thank you.

Hal Weitzman: That's it for this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast. But do you have questions about the Trump administration and the US economy? If so, you'll want to join the University of Chicago online at 6:00 PM Central Time on February 17th to hear Randy Kroszner address these issues in more depth at a virtual Harper Lecture entitled, The Trump Administration and the American Economy. This episode was produced by Josh Stunkel. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and please do leave us a five-star review. Until next time, I'm Hal Weitzman. Thanks for listening.