American Thought Leaders - The Libertarian View: Presidential Nominee Chase Oliver on China, the Border, and the Economy

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Chase Oliver is the Libertarian Party’s 2024 nominee for U.S. President. In this episode, we get his take on solving the border crisis, boosting the economy, and managing the threat of China and other adversaries.“Eventually, a lot of these countries do end up overthrowing their terrible, autocratic governments, and when they look for an example of what they want to go to, we need to be that shining beacon for them to look at. This is what free speech can give us: the most prosperous and powerful economy in the world, because ideas are allowed to spread,” says Mr. Oliver.“I fear what happens if we stop being the best and most free and prosperous nation in the world, because that’s what will allow China to truly ascend, is if we step away from our principles and our values. If we hold true to those, there’s nothing China can do to stop us because we’re going to be a more powerful economy, a more powerful military, and a more powerful cultural force around the world.”Mr. Oliver proposes what he calls a “21st century Ellis Island” in order to streamline the process of migration into the United States.“99 percent of people just want to come here and work, get a job, make some money, and possibly take that money back home with them to their family during the offseason if they’re in agriculture. We need to facilitate that through a 21st-century Ellis Island that basically says, if you’re coming here, come through a port of entry. Submit yourself to a background check and health check to make sure you’re all good to go if you are coming, and get to work. When we do that, we streamline the process of getting those peaceful workers right through the port of entry. And we can really laser focus our law enforcement on those who are trafficking human beings for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation, or for those who bring fentanyl, in order to basically sell it as Xanax,” explains Mr. Oliver.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

And eventually, a lot of these countries do end up overthrowing their terrible autocratic governments. And when they look for an example of what they want to go to, we need to be that shining beacon for them to look at. This is what free speech can give us, the most prosperous and powerful economy in the world, because ideas are allowed to spread. Chase Oliver is the Libertarian Party's 2024 nominee for U.S. president. In this episode, we explore his ideas on tackling the border crisis, boosting the economy, and managing the threat of China and other adversaries.

I fear what happens if we stop being the best and most free and prosperous nation in the world, because that's what will allow China to truly ascend. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Chase Oliver, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. Chase Oliver, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. So why don't we start here? I mean, how is it that you ended up running for president for the Libertarian Party?

Give me a little bit of your background here. Well, you know, first, it's how I came to be a Libertarian. You know, I started out in my politics being an anti-war Democrat because I opposed the George Bush wars. And when we elected Barack Obama, he made a lot of anti-war promises and failed to deliver. And when that happened, I decided to dump the Democratic Party. I was independent for a while. And luckily I ran into a libertarian party

of Georgia booth at a festival. And they literally waved me into the tent. And they said, you know, if you're anti-war, you're really pro-liberty. You're really a libertarian at heart. And let me explain to you why. And that started my journey. And then I ran for Congress in a special election because they needed somebody in Atlanta to run. And I thought, hey, I'm a libertarian in Atlanta. I'll do it. And from there, I ran for the

Senate. And a lot of people saw me get the runoff between Walker and Warnock. And they immediately were like, hey, that's the guy that needs to run for president. And I thought they were crazy. But here we are a year and a half later, and I'm the nominee for the Libertarian Party and I'm loving it. So you're structurally anti-war. So explain that to me. So I don't believe the United States needs to go to war unless, A, it's a war that's fully declared by Congress in line with the Constitution. But I think what we've done as a country is really since my entire adult life, because since 9-11, we've been exporting our values via the war on terror,

via the bomb, the bullet, and the drone. And I think this has led to further tension with the United States around the world. And I think a much better way for us to engage in foreign policy is to engage like we do with our neighbors in our neighborhoods. We engage in commerce and discourse and discussion. We don't shoot at each other. And that needs to be the way our nations guide each other when we interact with one another as international neighbors.

Well, let's talk about China. This is an area that I have been looking at for a few decades because it's very relevant to what you just described. Because I think exactly what you said is kind of what we try to do, at least across the Pacific. It's not exactly our neighborhood. But we didn't understand the intentions of the other side. And I think maybe to some extent we don't understand the intentions of the other side. And I think maybe to some extent, we don't even entirely understand them at the moment. So I think what you're saying works in a situation where everyone has the same goals.

Everyone has the same purposes. But if people have different purposes or we misconstrue the purposes of the potential adversary, like right now as we speak, China is waging what they describe themselves as a people's war against America, right? And that manifests in different ways. They would spend 16, I think the estimate right now is $16 billion a year on influence operations, what's called the United Front. I mean, these are not small sums of money, right?

And that's just talking about, purely about influence operations on Americans, right? So reacting to that with discourse doesn't seem to have worked. You're right. We want to engage in full, free, voluntary trade. And sometimes our partners are not necessarily being in full faith with that. And I think we see that with China. They manipulate the currency. They try to use other mechanisms to try to push themselves further up the economic ladder and give themselves a heavy hand in terms

of trade negotiations. What I encourage us to do is call their bluff and to keep up the trade because they're pumping up a bubble that will eventually burst. And when it does, the people of China are going to cry out for market liberalism when that happens. And just like any, you know, centrally planned economic plan that is manipulating the economy, that will eventually have chickens coming home to roost. And when it does, the billion plus people in China

who will be driven into economic recession will be demanding a better government. And hopefully, actually through peaceful revolution, in my opinion, push for a more liberalized government in the long term. But this is something we have to keep pushing as the world's leading economy. And we have to keep showing that

if you play by the rules of the road, your economy can grow and be that demonstrator. And I think the way we grow our influence with our international neighbors is not by necessarily just having central planners decide where we're going to measure influence, but trusting that our market forces can invest themselves in the developing world and create those market relationships outside of the realm of government. And that's what American business does so great.

I said on our debate stage last night, you know, it wasn't just Ronald Reagan that tore down the Berlin Wall. It was Wrangler jeans. It was McDonald's. It was people on the other side of the Iron Curtain wanting to engage in the Western trade and Western values. And I think we can continue to push that kind of stuff in East Asia and see a market liberalism over the next generation, hopefully. It's different engaging the people of a nation

and then a regime or the people of a nation and then a regime or the regime of a nation, or in this case, a dictatorship of a nation or the Chinese Communist Party. You can have utterly and completely different strategies for both from a diplomacy. Well, yes. I believe we always need to separate people from their government. I believe really in every aspect of both foreign and domestic policy, as Americans, we need to separate ourselves as people from the government quite often. And when it comes to engaging in foreign policy, and particularly with economic development, this is why I support programs outside of the government sphere. Things like microlending, where entrepreneurs inside the United States

and the Western world can directly inject capital into the developing world and really forge those relationships on a people level instead of a governmental level. Because government at the end of the day is a monopoly on violence and there's a vested interest in the elites on both sides to keep rattling the saber. So with regards to China, why do we keep rattling the saber with China? Well, because the military industrial complex wants to keep finding new weapon systems to approve and justify that by saying, well, see, we have an ascendant China we need to worry about, even though militarily, like, we are far ahead of where China is. And I believe if I were the president of the United States, naturally we'd have to engage with the Chinese government. We have to recognize we can trust them as far as we can throw them.

But what I want to see is more American entrepreneurs investing in China and seeing more Chinese entrepreneurs, as they hopefully liberalize their markets, being able to invest here at home and creating those market relationships. Because if people are working together, they'll demand that their government stop rattling the saber eventually. And so I think it's a far better way to create change working within that direct people to people relationship as opposed to trying to have these higher up talks between China and the United States that really doesn't go anywhere other than furthering the stalemate, furthering the division, and furthering the saber-rattling between the two nations. Okay, a couple of thoughts. The first one is if you want to do business in China,

you have to provide your IP for the partner company that you have to work with in order to be there in the first place with the understanding that they can use it in whatever way they want. And so I'll give you an example. Actually, Segway is a great example of a company. It wasn't particularly successful necessarily, but it was kind of a cool idea. A lot of people know what they are, right? Well, Segway went into China, wanted to do production there.

The partner company, of course, got the IP, as is always the case. They built a competitor, and ultimately Segway went into bankruptcy. I don't know if they went into bankruptcy, but the competitor that was built on the transferred IP bought the original Segway. So that's now a Chinese technology. That doesn't seem to me to be playing fair. Yeah. And I think as we expose more things like this, you're going to see less people wanting to send their money and send their economic development into China. And this is going to be hurting China in the long run. And so that's a great example of why some American firms might not want to do business there,

why they might want to do business in Vietnam or in Thailand or in South Korea, because they don't have those challenges with China. And so, you know, as the Chinese economy will eventually end up in recession based on what they're doing, again, with currency manipulation, other economic levers, as that happens, you're going to see people saying, why couldn't we get those American firms here? Why couldn't we get the investment? Why did those factories go to Vietnam or to South Korea or to Thailand or to Malaysia?

Well because they're not trying to abuse the businesses that are wanting to do business with them. They're actually having fair and voluntary exchange and free exchange. That's not what we have with China. We need to be pushing this further, this idea that you can't just steal someone's product because we're doing business with you and certainly not have to force that to be given to the government to have that information. Maybe there's an economic incentive someone could give to somebody that would make that

seem like a good idea. But if I were running Segway and that was the deal that was given to me, I certainly wouldn't have opened a factory there. I would have opened up a factory in probably South Korea. And they're a great trading partner. Well, yeah, I mean, it's very interesting because the way the U.S. and Japan, for example, had a very good relationship for a long time. In fact, I've read very compelling arguments that China kind of watched that relationship for a while

because the way it worked is the U.S. came over and said, we want free trade, let's do free trade, and we'll do, as long as we do free trade, we're going to be great friends. And the Japanese responded by kind of pushing extremely mercantilist policy in the other direction, a lot of barriers and so forth. But it's sort of like the Americans didn't notice or didn't care or however you want to play it. But ultimately, I think there were values were a lot more aligned, let's just say. That might actually work. Of course, the Japanese economy grew dramatically.

It became one of the largest in the world through that process. China kind of, you know, again, people have argued that, did kind of the same thing, but the problem was that they had a communist dictatorship at the top, kind of pulling the strings, opening up, liberalizing economically in certain ways, in certain highly beneficial ways, but not liberalizing from the perspective politically. Oh, yeah.

Right, yeah. We need to express those contrasts and differences in values. Like, you know know I'm here at, you know, we're here at Freedom Fest. I'm sure there are people here who I vehemently disagree with. I was on a debate stage with a couple last night but we were able to have very good discourse, disagree with one another without saying we need to report somebody to somebody else to say what they said. That's actually a better world that creates more conducive growth and as the United States we need to keep that being that shining example And so the best way for us to combat that overseas is for us to combat the creeping censorship

That's happening here in the United States We need to be pushing back against that and saying we need to keep ourselves as the most free and expressive nation on earth to be the beacon and the shining beacon that other nations can look to and eventually a lot of these Countries do end up for overthrowing their terrible autocratic governments And when they will look for an example of what they want to go to, we need to be that shining beacon for them to look at. This is what free speech can give us, the most prosperous and powerful economy in the world, because ideas are allowed to spread. And through discourse, the best ideas last, the worst ideas fall aside. This is the fatal flaw

of central planning, of communism, of socialism, is the fact that a very few number of people get to pick the market decisions. A few hundred people are making the decisions for over a billion people in China, as opposed to the trillions upon trillions of individual decisions they can make in the marketplace. That leads to the redundancy, that leads to the inefficiency, and ultimately leads to the death, starvation of people, because there's not enough resources to care for them. This is why capitalism works. This is why markets work. And the more we express that through our government, the more people in China are going to see that expose that. Because we now live in the information age. You can't fully cut everybody off the way they used

to. And the more we expose people to those ideas, the more likely they're going to overthrow their government and put those ideas in place in China. And we don't have to fire a single shot to do that. The people of China will one day rise up as long as we are being true to our principles and to the Constitution. I've been following your thinking about the military. And again, I think China's probably a good example, a good foil to discuss that with

because China's experiencing right now, I think by many measures, a dramatic military buildup where the U.S. is not. I mean, again, by many measures that I've seen out there. You could compare, for example, shipbuilding, especially military shipbuilding. It's something, it's orders of magnitude difference in the favor of China. There's a doctrine in China called civil-military fusion or military-civil fusion, I think, technically. And so the idea is that any technology or any development that has a potential military application will be done in conjunction with the military itself. And so the effect of that is,

many, many industries are having that discussion because of the centralization that we discussed, even when a company is ostensibly somewhat independent, of course, economically and so forth, there's still that, the long arm of the party is there. They practice a thing called unrestricted war, a system called unrestricted warfare. In the West, we call it hybrid, asymmetric hybrid warfare. Basically everything is weaponized in the course of your greatest adversary, which, as I said, they're waging a people's war against America. So there's a very real threat. I agree with you that there's certain people who have incentives to make things

look bigger than they are. But there's massive buildup, both in the nuclear arsenal and, you know, the air. We have a great article in Epoch Times about the sixth generation air fighters that that are being developed there by extremely reliable source of ours I could go on and on with this but essentially every aspect of the relationship whenever there's a potential in creating a military edge is being used that way it's not just uh I guess a conspiracy of the military industrial complex that this is is a big threat, that if we're not up for the task, could create a huge problem for us. Well, I recognize that China

is certainly building up their military, but I also recognize that there's a disparity. China is the second largest military spender in the world, but by a factor of five or six times, we're spending in the military. So even if we cut our military in half, we'd still be doubling our military investment to what China's investing today. And we're already the most military capable

fighting force on earth. I mean, a single aircraft carrier could take out a nation if we needed to, like in terms of our capability. Similarly with our nuclear capability. I think the first thing we have to do if we want to be calling China's bluff and insisting that they are not arming themselves nuclear and growing their nuclear arsenals, we have to signal to the rest of the world that we're willing to disarm some of our nuclear arsenal. Because we and Russia have the two largest nuclear stockpiles in the world. And it creates a world on the brink. And so, yes, I understand that China's building up.

But I also understand that the United States spends so much in the military-industrial complex, far beyond what they need to, to stay ready, available, and able to combat China if China really wanted to start a war. And I also remind people that the United States itself is a heavily armed nation. We have the Second Amendment for a reason. And I say all the time, if China landed an aircraft carrier on the coast of California and tried to invade, they wouldn't make it to Utah before gun owners took them out here in the United States because we are a well-armed civilian population and they are not afforded

that freedom and that capability. But, you know, I recognize that China is an aggressor on the global scale. All we can do is lead by example, show what happens if we reduce our nuclear stockpiles, and that engages China to do the same. Hopefully we can engage Russia to do the same. But as far as military spending, yes, they're going to build up their military. It's part of the bubble that's going to burst eventually because, of course, it's central plan money. And, you know, I fear what happens if we stop being the best and most free and prosperous nation in the world, because that's what will allow China to truly ascend, is if we step away

from our principles and our values. If we hold true to those, there's nothing China can do to stop us because we're going to be a more powerful economy, a more powerful military, and a more powerful cultural force around the world. Nothing they can do will change that, in my opinion, because of the freedom we enjoy. A tiny little bit more on military. You're familiar with strategic deterrence doctrine. Of course, the idea is that you have the weapon, you stay strong because you want to not have the other person take advantage of you, which they will if they could, because they're a bad actor.

And you're not, as you've just very eloquently argued, or at least shouldn't be. And you're right. We do have to make sure that we're still maintaining vigilance. And I think the best deterrent is we do have a very strong and powerful military. I will never argue for a weak military. I think we need to have one that can protect ourselves from sovereign invasion, can be somebody that can, you know, be a true check against bad actors around the world. Certainly if someone ever wants to go to war with us, it will be the last thing they've ever done. And I think we need to maintain that.

But I also recognize that we just have a very bloated budget. And so there's lots of areas to cut in the military that would not remove readiness. It's just removing red tape, redundancies, bureaucracies that just blowed up the budget. We could streamline our Pentagon spending and actually have a more militarily ready force for a fraction of the cost of what we're spending today. It's just about getting our priorities in line and making sure we're not lining the pockets of lobbyists who are wanting to fund weapons systems that maybe we don't need. That's the other thing is a lot of what we build in the United States militarily are programs we don't really need.

They're weapons systems that are kind of outdated, but we keep making them because it keeps producing jobs when we really need to be thinking about the 21st century warfare, things like information, cyber security. These are the real 21st century battlefields that we need to be preparing ourselves for. Things like our infrastructure, water and electricity, nuclear power plants. These are the things that need to be more secure than necessarily building tanks for a land war. So I focused a lot on China and I appreciate you engaging me on that.

I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, domestic policy. You know, you talked about wanting to tear down the system. I think that was in your closing remarks or something like that. But you also, talking to you right now, you kind of believe in the system, actually. Like, we want to be the shining city on the hill. Isn't that the system? Well, I believe in the system as it's intended in the Constitution and as our principles should be having it. But what we have right now is a government that's so far away, straight away from those principles, to where we now have this massive lobbying force,

this ability where the government is picking winners and losers in the marketplace due to the bureaucracy and the way regulatory agencies control the way we make market decisions. These are the things we need to remove ourselves from because you're right, we're a capitalist nation, we're broadly speaking a market-based nation, but there's so many areas where there's this creep of socialism, this creep of market control and central planning that I want to sound the alarm on, that we can actually be much better than we are today. We can be more prosperous than we are today. We can grow faster than we are today if we start removing ourselves from the creeping socialism that's coming into our government. And that's not just, by the way, from Democrats. I mean, I think most people would assume that

Democrats are the more socialistic party in the United States, but Republicans want to do that, too, through their own picking winners and losers in the marketplace, through their own regulatory loopholes that they give to the giant corporate interests that really harms the small business who's effectively paying a higher tax rate than those big businesses. This is why we see small businesses as the largest job creator in this country, but all the profit seems to be going to the large corporate interests. Why is that? Because they can buy and pay for the tax code. They can get the carve-outs that they want, the deductions they want to get. And so their effective cost of doing business is so much lower, their profit margins are larger. We need to get back to a truly

competitive free market. And this is what we have. We have market capitalism for the average person, but we have socialism for the rich and well-connected. And that's a problem because it creates a top-heavy economy that's benefiting the wealthy and not benefiting the small business owner and the average family in this country. And so that's the system that I want to tear down, is this grift at the top that is allowing for so much influence to be happening to those who have wealth, and it's taking the wealth away from the average American family. And through market forces, we can correct this, but we have to get government out of those market forces. Libertarians are, I guess, not polling very high.

I mean, I think it would be fair to say. Of course, there's an interest certainly here at Freedom Fest where we are right now. There's a huge interest. What would you seek if you weren't to win the presidency? What would be the biggest win you could have in your mind through your candidacy? You know, one of the things we always think about is what I call metrics of victory. The largest, of course, being winning the White House, which, as you said, it's a very high hill to climb for a third party based on the nature of our two-party system.

But there's lots of other victories we can have. We can have ballot access wins, where if I get percentages in certain states, it's easier to run Libertarians all up and down the ballot in that state so people can see more Libertarian options in their ballot. They can become more comfortable with us, they can see us in the marketplace of ideas, and ultimately grow and win at the local level and start building up our bench.

We can win major party status in states. That gives us access to the primary ballot. So, like, the Libertarian Party of Iowa got to participate in the Iowa caucuses, a huge political event, because we earned major party status in the previous election. That's what got me on stage at the Iowa Soapbox, one of the largest political functions, as the first candidate who's not a Republican

or Democrat to ever participate in the Iowa political soapbox, is because we made that investment we earned that major party status. So those two things can help us build our party structure up, and then in addition to getting the ideas out there, the best part about running as a libertarian is we push our ideas out there, and the Democrats and Republicans in an effort to not lose votes, adapt those ideas to themselves and adopt them themselves. And we're pushing the Overton window towards liberty that way through the pressure outside the two parties. So a big topic right now, how the border should work. Given our current reality, there's people dying of fentanyl in America. I think you can convincingly describe that as a kind of

China waging war in America, the precursors for that. And they're kind of involved in, come from China, and they're involved in every sort of step in the supply chain, including laundering the money. And, you know, as there's been a lot more, let's say, flexibility through the border, and there's been a lot of this sort of coyote type organized crime running people through, that's also opened up a lot of this sort of these coyote-type organized crime running people through. That's also opened up a lot of the fentanyl. In fact, the strategy works hand-in-hand in making that happen. So how do you square all that?

Because there's costs associated with that as much as, and the current reality you have to deal with. Oh, yeah. So the border is clearly a crisis. I think every American can recognize that. But I think the reason why it is such a crisis is because government does a really bad job of streamlining the process to allow peaceful workers to come here and work. And that's what most immigrants are. You know, colloquially, that's, you know,

paraphrasing, that's 99% of people who just want to come here and work, get a job, make some money, possibly take that money back home with them to their family during the off season if they're in agriculture. We need to facilitate that through a 21st century Ellis Island that basically says if you're coming here come through a

port of entry submit yourself to a background check and you know a health check to make sure you're all good to go if you are coming and get to work when we do that we streamline the process of getting those peaceful workers right through the port of entry and we can really laser focus our law enforcement on those who are trafficking human beings that for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation, or for those who are bringing fentanyl in order to basically sell it as Xanax and cause ODs. I think that's fraud and that's wrong. Even as somebody who, you know, I'm a libertarian, I want to end the drug war and decriminalize all drugs.

But I think when you press a fentanyl into a Xanax pill and you sell that to somebody with the understanding that they think they're taking a Xanax and they OD on it, that is fraud and that is violence that needs to be addressed. And so if we can let these peaceful people come across the border through our ports of entry, we can laser focus our law enforcement at the border on catching those who are coming here to do harm. And that's what we have to do.

We have to separate the forest from the trees. We have to be able to see clearly who it is that's doing the harm and let those peaceful people come through in a more streamlined process. That will be more secure for the United States. It will be better for the immigrants who have some sort of status to work here so their labor is not being exploited, which also helps the American worker from having their wages drive down by foreign workers. So all in all, it is a better process to have a 21st century Ellis Island than the calamity

we have at the border or trying to put everybody into cages or trying to deport 10 million people. That's just not workable. But what is workable is streamline the process so we can pay better attention to those who might be coming into the country to do harm to us. Doesn't that overload the social safety net? Well, I believe as a libertarian we can chew gum and walk at the same time. And part of that is tearing down the entitlements and the welfare system as it exists. Texas is the

second largest state in the Union. They have the second largest number of illegal immigrants in the nation and a study at Rice University actually showed that in fiscal year 2018 that they were actually a net benefit to the tax base of 422 million dollars, something like that number. And so while they do use social services they also pay sales tax, they pay property tax via their rent being passed, the tax being passed on to them. They pay all sorts of excise taxes and other taxes. And many of them also, through a false social security card, actually pay into the social security system and the entitlement system without ever being able to collect. And so ultimately, immigrants

are actually an economic net benefit to the United States. This idea that they're a drain is true in some cases, but ultimately when you look at the broad spectrum of it, they're actually a net benefit. They grow the economic pie. So many immigrants or children of immigrants are leading the Fortune 500 companies that we see today. And so to me, I think it's actually good that we're bringing people in who are industrious, who want to work hard and create something and exercise their full potential in the free market in the United States. That makes a ton of sense to me. I'm a child of immigrants myself with the same kind of vision. I think the argument is that the people that come here using the standard process are more likely to be exactly the people that you just described. Most people who want to come through the standard process, absolutely, are those industrious, hardworking folks. But there are so many people who get sidelined out of the process or it takes too long, it's

too costly. And that's when they come across illegally. That's when they weigh the benefit, the cost benefit of, hey, do I want to come through this process that's costly, time consuming, could take a while and I might not see that benefit for a minute? Or do I want to take the risk of having a coyote cart me across the border and being able to start working the economy tomorrow? And I think if we streamline the process, that wouldn't have to be a decision that peaceful people would have to make anymore.

And so we would actually see far less trafficking happen that way as well. Well, we actually have to finish up shortly, but a final thought as we finish? My final thought is I hope your viewers can look at their ballot and recognize they have more than two choices. I hope they look at each one of their candidates. They check out their website. They check out their platform. Remove what the letter is next to their name and just vote for who they think is the best. And if that's what every American did, I think we would have a libertarian president by now. Well, Chase Oliver, it's such a

pleasure to have had you on the show. Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining Chase Oliver and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kelek.