The Pomp Podcast - #1531 David McIntosh | Insider Reveals What Trump Really Thinks of Bitcoin

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

David McIntosh is the President of “The Club For Growth” and the Co-Founder of The Federalist Society. In this conversation we talk about bitcoin, stablecoins, what is going on inside the US government, taxes DOGE, tariffs, and much more. ========================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $500 in rewards.========================Core is the leading Bitcoin scaling solution, enabling you to lock in yield by locking up your Bitcoin. Simply lock it on the Bitcoin blockchain to secure the Core network, and get rewards. No bridging. No lending. Just holding. Still your keys. Still your coins. Now your yield. Start at stake.coredao.org/pomp.========================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on, guys? We've got an amazing episode with you today. Today, we have David McIntosh. He is the president for the Club of Growth, and he's the co-founder of the Federalist

Society. David is one of the most powerful and influential people in all of politics. He's one of the largest directors of money that goes into politicians behind their campaigns and helps educate them on the various topics that they end up voting on. David is somebody who's all about free markets, all about private individuals and their right to all of the things that America is built on, and he happens to be a big Bitcoiner. And this conversation outlines not only what his thoughts on Bitcoin are, but what's going inside the US government, what's happening with Bitcoin, crypto, taxes, doge, tariffs, and much, much more. I really hope that you guys enjoy this conversation. I always learn something from David, and this conversation is no different.

Here's my latest episode with David McIntosh. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of pomp investments you should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp or his guest as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy but only as an expression of his personal opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only if you pull a muscle all of a sudden you realize how often you use that muscle so the bladder is exactly like that when it's working well we don't think about it but when it's not working properly you're getting up at night, or in the cases of many men, you may have some leakage. If this is something

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Head to Zappobank.com forward slash pomp to learn more. That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K dot com forward slash pomp. Go check out Zappobank today at Zappobank.com slash pomp. All right, David, I thought a great place to start this conversation is everyone knows politicians are out there. they have policies. But I don't think people quite understand how much time, money, and effort in Washington, D.C., both from donors and from a lot of the strategists, is going into Bitcoin and crypto policy right now. It seems like the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve was a shot heard around the world. Talk a little bit as to how is the D.C. circle talking about Bitcoin right now,

and what do they want to happen with the asset? So you're absolutely right. There's a lot of energy there uh you've got prior to this in the biden administration bitcoin was and crypto were bad words right nobody wanted to acknowledge it most members of congress didn't understand it our group club for growth interviews about 300 candidates a year and that's where you start you find out that more than half of them didn't know what it was didn't understand it they heard of it And a few understood why it was a value to growth in the economy, but also in Bitcoin in particular, a mechanism to ensure freedom for individuals to be able to control their own resources and be free of government interference if the government didn't agree with them.

And those are the ones that we got behind and helped get elected. But now with Trump endorsing it in the election, coming out really strong, setting up the Crypto Council with David Sachs and Bo Hines, who I saw on your podcast. Washington is a buzz because the White House is now squarely behind this. They're undoing the bad Biden regulations and they're pushing Congress to pass bills that go even further. The Bitcoin Reserve, Trump can set that up somewhat by moving things around in the executive branch, But to really fund it, it'll take some legislation passed out of Congress. Same thing with stable coins.

You've got stable coins in the marketplace now. But if Congress passes a bill saying these are OK, then that's going to flourish as a means of transaction. And then for a lot of folks in the crypto space, the market structure bill is really important. And what that does is solidifies the deregulation of crypto so that it can be, you can have innovation people can develop new products and the marketplace is secure in knowing that there's enough oversight so people don't get ripped off but it's not a heavy hand of government trying

to shut it down so it's a great time for bitcoin and crypto generally in washington i would say two-thirds of the people don't really get it don't know what it's about still but we work pretty hard at educating people what the issues are you probably heard about this with um elizabeth warren attacking bitcoin because she alleged it was used for terrorists and crime and we put together in i run a bipartisan group so club for growth is very strong on the republican side we're the largest political group for republicans outside of the party and i teamed up with a moderate pro-growth democrat group that called the moderates and together we formed a bipartisan blockchain innovation project or bip and we assembled six experts who came out of the

cia the treasury department the fbi the nsa and they had dealt with bitcoin in the use in international terrorism and other things and testified to members in congress we actually prefer if you use bitcoin because that can be terrorists can be tracked whereas if you give them a truckload of cash you can't track that so like lindsey graham had been listening to elizabeth warren and then he heard from these policy experts and completely changed his position and said okay i realize that we need to promote the dollar abroad and bitcoin and crypto is a way of doing it so it's bit by bit we're bringing the experts who know about this up to capitol hill beau and david are bringing them throughout the trump administration and so it's a it's one of

those unique opportunities in history where people's eyes are open their ears are open and they're learning about the great wonderful things that can come from bitcoin in the whole marketplace. One of the things that fascinates me is if you go back to Satoshi, the cyber cyber punks, if you go back to kind of the early days, maybe in the ethos of Bitcoin, it's very libertarian. It's very kind of outside the system, you know, at least small government, if not anti-government. But in a weird way, the U.S. government embracing it has been incredibly important and critical to the position that Bitcoin is in today. It was incredibly important for the sec to approve bitcoin etfs yeah right i think bitcoin would have been successful regardless

right but it accelerated that time frame and so how do you think about that like you guys are a pro-growth kind of we had a small government fairly libertarian yeah i think you and i met at one one of the early bitcoin conferences in miami i walked around there and told them i'm doing support for in politics for pro-bitcoin candidates and everybody looked at me and said can't the government just stay out? And if you do have to come in, can it be bipartisan? It's one of the reasons I chose to make what we do bipartisan. And yet now I think everyone realizes having the government agree, this is a good thing in the economy and we shouldn't be interfering with it. That's a pretty libertarian approach. And for the most part, that's where

trump and his administration are driving driving the battle now you still got the banks who don't want to modernize right and view bitcoin and other uh stores of wealth as competition to what they do in the money network um so for example the stablecoin bill has a provision that the banks wanted in there that you couldn't pay interest on the reserves behind the stablecoin well that's because they don't want to compete and have to pay interest when people hold deposits with them right and so there's a lot they've got a powerful position they've lobbied for decades up in capital hill and they're still quietly pushing back on this but the momentum is is with us and i think we're going to see good things happen stable coins is another big piece this everyone knows bitcoin

is kind of this unique asset with the strategic bitcoin reserve set in place uh every politician i talk to uh they always throw bitcoin in there like they know that's the hot word that gets you like kudos in the community whether they believe it or not that's like okay if i say bitcoin people like it i'm going to say bitcoin stable coins i think is a much more nuanced thing they've got to understand some of the technology they've got to understand uh this is a way for the us dollar to actually get more global adoption what are you seeing there both in the bill but also maybe with the conversations with various politicians their interest in the stable coins themselves interesting almost that's the focal point for a lot of them right now. It has strong bipartisan support in

the Senate and the House. And the administration, talking to Beau and his group, they see this, as you point out, as a way of solidifying the use of the dollar around the world and for trade in transactions. I think the key is not to put too many burdens on it, regulatory burdens, so that we can see a bunch of different stablecoins come into the marketplace. The other one is a bill the libertarian part of us supports, and that's a ban on the central government digital coin. Because the Federal Reserve said, oh, you want a stablecoin? Well, we'll make one and we'll control it. Well, from a liberty standpoint, the problem with that is that the government then knows every transaction that you've entered into. And so there's strong

opposition on that. President Trump in the campaign said he would never allow one to be developed. Thomas Emmer up on the House has a very good bill that got out of committee. Now, that's not bipartisan. The Democrats still like the government involved in things, if truth be told so they haven't come on board on the ban on the uh i think it's a cbdc central bank digital coin um but a government coin but i think at least as long as the trump administration's there you're not going to see one of those and when we think about this uh kind of stablecoin thing there is uh onshore stablecoin issuers like uh circle and many many others that exist and then there are ones that i think people call offshore like a tether right um it seems like

tether is winning in the market outside the united states for sure uh but also they may be coming to the united states now and it's like what are you hearing about kind of the competition right there there seems to be these two different issuers um both of them seem to be doing a good job in their respective kind of strategies and markets but it feels like we're heating up for kind of a stable coin war a little bit between these uh different issuers yeah no exactly and typically that means things stop up on capitol hill right they want the industry to reach a consensus on what the issues are all about you know you've got in the marketplace the difference of is it only um u.s treasuries and u.s backed dollar reserves or do you have other um liquid assets in the marketplace

behind your dollar coin and tether had that has historically had that the that that's a in my mind an individual choice of what type of asset you want to invest in or use but then the question as you point out overseas versus domestic and i think we're very much free traders at the club for growth so i would say if you're gonna have the government authorized stable coins don't limited to us only stable coins include others that are developed overseas that are in the marketplace and i understand tether is setting up a u.s component to meet some of those requirements but the more the merrier and more choices people have the market's going to work out the most efficient effective one and everybody will use that until they aren't and somebody new comes

along and beats them in the in their game and that's how all the rest of us benefit what's interesting about club for growth is you all have this very specific uh kind of pro-economic uh policy and viewpoint um it feels like bitcoin and crypto are the like productization of that viewpoint yeah right i always um i'm very fond of saying like don't complain compete right like just go compete in the market. Go do it. And it does feel like somehow Bitcoin maybe to start, and now some of these other technologies have taken all the complaints that people had for decades about monetary policy, fiscal policy, the national debt, the way that the system works, you know, all this stuff, and actually built a technology solution to then go compete in the

market. And so it makes sense to me that you guys would be so into, you know, kind of Bitcoin and crypto, right? Totally. That's totally right. It forces discipline on the government. You know, you can't inflate the dollar and expect to compete with Bitcoin that has a fixed amount and therefore isn't going to be inflated away by government policies. The Federal Reserve doesn't like that. Congress doesn't like that because they like to spend money, even if it means inflation. And so the competition suddenly becomes government with Bitcoin or other forms of stable crypto. and and the government knows it can't keep up with that we're all in favor of that because it promotes freedom it promotes economic growth the other aspect of it isn't talked about as much but

you can use that technology for all sorts of things to essentially update the internet if you think about it that way i've heard of companies that put car titles actually a new senator from Ohio, Bernie Marino, had a company that did exactly that. He was a car dealer. And so he figured out we'll use blockchain to record everybody's title. It's much more secure. It's out there. You can quickly find it and search it. And so if America says we want to be at the forefront of this, it's going to be like the late 90s when the internet revolution occurred and the dot com revolution all sorts of new innovative products that give us more efficiency more freedom more individual choice will come onto the marketplace and that's what the club for growth is

all about right is um the other thing that seems to happen with a lot of these technologies is uh it's very global in nature and so people are moving to various jurisdictions because there's tax competition. And I wonder what the implications on the US tax policy will be. There's places, I think Portugal has no capital gains on crypto transactions. Places like Dubai, I don't think have any taxes whatsoever. Puerto Rico has become a hotspot for Bitcoin and crypto holders because of the tax situation there. Do you see that conversation happening in Washington where people are saying, wait, is talent leaving because of our tax policy and these other places are gaining advantage? Or are people kind of like, hey, some people are going to always move to a

lower tax jurisdiction, but it's not going to affect our policy. Actually, in DC right now, those are sort of second order questions. It's the regulatory competition that they're trying to correct. Because when the Biden administration came in, issued its executive order and directive for the agencies to really crack down on crypto, SEC wouldn't authorize until there was enormous pressure. Any of the products related to it, The banks were told, we want you to, you know, we think it's too risky. Don't hold and don't bank companies that are relying on Bitcoin and crypto. So they're correcting now all that regulatory overreach.

And that was driving people to Dubai and even to Europe, which has had less regulation, but not great. Now we're going to set up a regime that attracts everything back here. at that point then i think people will start choosing okay we've got two favorable regulatory regimes america is the most stable because of our military and our big our position in the world but maybe i want to get a tax exam advantage i could see portugal attracting business that way that'll next wave create pressure to address the tax and make it even more favorable so i see that coming in the future but not yet and on that competition uh it does feel like a bunch of companies got pushed outside the united states because of the regulation uh kind of effect uh maybe the best

way to say it it was you know punishment was really driving the regulation kind of like the enforcement drove the rules um right we've now switched out a lot of the personnel and some of them were just hey timing of the market and you know kind of the switch of the administration and some of it i think was very much like hey we don't like the policies that these people had so So we've got a new SEC chairman, we've got a new CFTC, we're getting some of these other regulatory bodies are switching out their personnel. Are you excited about the new people who are coming in? Do you think that's a tailwind for the industry or are there still concerns that you have about some of these people who are going into these positions? Yeah, I'm very excited about the change out.

And they've been very intentional about putting people in place who would be favorable to Bitcoin and crypto. The best example is Paul Atkins, who was just confirmed a few days ago as the chairman of the SEC, 180 degrees different than Gary Gensler. And Paul's been on the commission before as a commissioner. He's wise about how to make the system work. And Hester Peirce agreed to stay on. She's kind of the resident expert in this whole area. And Paul and she work very closely together.

So I'm excited about the new personnel. And I think most of the heavy lifting will be done there first. We'll remove this over enforcement, like you said, enforce before you write the rules. We'll write clear rules that are very favorable, but protect people from fraud and other things. And then Congress will follow and codify it because Congress lets the agencies do the heavy lifting. And then codifying is important, though, because then you don't get, say, in four years, we get an administration that goes back to the Biden approach. That would be a disaster. And the uncertainty would be very bad for the industry. So Congress codifying a regulatory structure, putting in place and codifying a lot of the rules that are very pro-Bitcoin and crypto is a good thing. You and Donald Trump have had amazing relationships. Yeah. Then in the paper, at least, falling out a little bit, come back.

I think there was a famous article in Politico that was like, you know, the club for growth and Donald Trump made up and fell back in love again. Yeah. Yeah. Talk a little bit about the relationship. But also, I think you've spent time. You understand how he thinks. You understand how he's kind of approaching this stuff. And I think a lot about policy changes usually happen from the top down. Like, none of this is happening without Trump saying, I want to protect Bitcoin. This is important. I think it's both a campaign issue, but also something that would be good for the country. And so, like, what do you think his personal perspective is on this entire thing? One, I think he wants America to be at the forefront. Make America great again. He wants America to lead in this area. And then second, he's very careful to keep his campaign promises. Not every politician is, but I noticed that in the first administration, whether you agreed with the promises or not, you could count on him working to try to keep those. and he made some very strong concrete promises that were favorable to the industry. And so he's going to ask people to keep it. Setting up the council was a way of bringing in business expertise, outside expertise, to help guide the government policies for him. And I know David Sachs and Beau Hines are both in the Oval Office briefing him regularly about it. And that gives

them a lot of authority to go to the agencies and say, you know, the president wants to get this done. Let's do it. I also know that Trump is sort of the art of the deal guy. So, if there's a roadblock somewhere along the line up on the hill, I think he then would come in in a more personal way and say, okay, guys, what's the matter? How do we cut a deal and do that? And he knows that The Club for Growth is very much behind its policies here. That and the big tax bill are our top priorities, right in line with his. This tax bill, when people hear tax cut, they immediately think rich people are getting a tax cut. Right.

And I think there's a couple of components that people have been talking about, at least publicly. There's an extension or a kind of codifying of the original 2017 Trump tax cuts. Maybe you can explain a little bit about what those cuts were and kind of where we're going. But then there's also this idea of cutting taxes or people who make $150,000 or less per year. And I've heard Howard Letnick, Scott Besson, they're talking about like potentially having 0% federal income tax for these people. Let's start with the Trump tax cuts first, because that I think people think of as like, hey, it's a tax cut for wealthy people. But also the administration is trying to help kind of the everyday American as well. But how do you kind of see what this strategy is? So the extension is a problem that was created 10 years ago with the first tax cut bill. And the whole complicated budget rules meant that they couldn't make it permanent. Bad policy, by the way, because tax changes that just happen automatically are not good for the economic investment decisions.

So the basic decision in this tax bill is, do we extend those tax cuts or do we allow them to expire? And this is where it gets partisan, unfortunately. The Democrats' position is we want a $4.5 trillion tax increase, biggest increase in the country's history. And that's what happens on January 1 next year if they don't pass a bill. So their strategy is block it, block it, block it, so we get that tax increase. Republicans have committed, no, we're going to extend those provisions.

And they're not tax cuts for just the rich. They're tax cuts for small business that run their whole – there are several provisions in there. They're tax cuts for every American in terms of how deductions are made and different provisions in there. The average family would pay $2,500 more in taxes if they let this huge tax increase go through. If the tax cut that's already in place is not extended, your math shows a $2,500 increase for the average American family. And that's how you get to, you know, kind of this largest tax increase ever in history. Exactly. And what the Democrats are saying is it's a tax cut for the rich.

The rich tax cut, if you will, was the corporate tax rate cut. And that was important for growth. That was permanent. So that's not actually changing one way or the other. And when you say it was important for growth, is there certain things you look at? Is it just like pure GDP growth or the other things that you guys look at that say, hey, that worked? Investment in plants and deployment of capital, return of capital. A lot of corporations were parking money overseas because they had lower tax rates, corporate tax rates there.

They brought that back to the United States. that all spurs GDP is kind of the gross summary of all of those different activities and how the economy is better off. The other component in this is there's still some more things that we can do to spur that economic growth. We've supported one that would allow immediate expensing of building a new factory and capital deployment. Right now, you've got rules that spread that deduction out over 30 years which means appreciation stuff yeah yeah so that is something we've been pushing that's kind of in the weeds but would be an important accelerant in that bill the real fight now is okay if we extend this are we creating more debt and deficit and so the

house republicans wanted to offset that with spending cuts particularly reversing the biden giveaway on the like we call it the green scam deductions but all of his tax bills that targeted the left-leaning industries and gave them these incredible write-offs repeal that and give the average american a tax break by extending the lower taxes for them and then the 150 000 or less earners per year do you think that that is uh it sounds good but very unlikely or is there a path here where you know because people here's here's uh maybe my angle on it yeah is i saw that in the headlines i made a video say hey i just saw somebody who's in the cabinet talk about they want to give zero percent federal income tax rate to anyone under 150 000 i never

got so many responses of people being like i don't care what side of the aisle they're on hell yeah Yeah, I like that idea, right? No, exactly. So what is the likelihood that that's possible? So I think their theory is particularly, I think Howard is a big supporter of the higher tariffs, is you switch the revenue stream from income tax over to tariff money. I don't think that's very likely to happen. And one of the other factors, the social factors, is people who are in the zero tax bracket don't really care if the government spends money and borrows because they're not going

to have to pay it back. And so it lifted the pressure off of Congress to be responsible and not spend more than they take in. When I was in Congress back in the 90s, we created the first zero bracket for people in poverty. And I've now come to the kind of position, everybody should have a little skin in the game with how the government's run. So they pay attention, they vote, they talk to their congressman. So even if it's just a hundred bucks, you know, for people who are in the poverty level, people making 150,000, you know, they should pay their fair share. What I like is a flat tax that

would level the tax amount for most people would be a tax deduction rate reduction and that gets you the right economic what would be the flat rate that you think could work i think the flat rate that gets us to neutrality on the the revenue is something around 18 percent 18 federal federal well but what you do is you count the 15 in social security so for a lot of people that are at that 100 000 150 000 range then it's effectively three percent more for income tax three or four yeah so i mean you know if you think about it from that perspective uh 18 is a lot lower than what people are paying right you know 20 25 30 35 i think 37 is the highest rate right now exactly 18 you can have a line out the door people to sign up for that right 18 is not as good as zero but 18 is

better than you know 30. exactly and you eliminate all these deductions that distort the economy i I would keep the charitable deduction because it's popular and it builds culture in our country, but, but get rid of the others. So basically what you do is you go to a flat tax, everyone pays 18% and then you just remove all of the like gaming of the system. You say like, you're going to pay 18%. There's no games to play. You want to donate to charity. That's one thing, but anything else, we take out all these deductions. 18% is what you think is best with your money. Yeah. It's a significant decrease in your overall tax rate. Uh, but you're already using all the deductions to play these games anyways. So just put it down at 18%.

yeah that's interesting do you think that uh people could finally file their own taxes put it on a postcard yeah here's what i made last year you know with uh with tax day recently uh the donald rumsfeld letter always circulates around right and uh him basically saying like you know i'm not a dummy but i don't know how much i owe you so i'm doing the best i can if i made a mistake you know sorry no exactly it's so complicated and even with things like turbo tax that help you figured out that's also enormously complicated um it and the lobbyist in washington like that because they get special deals for their clients ah and so that they're the they're the ones who don't like my idea of a flat tax yeah well i do remember um there was this whole thing about the

opportunity zones and i read a big article i think it was a sean parker of facebook fame uh and napster him and there's another guy uh they went to obama and they basically made the argument like these are opportunities and this is areas where capital goes in it would be good for these uh areas whatever which all sounds amazing right and makes sense and you know uh you could even argue is a good idea the problem is then they say okay well where are the opportunity zones and then it became a free-for-all of like who can advocate for their area that they want to invest in to be an opportunity zone and some of them are areas where they definitely would qualify under the spirit of this rule hey that is an area where if you put capital in there we probably should

incentivize that to happen it's going to make the area better etc and then there's other areas where you're like hey man this just looks like this is like rich people playing a little bit of boondoggle right yeah so i think that that's also part of this right is like there's rules that are created with the right spirit yeah but it's the implementation it's the execution that really really matters and naturally whenever that comes up there's lobbyists they show up right that's right um i heard a term it was a cover of a book um that i recently bought i haven't read it yet uh so i'll let you know if it's good or not but it says uh the wolves of k street uh and i said to me i said you know i feel like i should go learn learn a little bit about what

goes on over there if people writing books with that uh that type of title and she's get your tickets now for the dog stars it's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear a therapist kill or be killed jacob elodi there are people out there they need our help josh shoot first and inquire afterwards margaret qualley okay tough guy and guy piers arm up the dog stars directed by ridley scott in theaters august 28th get tickets now this is where our position of less government that means there's less money to be divvied up less regulations to lobby for and then the wolves of k street don't have any clients because

instead of investing money and trying to get a government favor, they'll invest money in a plant or a business or something that produces things. So smaller government means you don't have as much wasted on lobbying and trying to influence how the tax dollars are spent. Yeah, it makes sense. You mentioned earlier tariffs. Given the Club for Growth's position on many economic topics, I'm assuming you're not a fan. What is kind of the club's viewpoint on the current economic policy that's being put forward? So our goal would be to get to zero-zero tariffs, right? And I do think it's a mistake to say

we have a problem with the balance of payments. The balance of payments doesn't tell you anything about whether there's a problem with tariffs. It just tells you that a country is making something that we want to buy. So the goal should be zero-zero tariffs. We don't have that. And the president's right to point that out. That's a problem. So if he's using the tariff policy to push for those negotiations to lower them, then that's a win-win on that. There's a cost because the uncertainty of whether you're going to have a high tariff or a negotiated low tariff means people will pause on their investments to wait and see what's going to happen. And he's correctly pointed out that China is a problem.

But again, the wrong measure of the problem. Balance of trade isn't what the problem is with China. The problem with China is they're not a free market. So they have government control and can artificially lower prices, can take things in and out of the marketplace. place so we should use the tariffs to force them to negotiate to accept our companies obey their contracts allow people to have property rights things that would make them more a free market economy that we could compete with and trade with so it's a little nuanced so you'd like to want to get to zero zero zero zero but we recognize there's a national security issue with China

And then do you think that the tariffs in their current form will incentivize reshoring of manufacturing, create American jobs? Let's just say that we freeze where we are. Very high tariffs on China at the moment, lower tariffs on most of these countries, kind of the 10% blanket tariff. Do you think it works? Is there a path to it actually helping? I don't think it achieves the goal of reindustrialization. OK. And I heard somebody in the Trump administration saying that's their goal. I don't think that happens. And I don't think we really want that to happen. I'm not sure we want, you know, a bunch of factories making goods that are just commodities out there, toothpicks and other things like that. I think let other countries, if they can make it cheaper, do that.

We want the high-end products where labor is paid more because they add value and create a phone that is a complicated computer and other high-end products like that. And the other thing is we haven't really lost industrial jobs on the net. They've just shifted from the low-end jobs that now other countries can do more affordably to high-end jobs where they add value and create an end product that is worth more. And so labor gets to be paid more. You still have about 20, I think it's about 23, 25% of the economy coming from that manufacturing sector. So it's a myth that we can go back to that industrial economy. What we can do is move to the future where zero tariffs let the United States continue to be the high tech, the innovator, the new products, and let the rest of the world buy those products from us. Let them make some of the lower end commodity stuff.

And you think, let us do the SpaceX's, the Tesla's, the weaponry, the, you know, whatever the kind of high end, more technical stuff. okay and then the other thing that's happening is where you do have manufacturing the pressure isn't going to be to rehire a bunch of employees the pressure will be to use computers and robots and so it it's a false vision that's being sold by the folks who want to have i call it fortress america with high tariffs on everything doge talk of the town a couple weeks ago seems somehow doge now uh quietly is not getting as much attention because everyone's shifted their attention to the tariffs um do you think they're gonna be effective i do i think one of the things that elon brought in were a bunch of smart people who could go in figure out

what the computers say is going on he tells these incredible stories of the treasury database not saying what it's for who received the money i mean those are just sort of business practices that need to modernize the government and i think he's very effective at that they're also letting people go my daughter works here in new york and her company before she joined it had gone through some layoffs and so she's starting as a new employee wondering where things are going now they're stable and growing and she's got a good job and we were talking about it she's not not a fan of trump let's put it that way but she said well maybe the government needed to go through some layoffs because 50 years of adding people without modernizing the workforce it was

time so i think those will be really high value ads that elon and doge accomplish what they shouldn't ask him to do is go campaign um i don't it was a mistake to send him out to wisconsin to try to campaign for that judge he was right and took the right position but it took away some of his credibility back in washington which he i would like to see him use every bit of his credibility to keep digging into the government driving reforms helping it be more efficient and getting rid of the waste yeah there's a couple things the administration has said is their goal and i just want to run through them and you tell me you know good idea bad idea i think it'll work i think it won't um bitcoin uh the united states will be the bitcoin superpower

of the world do you think that's a great idea okay um and i think the bitcoin reserve helps establish that um but also the continued lightning of regulation means you're going to see bitcoiners want to come to the u.s it's stable it's good and it's going to be a great discipline on the federal reserve it feels like we have uh bitcoiners that infiltrated the white house yeah right scott bessett owns bitcoin howard letnick owns bitcoin trump owns bitcoin beau heinz owns bitcoin david saxon's bitcoin and i know that some of them sold because they had a divest or whatever right but like they were bitcoiners that held these assets and then went and got these positions uh which feels very different like that is a huge sea change from any

administration in our lifetime no that's right it's unique it's happening yeah it means it's here okay uh the united states will be the crypto capital of the world which is i think everything else other than the bitcoin superpower i i think that's good too um and i think again as we were talking about it promotes that innovation um now there's a big difference between bitcoin and the rest of crypto um decentralized means that you're protected from somebody flooding the market with more of their coin and pocketing the value of that because um it's not controlled by one group or one's person that gives bitcoin a big advantage and is people are weighing what to invest in but i think the rest of crypto the market discipline will have them uh create products

that people can be more comfortable with the administration has said that they want to create an economic boom in america by using a three-pronged approach which is use tariffs cut taxes and deregulate do you think that we will have an economic boom in america and do you think those three things could lead to that boom uh unfortunately i think one of the things tariffs works against that goal okay i think that makes it less likely for us to have an economic boom but the other two will absolutely create an economic boom so one of our messages to congress was with the president's decision on tariffs it's even more important that you pass the tax cut bill and that you push through the deregulatory agenda i think the two of those will compensate for the

harm that comes from the tariffs it's uh it's fascinating how um everyone is so focused like the tariffs the tariffs the tariffs in a silo but it happens to this big complex economic system uh same thing i think with tax cuts like i keep telling people uh you think people are debating tariffs right now half people don't even understand what a tariff is wait till we get to the tax cuts in a couple of months like that debate is going to be just as ferocious if not worse right well exactly and then even worse so the regulatory reforms right because you want to put somebody to sleep you start describing fda regulations and how they approve a new drug well and it's easy to fear monger right it's uh oh my god the fda uh safety yeah the second the word they use

the word safety immediately everyone goes well of course we should be safe right what is actually driving safety versus what's driving bureaucracy and red tape is very unclear and what they don't tell you is we're we're we're saying we're the safety agency but at the same time they're preventing competitors from coming onto the marketplace of course you get two safe drugs they let one on and they keep the other one off and then we have to pay a lot more money for that drug the term or the phrase make america great again i heard uh peter teal in an interview say that it is inherently a negative or pessimistic view because it suggests that the future of America

is not as bright as the past. And so it's a very interesting way to kind of unpack this. But I think that it's been used by one half of the political aisle to signal optimism and a resurgence, right? So it's very kind of interesting from a psychological and a marketing standpoint and stuff like that, just the words that are used.

i've asked a lot of folks uh i'm a staunch independent and so i asked my republican friends as my democrat friends as my independent friends do you think that we should have a brighter future than the past unanimously everyone says yes yeah say great say do you think that right now we have problems in america unanimously they say yes if i go past that there's a lot of debate right so what are the problems what's the plan going forward how you know what's on uh inbounds out of bounds like that's where i think all the debate goes and so i guess the question just becomes like do we need to make america great again or do we need to simply just continue to make america great yeah and it is less about like hey the bat the past was better than the future

and it's more so just like america's america and let's like keep going and the marketing message works obviously become president twice but it's actually more of like let's continue this you know great thing we got going more so than like the past was brighter than the future right now Yeah. I think, and part of what I, with Peter's concern, is to say we've somehow diminished from being great. And I think America's been great since its founding. We have problems that we address. And so I would fall on the, continue to make America great. But the president has the mega branding and i think that also i actually think that does signal optimism we're going to get better we're going to continue to improve and make things great the the key i think to doing it

which is where you'll get all the disagreements is allow more individual freedom and have a culture that reinforces basic values honesty hard work the things that have made us great in the past you combine those two and that and have policies and visions that focus on that how do we increase freedom how do we have a culture that rewards integrity and honesty and hard work that's the the backbone of all the other policies that will let us be great i appreciate your time i always learn something when we talk you've got very unique views and i think that uh more so than than anything, you guys have the substance. You guys do a lot of research. You guys put quite a bit of time and effort into helping both existing politicians, but also political

candidates better understand kind of these pro-growth, pro-economic viewpoints that you share. What can people who listen to this do to help you guys, right? Like how do they engage with you all? How can they learn from you? How can they participate in what the club's doing? Yeah. Step one, check us out on the internet, theclubforgrowth.org. And you can sign up for free to be a member. And then you get information about the candidates we endorse, the policies we're working on. One way to look at what Club for Growth is, is basically a funnel for talent for men and women who believe in freedom, believe in limited government. And we start with a fellowship program. So some of your listeners could look at that and say, hey, I want to apply

of that next year take 50 young leaders they've been out of congress for a little while so late 20s up to early 40s and we teach them free market principles we teach them communications we're going to start teaching them about podcasts because that's the new modern form of communication and then they form a network and now there's about 250 of them all around the country they're on slack channels they're on text chains comparing notes hey in idaho we've got this problem. I saw that you had the same thing in Missouri. How did you address it? And so there's a rising network of young leaders who are committed to the right principles. We hope some of them, back on the political side, we hope some of them decide to run for office, to run for

Congress, run for Attorney General, run for Secretary of State, and then eventually have those people run for governor and senator and eventually president. So our mission is to train at the beginning but then recruit men and women who are committed to doing the right thing to freedom in particular in our government and so people want to get involved um sign up yeah you can become an activist for us if you want to contribute we tell you the candidates we think are really good and you can contribute um 100 of it goes to the candidate and then if if you really like what we do we've got what are called super packs where we come in and help the good guys win with that the good guys win that's a good uh it's good branding as well yeah all right david thank

you so much for doing this we'll definitely do it together my pleasure great to see you insurance operations today are fragmented and policyholders expect more that's why leading insurers run on add-in from premium collection to claims payout Addian supports the entire insurance value chain, giving insurers full control over how money moves. A single platform to reduce fragmentation, complexity, and risk. Drive revenue, control claims cost, and power your next move with Addian. Learn more at addian.com.