CFR-ASU Election 2024 U.S. Foreign Policy Public Forum

Panelists with distinguished careers in government, business, and academia hold an in-depth, nonpartisan conversation on America's role in the word. They discuss the trade-offs presented by different policy options both locally and globally and provide context on the international issues, choices, and challenges facing the next president—including trade and national security, the U.S.-China relationship, and U.S.-Mexico relations.

DEAN CHARLA GRIFFY-BROWN: Thank you, everyone, for joining us this evening. We are absolutely delighted that you are here for the conversation that we are going to have. I would like to thank our esteemed guests, as well as the Council [on] Foreign Relations, for organizing this incredible opportunity to have a conversation about what is at the heart, seemingly, of our county right now, and also across the oceans as we interconnect. 

We live in a world that’s at a point of extreme volatility and at the same time extraordinary opportunity, and the opportunity really lies in our ability to connect to each other authentically regardless of our background, regardless of where we come from, regardless of our perspective. And so this is why the opportunities we have like tonight to connect in discourse and have these critical conversations is absolutely essential. 

Our world is facing, even as we speak—as we watch the hurricane unfolding in Florida, we’re experiencing a lot of dislocation. We have planetary health to consider. We have extraordinary technology, which we at Thunderbird have at the heart of what we do as we train exemplary leaders across sectors to really create the systems that we want to have in the future to navigate complexity and the dynamics that are before us. 

And one of the things that is really, really becoming more and more apparent in our volatile world is the fact that, as the video said, we may be more interconnected than ever, but also we are more distant than ever. So we have to find mechanisms for conversation. And this is a very important one, particularly as we struggle against forces of globalism versus tribalism. The things that divide us should not be larger than what brings us together, than what we have in common. 

And it is in this spirit I thank you for joining us and this incredible opportunity. We have an extraordinary panel. We have an extraordinary monitor—moderator who is going to introduce everybody on the panel. And I just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Thunderbird School of Global Management here at Arizona State University, to invite you to come back whenever you have an opportunity, and to tell you how much we appreciate the fact that you want to engage in such a conversation. 

And with that, I will hand things over to our moderator. Thank you. (Applause.) 

LABOTT: Thank you, Dean Griffy-Brown. And welcome to the Election 2024 U.S. Foreign Policy Forum, cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Thunderbird School of Global Management here at Arizona State University. 

I’m Elise Labott. I’m the Council on Foreign Relations 2024-2025 Edward R. Murrow press fellow. I’m the founder of Zivvy News, which is a news platform aimed at informing young people about global issues. And I write a Substack called Cosmopolitics, which is about U.S. foreign policy and America’s role in the world. 

Now, tonight’s event is the first of four public nonpartisan forums that CFR is cohosting with colleges and universities across the country in pivotal states like Arizona in the lead-up to Election Day. We’ll be discussing America’s role in the world and the foreign policy issues at stake in the upcoming election. Our panelists will examine the trade-offs presented by different policy options, both locally and globally, and provide context on international issues, choices, and challenges facing the next president. Topics will include international trade, the U.S.-China relationship, U.S.-Mexico relations, national security, and more. 

And I’ve got to say, we’re not all going to agree. People on this panel have different positions and different ideas of how U.S. foreign policy should be executed, and that’s okay. It’s really here to have a lively debate and a discussion about the issues. 

And as an independent membership organization, think tank, and publisher, CFR serves as that nonpartisan source of information and analysis to advance understanding of global affairs and the foreign policy challenges facing the United States and other countries. And we welcome people of all different perspectives to weigh in on our debate tonight. 

The goal this evening is simply to raise awareness of the international issues that affect our daily lives and to help you make an informed decision before casting your ballot. You know, obviously, there are too many issues to discuss in ninety minutes so we’re not going to get to every one, but we do hope you will bring up those issues most important to you during the question-and-answer session. And we also encourage you to take advantage of a host of election 2024 resources available online at CFR.org, intruding—including a tracker of the candidates’ positions on international issues. We have podcasts. We have videos. We have explainers that delve into specific issues. One of the recent ones on Russia from one of our analysts just went viral with hundreds of thousands of views, and they’re really entertaining too. So you can also find articles by experts in Foreign Affairs, which you—I’m sure everyone in this audience already reads, which is the preeminent journal of international affairs and U.S. foreign policy, published by CFR. 

I’d like to thank the Thunderbird School of Global Management and Arizona State University for hosting this event, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their generous support of our Election 2024 Initiative. 

So I’d like to briefly introduce the panelists. You have their bios in your program. Michael Froman is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Shannon O’Neil is the senior vice president, director of studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg chair at the Council on Foreign Relations. They’re my bosses, so please be nice tonight. And Doug Guthrie, the professor and director of China initiatives, Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. 

Now, unfortunately, Isaiah Wilson is no longer able to be with us here today due to Hurricane Milton, and, obviously, our thoughts and prayers are with everyone over there. We’re thinking of him, his family, and all those affected by the storm, and we hope they remain safe. 

Now, as a reminder, this discussion is on the record. It’s being livestreamed. You can also watch it later if you didn’t get enough at CFR.org. 

So, to begin with, we’re going to do a five-question live poll. We want to get a sense of how you in the room all feel about a variety of foreign policy related topics. So at this time, if you could scan the QR code on the inside cover of your program, and the poll is completely anonymous. So skip entering a username if you want to, but we really want your unvarnished opinion. 

(Pause.) 

Everybody ready? Okay. Now please share your thoughts on the following. We’re going to be able to view the results in real time on the screen, and we’re going to turn to this again at the close of this session and see how your views may or may not change. You might hear something tonight that makes you think a different way. 

So refresh your screen if you don’t see the correct question on your phone. We’re going to start with the first question: How important is foreign policy when considering who you will vote for in the presidential election—very important, somewhat important, not important? Wow. Well, we are at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, so not a surprise: 89 percent. That’s quite amazing. 

Okay. Next question: How active should the U.S. be in global affairs—more active than it is now, maintain a current level of activity, less active than it is now, not at all active in global affairs—I have a feeling we’re going to see zero in this room—do not know? More active than it is now, 55 percent. Current level, 34 percent. Less active, 16 percent. Not at all active in global affairs, 2 percent. Like I said, this is an anonymous poll. (Laughter.) 

Okay. Question number three: Which of the following do you consider the greatest threat to U.S. national security—artificial intelligence, China, climate change, domestic challenges, Russia, or other? Domestic challenges, 40 percent. Okay. And China, 22 percent. Climate change, 12 percent. Russia, 9 percent. I thought AI would be higher, but 8 percent. We’ll talk about that tonight. 

Number four: When it comes to trade with China, how should the U.S. approach tariffs on Chinese imports given the impact on Chinese businesses and American consumer prices—increase tariffs, keep tariff levels about the same, decrease tariffs, do not know? Decrease tariffs, 40 percent. And increase and keep, about the same—pretty much the same, 24 (percent) and 33 (percent). 

Okay, Last question: How should the United States approach security along the U.S.-Mexico border—build a physical barrier along the full border, allow greater resources to broader surveillance and enforcement, address causes of migration from Latin America through aid programs and diplomacy, all of the above, none of the above, do not know? Okay. So the biggest—the biggest one, at 38 percent, is reform the U.S. immigration system to allow more pathways to enter legally, and then the second one would be address the migration—causes of migration from Latin America through aid programs and diplomacy at 34 percent. Some all of the above, and then 9 percent allow greater resources for broader surveillance, and a few at 5 percent build a physical barrier. 

So after the poll we’re going to—now that the poll’s over, we’re going to start our conversation. And like I said, and again at the end listen to what you hear tonight; you may think a little differently. We’ll do the poll and we’ll see where we are. 

Okay, Mike, let’s start with the bigger picture on foreign—on the importance of foreign policy. Given the economy is a central issue for voters in 2024, why should we care about foreign policy, you know, when making the decision at the ballot box? Talk about how you see economic statecraft shaping the foreign policy agenda of the next administration. 

FROMAN: Well, first of all, Elise, thank you for moderating here. Thank you to Thunderbird and ASU for co-hosting this with us. And thank you all for coming and spending your evening with us; we really appreciate it. 

Look, I think, as the dean said in her introduction, we live in a more complex international environment right now than we probably have in eighty years. We’ve got the return of great-power politics. We have wars in the Middle East, in Europe, in Africa, among other places. We have a(n) unprecedented competition between China and not just the U.S., but other countries as well that cuts across military, political, economic, technological issues. We’ve got issues like pandemics and climate change that cut across borders that require international cooperation. And yet, the mechanisms of international cooperation are probably more strained and more limited, and the institutions are in more need of reform, than ever before. So international issues are at a particularly fraught moment. 

And then, to go to your question—and we’ve spent the day here in Arizona—it’s been a great day, by the way—just to learn more about what’s going on here. Arizona is a great example of just how much its economic well-being is tied into the rest of the world. If you think about the great successes that Arizona has had, including now having more manufacturing jobs in Arizona than existed before the pandemic—which a lot of states in the United States can’t say—the incredible amount of foreign investment that’s here— 

LABOTT: You may not know this in this room, but Arizona is number one in international investment—here in Arizona. So that’s pretty amazing.  

FROMAN: Right, exactly. And it’s not just semiconductors, but that’s obviously a big piece of it. But it’s the whole ecosystem around technology. Arizona exports almost $40 billion of products, including electronic equipment and semiconductors, aerospace, transportation equipment, minerals, of course, as well. And Arizona has really seen firsthand—it’s been on the front lines of seeing just how its economic wellbeing is tied into its neighbor, Mexico, but also the rest of the global economy. And so those issues are not separable.  

What goes on in the world and all the conflict and strife, the role of the United States in the world, our capacity to influence the behavior of other states and to help organize processes of cooperation, that directly affects the global economy and the success of Arizona within that global economy. And it’s sometimes hard to connect those dots, but if any place can do it, it is Arizona. Because you can see right here, including in Phoenix, just how important foreign investment is here, how important exports are from Arizona, how it’s supporting so many new jobs here, and the growth of Arizona, and how people are moving to Arizona from all over the country, all over the world because of the dynamism of the economy.  

LABOTT: Yeah, my mother has lived out here for thirty years. And I’ve personally seen the kind of growth that has taken place here, not just in, you know, the cafes and restaurants, but also in all the companies that are moving out here, all of the growth and the people coming out here.  

You have a new article in Foreign Affairs about economic statecraft. And you spoke about this shift towards a more protectionist stance in recent U.S. trade policy. Talk about the key trade-offs here between strengthening domestic industries like those in Arizona’s semiconductor sector, but also maintaining that open trade relationship. 

FROMAN: Well, the global trading system, again, for much of the last hundred years, has really been based on the goal of efficiency—lowering barriers, liberalizing restrictions, integrating economies—to make sure that consumers, at the end of the day, got access to the widest variety of high-quality products at the lowest prices. Now, in some cases, it went perhaps too far. I mean, companies put all of their manufacturing in China, or we relied completely on Taiwan for semiconductors because they did such a good job of manufacturing at a low cost. And we came to realize that efficiency is important, but it’s not the only value that’s important. And resilience, redundancy, diversification, national security, those are also important values.  

So that’s what we’re wrestling with now, is how to trade off efficiency with, for example, national security. And semiconductors is a great case. We have made the decision as a country that we cannot be 100 percent reliant on Taiwan for semiconductor production, that we need to have a domestic capacity. That it’s good for our economy, lots of spillover benefits as we’re seeing here, but also it’s very important to our national security, given how important semiconductors are to everything—defense, intelligence, and the entire competitiveness of the U.S. economy. So that’s what we’re—that’s what we’ve decided to prioritize right now. 

All of these steps, though—anything we do to reduce our dependence on China, we hate our dependence on China, also raises costs. And we don’t like inflation either. And those are the trade-offs. So we need to have conversations in forums like this about what are the trade-offs? How much are we willing to pay at the cashier, at the checkout stand, online for our clothing, for our footwear, for other products that we would traditionally import from other countries— 

LABOTT: To maintain that level— 

FROMAN: To maintain—to have less dependence, and yet will cost us—end up costing us more. And that’s the kind of conversation that I think we need to have in our—in our political system right now.  

LABOTT: Shannon, let’s talk about the impact of regional trade agreements. You know, building on what Mike just shared you’ve written about the importance of regional trade. And how should the next president think about leveraging agreements like the USMCA to benefit local economies, especially here in key states like Arizona? 

O’NEIL: Well, let me just add my thanks for hosting us here. It’s great to be in Phoenix and at Thunderbird. And this is really important. We look at the last, you know, thirty or forty years. And we talk a lot about globalization. And some people benefited from it, and some people did not benefit from it. But what you actually really saw over the last thirty or forty years was much more regionalization than globalization. And so when companies and money and suppliers and customers went abroad, which they did—you know, we saw global trade increase tenfold. But when they went abroad, they more often than not went closer by than further away.  

So we know lots of companies—you know, we can name big companies that, you know, source from—you know, Boeing sources from fifty-four different countries and parts all over the world. But most companies, when they found suppliers or when they found customers, they went pretty nearby. And so we see a real regionalization of trade over these last thirty, forty years. And so you have sort of three big regions: Europe, North America, and Asia. And between those three big regions, 85 percent of all global trade happens. So if you look at South America, the Middle East, you look at all of Africa, you look at South Asia, including India, all of those countries together are just 15 percent of trade. So they were sort of left out of this real big push of globalization.  

So that gets to this question, how does regionalization matter? And so as we look at the United States within all of this, in many ways Europe and Asia, and particularly with China at the center, they regionalized more than we did. Their trade between those nations is higher than trade between North American countries. And I would say that one of the challenges of that, the lack of regionalization, or the limited regionalization between Mexico, the United States, and Canada has made in some ways U.S.-based companies less competitive in big global markets. So you need—as you start thinking about how do you make high quality, you know, very quickly but affordable goods, you need bigger markets. You need bigger labor forces. You need greater access to the global economy. 

And working with the countries around us is one way to gain access. And I would say, particularly for Arizona, when you look at the trade in Arizona, and the biggest single trading partner for Arizona is Mexico. Mexico imports many things into Arizona, particularly agricultural goods but also electronics and the like, but Mexico buys lots of things from Arizona as well. And especially in electronics. Yes, some of those, you know, consumer electronics and servers and things are put together in Mexico, but lots of the inputs, and really the high value added, come from places like Arizona. And so as Arizona thinks about and is having this incredible boom in semiconductor fabrication, incredible boom in aerospace, incredible boom in some of these other high-end, high—advanced manufacturing areas, who are going to be the customers? Some of those will be final goods that we send off to other parts of the world, but some of them will feed into Mexican assembly plants. 

And that will be a synergy, but really a benefit for economies like Arizona’s, like many across the United States. In fact, a majority of states the single biggest trading partner in export market for those states is Mexico. And so as we think about—you know, as the world divides up more because of geopolitics, as we see some of these tensions and the things Mike was talking about, you know, concerns about national security, concerns about redundancy, how do we find places that we trust, that we would be willing to source from or to sell to, that will keep our economy going, that will allow us more consumers than just the ones that are here in the United States? Where do we find those? And I would say our neighbors are the closest place to start. So regionalization is at the core of increasing our national security safety in the areas that we believe we need to, you know, be not touching on or not dependent on potential adversaries, but also keeping our economic competitiveness so we’re not just restricted to the U.S. market and to U.S. consumers, and to higher prices.  

LABOTT: I’m going to go to Doug in a second on, you know, Arizona’s economy, and we’re going to talk a lot about China in this discussion today. But I want to follow up on what you said about Mexico, you know, given Arizona’s proximity, and you talk about those ties. How do you see the new—the U.S.-Mexico relationship evolving under the Sheinbaum administration? And you argue in your book, The Globalization Myth, that regional economies will prove key. And as supply chains move out of China, Mexico is really the best positioned. How does the new president take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity here?  

O’NEIL: So Mexico just inaugurated new president, Claudia Sheinbaum. She’s the first woman president of Mexico. Started on October 1. So she’s a full week in, making her plans. But she does have a huge opportunity, right? We are seeing right now a once-in-a-generation fluidity to supply chains. We’re seeing a movement of trade all around the world. And we’re seeing companies looking for different ways—they’re thinking about and actually acting on moving their geographic footprints in terms of their production, and then also in terms of their sales.  

So Mexico is pole positioned, because of access to the U.S. market, you know, the largest consumer market in the world through the USMCA—so tariff-free access. Because of proximity, right? It’s easier. You don’t have to cross oceans. So things can get to places more quickly. And because of some of the U.S. policies, things like the Inflation Reduction Act, where there are subsidies for electric vehicle cars. Mexico is included in the umbrella in terms of manufacturing of cars. So it’s part of a North American—especially a North American auto industry and vehicle industry. It’s included there. So there’s lots of advantages if you are thinking about producing in Mexico.  

But what Sheinbaum needs to do is, I would humbly say, there’s a lot of things she needs to change, because Mexico is gaining foreign direct investment. Last year, they had $36 billion in foreign direct investment come in. But it’s less than it should be, given Mexico is a top fifteen global economy, has access to the U.S. market. It’s getting less than 3 percent of global foreign direct investment. So there’s a bit of a mismatch there. And most of the reasons, I would say, are domestically driven, right? They are things that the Mexican president could—if she so chose, could change.  

There are things like access to clean, affordable energy, where Mexico has a deficit right now. And there needs to be a lot of investment in energy overall, and electricity generation, and distribution, but particularly in renewables in Mexico, you know, for their electricity grids. She needs to invest in security. You know, Mexico is a place that has—it’s at some of its record high in terms of homicides. You’ve seen rates of extortion and other kinds of crimes growing over the last six years. So really investing in a strategy that makes people safe, makes businesses safe, that’s something else that she needs to do.  

She can invest in the kinds of infrastructure that really help companies thrive, and help exports and trade thrive. So these are roads and rails and ports and airports. All of those have been underinvested in Mexico. And so it just makes logistics more costly. It takes more time to get things from place to place. That’s something too she can do. So there’s lots of things there. And she can engage and deepen cooperation with the United States. You look at these last six years in Mexico, and there was a relationship between the two countries. There always has been and there always will be, because there’s so many issues on the table.  

But at times, you saw a bit of a divide, or a distance on some of the issues that really matter for, especially, U.S. companies, U.S. businesses, U.S. suppliers, and the like. So I think she has a moment, right? Any new presidency is a moment for a reset. As we all know, and we’re talking about today, there’s going to be a new president here in the United States. So come next January, there’s going be two new presidents—fairly new presidents, sitting together. And it will be up to them to see what kind of relationship they form. And it can be one that can really push forward their economy, can improve security, can deal with migration, all kinds of issues that are on the table. Or, it can be one where there’s a lot of tensions there. So that’s sort of to be decided. 

LABOTT: Doug, we’re talking about all these shifts in supply chains, moving, you know, to more regional supply chains and regional trade agreements. But, you know, you have written so much about China. and over the last forty years, China’s really built this—the most sophisticated manufacturing supply chain in the world. And it’s not just about exploiting cheap labor. It’s become a lesson for the world in building complex industrial clusters. So, you know, countries (sic; companies) like Apple, countries (sic; companies) like Walmart. So if this trade tension with China begins to grow, and we’re going to talk about Taiwan in a little bit, but if that tension becomes more acute what happens to the Apples and the Teslas and the Walmarts that are shut out of China? What happens to U.S. capital markets? 

GUTHRIE: So, first of all, before I answer that awesome question—it’s a wonderful question, Elise. But I want to also thank Thunderbird for hosting this. But I also want to thank you guys for coming. This is just so exciting to have you all here and to be in this conversation and in this room, with conversation with all of you.  

So, Elise, I love the question. And, as you noted, I’ve spent my academic career, most of which was in academia but I also spent some time working with Tim Cook and Apple to really help manage what was happening. So I have a good understanding of what was happening in this supply chain. And you said it, and I truly believe it. This is not a story of a deep, cheap labor pool and China stealing all of our jobs. This is a story of over the last forty years the now second-largest economy in the world has—but back then it was not, when this started, when Deng Xiaoping opened China’s doors. It has built the most sophisticated manufacturing supply chain in the world, by a lot.  

And so when we think about, like, well, you know, if there are tariffs on iPhones that are being built in China, Foxconn has a plant in Chennai. They can just build phones there. That’s not how it works. Foxconn is just final assembly. And Apple works with 1,600 factories in China, right? And so they’re—all of those suppliers—now, they’re not using parts from 1,600. But what they do is they’ve helped the Chinese government build very complex industrial clusters in things like touchscreen glass, or in things like the little bolts that go—that keep the camera in place, or—and those industrial clusters all learned how to create efficient manufacturing. How did they learn that? They learned it from Tim Cook’s operations team, right?  

And so, you know, there’s a tremendous amount—a lot of people think that Steve Jobs is the genius that made Apple the most profitable company in the world. He’s not. Tim Cook is. And Tim Cook is the one who took Apple into China in 2001. Now the interesting thing that Tim Cook experienced was that when they entered China in 2001, Apple—China had just entered the WTO. So they were no longer allowed to have a quid pro quo for market access. So China’s strategy in the ’90s to learn to build complex manufacturing was, you want to be in China? You set up a joint venture and you transfer technology. And we need to learn from you. 

But what they learned later, and with companies like both Apple—and Tesla is also an interesting case in this, because they were the first automobile company that was allowed to enter China without a joint venture. And the reason is because both the Elon Musks and the ops people that work for him and the Tim Cooks and the ops people that we were working with there, they convinced the Chinese government that you should let us be here because we are passing tacit knowledge. We are teaching you how to build very, very sophisticated manufacturing supply chains and run efficiently, right? And so those things all compete with each other.  

Now, the reason Apple is the most profitable—the second most profitable company in the world is because Chinese suppliers are willing to work with Apple for free, zero margins. They have to pay costs, which are labor costs, but they will work with them for zero margins, because Apple ops engineers are embedded in the factories to teach them how to be efficient. And so it’s just this very, very complex dance. Walmart’s dance is a little bit less complex, because it’s a lot of light interest goods. But Walmart is the single largest exporter from China to the United States. 

And so, like—so, when you ask the question, you know, okay, let’s say trade tensions rise. Let’s say that—and we’ll talk about Taiwan later, but let’s say something gets really tense. And suddenly Apple, Tesla, and Walmart are shut out of China. Which could happen. That could happen. And when I was there and we were dealing with Xi Jinping, we saw the signals. And we worked it very hard to make it clear of how we couldn’t let it happen.  

But if tensions got bad and they got kicked out of China, it’s not like they can just go to India. And they will no longer be the most profitable companies in the world. And U.S. capital markets will be devastated. And so it’s a very, very serious issue that I think people often think, like, well, you’re producing in China, just go somewhere else. It doesn’t work like that. And if this happened, they would no longer be the profitable companies that they are. And capital markets would be— 

LABOTT: Well, let’s bring it back here to Arizona. You’ve said that when you talk about kind of building an American complex industrial cluster, Arizona is ground zero. 

GUTHRIE: Yeah. And partly, again, one of the reasons—you know, I sometimes get accused of singing too many praises on how awesome China’s manufacturing supply chain is. And trust me, Xi Jinping also broke my heart. And so there’s a lot of—there’s a balance of the story. But the thing that makes China’s economy so powerful is that this is not a neoclassical economic theory economy of just, like, free markets and go get it, guys. This is about a very complex system where you do have these five-year plans that come out of Beijing, but then they’ve built what we call a new economic sociology, an integrated culture of innovative systems.  

And so the most important article, I think, that was written in my period of learning about things, was an article written by the greatest China scholar, Andy Walder. And he wrote an article called Local Governments as Industrial Firms. And it is amazing to me—like, I do a lot of research in second- and third-tier cities. And you go talk to the directors of the bureau of commerce there. These guys—you know, these are Communist Party officials, and they must be just—these people talk like managers.  

They are—they talk about KPIs. They talk about their new visions for what the new industrial cluster will be. They’ll talk about innovating within this system. But it’s also an integrated system, because the government has said, look, you don’t—you’re in Lijiang, and you’re—this is Changzhou. You don’t want to put each other out of business. So let’s do something complimentary. And let’s—and so it’s very much of an integrated local government and market system.  

What I love about Arizona right now, and I’m seeing this in Phoenix, is—well, I mean, this is the fastest-growing city in America. And, what is it, the fifth largest city in America? And it’s a place that’s building complex things, like manufacturing supply chains in high-tech industries like microchips. But there are other aspects of this too, because you don’t just build the factories and have cheap labor. What you also need is vocational technical education. You need people who can train lines.  

And guess what? Michael Crow and Arizona State University have targeted that as, we’re not just going to be a great science institution. We are also going to have mid-level and vocational technical education. And so this, to me, is just such an impressive ecosystem. Now, I love that we’ve opened the doors to TSMC. I would love it—you know, JA Solar’s talking about coming here. Like, let’s get them all here, right? And let’s keep U.S. and China together by being more economically integrated, not building borders, building walls, and having tariffs, and so on. 

LABOTT: Mike, let’s talk about long-term versus short-term policy choices on this whole issue. When considering economic policies, such as the CHIPS Act, for instance, or export controls, how does the next administration balance short-term job creation against the kind of long-term strategic need to remain competitive with China and in other global markets?  

FROMAN: Well, I’m going to say something quite unpopular. Which is I don’t think these policies should be advocated for or promoted on the basis of job creation. We’re in an economy that is basically at full employment. We’re at 4.1 percent unemployment. Wages have been going up faster than inflation—not as fast as they—not as far as they could have with regards to productivity increases over the last twenty years, but wages are up, employment is up, labor participation rates are up, and job creation is fundamentally much more about macro policy than it is about industrial policy in a particular sector or another.  

So I think when it comes to the chips, or it comes to electric vehicles, or other clean energy products, we should have a conversation about, okay, do we need to have this made in America? Either for national security reasons or because we think the electric vehicle is going to be as important to the U.S. economy as the original automobile was a hundred years ago to the U.S. economy. Those are reasons to engage in industrial policy, if there’s an externality that, for example, isn’t built in.  

That, you know, we don’t take into account climate change enough in our normal economic interactions, and so having a government subsidy to ensure that we’re deploying clean energy technologies faster and better made in the United States, those are considerations that could be taken into mind. I don’t actually think job creation is the strongest argument for this. Of course, at a micro level here in Arizona, we’ll see jobs created. We will see jobs created also, you know, in other parts of the country without industrial policy. It depends a lot on what’s going on with our overall growth rates. 

LABOTT: Shannon, let’s talk about the whole issue about China kind of going to these other—you know, we’ve talked a lot about China trying to, you know, double down in Africa, double down in Latin America. What they’re really trying to do is pivot away from their dependence on the United States. So as we try to navigate U.S.-China relations, what does that mean for Latin America? 

O’NEIL: Well, it is interesting. We talk here in the United States about de-risking or decoupling, or whatever you want to call it, and sort of moving ourselves away and less dependent on China. You know, China’s doing the same thing, right? And I would argue, perhaps more successfully than we are, right? They are shifting their trade. You know, last year, they traded more with Southeast Asia than they traded with the United States or with Europe. You look at the kinds of—they’re going around the world signing free trade agreements. They’ve signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which ties them to more than a dozen Asian countries and makes it easier to trade between them and also create things, you know, in terms of production and moving supply—you know, pieces and parts back and forth between them.  

They’re going out and signing agreements with some countries in Latin America, with countries in other parts of the world. So they are really thinking, how do we diversify vis-à-vis the United States and, to some extent, Europe? And so in that, they are also, as they look at, you know, the big industrial production that they have, the capacity in terms of all kinds of manufacturing. You know, electric vehicles is one we talk a lot about, but there’s all kinds of stuff that they’re making. They’re also looking for markets all over the world, and particularly as their economy has, you know, slowed down a bit. They’ve wanted to keep the factories going, so they have lots of production that they aren’t able, at least right now, to sell into their domestic market, to domestic consumers. And so they’re looking for other folks around the world.  

And so this is getting to the Latin America point. But what’s interesting is, you know, we see here in the United States, we see in Europe, we see in Canada tariffs going up on electric vehicles, worried about Chinese cars coming in, and the like. But some of the countries that, you know, are being—hit is not right, the word—but who are seeing a flood of electric vehicles come in are actually emerging markets. Are places like Mexico, that had 200,000 Chinese cars come in. That’s a big part of the jump in trade with China is finished cars, both combustible engines and electric vehicles. Brazil is putting on electric vehicle tariffs for China because they too want to protect their market.  

So you’re starting to see this wave of production that’s moving out from the world from China, right? China’s actual share of exports in the world rose over the last year between 13.2 percent to 14.4 percent. So even as we de-risk and decouple, they’re gaining more of the global trade market share, let’s say, or export market share. So as it’s happening, they’re looking—so Latin America, Africa, these places are, in some ways, a final market, right? That’s one thing that China sees. The other thing China sees is, as they think about the things that they want to do, right, they want to lead in electric vehicles and batteries. So do we, but so do they. You need critical minerals, right? You need the inputs.  

And many of these places, you know, Latin America has more critical minerals for the green transition in terms of the breadth—you know, the kinds of minerals. If you go through, you know, the lithium, and the manganese, and the cobalt, and the copper, and you keep going, they have more than almost any other region. And they have some of the biggest reserves of some of these as well. So if you aspire to be the biggest electric vehicle producers in the world, you’re going to need those critical minerals. And so Latin America, places like that. So there’s both so there’s both a, do I have the resources I need to grow my industry, or, frankly, feed my people, right? Latin America has a huge bounty of agricultural products. And they now outpace—you know, Brazil and Argentina outpace the United States as the biggest exporters of soy and other products, partly because of this de-risking, I would say. 

So as they look at Latin America, it’s one—you know, is it a final market? Two, is it the inputs that we need? And then there is a geopolitical aspect there, right? They want to be able to look at Latin America, Africa, other places, and when they go to the UN or they go to other international forums, they want people who will—you know, when they put a proposal forward will vote with them on there. So there’s a geopolitical, diplomatic side to reaching out to many of these countries as well. 

LABOTT: Tariffs—oh, go ahead, Mike. 

FROMAN: Can I just—since you’ve told us that we’re not going to always agree, can I disagree slightly with Shannon on this? 

LABOTT: Yes! Yes! Disagreement is healthy. 

FROMAN: Or maybe a difference of emphasis. I’m actually a little more worried about Chinese excess capacity in some of these areas, because they’re building up a huge amount of capacity in electric vehicles and other products. The U.S. has effectively signaled that we’re going to close our market to Chinese electric vehicles, whether it’s through tariffs or restrictions on the software and hardware that might be in a Chinese vehicle that collects data on the driver, and where the driver’s going, and what they’re what they’re doing or what they’re saying in the car, or whatever. I think Europe will end up doing something quite similar. Maybe not in the same way that the U.S. does it, but Europe is very nervous about the German and the French auto industries. And I think they’ll find a way of keeping Chinese products out.  

I’m not sure where all these products are going to go. Yes, some will go to Mexico, but there isn’t that much—let’s just take EVs. You know, energy infrastructure, electric infrastructure, across emerging markets and developing countries to absorb millions of EVs being exported from—potentially being exported from China each year. And I think this is the next round of either a bubble within China, where they suddenly have all these factories producing electric vehicles and no place to sell it to, or trade tensions with the U.S., Europe, and the rest of the world as well.  

LABOTT: [Doug], we know that you’re not a fan of these tariffs. You think they’re a disaster, you’ve said. And talk about—a little bit about the tariffs. But then I also want you to talk—I mean, obviously we’re talking about strategic composition with China, tariffs. But we’re dancing around what the real issue in the room is, and that’s Taiwan, right? 

GUTHRIE: Yeah. So, just to be clear on this, I mean, yes, in general, I think tariffs are a disaster. And particularly when we’re talking about tariffs on goods that, you know, certain politicians say these are attacks on China, they’re not attacks on U.S. consumers. It’s wrong. It’s just—and my guess is that these people understand that, but they just think that American consumers will believe them. But when—you know, China is not the one that’s getting taxed.  

When an iPhone is sent from China to the United States, is produced in China, Apple always likes to say, designed by Apple in Cupertino and assembled in China, but whatever. It’s Chinese made, right? And the tax goes on that phone. And that phone goes up 25 percent in cost. And that cost—you think Apple’s going to pay that? No. They pass that to the consumer. And so the logic here is very, very clear. And 300 billion (dollars) in tariffs that were put on China are taxes on the American consumers. Again, Walmart, the single largest exporter from China to the United States, all of those costs are passed on to U.S. consumers.  

However, there is one area where I think tariffs, if you think about them in sophisticated ways, are meant to operate. And so, for example, if you’re going to create a tariff that increases the price tremendously of some good by 25 percent or whatever, if the logic is you don’t just want U.S. consumers to buy them and those costs are passed onto consumers, what you want is U.S. consumers to say, huh, well, maybe I won’t buy the iPhone. Maybe I’ll buy the one that’s made here in America. And then you create demand on the American goods, and you create jobs. 

LABOTT: Well, we have to create the kind of quality product that, right? 

GUTHRIE: But just to be clear—and, again, I don’t want to get into a political competition here between the two people. But, you know, when you put 300 billion (dollars) on tariffs on goods, and most of those are Walmart goods, and they’re passed on to consumers, that’s bad. But when you put eighteen billion (dollars) of tariffs on Chinese EV vehicles—first of all, Tesla—all of Tesla’s Chinese-made vehicles are going to Europe. So it doesn’t hit Tesla goods. All of Tesla’s goods that are sold in the United States are being produced in the United States. But if you want to increase the jobs and the labor market, and you want to increase the cost of the Chinese EVs, and there are other sources that are going to create jobs here, that’s OK. So I’m for tariffs, if they work logically. And some of them do. It’s just that we haven’t seen that with most of them that are—that are targeted at China. 

LABOTT: Shannon, I want to talk about immigration. So we’re talking, if the United States, and specifically Arizona, want to build this manufacturing supply chain, complex manufacturing, semiconductor chips, they’re going to need multiple levels of the supply chain. They need machinery. They need complex factories. And they need the kind of, you know, technical and vocational education to manage. And they also need cheap labor. And, you know, they need—so in that theory, migrant labor would possibly be a good thing. How do we balance that with the kind of national security implications of this—you know, of this influx of migrants to the country? And know—and we’ve seen from the audience that they think we need, you know, policy options, reform in the system. How should we be looking at this? 

O’NEIL: Well, to pick up just on a few comments Mike said. If you look at the economy over the last few years, this is an economy that was growing very quickly. It was an economy in which unemployment was falling, so more and more jobs were created. And the number of Americans who weren’t working has gone down, and the labor participation rate also rose, and we brought in more migrants than we had in a number of years. So there was migration, but it didn’t keep Americans from taking jobs. In fact, more Americans were taking—we had jobs as well. So there can be sort of this virtuous circle that happens.  

We also have a good number of pretty comprehensive and sophisticated studies that show that, you know, places where migrants move tend to be more dynamic, that migrants tend to create jobs, they create and expand the tax base— 

LABOTT: And they improve the economy, actually. 

O’NEIL: They improve the economy in places. Now, there’s a little bit of correlation. Migrants tend to go places where there are jobs. But there is pretty significant evidence that they actually bring dynamism to places that they end up settling. So there is an overall benefit to the U.S. economy when we think about this.  

Now, there are, of course, you know, particular places where, you know, migrants come in and, you know, they have kids in school, so there’s some costs in terms of people coming. Most migrants don’t actually qualify for lots of federal programs and the like, so they’re actually not taking from, you know, food stamps or other things. They just don’t qualify for those sorts of things. But this is a question, you know, as we go forward, you know, how many people do we want here in the United States? It’s also a question, as U.S. demographics change, and they are changing, in that the people who are leaving the labor force, of which more and more will be leaving the labor force as Baby Boomers do decide to go play more golf or whatever it is they like to do, and be— 

FROMAN: Scottsdale.  

O’NEIL: Scottsdale. They move to Scottsdale, so. (Laughs.) Who are going to fill those positions? The other interesting thing is, yes, we want migrants who come in who, you know, have lots of skills and can join straight into the semiconductor industry here and do those sorts of things. We want the migrants who come in and, you know, we know that migrants are much more likely—migrants or their children are much more likely to, you know, found a company, or create a patent, or do other things than those who have been born here.  

But we also need migrants who will be—who are, who are not at the highest skill levels, who don’t have the, you know, physics PhDs, and the like, right? We look at the U.S. labor market and we have a lot of people in the middle. A lot of people who have, you know, a good amount of skills, they may not have, you know, astrophysicist PhDs, but they also aren’t at the bottom. And we need all of those in order to make this economy work and to make places like semiconductor labs—you know, there’s people who have to open the doors and close the doors and do all those things. So I think all of that, as we think about the larger economy.  

But then the question is, how do we get them here? And then, you know, from the poll is—I remember, you know, the winning argument was, we need to change our immigration laws, right? And that is the challenge. And there is a real challenge. You look at the border over these last few years, and the last two years we saw a record number of people, over two million each year, present themselves at the border. Many of them were presenting themselves legally. They were applying for asylum. But we don’t have the capacity to actually adjudicate those cases. We have over two million asylum cases waiting to be adjudicated. You know, we have less than a thousand asylum judges at the border. How do you even go through that caseload, right? It’s going to be years and years and years.  

So we need, one, greater capacity to manage cases so they happen more quickly. If they happen more quickly, I think fewer people would present asylum cases because they know they just wouldn’t meet the credentials or sort of the criteria that they need to meet. So that’s part of it. We need more avenues for people to apply in their countries for visas. And then they come here when they actually have the visa. They don’t come to the border to then apply for the visa. And so some of those challenges. And we need to think about what are the needs of our labor market here and adjust our migration, you know, categories and numbers accordingly. And so all of those things. 

Now, we all know that, you know, this isn’t an easy thing to do. But I think there are glimmer hopes in Congress. If you look back at last February, there was a Senate bipartisan bill that was put forward. It was—it didn’t make it past the Senate, but it had a mix of enforcement, of billions of dollars for judges and others to speed the system, and it had 250,000 extra visas of various legal categories that would expand the labor pool and people here. So I think that is the kind of solution, as we look forward to the next Congress and the next administration. Can you come up with something there that makes the movement of people—it’s safer at the border, but it also allows in the people that we do need for our economies. 

LABOTT: We’re going to open it up to questions in a moment. But, Mike, obviously there’s people on both sides that this is a—we may not agree on the tactics, but clearly immigration is a bipartisan concern. Why hasn’t there been a bipartisan movement to kind of integrate the national security concerns that Shannon is talking about with thinking about the labor market and how immigration—legal immigration and migrant labor comes in? How come there hasn’t been—I really don’t think there’s been this discussion on the margins. But you would think, with all these congressional discussions and bills and everything, that that economic component would be a bigger part of it. 

FROMAN: Well, here I’m in violent agreement with Shannon. (Laughter.) And I think, in fact, there have been glimmers of bipartisan hope. The bill in February that Shannon mentioned earlier. There was, what was it, the group of eight that came together, bipartisan, to come up with a package. And it’s not rocket science. I mean, there’s a piece that’s about strengthening enforcement. There’s a piece about building capacity and improving our immigration system. And there’s a piece about having a sensible legal immigration capacity. And I think people may come out on different places there, but the pieces are all sort of evidence. And I’m hopeful, once we get past this election—because immigration is a top issue around the country, even places that don’t have a lot of immigration, they’re not by the border, but it is a top issue of voters—that hopefully we can have a more sensible discussion here.  

And I just want to underscore how important that is, because of the demographics that Shannon referred to. If you look ahead, to the year, let’s say, 2100, China is going to go from right now 1.3 billion people to an estimated 700 million people. It’s going to shrink, because of the one-child policy and the aging population. India will be the largest country in the world, the most populous country, as it is now. Nigeria is likely to be the second most populous country. Japan is going to be tiny. It’s going to be 30 or 40 million people.  

LABOTT: So we’re going to need people here. 

FROMAN: We’re going to need people here. Europe and the United States, and particularly the United States, where we are—we do have an aging population, where Baby Boomers are beginning to retire. We need to bring in 1 percent or so of population a year to continue to grow. And that’s where doing all the things that Shannon laid out in terms of a sensible immigration policy that includes enforcement, but also includes a capacity to help promote legal immigration of all the sorts that we need here, is part of the solution. 

LABOTT: Doug, do you want to weigh in? 

GUTHRIE: I mean, I love this conversation because I just think it’s—again, I get frustrated when we talk about trade and it’s just, like, well, either we should be building all of our stuff here and sending it abroad or—and it’s about borders and tariffs, when I think this is a complex conversation. And I love the regionalism part of it. But, like, I would love it—and this is part of why I think Phoenix is ground zero for this, is because Arizona is, you know, this destination of foreign direct investment and strong relationship with Mexico. Let’s get, you know, TSMC here, let’s get JA Solar here, let’s get, you know, Shenyang Machine Tools here, let’s get Lens here, let’s get Foxconn here.  

And then we have this integrated economy. And here, again, we need not just the complex manufacturing and the vocational technical education, but we also need the cheap migrant labor. And, you know, that’s one of the third pieces of why China’s economy is so strong, is they’ve built the industrial clusters, they’ve invested in vocational technical education, so they have the line managers. But then they have the floating population. And the government moves those people around. And so there’s seasonal employment all over. Anyway, but it seems to me like all of these integrative pieces are there. And I love the idea of just creating regionally integrated global economies. And I think that’ll make the world a better place. 

LABOTT: Okay. We’re going to open it up to questions. If you have a question, raise your hand. What I’m going to ask everybody to do is introduce yourself. You know, if you are here at the university, or just tell us just briefly who you are. Ask a short question, so that we can get to as many as we can. I’m going to encourage the audience—the panelists to play off one another. We like a little healthy disagreement. And we’ll just kick it off. We haven’t—we’ve spoken a little bit about immigration. We haven’t spoken about Ukraine or Israel. So the floor is yours, Arizona. 

Ma’am. We’re going to just wait for the mic runner. 

Q: Hi. I’m Saundra Arellano, a Thunderbird alum. 

And I’m wondering if you all can help me understand. I’ve read several studies, that appear to be very reliable studies, that immigrants commit far less crimes than native-born U.S. citizens and are far less likely to commit violent crimes. So I’m wondering if you all can help me understand why when we talk about immigration we talk about national security. Anybody. (Laughs.) 

LABOTT: Shannon—good question. Shannon, why don’t you take that one? 

O’NEIL: No, that is a good framing. And there are numerous studies that show that, is that immigrants who come in are much less likely to commit crimes, they’re much less likely to commit violent crimes than the native-born population. And so some of that that we hear in the ether is just not true. You know, I think where often the national security concern comes in is partly misunderstandings and perhaps lumping things together. You think migrants come across the border. Drugs also come across the border. Other things come across the border. And somehow those are elided as the same thing, which they’re not, right? They’re different things. There’s lots of flows that come across the border. You know, legal goods come across the border. Animals come across the border. There’s sort of—and those aren’t all a part of the category. So that’s part of it.  

You know, I think where there is a concern, and fair enough in many ways, is that, you know, in the end the United States too is a—or we aspire to be a country of laws. And we have set laws, And we would like those laws to be followed. And so, I mean, any of you who have lived abroad, at least in some countries, you know, sometimes when I was living abroad and I come back and, you know, you’re at a stoplight at 11:00 p.m., and there’s no one around, and the light is red. But you know what? You wait. And in other countries, you know, if there’s no one around, the light is red, you just go, because that’s the law, right? The norm is that you go through. And so, you know, there is something about that, right? If we have a set of laws, then everyone should follow those laws. Now, we’ve talked about here is that those laws aren’t really fit for purpose right now, and those laws should be changed. But that’s part of it.  

The other—you know, when people talk about the national security concern is—I think this gets into worries, you know, if there’s lots of people coming into the country, we don’t know who they are, would one of them be a terrorist? Would one of them be someone who really meant harm on the United States? Now, we don’t actually have a lot of evidence that—you know, in the terrorist attacks that have happened in the United States in the last ten or twenty years, or even back to 9/11, those people came in on visas. So they did not come in ways that they didn’t follow our laws. And more recently, you know, many of our terrorist attacks were not people who were born in other countries, but who were born here in the United States. You know, but I think that is—when people think about it, that is often where they equate it with national security.  

LABOTT: Thanks for your question, Saundra.  

We have a question in the back from this gentleman right there. 

Q: Good evening. My name is Michael Muth. Recently retired from the U.S., Foreign Service, Commerce not State.  

And thank you for expanding out beyond the beltway and getting out to the rest of America. And I just finished teaching a course on regional trade agreements. And not surprisingly, the World Trade Organization was a big subject of discussion. And so, question is, can, should, or will the WTO be saved? And if so, how? And just for your information, had Inu Manak, one of your researcher specialists, speak to us four to six weeks ago, and Alan Wolff, the former deputy executive director, speak with the class as well. So thank you.  

LABOTT: Thanks. Mike—oh, you want to— 

O’NEIL: First. You’re the trade. (Laughs.) 

GUTHRIE: It’s you, Mike. 

LABOTT: It’s heated up for you, Mike. (Laughter.) 

FROMAN: Well, look, I think that there’s a lot of focus on the WTO. And I’d say it’s under significant challenges. The WTO really does three things. It’s a forum for big, multilateral—it’s supposed to do three things. A forum for big, multilateral negotiations. But there aren’t any real multilateral negotiations going on right now, in part because there’s no real agreement between the major trading partners—U.S., China, India, Europe, others—about what we want to get done there. The second thing is it’s a monitoring organization of how countries are doing with their trade policy, whether they’re engaging in protectionist measures. And a lot of the states are not really participating in that. And then the third thing is that it’s supposed to be a dispute settlement system, sort of a court system where you can get issues resolved in a binding way. And in many respects, the dispute settlement system has been broken over time. The U.S. has had some complaints about it over time. And as a result, it’s no longer functioning the way it intended to function.  

A lot of people wring their hands about this, about the WTO. And my response, again, is not particularly popular among fellow trade negotiators. But it’s, let’s not worry so much about the WTO. Let’s worry about the underlying consensus among the major trading partners. If the U.S., China, India, Europe, others agree on what we want out of the global trading system, then the WTO will be able to function. And if we don’t agree, then it’s never going to function. And so right now, we don’t agree. And we were at loggerheads. We’re not really even having conversations about it. I think that’s the next step, is over time for leaders of those countries to have political-level conversations about what should the global trading system be about?  

Should it be about climate? Should it be about labor and environmental standards? Should it be about how countries engage in subsidies and industrial policy, or how we use different kinds of protectionist measures? What do we want to discipline, if anything at all? And if we have agreement on that, then we can go back and fix the institutions that are meant to articulate those values. 

LABOTT: Can the U.S. and China ever agree on what we want out of the global trading system? 

GUTHRIE: Well, I mean, one of the first things, I think, that would have to happen—I mean, in China, the leaders of China are desperate to be treated as peers, right? I mean the idea that China is the second-largest economy in the world and, you know, when the G-7 was formed, China wasn’t a part. And the argument was, well, it’s democratic capitalist economies. But we know that’s not true because they let Russia in in 2008, before they kicked them out in 2013 because of Crimea. And so people in China are just, like, oh, we’re at the kids table. We’re at the G-20. And that’s—I mean, I can tell you that that’s how people I know in the government, think like that. So I think the first thing is, we need to treat China like a peer. And I think that that could go a long way in helping those negotiations go on.  

The second thing is I think, you know, China is a network economy. We talk about guanxi-wangs. And we talk about—and really finding the people that are the kind of behind-the-scenes people that influence people. I mean, people in this room, some have heard me tell this story before, so I’ll say it quickly. But one of the things that I was able to help Apple with happened just by accident for me, because I happened to know Justin Lin when he was the chief economist at the World Bank and I was the dean at George Washington. And we became friends. And then he quit his job and moved back to Beijing and became a—you know, just a professor at Beijing University. And we were having serious problems. And we were in trouble.  

And so I’m just, like, I’m just going to call Justin. And so I went to talk to Justin. And Justin listened. And we talked for several hours. And he was, like, OK, well, I’ll talk to President Xi tomorrow, and we’ll see—we’ll see how things go. And I was like, what? And he’s, like, well, I have weekly meetings with him, and so. And my point is, though, that just having these Janet Yellen going over and giving a speech in Guangzhou and shaking her finger about China dumping goods, I don’t think it’s effective. Like, I think what’s effective is really treating China like a peer and getting behind the scenes and figure out who has leverage in that system that’s not just in the government affairs office. And, you know, I think it can be effective. But I think we have a lot of work to do. 

FROMAN: I kind of disagree. (Laughter.) Look, I think—during one of my stints in government, it was after the financial crisis, we put a lot of emphasis on the G-20. And the G-20 was designed in part to bring China and India and the other major emerging markets into global leadership and give them a full seat at the table.  

LABOTT: The truth is that right now the G-20 seems a lot more dynamic and a lot more interesting than the G-7. 

FROMAN: I don’t know about that.  

LABOTT: I don’t know. 

FROMAN: I think it’s become more bureaucratic. But the reality is, I think, look, I give China 100 percent credit for following its self-interests, narrowly defined. It is incredibly disciplined about doing that. What it has been less open to doing is take responsibility at a global level for what the U.S. and Europe and others have done over the years, which is to provide for public goods. And so, you know, my conversation with the Chinese was, great, you have a seat at the table. Every once in a while, you have to pick up the check. And they haven’t been willing to pick up the check, to take responsibility. They’ve benefited enormously—if you look at the incredible success of China over the last thirty years or forty years, since the opening of Deng Xiaoping. They’ve benefited enormously from a benign international environment, the fact that there was a rules-based system that allowed them to export their way towards middle income status. 

That benign system is gone, because over the years they—what we realized is that the rules-based system, including the WTO, was not terribly well suited for including a country as big and as important as China, as integrated as an economy as China, that follows a fundamentally different set of rules. And them following a different set of rules over this period has created this tension where even the U.S. and Europe have now—who were the proponents of free trade—have said, we’re going to close our markets because we’re not going to pay anymore for China’s success. And that’s a problem. That’s a problem for us. It’s a problem for China. 

LABOTT: Okay. Right here. White shirt. 

Q: Hi, I’m Dmitriy. I’m an assistant professor of government at the University of Arizona—the school about two hours away, with a slightly prettier campus. (Laughter.)  

Thank you so much for your insightful comments. I’m going to, I guess, inject a bit of drama into this conversation.  

LABOTT: Go for it.  

Q: This is, after all, the Election 2024 series. So how is our trade partner, China, viewing the upcoming election in the U.S.? Are they anxious? Do they have preferences? What are they—what are their thoughts?  

LABOTT: It’s a great question. Doug, what do you think?  

GUTHRIE: Well, so I have a team over there and we sort of monitor social media. And the interesting thing is people respect Donald Trump a lot more than they respect anybody else.  

LABOTT: Why is that?  

GUTHRIE: Because they think he’s tough, and he stands up for what he believes in. And they know, for them, that the tariffs aren’t hurting China. And so—and this is pretty sophisticated—like, you know, this is regular people, but it’s a pretty sophisticated conversation on social media, where people will say, like, yeah, the tariffs don’t really hurt us anyway. 

LABOTT: So tariffs are not hurting China, but they kind of are hurting, as we discuss the U.S. more. 

GUTHRIE: They’re hurting the U.S. consumer more than anything. And so—now, again, the EV tariffs are a different story, but it’s just 18 billion (dollars). And so but it is very interesting, because when I had this conversation with my team a couple months ago, because I was—or weeks ago, because I was trying to say we need to write something on this. And they were, like, we checked the social media. And they were, like, yeah, actually, people really respect Donald Trump a lot more. And so it’s just sort of—again, it’s an interesting twist in how we think about these things, because I don’t think they dislike the Harris-Walz ticket. I think they just think it’s sort of—it doesn’t strike them in any way. But Trump, they think this is a person who stands up for his values and for America. And, again, you know, this is kind of what people want in— 

LABOTT: Well, let me push back. If you—if you take what Mike said, and that China has been, like, vehemently pursuing its own interests, and then you get someone like Trump, who they think is pursuing America’s own interest, would they prefer someone like Harris that they think is a little bit easier? Or someone like Trump, that they respect more, even if they think he’s tougher?  

GUTHRIE: Well, so let me—let me let me clarify one thing. When I talk about social media, I’m not talking about the preferences of the politicians, right? I’m just—it’s a surprising thing to me, given how much anti-China rhetoric there is, that people on social media, it doesn’t seem to bother them.  

My personal feeling, though, to your question, is that it’s certainly the case that people within the government, and in higher levels of government, want somebody that they can work with. And they want—you know, it was a big deal a year ago when President Xi got on a plane and flew to California to shake hands with Joe Biden. Like, I was very surprised that that happened. And then have dinner with Gavin Newsom and a whole bunch of business leaders too. I mean, it was—and so I think to that question, I think within the government, for sure, people want some more collaboration and coordination. And it seems to me that within that system, Harris and Walz are a bit of an unknown. But certainly, within the government, they would rather have that. But it’s just a surprising fact to me that Chinese people don’t seem to— 

LABOTT: Interesting. Okay, right over here. Gentleman right here. 

Q: My name is Kyle Moynihan. I’m a Thunderbird alumnus from class of ’15.  

I’m just curious, we’ve talked a lot about tariffs in this conversation. And I want to know your opinion on how, even though I agree that in general tariffs are—kind of go against the fundamentals of a free market economy. But how can they sometimes be good to protect against something that’s unfair, like in the early days of NAFTA how having American-subsidized corn going into Mexico was harmful to Mexican agriculture, or how a tariff against China could balance out the artificial devaluation of the Chinese currency? 

LABOTT: Shannon, you want to take this, and then Mike can quarterback it? 

O’NEIL: Well, there’s—you know, there’s lots of different economic theories. But one that’s out there, and maybe there’s, you know, it seems like there’s some evidence actually from some of the—you know, the economic development of first Japan and then Taiwan, South Korea, and then China, is that if you have tariffs or other kinds of protections you give your own industry time to sort of catch up. You become efficient and create economies of scale and scope to become competitive with the global economy. And then, you pull the tariffs off. And, you know, they call it infant industries, right? You kind of—it’s like a baby, and you help them grow, and then all of a sudden they can walk on their own, and you let them compete with others around the world. So tariffs can be very helpful in that sense. That’s one side. 

You know, I think the other side—and, you know, to Mike’s point about the sort of excess capacity that’s going out in the world and, and what happens to the industries, right? If China is selling at—is subsidizing their EV or other industries, and then they’re sending it out, and they’re subsidizing it through their, you know, export-import banks, and the like, it would devastate, and may devastate, industries in other places in sort of unfair ways. And so the U.S., is, you know, Mike says, protecting. Europe is protecting. But some of these other countries are not able—particularly emerging markets—are not able to, or can’t, vis-à-vis China, because of other, you know, power struggles. And so, you know, their automobile industry, those industries may just be wiped out. Their steel industries and the like. So, there are reasons for tariffs, to sort of protect, especially. 

And then the third, which is what we’re seeing a lot in the U.S. and Europe and other places, is, you know, we think these particular technologies or these particular industries are vital to our national security, right? If we got into a war, we want to make sure that the missiles are made here. Or if we—you know, we think that, you know, the technology of the future is going to be large capacity batteries, and we want to make sure we have access to those, or those sorts of things. And so then, you know, how do you bring those home? One way is subsidies, right? You pay to have that happen. And we’re doing that in the United States and other countries are doing that. But the other way is you stop things from coming in. So tariffs can be a way, for the parts of your economy that you really think that you need to have it there, that’s where they can—they can be beneficial, rather than just a tax on people.  

LABOTT: Mike. 

FROMAN: I agree with that. I would just add one more thing, just goes to your question. Which is, I don’t think even the most ardent free trader is against raising tariffs or imposing a trade remedy if there’s unfair trade going on. So where a country is dumping a product or is subsidizing a product in ways that are a violation of normal rules, to have something that sort of levels the playing field—we all want a level playing field. We all want to compete on a level playing field. And if China is doing things, and they have done this in a number of—a number of sectors, that creates an unlevel playing field, then there is certainly a case for imposing some kind of restriction in order to both support the domestic industry and ensure that there is just fairness in the system. And, you know, that’s, I think, as much part of the global trading system as it. 

LABOTT: Any more questions? Right here, pink shirt right here. 

Q: Hi. My name is Gerrit Steenblik. I used to chair the Phoenix Sister Cities Commission. We have relationships with both China and Taipei. 

LABOTT: Oh, wow. 

Q: And although there was a mention of Taipei early on, we’ve not said much about it since. And Taipei obviously has—Taiwan has an enormous interest in Arizona. I would like to get some perspectives specifically about how we deal with Taipei and Taiwan, and the enormous contributions it has made to Arizona’s economy, and what we do to enhance and preserve that. 

LABOTT: Thanks very much. Doug. 

GUTHRIE: Sure. I mean, thank you. Such an important question. And we weren’t trying to hide from it. We just were running out of time. And so I’m so glad that you brought it up. And, again, it’s one of these arguments for you know, U.S.-China relations are at a really critical point, maybe the most critical in last thirty years. And Phoenix is a really important place because of Taiwan’s investment in the area, and what the potential tensions of that mean.  

Now, just to be very clear on this, and when people ask me, like, you know, what are we thinking about this, and what do we do? Two key things that I like to get people to focus on. One is in 1979 we signed the One China policy. So right now, U.S. policy is that there is one China, and Taiwan is a part of China. Now the Taiwan Relations Act, which was passed with a veto-proof passage, made that messy. But we still live in the world of the One China policy. And also, make no mistake about it, if things got bad—and I—you know, whoever can talk to President Lai, we should be talking to him, because the tension is real. Beijing is ramping things up.  

And if Taiwan declared independence, A, there would—there would be an invasion. I’m sure of it. And, two—B, sorry—(laughter)—the other thing that we need to be very thoughtful about—and here, again, this is why economic integration and sort of negotiation and thinking through these permutations play out—the scenario that we talked about earlier, I know it to be, I’m sure of it, Apple, Walmart, Tesla, a number of other companies, would be kicked out of China. And, you know, it would be a violation of trade rules, and there would be—but they can make things so difficult.  

Right now, Apple has such a sweet deal in China that it would be very easy for the Xi Jinping administration to flip the switch and completely change the cost structure of the entire thing. And world capital markets would just go nuts. I mean, and so I just think we have to all be really careful. And, to your point, like, we’re in Phoenix. So sister city relationships, Phoenix, the sister city with Chengdu but also with Taipei. I just think we need to get people to the table. It’s one of the reasons, again, that I like economic integration, is because I think policy negotiations shouldn’t just be left to the politicians. Like, it should be left to the people who have business interests and have economic interests in things not going bad.  

And so I just think Phoenix ends up being a really important place. I love the sister cities programs because I think this is a really important way for us to think about these kinds of negotiations. One quick sister city story. When I was in Lijiang just doing my research and interviewing a guy who was the director of the Bureau of Commerce. And he seemed to know so much about Arizona. He was just, like, going on and on. And I left the interview, and I was, like, was that weird? Well, it turns out that they’ve been the sister city of Tempe for thirty years and, like, yeah. They’ve been waiting for us. They’ve been waiting for us to come over. (Laughs.) And so—and ASU is in a very deep relationship with the ministry of education there. And so it’s just an interesting time for us to continue to educate people and develop it. But thank you for the question. 

LABOTT: Okay. We’re going to take a question in the first row right here, and then we’ll back through the rows. 

Q: My question is to Mike.  

Really going down to back in the Middle East, going into the whole Israel again. For some reason, I’m not sure if anybody, like, noticed this, but Iran was invited to join BRICS, which is something that, like, I think Russia and China lobbied for. My question is going into, like, would NATO be at war with BRICS if Israel, you know, like, escalate, or if the Middle East escalates into a full-out war? Would that be some form of a proxy NATO-BRICS conflict? As well as going into Ukraine, Russia is a BRICS country. Is that also a potential contest between, you know, BRICS and NATO conflict as well?  

LABOTT: Well, it’s an interesting question. One is obviously a security alliance, and the BRICS is more of a kind of political/economic alliance. But it’s a good question about this kind of axis of resistance between the BRICS countries and the more kind of Western alliance.  

FROMAN: Yeah, I think, with regard to BRICS themselves—and BRICS is the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, to be frank they don’t have a lot in common. It’s very hard for them to get anything done. And so— 

LABOTT: Except their animosity for the United States. 

FROMAN: Well, but it’s— 

LABOTT: Some of them. Most of them. 

FROMAN: I think it’s more complicated than that. India, I think, is much more sort of playing— 

LABOTT: Both ends, yeah.  

FROMAN: And they love the United States in all sorts of ways. They love Russia and Iran. They love China. They hate China. So I think it’s a much more complicated set of relationships. What I think is interesting about BRICS is, as you pointed out, the five of them have a difficult time getting anything done. And so what they decided to do was invite six more countries that have even less in common, and import— 

LABOTT: There was talk, I think, of Saudi Arabia, maybe joining. 

FROMAN: Yeah, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Argentina, et cetera. So I’m not so worried about a NATO-BRICS kind of confrontation. I think what is interesting, as Elise pointed out, is you have this emergence of an axis between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and spurred on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And what an interesting and disturbing development, that several years ago we were working with Russia and China both to constrain Iran’s nuclear capabilities and to constrain North Korea. And now the alliances, or the relationships, have fundamentally changed.  

So much so that today there’s reporting that North Korea is going to send troops to north—to Ukraine, to fight on behalf of Russia. That is a very disturbing set of developments. And how the U.S., and NATO, and others deal with that. Again, they don’t all have a lot in common, except for right now wanting to challenge the U.S.-led international system, and the U.S. specifically, and wherever the U.S. interests are—whether it’s in the Middle East, Asia, or in Europe. 

LABOTT: Yeah, we saw another report today that, you know, one of the weapons depots found in—one of the Russian weapons depots was North Korean weapons. 

GUTHRIE: Hey, Elise, could I just say one quick thing? 

LABOTT: Yeah, please. Please. 

GUTHRIE: It’s a really interesting question. And, again, we kind of are at this thing of how is China treated and how is it respected? And, you know, G-20, but he did come visit Biden. But the other thing that I think was really important that happened last year, and I know people in China were very proud of it, was the brokering of the Iran-Saudi deal—the brokering of the Iran-Saudi deal. And the idea that Xi Jinping brokered that deal to them meant, see, you better pay attention to us because we are actually involved with this situation too. And whether or not we—that matters, or we respect them, I can just tell you people in China think about it. And so. 

LABOTT: Well, there’s this whole idea of Russia becoming a responsible stakeholder that was brought up during the Bush administration. And I think we’ve been waiting for that to happen. The gentleman right here. Yeah, and then we’ll take the person next to them. 

Q: Today, Arizona voters— 

LABOTT: Can you introduce yourself? 

Q: I’m Albert Celoza from Phoenix College.  

Today, Arizona voters are being sent their ballots. And so this being the CFR Election 2024 Series, I would like our guest speakers to talk about compare and contrast the two parties or the two candidates with regards to the model of leadership. What kind of U.S. leadership are the two candidates offering? And how are we going to make our choices in the November ballot? Thank you.  

LABOTT: Good question. You want to start, Shannon? 

O’NEIL: Sure, I’ll start. And obviously there’s lots of people on the ballot, so I will—I will defer to the two at the top, because you all, you know, have more nuance in local races and the like. You know, when I look at the—you know, the previous administration, the Trump administration, and then what we’ve seen with Harris as vice president, I would characterize their leadership in sort of two different ways. I would say, Trump’s leadership tends to be more unilateral. It tends to be more transactional. And it tends to be more sort of personal or volatile. So he likes to do, you know, one-on-one deals, is much more transactional, what can we get done here? It’s not sort of ideologically driven and the like. And then, you know, it can depend on, sort of, you know, the moment. There aren’t, sort of, longstanding, you know, goals that get carried out over time.  

I would say Harris, of what we know of her positions, she tends to be more multilateral. I would say she’s more sort of—ideological isn’t the right term, but she has a, you know, a guiding principle of things that, you know, she’s pushing forward, and goals. And then I think she will be more institutional. So what does that mean, right? It means, you know, multilateral. I think she will continue to push forward many of, you know, the economic agreements that are regional and the like. She’ll tend to, you know, work with regional partners on various issues, NATO and those sorts of things. You know, I think she is driven—she has, you know, set principles. She has, you know, focus on labor, focus on the environment, other things she’s laid out. I think she’ll push those forward.  

And then in the last she’s more institutional. You know, I do think she will, as you know, the Biden administration has, she’ll use the whole of government, right? She’ll work to build up the Commerce Department, to implement things. She’ll work to build up—you know, there will be, you know, really boring Washington things, like interagency processes and things, to try to bring all of these folks together to, you know, sort of move the ball forward in a more bureaucratic way. And so, you know, there’s trade-offs. There’s good and bad of those different approaches. You know, the Chinese social media tends to like the more, you know, strong hand, unilateral approach. But as I look at the two administrations—and then, you know, there’s policy differences, of course, that, you know, you know about. But leadership-wise, I see them as different personalities that way.  

LABOTT: Mike.  

FROMAN: Let me maybe add to that, and maybe take your question—interpret your question slightly differently about leadership and the role of the United States in the world. Because I think this is actually an area where there is a pretty distinct difference between the two camps. And I think I would expect a Harris administration, like the Biden administration, to be very engaged internationally with allies and partners, with a view that the U.S. should show leadership, should insert itself where there are problems—whether it’s the Middle East or elsewhere.  

LABOTT: The kind of indispensable nation. 

FROMAN: The indispensable nation, as Madeleine Albright used to call us. But that the U.S. needs to be engaged internationally in order to ensure that the international system is reflecting our values, and our interests, and the like.  

There is a long history in the country, and it’s not limited to one party, of isolationism. And it goes back to George Washington and his farewell address about the entangling of alliances and warning Americans not to get involved in alliances. It was certainly prevalent here in the United States in the 1930s after the First World War. There was a bit of it in the 1950s when Robert Taft ran for president on the Republican ticket. And it’s back. And I think, to give it its due, I’d say I see two flavors of isolationism, and largely on the Republican Party although there are some on the Democratic side who also articulate it. But I think it’s more associated with former President Trump and his campaign.  

One is a view that, why are we engaged internationally when we have so many problems here? You know, why should we be sending money to Ukraine or to the Middle East when we don’t have enough money to pay for hurricane relief in the United States? And leaving aside all the complexities of why money from one pot does not equate money to another pot, there is a view of, why are we engaged internationally when we need to be spending our attention here in the United States? The other version of isolationism, which is a little bit more limited, and I’d say it’s somewhat more complicated, is why are we involved, for example, in Ukraine, when the existential issue facing United States is China? Let’s leave Ukraine to the Europeans. Let’s not send materiel and money to them. And let’s focus 100 percent of our efforts on deterring China from invading Taiwan, from containing China’s influence, from countering China from engaging that way.  

So you hear those two strains of isolationism articulated at times by former President Trump or people around him. And I think that distinction, between the U.S. pulling back and the U.S. needing to be engaged everywhere, including with regard to the Middle East and Ukraine, is a fundamental difference between the two camps. 

LABOTT: Okay. What I’m going to do is, unfortunately, we’re out of time for the question part. But I’m going to ask each of the panelists—I’m going to start with Doug—to just offer a closing thought. All three of you have touched upon different aspects of global trade impacting Arizona, we’ve talked about local communities kind of skeptical of internationalism. A, how can policymakers better communicate these global to local connections in terms of economic opportunity? And, B, what one piece of advice would you give the next administration as they offer these complex and economic and foreign policy challenges we spoke about?  

GUTHRIE: Oh, okay. I’ll try. But first of all, thank you guys, again, for coming here. And thank you all for being here and listening. I’m going to answer with this very heavily tied to my China focus. So this is a China-biased kind of answer. But the big issues for me are really, again, that we need to make a decision as an economy about how we’re going to continue to be economically integrated in the world. And this—making that decision, in my opinion, if we do it right, also mitigates some of the risk about global conflict, right? But we need to take seriously that we are in tension right now, and our—the second-largest economy in the world and not our largest trading partner in the world but it’s the second right after Mexico, we’re deeply embedded. And we need to just acknowledge that and understand it. It doesn’t mean we should just give everything into—you know, as I said a few minutes ago, I wasn’t joking, like, Xi Jinping broke my heart. Like, I just we—when we saw this— 

LABOTT: I think there’s a song in there maybe. (Laughter.) Xi broke my heart.  

GUTHRIE: There is. But, maybe, not there is. But maybe there is. But the point is that, you know, I’m not a fan of what’s happening there either. But I do think, for our own economic risk—both economic risk and geopolitical risk—we need to take this adversary and partner seriously. And so if I was just passing anything on to the next administration, I would just say, you know, get experts from all over the geopolitical system around you, but get some people who really understand a sensible approach to China.  

LABOTT: Get those experts. Good point. Shannon. 

O’NEIL: Well, in terms of giving advice to the next administration, one of the great things that the Studies Department, the think tank at CFR, does is has seventy-plus experts that do this. (Laughter.)  

LABOTT: That’s right. 

O’NEIL: So if you have any, you know, issue, part of the world, other things, we have lots of great, you know, people thinking about these and talking about these. So please go check that out. 

LABOTT: Really do. 

O’NEIL: But, you know, briefly, I would just say this. I would say, as you’ve heard from lots of us—and there are these, you know, strains in our—long-time strains and in our politics and in our society to sort of pull back. But I think turning inward is a mistake for us. And as we think about the problems—and we do have real problems here at home. But as we try to face these problems, what’s happening in the rest of the world will influence our ability to fix those problems, or even address those problems. And, you know, to end with one of those sort of witty aphorisms, but one that always struck me as fairly true is that, you know, if you’re not at the table—and here, it’s sort of the global table—you’re going to be on the menu. So we need to be at the table and setting the table, not being on the menu for others to decide what our future is going to be.  

LABOTT: I like that. Mike. 

FROMAN: The problem of going last is that they said all the good things. Look, I think, I would just leave you with the connection between the domestic and the international. That I think these issues are so important, as Doug and Shannon laid out, and our interconnection with the rest of the world. But that means we have to address our domestic situation too. And I’d say it’s two parts. One, economically. While globalization, I think, has been one of the most significant contributors to progress in the international system in human history, raising a hundred—or hundreds of millions if not billion people out of abject poverty, allowing competitive industries here in the United States to survive, and allowing us to continue to be a leading global economy. We have not done enough domestically to ensure that our workers and farmers and ranchers can survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world, whether that change comes from trade, or immigration, or technological development. And we need a much more robust domestic agenda if we’re going to have the base of support we need to continue to be engaged internationally.  

And the second part of it, I would say, is the politics. You know, we tend to think of ourselves as in the most polarized period of American history. Actually, if you go back and read your history, you know, this ain’t nothing. I mean, it is something, but there were some pretty bad periods in American history of political polarization. Having said that, we need to be able to have civil discussions like this one, and hopefully the ones you’re having elsewhere around the state as you prepare for the election, where people who disagree, and have good reasons to disagree about policy, can still have civil conversations and participate actively in the political process, and we can reach consensus on addressing some of the most outstanding issues.  

I was so impressed. We had—we were visited by Governor Spencer Cox, who’s a Republican governor from Utah, who is head of the National Governors Association. And he chose for his theme as chair of the National Governors Association the theme of “disagree better.” And how— 

LABOTT: Disagree agreeably. 

FROMAN: Disagree better. And not that—we’re not going to always agree. That’s fine. But how do we disagree better, and still move forward together to address the issues facing our country? To me, that’s one of the most important things we could all do together.  

LABOTT: Yeah, I was going to answer my own question, but then the benefit of being last is that Mike answered it for me. I think the conversation we’re having today, these type of conversations are so important. And hope you’ll continue to have them and continue to weigh in with us on CFR.org. 

Now we’re going to ask you the same five questions from the beginning of the session to see if views have changed or not changed. So, once again, I’m going to ask you to scan your QR code on the inside cover of your program, and let’s take the poll one more time. And refresh your screen if you don’t see the correct question on your phone. Okay, one more time.  

How important is foreign policy when considering who you will vote for in the presidential election? Okay, 96 percent. That’s up. That’s up. It was 88 percent and now it’s 95 percent. And somewhat important, 3 percent, then before it was at 12 percent. And not important, zero percent. Now we’re at 2 percent. Okay. Next question. (Laughter.)  

How active should the U.S. be in global affairs—more active than it is now, maintain current level of activity, less active, not at all active, don’t know? Okay, before more active than it was now was 49 percent, now 58 percent. So I guess we—maybe we changed some minds today. Maintain current level of activity, that was at 34 percent, now it’s at 32 percent. Less active, 8 percent. Not at all active, that one—now it’s 1 percent. It was at 2 percent before. 

OK. Let’s go to the third question: Which of the following is the greatest threat to U.S. national security—AI, China, climate change, domestic challenges, Russia, other? Okay. Before domestic challenges was 47 (percent), now it’s 45 (percent). China now is 32 (percent), before it was 20 (percent).  

FROMAN: Thirty-four (percent). 

LABOTT: Thirty-four (percent). It was 32 (percent) when I looked at it. It keeps changing. Russia was 9 percent, now it’s 5 percent. Climate change, 7 (percent) down from 12 (percent). So we did change a few minds today. 

When it comes time—to when it comes to trade with China, how should the United States approach tariffs on Chinese imports given the impact on Chinese business and American consumer prices—increase tariffs, keep tariff levels about the same, decrease tariffs, don’t know? Okay, increase tariffs, we’re at 14 percent; before we were at 23 percent. Doug, you might be happy to read that. (Laughter.) Keep tariffs about the same, we were at 34 (percent), and pretty much the same, 33 (percent). Decrease tariffs, 36 percent before, now 51 (percent). Doug, you did your job tonight. (Laughter.) 

And last question: How should the United States approach security along the U.S.-Mexico border—build a physical barrier around the full border, allocate greater resources to border surveillance and enforcement, adjust causes of migration from Latin America through aid programs and diplomacy, reform the U.S. immigration system to allow more pathways to enter legally, all of the above, none of the above, don’t know? I think we’re still at where we were before, maybe. Sorry about that. Popular answer is still reform the U.S. immigration system to allow more pathways to enter legally, but before we were at 38 percent and now we’re at 56 percent. And number two, address—number two is all of the above. And number three, 16 percent, address causes of migration through aid programs and diplomacy. 

So, obviously, you know, we did our job tonight, and you thought a little bit about—a little bit more about these issues. Maybe, you know, gave your perspective another chance. And that’s the, you know, idea of a healthy debate. Sometimes you’re going to change people’s minds. Sometimes you’re not. But we’re really glad you were all with us tonight. I want to thank Mike, Doug, and Shannon for leading this important discussion. And thank all of you for participating. (Applause.)  

I want to—this event was made possible in part by the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. You’ll be able to watch it on CFR.org. And, as Shannon said, we really hope that you’ll visit CFR.org and ForeignAffairs.com for additional nonpartisan information and analysis on global affairs and U.S. foreign policy in the lead-up to the election, and beyond. And thank you, again, to Arizona State University, and particularly the Thunderbird School of Management. And now everyone’s welcome to join us upstairs on the fifth floor for a reception, and we’ll continue the conversation. Thank you very much. (Applause.) 

(END) 

This is an uncorrected transcript.