Podcasts about North American Free Trade Agreement

On January 1, 1994, masked indigenous rebels burst from the rainforest in Chiapas, Mexico to launch an uprising that was years in the making.  The Zapatista Army declared war on the Mexican Government demanding basics rights for the diverse Mayan communities who lived in extreme poverty through out the region.  The rebellion, which captured the world's attention thanks in part to the Zapatista's charismatic leader, coincided with the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement and was disastrous for Mexican President Carlos Salinas who had promised his trade partners that Mexico was a modern, peaceful democratic country. Show Contact Info: Instagram: ⁠@that90spodcast⁠ Email: ⁠90s@curiouscast.ca Guest Info: Neil Harvey, Professor New Mexico State University and author of : The Chiapas Rebellion; The Struggle for Land and Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found Click On Picture To See Larger PictureCanada elected Carney, this was expected. Now Canada is going to head in the opposite direction of the US, it will enter a recession. Trump trapped Canada into renegotiating the USMCA. Bessent reveals the plan to bring back manufactures and says that tariffs will replace income tax. The [DS] is losing ground every step of the way. The agencies are now being cleaned out, the FBI has now confirmed that those within the agency are being given a lie detector test. Trump has now shutdown the [DS] payment system making it much more difficult to launder money. The [DS] is almost out of power, when Trump has them so weak he will attack. The WH put out a message, flyeaglesfly which refers to Bill Clinton. Will the Clinton's be on the run in the end?   (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Economy https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1917044090094412224 Carney is moving forward with the green deal and the great reset, watch Canada implode.  How the NAFTA/USMCA 2025 Review Underpins President Trump Remarks on Canada Only President Trump could get the Canadians to vote for an exit to the USMCA, and he did it brilliantly. To understand President Trump's position on Canada, you have to go back to the 2016 election and President Trump's position on the NAFTA renegotiation.  If you did not follow the subsequent USMCA process, this might be the ah-ha moment you need to understand Trump's strategy. During the 2016 election President Trump repeatedly said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.  Both Canada and Mexico were reluctant to open the trade agreement to revision, but ultimately President Trump had the authority and support from an election victory to do exactly that. In order to understand the issue, you must remember President Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer each agreed the NAFTA agreement was fraught with problems and was best addressed by scrapping it and creating two seperate bilateral trade agreements. One between the USA and Mexico, and one between the USA and Canada. In the decades that preceded the 2017 push to redo the trade pact, Canada had restructured their economy to: (1) align with progressive climate change; and (2) take advantage of the NAFTA loophole.  The Canadian government did not want to reengage in a new trade agreement. Canada has deindustrialized much of their manufacturing base to support the ‘environmental' aspirations of their progressive politicians.  Instead, Canada became an importer of component goods where companies then assembled those imports into finished products to enter the U.S. market without tariffs.  Working with Chinese manufacturing companies, Canada exploited the NAFTA loophole. Justin Trudeau was strongly against renegotiating NAFTA, and stated he and Chrystia Freeland would not support reopening the trade agreement.  President Trump didn't care about the position of Canada and was going forward.  Trudeau said he would not support it.  Trump focused on the first bilateral trade agreement with Mexico. When the U.S. and Mexico had agreed to terms of the new trade deal and 80% of the agreement was finished, representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce informed Trudeau that his position was weak and if the U.S. and Mexico inked their deal, Canada would be shut out. The key points to remember are: (1) Trump, Ross and Lighthizer would prefer two separate bilateral trade agreements because the U.S. import/export dynamic was entirely different between Mexico and Canada.

Our guest today is, Dr. Ann López is the Executive Director of Center for Farmworker Families. The Center for Farmworker Families provides support to farmworker families in the central coast of California. The Center for Farmworker Families is a 501(c3)nonprofit at www.farmworkerfamily.org . The website is designed to provide updates on the status of binational farmworker families and provides ways in which those who are interestedcan become involved with the work of improving their life circumstances.She is an emerita professor and taught courses in biology, environmental science, ecology and botany in the biology department at San José City College for many years. She has a Ph.D. from UCSC in Environmental Studies where she studied the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the farms of west central Mexico. Her book entitled The Farmworkers' Journey summarizes the results, arguments and conclusions of her research and was published by UC Press. She has been recognized for her work by The U.S. Congress and many organizations.

Larry Kudlow dives into key economic and political topics, starting with an introduction to the show and live streaming options. Kudlow covers the recent plane crashes and extends sympathies to the victims. He discusses President Trump's America First policies, focusing on the reassertion of tough tariff diplomacy with Mexico, Canada, and China to address issues like border control, fentanyl trafficking, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Kudlow also highlights Trump's strategy to use tariffs for national security and economic growth. The episode features insights from various experts like John Carney and Steve Forbes on the impacts of these tariffs and Trump's broader economic program. Additionally, Kudlow touches on military actions in Somalia, the release of Venezuelan hostages, and the Panama Canal's Chinese influence. The episode ends with Kudlow's optimistic outlook for America under Trump's leadership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words”, Hanson talks about the current status of the Mexican-American relationship. Currently, the United States has a $100 billion plus trade deficit with Mexico.  Days after taking office, President Trump directed the U.S. military to begin deportation flights to Mexico. Mexico initially refused, only to concede days later.  Trump threatened to impose a 25% on Mexican imports unless America's southern neighbor took concrete action to curb the flow of illegal aliens and drugs across its borders.  A day later, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum caved, sending 10,000 national guard troops to the U.S. southern border.  “What is the Mexican-American status quo now? It's very disturbing. We sent deported criminals back to Mexico and they would not allow them to land in Mexico. We had people of the cartel shoot an American citizen on U.S. land and shoot at our Border Patrol. So, what is Mexico? Is it a neutral? Is it an ally? Is it an enemy? Is it a frenemy?” “So, I don't know what Mexico is, but I know what we can do about it. 20% tax on anybody who sends, anywhere in the United States, money back to Mexico. That would raise about $12 billion dollars. That would send a message. And then we have a tariff. Donald Trump says he's going to do it very quickly and that would tell Mexico, “you're not going to run up a $167 billion under the guise of the North American Free Trade [Agreement].”   For Victor's latest thoughts, go to: https://victorhanson.com/  Don't miss out on Victor's latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You'll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqkXbgqrDrDVInBMSoGQgQ The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: https://secured.dailysignal.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you work across time zones, borders and cultures, this is the show for you. In the Weekly Concept series, Leonardo aims at defining a topic in international business. These are shorter episodes to illustrate key concepts in this discipline.   Today, we talk about NAFTA. It stands for North American Free Trade Agreement.   NAFTA was a trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, signed in 1992 and enacted in 1994, aimed at eliminating trade barriers and boosting economic cooperation. It removed tariffs and allowed for easier movement of goods, services, and investments across the three countries. Connect with the host ⁠⁠Leonardo Marra on LinkedIn.⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Join Leonardo on Patreon for:⁠⁠ Podcast Archive: 102 episodes (40+ hours). Podcast Bonus Episodes: New exclusive content. Early Access: Upcoming YouTube videos and newsletters. Thinking Process Journal: Insights into Leonardo's content preparation, including a curated reading list and personal reflections. Q&A: Submit questions for future episodes, and receive a shoutout when they are answered. You could also support the podcast by purchasing one of the following books on Amazon using the links provided: - ⁠⁠⁠The Personal MBA⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠HBR's 10 Must Reads 2025⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠The 48 Laws of Power⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠Blue Ocean Strategy

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game. (commercial at 8:51)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game. (commercial at 8:51)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Before entering the White House, U.S. President Elect Donald Trump announced that he will sign an executive order imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all products coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico. The Agenda speaks with global affairs and trades experts who will discuss whether we should call Trump's bluff. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's time for Canada to pay "a very big price." That was the message from president-elect Donald Trump this week when he announced a 25 percent tariff on literally everything coming into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico. The tariffs will come into effect January 20th, Trump said, and stay in effect until "Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! "This isn't the first time Trump has threatened to impose major tariffs or followed through on his threats. And while previous levies didn't last - but they were around long enough to be a thorn in the side of Canadian negotiators reworking The North American Free Trade Agreement.So, is this most recent threat a negotiation ploy, political bluster or the first salvo in a trade war that could end in economic ruin?For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

As the author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, the Cambridge University historian Gary Gerstle was one of first people to recognize the collapse of neoliberalism. But today, the real question is not about the death of neoliberalism, but what comes after it. And, of course, when I sat down with Gerstle, I began by asking him what the Trump victory tells us about what comes after neoliberalism.Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle received his BA from Brown University and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author, editor, and coeditor of more than ten books.  He is currently the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, where he is working on a new book, Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty-First Century.  He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Named as one of the "100 most pivoted men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most pivotal broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the pivotal author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two cats, both called Pivot.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. TRANSCRIPT“It's important to recognize that the neoliberal triumph carried within it not just the triumph of capitalism, but the triumph of freedom. And I think the that image of the wall coming down captures both. It's people wanting to claim their freedom, but it also paves the way for an unregulated form of capitalism to spread to every corner of the world.” -Gary GerstleAK: Hello everybody. As we try to make sense of the aftermath of the US election this week, there was an interesting headline today in the Financial Times. Donald Trump apparently has asked, and I'm quoting the F.T. here, the arch-protectionist Robert Lighthizer, to run U.S. trade policy. You never know with Trump, he may change his mind tomorrow. But nonetheless, it suggests, and it's not a great surprise, that protectionism will define the Trump, presidency or certainly the second Trump presidency. And it speaks of the structural shift in the nature of politics and economics in the United States, particularly given this Trump victory. One man who got this, I think before anyone else, is the Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle. He's been on the show a couple of times before. He's the author of a wonderful book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. It's a profound book. It's had an enormous impact on everybody. And I'm thrilled and honored that Gary is back on the show. This is the third time he's been on the show. Gary, is that important news? Have we formally come to the end now of the neoliberal order? GARY GERSTLE: I think we have, although there's an element of neoliberalism which may revive in the Trump administration. But if we think of a political order as ordering political life so that all participants in that order have to accept its ideological principles, we have moved out of that order. I think we've been out of it for some time. The critical election in this case was 2016, and the critical move that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders made in 2016, the two most dynamic presidential candidates in that year, was to break with the orthodoxy of free markets, the orthodoxy of globalization, the orthodoxy of a world without borders where everything was free to move and the market was supreme. And the only role of government in the state was to ensure as full access to markets as was possible in the belief that if governments got out of the way of a private capitalist economy, this would spur the greatest growth for the greatest number of people everywhere in the world. This was governing orthodoxy, really from the time of Reagan until 2016. Trump broke it. Sanders broke it. Very significant in this regard that when Biden came into office, he moderated some of the Trump tariffs but kept the tariffs on China substantially in place. So there's been continuity for some time, and now we're going to see an intensification of the protectionist regime. Protectionism used to be a dirty word in American politics. If you uttered that word, you were excluded from serious political discourse. There will be other terms that are used, fair trade, not just because protectionism has a negative connotation to it, but we are living in an era where governments assert the right to shape markets as they wish to in the interests of their nation. So, yes, we are living in a different era, although it must be said, and we may get into a discussion of this at some point, there are sectors of the Trump coalition that want to intensify deregulation in the domestic market, that want to rollback government. And so I expect in the new Trump administration, there is going to be tussles between the protectionists on the one hand and those who want to, at least domestically, restore free trade. And by that I mean the free operation of private capital without government regulation. That's an issue that bears watching.AK: Is that a contradiction though, Gary? Can one, in this post-neoliberal order, can governments be hostile to regulation, a la Elon Musk and his association with Trump, and also be in favor of tariffs? I mean, do the two—can the to go together, and is that the outline of this foggy new order coming into place in the second quarter of the 21st century?GARY GERSTLE: They can go together in the sense that they have historically in the past gone together in the United States. In the late 19th century, the US had very high tariffs against foreign goods. And domestically, it was trying to create as free a domestic market as possible. What was known as the period of laissez-faire domestically went along with a commitment to high tariffs and protection of American laissez-faire against what we might call global laissez-faire. So it has been tried. It did work at that time. But I think the Republican party and the constituencies behind Donald Trump are divided on this question. As you noted, Elon Musk represents one pole of this. He certainly wants protection against Chinese imports of electric cars and is probably going to get that because of all the assistance he gave Trump in this election. But domestically, he wants no government interfering with his right to conduct his capitalist enterprises as he sees fit. So that's going to be one wing. But there's another wing of the Republican Party under Trump that is much more serious about industrial policy that says we cannot leave the market to its own devices. It produces too many human casualties. It produces too many regions of America left behind, and that we must use the government to help those people left behind. We must structure free enterprise industry in a way that helps the ordinary working-class man. And I use the word “man” deliberately in this context. Interestingly, JD Vance, the vice president, embodies both these tendencies, sees, on the one hand, a creature of venture capital, Silicon Valley, close to the Musks and Peter Thiels of the world. On the other hand, he has talked explicitly, as in his vice-presidential acceptance speech, about putting Main Street over Wall Street. And if he's serious about putting Main Street over Wall Street, that's going to involve a lot of government intervention to displace the privileged position that finance and venture capital now has in the American economy.AK: Gary, you're a historian, one of the best around, you're deeply versed in the past, you bring up Vance. He presents himself as being original, even has a beard. But I wonder whether his—I don't know what you would call it—a Catholic or Christian socialism, or at least a concern with the working class. Is it in any way new, for you, historically? I mean, it certainly exists in Europe, and there must be analogies also in American history with him.GARY GERSTLE: Well, if he is a convert to Catholicism, I don't know how well-versed he is in the papal doctrines of years past. Or decades. Or even centuries passed. But there was a serious movement within the Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th century to humanize capitalism, to declare that free market capitalism produced too many human casualties. Too many ordinary Catholic workers and workers who are not Catholic were hurt by unemployment, poverty, being thrown out of work in the troughs of business cycles, having no social welfare to fall back on, as a result of injury or misfortune in life. And so there was a profound movement within Catholic churches, in the United States, and in Europe and other parts of the world as well, to humanize capitalism. Whether this very once important Catholic tradition is an active influence on Vance, I don't know, because he's a recent convert to Catholicism, and I don't know how deeply has imbibed its history or its doctrine. But there is a rich tradition there. And it's possible that this is one of the sources that he is drawing on to shape his contemporary politics.AK: We were talking before we ran live, Gary, I said to you, and I think you agreed, that this use of the word "fascism" to describe Trump isn't always particularly helpful. It reflects a general hysteria amongst progressives. But I wonder in this context, given the way in which European Catholicism flirted, sometimes quite openly, with fascism, whether the F-word actually makes a little more sense. Because after all, fascism, after the First World War, was a movement in the name of the people, which was very critical of the capitalism of that age and of the international market. So, when we use the word fascism now, could it have some value in that context as a kind of a socioeconomic critique of capitalism?GARY GERSTLE: You mean fascism offering a socioeconomic critique of U.S. capitalism?AK: Yes. For better or worse.GARY GERSTLE: I'm reluctant to deploy the term fascism, since I think most people who enter the conversation or who hear that word in the United States don't really know what it means, and that's partly the consequence of historians debating its meaning as long as they have, and also suggesting that fascism takes different forms at different times and in different places. I prefer the term authoritarianism. I think that tendency is clearly there and one can connect that to certain traditions within the church. The United States once had a intense anti-Catholic political tradition. It was unimaginable in the 19th century. AK: Yeah, it drove the KKK. I mean, that was the Klan hated the Catholics probably more than they hated the Jews.GARY GERSTLE: It drove the Klan. And the notion in the 19th century—I'm not remembering now whether there are 5 or 6 Catholics who sit on the Supreme Court—but the notion in the 19th century that 5 or 6 Catholics would be the chief custodians and interpreters of America's most sacred doctrine and document the Constitution was simply unthinkable. It could never have happened. There was a Catholic seat. As for a long time, there was a Jewish seat on the Supreme Court, but understood that this would be carefully cordoned off and limited and that, when push came to shove, Protestants had to be in charge of interpreting America's most sacred doctrine. And the charge against Catholics was that they were not democratic, that they vested ultimate power in God and through an honest messenger on Earth, who was the pope. John F. Kennedy, in 1960, became the first Catholic president of the United States. Biden is only the second. Vance is the first Catholic vice president. Before in the campaign that Kennedy was running in 1960, he had to go in front of thousands of Protestant ministers who had gathered in Houston so he could persuade them that if he became president, he would not be handing America over to the pope, who was seen as an authoritarian figure. So for a long time, Catholicism was seen as a carrier of authoritarianism, of a kind of executive power that should not be limited by a human or secular force. And this promoted, in the United States, intense anti-Catholic feeling, which took the country probably 200 years to conquer. Conquered it was, so the issue of so many Catholics on the Supreme Court is not an issue. Biden's Catholicism is not an issue. Vance's Catholicism is not an issue. But Vance himself has said, talking about his conversion, that of his granny—I forget the term he uses to describe his granny—were alive today, she would not be able to accept his conversion because she was so deeply Protestant, so evangelical, so—AK: A classic West Virginian evangelical. So for me, the other contradiction here is that Vance is unashamedly nationalist, unashamedly critical of globalization. And yet, by embracing Catholicism, which is the most international of face, I don't quite understand what that suggests about him, or Catholicism, or even history, that that these odd things happen.GARY GERSTLE: Well, one thing one can say in history is that odd things happen and odd couples get together. I don't know myself how fully Vance understands his Catholicism. I believe Peter Thiel led him to this. Vance is still a young man and has gone through a lot of conversions for a young man. He was—AK: Well, he's a conversion expert. That's the narrative of his life, isn't it?GARY GERSTLE: Yes. Yes. And he began as being a severe anti-Trumper, almost a Never-Trumper. Then he converted to Trumpism. Then he converted from Protestant to Catholicism. So a lot of major changes in his life. So, the question you just posed is a fascinating one. Does he understand that the church is a catholic church, meaning small c catholic in this case, that it's open to everyone in the world? Does he really understand that? But I would extend my puzzle about religion beyond Catholicism to ask, for all the evangelical supporters of Trump: where is Jesus's message of peace and love? Where did that go? So there are puzzles about the shape of Christian religion in America. And there's no doubt that for its most devout supporters in the United States that has taken a very hard nationalist turn. And this is true among Protestants, and it is true among many Catholics. And so, I think the question that you posed may be one that no one has really confronted Vance with.“What we have to think about in regard to Trump is, will they take on projects that will threaten the constitutional foundation of the United States in order to achieve their aims? What does Musk represent, and what does part of Trump represent? It represents unbounded executive power, unconstrained by Congress, to promote conditions of maximum freedom. And the freedom they have in mind is not necessarily your personal freedom or mine.” -Gary GerstleAK: And I would extend that, Gary. I think that the most persistent and credible critics of Trump also come from the religious community. Peter Wehner, for example, former—I don't know if you're familiar with his work. He writes a lot for the Times and The Atlantic. Very religious man, is horrified—worked in the Bush and the Reagan administrations. Let's go back to—I was looking at the cover of the book, and obviously authors don't pick the covers of their books—GARY GERSTLE: I did. I picked this.AK: Okay. Well, when you look at the—GARY GERSTLE: This is this is not the original cover.AK: Right, so, the book I'm looking at, and for people just listening, I'm going to describe. The dominant picture is of the Berlin Wall being knocked down in the evening of November 1989. It's odd, Gary, isn't it, that...for the rise and fall of the neoliberal order, which is an economic order in a free market era, you should have chosen the image of a political event, which, of course, Fukuyama so famously described as the end of history. And I guess, for you as an economic historian who is also deeply interested and aware of politics, is the challenge and opportunity to always try to disentangle the economics and politics of all this? Or are they so entangled that they're actually impossible to disentangle, to separate?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I think sometimes you need to disentangle them, sometimes they move in different directions, and sometimes they move in the same direction. I think to understand the triumph of the neoliberal order, we have to see that politics and economics move in tandem with each other. What makes possible the neoliberal triumph of the 90s is the fall of communism between 1989 and 1991. And no picture embodies that better than the taking down of the Berlin Wall. And that connotes a message of freedom and escape from Soviet and communist tyranny. But the other message there is that tearing down of those walls opens the world to capitalist penetration to a degree that had not been available to the capitalist world since prior to World War One, prior to the war, and most importantly, to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. And where communists came to power everywhere, they either completely excluded or sharply curtailed the ability of capitalist business to operate within their borders. Their message was expropriate private property, which meant expropriate all corporate property. Give it over to the state, let the state manage it in the interest of the proletariat. This was an extraordinary dream that turned into an awful tyrannical outcome. But it animated the world, as few other ideas did in the 20th century, and proposed a very, very serious challenge to capitalist prerogative, to capitalist industry, to free markets. And so the collapse of communism, which is both the collapse of a state—a communist state, the Soviet Union—but perhaps more importantly, the collapse of the belief that any governments could structure the private economy in ways that would be beneficial to humankind. It's what opened the way in the 1990s to the neoliberal triumph. And it's important to recognize that the neoliberal triumph carried within it not just the triumph of capitalism, but the triumph of freedom. And I think the that image of the wall coming down captures both. It's people wanting to claim their freedom, but it also paves the way for an unregulated form of capitalism to spread to every corner of the world. And in the long term—we're in the mid-term—that was going to create inequalities, vulnerabilities to the global financial and economic systems, that were going to bring the global economy down and set off a radically different form of politics than the world had seen for some time. And we're still living through that radically different form of politics set off by the financial crash of 2008/2009, which, in my way of thinking, was a product of untrammeled capitalism conquering the world in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's and communism's collapse.AK: Yeah, and that's the other thing, isn't it, Garry? I mean, it goes without saying that the bringing down of the war fundamentally changed the old Soviet economy, the East European economies, Poland, Hungary, eastern part of Germany. But what no one—I think very, very few people imagined in '89 was that perhaps the biggest consequence of this capitalist penetration wasn't in Warsaw or Moscow or the eastern part of Berlin, but back in West Virginia with guys like JD Vance. How did the bringing down of the wall change America, or at least the American economy? I've never really quite understood that.GARY GERSTLE: Through the mass exporting of manufacturing to other countries that—AK: Wasn't that before? Wasn't that also taking place before '89, or did it happen particularly in the '90s?GARY GERSTLE: It began before 1989. It began during the Great Recession of the 1970s, where the first districts of manufacturing in the U.S., places like Buffalo, New York steelmaking center, began to get hollowed out. But it dramatically intensified in the 1990s, and this had to do with China permitting itself to be a part of this global free market. And China was opened to capitalist penetration from the United States and Europe. And what you saw in that decade was a massive shift of manufacturing to China, a shift that even intensified in the first decade of the 21st century with the admission of China in 2001 to the World Trade Organization. So China was a big factor. Also, the passage of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which rendered the northern half of the Western Hemisphere one common market, like the European Common Market. So, enormous flight of jobs to places like Mexico. And the labor costs in places like China and Mexico, and then East Asia already leaving Japan for Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, parts of the South Asian subcontinent. The flight of jobs there became so massive, and the labor costs there were so cheap, that American industry couldn't compete. And what you begin to see is the hollowing out of American industry, American manufacturing, and whole districts of America just beginning to rot. And no new industries or no new economies taking the place of the industries and the jobs that had left. And this America was being ignored, largely in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, in part because the ideology of neoliberalism said, we understand that this global free market is going to increase inequality in the world, it's going to increase the distance between rich and poor, but the distance between rich and poor is okay because all boats will rise. All people will benefit. This is not just an American story, this is also the story of other parts of the North Atlantic economy. Britain certainly, Germany was a partial exception, France, other places, and this was the ideology...growth would benefit everyone, and this was not the case. It was a fallacy. But the ideology was so strong that it held together until the financial crash of 2008/2009. After that crash, it became impossible to make the point that all boats were rising under the neoliberal regime. And this is when the forgotten Americans and the forgotten Brits of the northern part of the of Great Britain. This is when they began to make their voices heard. This is when they began to strike a very different note in politics. And this is where Donald Trump had his beginnings with these forgotten, angry people who felt ignored, left behind, and were suffering greatly, because by the early decades of the 21st century, it wasn't just jobs that were gone, but it was healthy marital life, divorce rates rising, rampant drug use. Two Cambridge economists wrote a book called Depths of Despair.AK: Yeah, that book comes up in almost every conversation. I once went down to Princeton to interview Angus Deaton. Like your book, it's become a classic. So let's fast forward, Gary, to the last election. I know you're writing a book now about politics in our time of authoritarianism, and you're scratching your head and asking whether the election last week was a normal or an apocryphal one, one that's just different or historical. And I wonder, in that sense, correct me if I'm wrong, there seems to have been two elections simultaneously. On the one hand, it was very normal, from the Democrats' point of view, who treated America as if it was normal. Harris behaves as if she was just another Democratic candidate. And, of course, Trump, who didn't. My interpretation, maybe it's a bit unfair, is that it's the progressives. It's certainly the coastal elites who have become, implicitly at least, the defenders of the old neoliberal order. For them, it kind of works. It's not ideal, but it works and they can't imagine anything else. And it's the conservatives who have attacked it, the so-called conservatives. Is there any truth to that in the last election?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I think the Democrats are certainly seen by vast sectors of the population as being the defenders of an old order, of established institutions controlling the media, although I think that's less and less true because the legacy media has less and less influence and shows like yours, podcasting and rogue Fox Television and all kinds of other outlets, are increasingly influential. But yes, the Democrats are seen as a party of the establishment. They are seen as the party of the educated elite. And one of the factors that determines who votes for who now is now deeply educational in the sense of, what is your level of educational achievement? If you are college educated, you're much more likely to vote Democratic, regardless of your income. And if you're high school educated or less, you're much more likely to vote Republican. I don't think it's fair to say that the Democrats are the last protectors of the neoliberal order, because Biden broke with the neoliberal order in major, consequential ways. If the defining characteristic of the neoliberal order is to free the market from constraints and to use the state only to free up market forces—this was true, to a large extent, of Obama and of Clinton—Biden broke with that, and he did it in alliance with Bernie Sanders, set of task forces they set up in 2020 to design a new administration. And his major pieces of legislation, reshoring CHIPS manufacture, the biggest investment in clean energy in the country's history. $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the biggest infrastructure project since the interstate highway system of the '50s, and arguably since Roosevelt's fabled New Deal. These are all about industrial policy. These are all about the government using its power and resources to direct industry in a certain way so that it will increase general happiness, general welfare, general employment. So this represents a profound change from what had come before. And in that way, the Biden administration can't be seen as the last defenders.“The question is, will they be able to get further than past generations of Republicans have by their willingness to break things? And will they go so far as to break the Constitution in the pursuit of these aims?”AK: And let me jump in here, Gary, there's another really important question. There was a very interesting piece, I'm sure you saw it, by Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker about Bidenomics and its achievements. You talked about the New Deal, the massive amount of investments—it was post COVID, they took advantage of the historical crisis. Trillions of dollars have been invested in new technologies. Is Bidenomics new in any way? Or is it basically just a return to the economics, or the political economy, of FDR?GARY GERSTLE: Well, it certainly draws inspiration from FDR, because at the core of the New Deal was the conviction that you could use government to direct industry to positive uses that would benefit not just the corporations, but the population as a whole. But there was nothing like the Green Energy Project in the New Deal. The New Deal, except for hydroelectric projects, was primarily about prospering on a cheap fossil fuel economy. The New Deal also was very comfortable with accepting prevailing gender and race conceptions of the proper place of women and African Americans in American life in a way that is unacceptable to Bidenomics. So there are redirections under Bidenomics in ways that modify the New Deal inspiration. But at its core, Bidenomics is modeled on the New Deal conviction that you need a strong federal government to point industry in the right direction. And so in that sense, there's a fundamental similarity in those two progressive projects. And I think people in the Biden administration have been quite conscious about that. Now, the particular challenges are different. The world economy is different. The climate crisis is upon us. So, it is going to take different forms, have different outcomes. But the inspiration clearly comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal.AK: Well, let's go over to the other side and Trump. You scratching your head and figuring out whether this is unusual. And of course, it's the second time he's won an election. This time around, he seems to be overtly hostile to the state. He's associated with Musk, who's promised to essentially decimate the state. In historical terms, Gary, is there anything unusual about this? I mean, certainly the opponents of FDR were also very hostile to this emergent American state. As a historian, do you see this as something new, the pleasure in essentially blowing the state up, or at least the promise of blowing the state up?GARY GERSTLE: That impulse is not new. There have been members of the Republican party who have been talking this language since the New Deal arrived in America in the 1930s and '40s during the '50s and '60s and early '70s, they were marginal in American politics. And then with the neoliberal order coming into being in the '70s and with Reagan as president, their voice has gained enormous traction. One of Reagan's key advisors in the 1980s and 1990s, one of his favorite lines was, “I want to shrink the size of the federal government until we can drown it in the bathtub.” It's a wonderful image and metaphor, and captures the intensity with which conservative Republicans have wanted to eliminate the strong centralized state. But they have not been able to do it to a degree that makes that have satisfied them. It turns out that Americans, for all their possible ideological opposition to big government like big parts of it, like Social Security, like Medicare, like a strong military establishment that's gonna protect the country, like clean air, clean water. So it's proved much more difficult for this edifice to be taken down than the Reaganites had imagined it would be. So, the advocates have become more radical because of decades of frustration. And what we have to think about in regard to Trump is, will they take on projects that will threaten the constitutional foundation of the United States in order to achieve their aims? What does Musk represent, and what does part of Trump represent? It represents unbounded executive power, unconstrained by Congress, to promote conditions of maximum freedom. And the freedom they have in mind is not necessarily your personal freedom or mine, as the abortion issue signifies. What they have in mind is corporate freedom. The freedom of Elon Musk's companies to do whatever they want to do. The freedom of the social media companies to do whatever they want to do. The question is, will they be able to get further than past generations of Republicans have by their willingness to break things? And will they go so far as to break the Constitution in the pursuit of these aims? Peter Thiel has said, very forthrightly, that democracy no longer works as a system, and that America has to consider other systems in order to have the kind of prosperity and freedom it wants. And one thing that bears watching with this new Trump administration is how many supporters the Peter Thiel's and the Elon Musk's are going to have to be free to tear down the edifice and the institutions of the federal government and pursuit of a goal of a reconfigured, and what I would call rogue, laissez-faire. This is something to watch.AK: But Gary, I take your point. I mean, Thiel's been, on the West Coast, always been a convenient punchbag for the left for years now, I punched him many times myself. I wanted to. But all this seems to be just the wet dream of neoliberals. So you have Musk and Thiel doing away with government. Huge corporations, no laws. This is the neoliberal wet dream, isn't it?GARY GERSTLE: Well, partly it is. But neoliberalism always depended on a structure of law enforced by government that was necessary to allow free markets to operate in a truly free and transparent manner. In other words, you needed elements of a strong government to perfect markets, that markets were not perfect if they were left to their own devices. And one of the dangers of the Elon Musk phase of the Trump administration is that this edifice of law on which corporations and capitalism thrives will be damaged in the pursuit of a radical libertarianism. Now, there may very well be a sense that cooler heads prevail in the Trump administration, and that this scenario will not come to fruition. But one certainly has to be aware that this is one of the possible outcomes of a Trump administration. I should also say that there's another very important constituency in the Republican party that wants to continue, not dismantle, what Biden has done with industrial policies. This is the other half of JD Vance's brain. This is Tom Cotton. This is Marco Rubio, this is Josh Hawley, senator from Missouri. And they want to actively use the government to regulate industry in the public interest. And there's a very interesting intellectual convergence going on between left of center and right of center intellectuals and policymakers who are converging on the importance of having an industrial policy, because if Elon Musk is given his way, how is the abandoned heartland going to come back?AK: It's cheering me up, Gary, because what you're suggesting is that this is a fairly normal moment. You've got different wings of the Republican Party. You've got the Cottons and the Rubios, who were certainly not revolutionary. Why should we believe that this is a special moment then?GARY GERSTLE: January 6th, 2021. That's the reason. Trump remains the only president in American history to authorize an attack on the very seat of American democracy. That being: Congress sitting in the Capitol. And once he authorized the attack, he waited for three hours hoping that his attackers and his mob would conquer this building and compel the legislators inside to do—AK: And I take your perspective. I'm the last person to defend that. But we're talking about 2024 and not 2021. He won the election fairly. No one's debating that. So, why is 2024 a special election?GARY GERSTLE: Well, here's the key. Well, maybe it's a special election in two ways. It may signify the reconfiguration of a genuinely populist Republican party around the needs of ordinary working-class Americans. And we should say, in this regard, that Trump has brought into his coalition significant numbers of Latinos, young blacks. It has the beginning of a look of a multiracial coalition that the Democrats once had, but now appear to be losing. So it may be an epochal moment in that regard. The other way in which it may be an epochal moment is: what if Trump does not get his way in his term in office for something he really wants? Will he accept that he is bound by the Constitution, that he is bound by the courts? Or will he once again say, when he really wants something, no constitution, no law, will stand in my way? That's how January 6th, 2021, still matters. I'm not saying he's going to do that, but I think we have to understand that that is a possibility, especially since he has shown no remorse for the outcome of the last election. If I read into your comments, I hear you saying: he won this time. He doesn't have to worry about losing. But Trump is always worried about losing. And he is a man who doesn't really know the Constitution, and the parts that he knows and understands he doesn't especially like, because his dream, along with Elon Musk's dream, and this is one reason why I think they are melding so tightly, at the apex of American government should be unbounded executive power. This is not how the country was set up. And as Congress and as the courts begin to push back, will he accept those limits, that there must be bounds on executive power? Or will he try and break through them? I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it's something that we have to be concerned about.AK: I wonder, again, wearing your historical cap you're always doing, the more you talk, the more Trump and Trump's Republican party is Nixonian. This obsession with not being responsible for the law. The broadening of the Republican party. Certainly the Republican party under Nixon was less singularly white than it became later. Isn't, in some ways, Trump just a return to Nixon? And secondly, you're talking about the law and Trump ransacking the law. But on the other hand, everything he always does is always backed up by the law. So, he has a love hate relationship with the law himself. He could never have accomplished anything he's done without hiring all these expensive lawyers. I don't know if you saw the movie this year, The Apprentice, which is built on his relationship with what's with Roy Cohn, of course, who schooled him in American politics, who was McCarthy's lawyer. So, again, I'm not trying to defend Trump, but my point is: what's different here?GARY GERSTLE: Well, a key difference from Nixon is that when push came to shove, Nixon submitted to the rule of law, and Trump did not. Nixon did not unleash his people on Congress when a group of senators came to him and said you're going to be impeached if you stay in office, you should resign. He resigned. So the '70s was a moment of enormous assertion of the power of Congress, and assertion of the power and authority of the Constitution. That is not the story of Donald Trump. The story of Donald Trump is the story of the Constitution being pushed to the side. If you ask, is there anything new about Americans and politicians trying to manipulate the law in their favor? There's nothing new about that. And Trump, having made his fortune in New York real estate, knows there's no such thing as perfect markets, knows that judges can be bought and corrupted. And so, he has very little regard for the authority of courts. Everything's a transaction. Everything can be bought and sold. So, he understands that, and he has used the law to his advantage when he can. But let me bring you back to his first inauguration speech. There was no mention of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in what he had to say that day. I think we'd be hard pressed to find another inaugural speech that makes no reference to the sacred documents having to do with the founding of the American Republic. And so I think in that way, he is something new and represents, potentially, a different kind of threat. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it's certainly possible. And let me add one other element that we have to consider, because I'm suggesting that he has a fondness for forms of authoritarian rule, and we have to recognize that hard rights are on the march everywhere in the world right now. The social democratic government of Germany has just fallen. Britain may soon be alone in terms of having a left-center party in control and upholding the values of liberal democracy. The world is in a grip of an authoritarian surge. That is not an American phenomenon. It is an international phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon I understand well enough, but if we're to understand the kind of strongman tendencies that Trump is exhibiting, the appeal of the strongman tendencies to so many Americans, we have to understand the international context in which this is occurring. And these movements in these different countries are fully aware of each other. They draw strength from each other's victories, and they get despairing from each other's defeats. So this is an international movement and an international project, and it's important, in that regard, to set Trump in that historical context.AK: Final question, Gary, there's so much here, we'll have to get you back on the show again in the new year. There's certainly, as you suggested, a great deal of vitality to conservatives, to the Cottons, the JD Vances, the Steve Bannons of the world. But what about on the left? We talked earlier, you sort of pushed back a little bit on the idea that the progressive elites aren't defenders of the neoliberal order, but you kind of acknowledged there may be a little bit of truth in that. In response to this new conservatism, which, as you suggested, is in some ways quite old, what can and should progressives do, rather than just falling back on Bidenomics and reliance on a new deal—which isn't going to happen now given that they had the opportunity in the COVID crisis to spend lots of money, which didn't have any impact on this election, for better or worse. Is there a need to re-architect the progressive politics in our new age, the age of AI, a high-tech age? Or do we simply allow the Bernie Sanders of the world to fall back on 20th-century progressive ideas?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I'm not sure where AI is taking us. AI may be taking us out of democracy altogether. I think one of—AK: You're not giving it any chance, if that's the case.“What if Trump does not get his way in his term in office for something he really wants? Will he accept that he is bound by the Constitution, that he is bound by the courts? Or will he once again say, when he really wants something, no constitution, no law, will stand in my way?”GARY GERSTLE: Well, there are different versions of AI that will be coming. But the state of the world right now suggests that democracy is on the defensive, and authoritarianism is is on the march. Those who predict the death of democracy have been wrong in the past. So I'm not predicting it here, but we have to understand that there are elements of life, technology, power in in private hands today, that make democracy much harder to do effectively. And so, this is a period of reflection that groups who care about democracy at all points on the political spectrum have to be thinking very seriously about. As for the here and now, and politicians don't think in terms of 10 or 20 years—or you have to be a leader in China, where you can think in terms of 10 or 20-year projects, because you never have to face any election and being tossed out of office—but in the here and now, I think what Democrats have to be very aware of, that the party that they thought they were is the party that the Republican Party has become, or is becoming: a multiracial, working-class party. And if the Democrats are to flourish—and in that regard, it's very significant—AK: It's astonishing, really.GARY GERSTLE: It is astonishing. And it's important to to note that Trump is the first Republican nominee for president since George W. Bush in 2004 to get a majority of votes. And the only person to do it before him in the last 30 years was his father, George H.W. Bush, in 1988. Kamala Harris came within 200,000 votes of becoming president of the United States. That's not well enough understood yet. But if 200,000 votes had changed in three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would be the president elect of the United States. However, she would have been the president elect while losing the popular vote. And one has to go very far back in history to find the Democrats being the beneficiaries of the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. And I think the fact that they lost the popular vote for only the third time in the last 50 years, maybe? I mean, when they elected someone...has to suggest that they have to do some serious thinking about how to reclaim this. Now, Bernie Sanders is coming out and saying, they should have gotten me on the public stage rather than Liz Cheney, that going after suburban Republican women was the wrong route. You should have stuck with me. We had a left/center alliance that worked in 2020. We could have done it again. But that's not my reading of the situation. My reading of the situation is that Bernie-style politics is distinctly less popular in 2024 than it was in 2020. The Democrats have to figure that out, and they have to figure out what they have to do in order to reclaim majorities in American life. And in order to do that, I think their economic programs are actually on the right track, in that respect, under the Biden administration. I think they probably have to rethink some of their cultural policies. There were three issues in this election. The economy was number one. The immigration issue was number two. And then, the trans issue was number three. The Republicans ran an estimated 30,000 ads declaring that the Democratic party was going to take your children away by turning them from boys to girls or girls to boys. The Democratic party has to do some hard thinking about how to have a progressive policy on immigration and how to have a progressive policy on issues of trans matters without losing a majority of the American people, who clearly are, at this moment, not with them on those important issues.AK: It's an astonishing moment, Gary. And I'm not sure whether it's a revolutionary moment or just surreal.GARY GERSTLE: Well, you've been pressing me, on a number of occasions, as to whether this is just the normal course of American politics, and if we look in that direction, the place to look for normality is...incumbents always do badly in high-inflationary times. And Ford and Carter lost in the 1970s. Every incumbent during COVID and during the inflationary period in Europe seems to have lost a recent election. The most normal course of politics is to say, this is an exceptional moment having to do with the enormity of COVID and what was required to shut down the economy, saved people, and then getting started up again, and we will see something more normal, the Democrats will be back to what they normally do, in 2028. That's a possibility. I think the more plausible possibility is that we are in the midst of some pretty profound electoral realignment that is giving rise to a different kind of political order. And the Democrats have to figure out if that political order is going to be under their direction, what they have to do to pull that off. AK: And maybe rather than the neoliberal order, we're talking about, what, a neo-authoritarian order? Is that—GARY GERSTLE: Well, the Trump forces are maybe neo-authoritarian, but we don't have a name for it. Pete Buttigieg—AK: Well, that's why we got you on the show, Gary. Don't you have a name for it?GARY GERSTLE: No. You know—AK: We're relying on you. I hope it's going to be in your next book.GARY GERSTLE: Well, I have till January 20th, 2025, to come up with the name. Pete Buttigieg called it the Big Deal rather than the New Deal. I don't think that cuts it. And there's some other pundits who are arguing about building from the middle out. That doesn't cut it.AK: That sounds terrible. That sounds like—GARY GERSTLE: This is part of Biden's—AK: Designing political parties by committee. It's like an American car.GARY GERSTLE: This is part of Biden's problem. You can't name, effectively, in a positive way, what he's done. One thing that's going to happen—and this may be a sign that things will continue from Biden to Trump, in terms of industrial policy. Do you have any doubt that Trump is going to plaster his name on every computer chips plant, every battery factory? Trump brought this to you, he's got to be there for every opening. He's not going to miss a beat. He'll see this as a grand publicity tour. I think there's a good chance he will take credit for what Biden has started, and that's going to upset a lot of us. But it may also signify that he may be loath to abandon many of these industrial policies that Biden has put in place, especially since the Biden administration was very clever in putting most of these plants, and chip plants, and battery plants, in deep red Republican districts.AK: Well, Gary, I know you're not particularly cheerful. I don't suppose most of our audience are, but you actually cheered me up. I think things are a little bit more normal than some people think. But we will get you back on the show after January—what did you say—January 25th, when you'll have a word to describe the New World Order?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I said after January 20th, 2025, you can expect me to have a name. I probably should—AK: Gary, now, we'll have you back on the show. If you don't have a name, I'm going to report you to Trump.GARY GERSTLE: You'll have to bury me.AK: Yeah. Okay. Well, we're not burying you. We need you, Gary Gerstle, author of Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, a man who makes sense of our present with historical perspective. Gary, as always, a pleasure. Keep well and keep safe. And we'll talk again in the not-too-distant future. Thank you so much.GERSTLE: Thank you. A pleasure talking with you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game. (commercial at 8:51)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game. (commercial at 8:51)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

When it was ratified more than 30 years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement was hailed as a decision "that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace," according to President Bill Clinton. Today, NAFTA is toxic, and populist anger at the multilateral free trade regime of the post-Cold War era is redefining global politics. In this episode, Dan Kaufman, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, tells us how NAFTA destroyed the working class in his home state of Wisconsin, specifically in Milwaukee, once the "machine shop of the world." Further reading: How NAFTA Broke American Politics by Dan Kaufman Further listening: The Economy, Stupid with historian Nelson Lichtenstein

In 1992, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. signed NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the global business landscape began transforming. Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, studies how companies have adjusted their strategies to that disruptive change — from rethinking their supply chains to learning to navigate unpredictable trade policy environments. He discusses how companies can plan for an evolving world of multi-country international supply chains and cross-border information flows. Key episode topics include: strategy, competitive strategy, business history, globalization, technology and analytics. HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week. · Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: Globalization: Myth and Reality (2017)· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org]]>

Culture, finances and people have always moved with fluidity across boundaries within the binational, three-state metropolitan region known as ‘the Borderplex.' Together, Las Cruces, El Paso, and Ciudad Juarez are an economic powerhouse with a combined population of 2.7 million and the largest bilingual and binational workforce in the Western Hemisphere.  After the North American Free Trade Agreement was reached in 1994, Borderplex assets—including its urbanization and industrialization—exploded for decades. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement updated NAFTA commitments in 2018, realigining regional trade in a way that paid off as COVID-19 brought volatility to global commerce for years to come. With instabilities persisting today in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia, the appeal of an international supply chain physically closer to U.S. markets has only grown.  Connected to the greater U.S. by Interstates 10 and 25, The Borderplex is a growing arterial for international trade and is further optimized by collaborative economic planning between leaders in all three of its cities. As a result of all of these and other factors, last year, Mexico surpassed China as the top importer to the U.S.-- a position China had held since 2009.  The Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness at the University of Texas at El Paso and The Borderplex Alliance are two prominent organizations supporting the assets and relationships that make The Borderplex so critical to the U.S. They each provide expert analysis and guidance to companies and individuals interested in engaging this regional binational economic hub.  In this episode, Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance, and Mayra Maldonado, executive director of the Hunt Institute, offer their perspectives on these exchanges and what it means to be a binational region within the current political climate.  Fact check of today's interview:  In this interview, a guest refers to El Paso, Texas, as the second safest city in the US with a population of half a million or more. Although this distinction appears to have been given in 2017 and is not the city's current ranking, El Paso consistently ranks as one of the safer cities in the US for its population size.  Relevant links and resources:  Episode one of the series: “10X Border Series: Why U.S. Immigration Reform is Critical to Our Future with Dr. David Shirk”  Episode two of the series: “10X Border Series: Climate-Induced Drought Tests U.S.-Mexico Water-Sharing”  “The Transformative Power of Reduced Wait Times at the US-Mexico Border” (joint report between the Hunt Institute, Atlantic Council and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte)  Hunt Institute's overview of the Paso del Norte Region

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are constantly talking about trade, tariffs and domestic manufacturing.In many ways, these talking points stem from a single trade deal that transformed the U.S. economy and remade both parties' relationship with the working class.Dan Kaufman, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, explains how the North American Free Trade Agreement broke American politics.Guest: Dan Kaufman, the author of “The Fall of Wisconsin,” and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.Background reading: How NAFTA broke American politics.Both Democrats and Republicans are expressing support for tariffs to protect American industry, reversing decades of trade thinking in Washington.For more information on today's episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Soon, you'll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don't miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts.

pWotD Episode 2669: Bill Clinton Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 342,902 views on Thursday, 22 August 2024 our article of the day is Bill Clinton.William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992. Clinton, whose policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy, became known as a New Democrat.Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1968, and later from Yale Law School, where he met his future wife, Hillary Rodham. After graduating from law school, Clinton returned to Arkansas and won election as state attorney general, followed by two non-consecutive tenures as Arkansas governor. As governor, he overhauled the state's education system and served as chairman of the National Governors Association. Clinton was elected president in the 1992 election, defeating the incumbent Republican Party president George H. W. Bush and the independent businessman Ross Perot. He became the first president to be born in the Baby Boomer generation.Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. He signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, but failed to pass his plan for national health care reform. Starting in the mid-1990s, he began an ideological evolution as he became much more conservative in his domestic policy, advocating for and signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program and financial deregulation measures. He appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the U. S. Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U. S. military intervention in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, eventually signing the Dayton Peace agreement. He also called for the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and many former Warsaw Pact members joined NATO during his presidency. Clinton's foreign policy in the Middle East saw him sign the Iraq Liberation Act which gave aid to groups against Saddam Hussein. He also participated in the Oslo I Accord and Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, and assisted the Northern Ireland peace process.Clinton won re-election in the 1996 election, defeating Republican nominee Bob Dole and Reform Party nominee Perot. His second term was dominated by the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, which began in 1995, when he had a sexual relationship with the then 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In January 1998, news of the affair made tabloid headlines. This scandal escalated throughout the year, culminating in December when Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, becoming the first U. S. president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson. The two impeachment articles that the House passed were centered around perjury and Clinton using the powers of the presidency to commit obstruction of justice. In 1999, Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate, where he was acquitted on both charges. During the last three years of Clinton's presidency, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus—the first such surplus since 1969.Clinton left office in 2001 with the joint-highest approval rating of any U. S. president. His presidency ranks among the middle to upper tier in historical rankings of U. S. presidents. However, his personal conduct and misconduct allegations have made him the subject of substantial scrutiny. Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the Clinton Foundation to address international causes such as the prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2009, he was named the United Nations special envoy to Haiti. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton founded the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund with George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has remained active in Democratic Party politics, campaigning for his wife's 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:37 UTC on Friday, 23 August 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Bill Clinton on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Joanna.

MCALLEN, Texas - Adrian Villarreal, president and CEO of IBC Bank-McAllen, says the North American Free Trade Agreement - now known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement - has transformed Deep South Texas. Villarreal spoke about his bank's heavy involvement in NAFTA and USMCA while participating in a bankers panel at the City of McAllen's recent 2024 MxLAN International Economic Summit. The discussion was titled “Future of Banking.” In his remarks, Villarreal pointed out that IBC Bank has been around for about 58 years. “We were organized, founded, born here, as a Deep South Texas institution. And so having that type of profile, it's always been very important for us to be champions of economic development here in this area,” Villarreal said. Villarreal said that when he first started at IBC Bank, in the early 1990s, NAFTA was being born. “I remember that there was this sort of electricity in the bank. There were trips being made to Washington, DC. There were executives from the bank that were participating in think tanks, in business committees and councils to give feedback on that original NAFTA agreement. And we're very much engaged in that.” Villarreal continued: “As we know today, when NAFTA first came around, it really transformed this area. I remember back, growing up and we had double digit unemployment numbers. Today, here in the city of McAllen, I believe it's about four to four and a half percent. Incredible progress.” Villarreal said IBC Bank played a key role in fashioning USMCA, just as it did NAFTA. “Even in this last update, to turn NAFTA into USMCA, we were invited to participate, to be part of the think tanks around that.” Villarreal said he remembers talking to the head of IBC's international department (Gerry Schwebel) about the USMCA negotiations. “At the very beginning of those negotiations, he was saying that the table was kind of pretty much empty. It was him, a bunch of policy makers and politicians involved. And then, as the agreement was coming towards an end, everybody showed up. Big Corporate America, big multinational banks, transportation companies, the automobile industry. Obviously, the table was full.” Villarreal said he remembers Schwebel telling him a particular story about the USMCA negotiations. “I remember him telling me a story that, around the table they were kind of looking at him and saying who are you? And it really wasn't a question about how did you sneak into this table? What it really was about is, how do you know so much? I think the reason why is because we take a deep commitment and being a champion of this area, being involved in this area and promoting economic activities that make a real difference.” He continued: “Now, when you look at us transforming from an agricultural society to a trade society, now becoming a medical hub, and the growth in institutions down here, it really kind of started with NAFTA opening that floodgate.” Villarreal added: “And so we take that responsibility very seriously, of being, just as all my peers here want to be, really good corporate citizens. And I think, overall, that engagement and being able to provide economic opportunity for everybody, I think that's one of the things that I've been the most proud about in terms of IBC Bank.”Editor's Note: Here is an audio recording of the bankers panel at the 20214 MXLAN International Economic Summit. To read the full story go to the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service's website.To read the new stories and watch the news videos of the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service go to www.riograndeguardian.com.

Brian Mulroney was a great friend to American Presidents, and one of the big four leaders who helped bring down Communism in the 1980s. He helped George Bush in the Gulf War and was the leader who pushed for the freeing of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He was a man who played an outsized role in his times as the leader of our great northern neighbor. Brian Mulroney died on February 29, 2024. In his Obituary The New York Times wrote of him: " Mr. Mulroney was known as the Canadian leader who led the country into the North American Free Trade Agreement, with the United States and Mexico, a pact signed in December 1992, and as the author of an overhaul of Canada's tax regime.... He prided himself on being a confidant of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; on promoting a thaw between Moscow and Washington in the closing days of the Cold War; and on going much further than either the United States or Britain in imposing sanctions against white-ruled South Africa to press for the release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of apartheid." “I am a centrist, a modern one open to all discussions,” Mr. Mulroney said during the 1984 campaign.  Mr. Mulroney proposed a goods-and-services tax,  he successfully negotiated the NAFTA accord, and tried but failed to bring about a national unity with Quebec and get them to sign on to the country's constitution.  That failure would eventually lead to splits in his own Conservative Party and his resignation and their total wipe out in the election just after he left office. In this episode we look back at the life and leadership of Brian Mulroney, and listen to perhaps the speeches that are today how most Americans remember him. The great friend of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher , George H. W. Bush, and his Queen, Elizabeth 2.  He gave the eulogies to three of them, and spoke on television during the period of mourning for Prime Minister Thatcher, this episode will feature those speeches and one of the interviews, plus we will hear from Canadian leaders, the Canadian news coverage of his passing, and an interview with the man himself on the George Stroumboulopoulos Show. As we bid farewell to this great friend of the United States.  Our host will also pay tribute to his own Step-Father, Charles "Larry " Bulmer, who was a member of the Canadian Air Force for 35 years and then worked with NATO, and we will hear him briefly retell the story of our host's family trip to the Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump National Park in the Alberta Province of Canada.  It was a trip our host said was one to remember. If you would like to learn more about the Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage site here is the link https://headsmashedin.ca/ We hope this is a fitting tribute to a legendary man, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney  Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcastsThanks for listening!!

On this episode, my guest is David Bacon, a California writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. His latest book, In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte (COLEF / UC Press, 2017) includes over 300 photographs and 12 oral histories of farm workers. Other books include The Right to Stay Home and Illegal People, which discuss alternatives to forced migration and the criminalization of migrants. Communities Without Borders includes over 100 photographs and 50 narraatives about transnational migrant communities and The Children of NAFTA is an account of worker resistance on the US/Mexico border in the wake of NAFTA.Show Notes:David's Early YearsLearning about Immigration through UnionsThe Meaning of Being UndocumentedNAFTA and Mexican MigrationThe Source of Corn / MaizeBinational Front of Indigenous Organizations / Frente Indigena de Organizacaions BinacionalesThe Right to Stay HomeAndres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) CampaignThe Face & History of Immigration in the USAImmigration Reform and AmnestyThe Violence of Fortuna Silver Mines in OaxacaSolidarity, Change and OptimismHomework:The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican MigrationIn the Fields of the North / En los campos del norteIllegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes ImmigrantsCommunities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of MigrationThe Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico BorderDavid's Twitter AccountDavid's Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism podcast, David. It's an honor to have you on the pod. To begin, I'd like to ask you where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you there. David: Well, I live in Berkeley, here in California, and I am sitting in front of my computer screen having just what I've been up to today before talking with you. Chris: Hmm. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for your work. Perhaps I could ask you what drew you to the issues of labor and migration.David: Sure. Well, I come from a kind of left wing union family, so I knew about unions and workers and strikes and things like that from probably since before I can remember. And so I was kind of an activist when I was in high school, got involved in the [00:01:00] student movement in the 1960s at the University of California, got involved in the free speech movement, got tossed out by the university, actually, and wound up going to work after that, really, because I got married, had a daughter, and I got married, had a daughter, and, I needed to get a job and, you know, worked for quite a while as a a printer in the same trade that my father was, had been in went back to night school to learn more of the, of the trade, how to do different parts of it, how to run presses and so forth and then got involved, this is, you know, in the late 60s, early 70s got involved in the movement to support farm workers, really, and I was one of those people, you know, if you're my age, you remember this, if you're younger, you probably don't, but we used to picket supermarkets to try to get them [00:02:00] to stop selling the grapes and the wine and the lettuce that was on strike, and we would stand out in front of Safeway and other supermarkets with our red flags with the black eagle on them, And ask customers, you know, not to go into the store, not to buy the products that farmworkers were on strike against.And I got really interested in. I'm curious about the workers that we were supporting. You know, I grew up in Oakland and so I didn't know anything about farm workers, really. I didn't know anything about rural California, rural areas, didn't speak Spanish didn't know much about Chicano, Latinos.Oakland's a pretty diverse city, but in the area of Oakland where I grew up in you know, in our high school, you know, the students were African American or they were white, and that was a big racial question in, in school when I was in high school. So I grew up not knowing any of these things.[00:03:00] And Because I was involved in, you know, standing out in front of these stores and supporting workers, I, you know, began wondering, who are these workers that we're supporting? And eventually, I went to work for the union. I asked a lawyer friend of mine who was in their legal department if they needed any help, and of course he said yes.I went down to, Oxnard and de Santamaria began working for the union, originally taking statements from workers who had been fired because of their union activity. I didn't know much Spanish, so I had to learn Spanish on the job. Fortunately, you know, the workers were very patient with me and would help me learn, help me correct my still bad pronunciation and bad grammar.And, and I began to learn. And that process has been going on ever since, really. That was a, that was a formative time in my life. It taught me a lot of [00:04:00] things. It taught me about, you know, the culture of. farm workers who were mostly Mexican in those years, but there were still a good number of Filipino workers working in the fields.That eventually led me to the woman I eventually married, my wife, who was the daughter of of immigrants from the Philippines from a farm worker family. So I learned about that culture and I began learning about immigration, which I hadn't really known anything about growing up. Why people come to the U.S., what happens to people here. I, I saw my first immigration raid. When I was an organizer, I later became an organizer for the union as my Spanish got better. And I remember going to talk to a group of workers that I had met with the previous night, who were worked up in palm trees picking dates.And I went down to the date grove, this was in the Coachella Valley, and there was this big green van, and there were the [00:05:00] workers who I'd been talking to the previous night being loaded into the van. I was just You know, really shocked. The van took off. I followed the van all the way down to the Imperial Valley, to El Centro, where the detention center was.Stood outside the center trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. What am I going to do? What's going to happen to these people? And that was sort of an introduction to the meaning of being undocumented, what it meant to people, what could happen. And that made me an immigrant rights activist, which I've also been ever since, too.But also, over time, I got interested in the reasons why people were coming to the U. S. to begin with. You know, what people were finding here when people got here was very, very difficult work, low pay, immigration raids, police harassment, at least, and sometimes worse than that, poverty. You know, Why leave Mexico if this is what you're going to find?[00:06:00] And it also made me curious about the border. And so that also began something that has continued on in all those years since. I eventually went to the border, went to Mexico, began getting interested and involved in Mexican labor politics, supporting unions and workers in Mexico, you know, doing work on the border itself.After the Farm Workers Union, I worked for other unions for A number of years and they were generally reunions where the workers who were trying to join and we were trying to help were immigrants. So the government workers union, the women in the sweatshops sewing clothes or union for factory workers.And so my job was basically to help workers organize and. Organizing a union in the United States is like well, you know, people throw around this word, you know, this phrase class war and class warfare pretty freely, but it is like a war. You know, when [00:07:00] workers get together and they decide they want to change conditions and they want to you know, get the company to, speak to them and to deal with them in an organized way.They really do have to kind of go, go to war or be willing to, for the company to go to war with them. You know, really what people are asking for sometimes is pretty minimal, you know, wage raises or fair treatment at work or a voice at work. You know, you think, you know, what's wrong with that. But generally speaking when employers get faced with workers who want to do that they do everything possible to try and stop them.Including firing people and harassing people, calling them to meetings, threatening people, scaring people. You know, there's a whole industry in this country that consists of union consultants who do nothing but, you know, advise big companies about how to stop workers when they, when they try to organize.So that's what I did for about 20 years. Was help workers to get organized, form a union, get their bus to sit down and talk [00:08:00] to them, go out on strike, do all those kinds of things. And eventually I decided that I wanted to do something else. And I, I was already involved in, you know, starting to take photographs.I would carry a camera and I would take pictures of what we were doing as workers. We would joke about it, kind of. I would tell workers, well, you know, we're going to take some pictures here and you can take them home to your family and show them, you know, that you're really doing what's right here and 20 years from now you'll show your grandkids that, you know, when the time came, you stood up and you did what was right and people would joke with each other about it.And I discovered also that you could use them to get support for what we were doing. You know, we could get an article published in a newspaper somewhere. Some labor newspaper might run an article about us. You might get some money and some help or some food or something. But after a while, you know, I began [00:09:00] realizing that these photographs, they had a value beyond that.And that was that they were documenting this social movement that was taking place among immigrants and, and Latino workers, especially here on the West Coast of people basically trying to. Organize themselves for social justice in a lot of different ways, organizing unions for sure, but also trying to get changes in U.S. immigration laws, immigration policies those people who are citizens and able to vote, registering to vote, political change. You have to remember that if you go back to the 1960s or 1970s, Los Angeles was what we used to call the capital of the open shop. In other words, it was one of the most right wing cities in America.You know, the mayor Sam Yorty was a right wing Republican. The police department had what they called the Red Squad, whose responsibility it was is to go out and to deal with [00:10:00] people that wanted to change anything or to organize and Unions or strikes or belong to left wing political parties or whatever.And today, Los Angeles is one of the most progressive cities in the United States, and it has to do with what happened to those primarily Central American and Mexican and workers of color, women, who over time got organized and changed the politics of Los Angeles. And so, you know, I was really fascinated by it.This process, I was involved in it as an organizer and then later as a somebody taking photographs of it and writing about it that and so that's, that's sort of the transition that I made for the last 30 some odd years. I've worked as a freelance writer and photographer, basically doing the same kind of thing.I look at it as a way of organizing people, really, because the whole purpose of writing the articles and taking the [00:11:00] photographs is to change the way people think, and make it possible for people to understand the world better, and then to act on that understanding, which to me means trying to fight for a more just world, a more just society.And so. That's what, that's the purpose of the photographs, that's the purpose of the writing, is to, is to change the world. I think it's a big tradition in, in this country, in the United States of photography and of journalism that is produced by people who are themselves part of the movements that they are writing about or documenting, and whose purpose it is to sort of help to move forward social movements for social change.Chris: Amen. Some of the stories you were mentioning remind me of my mother who also worked for a labor union most of her life. And I was definitely still very much concerned with the state of affairs. I should [00:12:00] say that you know, I'm incredibly grateful as well to have a man of your stature and experience on the pod here to speak with us your work Has definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things I hadn't seen living here in southern Mexico, in, in Oaxaca.And one of these, these books, which I'd like to touch on a little bit today, is entitled, The Right to Stay Home. how U. S. policy drives Mexican migration. And we're actually at the 10 year anniversary of the publication of this book. So I feel honored to be able to speak with you in this regard about it.And, you know, it's, for me, someone who was a backpacker and a tourist, and then later a resident of this place, of Oaxaca, to come to understand much more deeply the complexities and nuances around migration, and especially in the context of Mexican migration to the United States. [00:13:00] What's left out of the conversation as someone who grew up in urban North America and Toronto, Canada very much on the left in my earlier years, in terms of organizing and, and and protesting, the, the, the dialogues and the conversations always seem to be around the the treatment of migrants once they arrived and, and not necessarily, as you said, why they left in the first place, the places that they left and the consequences to the places that they left.And so I guess to begin, I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background into How that book came to be written and what was the inspiration and driving factors for it? David: The book came to be written to begin with because I began going to Mexico and trying to understand how [00:14:00] the system of migration works in the context of the world that we live in, you know, people call it globalization or globalism, or you could call it imperialism.So I was trying to understand that from the roots of first having been involved with people as migrants once they had arrived here in the U. S. I was trying to understand Well, two things. One was why people were coming, and also what happens to people in the course of coming. In other words, the journey that people make.Especially the border. The border is the big And the border has very important functions in this because it's really the crossing of the border that determines what the social status of a migrant is, whether you have papers or not, whether you're documented or not, which is a huge, [00:15:00] huge, huge distinction.So as a result of that, and as a result of kind of listening to people listening to the movement in Mexico talk, about it, investigating, going to places like Oaxaca. I first wrote a book that tried to look at this as a system, a social system. It's really part of the way capitalism functions on a international or global basis in our era because what it does is it produces Displacement, the changes that are, you take a country like Mexico, and this is what the first book, the first book was called Illegal People.And what it looked at was the imposition on Mexico, for instance, it starts with NAFTA, the free trade agreement. In fact, the first book I ever wrote was about the border and was called The Children of NAFTA, the [00:16:00] North American Free Trade Agreement. But this book Illegal People, what it really tried to do is it tried to look at the ways in which People were displaced in communities like Oaxaca.And of course, for Oaxaca, Oaxaca is a corn growing state. It's a rural state. Most people in Oaxaca still live in villages and small communities. Oaxaca's a big city, and there's some other cities there, but, but most people in Oaxaca are still what you call rural people. And so NAFTA, among the many changes that it imposed on Mexico, one of the most important was that it allowed U. S. corn corporations, Archer Daniels Midland Continental Grain Company other really large corporations to dump corn in Mexico at a price that we were subsidizing through the U. S. Farm Bill, our tax money. In other words, we're, our tax money was being [00:17:00] given to these corporations to lower their cost of production.And that allowed them to go to Mexico and to sell corn at a price that was so low that people who were growing corn in a place like Oaxaca could no longer sell it for a price that would cover the cost of growing it. That had an enormous impact on people in Oaxaca because what it did was it forced people to basically to leave in order to survive.It's not that people were not leaving Oaxaca already before the agreement passed. There were other reasons that were causing the displacement of people in rural communities in Oaxaca. A lot of it had to do with this relationship with the U. S. even then, but certainly NAFTA was like pouring gasoline on all of that.And so three million people was the estimate that in a period of 10 years were displaced as corn farmers in Oaxaca. That's a huge percentage of the population of Oaxaca. [00:18:00] And so people were forced to go elsewhere looking for work. People went, you know, to Mexico City. You know, Mexico City, the metro system, the subway system in Mexico City was built primarily by workers who came from somewhere else.A lot of them from Oaxaca. Who wound up being the low cost labor that the Mexican government used to build a subway system. They went to the border, they became workers in the maquiladoras, in the factories that were producing everything from car parts to TV screens for the U. S. market. And then people began crossing the border and coming to the U.S. as either farm workers in rural areas of California or as low paid workers in urban areas like Los Angeles. So one of the big ironies, I think, of it was that here you had farm work, farmers who were being forced off their land. And remember that these are corn farmers, so [00:19:00] the Domestication of corn happened first in Oaxaca, and the first earliest years of domesticated corn, thousands of years old, have been discovered in archaeological digs in Oaxaca and caves near Oaxaca City to begin with.So here we have people to whom the world really owes corn as a domesticated crop, who are winding up as being wage workers on the farms of corporate U. S. agribusiness corporations in California, Oregon, Washington, eventually all over the United States. That was the migration of Oaxacan people. And so you could sort of see In this, as sort of a prism, what the forces were, what the social forces at work are, in other words, that in the interests of the profits of these big corporations, these trade agreements get negotiated between [00:20:00] governments, okay, our government, the U.S. government negotiates with the Mexican government, but that's like David negotiating with Goliath, or the other way around, rather, you know, The agreements are really imposed. It's not to say that the Mexican government of those years was opposed to it. It was a neoliberal government too, but the power in this negotiation is held by the U.S. government. And so that trade agreement in the interest of making Mexico a profitable place for, you know, Archer Daniels Middleton to do business gets imposed on Mexico. And then as a result of that, people get displaced and they wind up becoming a low wage workforce for other corporations here in here in the U.S. In fact, sometimes they Wind up working for the same corporation Smithfield foods, which is a big producing corporation [00:21:00] went to Mexico. It got control of huge areas of a valley called the Peralta Valley, not that far from Mexico city. And they began. Establishing these huge pork or pig raising facilities.In fact, that's where the swine flu started was because of the concentration of animals in these farms. Again, displacing people out of those communities. And people from the state of Veracruz, where the Perote Valley is located, many of them wound up getting recruited and then going to work in North Carolina at the huge Smithfield Foods Pork Slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina.So that sort of tells you a lot about how this system works. It produces displacement. In other words, it produces people who have no alternative but to migrate in order to survive. And those people go through all the things that people have to go through in order to get to the United [00:22:00] States because there are no real visas for this kind of migration.And them wind up being The workforce that is needed by the system here, Smithfield Foods or other corporations like them in order for them to make high profits here. And in the process of doing this, I was developing a a relationship with a very unique organization in Mexico, in Oaxaca, a part of which exists in Oaxaca, called the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, which is the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations.And this is an organization that was actually started by Oaxaca migrants in the U. S., in Los Angeles, and then expanded both into the Central Valley here in California and then expanded back into Mexico in Baja, California, where there are also big corporate farms where primarily Oaxaca, people from Oaxaca are the workforce, and eventually chapters in Oaxaca itself.[00:23:00] And so I would got to be friends with many people in this organization, and I would go and take photographs at their bi national meetings, they would have meetings in Mexico where people could come together and and talk about their situation. And, you know, I began, obviously, listening to what people were talking about.And, People developed this, I think, very kind of path breaking, unique analysis of migration in which they talked about a dual set of rights that migrants need and migrant communities need in this kind of world. And so, What they said was, on the one hand people need rights as migrants where they go.In other words, people, when they come to the United States, need legal status. People need decent wages, the ability to organize, you know, an end to the kind of discrimination that people are subject to. But, [00:24:00] people also need a second set of rights as well, which is called the right to stay home. And that is the title of the book, The Right to Stay Home.And what that means is that, People need political change and economic and social change in their communities of origin, which makes migration voluntary. So these are communities that are so involved in the process of migration that it would not make any sense to say that migration is bad, because In many cases, these are communities that live on the remittances that are being sent by migrants, by members of people's own families who are living and working in the United States.So the discourse in these meetings was sort of on the order of saying that people have the right to migrate, people have the right to travel, people have the right to leave, but they also have the right to stay home. They have the right to a decent future. A young [00:25:00] person who is growing up in Santiago, Cusco, Oaxaca in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, for instance, has a right to a future in Oaxaca so that you can make a choice.Do you want to stay and have a decent life for yourself in Oaxaca, or do you want to leave and hopefully have a decent life for you and wherever you go, whether Baja California or California or Washington State? So in order to have a Right to stay home. What has to happen? What do people need? It's kind of a no brainer. People need well high farm prices to begin with. They need the ability to raise corn, tomatoes, Whatever crop it is that they need and sell it at a price that is capable of sustaining those families and communities. People need education.They need healthcare, but people also need political change because the Frente Indígena is a political organization. And so it was fighting [00:26:00] against the domination of Oaxaca by the old PRI, the party of the institutionalized revolution, which had been running Mexico for 70 years, trying to find a government that would begin to push for those kinds of social rights.And that was you know, a very important kind of eye opening for me was to hear people talking about the right to stay home, so much so that I said, you know, we need a book about this. So we're not just describing the system itself, how it works, but we are talking about what are people's responses to it?What do people think should happen here? And this was one of the most important developments of it. And it was not just. The people in Oaxaca, the more I did work on trying to investigate it and document it, there's part of the book, and also this was being done in people's [00:27:00] voices, the main voice in the right to stay home belongs to Rufino Dominguez, who was one of the founders of the Frente Indígena, who was my teacher in this, and so at one point they did knock the PRI out of power in Oaxaca and elected a governor, Gabino Cuei, who turned out to be not as good as people had hoped that he would be, but he was not the PRI.And he appointed Rufino, the head of the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants. So here was Rufino who had, was a left wing radical who spent his whole life opposing the government in Oaxaca, who then joined it for a while until he could no longer stomach what was going on there and had to leave.But. Pushing for that kind of political change in Oaxaca. There's another part of the book that talks about the miners in Cananea near the border with the United States. And their Effort to try to. win justice from this huge corporation that [00:28:00] was basically intent on destroying their union. And when they were forced out on strike, those miners also had to cross the border to Arizona to become workers in Arizona to survive.Again, you know, you see how the system is working here, but they also were talking about what kind of political change has to happen in Mexico for the right to stay home. to become reality. And that movement in Mexico grew strong enough so that, you know, after The Right to Stay Home was published, some years after, since it was, as you said, 10 years ago that Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned.He went all around the country speaking in every little tiny village that Mexico has, practically, in the course of four years. And one of the main things he talked about was the right to alternatives to forced migration. And I was there in Mexico City in the Zócalo when he took office. He finally won it.I don't want to go into all the things that had to [00:29:00] happen for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to win an election and become president of Mexico. But in his, in his inaugural speech as he was being sworn in, he talked about, we are going to make Mexico into a place where Mexicans can be happy living, where you don't have to go to the United States in order to survive, and I think you can talk about the, Things that the Mexican government has not been able to accomplish in the last four or five years.But I think one thing is beyond question and that is that that has been the main direction of the policy of the government of Mexico in that period of time because that's what got him elected. was this idea that, as he said, we are going to reject the liberal, neoliberal hypocrisy of the last six administrations in Mexico, meaning no more trade agreements like NAFTA, no [00:30:00] more opening Mexico up to U.S. corporations to come in and make money and as a result of which everybody's going to have to leave, that there had to be some kind of different direction in Mexico. So, in a way, I think that. Maybe that book, The Right to Stay Home, was like a little grain of sand that joined with other little grains of sand like it in helping to move forward that process of political change, because it happened on really on both sides of the border.Gosh, millions and millions of Mexicans who are living in the United States. So the process of political discussion that goes on about the kind of government Mexicans should have happens not just in Mexico, it happens here too. You know, part of Mexico is here on this side of the border. So you know, the book, and the book actually was published in Spanish and in Mexico as well too.So I think that it talked about things that were very important to people. [00:31:00] At the time, and that people are still debating about what has to happen in order for the right to stay home to be a reality. And I think it's something very important for people in this country to listen to and to think about as well, too, because in all the debates about migration that happen in here in the U.SThere's not a lot of attention that's paid to this whole idea of the two sets of rights, what has to happen. You know, certainly, you know, there are people like Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party that just, you know, never going to talk about anything like this. But even among Democrats, even in the Biden administration, you know, it's really too much about how to manage the border, you know, which basically boils down to how many people are we going to detain and deport.Rather than thinking about what kind of [00:32:00] world do we want to live in. Therefore, what kind of places migration going to have in it? ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's it's been fascinating reading and rereading this book in, in, in part to be able to give voice to not just migrants and not just migration issues in the places that people move to or migrate to, but also in the places that they, that they leave behind and the voices of the people that they leave behind.And you know, I think for. Many North Americans, especially those who are first or second generation citizens of those countries of Anglo North America, of Canada and the United States, that these are, these are the stories these are the voices that that maybe they haven't heard of in their own families as well.And so, you know, you started to mention a little bit about this. the kind of superficiality, perhaps, if I'm, if I can say it in that, in those terms, of the [00:33:00] political conversation around migration in the United States, in Canada, and perhaps even in Mexico. And so I'd like to ask you about the reception and perhaps the fallout Once the book was published, and I'm curious how the declaration to the right to stay home or the right to not migrate has altered at all the political or social social landscape in rural Mexico, you know, at least in terms of the people that you know in these places.And also if there was any response, any, any ground shaking movements as a result of the book coming out among activists in the United States. David: Well, I think that the book contributed to an important change. In the immigrant rights movement in the United States here, because, you know, having participated in that movement as an activist [00:34:00] for, gosh, 40 some odd years now, maybe more, Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 with the so called amnesty law.Which not only gave amnesty to undocumented people, but also made it illegal for undocumented people to work in the United States after that and started the whole process of the border militarization. In fact, you know, the negative parts of that bill were so bad that many people like myself opposed the bill, even if it had amnesty in it, saying that it was not a this was not a good deal.And I think that over time. You know, history has proven that we were right not that amnesty was unimportant and not worth fighting for, but that the price that we paid turned out to be much higher than people were willing to give it credit for, you know, at the time. But what was also really missing from that debate, for instance, in [00:35:00] those years, was any sense that we had to really deal with and think about the causes of migration and the roots of migration, the displacement.It was really all about the status of people when they were here. You know, should it be legal or illegal for people to work? Should people get papers or should people not get papers? And that was a very limiting Conversation, because what really, what it really meant was that it could not acknowledge the fact that the migration from Mexico is not going to stop.For instance, the, in that, in that bill, the, the qualifying date for amnesty was January 1st, 1982, meaning. That if you came before that date, you could apply for the amnesty and get legalization, and if you came after that date, you couldn't get it. For people migrating from [00:36:00] Oaxaca, for instance, almost everybody came after.So all the Oaxacans who came to the United States, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people really hardly anybody. Qualified for amnesty because of that bill, which is one reason why legal status is such an enormous question for the Oaxacan community here in the U. S. So it, the, the discussion of that bill didn't acknowledge that and also by setting that date, it was, I think, very cynical because Mexico had what was called the Peso Shock in 1982, where the economic crisis in Mexico got so bad that Mexico had to devalue its currency.And what that meant was that thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico lost their jobs and had to come to the United States. And by setting that date, January 1st of that year, what you were really saying is, none of those people are going to qualify for amnesty. So they were [00:37:00] already here. But also it didn't acknowledge that, you know, in the, that, that bill set up a a commission to study the causes of migration, supposedly.And that commission came back and recommended the negotiation of a trade agreement between the U. S. and Mexico. And it said, well, in the short run, maybe this would result in the displacement of a lot of people, but in the long run, it would lead to the economic development of Mexico, and then people would have jobs and they wouldn't have to come here.Well, that was another very, very cynical kind of thing, because the negotiations of NAFTA started not long after the report of that commission, and in fact, NAFTA did lead to the displacement of millions of people in Mexico. There were four and a half million migrants from Mexico living in the U. S.when NAFTA went into effect and by 2010 it was [00:38:00] 12 and a half million people. So an enormous increase in people and the rise in Mexican living standards. Never happened. Well, that's not true. When López Obrador finally came into office he began taking measures to raise wages and raise the living standards in Mexico, which previous administrations had resisted bitterly because they wanted to attract investment.And things have started to improve economically for workers and farmers in Mexico a little bit. But up until then, so being unable to face the roots of migration and its connections to corporate America and the way our government was on the one hand producing migration or doing things to produce migration on the other hand making The status of migrants, illegal criminalizing it here.It was a really, a very difficult debate for people in [00:39:00] the immigrant rights movement. As a result, a lot of organizations said, well, MSD, we need MSD. Let's just forget about a lot of other stuff. Let's just get down to seat on what we paid a really bad price for it. Today I think there is a lot more discussion in the immigrant rights movement about what happens in Mexico and Central America in particular that causes people to come to the United States.I think still there's not enough of a willingness to deal with the economic part of it. the poverty. So these days, the way it gets dealt with is mostly by talking about the violence in Honduras. For instance, San Pedro Sula, which is called the murder capital of the world. You know, I wrote a whole article about how did San Pedro Sula become such a violent place to begin with?And what did it have to do with U. [00:40:00] S. companies going and growing bananas in Honduras? But in any case it gets put down, I think too much to violence, to the exclusion of the causes of the violence. What is the, what is the root cause of violence in Central American countries? The Civil War in El Salvador was fought about who was fighting on what side, what kind of changes were people proposing.The more you unpeel it, the more you look at it, the more you see that this is really, again, about the economic and political relationship between the U. S. and China. Those countries. And so I think that books like Illegal People, like The Right to Stay Home, played a role in trying to get us to look more at this as a whole system, what produces migration, and then criminalizes migrants here.I think that it's a very [00:41:00] limited accomplishment. Because we still have an extremely unjust immigration system. You know, we all hated Trump and the detention centers and, and his racist orders. But the reality is, is that we have more people crossing the border this last year than any other previous time in our history.And we have thousands and thousands of people living in detention. In the United States in detention centers and in detention centers on the Mexican side of the border. And this is under a democratic administration. So, I think that we have to be real about how limited our impact has been up to now.But, having said that, I think it is still a big advance for us to be able to talk. in this country, in the United States, about the roots of migration, and also be able to reach out to organizations and people and communities in Mexico and talk about, well, [00:42:00] okay, what is our, what should our relationship be?Well, how do we work together? How are we going to be able to try and change this system together? I think those efforts are kind of only starting, really. I don't think there's nearly enough of it, but I think that's the future. That's where the change is going to come from. Chris: And I can't stress enough, you know, how devoid of complexity and nuance most any political conversation has these days, and that most people don't go looking for it, in part because You know, most people haven't been taught.So, you mentioned a little bit earlier, as you wrote in, in your book, The Right to Stay Home, about the consequences of mining companies, as an example, in, in Mexico. Foreign owned mining corporations. And Here in Oaxaca, it's very well known that these corporations undertake geological testing without the [00:43:00] consent of communities, that they lie to the communities about concessions when trying to push their way into the territory, and then sponsor community violence by dividing the people against each other through bribery, corruption.Intimidation, threats, and sometimes assassination. And so, I'm curious, first, if you could offer a little bit more of what you've seen in this regard, and secondly, why do you think that in this example that, you know, Canadians, in the context of the one particular mine here in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, is a Canadian owned mine, why they have no idea that this is happening on foreign soil in their names?You David: know, I wrote a long article about San Jose del Progreso in the Vice Centrales in, in Oaxaca, and Fortuna Mine there, which is a Canadian, Canadian company. And I think this is [00:44:00] another way of seeing what this kind of, just to use shorthand, this free trade arrangement between the US, Canada and Mexico, what it really means for people on the ground.Mexico in previous administrations changed this mining law so that it became possible. And the purpose of to make it possible for foreign corporation to get a mining concession anywhere in Mexico and develop a mine without having to get the consent of the people who live in the community around it.Basically saying that, you know the Mexican government was entitled to sell off these concessions regardless of what the people there thought about it. And so the purpose of this was to, again, attract foreign investment into Mexico. This is part of the neoliberal policy that says [00:45:00] that the economic development policy of Mexico should be to sell pieces of Mexico to foreign investors, to foreign corporations.And supposedly this money is going to make life better. For people in Mexico well, first of all, it's a very corrupt system, so the selling of mining concessions involves, you know, millions and millions of dollars that wind up in the pockets of those people who grant the concessions. So it was a source of enormous corruption in the Mexican government in granting those concessions and in passing that change in the law to begin with.And then in fighting for changes in the legal system, the free trade set up, those mining corporations could then, basically, it gave them not only a kind of impunity against communities that protested about it, but in which they could even sue the Mexican government. If the Mexican government tried to stand in the way and say, well, you [00:46:00] can't develop the mine, then the mine could sue the Mexican government and say, well, you deprived us of potential profits and you owe us millions of dollars.And there were decisions like the metal cloud decision that allowed for this kind of thing to happen. So what this meant is on the ground, you have mining mining concessions sold and mines being developed all over Mexico. In the face of local opposition, and the mine in San Jose de Progreso is a really good example of that, where you have a Canadian company that comes in and says, okay, we are going to, in fact, they weren't the originators of the mine, they basically bought a mine that had been played out by previous owner.And so we are going to dump a lot of money into this and we are going to make it a producing mine and the impact on the community. We don't really care. And so the impact is really enormous. You know these are open pit mines. They're a scar on the land. They [00:47:00] contaminate the water, the aquifer, so that these farming communities can no longer support themselves in the same way.In order to develop the mine, what they do is they divide the communities. And so, as you said, in San Jose de Progreso, they bought off the town's, the town's government who basically gave the company permission to do whatever it wanted to in spite of local opposition. Then when local opposition got organized to, to oppose it, the company cooperated with the with the local leaders that it had bought off to basically go after those leaders in a very violent way.So, Bernardo Vazquez. who had was from this community. He had actually gone to the United States and become a farm worker in Petaluma, in California. And then seeing what was happening in his community, went back to San Jose de [00:48:00] Progreso and to and began leading the opposition. And he was then ambushed and assassinated.Other people in his, around him were also killed, and then the violence went both ways. People on the other side got killed. And so this whole community became a warring camp, camps against each other. You know, I remember when I visited there, there are two taxi companies in this community. There's a taxi company that's associated with the People who are pro mine and the taxi company is associated with people who are against it.And you better not get into the wrong taxi because you could, some terrible things could happen to you. I took pictures of these threats that were spray painted on the walls of, some of the irrigation canals there, Bernardo Vasquez, your time has come, you know that was before he was assassinated.A lot of the people who work in the mine come from somewhere else, some of them from Canada[00:49:00] but it takes a few of the jobs in hand somehow. to certain people in the community there as a way of buying them off and giving them a stake in the continuation of the mine. And so what happens is that you have a community that's a continuing, a continuous war with itself.And this happens all over Mexico. In fact, it's not just Mexico, this is happening in El Salvador, it's happening in Guatemala, and actually mostly by Canadian companies. So you ask, do people in Canada know about this? I think there are some journalists like Dawn Bailey who have Canadian journalists who have tried to write about it, and tried to make people in Canada aware of it.I don't think that most people in Canada have the faintest idea of what those corporations are doing, and that's because I think the corporate media in Canada has very little interest in showing that, partly because, you know, they have the same basic set of economic interests that the mining corporations themselves do.[00:50:00] Probably share, same shareholders, who knows? In any case That's something that could happen and that should happen if people in Canada became more aware of what these companies were doing and then began taking action in Canada to try to restrict them. I think it would have a big impact on the ability of these communities in Oaxaca to survive.I think that San Jose the Progresso is going to be a war with itself and this continuing political violence is going to happen. Until the company, basically until the company leaves, really. I don't see any other solution, I don't see how the mine can continue operating there under any ownership and not have this war taking place there.So, but I think that the way to get that company to leave is for people in Canada to take some action in cooperation and in solidarity with the people in that [00:51:00] community. So, maybe by Organizing delegations from Vancouver or Toronto down to San Jose del Progreso would be a way of helping that to develop.That's possibly something that might happen, but basically you need that relationship in order, I think, in order to stop this from happening. Chris: Hmm. Thank you. Yeah, and you know, of course it just ends up contributing to migration, right, and exile, displacement within those communities. And and so I'm curious, what do you think the right to stay home or the right to not migrate can offer us as modern people, as citizens or migrants in the context of the current crises and perhaps the crises to come?You know, you mentioned that Immigration the numbers, the number of people coming into the United States over the last year has just been unprecedented. The number of migrants [00:52:00] flowing through Oaxaca, for example, in Southern Mexico right now is unprecedented and it really seems, you know, like.not just my opinion, but in terms of statistics and predictions and all of these things, that it's only going to get more unprecedented. So I'm curious what you might, what you might think that this, this declaration, the right to stay home or the right to not migrate, might offer us going forward. David: Well, I think it offers us something to fight for.That it gives us a vision of what a future could and should look like in the communities where displacement is taking place. In San Jose de Progreso, for instance, the right to stay home means a community that's not at war with itself, which means that the mining operation has to end. But, Ending the mining operation doesn't necessarily mean that people are [00:53:00] going to have an educational system or a health care system that's capable of meeting their needs.So you need political change in Oaxaca, San Jose de Progreso, and Mexico in general, that is able to deliver those things. For people. I think we could take that same thing and and look at people coming from Venezuela. There are a lot of Venezuelan migrants who are crossing Mexico coming to the U.S. border. On the one hand, the U. S. government is sort of a little bit more friendly. to Venezuelan migrants, although it's still doing whatever it can at the border to try to keep people out. Because, you know, this gets used in the media in the U. S. as a way of saying, well, this is the proof that the socialist government in Venezuela is incompetent and corrupt and ought to be removed, which has been U.S. policy for a long time. But in reality, the economic problems in [00:54:00] Venezuela would certainly be a lot less if Venezuela wasn't subject to the U. S. sanctions regime, which is basically sought to strangle the Venezuelan economy. And so the people who are leaving Venezuela, whether they're middle class people who are, you know, fed up with the problems of Caracas or whether they're poor people who have you know, have to migrate in order to survive those are due to U.S. policy again. So really, the right to stay home means in the United States that people in the United States, progressive people especially, have to seriously take a look at what the impact of U. S. policies are on the people that are being subjected to them, and to begin with, cause no harm.That would be a good starting place to stop those policies that are actively producing migration. You know, the people who drowned in the Mediterranean, those 600 people who [00:55:00] drowned in that horrible boating accident, who were they? A lot of them were Afghans. A lot of them were Iraqis. Why were they leaving?What were they doing on that boat? They were the product of that U. S. war. Now, I was a very active, you know, opponent of, of the war. I went to Iraq twice to try to make connections with trade unionists and other people in Iraq who were trying to fight for kind of a progressive nationalist solution to the economic problems of Iraq in the wake of the occupation to end the occupation.But you know, that's kind of what we need. We need to take responsibility for the impact of what this government has done. When we take a look at what the, what is going to happen to the people of Palestine and Gaza, [00:56:00] Under the bombardment, you know, if people were able to leave Gaza, there would be literally hundreds of thousands of people going wherever they could.And the Middle East simply in order to get out from under the Israeli bombs. And those bombs are coming from where? They're coming from the United States, that military aid package. You know, you cannot have a military policy and a military aid package the way the U. S. passes them without its having enormous impacts on migration, on the displacement of people, and at the same time it also Produces impacts here in the U.S. that we also need to take a look at and see what the relationship are. You know, people migrate in the U. S. as well, too. We have factories to close when Detroit stopped being an [00:57:00] auto manufacturing center and the Factories in Detroit closed, the car factories, thousands and thousands and thousands of auto workers became migrants in the U.S., going from city to city to city, looking for. So the price of the economic crisis that exists for us isn't felt just by people in Mexico or Palestine or Iraq. It's felt here in the United States and in Canada too. These problems They require a political solution, you know, they require us to organize ourselves in a way that is strong enough to force political change on our government here, so that it takes responsibility for the past devastation.And the past displacement and also stops doing the things that are going to keep on causing it in the future. And then I think we can think about kind of repairing the world. I think we have to repair the world, too, after this. But the first thing we have [00:58:00] to do is we have to stop hurting it. We have to stop the damage, and that means having enough political courage and enough political power to make our government do that.That's a tall order. That's a tall order. I don't think it's something from today to tomorrow. But it's a long process. You know, I'm a, I grew up during the anti Vietnam War movement and the civil rights movement, and I saw this country at a time when it was possible and when we did it. So I'm the optimist.I believe that it's within our power to do this. But looking at where we are right now, I think we have a long way to go. And so, you know, if what I do contributes is granito de arena to it, you know, a lo mejor. Chris: Thank you so much, David. Yeah, it's definitely really, really important to hear words such as yours in a time of deep nihilism.[00:59:00] And, and also the absence and I think the disregard of, of Elder Voices in our midst and in our movements. So, I deeply appreciate your willingness to speak with me and, and to our listeners today. And just finally, before we depart, how might our listeners find out more about your work?How might they purchase your books? David: I have a blog and a lot of what I write and the pictures that I take are up there and I put them up there pretty regularly. And so the way to find it is to Google my name, David Bacon, and the blog is called The Reality Check. And so if you Google that together, you'll find it and that's how you can connect.Chris: Thank you so much, David. David: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game.(commercial at 8:43)to contact me:This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5080327/advertisement

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game.(commercial at 8:43)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5080327/advertisement

Lee had me in stiches one minute and dropping knowledge that left me speechless in another. He is super talented and has written TV shows, books based on shows, Films, and including a book series with Janet Evanovich! he put himself through UCLA as a freelance journalist, writing for such publications as American Film, Starlog, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times Syndicate, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle (He also wrote erotic letters to the editor for Playgirl at $25-a-letter, but he doesn't tell people about that, he just likes to boast about those "tiffany" credits). He published his first book ".357 Vigilante" (as "Ian Ludlow," so he'd be on the shelf next to Robert Ludlum) while he was still a UCLA student. The West Coast Review of Books called his debut "as stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort," singling the book out as "The Best New Paperback Series" of the year. Naturally, the publisher promptly went bankrupt and he never saw a dime in royalties. (But the books are available on the Kindle as "The Jury Series") Welcome to publishing, Lee. His subsequent books include the non-fiction books "Successful Television Writing" and "Unsold Television Pilots" ("The Best Bathroom Reading Ever!" San Francisco Chronicle) as well as the novels "My Gun Has Bullets" ("It will make you cackle like a sitcom laugh track," Entertainment Weekly), "Dead Space" ("Outrageously entertaining," Kirkus Reviews), "Watch Me Die" ("as dark and twisted as anything Hammet or Chandler ever dreamed up," Kirkus Reviews).Goldberg broke into television with a freelance script sale to "Spenser: For Hire." Since then, his TV writing & producing credits have covered a wide variety of genres, including sci-fi (SeaQuest), cop shows (Hunter, The Glades), martial arts (Martial Law), whodunits (Diagnosis Murder, Nero Wolfe), the occult (She-Wolf of London), kid's shows (R.L. Stine's The Nightmare Room), T&A (Baywatch), comedy (Monk) and utter crap (The Highwayman). His TV work has earned him two Edgar Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America. His two careers, novelist and TV writer, merged when he began writing the "Diagnosis Murder" series of original novels, based on the hit CBS TV mystery that he also wrote and produced, and later wrote the 15 bestselling novels based on "Monk," another show that he worked on. He is co-creator of the hit Hallmark movie series "Mystery 101." He also he teamed up with Janet Evanovich to write the #1 New York Times bestselling Fox & O'Hare novels ("The Heist," "The Chase," "The Job," "The Scam," "The Pursuit"). His most recent books include the thriller "True Fiction" and the police procedural "Lost Hills." But perhaps he's best known for his pioneering work mapping the human genome and negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. Goldberg lives in Los Angeles with his wife and his daughter and still sleeps in "Man From UNCLE" pajamas. His latest book is Malibu Burning! Its soo good! leegoldberg.com

To create better relationships between countries, the U.S., in cooperation with Canada and Mexico, created the North American Free Trade Agreement (also known as NAFTA), which is now known as the USMCA Agreement (United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement). This agreement, besides its economic and trade benefits, also has traveling and working advantages. More specifically, the U.S. created the Treaty National Professionals Visa, or the TN Visa, to allow citizens of Canada and Mexico to live and work in the U.S. temporarily. So in this Podcast, we will talk about the TN visa. To qualify for a TN visa, you must work in the USA in one of the professions on the list of TN occupations. You must also satisfy the educational standards and credentials required for the profession you will work in. This classification permits you to work in the USA and extend your status over and over without limitation.

America's mutton consumption has increased over the past decade, and the sheep that provide that meat also provide wool and graze the rangelands of the West. However, since the U.S. joined the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 90s, domestic lamb and mutton production has declined 60% while imports have increased over 500% in the same time period. Idaho sheep ranchers Frank Shirts and Henry Etcheverry spoke with members of the media about the issue earlier this week in the Boise Foothills, calling attention to the importance of the industry and the economic threats they currently face.

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game. (commercial at 8:51)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5080327/advertisement

NAFTA is a trade agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that aimed to promote economic integration and free trade among the three countries. While the agreement mainly focused on reducing trade barriers and increasing economic cooperation, it also had some implications for drug trafficking.Increased Border Security: One of the concerns following the implementation of NAFTA was that it might facilitate drug trafficking due to increased cross-border trade. To counter this, the agreement also led to enhanced cooperation between the three nations' law enforcement agencies, which included improved intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to combat drug smuggling.Impact on Smuggling Routes: The opening of borders and increased trade activities could have potentially altered traditional drug smuggling routes. Criminal organizations often adapt to changes in law enforcement efforts and border security, which may result in shifts in their tactics and the routes they use to transport drugs.Economic Impact on Drug Production Countries: NAFTA's provisions might have had indirect economic effects on drug-producing countries. For instance, reduced tariffs on agricultural products from the United States and Canada may have affected local farmers in Mexico, potentially pushing some toward illicit activities like drug cultivation to make a living.Legal Trade as a Cover: The increased volume of legal trade between the NAFTA countries might have offered opportunities for criminals to use legitimate business transactions as a cover for drug trafficking. The sheer volume of cross-border trade could make it challenging for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal activities.In this episode, we dive take a look at the North American Free Trade Agreement and how it has impacted the narco game. (commercial at 8:51)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5003294/advertisement

A false religion is pulling people away from the practice of the true Catholic faith. Rather than focusing on the good, true, and beautiful, this dangerous practice leads to death. Has it affected someone you know? In this podcast with host Cale Clarke, he discusses an article from the LA Times about the growing trend of Latinos turning to the veneration of unofficial saints, particularly Santa Muerte. The article describes a gathering at a small storefront in Los Angeles where people pray and engage in a weekly rosary service in honor of Santa Muerte. Cale explains that Santa Muerte is a figure often depicted as a skeleton dressed like the Grim Reaper and is considered the fastest-growing religion in the Americas. Cale mentions that many Catholics, particularly Latinos, are feeling estranged from the Catholic Church, leading them to seek alternative forms of spirituality. The article suggests that factors such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Tequila Crisis may have contributed to the rise of Santa Muerte's popularity since 2001. He also highlights that Pope Francis and other Catholic leaders have spoken out against the veneration of Santa Muerte, considering it dangerous and contrary to traditional Catholic beliefs. Throughout the podcast, Cale discusses the perspectives of individuals involved in Santa Muerte worship. Some identify as Catholics but feel disconnected from the Church, while others consider themselves exiles from Catholicism. He emphasizes that God has specific expectations for worship, particularly through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and criticizes the notion of constructing one's own religion outside of these prescribed practices. He concludes by expressing concern about the direction and beliefs associated with Santa Muerte worship. Hear the whole conversation here - The Death Cult - Relevant Radio

Alan R. Garcia was born in Mexico and relocated to New York City with his mother and sister when he was but four years old. His move to the U.S. was memorable as he will explain. It was a year later that his father was able to rejoin the family.   Alan grew up curious about the differences between peoples. He also learned that it is not so much our differences but our similarities that count.   Today, Mr. Garcia works for the Cristo Rey school in Brooklyn. This is one of 30 unique schools around the nation. All I will say is that students that graduate from the schools in the 30 cities across the United States make up a number equal to six times the average for similar populations from other high schools. I am going to let Alan tell the story.   About the Guest:   Alan Garcia:   I was born in Mexico and moved to the United States with my sister and my mother. Given that I was quite young when we made the move, I likely wouldn't remember the journey if not for how we got here. It was a 7-day Greyhound bus ride from Mexico to New York City. And what made the trip even more memorable was the absence of my father, who could not join us. My first memory of life involves my mother telling me to pack a bag with the most important things I could think of. Naturally, my 4-year-old-self chose the most important thing I owed: my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures. Only one action figure survived the trek: Donatello, the “purple” one. Since those days on the Greyhound, Donatello has been with me, and he is now prominently displayed on the mantle in my living room. Arriving in New York City was as mesmerizing then as it is to me now. We arrived to Port Authority Bus Terminal, blocks away from Times Square, and travelled the final leg to our new home in the Bronx, where I was to meet my grandfather, an immigrant from Poland. There are many things I had in common with my grandfather, but it's safe to say my looks weren't one of them. With my older sister ready to enroll in school and mother going to work, it was my grandfather's responsibility to look after me. But my grandfather was also a working man. He drove a yellow cab for nearly 50 years. Therefore, his version of “babysitting” didn't involve morning cartoons (ok, maybe a little bit) and strolls in the park. Rather, I spent a good deal of time in his cab, riding around the city, hearing and watching him engage with thousands of customers. Just imagine: a small, Mexican boy with a middle-aged, Polish man. It was quite the scene!   My father would eventually reunite with us almost a year later, and by the time I knew it, I had everything I could ask for in that cozy 1-bedroom apartment in the Bronx: my family (my sister, my parents, and my maternal grandparents). Money was tight, but our family bond was tighter. It didn't take long for me to notice that we didn't have “all the things” other kids had, but we never wanted. Every adult in my home was working (even my grandmother picked up a part-time job at a local bakery), and my mother was the head of the household. Working, raising a family, and earning her bachelor's degree all at the same time, my mother's relentless work ethic and unwavering generosity was the ultimate inspiration. To this day, I credit watching her graduate from college as the reason why I became so passionate about education. We were all so proud of her!   Looking back, growing up in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national, tri-lingual immigrant family was such a blessing. In many ways, “difference” was all I knew—it was all I was surrounded by. Some nights it was tacos, other nights pierogi, and on occasion Burger King. My grandfather spoke to us in Polish and a heavily accented English, I translated my schoolwork into Spanish for my father, and my mother made it a point to have my sister and I retain our native Spanish and develop perfect fluency in English. At a predominantly white Catholic school, we were the “immigrant kids,” but in the neighborhood were just another ingredient in the melting pot. At home, “difference” was normal, but in the streets of New York City (and beyond), navigating difference has been a whole different story. Yet the common denominator throughout my life has been the values instilled in me as a child: a hard work ethic, a steady faith, and the ability to see opportunity in all things.   By most accounts, I've achieved “success” throughout my life. I've graduated from some of the most selective, prestigious educational institutions in this country, I am gainfully employed, and I live comfortably with the love of my wife in midtown Manhattan. But the markers for my success are not money or how many things I can acquire. If I am successful, it is because I have paid forward the opportunities I have had and have inspired those around me—particularly future generations—to remain generous in spirit, to work hard, to keep a steady faith, and to see opportunity in all things. It's interesting, difference is often what prevents people or organizations from interacting with someone/something new, but I believe it is what life is all about. Our differences are what make us unique and, when we share our differences with each other, we learn we actually have more in common than we originally thought.   Ways to connect with Alan:   Link to my LinkedIn page: (4) Alan R. Garcia | LinkedIn Link to my GoFundMe page: https://gofund.me/6f090f1d     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson  01:21 Well, Greetings once again. I am Michael Hingson. And you are listening to unstoppable mindset. I want to thank you for being here today. I hope that you enjoy what we get to talk about we are talking with Alan Garcia, who has a very interesting story in a lot of ways to talk about. Alan is still in New York, right?   Alan Garcia  01:43 That's correct   Michael Hingson  01:43 there ya go in New York City. We're in New York City.   Alan Garcia  01:47 I'm in Manhattan. Ah, perfect.   Michael Hingson  01:50 Well, Alan, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Alan Garcia  01:53 Thanks for having me. This is exciting.   Michael Hingson  01:56 Well, so let's get right into it. I'd love to learn a little bit about you maybe growing up and talking about your, your childhood. And I know you have quite a story to tell. So I'm just gonna let you go to it.   Alan Garcia  02:07 All right. Thanks, Michael. So yeah, the story begins, my earliest waking memories, if you will, are on a Greyhound bus ride from a small little town in central Mexico, all the way here to New York City. So I was born in Mexico, in the town of Gambero, which is a small rustic town, four hours north of Mexico City. So right smack dab in the middle of the country. And my mother happened to be born here in New York. So she grew up here. But when she was a teenager, her parents split up. So her mother is Mexican Mexican descent. And her father, my grandfather is an immigrant from Poland. So when they split up, my mother was was spending a lot of time back and forth between the two countries as a kid as a teenager. And so when she became an adult, at the age of 18, she decided to leave New York City well for what she thought at the time was for good. And moved to Mexico. And my sister was born there. I was born there. But fast forward. It's my sister was was seven years old. I was four years old, 1994, North American Free Trade Agreement hits Canada, the United States and Mexico. And my parents had a small business. You could think of it as the intermediary between farmers and market. So kind of the middle, the middle, the middle of that, that part of the business. And my parents were very young, I had children very young, that married very young, maybe a little bit over in over their heads as far as the amount of responsibility. But NAFTA, actually caused my parents business to go bankrupt. Inflation hit Mexico very hard. It was good for big business, but not necessarily for the little guy. So my parents decided to put whatever resources they had left together. And we could afford three bus tickets, three coach bus tickets, one way tickets from Mexico to New York. And my father could not come with us at the time. And   Michael Hingson  04:34 because you couldn't afford the force ticket,   Alan Garcia  04:37 we couldn't afford it. But there was also some issues with this paperwork to be honest with you, Michael. At the time, the government, both the American government and the Mexican government were trying to really clamp down on folks leaving Mexico and fleeing the inflation and the economic turmoil. The violence and the drug cartels at the time had gotten a hold of a lot of businesses. You know, opening up the markets did a lot in terms of opening up the both the legal trade and the illegal trade. Yeah. So, so even so my mother's right, she's born here in New York. So she's an American citizen. There's many things I'll never be able to repay my mother for. And one of them is the fact that when my sister and I were born in Mexico, my mother filed for dual citizenship for my sister and I. And so my sister and I legally have a consular Birth Abroad. And she figured that if all if nothing else, our citizenship is the most valuable thing. We have our dual citizenship. So the government did not think that my life put it this way. The government thought my parents were married under nefarious circumstances, they thought my father married my mother for citizenship, which was not the case. My father never became an American citizen. And so he could not come with us and to to avoid sort of any legal troubles. My mother said, hey, I'll take the kids to New York, take them to the grandfather's home in the Bronx. And we'll start from scratch there. We either we start from scratch in Mexico because we're bankrupt. Or we'll start from scratch in New York in the land of milk and honey, so to speak. where the streets are paved in gold, as they say, and the kids will start there. So it was a week long bus ride. We ended up riding Time Square, midtown Manhattan Port Authority Bus Terminal, took the the one train the local and still to this day, very local one train Yes. Up to the Bronx. And it's funny, Michael, I remember my mother vividly before we left Mexico said Alan, pack, the most important thing you can think of we don't have a lot of space, small little toddler sized bookbag. And of course, the most important thing at the time for me were my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures was the most important thing I could think of. And it's interesting on my mantel, here in my living room to this day, I have one of the four action figures left. It's Donald Telo, aka the purple turtle, he made the journey and he's been with me literally my entire waking life. Dude. That's right. And so you know, we show up in the Bronx. And I would I would learn years later, Michael, that my mother was very weary of telling her father that we were coming back. If you could think about it, when she left at 18 years old, to go start a family and my father, my grandfather was very upset and disappointed. So she said well, that the greatest leverage I have is his grandchildren. He can't say no to and of course, he did not. So he welcomed us with open arms. And we settled in there in the Bronx, in his one bedroom apartment. When about a year without my father. My mother was very intentional about us, keeping in touch with him. But again, this is 9495 and a long distance phone call to Mexico. Quite expensive. Those days. So I remember on Sunday evenings, late night, my mother would would huddle with my sister on the phone and leave us about maybe 10 minutes to speak to him. And she would show us a picture while we were talking to him so we could visualize what he looked like. She didn't want us to forget what he looked like given particularly me that I was I was I was younger. And so this voice that I would hear on Sunday nights, she would say, Alan, that's your father. That voice that you that that ominous voice you hear on Sunday evenings is your father. And then sure enough, but a year later, we would reunite he actually went to Los Angeles first, he had some friends there a potential job. My mother flew us out to go see him. And naturally I thought he worked at Disneyland. And my father said, no, no, I don't work here. This is not what I remember the Lion King and the Simba parade. And he said no, I thought my dad was the coolest guy ever. And I still think that but at the time, I thought wow, this is so much nicer than the cold and bitterness of New York City. But my mother said no, you have to come back to New York with us. And my father, if you could imagine Michael he had never really met his father in law, right. My grandfather was his prospect was I'll show up to New York City with no job and had to support my family and live on in my father in law's one bedroom apartment bomb and on his couch trying to raise his grandchildren and be the husband to his daughter. So my father had to swallow his pride and and do what my mother thought was the best for us. And so we all move back and, and then my estranged grandmother like my grandfather's wife, who they had separated in the mid 80s. She got wind of this she He was living in Mexico, and she moved back to New York. So all six of us by 1995, reunited in my grandfather's one bedroom apartment in the Bronx. And although at the time, I'm sure from my parents from my grandparents, a very overwhelming proposition. For me as a young child, I had everything I could ever want. I had my family, my parents, my grandparents, my sister, yeah. Everybody working to make ends meet. Everybody pitching in to turn, you know, frowns into smiles and to make sure my sister and I never wanted. We didn't have much. My grandfather drove a yellow cab in New York City for 50 years.   Michael Hingson  10:42 Where was he from originally.   Alan Garcia  10:44 So he's from Poland. There you go another immigrant. And he passed away a few years ago. But he grew up in hiding in Nazi occupied Poland during the Second World War. And so when, when the war ended, and Soviet Union came in, he was a bit of a troublemaker, he was not a big fan of communism, or the communist and his his mother, my great grandmother would always fear that his outspokenness would get them in trouble. So she basically disowned him. When he was a teenager. He was about 17. And she said, you're gonna get us all in trouble. We did so much to just survive the war. Why can't you just shut your trap and do what you're told. But that's not that's not the type of man he was. So he left his native land, emigrated to New York, you know, the whole Ellis Island story from London, to New York. And so it's interesting for me growing up in an immigrant household. You know, I have my immigrant story, my sister as well. My mother is technically not an immigrant, but was straddling two worlds her whole life. My father is an immigrant, and my grandfather, very heavy Polish accent, I mean, a prototypical middle aged Polish man, by the time I met him, and, and he and I looked very, very different. We sounded different, we had very different last names. And as a kid, I spent a lot of my time in his yellow cab driving around the city. I mean, that was his version of babysitting. It was Alan let's let's go to work. So spent a lot of really good memories in the front seat of his cab and hearing him talk to whoever got in this cab and share stories and, and find commonality. I mean, you step into a cab, you never know who's gonna get in and store you're gonna hear so just the way he was able to laugh and joke and, and ultimately get a perhaps more generous tip out of his, his business. It was it was for me, looking back, there was so much difference in my childhood between language and cuisine, and customs, and, and just trying to assimilate differences very normalized. For me. I mean, no one, no one, no adults in my life, were intentional about teaching us about difference, I think it was just so organic, and part of our survival, that looking back, it was a real blessing to be in a trilingual, multi ethnic, multinational household and have to navigate those spaces. I remember as a kid, my father, going to parent teacher conferences at school when I'm in elementary school, and he didn't really understand English. So I'd have to translate for him what the teachers were saying. And then when we got home, my grandfather who was fluent in English polish, but he didn't know any Spanish, despite being married to a Mexican woman in his younger days, he would talk about me with my report cards. And I would have to translate to my father what my grandfather was saying, and vice versa, I would have to translate to my grandfather, what my father was trying to tell me in Spanish. And so my mother was very insistent on us learning multiple languages, keeping our native tongues, and to be honest with you, Michael, she didn't want my sister to speak with an accent. She had seen some some of the bullying or some of the teasing that can happen both in Mexico and in New York when that happens. And so she wanted us to speak fluent English, but but also not forget quote, unquote, where we came from. And again, all these things were just organic, they weren't explicit lessons. They were taught to us and looking back the career I've had as an educator or just a citizen of, of the city of this country of this world. I think it was a huge blessing in disguise.   Michael Hingson  14:41 Well, it's interesting, you. You describe something I've heard so many times, even from other people who immigrated to the United States and talking about their families. It's the values it's the mindset that parents have that really teaches and taught you so many things, one to valuate, you had to remember where you came from, to understand that it's okay to be different. And that we're all part of the same world. But that you can go from a really hard time and a real time of hardship to things being better. I was thinking, you came to New York on a bus, you didn't have any money, but within a year, your mother was able to fly you all out to Los Angeles to see your father. And that immediately made me think, well, he earned enough money or not you but your family earned enough money to be able to do that. So clearly, there was some rightness in that decision. And I and I think your parents were probably people who wouldn't forget all the realities and the value that moving to America brought. But all the value that where you came from taught them and you to be able to thrive, and be better people for it.   Alan Garcia  16:11 Oh, certainly. Oh, certainly. I mean, from a young age, I mean, even to this day, having a strong work ethic, was the universal language. You know, and I say I say that tongue in cheek, because there were multiple languages spoken around in our in our household, but my father was working, you know, jobs. My mother not only was working, as soon as she got back to New York, she was going to college. And so I saw my mother graduate from college when I was in fourth grade. And again, that normalized for me, oh, I guess when you're older, and you look like my parents, you just go to school, right as an adult. And so I remember my sister and I, our routine was we walked to school together, we get out of school, we're putting the after school program. My mother picks us up. She worked in a banking and finance and so at a local branch by our elementary school, we would close down the branch with her 5:36pm, Eastern, we'd go home, have a little snack break, and then we would attend her night classes for you for years. And so she went to Manhattan College, a local college, but where we grew up in the Bronx, and she would come into the college with her two kids. And she would say, hey, Alan, Lilly, that's my sister's name, sit in the library or sit in the hallway. And if you have homework to do just, you know, get to it. And I'll answer any questions when I'm done. We wouldn't get out of there until 8:39pm, we'd get home, we'd have another snack, my mother would help us with our homework. And we'd repeat, wash, rinse, repeat every day. And so it was very, you know, very, very routine, heavy. A lot of rituals, if you will, every now and then, my mother built a really nice rapport with with her professors and her classmates. And they were always so intrigued that she had these little kids. So well behaved in the college. And so sometimes we would be able to peek into a classroom or get a tour of, of a space on college. And, again, Michael, looking back, what a blessing that I'm 789 years old, and I have exposure to a college campus. I've exposure to a professional workplace where my mom is, you know, working. And I remember, I looked at my friend's parents and ever said, man, every parent does this. And sure enough, that wasn't the case. But again, that was normalized for me. And my grandfather, right working 1516 hour days in a cab, even my grandmother, she was working part time at a bakery in the neighborhood, and you're the coolest kid in the neighborhood, and you can walk into a bakery and get free cookies. So it was I mean, now that I'm an adult, obviously, and I'm older, and I can really see this with different perspective. Everybody working to make ends meet everybody pitching in. Again, to make sure my sister and I a never wanted but also saw that life is about working hard and and doing it together and reaping the benefits of that. So that really was the universal language to your point about about values and and a work ethic.   Michael Hingson  19:20 But there was also a lot of love. And that is something that clearly surrounded you and your sister, but that was created in that whole family environment.   Alan Garcia  19:33 Oh, yeah. I mean, it was. So you mentioned love and I think about my older sister and she was she was older than you know, she's older than me. So she's really seen everything first in this country, right? She's going to school before me. She seeing the middle school years before me. She's entering adolescence before me and I remember from a young age she would come home, especially when I was little younger and spending more time with my grandfather, my sister was Alan. You know, the kids in the neighborhood are gonna say what different, they're gonna say we're not from here. So talk about this, these are the cool things to talk about. Or I'll give you another funny example. My mother would make pick our lunch, right in the morning is most mothers do. And in the beginning, she was packing us some leftovers from the night before, right to save money. And we did not have a school cafeteria where we went to school. So you're eating normally things that your parents prepare for you. And my mother would pack some leftover Mexican food, and the kids would tease my sister, my sister for it, or what is that? You know, it smells kind of funky things like that. And my sister would come and say, Mom, please don't pack Alan with that lunch, he's gonna get made fun of for it, pack them something called a turkey and cheese. And I was like, What's a turkey and cheese. So my sister was, you know, in her own way, trying to protect me and kind of, to your point, love, love me and in a new way, that she didn't want me to go through some of the hardships she went through. And I guess I'll never be able to repair in a sense for those things. But, but then my family saying, Okay, I guess, you know, we're gonna have to change the way we do things to give Alan and Lilia a different, maybe even better experience and we had as kids. And so there's a lot of love that goes into that. You know, my parents, God bless them that they've never been the parents to say, oh, you know, we did it this way. So you have to do it this way. Or the prototypical back in my day, right? My parents got married really young, relative to my sister and I, they're still relatively young. So their whole philosophy has been Who are we to judge you and tell you how to live when the whole world doubted us? Right? The whole world never thought we'd make it to this country in the first place. So a lot of love and humility goes into that.   Michael Hingson  21:58 Did you get treated? In any different way? Were you bullied? Or were you? Did you look different enough or in any way where you consider Nona and your sister on? And you're referring to it a little bit? But were you different enough that it really ended up being a significant problem? Or did Lux have anything to do with any of that?   Alan Garcia  22:20 Yeah, it was definitely there. I grew up. And if you ask any of my childhood friends, there were no Mexican families in our neighborhood. In that particular area of the Bronx, we stood out like sore thumb. No Mexican families, few few few folks of Hispanic, Latino descent generally. And so we did stick out. Again, we spoke a different language amongst each other than then most of the kids spoke in the neighborhood. So that that that was definitely noticed. And just being immigrants, generally, you know, the proverbial you're, you're not from here, go back to where you came from those kinds of things. It just, you know, happen in the playground or amongst kids. And that that's, you know, the true test of you know, what, when I think about assimilation, it's, it's, it's somewhat necessary. It's a good thing. It's valuable if you're able to cultivate yourself to where you are, but it was a teaching opportunity to for the folks that cared enough, and that didn't tease you to appreciate where you're from, and why are you different? And why do you why do you eat those things? And what language are you talking to you, Alan, you're talking this one thing to your grandfather and this other thing to your father and make that and help that help me make sense of that. So   Michael Hingson  23:38 talking out of both sides of your mouth, yeah.   Alan Garcia  23:41 You know, it's tacos one day, it's pierogi. Another day. Both are good. And both are good. So, you know, definitely, there was some teasing bullying. And so then it becomes Okay. At home, it's about values and finding a universal language amongst peers in the playground. What does that look like? And for me, sports was actually a really an equalizer. You know, growing up in New York City, you play basketball, that's just the thing you play. You play basketball, you get on the blacktop in the summer. And basketball was an avenue, where it didn't matter what I sounded like, it didn't matter what I looked like if you could perform on the court that gave you street cred. And that gave you confidence. Now, it's funny because most kids thought, oh, Alan, you should play soccer, right? Because you're from Mexico or what do you you don't belong on a basketball court. So you have a chip on your shoulder. And it's funny, my father growing up in the 80s he was all about the Showtime Lakers. Kareem James worthy. So he was you know, a talented athlete as a younger man. Certainly soccer was his first love but he loved all sports. And so he noticed right away. Soccer is not going to be the thing that that allows that Ellen's make a lot of friends now Sara Lee, so let me teach them basketball. And I remember on weekends going to the park with him and using that as a springboard when I was on my own, to burn my chops, so to speak on the basketball court, and between you and me, because I was a pretty talented basketball. I was gonna ask   Michael Hingson  25:17 you that I was. Well, that is that is cool. Right? So yeah, you went into high school and you got involved and more of that stuff. And I guess, earn enough street cred earn enough credibility and enough respect that you you made it through reasonably unscathed.   Alan Garcia  25:36 Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I think between that. And I would say thanks, most, mostly to my mother, if not anything, being a good student. And, of course, it's funny, you know, there's this there's this paradox in the inner cities of being, or maybe it's not exclusive to the inner cities by any means. But what I saw, really magnified was, if you're good at school, you're a nerd, right? If you're good at school, you're smart, and you're not cool, etc. But because I was a good athlete, because I had a good core group of friends and a loving family. For me, being smart was cool. There was accolades to it, there was recognition for it. And again, as as the quote unquote, outsider, I was defying a lot of folks stereotypes of what people like me look like, we're supposed to be right, lazy, you're not good at school, and, and so to be good at school was, was part of that chip on your shoulder to say, hey, just because my last name is this, or I'll give you a very humbling example, Michael, when my parents couldn't afford the tuition for the Catholic school. Each month, when you can't afford the tuition, you don't get your textbooks, and you don't get your report card. It's held from you until your family is able to pay tuition. And so I remember not being able to get my textbooks on time or get my report cards on time. But my friends would say, hey, Alan, why don't you come over to our place for you know, play date, hang out, and I have the book. So you can you can study with us. And so that was an avenue to make friends. And so getting, quote unquote good at school was a way to get acceptance.   Michael Hingson  27:19 It's interesting that the mindset was though, if you don't pay your bills on time, even though you might eventually be able to do it, and probably would be eventually able to do it. You don't get your textbooks in a sense, I can see withholding the report card. But that's a pretty interesting punishment. So you can't have your textbooks and essentially, you can't learn very strange teaching attitude, coming from an educational and teaching background somewhat today, but that's too bad. Things like that occur.   Alan Garcia  27:53 That's that's mid 90s. Inner City. Education for you the school of hard knocks.   Michael Hingson  27:59 There you go. So what did you do after high school? So yeah, so after high   Alan Garcia  28:05 school, or even when I was thinking about college, it's funny. My mom and I are so alike in many ways that we butt heads, right? I'm sure you've heard that before. It's like two magnets just just repelling each other. She and I are very close. We're attached in many ways. And she wanted me to stay here in New York City for college. She couldn't fathom me leaving and her baby, right all that language. So I didn't even give myself the option. Michael, I did not apply to a single college within a two and a half hour radius of New York City. I wanted to branch out explore. It wasn't like me to be honest. I'm actually I'm was a shy person. I've become more outspoken and outgoing. But as a kid, I was pretty reserved, kept my head down, right type of thing. When I say you know what, I gotta use this opportunity to branch out. So my college guidance counselor, she's sent kinda like a guardian angel to me. She really helped me apply to colleges. All I knew was Manhattan College, where my mom went and a lot of where my friends were applying. So she said, Allen, I think there's a school in upstate New York, Cornell University, be a great fit for you. It's funny, though, I was very interested, obviously, sports and sports journalism at the time. So I said, said, Miss Ross, it's her name. I said, Is it like a like a city? And do they have sports? And she said, it's a city and the college chest. So, you know, my ignorance was was her advantage. I applied to the school got into the school without ever seeing it without ever going, knowing anyone who ever went there. But she knew better than I did. And so I went to Cornell, and it was rough in the beginning. I'll be honest with you, Michael, if you take a city kid and put them in upstate New York, there was culture shock, as as street savvy as I was, and it's sort of streetsmart as I consider myself, I was a fish out of water. I didn't like it, it was eerie on almost the silence. And the lack of people and the lack of noise was not interesting to me at the time. But it ended up being the greatest thing for me both personally and sort of pre professionally, just getting out of my comfort zone, doing a lot of things that I had never really grown up doing meeting folks from all over the world. Competing in the sense of folks on the on a different level, I went to a very, very academically rigorous private high school in New York City. And so the academics were actually not that much of a challenge. There was more How do I get to know different types of people? How do they get them to know me? And I'll share a quick funny story with you when I was rushing fraternities. That's a big thing up there in Ithaca, Cornell, we read this gathering. And the icebreaker was, what's the best birthday gift you ever had as a kid? And I remember saying, Oh, my video game console, my Nintendo 64 and Domino's Pizza party, with my friends. And I thought that was pretty neat. And this one other peer of mine. His was stocks that his uncle had given him as Bar Mitzvah. And I said, What do you mean stocks? And he said, Oh, yeah, you know, I got the stocks and compound interest, and they appreciate value. And by the time I graduate college, and I'm ready to purchase a home, and I was like, wait a minute, mine is video games and Domino's Pizza, and yours is stock. And it was such a to this day. It's so vivid for me because I said, How are we the same age? We're both at Cornell University. But you you think and operate on such a different plane? Not just now but your whole childhood? And young adulthood is has? What conversations were you having? And and what is your outlook on life compared to mine? And that was so groundbreaking for me, Michael? Because I said, Hmm, I need some more of that. I need to know how you're operating how you're thinking. Because that's a world I don't know. You know, my parents have no investment portfolio to speak of, heck, my grandfather, you know, cash business driving a cat, I don't know what that means. So, college was really eye opening, and so many levels. The classes were great, the academics were cool, and all that. But it was more than the networking and the people aspect and learning how different folks operate that really, really set me up for success.   Michael Hingson  32:47 So what did you learn from that when he said stocks and so on? How did you then deal with that going forward?   Alan Garcia  32:54 Yeah. I mean, I had interesting conversations with my family about hey, how are we investing in in building multi generational wealth? You know, to my parents, Hey, are you thinking about your your pension or Social Security or investments or rainy day funds or passive income, it was just conversations and language that, again, going back to the earlier part, my parents were doing so much just to get by and survive and, and put us in a position they didn't. There's no 25th hour in the day, think about all those other things. So it was really up to me to generate those conversations and think about those things. And then, as soon as I became gainfully employed and put myself in a position, I said, I'm going to be you know, obviously, my sister and I are going to be that that first generation that really starts to set up our family for success. And so it's, it's led to a lot of, you know, intentional planning and, and heck, we're not perfect, and we're still trying to make it. But it just introduced even my parents and the limited small amount of family I have in this country that we have to we have to do have to think different. We have to operate different, you know, huge kudos to my parents and all the feminine goddess here. But there's so much more to learn so much more to take advantage of so much more for us to absorb. And it was my kind of small way of paying back if you will.   Michael Hingson  34:16 What are your parents think about all that?   Alan Garcia  34:19 Oh, man. Again, they're the best. They they're so supportive. They continue to nudge me in all the right ways. And I remember when I graduate from high school, my father said to me, Alan, I'm um, this is the greatest one of the greatest gifts he's ever given me today, Alan, you're better and smarter man than I am. And I kind of looked at him confused. I said, I'm only 18 I'm barely I haven't achieved anything. And what do you mean, I'm smarter than you? You've given me so much advice and, and wisdom. He said, No, no, I mean, I'll always be your dad. And I'll always have advice to give you but what you're doing, what you're accomplishing what you're going to accomplish. She's more than I could ever do more than I'll ever do. And you should, you should take that to heart, you should know that you can do anything. Don't let anyone tell you can't you're you're already proving, with so many people in Mexico, even family doubted what so many, you know, friends are quote unquote, adversaries of yours as a kid doubted. And you're a better man than me for it. My father never knew his father. And so that was, I don't even know my paternal grandfather, I've never seen a picture of him don't know his name. And so my father is really learning how to be a dad this whole time and, and it was almost a little bit of a passing of the torch, say you're, you're gonna bring honor to the Garcia name in a way that it's for him it was Shane his whole life. And so he said, you're going to, you're going to put your honor to that last name and make it mean something that has stuck with me to this day.   Michael Hingson  35:51 And, and it should, it's, it also says a lot about him and how he, he values you. And again, it goes in the immediate reaction that I have is it goes back to love. And there's just so much that you guys get to share, which is so great. I never knew my paternal grandfather, my father was orphaned. I don't know exactly how young but by 12 he was and he lived on his own. And he didn't join the Boy Scouts, there was another program called the lone scouts that was a spin off of the scouting program. And he was part of that. And then later, he was a sheep herder. He was a cowboy in Washington State and did other things. He was born in Oklahoma, but moved around and then eventually joined the military. And went in the military. One of the other people around him, got him writing to this other guy's sister in law. And when the war was over, he went home and he married my mom. And so that the other guy was was named Sam. So where I actually had an uncle Sam. So it was kind of cool. But you know, the value, I think that so often parents in the past have put that value on. And I think there's a lot that I wish more people would learn today about the kind of love and the kinds of things that you're talking about here. You talk a lot about navigating the differences in life. Tell me more about what that means and why that's important.   Alan Garcia  37:33 Yeah, so again, it's part of my lived experience. It's it's how I almost it's my worldview, you know, where I see differences opportunity. I see it is what makes life interesting and exciting is learning about our differences. Learning about everyone has their own journey. Everyone has their own unique past. And it can be a little daunting to to meet new folks or share something about yourself with others. But if you're able to have a welcoming demeanor about you, and if you're able to have the courage and bravery to, to ask questions to be curious, I have I have found that through that process, we realize we're actually more likely to different. And it's those differences that make for a pleasant conversation and an enduring relationship. It's through its through that that we've mentioned, then find commonality. So it's my worldview, it's my outlook. It's rooted in how I grew up. And it's, it's part of my professional outlook on life, my career as an educator, my philosophy of teaching and learning, but then also in my, in my personal life. My wife is from Bangladesh, and she's Muslim. I grew up Catholic and a kid from from Mexico. So even in my personal life, I've always just been intrigued by folks of different backgrounds and their and their journeys. And it's, it's, it's made life worthwhile.   Michael Hingson  39:02 Same God. That's right. More people would recognize that still the same God.   Alan Garcia  39:09 That's right. That's right. Well,   Michael Hingson  39:12 you know, I'm, I was thinking, I've spent a fair amount of time around New York, I've not spent a lot of time in places like Harlem and so on. But in the starting in the late Sep, well, in the mid 70s. And then, for many years, I did spend a lot of time around New York and I had no fear or concern about walking around. I mean, of course, there are always some crazy people. But, but I felt that if people started accosting me or started treating me in not a good way, it was as much perhaps my behavior that caused them to do that. I go back to the whole idea that you know, animals can sense fear. And if you're not afraid of animals and you and you, Project loves you, they're not going to bother you, like animals will, if you're afraid of them. And people are the same way they can sense how you are. And I personally enjoy talking with people, and I don't care who they are. And I know I've talked to some, probably pretty rough people. But you know, it's okay. Because I consider them people. Now, one of the things that did happen to me in New York a few times is I would leave the hotel I was staying at when I was back there doing sales and so on. And these people, they got to know me, they came up and they said, We're part of the guardian angels, we'll take care of you and make sure you don't have any problems. And I said, Look, I don't, I'm not gonna have any problems. It's not a big deal. They wanted to walk with me anyway. And I let them but you know, the, the thing is that, I believe that we are really a reflection of how people are going to treat us if we, if we hate, that's gonna rub off. And people are gonna sense that if we love that's going to rub off and people are going to sense it. And I would much prefer the latter to the former. And I've found always that it was pleasant to to be around people, no matter who they were. And I've met some homeless people who I'm sure were pretty rough people. But, you know, we were all part of the same race of people. That's right.   Alan Garcia  41:23 Yeah, I'm with you. There. I'm with you there. And, and it's, if we can have the courage and bravery to, on the one hand, we'll both be a little vulnerable. But then also welcome folks. Where they're where they are on their journey. I have found that more often than not to be pretty pleasant interaction.   Michael Hingson  41:41 Yeah. Well, what did you do after college? So you went to Cornell? You didn't go into hotel management or any of those things up there? That's okay. No, no. Yeah. Yeah, for a good break.   Alan Garcia  41:56 Yeah, the hoteles as they're called. Yeah, that no, that was not my path. I actually I was I was studying sports journalism and communication media studies. But I was minoring in education, and then sort of the the formal. Everything from the history of formal education in this country, how it came about to the financing to different educational models, Montessori public, emerging charter schools, charter schools are really hot at that time. Some of the biggest charter school networks were just beginning to pop up in the major cities. And it was really through understanding or trying to understand the systemic inequity that's been built in to our public education system, but then even lack of access to private education, and even how things like real estate and redlining and all these other sort of socio economic factors contribute to education, that blew my mind, because I looked back at my own story. And by that time, I was well versed in the fact that I was a statistical anomaly. And, you know, the odds of a quote unquote, kid like me, making it to a quote unquote, place, or places like I did that was was slim. But never let that limit my my, my belief that it can be more common, more people can do it. And so I pursued Graduate Studies in Education at the University of Pennsylvania graduate school there, got my master's in education, really, really kind of a deep dive into into, why are things the way they are? And seeing things from an assets based approach? So not so much, okay, why don't things work? You know, that that's been documented and well versed. But given the circumstances that we know exist, that contribute to why certain demographics or certain sectors of the population don't achieve? Who are the young people that even in those spaces in those circumstances are succeeding? So how do they find a way? How are the schools or the quote unquote, village, if you will, producing enough success, in spite of or despite the traditional barriers? And then can we replicate what works? So it's one thing to avoid what doesn't? But can we systematize and create it sort of philosophies of thinking and then operationalize the stuff that does? So as part of a really interesting research team, this is 2013. We were actually contracted by the New York City Department of Education. It was a team of 12 graduate researchers, led by our professor Dr. Shaun Harper, who's now at USC, and the DOE contracted us to examine 40 Title One Paul like high schools in New York City, and interview what ended up being over 400 Black and Latino male students, that is a demographic that historically has the lowest levels of high school graduation College, matriculation, graduating college within six years, all these all these statistics, and we know well, but these 40, schools found ways to graduate this particular demographic, above the national rate, and then through their Alumni Services, track them through college and find that they were actually graduating from college again, above the national rate when compared to peers of their same socioeconomic status. So he said, Okay, these schools are finding a way to do it, these young men are doing it. So we studied that we produced a whole report for the doe. And it was interesting, because we call the study, finding ourselves, all of the researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, myself included, were black and Latino men, and from all parts of the country, but we just happened to be studying the same university. And so we were in a way, rediscovering the younger version of ourselves, and finding a way to produce a report and produce a list of recommendations that New York City could follow. And any other major sort of urban city could follow and say, Hey, these are the schools that are doing it. This is how they're doing it, this, how they're staffing it, this is how they're building their class schedules. These are the additional and requisite supports that this particular demographic is receiving. And then even after they graduate from college, this is what the schools are doing in the post secondary space. And that was really neat for me, because I'm studying in Philly, at Penn. But every week, we were traveling to New York City and doing this study. So it was a way for me to stay close to home in a way. And that really, I caught the bug there of both being a practitioner in a sense, being in schools on a weekly basis, but then also doing the research. And I said, Hey, I I want to make a career out of this. I found that just through sharing my story and and providing families with nothing revolutionary Michael, just access to information and pathways that they otherwise didn't have access to or wasn't made. You know, it wasn't made simple enough for them to to understand. I could really do something here. And so that's what I did after college. And then I pursued a career in education formally after that.   Michael Hingson  47:29 I definitely want to hear a little bit more about that and and what you're doing now, but I'm curious about something just because I'm not as knowledgeable about as I probably would love to be. But tell me more about what you think about the whole concept of charter schools and where they fit into the world. Are they? Are they more of a blessing or not?   Alan Garcia  47:48 Yeah, I think unfortunately, charter schools, and that question has, has produced a knee jerk either. Yes, yeah, sir. And I think there's more more nuanced there. Because I'm for family choice and families having options, right? Historically, if you're zoned to your local public school, depending on your zip code, and that school is overcrowded, or it's under resourced, or you just want your child to go somewhere else that was very, very limiting. In the late 90s, early 2000s, the beginning of voucher programs and families having to apply for vouchers and have a little bit of school choice. We're well behind in in families, understanding how to navigate that system. So charter schools, allow families to do that. Now the lottery, right? So it's not guaranteed, but it still gives them choices. And I'm all for family choice. I think that's a good thing. Generally, the culture that sometimes charter schools but not exclusive to charter schools is by design a little bit more more rigid, perhaps a little bit more accountability than your traditional public school, or maybe even a private in a secular or parochial school. And I think they sometimes get a bad rap. Because there there's private funding in charter schools, and they model sort of more business oriented approach to to pedagogy and learning. And I think it's just it's it straddles that world between we want to offer families choice, but this is going to look and feel different than what most parents went to as a kid because the charter schools weren't around. I mean, now you're starting to see the first ever second generation charter school families. But it because it's just a little foreign, and it's not. Again, what we did back in my day, right if you're a parent, that can be some resistance to it. But I any school, whether your charter, public, or traditional public records, charters, particularly public schools, or private, you're gonna have good educators. You're gonna have bad educators. You're gonna Good teachers, you're gonna have bad teachers. Yeah, it's across the board, we need to train our teachers better train. And that's that's actually what my master's thesis at Penn was about. It was, how antiquated our teacher training and preparation programs are, and how they're not immersive enough. And then you do all that work, you go to higher ed, you get a graduate degree, you're putting yourself now and astronomical debt. And at least in New York City, your starting salary is 40,000. And but you're what you're tasked with with the world. And I saw that paradox when I was at Cornell, and I told a lot of my friends or my particularly my friend's parents, oh, I'm gonna go into education. And they were all so bummed out, Michael. They looked at me said all Alan, you wasted your Cornell education, oh, gee, you're gonna go into teaching? Oh, what a bummer. And I said to myself, How ironic is this, that all of these parents here, because I was on scholarship at Cornell, I didn't want my parents any debt. All these parents are at that time, accruing probably a quarter million dollars of student loans and debt, so that their kids can have the best teachers and the best credentials. But God forbid, someone who's well credentialed wants to go into education. Right? It never made sense to me. So many parents want their kids to go to these Ivy League schools top to your private schools, and they look at where the edges, the teachers, all you went to Princeton, you'd went to Williams, you went to Columbia, wow. That's where I want my kids to go to school. But God forbid, someone like me, chooses to go to education and not a career in finance, or business management or healthcare. Be a doctor, oh, Alan, you wasted it. And I would push back to my parents, and sorry, my friend's parents and, and folks that thought about that. Because I want the philosophy around what it means to be an educator in this country to be held in high esteem, and guard, it starts there, it starts with that attitude. If we don't have that, then how are we going to hold our educators accountable? And how are they going to feel really proud of what they do.   Michael Hingson  52:01 And that was, what I was actually going to get to is that. The other part of it is, besides training, and really giving teachers all the training that they should have, is giving teachers all the support that they should have, and truly being involved in your child's education, and in the educational system, because our future really depends on it, but people don't do that.   Alan Garcia  52:30 Exactly. We don't. And so that's that's sort of when I get on my pulpit and, and try and get folks this all across the board, from kids to parents and my colleagues to folks outside of the education space proper. To think more about how we view education, generally, your I have often found you talk to anyone and say, Hey, what are some influential people in your life, somewhere in their top five will be a teacher, sometimes I will be an educator, and I'll say to them, yeah, that same, you know, regard you have for that person, that that same love you have for that person Majan if you had that for all your teachers, and in turn the educators in that space would learn to, to feel more appreciated to feel like you know, both of them have just a purely economic perspective, but then also the esteem that comes with with the position, if we're just seen as a kind of a backup job or something that Oh, you didn't cut it elsewhere. It's you became a teacher, that's not helping anybody   Michael Hingson  53:30 know when it's not true. Right? I'm very blessed that one of my top five people is a teacher. He was my sophomore geometry teacher, and we stay in touch. He's 86, I went to his birthday and surprised him when he turned 80. He came to my wife's than my wedding 40 years ago, now over 40 years ago. And, you know, I, I've always enjoyed him and so many other teachers I was blessed with with good teachers. And then when I was at University of California, Irvine, and in graduate school, I also got my secondary teaching credential. So I went through the school of education there, and Ken Bailey and the the people at the school were, were great. And they gave me a lot of opportunity and didn't care that I happened to be blind. And that was great if they cared, it never showed to me. But I got to be a student teacher at a local high school, teaching, physics and math and had great master teachers as well. And I've got to say, I just have nothing but praise for the whole concept of teaching. And my belief is that we all are teachers anyway, and people are always asking me about being blind. Well, I'm a teacher, right? And I shouldn't resent or take offence at people asking questions and don't I'd rather take the time to answer questions and to Each for most of my adult life, I was in sales. And I believe that good salespeople, real salespeople are teachers. And they're also learners, because the good salesperson might suddenly recognize my product isn't what this customer needs. And sometimes it's tough to make the ethical choice to say to the customer, this isn't gonna work for you, but here's what will. But the reality is it will always come back. If you are open and honest and gain someone's trust. It'll come back to support you in the end.   Alan Garcia  55:33 100%. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.   Michael Hingson  55:37 Yeah. And so I, I really am just always so frustrated when I hear a lot of things going on with teachers. I mean, even today, where we talk about or hear about all the books that are being banned, and you got to sit there and go, have you read them? Do you know? Are you just going what, by what someone else said any course usually, the hammer rhythm they don't know. Right, right. Right. For a while, people were really going after Dr. Seuss, you know, he's a racist and all that. But I was watching something last week. And they said, the people who were reporting said over time, he changed. And if he had more racist comments, or what we're deciding now are racist comments early on. That wasn't the case later in his life. I see. Yeah. Which is, which is interesting. But you know, we, we should value education, and we should do more to recognize the high value that it brings to all of us.   Alan Garcia  56:36 Agreed. So,   Michael Hingson  56:38 so you in addition to well, so exactly, what are you doing today? What's your job today?   Alan Garcia  56:44 Sure. So I work for a pretty innovative secondary ed, educational model, the school is called a crystal Ray, Brooklyn High School. The Crystal ray model is a national model. It's a private secondary network. It's a Catholic network. 38 high schools in 30, cities coast to coast everywhere from Miami to Seattle, and all corners in between. And the really innovative thing no matter where we are, it says three things. So on the on the one, every crystal Ray school is designed to serve a population a demographic that otherwise could not afford or access private education. So I'll give you an example here locally in New York, the average Catholic high school tuition annually is $10,000 a year. And yeah, and the average private, high school tuition, living other schools other than Catholic schools is $20,000 a year. And so our tuition is capped at $2,500 a year, no family will ever pay more than that. And we only charge families what they can afford. So each family is on an individualized payment plan relative to their income. And we vet that in admissions, we collect all sorts of paperwork. The average family contribution is at around $1,000 a year. So we want to make this a very affordable and accessible option. It's a college preparatory experience. So that's that's on the one is who we serve, no matter where we are. That's what we do. The second is every single student from freshman year through senior year, will go to school four days a week, and actually intern at a company in corporate America, private America, one day a week, all four years of high school. And so you could imagine you go to school, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and your interface, internship days Wednesday. And then you do that off all years of high school. The students get deployed on a day depending on what grade they're in. So on one day, so for example, I said Wednesday that the senior work day, all senior the out of the building interning the rest of the students are in the building, but then the seniors go to school the other four days of the week. So it's the same experience for every grade. That is combining both a college preparatory education and a youth Workforce Development giving the students real work life experience. Because again, this population tends to be first generation tends to be immigrant population, lower income population, who will likely be the first in their family to do a lot of things. So we want to close the achievement gap. And we have found that these two things are a recipe for success on a national scale. The most recent numbers a few years ago, the National aggregate Cristo Rey High School students on a national level are graduating from college six times the national rate of students in a similar demographic who don't go to Cristo Rey High Schools. Now we have over a small sample size nationally. But it's it's it's the scope is wide enough that we said hey, there's something about this work thing. That's different. Yeah. So that's number two. Number three is the every school's funding model. So because families only pay what they can afford, and in our school When Brooklyn Nets about 10% of our operating budget annually, the revenue we generate, through the work study program, the internship program that money funds the school. So I get this question all the time, Mr. Garcia, what am I getting my paycheck, right, the kids don't get it, they don't get a paycheck. A company will pay the school exchange a fee for service. And collectively in the aggregate those funds, each student is a price tag, essentially any student employee student worker, it's $10,000 a year, from Labor Day, through the end of June, their work year models and academic school year, each company will pay for an intern. And that money collectively, for us is about 60% of our operating budget. And so that's what literally keeps our lights on. It's what's subsidizes the child's education, and allows us experience to be affordable and keep prices down for everyone. Now, you mentioned before sales, Michael, my job is to actually go out and sell this educational model this idea to companies and say, Hey, we have a young, motivated, excited workforce, that likely your company corporate America doesn't have access to for a whole host of reasons where these kids live, the fact that they're first generation, we exclusively serve students of color at our school. And a lot of companies are looking to increase the number of employees of color they have. So an organic pipeline of talent that you can say you've built a relationship with organically since they were teenagers. And then I also want to do what's right by the kids, right, I want to I want them to have an educational experience, both at school and at the workplace. So finding the supervisors in the workplaces that are willing to work with the younger population, mentor them, almost an apprenticeship model, and show them the ropes. And so the more partners we're able to get, the more money our school be getting, the more experiences our students can have. And so that's what I do. That's the school I work at. And I'm, as I mentioned before, the Vice President of Corporate work study program, so I oversee all program management, external client relations, student formation, and then curating th

Globalization was once the watchword of Washington. Bill Clinton made it a centerpiece of his economic policy, from the North American Free Trade Agreement to ushering China into the World Trade Organization. But two decades later, America has become increasingly protectionist, pushing strategic industrial policies and trade barriers. Just the other day, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan turned heads when he said "the postulate that deep trade liberalization would help America export goods, not jobs and capacity, was a promise made and not kept." Indeed, the Biden Administration has been touting a new kind of trade policy, one known as "friend-shoring." It encourages friendly nations and their companies to shift manufacturing away from geopolitical rivals like China and toward allies.  On this episode, Stephanie speaks with Mike Froman, who served as the US Trade Representative under President Barack Obama, about how trade policy has evolved since his administration and where it's heading. We also sit down with Senior Editor Brendan Murray, who takes us to Morocco, a country where globalization still holds sway. There, companies from China and Russia are manufacturing auto parts and sending them around the world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grain marketing specialist Dr. Mark Welch discusses what's impacting the price of corn. One of the negotiators who helped iron out the North American Free Trade Agreement looks back on the deal. Recent rains may mean more dryland sorghum on the Texas High Plains.Weed control is an important aspect of forage management.Low stress cattle handling can lead to improved herd health. 

This is the second part of our discussion on the book "Stuffed and Starved - the hidden battle for our world's food system." We look at the price development at the supply chain, addressing the lack of transparency and how corporates are incentivized to process foods for higher profit. We discuss corporate and consumer responsibility. And talk about whether malnourishment is an issue of "insufficient food"? The author Raj Patel is a British Indian. Academic journalist and activist. He holds a PhD in development and sociology from Cornell University. In this book, he focuses a lot on the inequality of our food system. The book's main thesis is that more people are overweight than people who are starving. And that's solving the issue is now our food system is not just about increasing yield. It's much more a poverty and distribution issue. I'm joined by my amazing co-host Frank Kuehne. He's the managing partner of the Adalbert-Raps Foundation, which offers grants for scientific research in food technology, but more on that later. Let's jump right in. LINKS Get funding for your food science research: https://en.raps-stiftung.de/ Find out more about the book Stuffed and Starved More info and links to resources on https://redtogreen.solutions/   Connect with the host, Marina https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/ Connect with the host, Frank https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankkuehne/ More info and links to resources on  https://redtogreen.solutions/   Please rate the podcast on Spotify and iTunes!

Welcome to our season called "Book Talks." In the first two episodes, we will cover the book "Stuffed and Starved - the hidden battle for our world's food system." The author Raj Patel is a British Indian. Academic journalist and activist. He holds a Ph.D. in development and sociology from Cornell University. In this book, he focuses a lot on the inequality of our food system. The book's main thesis is that more people are overweight than people who are starving. And that's solving the issue is now our food system is not just about increasing yield. It's much more a poverty and distribution issue. I'm joined by my amazing co-host Frank Kuehne. He's the managing partner of the Adalbert-Raps Foundation, which offers grants for scientific research in food technology, but more on that later. Let's jump right in. LINKS Get funding for your food science research: https://en.raps-stiftung.de/ Find out more about the book Stuffed and Starved More info and links to resources on https://redtogreen.solutions/   Connect with the host, Marina https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/ Connect with the host, Frank https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankkuehne/ More info and links to resources on  https://redtogreen.solutions/   Please rate the podcast on Spotify and iTunes!

These days, Mexico is one contradiction after another. For example, President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador – or AMLO, as he is called – declared a rhetorical war on the private sector, yet the economy is holding on pretty well – at least for now. On the tourism front, it's one of the world's booming tourist destinations, despite travel advisories warning of drugs and crime at popular destinations. And on trade, the government is on a protectionist streak, yet the North American Free Trade Agreement was renegotiated. What's really going on in Mexico? The Altamar hosts are joined by Jorge Guajardo, former Mexican diplomat and global savant. Altamar's ‘Téa's Take' by Téa Ivanovic examines issues at the border between the US and Mexico.   ----- Produced by Simpler Media

On this week's podcast we talk to Laura Sullivan, a fiber artist living and working in Vermont. She works at University of Vermont Extension, growing hemp fiber in the research trials at Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh. Through her work with textiles and hemp, she has come to a revelation that clothing is agriculture — or at least should be agriculture. She points to traditional ways of spinning and weaving. “Almost every culture around the world did this,” Sullivan said. “So it's almost universal in that way. And those fibers were all derived from the soil. So in that sense, to me, clothing is originally agriculture and can also be agriculture again in the future.” Her work at the Extension fiber trials gives her access to hemp fibers. But because there is no infrastructure in the Vermont to process hemp fiber, she does it all by hand. “I use all antique hand equipment to do my processing, and it's not ideal by any means,” she said. From retting and breaking, to sketching and hackling, spinning and scouring, she takes us through the whole process. During the interview she talked about the importance of fibersheds. “A fibershed is a commitment to work within the geography of a land base,” Sullivan said. “It's a way to belong to each other and the land.” The fibershed movement asks: Where is fiber in our environment, and how can we work with it? Domestically produced textiles are at an all-time low, thanks to the now-replaced North American Free Trade Agreement, she said. “In 1990, 50% of clothes worn in the U.S. were made here,” Sullivan said. “And now that figure stands at 2%. So in a very short amount of time, we have completely offshored the entire industry.” And at what cost? “The textile industry was the biggest employer of people in rural America, and namely women and those without diplomas. So we've really lost a lot in that, especially in a state like Vermont, where we are largely rural and agrarian. It's just a huge missed opportunity,” she said. Sullivan is hopeful that industrial hemp can revitalize the domestic textile industry. Laura Sullivan's Pipe Dream Hempworks https://pipedreamhempworks.com/ Northern New England Fibershed https://nnefibershed.com/ UVM Extension https://www.uvm.edu/extension   New Nuggets WV House passes Industrial Hemp Development Act https://www.lootpress.com/house-passes-industrial-hemp-development-act/ Clouds darken over CBD as more states consider banning delta-8 https://hemptoday.net/dark-clouds-grow-over-cbd-as-more-states-consider-banning-delta-8/ Should Fashion Industry Switch To Sustainability To Fight Climate Change? https://www.thequint.com/news/environment/should-fashion-industry-switch-to-sustainability-to-fight-climate-change Thanks to our Sponsors! Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Sponsor Spotlight on FARM: a platform for investing in farmland regeneration https://www.farmland.fi/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

Slouching Towards Utopia is the new book from Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Professor DeLong joins show host Gene Tunny to discuss the long twentieth century from 1870 to 2010. The conversation considers the three factors which came together to massively raise living standards post-1870, and how nonetheless we've struggled to achieve the Utopia that once appeared possible. The “neoliberal turn” beginning in the 1970s and 1980s is considered, and DeLong explains why he writes that “Hayek and his followers were not only Dr. Jekyll–side geniuses but also Mr. Hyde–side idiots.”You can buy Slouching Towards Utopia via this link:https://amzn.to/3TK4evmPlease get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. HighlightsThe big story after 1870: technological progress becomes rapid, the technological competence of the human race globally doubles every generation. [6:50]The importance of industrial research labs in the big story since 1870 [16:35]The role of the modern corporation [18:23]Globalization in the late nineteenth century and pre WWI [23:25]How bad governance can make a country very poor very quickly [29:09]The neoliberal turn [35:56]Prof. DeLong thinks the big lesson of history is that trying to maintain social and economic systems past their sell-by date doesn't work [58:28]About this episode's guest: Brad DeLongBrad DeLong is a professor of economics at U.C. Berkeley, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a weblogger at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and a fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982 and 1987. He joined UC Berkeley as an associate professor in 1993 and became a full professor in 1997.Professor DeLong also served in the U.S. government as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy from 1993 to 1995. He worked on the Clinton Administration's 1993 budget, on the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, on the North American Free Trade Agreement, on macroeconomic policy, and on the unsuccessful health care reform effort.Before joining the Treasury Department, Professor DeLong was Danziger Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He has also been a John M. Olin Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University, and a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at M.I.T.Links relevant to the conversationBrad DeLong's substack:https://braddelong.substack.com/DeLong on Hobsbawm's short 20th century (1914 to 1989) compared with his long 20th century:https://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/the-short-vs-the-long-twentieth-century.htmlRe. Yegor Gaidar's analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union:https://sites.dartmouth.edu/asamwick/2007/06/08/the-soviet-collapse-grain-and-oil/Lant Pritchett's book Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility:https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/9781933286105-Pritchett-let-their-people-come.pdfCreditsThanks to Brad DeLong for a great conversation, Nicholas Gruen for connecting Gene with Prof. DeLong, and Josh Crotts for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Please consider signing up to receive our email updates and to access our e-book Top Ten Insights from Economics at www.economicsexplored.com. 

The Chupacabra is undoubtedly one of the most well known cryptids. It is a recent monster, emerging in Puerto Rico only in 1995. We discuss what was going on in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, the spread of the Chupacabra to Mexico after the North American Free Trade Agreement where it merged with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and how it became associated with both coyotes suffering from mange and immigrants in the 2000s.We are joined by Brenda Salguero and Dr. Orquidea of the podcast Monstras: Latinx Monsters and Folklore, Dr. William Calvo-Quirós, author of “Sucking Vulnerability: Neoliberalism, the Chupacabras, and the Post-Cold War Years,” and Dr. Ed Guimont of the Impossible Archive podcast.Bonus: The time a teddy bear was victimized by El Chupacabra, Scully and Mulder get problematic, and kangaroo chihuahuas ReferencesWilliam Calvo-Quiros: “Sucking Vulnerability: Neoliberalism, the Chupacabras, and the Post-Cold War Years”Robert Jordan Michael: “El Chupacabra: Icon of Resistance to U.S. Imperialism”Lauren Derby: “Imperial Secrets: Vampires and Nationhood in Puerto Rico”Silvia Rodriguez Vega: “Chupacabras: The Myth of the Bad Immigrant”Scott Corrales: Night of the ChupacabrasThe 1996 "Chupacabra Homepage"Asher Elbein: Chasing the Chupacabra, A Lonestar LegendBenjamin Radford: Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and FolkloreJoe Bandy: Bordering the Future: Resisting Neoliberalism in the BorderlandsSupport the show

Guests featured in this episode:Dr Michael John Hastings, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick CBE. He began his career as a teacher at a London Comprehensive school but after a few years took up a government job and supported policy initiatives to bring employment and development to Britain's inner cities in a rough period marked by urban riots. He went to work for the BBC as presenter and later joined the BBC Corporate Division, after which he became the head of its Public Affairs, and then its first head of Corporate Social Responsibility. In 2002, he was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in recognition of his services to crime reduction, including two decades of serving as a trustee and chairman of Crime Concern, and nine year of work with the Commission for Racial Equality. In 2005, he became a crossbencher life peer in the House of Lords. GLOSSARY:What was the January 6 insurrection ? (00:10:45 or p.3 in the transcript)United States Capitol attack o on January 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters of Pres. Donald J.Trump. The attack disrupted a joint session of Congress convened to certify the results of thepresidential election of 2020, which Trump had lost to his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. Because its object was to prevent a legitimate president-elect from assuming office, the attack was widely regarded as an insurrection or coup d'etat. The FBI and other law-enforcement agencies also considered it an act of domestic terrorism.  For having given a speech before the attack in which he encouraged a large crowd of his supporters near the White House to march to the Capitol and violently resist Congress's certification of Biden's victory—which many in the crowd then did—Trump was impeached  ched by the Democratic-led House of Representatives for “incitement of insurrection” ;he was subsequently acquitted by the Senate. Source: What is the Davos Forum and what is the agenda for 2022 meeting? (00:30:14 or p.7 in the transcript) For more than 50 years, the World Economic Forum, also known as the Davos Forum, has served as a global platform where leaders from business, government, international organizations, civil society and academia come together to address critical issues at the start of each year.Davos was established in 1971 in Geneva (Switzerland) as an “independent, impartial and not tied to special interests” non-profit organization. Its founder is Klaus M. Schwab, a professor at the University of Geneva, who initially invited 444 executives from European companies to a meeting on corporate governance in the convention center of Davos.His idea was to introduce the American business management approach to European firms. He never imagined that that meeting would lead to the unparalleled international summit that it is today.Thousands of ideas come out of the Davos Forum. Not all of them materialize, but some have come far: the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, was first proposed at an informal meeting in Davos.In 2021, the forum had to be canceled because of the pandemic.The war in Ukraine and the human tragedy that it entails has forced a change of agenda. Leaders gathered in Davos must therefore address the challenges stemming from the conflict, yet not lose sight of longer-term environmental, technological and social priorities. The meetings are structured around six themes: 1) Promoting global and regional cooperation; 2) Ensuring economic recovery and building a new era of growth; 3) Building healthy and fair societies; 4) Safeguarding the climate, food supply and nature; 5) Promoting the transformation of industry; 6) Harnessing the power of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Source: Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: Novel Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentreSubscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!  

"Fuck the Shah!" - Jimmy Carter, 1979 From the fall of the Shah and the subsequent fall of Iran (things turned out to be a hot mess), to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the attention drawn to the Zapatista National Liberation Front (EZLN) and beyond, international trade from 1979 through the end of the 20th century can only be described as chaotic. The mass liberalization of international finance found Central America swimming in debt, causing a crisis known as The Lost Decade and an influx of immigrants to the United States. What did we do? We turned the victims into villains.

Episode 165: “Economic inequality is out of control. In 2019, the world's billionaires, only 2,153 people, had more wealth than 4.6 billion people.” Those two sentences lead off Oxfam's annual look at inequality. This year, Oxfam looks at unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis. I speak with Paul O'Brien, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam America about the in-depth report that is startling and bracing, and reminds us of the vast chasm dividing the very rich from the rest of us. Then, almost three decades ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, which devastated working people and the planet because NAFTA meant poverty for millions and an open season for corporations to abuse workers and the planet. Last week, NAFTA 2.0 passed the Senate so it's a time to ask: Is it any better? Well, that depends on who you ask—so I debate that question with Eric Gottwald, the AFL-CIO's trade expert. -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Podcast at: www.workinglife.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tasini.3

Last week, Mexico became the first country to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement , or USMCA. Canada is expected to follow suit in short course. In The United States, however, not all American lawmakers are convinced the USMCA would be a better deal than the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Democrats have threatened to block it , and a few key Republicans are withholding support unless the administration makes some concessions on tariffs.

Keynes and Bown examine the legal arguments surrounding President Trump’s threats to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization. They speak with legal experts Gary Hufbauer (PIIE), Rachel Brewster (Duke...

Keynes and Bown examine the legal arguments surrounding President Trump’s threats to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization. They speak with legal experts Gary Hufbauer (PIIE), Rachel Brewster (Duke...

Keynes and Bown examine critical economic issues caught up in Canada’s talks with the Trump administration over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement. They speak with Meredith Lilly (Carleton University) and Madelaine...

Keynes and Bown examine critical economic issues caught up in Canada’s talks with the Trump administration over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement. They speak with Meredith Lilly (Carleton University) and Madelaine...

Keynes and Bown examine the still murky details on autos and a potential sunset clause for the Mexico-United States trade agreement—which the Trump administration says is designed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement...

Keynes and Bown examine the still murky details on autos and a potential sunset clause for the Mexico-United States trade agreement—which the Trump administration says is designed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement...

Soumaya Keynes of the Economist and PIIE Senior Fellow Chad P. Bown focus on the economic tension arising through the ongoing NAFTA—or North American Free Trade Agreement—talks between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The...

Soumaya Keynes of the Economist and PIIE Senior Fellow Chad P. Bown focus on the economic tension arising through the ongoing NAFTA—or North American Free Trade Agreement—talks between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The...