I had the pleasure of listening to Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, speak at Pittsburg State University last night.
The event was part of the H. Lee Scott Speaker Series and held at the university’s beautiful new Bicknell Family Center for the Arts. If you have the chance to catch something there, go. It’s an incredible place.
It was an amazing time. He spoke for two hours, part of that a riveting conversation with Chris Childers, Pitt State’s interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.
As he breezed through lessons he’s learned over the past 45 years in journalism, I realized he’s stayed this good — he’s won three Pulitzer Prizes — because he’s always learning. Friedman was just in China, learning about the Chinese company Huawei’s new smart vehicles. Before flying to Kansas, he had a three-hour breakfast with a Microsoft executive. He’s constantly probing, pushing, asking.
Friedman mostly stayed out of politics, but he had some profound insights about the United States’ current push towards tariffs.
The world’s economy is too integrated now for isolationism, Friedman said. “There’s not a single country in the world with all the necessary materials to make an iPhone by itself,” he noted.
Take the most popular vehicle in America, the Ford F-150. About a third of it is made in America, Friedman said. How will tariffs make that car cheaper?
Friedman offered a third example of a Vietnamese shoe factory. Vietnam was slapped with a staggering 46% tariff on Wednesday.
Trump says his favorite word is ‘tariff.’ Mine is ‘public.’ Public places, public schools, public universities, public resources. If I were running for president, I would focus on what we have in common.Thomas Friedman
“All tariffs buy you is time,” said Friedman. “But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that not too many Pitt State students want to work at a shoe factory. And even if they did, I don’t imagine Pittsburg has a bunch of empty shoe factories.” Who would build them? Who would work in them for Vietnamese wages?
Either way, observed Friedman, we better get used to paying more for shoes. “You cannot tariff your way to prosperity,” he said. “This will not end well.”
I enjoyed so many parts of the conversation it’s hard to avoid writing about them all. Two other tidbits that stood out:
• “Trump says his favorite word is ‘tariff.’ Mine is ‘public.’” This earned the loudest applause of the night. “Public places, public schools, public universities, public resources,” Friedman continued. “If I were running for president, I would focus on what we have in common.”
• Friedman is a firm believer in disengaging from social media and screens. He called Mark Zuckerberg one of the “worst individuals in our country” and sees social media as a key reason we’re constantly screaming at each other.
And the five points of advice he offers his two daughters still sticks with me:
1. Think like an immigrant. Be hungry, work harder than the rest, and know that anything can be taken from you.
