Crony Capitalism And The Cost To Consumers

When the rules change on a whim, your budget becomes collateral damage. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sits down with University of Michigan economics professor Dr. Justin Wolfers to unpack why the affordability crisis is also a governance crisis: unpredictability, interventionist decision-making, and pay-to-play incentives that can quietly raise prices while weakening competition.

We dig into concrete Michigan flashpoints that make the stakes real, including the Gordie Howe International Bridge and what it means when major infrastructure and cross-border trade can be threatened for political leverage. We also talk energy policy and the cost of forcing uneconomic choices, plus the strange contradictions of blocking renewable energy like wind while global conflict pushes oil prices higher. Along the way, we connect these choices to business confidence, market stability, and the long-run foundations of growth.

Tariffs and manufacturing are a core thread, especially for automakers and suppliers that live and die by predictable supply chains. We also confront a harder question: what happens to democracy when major corporations feel too intimidated to speak publicly, even when policies hurt their bottom line? Finally, we zoom out to America’s innovation edge, the risk of scientific brain drain, and why welcoming global talent matters for pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, AI, and the next generation of high-quality jobs.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s feeling the squeeze, and leave a review if you want more conversations like this. What’s the clearest sign you’ve seen that policy chaos is showing up in your everyday costs?

Transcript

Welcome And The Affordability Squeeze

Attorney General Dana Nessel 0:05

Hello and welcome to another episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits, your favorite podcast to learn about how the laws and policies of this country are shaping your life every day forever. I'm your host, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and um I don't know if you've heard about it, but apparently America is facing a bit of an affordability crisis. And I want to talk about it. So today I'm super excited to be joined by University of Michigan Economics Professor Dr. Justin Wolfers for a discussion about how shifts in federal policy are influencing business confidence, economic stability, and long-term innovation, particularly in states like Michigan that sit at the intersection of manufacturing, trade, and research investment. So get ready because we've got an incredible discussion in store for you. Hello and welcome to Dr. Justin Wolfers. Um it's great to have you on the podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to um uh to talk to us and to um discuss some of these really concerning economic uh uh realities of today, which I think are are very different from what we may have seen um in the past. Um we have so many things that are happening because of policies coming from the federal government, specifically from our president. Uh, and I wanted to talk to you about the kind of impact that we're seeing on us here in Michigan and on the United States in general. And um, I refer to much of this as uh, well, chaos to begin with. Yeah, that's accurate. Checks out, not necessarily well thought out economic planning. Um, but in addition to that, crony capitalism, you know, a system uh that is based on payoffs more than anything else. And uh here's a matter that I was just discussing with people in my office, and it has to do with the uh the expected uh opening of the Gordy Howe International Bridge. And this is uh an international border crossing that is scheduled to open very shortly. Uh, you know, it's an agreement between Michigan and Canada, and uh scheduled, you know, to bring in at least to the state of Michigan about$7 million a week. But um because uh the president um has a relationship in the neighborhood of about a million dollars with uh the Maroon family, who is a competing bridge, uh he is threatening not to staff it with um custom and border patrol so that the bridge can't open. And it's that kind of thing that has a lot of us scratching our heads saying, What the heck is going on here? This is a bridge that's gonna be great for not just the state of Michigan, but all the United States. And he may decide just not to open it because he got a contribution to his pack. What can you tell us about things like this and how it affects the country when you know long-standing plans for the economy are disrupted uh based on the you know payoffs to the president?

The New Age Of Interventionism

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Well, uh so Dana, one of the joys about talking with you is you do a great job of telling the story. Um, it's very easy to get bogged down in the details of the who, what, and where, but we'd be better off if there was look, here's some very simple logic. Two bridges are better than one. Um some people want to build a bridge. Let it rip. Um that's about as far as my thinking has to go. Um, so I want to actually go back with a new word before your word crony capitalism and instead talk about interventionist. So it used to be that the old lines of economic and political division in the United States were Republicans believed in markets, and Democrats were typically more interventionist, that they understood that sometimes markets don't serve the general interest, and so they need to be regulated. And this is the work you do is you know, you've got an economist telling an attorney general about the importance of rules, laws, and regulations. I'll stop mansplaining.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 4:33

Um well, that is that is a large part of uh, of course, what we do here at the Department of Attorney General is we are the regulator for all kinds of different systems that were that are in place. It's our job to enforce the law.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Right. And so historically, Democrats were more comfortable with that than Republicans. But and Republicans, if you quote Reagan, like Reagan believed deeply in laissez-faire, market forces and the like. And so if someone wants to build a bridge, it's the government's job to get out of the way. That was the old Republican Party. This is the most interventionist government of our lifetime. So it's not just this bridge, obviously. This is a president who literally called Coca-Cola and told them to reinstate their earlier recipe. This is a president who told Intel who to make their uh CEO. This is a president who called the CEO of Intel into his company in that into the White House. And the CEO left 10% of his company down the White House cushions. This is a president who's betting yours and my money on individual companies, which is now what the White House is doing. So this is very, very different than the traditional Republican Party. This is not the party of Reagan. That was the first point. The second is how does he intervene? It could be you intervene because you have principled views about how markets operate and how sometimes they need guardrails. That's your day job. I'm not going to explain to you how you do that. But it could be instead that what you do is you intervene because your mates told you to. That's the crony in crony capitalism. And what do I mean by mates? It could literally be mates. It could be people who can do you political favors, it could be people who um do you where there's financial payoffs. Remember, the president has enormous financial entanglements, particularly in crypto, in new media, and so on. The problem of crony capitalism. So crony capitalism is basically how you think about the Russian economy. The way to succeed in Russia is to be mates with Putin. It's not to build a better mousetrap. And so what that does is it filters out to the rest of the economy. If you want to make money, it's not about building a better mousetrap, a faster car, a cheaper car. It's about your proximity to mar-a lago. We move competition from the marketplace where people are trying to produce better goods at lower prices to mar-a-ligo, where people are trying to produce better, more effective side payments and payoffs. And the result of that is unproductive firms that are very good at lobbying can succeed. The result of that, in turn, is that you and I, customers, consumers, end up getting screwed. Right? If there's one bridge, the price is high. If there's two bridges, the price comes down. If there's one bridge, there's lots of traffic. If there's two bridges, there's much less traffic. Um, and it's a very, very destructive way forward. I think the US is only a couple of steps down this pathway, but the pathway to crony capitalism is a pathway towards economic ruin.

Coal Plant Orders And Central Planning

Attorney General Dana Nessel 7:30

Yeah, um, let me give you another example, and I think it it really helps to support what your theory is here in terms of what's happening. Um, there was uh, you know, there's a coal plant out in Ottawa County on the west side of Michigan, the J.H. Campbell plant. Um, and this is a very old plant, about 64 years old. It was scheduled to shut down and be decommissioned last May. And that was something that was agreed upon uh with uh the state of Michigan and the Michigan Public Service Commission, uh, and um, you know, Consumers Energy, who that is the company that, the utility that actually operates the coal plant. And everyone understood that um uh that this was an inefficient plant and that the state and the consumers energy customers would uh be better served with other kinds of energy. And maybe that was natural gas, uh, or maybe it was clean energy using solar and wind. But last minute, you know, a few days before the plant was scheduled to close, the Trump administration comes in, the Department of Energy, and says, no, you have to keep operating, you have to keep this coal plant open, even though there was no more coal left. And now they're actually having to um, in order to obey the order of the Department of Energy, uh, it is costing somewhere in the neighborhood of$135 million. Just that was just from May until December. And it's not useful, it's not helpful. We have more than enough energy from natural gas and from other uh types of products, and it's just costing a ton of money for our state and the other states that are in our energy grid. Uh and but every you know 90 days or what have you, these orders are renewed. And again, it's costing consumers energy and it's costing you know residents of our state an absolute ton of money. And all I could think about, you know, you mentioned um uh Putin, you mentioned Russia. It just it sounds like uh this is Soviet style in terms of telling which plants, the government telling uh companies what plants can be open and what plants have to close instead of the the free market. And I find it to be just fascinating. I'm I I guess I wonder what your opinion is. What happened to these free market capitalists?

Wind Power And Energy Security

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, so what do we call it when faceless bureaucrats in Washington, as part of a planning commission, decide which coal plants are open and which are closed and how much each should produce as part of their glorious five-year plan. Um, the rhetoric of this is really literally unbelievable. Um, but the rhetoric is the reality, and that's what I meant. I I use the term interventionist. You could say, I'm trying to be precise, right? So if I wanted to get a newspaper headline, I'd call it communism. It's not, um, but it's command and control. This is a belief that one man is smarter than the market. Um this was a belief that historically the Republican Party didn't hold. Um, it's also a belief that basically we we had a cold war over this. Um we have amazing examples. So at the end of um World War II, there was a country where we decided to let the Russians settle the north half of the country and institute uh central planning, and the Americans, the southern half of the country, where we instituted markets. This country, of course, was Korea. Both of these countries had average incomes of about$3,000 at the end of World War II. It's a perfect natural experiment because you've got basically the same patch of dirt, a shared culture, a shared history, similar people, North and South, just an artificial line that went straight through the middle of Korea. And you fast forward nearly a century and you discover that people in North Korea average income is barely grown. They're hungry. People in North Korea are literally shorter than people in South Korea because I think central planning failed to deliver the bountiful crop harvests that we thought it would, and people in South Korea. South Korea is an advanced country now. They're wealthy, they're enjoying extraordinary abundance. We that's the experiment between central planning versus markets. And we saw that experiment and markets won. I can't tell you why we're going back on this. I mean, an autocrat likes power, blah, blah, blah, and there's historical stories about this, but I think what really matters is uh two things. One, you point out the reality. The reality is we have a return to central planning in the United States. We haven't gone the full North Korea, but we're several steps down the path. And two, that's that fails. It simply doesn't deliver bountiful harvests. You can tell a beautiful story because you understand the economics of that particular coal plant. We don't need to because there's a simple question of economic logic. If they wanted to shut it, and the only reason they were opening it is because someone in Washington is telling them to, that tells us it's an unprofitable, inefficient way of generating energy. You told the story about coal, but you can also tell a similar story about um wind, but it goes in the opposite direction. The president, for some truly bizarre reason, dislikes windmills.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 13:00

I'm told it's because windmills cause cancer.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

I'm not sure if they're thoroughly charming and engineering miracles. But as a result, he's putting the federal government, the might of the federal government, between potential turbines and getting erected and renewable energy. Now, it's an incredible moment right now. We're at war with Iran, oil prices are rising, we're starting to see the geopolitical strength coming out of our reliance on fossil fuels. You know one thing? We had those windmills, windmills don't care what's happening in the Middle East. Um there's also geopolitical issues here, too.

Tariffs And The Silence Of CEOs

Attorney General Dana Nessel 13:36

Yeah, and I mean it really goes to show that, you know, our reliance on energy that comes from elsewhere uh is misplaced and dangerous when it comes to obviously times like this where uh if we had, if only the the oil uh companies and the big fossil fuel companies had not sort of stymied more innovation for wind and solar, we would probably be in a much better place than we are right now. I want to talk for a second about uh about tariffs, something that um I'm you know never seems to leave the news cycle. Uh and you know, uh obviously the the president declared independence day and had random Liberation Day. Oh, I'm sorry, liberation day, liberated from our jobs, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Liberated from our foreign.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 14:39

So so this went on for quite some time, and they were seemingly without much um uh real thought provided or rationale given for why there were certain tariffs for certain countries and others for for you know countries, some of which I had never heard of, and apparently only penguins live on some of these countries.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

I've heard in McDonald Islands, penguins and seals. It's a little island off of Australia, actually. Oh, it sounds like um they were the penguins were seen celebrating after the recent Supreme Court case.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 15:13

Well, so here's the thing that was interesting. Um many uh state AGs brought that case and were successful. Um, and then as you know, immediately following the ruling, the president uh implemented new tariffs at 15% under another uh you know federal law, and um that's being challenged now by you know by Michigan and many other states. Um but I guess I want to ask a few things. One, what did we learn already from the imposition of tariffs and what it does to our country? But in addition to that, and let me tell you the story. I did not join, I did not participate in the first lawsuit uh that my colleagues did that ultimately was successful before the Supreme Court. And the reason why I didn't is because when I reached out to the auto manufacturers, who of course are our biggest employers here in Michigan, um they did not want to provide declarations. They did not want to be part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration. They preferred, they said, to sort of back channel things and like we're gonna solve this on our own. And obviously it's clear they really weren't able to do that. But what does it mean when you have some of the most powerful companies in the world, right? Uh General Motors, Ford, Stillanis, um basically saying, you know, oh, we we don't want to be too vocal about our opposition to this, even though it's highly illegal. And even though it's very damaging to our company. Our company is losing an old untold amount of money. Each vehicle, uh, at one point I saw, like, even for the lowest priced vehicles, you were seeing an increase of somewhere of, you know, perhaps$5,000 per vehicle. What does it mean when the most powerful companies in the world are afraid to challenge the president publicly?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Right. So this comes back to the earlier question you asked about crony capitalism. So if the most important business asset you hold is access to the White House, then that is an enormous incentive to be quiet. And so we see this from CEOs across the board. Basically, the most important thing if you're the Fort if you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company is don't make the president angry. Um the president can go after, can put the machinery of the state against you in all sorts of ways. So when we started talking about green capitalism, I did what an economist does. I talked about the ways that distorts capitalism. You're now raising your second question, it distorts democracy. Because what it does is it provides, it basically silences competition in the political marketplace. That normally there's a battle of ideas, you've got a good idea, and I've got a good idea, a better idea. And then you and I go and talk in public and uh we see which idea wins. But now you discover that Ford and General Motors and Stillantis don't want to speak at all, or they don't want to speak against the president. This is actually a very, very challenging moment for the media because if I want to know about, I mean, it's a challenging moment for you as Attorney General. You should I challenge his case, the automakers don't want me to. The automakers don't represent the public interest. The automakers represent the shareholders of the automakers. And often in the past, they may have been a closer proxy for the public interest. Now it's quite starkly opposed. Um, and so it is a moment for those of us who are not under such pressures to speak loudly and clearly. It's one of the reasons I've become more public-facing in my own work, which is lots of people are scared to speak loudly. So therefore I can, because it's very hard to fire me. I'm not that worried, I could get another job anyway. Um, and you, well, you know, you get hired or fired by the voters. And hopefully they would only fire you if you didn't best represent their interests. And so this is why I want to come back to you and say, next time there's a case, I do think Michigan should be a part of it.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 19:10

Um, good news, we are. Uh, I did join the second case. And it, I just to make it clear, it's not like, oh, I only do what the auto manufacturers tell me to do. That's never been the case. But why do we need their participation? Well, because I need information from them. I need to be able to say how this is going to impact um their profits, their the the employment of workers in my state. And for uh the treasury of our state, you know, what they're paying ultimately in taxes, because based on what, of course, the the amount that they're that they're profiting. So these are the types of considerations that you, you know, uh certainly we had to see how things were going to play out in order to be able to assess what our damages are. And some of my colleagues decided to move forward uh more quickly, and I'm glad that they did, and obviously they were successful, but I guess we've now had an opportunity to see what does it mean for our country when you have these arbitrary arbitrary uh and capricious taxes, sorry, tariffs that are imposed. Like what does that do to us as a country? And um, what do you expect to see in the future if this continues to happen?

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Right. So the point that you just made, and I think it's really important to underline it, it's that the credibility of big business in our political debates has been undermined and subverted, not by the business themselves, but by the present. And it changes who and what we think reliable sources of information are. So, Dana, next time.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 20:55

Based on some of their public maneuvers that I thought were there to sort of appease the president. And some of it was um manufacturing uh fewer items of of pride gear, I would say. They used to have a whole section of the store for um, you know, free gay pride, and you could purchase t-shirts or various other items. Um scaling that back uh because that was now popular with the president. And the other thing was the their DEI um programs, uh, corporate programs. So uh, you know, we've seen now that there has been some backlash, and of course, there's been you know very public boycotts, especially by the African American community and some big organizations, and Target's not doing very well as a result. So I made a remark about how discrimination is bad for business. And I will say this as a member of the LGBT community. You know, yeah, when you see uh a tent at your local pride that has the name of that business, now you feel more comfortable not just purchasing products from that business, but also maybe you want to work for that. And you know that you won't be discriminated against if you do. Anyway, the representatives there from uh who happen to be from Target, who I did not know were were in the audience, I should tell you, when I made those remarks, you know, went to great lengths to tell me that really they're doing all of these things that are they're still maintaining uh their their you know products for pride. It's just they're more uh hidden in the store, or you have to go online to get them, or whatever it is. And, you know, my point is that here they are capitulating to what they believe uh the president would like to see. The president doesn't like uh diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The president doesn't like anything that apparently is LGBTQ related, but that hasn't translated into um better business for them or better profits. And in fact, they're doing much worse. And uh so to me, like, was it worth it, Target? Like, how did that work out for you? That's how I thought about it.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

I think the current moment is a moment for that calls for, that demands courage. And what we've discovered that is that too many of our corporate leaders care more about next quarter's share price than they do about defending the institutions so that a found the foundation of the prosperity that keeps them alive. Um, so it's a moment for courage. Courage got more expensive for those folks. I want to be kind of empathetic, right? When the president calls you as the CEO of Target and says, do this or bad things will happen. You've got to make payroll. You've got tens of thousands of people who work for you, you care about them. I can see that's a genuine dilemma. I'm not saying they shouldn't be courageous. I just saying I can feel their pain. Now, let me point out if those folks are going to be less courageous, you didn't need to hear this lecture from me. It means that the rest of us need to step up. And who is it who's not under the pressure? Well, I'd say a Democratic attorney general, I'd say a tenured university professor. So we are the ones who have to pick up the slack from the failures of moral courage at moments like this.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 24:06

But are these companies now not noticing the fact that, you know, just because you didn't go out and immediately file a lawsuit if you're GM, it didn't work out for you. Whatever your back channeling was, I mean, I guess it could have been worse, but it turned out to be pretty bad. And it would have been better had you just litigated this in the very beginning. And I would say that's true of Targeted. That's true of so many different companies, um, sitting on your hands, you know, and trying to again, you know, um make contributions to the president's PAC and, you know, trying to talk to members of his staff that you might know and you might be able to bend their ear. It's not as effective as just broadly coming out and saying, we oppose this policy, and also it's illegal, we're suing. That's what I'm I'm struggling with when it comes to, you know, our Fortune 500 companies and when it comes to uh the Republican Party, which again used to be like that, they were the Chamber of Commerce Party. And what I've basically said uh in this last year, I mean, you know, I've filed now about I think 48 lawsuits against the federal government. Some of my colleagues have filed 60 or 70 or 80 cases. But the fact is, if you look at the cases as a whole, it is big business often that benefits from our cases because we are challenging. Yeah. And I so the Democrats at this point, I feel like we are the party of capitalism.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Unquestionably.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 25:37

And it's unquestionably. So this is what I just struggle to understand why the Chamber of Commerce types aren't being more vocal because it's their businesses that are losing money.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

So I think you're inviting me to say doing the right thing is profitable. And that's something we would all hope were true. I don't think it is. That's a certain there's a certain kind of left-wing magical thinking where we like to believe every time doing the right thing is also profitable. And it's because of the logic of crony capitalism that you started with. If the president said to all the automakers, do what I say, or else I'm gonna come after you, they could stand up to him. But instead, what he says is to one of them, do what I say, or I'm gonna come after you. And their competitors will come and take market share if he were to somehow, you know, there's many ways in which the federal government can like make life difficult. Because the president is effective at his strategy, and I to be clear, I think his strategy is unethical, possibly illegal, and not okay. But his strategy is to change the calculus for individual businesses so capitulation is more profitable than standing up. I actually think he's often very successful at that. So there is, I think, you know, there's there's two questions here. Sometimes collective action solves the problem, right? So when the president went after Columbia University, it rolled over. If instead Columbia had reached out to other universities and said, you know, together we hang or we hang together, they might have had more power. The other is I also deeply think you don't need to talk to an economist to tell you it's more profitable to do the right thing. Remember, one day you will be dead. What's on your headstone? Are your kids proud of you? Are you repaying the society that created the rules and the laws that allowed you to do business? Are you living up to your social obligation? I think you know, I'm not gonna sometimes it is the right thing. I agree with you. Sometimes it is the right thing. It's purely profitable to fight the president, but sometimes it's not. Yet still maybe you should.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 27:59

Do you have any thoughts about what this is going to mean for our scientific community and especially uh pharmaceutical companies, for instance, right? Um, I read a study lately or recently that indicated that something like 20% of all of our you know PhDs um had been leaving the country and finding other places to work because it's such an unwelcome environment. I imagine that many of those people uh are actually um foreign nationals that don't feel comfortable, either they're not permitted to come to the United States anymore, or they don't feel comfortable being in the United States. You know, I wonder like what will the future hold for that kind of innovation as we look at again, the people who are vested with with creating and inventing things that are you know important for our health and our safety and our welfare, but fleeing the country and going elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Yeah. Uh Dana, I don't know if you've noticed. Um, my accent is not actually from South Michigan. Um I am originally from Australia, so I'm one of those, I'm a funny kind of scientist, I'm an economist, but I'm one of those foreign scientists who's here plying his wares in the United States. And the turn inwards is terrifying. Um, so much of our talent comes from abroad. The US is where good scientists come to do great science. Basically, scientists want to be around other scientists. That means there are many possible what we call equilibria things that could happen. If everyone goes to Australia, I'll go to Australia. If everyone goes to America, I'll go to America. We're very fortunate in the United States that we're the center of science. And so people from all around the world come here to do their best work. If we make it difficult for those folks to get in the country, and we already have, if we make it an unwelcoming country, and if we demand to see their papers every time they're out for a walk with their family, they're going to go elsewhere to do science. Um, it's already difficult. I teach at the University of Michigan. Our PhD students come from all around the world. It's really amazing. The Korean Ministry of Finance sends their best and brightest and pays, pays really, really big fees to my employer. And we spent send that money up to Lansing and hope you guys do amazing things with it. Um and it's a form of soft power as well. They come to the US, some of them stay because they can be part of Silicon Valley, part of pharmaceuticals, part of automotive engineering, part of the next AI generation. And some go home, but they take with them American val about American values. Um, the problem right now is if you were to come to the US for an advanced course of study, you can't be confident that if you went home at Christmas, you would be allowed back in.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

And so that changes the calculation, which is, well, should I go, yeah, should I go to the University of Michigan or should I go to Oxford?

unknown 30:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

All of a sudden, Oxford became a whole lot more attractive. And I will tell you, my inbox contains job offers from countries all around the world who are saying, hey, it's kind of weird over there. Do you want to leave? Now you might say, is it really possible that when a country is hostile to foreigners, that it can lose its scientific edge? And here it's important to know a little history. Before World War II, the Center for Scientific Excellence was Germany. And it wasn't just that Germans were really good at science, it's because great German scientists attracted great scientists from all around the world. Then comes Hitler, it becomes deeply uncomfortable to do science in Germany, and they scattered. And Germany's never recovered. Germany today is not the leader of artificial intelligence. It's not the leader in pharmaceuticals and so on that we are, and it's essentially because the US became the new home for global science. And you're absolutely right to say that is under threat right now in very deep and very profound ways. And I just want to speak, if I may, um as a statement of values. I came to this country because I loved the intensity with which Americans would openly strive for greatness. Like the people around me at the university, they're going to discover the next vaccine, the next great breakthrough, and you just have a go. And I thought that ambition is almost uniquely American, and I loved everything about it. And we're trading that ambition for grievance.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 32:37

We do have a great basketball team right now, though, I should say, both men's and women's.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

So and they're going to give us a few fleeting moments of joy. But if you want to think about the real drivers of long run prosperity, it's the work that my colleagues in the laboratories are doing right now, inventing that next generation of pharmaceuticals, inventing the possibility of vaccines, inventing the possibilities of new forms of computers, and inventing new and better ways of doing economics. It cannot be overstated how central that is to economic growth. And if we destroy that, it's not going to send next quarter's GDP down. But it does mean that in a generation, our kids are going to wake up and there are not going to be high-quality knowledge work jobs for them. And they'll have to do something else. And it's just going to be a series of lost opportunities that we never see. And it's because we forced the scientists out.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 33:37

I I just see this world now where, you know, whether or not you're stealing money from the government or from a nonprofit or from, you know, the people that you are serving in your company, um, you know, there's there's literally nothing that you can't get away with for the right price. And what impact does that have on us? Um, and and you know, just today we're dealing with this situation with Ticketmaster Live Nation, where uh, you know dozens of states were working together uh with the DOJ and the FTC, and then we're in the middle of trial, and all of a sudden uh Kellyanne Conway swoops in on behalf of Ticketmaster, and uh suddenly the DOJ settles and gives them a sweetheart deal uh in a case that I think we were very likely to win, uh, that you know, an antitrust case. And so what does it mean in terms of the operation of these companies where it's just a free-for-all, and you can literally do whatever you want, no matter how flagrantly you are violating um federal law and know that you can get away with it.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Right. Let me give you an analogy. Um football. We all follow football, college football, go blue.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 34:58

Um Australian football or American football? Because those are different things.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

I mean, they're amazing. So in Australia, your knowledge of Australia is extraordinary. In Australia, I support the Sydney Swans, I'll take you to a game one day. But here, uh, I support the Michigan Wolverines. Football has a lot of rules. If the referees didn't enforce the rules, it would be a terrible spectacle. It would be a bunch of big buffy blokes just lying all over each other, probably throwing punches, and there would be no art, there would be nothing worth watching. Football's only a useful spectacle because there's a set of rules and the rules are enforced. The same is true of economies. Now it turns out at the end of this hour, I know the referee. She's my good mate, Dana Nessel. And I just want to point out, therefore, the essential economic role that you play. So for our audience, it's easy at moments like this to feel despair. But for those of us who can find power, those of us who can play a role, justice is no longer at the Justice Department, but we do have state attorneys general. And so, Dana, uh, I voted for you, I'm your constituent. Um, I want you to walk away and remember how many of us are cheering for you, how important what you do is, how there aren't many of us left between here and worse outcomes. And now's a great time to stand up. And I want you to know that everyone I know is cheering for you as well.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 36:31

Well, I really appreciate that. I will say I'm really proud of the work that the Democratic Attorneys General have done. Uh, and we have tried very hard to um, you know, fight back as tenaciously as we can, you know, understanding that we have the law on our side.

unknown 36:48

Right.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 36:48

Um, and we really are trying to fight to preserve um all the things that you've talked about that make America such a desirable place for people all over the world. But we appreciate the work that you're doing at uh the University of Michigan. And again, love uh every time you pop up on the screen, uh, makes me proud of my alma mater uh and the work that um you're doing to make sure that people know and understand the impacts of this administration uh and their lawlessness, uh, their their seemingly lack of planning and certainly uh a complete disinterest in what makes uh the United States as economically powerful as we have been for you know many, many years now. It just feels as though these things that have been done in this very short period of time uh are going to have a lasting impact for many years, maybe generations to come. And you know, that's not a great set of circumstances, but it it does help to know that there's lots of people that are fighting back against that. And um, you know, our country has seen really troubling times and uh we've gotten past it. I hope that we'll be able to do so again. But we uh really appreciate you having you on the show and um and speaking out as forcefully as you have been. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Pleasure, thank you.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 38:12

Can you do me a favor, Justin? If you would just mind before we finish things up, can you just um say for our our listeners out there that's not a knife? This is a knife. Can you just I just want to hear it more natural?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

I can't do that. I can do the I can do an Australian economist. That's not an economic argument. That's bullshit.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 38:34

Boom!

SPEAKER_01 38:35

How's that?

Attorney General Dana Nessel 38:36

Even better. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Okay.

Attorney General Dana Nessel 38:51

That's about the time we have for today's episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits. Hopefully, you learned something about how the government's decision has uh the power to pad your pocket or rob you blind. The economy is a complicated and physical place and it can change on a dime, and we have to hold our leaders accountable for when they start messing with the bottom line. Um, as we're speaking here today, it is March 30th. Uh, I will be back soon with um Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays, at which point I hope to rub in her face the fact that the University of Michigan Wolverines are a hundred percent going to be the University of Arizona. And if that doesn't happen, then hopefully somebody edits this out. But thanks for tuning in, and until next time, catch us online at mi.gov slash ag podcast, or on social media at miatorneygen, or wherever you get your podcast.