Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec spoke with Oren Cass on Monday’s installation, where the two broke down the state of the US economy, globalization’s lasting damage, and President Trump’s plan to impose steep new tariffs on China—part of a broader push to untangle America from the Chinese economy.

Posobiec opened the discussion by rejecting the notion that all is well in America: “There’s a lot of people who have been saying that the status quo, that the concerns of so much of America doesn't really matter, that everything's certainly fine, that people are just, you know, everything’s sunshine and roses,” he said. “In reality, the status quo does have these massive structural issues to it.”

Posobie pointed to the decades-long hollowing out of middle America, runaway government spending, and reckless monetary policy that relies on the Federal Reserve to inject liquidity into markets during crises: “At some point, this was always going to come to a halt. At some point, this debt was going to have to be paid. And this is the way that President Trump and his team have decided to come together and face it, but actually address something whereas the previous administration, of course, were sitting there and lying to you blue in the face, telling you that nothing was wrong,” Posobiec said.

Cass, the founder of American Compass and former policy advisor to Mitt Romney, echoed that sentiment, pushing back on the notion that America’s economic success can be measured solely by GDP and cheap consumer goods.

“There are so many people that who will just say, ‘Look at GDP, it’s gone up a lot, so obviously free trade has been great.’ Or, ‘Look at how much stuff we have, look at how cheap big TVs are.’ They really do think that the definition of flourishing is how much stuff you have,” Cass said. “I like stuff too—I don’t think we should live in log cabins in the woods—but we do need to think a lot harder about some of these trade-offs.”

He added, "there is more to life than just as much cheap stuff as you can get from China. Whether or not there are good jobs in communities across the country that allow people to support families. Whether or not we can make the things we need in this country to defend ourselves, to be resilient in the case of some sort of crisis. We sort of gave that all away, and thank goodness we will hopefully start to get some of it back,” Cass added.

Posobiec then pivoted to Cass’s proposed three-step plan to disentangle the US economy from China’s—starting with tariffs and ultimately revoking China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status.

“You have an interesting idea for a three-step plan for the tariffs on China,” Posobiec said. “But ultimately, would culminate in a real disentanglement of the US and Chinese economies... Do you think that’s achievable?”

“I think this is one of the most achievable things,” Cass responded. “The original sin in the sense of globalization was when we granted China PNTR status in 2000-2001. That’s what allowed them to join the World Trade Organization and open up the floodgates of offshoring. We should do the reverse.”

Cass noted that the idea of ending free trade with China is no longer fringe—it has gained bipartisan support, including from the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “There’s already bipartisan legislation in Congress to do this. By the way, one of the co-sponsors of it was Marco Rubio, who is now the Secretary of State,” Cass said.

He argued that codifying such a shift through Congress would give it permanence and signal seriousness to Beijing and the world. “If we actually changed this stuff into law, everyone will know that we mean it—this is for good,” he said.

Meanwhile, President Trump is preparing to ramp up pressure on China with a sweeping new tariff. Trump is set to impose an additional 104 percent tariff on Chinese goods starting April 9 at 12:01 am. The move comes after China failed to meet a deadline to remove its own retaliatory tariffs. China had announced a 34 percent retaliatory tariff on US goods earlier this week.

Unlike China, other countries have signaled a willingness to work with the U.S. on fairer trade terms. The EU has floated a “zero-for-zero” tariff agreement, while India, Japan, and Taiwan have also expressed interest in bringing down barriers.

Watch the full episode below: