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Audio Transcript

Todd Kuethe: You’re listening to the Purdue Commercial AgCast. I’m Todd Kuethe, professor here in the Department of Agricultural Economics, part of the CCA. And I’m joined by my co-host…

Chad Fiechter: Chad Fiechter, also a professor of agricultural economics.

Todd Kuethe: We go around and have a bunch of conversations with people to try to understand the ag economy, or understand ag’s role in the broader economy. We’ve had a lot of conversations with people. We get to ask them questions. Doing this podcast gives them an excuse to say yes to us asking these questions. But it’s also nice for us ’cause we get to learn a bunch. And we thought the kind of audience we have, they also like to learn. That’s why we also release them, right?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: You’re about to listen to a colleague of ours, Joe Balagtas. And Chad, why don’t you just tell us again how we broke our only rule we made for this podcast?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Okay. So, the rule that Todd’s referencing is that we weren’t gonna talk to other academics. We wanted this to be a conversation with people who have experiences different than ours. However, Joe’s had a very unique experience and that is, he worked for the Council of Economic Advisors for the White House during

Todd Kuethe: Basically the end of the first Trump term. He was gone before Biden was sworn in.

Chad Fiechter: That’s right.

Todd Kuethe: But it was in that interim time. He worked for the Council of Economic Advisors as a group that does research and information to benefit the President. So a lot of it is evaluating policy proposals or if the administration has a question about what’s going on in whatever sort of sector of the economy. And they have different experts for different areas. And Joe covered agriculture. Sort of like a conversation we had with Nate Kaufman from the Kansas City Fed.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, you’re right.

Todd Kuethe: How the Federal Reserve kind of always has a, a couple of ag people around so they can understand how it fits into everything else or how the ag sector works. Right. So the Council of Economic Advisor similarly has almost always has an ag person.

Purdue was kind enough to give him a little space to go do that for a year. It’s nice ’cause he brings and all this experience and information back. Plus he represents us there, right? And gets to meet some really interesting, and talented people that are experts in other areas.

But we wanted to sit down with Joe ’cause we wanted to learn how’s the White House actually work from your perspective, from somebody that works in it? When it relates to the agriculture sector and economic policy. So similarly, we had a conversation with Matt Erickson.And the Matt and Nate ones, you can go back and listen. They, they’re up already. We had conversations with Matt Erickson, what is an ag person like on the Hill trying to pass legislation? How does an ag committee work? We were like, oh, we should get similar talk to Joe. We would not have found out as much as we would like to know about Joe’s time in Washington without it being like, help us learn for this podcast.

Chad Fiechter: But I think that this is symbiotic, like we’re using the audience, of we think two, three, to have conversations with people like Joe.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Yeah. And we started this with one listener.

Chad Fiechter: We did.

Todd Kuethe: Now we’re up to two, three.

Chad Fiechter: Two, three.

Todd Kuethe: We might have six. By the end of this show episode, it’s that good that we could double our audience. I think you should definitely enjoy it. Listen, tell your friends and colleagues. Spread it around. If you liked the conversation, if you’ve liked what we do with our time here, if you find it enjoyable, I’ll go back, listen to the other ones. Also we got, more lined up and we got a whole fall schedule of people we’re hoping to interview and get some information out there.

Today we’re introduce yourself for us. Say hello to the audience.

Joe Balagtas: Hello audience. I’m Joe Balagtas.

Todd Kuethe: We have a tradition that sometimes works on this podcast.

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Todd Kuethe: Our audience is, driving a combine or a tractor. Maybe they’re just driving in the car. and they’re imagining this conversation in their minds. So, Chad and I, in our first podcast, we mentioned that, Chad’s been told he looks like

Chad Fiechter: Lorenzo Llama.

Todd Kuethe: Yes. Lorenzo Lamas, a young Lorenzo Lama. Not a current.

Chad Fiechter: It was also, my hair was a little bit longer and I think it was driven by that.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. We’ll see what you get now with a little bit shorter hair. I’ve been, I was told I looked like comedian Tom Segura.

Joe Balagtas: So I almost thought you looked a little bit like, and I’m gonna draw blank on this name. Who is the actor? He was in Close Encounters of the Third Time

Todd Kuethe: Dreyfuss. Richard Dreyfuss.

Chad Fiechter: Wow, that’s awesome.

Todd Kuethe: That’s awesome.

Chad Fiechter: That’s awesome.

Joe Balagtas: You posted a picture of you and your family and I commented that I didn’t know Catherine was married to Richard Dreyfuss.

Todd Kuethe: I’ll take it.

Chad Fiechter: That’s good.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. I’ll, I’m gonna use that one from now on. I’ve been told I look like Richard Dreyfuss. So Joe, for our listener is picturing, this conversation, tell him a little bit, what celebrity have you been told you look like? So we can picture that in our minds.

Joe Balagtas: I’ve been here, what, 20 years now, and this is early in my career at Purdue. I went to the co rec to work out. As I was walking out, there’s a group of high school volleyball players. There’s a high school volleyball tournament. And as I walked through the door, through these group of kids, I heard over my shoulder somebody say, and this is gonna date me a little bit. The student said, Hey look, it’s Yao Ming. And I thought it was both offensive and hilarious at the same time.

Todd Kuethe: It’s both of those mostly ’cause you do not look like Yao Ming in any way. One, you’re not seven feet tall.

Joe Balagtas: I’m not seven feet tall.

Todd Kuethe: Two, you’re not famously a Chinese basketball player.

Joe Balagtas: No.

Todd Kuethe: Of any height. I also impressed that it was high school students. I would’ve said elementary for you to look like you, you look more like Yoa Ming the shorter the person observing this.

Chad Fiechter: That’s true.

Todd Kuethe: But if they were like roughly your height

Joe Balagtas: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Then,

Chad Fiechter: Were you on a hill?

Joe Balagtas: No, I was just walking on the door.

Chad Fiechter: Ok. Alright.

Todd Kuethe: Were you, uh, the top half of two people in a trench coat looking like a? Anyway, I think we’ve gone as far as we can with that one. We should talk about what we came to talk about.

Chad Fiechter: Yes.

Todd Kuethe: So the reason, Joe, we invited you to come in is you had an interesting role for a year as an ag economist. You worked at the Council of Economic Advisors, which is part of the White House. Tell us a little bit about that.

Joe Balagtas: Sure. So summer of 2019, I went on leave from my job here at Purdue, to work at the CEA, Council of Economic Advisors, in D.C. Basically, Purdue loaned me, to the Council of Economic Advisors. I was there for 18 months. Working on agriculture and trade and a bunch of other stuff.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. So, we’ll take a step back. You work for the President, right? So it’s in the White House.

Joe Balagtas: Correct. So the Council of Economic Advisors was created, I think it was ’47, just after World War II, to be economic consulting agency for the White House.

Todd Kuethe: And about how many economists are there for the Council of Economic Advisors?

Joe Balagtas: So the council itself is typically three people. A chair, and two other members of the council. Under those three, there’s maybe 10 to 12 senior economists. I was a senior economist that cover the span of the global economy.

Todd Kuethe: And then there’s probably 20 junior economists and interns that do almost all the work.

Joe Balagtas: So the Council of Economic Advisors is in the Eisenhower Executive Office building the EEOB, which is, to me a French looking building right next to the White House. Directly west of the White House, on the White House campus. And that was amazing, right? Just going through White House Security every day. On my way to work. Right. And then, and then

Chad Fiechter: Did you go every day?

Joe Balagtas: In the office? Oh yeah. In the office, every day. Even through most of the pandemic. I think we are the last people working in person.

Chad Fiechter: Seriously.

Joe Balagtas: In June of 2020, at the height of COVID, I could walk down, I lived near Chinatown, which is a mile east of the White House. I could walk down the middle of the street. All the way to work. Nobody else was there, was deserted because of COVID, and we were in person.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. So anybody who’s listening at home that is not familiar with the Eisenhower building, I would encourage them to go on Google Image search. It’s my favorite building in D.C. At least I’ve never been on the inside, but the outside. The best looking building in all of D.C.

Joe Balagtas: It’s beautiful. I don’t know how to des, I’m not an architecture guy. How would you describe it?

Todd Kuethe: No, no.

Joe Balagtas: It looks sort of Frenchy.

Todd Kuethe: Old, old, old, timey and formal and beautiful. It looks like it should have beautiful gardens all around. Like almost like a palace in a way. I think it’s more attractive building than the White House.

Chad Fiechter: Is any part of visualizing the West Wing, the show West Wing appropriate for where you worked?

Joe Balagtas: So the West Wing is the part of the White House closer to the executive office building? It’s separated by the West Wing and the EEOB are separated by a driveway, essentially. And there are people shuttling back and forth that driveway into the West Wing on the regular.

Todd Kuethe: So, tell us a little bit, how did you end up working at CEA? What was the path that sort of, how did you get that opportunity?

Joe Balagtas: So let’s talk about what the CEA does, right?

Todd Kuethe: Oh, start there.

Joe Balagtas: The, the CEA

Chad Fiechter: Joe, you should host this podcast.

Joe Balagtas: The CEA provides information on the economy to the President, right? And it was created to be staffed by government economists on leave from places like the USDA or

Todd Kuethe: Department of Energy or

Joe Balagtas: et cetera. Yeah, right. Um, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Treasury. Commerce. And then also from academia. Academic economists, experts in particular fields, who go and give their time to the White House, to make sure that the President is making decisions with the best information possible.

Todd Kuethe: And you were there as an agricultural economist.

Joe Balagtas: You only have 10 senior economists covering the economy. Most of them are experts in their field, labor, trade, et cetera. Agriculture’s a tiny part of the U.S. economy. So if you’re only gonna pick 10 economists to cover the whole economy. You might think, oh, maybe don’t pick an agricultural economist. But it’s so specialized, right? You need someone to cover agriculture that knows the institutions. So there’s typically an ag economist on that staff. Not always, but typically.

Todd Kuethe: That was my experience, like when I worked at the USDA. Right. We had people frequently that would do spells in CEA.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Because particularly like, I think it’s seasonal, right? So like if there’s challenges related to food or agricultural production or something, that it gets more incentivized to have somebody with that specialization there, right?

Chad Fiechter: And are you typically, were there 18 months?

Joe Balagtas: I was there, it was a 12 month appointment that extended for another six months. At the end of the first Trump administration.

Todd Kuethe: So you were so good that they were like, we can’t let Joe leave now. We need him at least another half a term.

Joe Balagtas: That’s what I like to tell myself.

Chad Fiechter: Did you think of yourself working for the President? Like, ’cause you span too, so did you think of yourself

Joe Balagtas: You’re in the White House, a political building, right? Everybody in there is political. Almost everybody there is on Team Trump or on Team Biden or on team, whoever the President is. And that’s just how the White House works by design. I wasn’t really on Team Trump. I wasn’t on team anybody. I’m an economist and I don’t have strong policy positions. I just do analysis. So when I was invited, the first conversation I had interview, uh, I had with the chief of staff was, well, I’m really not on board any particular policy. Is that a problem? And she said, absolutely not. We want people to provide objective facts, information, knowledge from the literature. So the President has that, right. And as long as you’re not like out there, you know, marching against the President, we’re good.

Chad Fiechter: This is an not totally, but that’s objectively what it’s supposed to be doing, is to be an objective analysis of the economy, to provide information to the president.

Joe Balagtas: That’s That’s how the CEA is designed. Now, of course, people who have strong political leanings might not be willing to work for the president of the, of, of who’s, who’s espousing parties that they don’t ag uh,

Chad Fiechter: Sure.

Joe Balagtas: policies that they don’t agree with. Right. So, republican presidents tend to have conservative leaning

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Joe Balagtas: economists on the CEA. Democratic presidents tend to have liberal leaning economists on the CEA and so on.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Joe Balagtas: But the CEA really does stand out in the White House as relatively nonpolitical.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Joe Balagtas: And that’s both the, again, by design it’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness. So everybody else in the White House has strong political position, policy positions that they’re pushing for. And the economist is the nerd in the building saying, well, actually, right. It makes you really unpopular.

Chad Fiechter: I mean, do you kind of feel like that, like you’re a little bit of like.

Joe Balagtas: Oh, absolutely.

Chad Fiechter: If they see you out, there’re like, yeah..

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, let’s not invite that guy to the meeting.

Todd Kuethe: And then the things that the CEA does, one of the things I know is that there’s the annual, like it believe it’s annual, the economic report of the president.

Joe Balagtas: Correct.

Todd Kuethe: So you would contribute some section of that report that’s under your purview or expertise, right?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, correct.

Todd Kuethe: Were you there when they did the, when it was the superhero report? Do you know what I’m talking about? So this is what a nerd I am. So I, I sometimes read this, but there was like a year where they had all these thank you’s and they thanked all the interns, and then they listed the non superhero name of a various superhero.

So it’d be like. We’re thanking, Clark Kent and,

Joe Balagtas: I think one of the ERPs, they’re called, one of the ERPs had some of those Easter eggs in them.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Joe Balagtas: For people to find. But you gotta be a nerd economist to be reading those thinking. So you just told on yourself, Todd.

Todd Kuethe: That’s what we’re here for. That’s my role in this podcast team. Chad is the Lorenzo Lamas. I’m the nerd, Dreyfuss. Let’s talk a little bit about how you got to be on the CEA.how did you end up with this job?

Joe Balagtas: The idea is you need someone with specialty in agriculture to be there. It’s a relatively small world of us ag economists that work on policy, who you could draw from. And somebody in their Rolodex had my name. Right. And so in fact, I had an agreement with Rob Johansson, who was Chief Economist at USDA at the time. He said, Hey, we have an interest in having you in the CEA.

Todd Kuethe: So presumably they would’ve called Rob Johansson, we need an ag Economist, and he would’ve thought of, here’s three to five people that I think would be a good fit or something, right?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. Correct.

Todd Kuethe: And then you’re in that set.

Joe Balagtas: Correct.

Todd Kuethe: I’ve done policy work and stuff.

Joe Balagtas: The connection was actually one degree of separation apart from Rob. So Rob actually called Jason and I don’t know if he asked Jason, Jason Lusk,

Todd Kuethe: Who was our department head

Joe Balagtas: at the time. I don’t know if he asked Jason and Jason and said no, or if he asked Jason for names and Jason gave him my name. But either way, I should thank Jason.

Todd Kuethe: You apply for it like a regular job? Like you had to write a cover letter and give your resume or what we call CV?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, there are interviews. This was a pretty informal interview. The Chief of Staff, DJ Nordquist, at the time, called me up once we realized that there was interest on both sides. She called me, there’s a 30 minute interview. They had my CV and I was hired.

Chad Fiechter: For everybody who doesn’t know our world. Largely we’re just judged based on a piece of paper that lists out our accomplishments around academic outputs. Right. So you’re a known commodity. It’s not like you’re just bumbling around. People, people have a lot.

Todd Kuethe: You’ve written some papers that cover topics that the council would care about or maybe given speeches to groups that the council are trying to reach or even interact with the stakeholders that they would value, right?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, no, that’s right.

It’s an honor to be asked and to serve on the CEA. It’s a feather in the cap of Purdue, for me to do it. That’s why Jason and the dean at the time, Karen Plaut, were happy to let me, you know, they granted me leave.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, like the rest of us would have extra classes to teach or

Joe Balagtas: You guys picked up the slack while I was gone. So thank you for that.

Todd Kuethe: So you are the ag economist of this group of like 10 to 12. You said 10, right? 10 economists.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. Ish.

Todd Kuethe: 10, 12. So these other people are also economists, but you don’t know them. Like you’re showing up first day of work to like meet these other economists who are, on paper at least, also as expertise in their area. Right. What was that like compared to working with just ag economists? Like the people that, like you’re used to work where we all care about this subject matter. And now you’re maybe the only one that does, what was that like?

Joe Balagtas: Well, so it’s a little bit intimidating. Because there are a lot of smart people in the White House. In general, not just the CEA, a lot of really smart, high energy, driven people in the White House. A lot of people who know how government works, you know, and I walk in there as an academic and I really don’t know how government works.

Todd Kuethe: Well, you do know how like committees and emails work. That’s the thing that, academics learn, right? Like, oh, here’s how you schedule meetings.

Joe Balagtas: We’re pretty good at that. Turns out we’re not very good at that, right? I learned at CEA. But yeah, it’s a little intimidating. It turns out people are, you know, it’s a small group. People have to work together well. One thing about CEA very different from our scholarly work, we publish stuff without our names on it, right? So it’s really team effort, right? Everything that goes out is the White House, right? And not Joe Balagtas for the White House.

Todd Kuethe: If you did all the analysis, wrote all the words, your name’s not gonna show up. This is not the job for someone who wants individual glory.

Joe Balagtas: Not really. There’s individual glory that you build a reputation and say, oh yeah, I remember Todd. He did this and let’s bring him in a secretary in the next administration. Something like that.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, is Joe teasing his next move here?

Joe Balagtas: Oh, no, not,

Chad Fiechter: But is that a thing though? Is that, like, is there, are there politically motivated economists who, that would be one of the reasons you would want to be on CEA?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, absolutely.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Joe Balagtas: Right. And so there are people at CEA right now, or in the White House right now, who had a job in the first Trump administration, right. Who now have a better job in the Trump administration because they were there, and they were good team. They’re team players. They’re productive. Right. And they proved their worth and, and they’re

Chad Fiechter: What would be a better job?

Joe Balagtas: Then, I think that’s subjective. Right? Okay. So I, I honestly, for a year and a half, it was great work. I wouldn’t wanna make a career out of it.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Joe Balagtas: It’s really stressful. It’s very different than the type of work we do here at

Chad Fiechter: MM.

Joe Balagtas: in academia. I loved it while I was there. I was very glad to come back to Purdue though.

Todd Kuethe: So let’s get to our listener. That person’s favorite part of the podcast, which is walk us through a day. You walk the empty streets from your apartment to the, uh,

Chad Fiechter: the post apocalyptic

Joe Balagtas: Yes.

Chad Fiechter: streets of D.C.

Todd Kuethe: Um, no, they were apocalyptic. Oh, that it was not supposed yet. It was still apocalyptic when we started. So first of all, what time are you going in?

Joe Balagtas: Pretty flexible. Eight ish.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Joe Balagtas: I’d be in. Every now and then there’d be a early meeting and I’d go in earlier, but it’s more regular. Hours were more regular than I hold here at Purdue.

Todd Kuethe: What’s a typical day look like? How do you spend your day?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. So at any given moment, any given day, I might have three or four projects that I’m working on. Some of them are regular, right? So I was in charge of the Industrial Production and Utilization Report, monthly report that comes out of, the Fed. And whenever that came out, we would get a early peak at it, 24 hours before it was released. I’d write a memo with my team, and send that to the President so he knows what the news is gonna be the next day.

Todd Kuethe: This is probably be the big takeaway and this is how

Joe Balagtas: Yep.

Todd Kuethe: various people are gonna react to that information.

Joe Balagtas: That’s right. Memo, like, you know, two or three bullets. Right. Here’s what you need to know, Mr. President, about industrial production in the country over the last month.

Todd Kuethe: Do you think the President read it or somebody who works for the President? Who are you writing this for?

Joe Balagtas: So that report was written for the President and anyone else who would be in the Oval Office with him when it was shared with him.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Joe Balagtas: Right. Did he read it? I don’t know, maybe. I think somebody before the President decides what’s newsworthy and what’s important for him to, to read.

Todd Kuethe: Someone in the filter of, ’cause he’s gonna get these things handed to him all day long.

Joe Balagtas: Right. And so if there’s some big breaking news in industrial production, that memo might come across his desk.

Todd Kuethe: Are you in a group? So like there’s some portion of your day then where you’re like just reading in isolation in your desk, right?

Joe Balagtas: That’s right.

Todd Kuethe: But then there’s some part where you’re gonna get together with your colleagues and say like, well here’s my take on this. Here’s what jumped out to me. Right. You say it’s a mix of sort of like monastic alone time consuming information

Joe Balagtas: Correct.

Todd Kuethe: then breaking it down with other people.

Joe Balagtas: Yep. And for those regular reports, I’d be the lead. I’d read the industrial production report. I’d draft a memo, like bullets, and I’d give it to a junior economist, Troy Durry in this case. Think of junior economists as really bright, early 20 something people that drive Washington D.C. They might have a master’s degree in statistics, but probably like, international relations or public policy or something like that.

Todd Kuethe: The best description I ever heard about D.C. was from, the newsman, Brian Williams, who started his career in D.C. and he said, it’s a town full of earnest, former student council presidents, driving Honda Accords.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Right. And that’s whoruns a lot of the actual groundwork in Washington, from the Senate to the White House, to the agencies, even the political parties themselves. And I’m here, I’m bright, I’m gonna work on… Matt Erickson, previous guest on the podcast did a little time in that kind of world, right.

Joe Balagtas: Troy would draft the memo, it would come back to me and I’d say, yep, that looks good. Let’s send it on.

Todd Kuethe: And then did you present any of the stuff, like verbally, not just in writing, like would you go in and brief the President or a team of people?

Joe Balagtas: I never briefed the President. Mostly, I would brief the Chair or one of the members. And either the chair or the member would go to the Oval Office and present the work to the President.

Chad Fiechter: If you were politically motivated and you wanted to work for a President, would that be sort of a next natural step? You were in a senior economist in the previous administration and now it just makes sense for you to move into this Chair ’cause you have more, do you have more influence as the Chair?

Joe Balagtas: Oh, absolutely. Maybe that the current chairs, are the recent chairs, that I could think of, some of ’em worked in CEA as senior economists. Right.

Todd Kuethe: Well, here, here’s an example of someone who I know that was a chair is, Austin Goolsby, who’s the

Chad Fiechter: Oh yeah.

Todd Kuethe: President of, Chicago Fed, right.

Chad Fiechter: Yep.

Joe Balagtas: Correct.

Todd Kuethe: And so he has that experience. He brings that experience to the Fed and thinking about how they interact with policy and stuff.

Chad Fiechter: Tom Phillipson was chair towards the end of my time, or in the middle of my time at the CEA. He started as a senior economist and was promoted to chair. Who’s, who’s doing the promoting?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, probably White House Chief of Staff and other people close to the President.

Chad Fiechter: So if you make the President unhappy with your take on industrial production in the United States, can he be like whoever wrote this, get rid of ’em.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. I’m not sure it’s that… When I was there, I wouldn’t think so. Right. I don’t think people were afraid to, disagree, or to provide views that might be seen as unpopular. I think that was fine. You know, one thing we worked on, getting back to tasks. Starting pretty much the whole time I was there, we were working on trade, in particular trade with China. I arrived summer 2019, so the trade war was already on, and we spent a lot of time working on, moving towards a trade agreement with China.

Chad Fiechter: Got it.

Joe Balagtas: Right. And so CEA was producing a lot of work showing that uncertainty around trade policy, trade policy uncertainty was really costly for the U.S. And that an agreement that gets rid of that uncertainty would be a good thing. And that was unpopular, right? Among certain people in the White House.

Todd Kuethe: Now did you have access to much information that you could not access now as a professor, or were you basically looking at around the same sources of data? Same reports?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. No, there’s data there at the CEA that I can’t get anywhere close to. One is we got early access, early peaks at official reports, right. So, you know, before the BLS monthly labor report comes out, we see that 12 hours before it comes out.

Todd Kuethe: Are you in a rush of like, I gotta get everything I can out of this in the next 12 hours?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, so you gotta be really careful, right? You have access to incredible data and some of it’s sensitive and you just gotta be really careful how you handle it. There’s all kinds of, yeah.

People respond, right? If I send an email from my White House email address to USDA, you get immediate answers. People in private sector respond during the, you know, when the COVID pandemic kind of blossomed in Spring 2020, credit card companies and other companies tracking economic activity just gave their data to the White House. Right.

Chad Fiechter: Seriously.

Todd Kuethe: To help the White House figure out what the heck was going on. Cause because one of the problems, and we talked about this,we had Nate Kaufman on who works at the Federal Reserve, there’s a lot of good economic data, but it can come in kind of slow or late, like things are collected through surveys.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: You know. You, you get people’s observations, but then you gotta process that. It can take a while. Right. Like with the credit cards, you can maybe get close to instantaneously. Oh, people are going like, you were there in COVID. Right. So people are going back to restaurants, ’cause the number of like sit down restaurant, receipts is like doubled.

Joe Balagtas: Exactly.

Todd Kuethe: Another question is that like, how do we know if you’re doing a good job? How are you evaluating being good at being a CEA economist? Like what, what, what determines that or who determines that?

Joe Balagtas: The members will let you know, right? If you’re being useful. And they might let you know verbally, like, you know, Joe, get on board. And I think I was told this once or twice by the Chair.

Chad Fiechter: Meaning like we need more out of you? We need different things out of you? What were they meaning?

Joe Balagtas: So I didn’t love how some of the phase one trade agreement was coming together. I voiced my opinion. I said, I’m not sure that’s a great way to do it. And I was told, you know, get onboard.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Todd Kuethe: This is happening. We want you to measure what’s gonna happen.

Chad Fiechter: Adjust.

Joe Balagtas: But they listened, right? And they said, yeah, we were taking that into consideration. Thank you very much.

Todd Kuethe: So you’re spending your day reading, writing, thinking about the economy.

How long is your day? Are you there? Do you leave at five? Are you there in the evenings? Is this like a lot of time.

Joe Balagtas: It’s a lot of time, right. So I learned really, really early that you never leave your, your, white House phone behind. So I went for a run on a Saturday morning, like two or three weeks into my stint at CEA, and I came back and my phone had blown. And they’re like, Joe, where are you? We need you in the White House right now. Right. So you get, you’re kind of always on call. And there were plenty of days when I went home at 5:00 PM. Um, so it’s it’s kinda real.

Todd Kuethe: Were you coming in sometimes Saturday, Sundays?

Joe Balagtas: Oh yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Oh wow. Interesting.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: That’s definitely not your typical professor the pace of life.

It is so different than our university jobs. So you didn’t have meetings to plan a meeting for when you would have your meeting?

Joe Balagtas: No.

Todd Kuethe: Whatever kind of thing.

Joe Balagtas: No, things are really, yeah,

Todd Kuethe: Like we’re gonna do this next fall. Let’s get together in April to figure out when we should meet this summer to do this fall thing.

Joe Balagtas: You know, there’s this sense, um, at least here in, I think in general, uh, but certainly those of us who think about how government works and government policy, there’s, there’s this caricature of really inefficient government. The White House is anything but efficient. The people there are really busy and they move quickly and they’re not inefficient. Right. I’ve never, there are no meetings without an agenda. And if we’re done with the agenda items, 30 minutes later let’s close shop and go back to work.

Todd Kuethe: So I think what Joe’s trying to say is this podcast would not fly

Chad Fiechter: No.

Todd Kuethe: at the White House.

Chad Fiechter: Definitely not.

Joe Balagtas: This is productive activity. I don’t

Chad Fiechter: Wait, can we go back? ‘Cause I had a question that I’ve been holding onto. So you wrote these memos. Can you think of a time when something you wrote like you heard later, like, do, do you have any examples of like,

Todd Kuethe: You could clearly tell that the White House had consumed what you had put out.

Joe Balagtas: I think the signing of the phase one trade agreement was a win for the CEA, in the sense that we were focused on trade policy uncertainty, right. There’s a study from the Fed that said trade policy uncertainty knocked a point off of GDP in 2019.

Chad Fiechter: Wow.

Joe Balagtas: It’s a big, really costly. And so getting that agreement was, I’m not claiming credit for it. But CEA was really pushing for an agreement.

Chad Fiechter: When that happens, are you like, there’s not a lot of moments in our jobs, there’s a few moments, right, papers get accepted. Students do well, right. Where it’s like, oh, that’s nice. That feels nice. Like, is that what you feel whenever the agreement gets signed? You’re like, ah, we, that was good.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Was there ever a desire to like pop champagne with the colleagues? We got it.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. No, I think, and that was one of ’em. Maybe a couple others that I can’t talk about.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Back to you, Todd, the tasks and things you’re working on, thinking about it as being a professor, how many of those things are sort of like predictable flow? Like you kind of know that report’s gonna come out? Sometimes there’s like that kind of a, and how much of it is just like you’re putting out the fire of the dead.

Joe Balagtas: So there’s this regular rhythm. That’s a good point of, monthly reports. The annual report, the economic report of the President that’s got a regular schedule. Medium term projects that you might be working on, regulatory review. That’s all, pretty predictable. On any given day, you’re gonna get a call that says, Joe, we’re working on this, food box program and we need to know, what the economic impact is or what demand for, you know, what the rate of food insecurity is in Florida, and how this might affect that. And we need the answer by, 5:00 PM Tuesday. Or tomorrow. That stuff could fill up quite a bit of your day.

Todd Kuethe: So, I wasn’t able to go visit Joe while he was there because it was COVID, but there would be times where if I said like, Hey Joe, I wanna come out to visit you. You’d say like, don’t come this week. This other week might be better or something, right?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Or you can predict it a little bit.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah, that’s right. I know I agreed to host you for a West Wing tour, Todd. You know, but there’s this crisis and we need to find, PPE, you know, fixed PPE supply chains so that hospitals have rubber gloves. Right. And I just can’t get away. So, sorry.

Todd Kuethe: See you later.

Chad Fiechter: So it’s, it’s hard to envision a world where economists are so valuable and needed in a crisis, like relative to like firefighters. So when you went on the run and your phone’s blowing up, like can you give an example of like, what is it that they need you for so desperately that there’s a problem with you being out and away from your phone?

Joe Balagtas: We, we weren’t saving lives so much. Most of the crises are more internal like, the President is traveling to, North Carolina. And, you know, 36 hours before his trip, a hurricane blows through. that wipes out a bunch of agriculture North Carolina or in Virginia. You know, give us four bullet points that the President has to know when he visits North Carolina about agriculture in North Carolina.

Todd Kuethe: So he’s not showing up and be like, you’ve ruined a lot of orange groves here in North Carolina, so you can be informed as to what the problem is.

Chad Fiechter: That’s helpful.

Joe Balagtas: And then COVID created different types of crises.

Chad Fiechter: Actual crises.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. Those were, external crises,

Todd Kuethe: if there was, rumors of a new wave or something, and then you’re like, well, we got to get some analysis of this on the, we can’t wait till next week to correct.

Chad Fiechter: But it is, I don’t know why that’s interesting to me, but it’s interesting to me that there could be like these crisis driven research.

Joe Balagtas: You guys and I, we do research with a really long time horizon. Andsome of us work on papers that take years, from inception to publication, or decades.

Todd Kuethe: We also tend to study things that have happened. So what was the effect of this farm bill on this group of farmers? What you’re doing in CEA is like, this could happen if this happened. What’s gonna happen?

Chad Fiechter: Or we’re just figuring out what the extent of COVID mean, you know, the pandemic means, and there’s a bunch of strawberry growers in Florida who suddenly, have to plow up fields or something. Right. Man, you were there a weird time.

Joe Balagtas: It was a crazy time.

Chad Fiechter: Wow.

Joe Balagtas: Trade for sure was crazy. And then COVID was, you know, oh, that’s the other thing about CEA. So, because it’s a small group, and we have to expand the whole economy, I was working on a lot of stuff that wasn’t agriculture. Working on PPE supply chains, the economics of PPE supply chains and so on.

Todd Kuethe: Is there a part of you that wants to go back sometime when it’s boring? Like if you got a similar call from the future chief economist like Joe, right now, there’s nothing going on. Can you come, just hang out?

Joe Balagtas: And it is, the excitement is part of, is certainly is one of the perks of it, right? It was a really good change of pace for me, you know, 15 or 18 years into my academic career.

Todd Kuethe: And then the other question that we ask everybody is talk about what sort of constrains you or what, like limits the CEA from being as good as it could? Like is it just literally like, I wish we had six more people here. Or I wish our days were an hour longer or there’s some piece of the economy I wish we could actually measure better than. What limits your ability to be?

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. I mean, more brains, more people, is always better. But again, it’s only 10. So that you work with what you got? I don’t know. I’m looking at this current White House wondering if the focus on, loyalty, part, one important job of the CEA, and others in the White House, is to say, you know, what this isn’t a great idea. Or the here are the costs of this thing, right, that you’re proposing. And, for any President, you know, getting that information is important. They might disregard it, right. We’re not politicians. There’s lots of good reasons why somebody might pursue a policy that have nothing to do with cost benefit analysis, as we economists do it, right, but it’s important for them to have that information so that they, they’re aware of the costs. And when they say, no, look, I’m gonna pursue this policy because, you know, I need to vote from Senator so-and-so from Alaska.

Chad Fiechter: Yep.

Todd Kuethe: So we’ve talked a lot about CEA, but are there similar other groups at the White House, like in terms of. Are they getting advice from non-economist? Like is there a science policy council or are they just basically CEA?

Joe Balagtas: There is a science policy council. It’s called Office of Science and Technology Policy. There is a Purdue colleague at OSTP, when I was there. On the economy, there’s also the National Economic Council, which is really the driver of economic policy. Kevin Hassett is now the chair of NEC. He was chair of CEA and he was rolling out just as I got there. They’re more political.

Todd Kuethe: So you guys were kind of the nerds that would crunch the numbers behind policy decisions? Not necessarily as much like advocating particular,

Joe Balagtas: We were not advocates. Correct. And again, that’s by design and that’s a feature, it’s a bug if you wanna be popular. Right. And if you wanna have power, right, if you’re not, if you’re not a cheerleader, then, then, then, uh,

Todd Kuethe: Like it sounds like me or Chad shouldn’t be the National Economic Council ’cause we want to be cool and popular.

Joe Balagtas: Do you guys have strong policy positions?

Todd Kuethe: We do. The more mundane the policy is, the more I have like I’ve got a lot of opinions right now about parent teacher organizations at schools. I’ve, at times in my life really cared about, how you allocate intramural fields among club sports. Basically, the more mundane and small it is, the more it’s like, I’m gonna call out procedure. But like what we should do about international conflict among other countries, I don’t have a lot of opinions.

Joe Balagtas: Part of me, while I was there wished I had had my own strong policy positions that I could advocate for. And I saw some of my colleagues do a little bit of that. There’s one guy, Steven Braun, who is at CEA now. He’s been at CEA, I think since bill Clinton’s first term.

Todd Kuethe: Oh my goodness.

Chad Fiechter: Wow.

Joe Balagtas: And he’s the lead macro forecaster for CEA and a huge piece of White House economic information. Right.

Todd Kuethe: So he has been at CEA longer than you have studied economics at all?

Joe Balagtas: Through Republican and Democrat presidents and just has a lot of wisdom. I once heard him tell the cautionary tale of the CEA economist who wants to advocate. And he was talking to a high school group that was touring the CEA. He said the CEA is the nerdy kid at the lunchroom. And that’s our role. And that’s what we do best. And every once in a while, one of those nerdy kids will try to be a popular kid, right, and it works for a little while. But it always turns bad, right, it always ends up bad for that kid. And maybe for the other nerds as well.

Well, ’cause also you live here in town. So you lived 18 months away and you were working kind of like insane hours.

Pretty insane hours. It was interesting. So I have three sons. That fall of 2019, my oldest son was starting his senior year in high school, another one in high school, and then a younger one. The high schoolers did not wanna move. So Arlene, my wife, stayed with the boys here in West Lafayette. And I originally thought, well, I’ll just go find an apartment and I’ll shuttle back and forth every other weekend. That turned out to be a lot of travel. So I ended up, ended up to be more like every month-ish or so I’d come back. In a way I ended up having more time for myself even though I was really busy. Because I didn’t have a wife and kidswaiting for me at home.

Todd Kuethe: You could also like, I’m gonna push dinner back 45 minutes.

Joe Balagtas: And nobody

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Right.

Todd Kuethe: Be like, well, but then there’s this practice and you gotta get,

Joe Balagtas: I didn’t have to shuttle anybody to practice.

Chad Fiechter: I was setting you up for the potential to be like, wow, thanks for your service, Joe. You really did as a service. And then you flipped it around and now our listener is not impressed.

Todd Kuethe: Maybe they’re like, now I need to get a job at

Chad Fiechter: CEA.

Todd Kuethe: CEA. And get a little me time.

Joe Balagtas: Yeah. What I’m saying, Chad, is right now with a bunch of kids, little kids in the house would be a great time for you to leave and spend a year in Washington D.C.

Chad Fiechter: Well, you said, on a Saturday morning run and I was like, get away from my phone. Oh, it’s, that’s usually not what I’m worried about.

Joe Balagtas: No.

Todd Kuethe: I feel like we’ve exhausted Joe pretty well.

Chad Fiechter: We have.

Todd Kuethe: So, we always wrap up with some lightning questions, some, some quick answers. So these will be like, we gotta get just your brain simple. So I’ll start with a classic one.

When you’re working at the White House, the White House gets a time machine that you can only use for professional purposes. You can’t use it for recreation. It’s just to make you better at being a CEA economist. When are you going to with your time machine?

Joe Balagtas: Ooh. Maybe a farm crisis. Early eighties.

That would be a fun time to be working on agriculture in Washington D.C.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, you can go back

Chad Fiechter: Man, good answer. That’s at least in my top 20 answers.

Todd Kuethe: You got a report coming out. They’re calling you in. You’re working extra hours, but you’re getting hungry. What are you going to eat? Where are you gonna go grab something real quick?

Joe Balagtas: The White House is on this island. There’s not a lot of great retail close to the White House. You have walking across the street takes 30 minutes ’cause you have to leave the building and go through security to get back in and so on. So it’s a little bit of a hassle.

Todd Kuethe: And you probably can’t just order like a GrubHub to like bring something to your desk. They don’t really deliver.There’s a mess hall in the, in the bottom, in the basement of, of the executive office building that had just okay stuff. D.C. has these lunch places, you’d know them, Todd, that just make sandwiches and salad bars. Yeah. Or like a pay by the pound salad bar.

Joe Balagtas: Exactly.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Joe Balagtas: But there are a couple sandwich places that are really good. And there’s one, oh, just on the other side of Lafayette Square. That made that roasted a couple turkeys every day and made turkey sandwiches. And if I had, again, 45 minutes to get away from my desk for lunch, I, that, that’s a, that was a pretty good option.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. The White House similarly can issue you a magic wand, just to use for work, and learn something that you can’t otherwise. Right, so you get this data, you get these reports, you talk to people, but like there’s still something you’re missing. But now with this magic wand, you can know that thing. What’s the one thing you’re gonna use that,

What would be make me a good economist? I don’t know, maybe some, machine learning skills or something like that.

Joe Balagtas: I would’ve used the wand for understanding true preferences. So the large language model doesn’t get me closer to why did you make that decision? The like, the true why?

Yeah. If I could know things

Todd Kuethe: Or maybe you could learn,

Joe Balagtas: If you really wanna be powerful, if you want to go to Washington and sort of wheel power, it’s not clear economics is the tool. I think it’s law probably. Seems like lawyers are the ones that pull the levers more than economists, unfortunately, for us.

Todd Kuethe: Okay, so, I’m not legally telling you that you could do this or should do this.

Chad Fiechter: Good caveat.

Todd Kuethe: If they were going to close the CEA. It’s done forever, but they’re gonna let all former CEA employees come in and grab one thing to take as a souvenir to have at your house. What are you taking from the White House or CEA stuff? What would be your memento?

Joe Balagtas: So, the White House had these umbrellas that would stand at the doorway, um, facing at, of the executive office building, facing the West Wing. So if it were raining and you had to go to the White

Todd Kuethe: You don’t wanna get your suit wet?

Joe Balagtas: You grab an umbrella and they’re like very nice, White House umbrellas. And I almost thought I should just grab one and keep walking and take it with me. And I never did. And now I wish I had.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, that’s a good one.

Chad Fiechter: Man. I feel like now we know what to get, Joe.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, that’s true. Now we know the perfect.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, exactly.

Joe Balagtas: I actually bought a White House umbrella from the gift shop. There’s a gift shop in the executive office building. Uh, but it’s just not the same. Right. It’s,

Chad Fiechter: You wanted one of the used ones. One with history.

Joe Balagtas: Like the real ones.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Joe Balagtas: Like having a black market.

Todd Kuethe: This umbrella is this could, this could have been used to cover the hair of name dignitary who came through the White House when it was raining one day.

Right. Well, Joe, thank you for being so

Chad Fiechter: Thanks, Joe.

Todd Kuethe: generous of your time. We learned a bunch.

Joe Balagtas: It was good to talk to you. Thank you .

Todd Kuethe: Thank you again for listening to our conversation series here on AgCast. I hope you learned a lot about the White House and economic policy in the agriculture sector from the perspective of the Council of Economic Advisors, a group that some of you maybe have never heard of before.

Chad Fiechter: It’s another opportunity for people with a PhD in economics. Joe talks about the people who are doing the analysis and then bringing it to Joe to sort of sign off. Those are all people with a master’s in economics. So this is, also an interesting alternative career path.

Todd Kuethe: It’s an interesting mix of people that are on it for a very long time.

Chad Fiechter: That’s their career. Or you have people that sort of come in for a season. Or for a brief period based on the information needs of the White House at the time. We should also remind listeners that we have that great podcast with Nate, Nate Kaufman, the Kansas City Fed. If you haven’t listened to that one, it’s really good. And then that one was followed by

Todd Kuethe: Oh, that was Brant.

Chad Fiechter: Brant.

Todd Kuethe: We talked about ag tech. We got the chance to really find out what the heck actually is ag tech.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Which I think we ended up with more questions than answers.

Todd Kuethe: Y Yeah, I know, but like, I now feel like ag tech to me feels like a real thing. Where before it was always just like someday this could happen, right. There’s like science fiction, but he shows like, no, no, it’s science. Like it’s, it actually exists. And so that was interesting.

And, and then we had Joe Suttles on to talk about, large scale investments in the ag sector. Which is a follow up from conversation we had with, Kyle Maple and Petro, who is also on a previous podcast. They also kind of work in that world.

Chad Fiechter: One of the things about Joe, because I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had with Joe, is he, he’s real practical, right? Like he’s trying to make stuff work.

Todd Kuethe: We’re talking about investment at a high level, but then he’s also the guy that just has to make things work and stand between money and practicality.

Yeah. And trying to get I don’t know how long people can use the analogy of Green Acres till it’s just outdated. But it’s like you’re trying to talk to both Wall Street and farmers. And get them to understand each other.

Chad Fiechter: Is that the premise of Green Acres?

Todd Kuethe: So the guy with the Green Acres was like, it’s this rich city dude that buys a farm and it’s like fish outta water. But Beverly Hills is the opposite, where you get this sort of like country guy and now he’s living in with the high society.

Chad Fiechter: I kind of feel like that’s what I’m living.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Except you’re not a hillbilly. It’s flat as a pancake where you’re from that rights.

That’s true. No. You would be, I think you would be a hay seed. Or a hick.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: I don’t know which one of these are offensive, but I feel like hillbilly to me, now this is ’cause I’m from the Ozarks, hillbilly implies topological variation. But I guess you could be a Midwestern redneck. I don’t know.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Well, according to Jeff Foxworthy, anybody could be a redneck.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: It’s just matters like how you use the high dive.

If you think we could learn from you and you happen to be coming through Purdue, let us know. ‘Cause we would love to learn more. Thanks for listening. Make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, and come back next month.