U.S. Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And we turn now to the United States which, of course, is gearing up for its own chaotic political race while Donald Trump wears his MAGA hat. Democratic presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, wears a hat that says, MATH. The former tech executive is an unabashed numbers lover who calls his campaign the nerdiest in history. Born in New York to Taiwanese parents, Yang’s story is unique in a crowded Democratic field. But can he pull away from that pack? Hari Sreenivasan tries to find out.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Why are you running for president?

ANDREW YANG, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’m running for president to try and solve the problems that got Donald Trump elected in 2016. And the most direct cause of his victory was that we automated away 4 million factory jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri and Iowa, and if that list of states sounds familiar, those are all the swing states he needed to win. And now, my friends in technology know that what we did to the manufacturing workers we will now do to the retail workers, the call center workers, the fast-food workers, the truck drivers and on and on through the economy. We’re in the midst of the greatest economic transformation in the history of the country, what experts are calling the fourth industrial revolution. And I’m running for president to wake America up to the fact that it’s not immigrants that are causing dislocations around the country, it is technology and evolving economy, and then enacting meaningful solutions that will help American transition through this time.

SREENIVASAN: Somebody is going to say, why not start at, I don’t know, mayor, work your way up?

YANG: Well, unfortunately, we’re way behind the curve. We don’t have that much time. If you look at the numbers now, 30 percent of malls and stores are closing in the next four years because Amazon is soaking up $20 billion in business every year, and being a retail cashier is the number one job in the economy. Being a trucker is the most common job in 29 states, and robot trucks are five to 10 years away. So, if I bided my time and ran for mayor, you know, many of these challenges would get far, far ahead of us. If they aren’t already ahead of us, already.

SREENIVASAN: You know, Former Vice President Biden was recently making a speech the other day, which is the first priority has to be to beat Donald Trump. And you have said multiple times, “I’m the candidate to beat Donald Trump because I am laser focused on the problems that him elected in the first place, but I’m his opposite. What I am saying is that the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.” Is it really that simple?

YANG: It may well be that simple. But I’m already drawing thousands of Trump supporters, Independents, Libertarians, Conservatives. Someone in Iowa came up to me and said, “You’re what I hoped for when I voted for Donald Trump.” Think about that for a second. And of course, I’m drawing many Democrats and Progressives who are excited about the fact that we can put resource into the hands of families and children and start recognizing the work that women in particular do in our families and communities every day. So, I’m getting Americans from every point in the political spectrum, including the 25 percent who are politically disengaged. And because of this, I can build a much bigger, broader coalition to beat Donald Trump in 2020.

SREENIVASAN: Did you take some inspiration from the idea that an outsider could do this?

YANG: Well, certainly I would never be running for president if Donald Trump had not won in 2016. To me, his election was a giant red flag to the progress of our country where if you — you have to take a step back and say tens of millions of Americans were desperate enough to take a bet on a narcissist reality TV star as our president. So, that, to me, should be a stop sign for Americans and many walks of life. It was for me. And I said, “OK. How did this happen? We’d automated away millions of manufacturing jobs in the swing states, scapegoated immigrants, what are we going to do about it.” This is not a conversation I was seeing being had in our political circles. And so, I said, “This is why I’m going to run for president.” So, in a way, Trump definitely inspired me to run.

SREENIVASAN: You know, in some ways, you’re also stacking certain lobbies against you when you look at some of these policy proposals. You want to create a department of attention economy to help study technology like smartphones, how they might be harming us, and regulate companies, apps, games, social media, you want to create on a cabinet level, secretary of the Department of Technology, you want to regulate A.I. and emerging technology, you got the VAT tax, those seems like government overreach to a tech industry that’s largely gone unregulated. You want everyone to be automatically able to e-file their taxes, sort of reversing it, right?

YANG: Yes, seriously.

SREENIVASAN: Right.

YANG: We have better things to do than —

SREENIVASAN: Yes. And then —

YANG: — some tax experts.

SREENIVASAN: And I can see, you know, intuit and H&R Block lining up against you there. You want to make economic crimes punishable, so you want to hold the financial companies to account. I can see bankers and CEOs that want to fund your opponents just based on that single policy, right. All of these different smaller constituencies have become very powerful lobbies groups over time.

YANG: It sounds like you’ve been in D.C.

SREENIVASAN: No, no, no. But it’s — unfortunately, that’s kind of part of the reason that we have this sclerosis that we have is how do you change that kind of a system that keeps people who are speaking your truth from actually getting the votes necessary?

YANG: Well, I’ve raised millions of dollars from everyday Americans around the country and increments of only $19 each. So, my fans are even cheaper than Bernie’s. So, you know, if you get the people on your side, then you can win an election in a democracy. But it is not as cut and dry to saying, “Oh, these people are going to be for me or against me.” There are over 100 technologists and CEOs who have come out and endorsed my candidacy. Because if you sit with them and say, “Hey, are you concerned about the future?” A lot of them are.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

YANG: Like a lot of them are not bad people and they’re not even solely economically motivated. They’re parents, they’re Americans, they grew up in the Midwest.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

YANG: And if you say, “We need to come together and create a system that works well for everyone, there are a lot of CEOs that will embrace that.

SREENIVASAN: You know, the biggest policy that you are arguing for, universal basic income, which would put $1,000 into the hands of every citizen every month pretty much no questions asked. You’re calling it the freedom dividend because it polls better with Republicans that way.

YANG: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: Now, Republicans might just come back and say, “This is just, you know, another socialist redistribution plan.” How do you think it’s going to work, and how do we pay for it?

YANG: Well, I’ll start with how to pay for it. So, even Conservatives do not like the fact that Amazon, a trillion-dollar tech company, paid zero in federal taxes last year. They know that’s not the way our system should be designed. And so, the way we pay for our freedom dividend for every American is we follow every other advanced economy in the world and have a value added tax. And because America’s economy is up to a record $20 trillion plus, up $5 trillion in the last 12 years, even a mild value added tax would generate $800 billion in new revenue. That plus economic growth from having all this consumer buying power in Americans’ hands, lowered direct costs on things like incarceration and homelessness services and emergency room healthcare and then the value gains from having a stronger, healthier, better educated population would be enough to pay for a dividend of $1,000 a month. This is the trickle-up economy from people, families, and communities up.

In terms of Conservatives and their either excitement or lack thereof for this proposal, there’s one state in the U.S. that has a dividend right now, and that state is Alaska and it was passed by a Republican governor, deep red state, and it’s wildly popular. Many Conservatives and Libertarians and Independents really like the idea of a dividend because it puts more decision making into their hands as opposed to the government.

SREENIVASAN: Look, value added tax, there’s going to be people — right now, any time you hear a word of tax, Conservatives or Republicans, Fiscal Conservatives will come out and say this is a job killer, right? And if you say you want to tax companies like Amazon, there are shareholders that penalize those companies. So, how do you get over those two big hurdles?

YANG: I addressed 70 CEOs at a conference recently here in New York and I asked how many of them are looking at using A.I. to displace like thousands of back office workers. Every single hand went up. So then when you ask them, “Hey, do you think it’s reasonable to have some sort of measure so that the American people have a path forward,” it’s not unanimous but it’s about 50/50. Like many reasonable CEOs look up and say, “You know what, my incentives and my position are to maximize profitability on a quarterly basis, which means if someone has this A.I. solution that enables me to get rid of workers, I have to take it.” So, they see their own incentives and they see that it’s going to be disastrous for many American workers and many of them are open to different sorts of solutions for the broader population.

SREENIVASAN: So, $12,000 a year, that’s still below the poverty line, that’s not enough to survive on. So, does that mean that people, let’s say, they’re pursuing the things that do make them happy versus slogging through some horrible job? Does that mean they pick up more part-time work that are kind of economical role productivity decreases or that perhaps wages decrease considering the market says, “Well, maybe I don’t need to pay everybody so much because they have $12,000 coming in,” or prices increase a little bit saying that bag of chips can go up a couple more cents because everybody has this in their pockets?

YANG: Well, the first thing it does is it puts more money into the economy. It would grow the consumer economy by about 12 percent, it would create at least 2 million new jobs right in main street communities where people can actually need the jobs instead of thinking someone’s going to, you know, move to Seattle or something. So, there’s just more work to be done when people have more buying power and it would also help recognize a lot of the work that’s done in families and homes and communities every day. Most of it is done by women, people like my wife, who’s at home with our two boys, one of whom is autistic. Right now, the market values her work at zero, GDP would value her work at zero, but we know that’s the opposite of the truth, that her work is as important and challenging as any other work that’s being done. So, this would actually make us more productive in many ways because it would free people up to do the kind of work they want to do, much of which might not be showing up in GDP, which in my view is a very flawed and incomplete measurement.

SREENIVASAN: You’ve got a bunch of different proposals on your site besides universal basic income. So, I want to get to a couple of those. You know, you call for a hundred prosperity dollars for every American that can donate to nonprofits. You’ve got 100 democracy dollars for every American that they can put toward elections. So instead of waiting for Citizens United to be rolled over or turned over, you want to add more money into the system. That would cost you $23 billion. You got an American exchange program. You want to take high school seniors and have them travel to different parts of the country for six weeks, free marriage counseling for everyone. You want to increase teacher salaries, and the sort of specifics you say you’re going to work with the states on that. You want to create American journalism fellows. Good for us, good for me, but that’s going to cost a $6 billion fund to help that. And you want to attract people, as you were talking about, to dying malls and rethink how they could be used. How does all this get paid for?

YANG: And this is one thing that I have to say, like, I get very passionate about, is it’s incredible how successfully we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that we don’t have the resources. Again, our economy’s up to a record $20 trillion. We are the richest, most advanced economy in the history of the world. We can easily afford these things. What’s happening right now is that to the extent money is getting spent, it’s getting caught up in various systems and bureaucracies that are not really delivering the benefits that the American people expect. And that’s one reason why we’re getting so frustrated.

SREENIVASAN: Abortion’s been in the news a lot recently as states are opting in to restrict it until courts challenge this all. On your site, you say that basically if men were getting pregnant, we wouldn’t have restrictions on reproductive rights. You also say requirements placed by individual states on access should be subject to oversight by a board of doctors, not the whims of legislators. So how do you get to that vision of yours from where we are today?

YANG: As you can tell, I’m very pro women’s reproductive rights, and as a male legislator, I don’t think it should be up to me what women do. I would leave it — I would leave the room and let women decide. I have a feeling I know how women would come out. But the best way we can protect women’s rights is to make sure that Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. And the best way to make that happen would be to have the Supreme Court reflect, in my mind, the views of the American people. And right now, the Supreme Court’s been politicized in a disastrous way, so there are a couple changes I would make. Number one is we should move away from lifetime appointments to 18-year terms, which would help depoliticize and make it less of a firestorm.

SREENIVASAN: Why 18?

YANG: Oh, well that would — if you had nine justices, then that would mean that you get an appointment every two years. It’s fairly predictable; each president gets two. But it’s ridiculous that we’re hyperventilating over whether an 86-year-old woman gets a cold. You know, that’s not a way a modern country should operate. And then the second thing is that there’s nothing in the Constitution about the number of justices on the Supreme Court. It’s been lower than nine; it’s been higher than nine, and other countries have had higher numbers in part so that when someone steps down it’s not as big a deal.

SREENIVASAN: On climate change, you say the federal government should support local efforts through funding and market based incentives, meaning what?

YANG: Well, right now, if there’s a big company that emits a lot of carbon into the – into the air, they’re not really internalizing that cost in economic terms. So the way we help monetize it is we have a carbon fee and dividend.

SREENIVASAN: And not a tax?

YANG: Well, I mean, you could call it a tax. You could call it a fee. I mean, you know, it has the same effect. But the point is that polluters should be internalizing the cost of their emissions, which then provides an incentive for them to reduce those emissions and they can even innovate, get their emissions down and then sell those credits to another company. Those are the market mechanisms that would help us get emissions under control much more quickly.

SREENIVASAN: OK. Immigration’s another hot topic that we’re thinking about and talking about a lot right now. You’d support the DREAM Act. You’d increase funding for border security and create a pathway to citizenship that would mean a new category of permanent resident who’d have to wait 18 years for citizenship, about the age that – when we could vote, right? Why do you think congress agrees to this versus the impasse that they have had for the last 20 years, when they’ve tried to make different steps at comprehensive immigration reform?

YANG: Well, if you remember, there was a time when Marco Rubio was leading a bipartisan effort that looked very much like the proposal that I’m championing. And then he lost a bit of political courage. He figured out that he would be bad for him politically, and then – you know, like, then we never heard from it again. But most Americans agree that this is a common sense approach that we need to pursue. If you have over 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., which we do, it’s completely ridiculous to suggest somehow that we’re going to deport 12 million people. It’s practically impossible. It would collapse regional economies. It would be inhumane and separate families. So we need to own the fact that these people are in our country, and we need to figure out a path forward for them and again, republicans were for this before they started scapegoating immigrants to the extent they have recently.

SREENIVASAN: Regarding China, you have talked repeatedly about figuring out a better relationship forward with them, about not seeing their gains as our losses, and at the same time, you also mention that their advantage in artificial intelligence is massive, the amount of data that they have access to, and that if we had a lead, they’re catching up on that, if not going to pass us on that. They’re also increasing right now their global influence with dozens of countries through their Belt and Road Initiative at a time when the United States seems to be pulling back in how we engage with the world. And you’ve got estimates – by some estimates right now that on the western side of their country, you’ve got a million Uyghurs who are in reeducation camps in 2019. So what are you willing to compromise to keep our t-shirts cheap?

YANG: Well, I wouldn’t — certainly wouldn’t simplify it to that extent. I mean, there’s a much more complex relationship than cheap t-shirts.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

YANG: But to me, the temptation is to view any rise in China’s wealth and influence as somehow detrimental to American interests. That would be something that America’s kind of have a — had a natural tendency in the past. And so, if we head down that road, then we’re going to wind up certainly with a trade war as we’re seeing now and potentially a cold war and maybe even worse over time. I mean, we have to see that China’s development is historic in nature and does not necessarily mean that our standard of living or our stature in the world is necessarily going to decline in an absolute way. So the goal is to try and find the win-win where U.S.-China relationships are concerned. And I talked about – you know, I talk about AI a fair amount. Like, we need to maintain a leadership position so that we can more effectively, frankly, like, be at the table so that China feels like they need to work with us. And so, there is an element of focusing on our own competitiveness, but here’s also an element in trying to avoid the zero-sum game that would lead us to a cold war with China.

SREENIVASAN: You know, there’s this weird factor that American voters have, which is do I want to have a beer with the guy or do I want to sit down and invite him into my home. Here you are, traveling around the country now. What’s your kind of elevator pitch to them? How do you introduce yourself?

YANG: Well, you know, it’s fun. I mean I sit with Americans all over the country. And I’m not sure where I rate on the have a beer factor, but there are crowds of thousands of Americans coming out to our events and rallies.

SREENIVASAN: Yes, but considering there’s 20 other candidates, how do you breakthrough? Obviously there’s the policy proposal, that’s pretty exciting right now. But how do you introduce yourself as a person that they can connect with?

YANG: Well, that’s one of the fun parts of this process, just introducing myself to more Americans.

SREENIVASAN: You know, what are the values that drive you? Where did you come from? You know what I mean? What’s the kind of thing that say, OK, I trust this guy, I’ve looked him in the eye, I’ve shook his hands, I got it?

YANG: You know, what’s fun is I actually think I’m introducing myself through the policies and through the problem-solving approach, is that Americans at this point have lost patience with political narrative of symbols and anger and cults of personality. Like, they’re more interested in how to solve the problems of the day, and when they see someone focused on solving those problems, to many Americans, that’s a breath of fresh air.

SREENIVASAN: Andrew Yang, thanks so much.

YANG: Thanks. Great to be here with you.