 Hello and welcome back to War Economy and State. This is the Mises Institute's foreign policy and international relations podcast where we get together every few weeks to talk about what's going on beyond the U.S. and look at some issues related to geopolitics, geostrategic issues, and how that might fit into a less damaging foreign policy that we might advocate here that maybe pays a little bit more attention to laissez-faire than what we usually get from Washington in terms of foreign policy. And here joining me as usual is my co-host Zachary Yost. And we're going to talk a little bit today about the Americas and foreign policy strategy related to really concentrating on the Western Hemisphere. Now of course ideally American foreign policy would be extremely modest and really just focus on North America and the U.S. specifically. But what's something we could do in the meantime, just pulling back from the U.S. idea that it needs to be in every single corner of the globe, intervening in every continent from the Middle East to East Asia to Africa, and really just at least move in the right direction toward a more ordinary sane foreign policy that doesn't get the United States involved in conflicts worldwide. And one strategy there is to take a hint from the 19th century Americans and focus more on the Americas. That is on the Western Hemisphere, recognizing that the United States is surrounded by gigantic oceans and it's only major countries that are nearby are to the South. And these are populous countries, but they're not even in the running to be world powers. So maybe the United States could focus on something more of a modern Monroe doctrine as a step in the right direction and really try and cultivate economic and political and geostrategic ties with these countries. The U.S. has generally taken Latin America for granted, has mistreated it historically in a variety of ways, has absolutely not respected the sovereignty of these countries and instead is focused on pandering to horrible places like Saudi Arabia while getting all high and mighty morally about countries in the Americas that don't live up to profess alleged American ideals. And that's a losing strategy. And as far as the economic strategy goes, there was a good article that came out from Inter-American Development Bank, which I'm not terribly familiar with, but they had a very interesting concept here. They were talking about nearshoring, right? So we're being told that China is a strategic competitor and we got to stop pouring so much capital in that country. We, meaning I guess American capitalists, who have invested over the years a lot of money in China and production there. Especially at the lower end of production, just assembling things. There's not actually much innovation going on over there, but the low cost of production has been important and Americans have done offshoring in China a lot. And so now this term nearshoring is starting to come up. It's somewhere in between the offshoring and the reshoring, right? We hear all the time about how, oh, you have to bring back to America, right? This is the protectionist Trump line, which based on terrible economics, the idea that you have to produce everything in America that Americans need. And we need to embrace this autarkic-type economy. And we should tax the hell out of any products that are produced outside of the United States. And what often the people who support these protectionist views, what they say is, well, if China produces those things, they can use those things against us in the foreign policy sphere. Even granting that argument, well, that doesn't cover all the other countries you could trade with. So the fact that China, one country, might be a major strategic competitor, doesn't mean you should tax the hell out of everything that's produced in other countries. So it's this real weird, hey, China is the rest of the world, and therefore we shouldn't trade with the rest of the world. A far better strategy and something that conforms to sane economics is to just, if China's a problem, trade more with everybody else. And nearshoring is this term now that's being applied to trading more with Latin America and the Caribbean to developing production in Latin America and the Caribbean in such a way that the Americans can benefit from it. And from the usual benefits of foreign trade. And so this memo essentially from Inter-American Development Bank talks about how some of these countries are already what they call quick wins in terms of expanding trade with these countries, like Argentina and Colombia, where there's already a lot of production going on. They already have, for the most part, the rule of law. You don't have to worry terribly much about whole scale expropriation from these states. And none of them are strategic competitors. All of them are tied very closely to American trade, especially Mexico. And it would seem to make perfect sense that you would try to cultivate closer relationships with these countries. So we're going to talk a little bit more about how would you do that. Just to start off, looking a little bit at just the benefits of expanding just general foreign policy partnerships with Latin America, Zach, maybe you can tell us a little bit. You presented a paper this, I believe, September at the Mises Institute's conference, the Libertarian Scholars Conference in Nashville. And you presented a paper on the Monroe Doctrine and Hemispheric Defense's grand strategy. So maybe you could give us the short version of what that is and how the Americas in general fit into that. There's lots of listeners who are probably familiar with, there's sort of a resistance right now to the blob, the American foreign policy status quo. And this is normally under the umbrella of realism and restraint is what it's called. But in my mind, there's a bit of a, it's very clear what realism and restraint is against or against all of our crazy, horrible interventionist foreign policy. But it is sort of lacking in a positive vision. So this paper was sort of an attempt to put forward an idea of what the grand strategic vision of an unalternative grand strategic vision could be. And that's more or less just going back to the Monroe Doctrine, which when it came out, there's two parts of it. Usually only remember the first part, which is that the U.S. basically told all the European colonial powers, stay out. If you don't have a colony here already, you can't form another colony, things like that. And the only time it was really violated by the Europeans was during the Civil War when they tried to install a king in Mexico and that didn't go well. So that's always my joke when people from Mexico are like, what is Cinco de Mayo? Why do Americans celebrate this? It's a fake holiday. I'm like, no, Cinco de Mayo is a great, great American holiday, a triumph of defending the Monroe Doctrine. But anyway, the other half of the Monroe Doctrine is that the U.S. won't interfere in European affairs. So obviously that's long gone out the window. We're interfering everywhere as we talked about it length last week. So it's my argument in brief is that the U.S. should refocus on the Western hemisphere. We should work to repair relationships with our side of the globe, which is sort of the ignored stepchild that gets shoved in the closet and only brought out to shove around and do the dishes or things. I mean, we've done lots of bad things to central and South America. So I'd argue that if we, it would take a lot of work to make credible signals to all these countries that we don't want to just restart Yankee imperialism 2.0, the United Fruit Company and whatever else, that we want to work with this side of the globe as our partners and as our friends and that we're not going to be engaging in gunboat diplomacy. And I think there are various ways this can be done, especially through what I would argue is the only good American Alliance, which is the Rio Treaty, also called the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, which is actually similar to NATO in terms of promoting sort of collective defense and whatnot. And it actually predates NATO, but it's sort of largely ignored. One good thing about it, unlike NATO, is it does not have like a standing command structure, whereas NATO had like and still has like active military commands and whatnot. So I think that this treaty system would be especially a good way to sort of build friendship to indicate that, you know, America's coming home to our hemisphere. We want to work with everyone. We want to build a prosperous hemisphere. And there was a comic, I think, sort of from like 1940 or so that was put out in the newspapers arguing against U.S. intervention, or it might have even been from before World War I, but it's just the Eastern Hemisphere is on fire. And then there's a big wall just called the Monroe Doctrine. It's sort of a firebreak. It's a firebreak to the Western Hemisphere. And it's sort of people accuse us of being isolationists and things. And it's like, because we don't want to become involved in all these crazy goings on on the other side of the planet, does not mean we can't be friends with people on our side of the planet and develop close economic ties. And as I think you pointed out, Canada and Mexico are our largest trading partners, not China. Brazil and Mexico are some of the two of the largest economies of the planet. They're both very populous. We have tons of resources in this half of the globe. There's no reason we need to be involved militarily from a national security or economic standpoint in terms of intervening around the world for economic reasons, given how fortunate we are on this side of the planet. Well, there's a couple of points there that you make that I kind of build on, right? Is the the issue of being friends with Latin America is very important in the sense of you don't want to give them a reason to invite in any other powers, right? So if if Columbia, Brazil, the Caribbean, they're all treated well by the United States, why would they want to then help any other major power get a foothold than in those countries? And I because this came to mind because I have an old book on Latin America from the 1940s, where is a book my dad had? And it there's a ton and it's written in the early 40s. So it's written during the war, I believe in 42. And boy, there is so much in that book about how we need to make sure that the Nazis don't get a foothold in Latin America. And there's there's fascist fist the columnists everywhere in Latin America. And this is this is the real challenge for Latin America is that they'll just invite in foreigners who will then challenge our power. And that's of course long been a sort of paranoia that the US has had right. Think of the Zimmerman telegram and just this idea that these these Latin Americans are going to invite in the Germans or the Soviets. And then they're going to use that as a as a launching off point to conquer Florida, which reminds me of a Chuck Norris movie from the 80s called Invasion USA, where this flow till of like World War Two landing boats comes from Cuba to invade southern Florida. And they're just like blowing up entire like Miami neighborhoods with rocket launchers and stuff. Check it out. Excellent. Excellent film. But I think that reflected a certain certain ongoing issue that that Americans feel that Latin America secretly yearns to help some Eurasian power take over America. But what reason would they have to do that? If the United States actually had good friendly relations with these countries and wasn't positing basically a standing threat to invade these countries, if their regimes don't do what the United States likes, think of how just a few years ago, the US regime was was putting out feelers kind of floating the idea of invading Venezuela for quote unquote humanitarian reasons. And we all right that what that would have been so disastrous in terms of their neighbors and knowing that oh, the US is back to its old tricks of just invading countries, because I think most Americans don't actually have a good handle on just how often the United States is intervened in Latin America. I mean, most of these things, they're just completely forgotten, right? Nobody talks about the the numerous American invasions of the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, and South American countries, not to mention the filibustering that occurred back in the 19th century. I mean, just so much intervention there. Not to mention the close ties between the CIA and the Pinot Chet regime. And I'm not like a big Pinot Chet hater. I'm not in a yende lover by any means, but the CIA's intervention there is quite repugnant, really. And so sure, most people just most Americans have forgotten all about that. And but they haven't forgotten they they're quite acquainted with that stuff. So yeah, they need reassurance that the US would not go back to those old tricks. And that the US wants to primarily use the carrot with these countries in terms of free trade agreements and just friendly relations in general. And that should really be the strategy. And by the way, for like some good background, you mentioned United Fruit Company, which of course now is what did they change a Chiquita banana, right? They changed their name because they became so hated. Rothbard has a good book on those sorts of things called Wall Street Banks and American foreign policy. It's a short book is like basically a monograph. But it's a good introduction to a lot of these issues of American intervention in Central America, especially. And so it's just low hanging fruit. Really, you would think. But I'm not quite I mean, what's your impression of what's really standing in the way of this? Is it just the fact Washington just doesn't want to give up on the idea of be of intervening everywhere in the globe? Or is it just that they take Latin America for granted? They're like, we'll deal with that later as time permits. I'm not entirely sure. I do think there's sort of some neglect taking for granted. It's just, you know, people probably want to be, you know, in the foreign service want to be posted in exotic locales on the other side of the planet rather than I don't know, you know, Honduras or Columbia or really anyway, I mean, Columbia, we were very involved in the drug trade as well. I mean, that's another issue, sort of skipping ahead here, but how our domestic policies also cause trouble for these places. But I think it's Yeah, we don't have really credible commitments to them. Mexico actually left the Rio Treaty in I think 2002, because they were worried that they'd get entangled in the Iraq war actually. And also because of the Falklands War, that was a Falklands War sort of did a lot of damage as well to sort of decide the idea of this Rio Treaty. I mean, it's still on paper. They have meetings where they talk about things, but it's not really, I mean, most people don't even know it exists. So I think yeah, it's neglect and as we're just talking about our abuses of the region. And I think some credible commitments we could make is, you know, if a presidential candidate or someone were to say, we want to make these changes and include how they affect the rest of the hemisphere. I mean, especially like the drug war and everything. I mean, people talk about immigration a ton, but there seems to be very little talk about why, you know, millions of people are pouring into across the southern border. I forget what it was. Something like 2%, I mean, I don't know if this is very accurate, but I did see a figure that like 2% of the Cuban population has crossed the southern border. I guess in the last year or so, I mean, millions of Venezuelans have left their country. And I would say this would be wildly unpopular, especially with people in America who are friendly to liberty. But if you know, if I was King Zach or something, I would just normalize relations with Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua, those I suppose the trio, the axis of evil as might be said back in an earlier time, and just be like, your sovereign states, as long as you don't invite, you know, the Russians or the Chinese or whoever, I mean, I can't imagine anyone wanting to station troops in the Western Hemisphere at the moment. As long as you don't do that, you know, we're not going to come in and, you know, crush you. Basically, is I think if we could make, I mean, and I can't imagine anything more than normalizing relations with Cuba and Venezuela doing that, saying there's clearly a new policy in place here, where we want to have a different relationship with our neighbors. Yeah, it and most people, of course, forgotten about that, right? The Nicaragua thing. That's just, it's just something that's been going on for so long that nobody even brings it up anymore. And with Cuba, I mean, Castro is long gone. And there's just now this authoritarian oligarchy that runs the country. But the United States obviously has no problem with being friendly toward countries that have oppressive oligarchies in charge of the country. Just look at Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the fact that the US up until recently was extremely friendly with China, which was certainly not a liberal country in terms of comparing it to say Nicaragua. It was really wasn't any notably worse than that. And so it's just this total double standard. Sometimes just in terms of pandering to domestic groups, right, like the Cuba thing, a lot of it's just about pandering the Cuban voters, Cuban American voters. And if there's no like real rhyme or reason to it in terms of actual defense of the United States or anything like that. And it just makes sense in terms of I liked you the section you hear that had just the in your memo on on the or rather, I guess it was your summary of your presentation on Monroe Doctrine. Just talking about how economically unfeasible this American idea of meddling in these Eurasian conflicts is because you look at maybe you can tell us a little bit about this, this asymmetry in terms of munitions between the Americans and the Russians. And just what would be required of the US if it really was in the position of having to defend NATO's Eastern flank from the Russians and just how that would just be miles away from the efficiency of instead, just ensuring that the Americans are that the Americas are secure from some sort of foreign intervention from Eurasia or Europe or whatever. Right. Yeah. So even these figures are out of date now in terms of how crazy I mean that the the war in Ukraine is a resource black hole basically. I mean, so it was it's been reported that Russia fires about 60,000 artillery shells a day. And I've also from some Russian sources who talk in English that I've listened to, they say like their friends out in like Don Vass and everything are like, yeah, where we use like Soviet shells like this box says made in 74 boxes 76. They're like, there's so much stuff from the immense Soviet buildup for conventional warfare that, you know, it's practically limitless. And whereas the US for years was producing, let me see if I have it here. Yeah. So around like in 2018, the US was buying 16,000 artillery shells a day a year. So, you know, the Russians were firing, you know, five times that many every day. And that year they it was like this headline like shocking US buys 150,000 artillery shells this year. That's three days of, you know, the conflict in Ukraine. The Ukraine used up 18 years worth of javelin anti tank missiles so far 18 years worth of American production. I don't think they're actually in production anymore. For domestic use at least there's been some I've not followed it very closely, but the government is like, Oh, we want to list we want to add your factory to a list if you could produce 20,000 artillery shells a month. They haven't actually started ordering this huge buildup. But and I've seen some people doing sort of guesswork estimates based on things that were published in various times about the total US stockpile, which I mean, it's not like published, but it's just sort of like, these sort of, you know, layman's loose were like, the US would not be able to supply Ukraine with artillery shells beyond 2024, basically under current, you know, levels and production. And that's the other thing. It's not like we have all these factories that can easily be switched over to producing munitions and whatnot takes time to switch. So were was the US to become involved in an actual conventional war that, you know, by a miracle didn't turn nuclear in Eurasia. The the US economy, I mean, a huge percentage of it would have to shift into wartime production, which would just, you know, we already have huge shortages of sort of these kinds of skilled laborers, welders, dye makers, and these sort of technical industrial things. It would be quite disruptive. It'd be quite a mess. I mean, in the end, just leaving aside nuclear weapons, you know, assume a can opener, we would be able to win because America's just has so many advantages over everyone else, but it would be a long, hard process that would be very disruptive to our comfy American lives is at least my analysis. Well, and as we've emphasized in last episodes, the question is why, right? I mean, Europe, they're always telling us how wealthy they are, how great everything is in Europe, how they they have these these generous welfare states, and they don't understand where the Americans waste all their money and mismanage everything. Oh, but by the way, America, we don't feel like defending ourselves. So you American taxpayers cover everything. And I saw that the Prime Minister in Finland was saying, Well, you know, just Europe, you can see from what's going on that Europe cannot defend itself without America. So America, come defend us. And so we're supposed to just be in awe of how great the Europeans are, but we're also supposed to pay for their military programs. And this is a region with 400 million people, if you count the British and immense stores of wealth. But they just they just exploit the Americans so they don't have to spend any of it on their military priorities. And I don't necessarily agree with their military priorities. I think they're way more way too paranoid about Russia, especially given how much richer they are, and potentially well equipped. But the fact that they just exploit the Americans and expect the Americans to get involved in a land war in Asia, essentially, which I'm told is bad by Visini and the Princess Bride, apparently, that's one of the classic blunders. And the fact that the United States even contemplating that and wasting hundreds of thousands of millions of rounds of artillery on it for something that's an ocean away, and poses no threat across the ocean is just really quite astounding. The American policy should be on avoiding nuclear war, because that's what does pose an existential threat to the United States. But the idea that any of these world powers, the Chinese included are going to float a flotilla across the Pacific Ocean, or roll, I don't know, 1000 tanks across the isthmus of Panama up into North America is just so laughably dumb. That's that is just such an economical way to address real defense rather than all this playing around to benefit the Europeans who are living off the American taxpayer. So it's just really outrageous, really, that there's so much focus on Eurasia and East Asia and Africa and the Middle East and such, especially since the United States has such huge oil output. And then you add to that Canadian oil output plus Venezuelan oil output, the Mexicans would have good oil output if they didn't keep botching Pemex and how it's run. And so that's just you don't even need the Middle East. So it's really just it's quite astounding. You can really just see how it's really all about keeping the war machine going and the gravy train going to the Pentagon and to the weapons manufacturers. Yeah. And in the Prime Minister of Finland's defense, as she was actually saying that Europe depends too much on the US, like saying that it's a problem that we're completely useless. Oh, no, I just read that. Oh, poor I apologize to the Prime Minister of Finland, who, of course, is the coolest Prime Minister in Europe, as we all know. A third of the global GDP roughly, I think is in the Western Hemisphere. America is more or less oil self sufficient. And I mean, it's not a big issue to import from Canada. And actually, I was stunned because when the when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was stunned that actually, I think Russia is our was our largest oil importer, maybe aside from Canada. And it's because of I mean, I know nothing about petrochemistry and all that, but parent like the type of crude. And apparently Venezuela could supply that and Chevron has been granted a permit by the US government to start pumping oil in Venezuela again, I assume because we need that grade of crude, I think heavy crude or something. And this also brings up another point, which is something actually Dan McCarthy of ISI has raised several times. And it's sort of the way in which economic interests with globe spanning trade incentivize and can lead to sort of rent seeking interventions. And it's sort of like the idea of a freedom of navigation that the US has to defend the global commons. I am fine with the US sailing wherever it's allowed to sail under international law, sort of freedom of navigation exercises. But on the other hand, I don't like the rest of the world free riding off of us maintaining these global commons. I'm not too sure that there'd be, you know, state sponsored piracy springing up everywhere if the US wasn't, you know, didn't have you know, whole fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf and in Japan, but at the same time, you know, if if we're more near shored, as the term is now, it's even less of a temptation, you know, that we have less of these sort of interests that could lead to business interests, advocating we, you know, go in and do regime change or whatever. It's sort of this near shoring idea of building these relations with our neighbors also frees us up from what could potentially still remain an entangling aspect of US foreign policy and maintaining the global commons. It's sort of another way in which everyone free rides off of us. That is not talked about really at all. Yeah, well, this takes us back then, I think, to the issue of just the near shoring to expanding trade with places other than China. If if Washington is going to insist that trade with China is a bad thing, and it shouldn't happen. Well, that really says nothing about trade policy overall, as I mentioned, because there's 200, there's 194 other countries to trade with. And you can just see that now and that so many of the goods that come from East Asia have already just switched over to Vietnam that the amount of clothes and manufactured goods coming in from Vietnam has really gone up in recent years. But Latin America makes a lot of those things also. And when you look at the shipping lanes, then that would be necessary for that, right? It would just be much more modest. And you can look at also these places in Latin America is very potential export markets for the United States. And that's something back, again, to what this this memo from the Inter-American Development Bank is saying is that look, not only can these places in Latin America supply whatever it is Americans need at relatively low costs is that these are in a lot of cases, medium, medium, well, whatever the term is, moderately well developed countries in the sense that these aren't like dirt poor places that aren't going to want anything from the United States in terms of exports either and contrary to what some people seem to think the United States still does manufacture lots and lots of things as huge manufacturing capacity. It just doesn't use as many people as it used to because a lot of it's automated. And so employment in manufacturing is down, but manufacturing overall is up. Americans make a lot of stuff still. And so Latin America, especially if you look at these middle income countries, Chile, Argentina, Peru is quickly coming up. Mexico is a middle income country on the same level as Eastern Europe. Their just main problem is crime and something they badly need to do something about. But in terms of economic development, this is not a quote unquote third world country. And so they have the potential, of course, to import much more there. And that is just another place then that the United States could be developing markets, especially when China and East Asia, because Japan is so isolationist in terms of its economic policy, they're so geared toward using policy to push domestic production and keep out foreign competition throughout the region in many cases. And so yeah, they have ties with America in many cases, but they're not as friendly toward just real true trade with the United States as many of these Latin American countries are, especially when you look at not just NAFTA, which isn't real free trade, maintain that, right? I'm not claiming that it's a laissez-faire free trade, but it is definitely a large amount of trade that has been facilitated to a certain extent by NAFTA. And look at agreements with China or with Chile as well. I mean, just tons of trade commander because Chile knows what's good for it and has done a lot of trade agreements globally, not to mention all sorts of minerals, copper, of course, out of Chile, significant. When you look at these commodities, a lot of that, if developed better, is available in Latin America as well. We hear all about how China has a monopoly on rare earth metals and all that. Well, they don't really, it's just that what capital has been poured into extraction has been largely in China. And it's been neglected in terms of these extraction resources in much of Latin America. So there's just a lot of potential there that is generally being ignored. And you don't need a bunch of intervention from the US regime to do that. You just need to have policies that encourage more trade in terms of lowering tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers, which are substantial. These are the things that limit what you can import into the United States because if you produce it wrong, if you produce it in a way that doesn't conform to US ideals of labor and concepts around environmental protection and so on, then they're not allowed to export those goods to the United States. And so that limits trade a lot because the US regime basically wants to export its own environmental and labor regulations to Latin America. And so that's a big problem. And the US hasn't really tried to do that with China. And that's one reason why trade has been much more significant there. So rather than trying to get Latin America to please the Democrats in terms of their regulatory policy, who should really be pursuing just more trade and friendlier relations overall. Also, just the cultural aspect as well. There are tons and tons of people from Latin and South American ancestry in America. I think it's probably a lot like just because of like they speak Spanish rather than English that it's just sort of like they're not viewed in the same brotherly way as Canada is or something. And it's just sort of like, to me, it seems very perfectly fitting that we could, you know, have this sort of harmony. Part of it might be that I mean, aside from Venezuelans and Cubans, I'm not really sure of South and Central American diasporas really lobbying like lots of other groups do, you know, Armenians, Iranians, Israelis, Cubans and Venezuelans, as I said, Russian expatriates are always lobbying for like intervention in their countries. And I think I mean, I'm not even aware of there being anything like that, even for Mexico or anything. And to the Mexican crime point, it's sort of US policy facilitates so much of the Mexican crime on the one hand, forget what they're called the people who smuggle people across the border. Yeah, yeah. And the drugs and all of that, it's just sort of we could do so much to make things better for everyone is my view. And it's just sort of like, come home America doesn't mean that you put up a 50 foot high wall to keep your neighbors away. It's like, when you come home, you say hello to your neighbors, you have a cookout, you have a street party, you know, it's just sort of people have a very strange hermit idea of what it means to come home, it seems. Well, that's another place where the United States has lucked out, right, is that when it faces migrant issues, the migrants who can most easily get to the United States are Latin American migrants. And these people, let's look at these people, they speak a European language, for the most part. And it's a lot easier to learn English from Spanish, than it is learning English from Arabic, or an Asian language. They are Christians, for the most part, or nothing in many cases, but usually when they're nothing, they're like middle class or above in Latin America, and they're not, they're not migrating to the US nearly as much. And so it's much easier for these people to integrate into American society. And you don't hear a lot about Latin Americans blowing up stuff in America, right? When was the last time Mexicans rioted about something or blew up some buildings? I mean, it's just not something that happens. And so yet when you look at the issue of if you're Belgium and you just have this tidal wave of African and Middle Eastern and Muslim migrants coming to your country that have a real hard time integrating, and then you look at a bunch of Catholic Mexicans or Central Americans who in many cases then just like join whatever the local evangelical church is, then what's the problem? And the ones that join evangelical churches become like Republicans. And so it's just a completely different situation. And so yet again, the immigration situation is much better for the US. And that's just a much better way for the US really to focus on the Americans and really maybe just say, okay, you're up. You're responsible for your migrants. We're not going to take any because we're already focused on our Latin American migrants. And so that would just be a far wiser policy as well. So we better wrap up then this episode of War Economy and State. And again, I'm Ryan McMakin. Thank you to my co-host Zachary Yoast. And we'll be back next month with a new episode. So happy new year, happy holidays, and we'll talk to you in 2023.