This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Sunday, September 24th, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Former President and current presidential hopeful Donald Trump would like to leave Congress behind when it comes to weapons transfers in the administration he hopes to staff in 2025

and the Heritage Foundation's agenda, in many ways leaves military restraint behind.

Cato's Jordan Cohen discusses some of the elements of the plan.

I think it's well understood that in Washington, think tanks often provide a bench for future administrations, for congressional staff,

for people who want to have a more direct impact on policy.

And of course, the Heritage Foundation has been around for a long time as a longstanding

conservative institution and when it comes to foreign policy

you know they've had significant influence over the years in from the Reagan administration on. What are they

proposing for the next administration? Who is likely to listen to them which is to say Republican?

Yeah so the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 is both kind of this attempt to

ostensibly staff future Republican administration or in the White House

and to lay out what policy visions look like. So when it comes to foreign policy,

while admirable to create a consistent Republican Party foreign policy that up until this point has not really existed and it just changes

administration to administration and

presidential candidate to presidential candidate. So it's admirable that

they are trying to do that. However, part of the policies they're recommending are not necessarily restrained and they are very much kind of in the

peace through strength ideology and that means increasing tensions with China, not decreasing

defense spending and things that at the Cato Institute we've long opposed.

I can remember years ago attending an event in Washington attended

where the main speaker was a Republican congressman and you know one of the questions was raised hey what about

...