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I'm Ben Mathes. Welcome to Kickass News.

I'm honored to have as a guest today one of the brightest and most accomplished minds in economics and foreign policy in the world.

The honorable George P. Schultz is one of only two individuals who've held four different presidential cabinet posts.

He's taught at three of the country's great universities, MIT, the University of Chicago, and Stanford.

And for eight years he was president of the Bechtel Group, a major engineering and construction company.

He began his career in government service in 1955 as a senior staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisors to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He then became dean of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business and to fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University

before returning to Washington where he served as Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, and the first director of the newly formed Office of Management and Budget under President Richard Nixon.

During this period Schultz also served as chairman of the Council on Economic Policy, negotiated a series of trade protocols with the Soviet Union, and represented the United States at the Tokyo meeting on the General Agreement on tariffs and trade.

He later became chairman of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board under President Ronald Reagan, before serving as Reagan Secretary of State, playing a key role in implementing a foreign policy that would lead to the successful conclusion of the Cold War.

And the development of strong relationships between the United States and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Japan, and the Association of Southeast Asia Nations.

Since then, George Schultz has made his home at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he's the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow.

Today, Secretary Schultz joins me for a wide-ranging discussion covering everything from the Cold War and climate change to economics and the Trump Tax Plan.

He recalls his close relationship with his favorite president, Ronald Reagan, and the vital importance of a president and his Secretary of State being on the same page.

He talks about Ronald Reagan's perishing missile moment as a masterclass in peace through strength and the 1986 Tax Act as a lesson in breaking through partisan gridlock.

George Schultz reveals how he knew McHale Gorbachev was someone he could do business with.

He shares what he saw on a meeting years ago with a young Vladimir Putin, and he suggests that President Trump may soon need to have a perishing moment of his own.

Plus, why Ronald Reagan never bluffed, why foreign policy is a lot like gardening, and why the prospect of nuclear war still keeps this old Cold War you're up at night, coming up with former Secretary of State George Schultz in just a moment.

Today, I'm sitting down with former Secretary of State George Schultz, who was Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan for six and a half years, and fittingly we're talking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

Secretary George Schultz, thanks for sitting down with me. Well, since we're here at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, I want to start by talking to you about your time as Secretary of State under Reagan.

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