The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and politicians who are defining the 21st century in terms of individual freedom and autonomy.

Today's guest is Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky. He talks about why he cosponsored legislation to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files, how President Donald Trump's tariffs and bombing of Venezuelan boats are bad policy and unconstitutional, and why fellow Republicans like Vice President J.D. Vance are Luddites and nostalgia merchants who want to regulate free markets to death.

Paul, the subject of a 2014 New York Times Magazine article titled "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?", also talks with Gillespie about his plans for a 2028 presidential run, the enduring anti-war legacy of his father Ron Paul, and why he believes that he and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) are the only members of Congress who have stayed true to the Tea Party's commitment to lower spending and smaller government.

0:00 —Releasing the Epstein files

2:32 —Tariffs and protectionist propaganda

6:29 —The economic policies of the GOP

11:32 —Military strikes on Venezuela

13:27 —Foreign intervention

15:16 —Military aid and arms deals

19:38 —Congressional spending and the debt

22:04 —Federal hemp ban

23:30 —What's happened to the Tea Party?

26:00 —Will Paul run for president again?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. My guest today is the libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul. Sen. Paul, thanks for talking to Reason.

Rand Paul: Glad to be with you, Nick. Thanks for having me.

You are an outspoken advocate for releasing all of the material on Jeffrey Epstein and everything that comes out of that. You co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the Senate. After a very public delay, President Donald Trump has fully endorsed the idea of getting all the Epstein stuff out there. What is in the Epstein files that we don't know yet that you think will be important for the public to know about?

I think it's important to know, first of all, that Donald Trump was for it before he was against it, before he was now for it. I have no idea what's in the files. It really has not been a big pressing issue for me. It's not something I've spent a lot of time either thinking about or researching. But as people talked about it endlessly, and as Donald Trump and his acolytes talked about it endlessly, it became a symbol for the idea of: does your government treat people differently whether they're wealthy or not? So, if someone is super wealthy, do they get a different form of government than someone who is not?

And so the idea that we wouldn't reveal these people because they were rich—I guess I come down on the side of transparency, because I think that it's important. And if government's going to mete out justice, that the justice, you know, be impartial. Based on the color of your skin, impartial based on who you are individually, but also impartial based on your financial circumstances.

But other than that, I have no idea if anything's gonna come out. I also think there are some complexities. For example, you know, I'm a public figure. If you accuse me of a heinous crime and it turns out I didn't do it, and they investigate me, is it really fair for you to now publicize that a grand jury investigated me for something terrible—that obviously people would not like—and I would be, you know, run out of town on a rail? Is it fair, really, to release that?

So there are real questions here, whether or not accusations should be laundered in public that could be very, very damaging to people. But all that being said, I come down on the side of, you know, we need to have a justice system where it doesn't have an appearance of partiality toward people who have money.

So let's talk about tariffs. Donald Trump has gone out of his way to unilaterally levy tariffs on basically every country on the planet. You have spoken out very harshly against the imposition of tariffs by government or executive order, essentially. Or claiming a national emergency. Leaving aside the unconstitutionality of all of this— which I suspect the Supreme Court will side with you on that issue. Can you explain to people who are struggling with the economic problems with tariffs—why are tariffs a bad idea?

Well, there are two arguments that the protectionists make. They say we've been ripped off. That China's ripping us off. And we're somehow getting poorer and the middle class is being hollowed out. These are both fallacies and pretty easily proven wrong.

So the first argument is that we're being ripped off. So you have to look at things, first of all, as an individual trade, not in aggregate. So if you go to Walmart and you buy a TV and you give Walmart $600, it is by definition a good trade because it's voluntary. No one forced you to buy it. You wouldn't have given your $600 unless you wanted the TV more than your $600. And Walmart wouldn't have given you the TV unless they wanted your $600 more than the TV.

So what happens is then a million people go to Walmart, and then all the TVs came from China. And we now have this enormous trade deficit with China, and you all bought TVs from China and China didn't buy anything from you." I'm simplifying this, but this is sort of what happens. But how can a million individual purchasers all be happy? And you ask them at the end of the year, "Are you still happy?" "Yeah, I love my TV. I'm glad I gave my 600 bucks. I didn't feel ripped off. I wasn't ripped off."

But then how can someone—a politician—draw a circle around a million Americans and say, "Oh, there it is. We've been ripped off. China's been ripping us off"? It comes from a measurement we call the trade deficit. And I think it's important that people, as they try to understand this…

How is it…Sorry go ahead.

I was just gonna say that a trade deficit is not just misinformation—it completely is a fallacy and means absolutely nothing. But we bought into this.

And then they buy into it also for nationalistic reasons: that my circumstances may not be perfect, I'm not happy with my income, inflation's outpacing me. You know, the Chinese must be at fault. Foreigners are at fault. It's an easy sort of false nationalism or patriotism. But it's a fallacy, because we've gotten rich and the Chinese have gotten rich.

Sometimes it's more apparent how rich they got because they started out so poor. So if they were making 30 cents a day in 1975 and now they make $4 an hour, you can see their richness more than you can see the increase in ours. 

We've all gotten richer.

One interesting thing is: before China got in the World Trade Organization, before we began trading with them in 1975…actually our manufacturing output from 1950 to 1975 was actually exceeded by our manufacturing output from 1975 to 2000. There's a great book by Don Boudreaux and Phil Gramm on this recently—The Sevens Myth of Capitalism — it goes through a lot of the statistics on this.

But anyway, it's a fallacy that we're being ripped off, and it's also a fallacy that the middle class is being hollowed out. If you look at the 70-year statistics on household income, you'll find that the middle class, while it's slightly smaller than it was 70 years ago, it's because they went to the upper class. The migration is from the lower class to the middle class and from the middle class upward. It's all migration upwards. HumanProgress.org does a wonderful job of bringing together these statistics and how well we're doing over the last century.

Yeah. So can I ask you, you know, you've taken issue with President Trump talking about this. People like J.D. Vance, you know the Vice President, senator from Ohio, which borders Kentucky. Is this the beginning of the end of this stage of the Republican Party? Because you're talking about economic policy that all Republicans signed on to a decade ago, and now many in the Trump camp are saying, "Oh, that's crazy thinking." Where do you go with this, in terms of what Republicans are following you