Making the case for free markets requires sound research and clear communication. The American Institute for Economic Research is one of the top think tanks doing that work today. AIER, founded in 1933 amidst the Great Depression, has long championed classical liberal principles—yet today, it faces the challenge of restoring momentum on both sides of the aisle.

In this episode of Giving Ventures, Peter sits down with Sam Gregg, AIER’s newly appointed president, to explore how the organization aims to reestablish free market ideas as essential to America’s economic and cultural renewal. They break down AIER’s strategic efforts beyond research—outreach, education, social media, and coalition-building—designed to influence policymakers, journalists, and everyday Americans. Sam emphasizes AIER’s steadfast adherence to principles amid growing ideological divergence on the right. He believes reimagining fusionism can unify conservatives around the principles of liberty and virtue.

Note: This transcript was generated and cleaned by AI.

Peter Lipsett: I know two great leaders in the free market space that hail from Tasmania: you and Nick Dunne, and there may be others. Is that island secretly a bastion of free market thought way down there on the other side of the world?

Samuel Gregg: I’m afraid quite the contrary. If anything, the sentiment is probably as protectionist as one of the smaller states — it has long received subsidies from the federal government, et cetera. I could go on. But I did grow up there, and I grew up in Australia at a time when the country was going through an economic transformation, one in which it was moving from a highly protectionist, essentially Keynesian set of economic policies and principles throughout the 1980s under both governments of the centre left and centre right, towards embracing free market ideas and policies. So it was an interesting time to grow up in Australia, to see those sorts of transformations happening around me as I was a little boy and a teenager.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, and certainly you’re precocious — you think a lot about things — and I’m sure it informed your thinking. So talk to us about the American Institute for Economic Research, a very long name. AIER, an acronym I will surely stumble on at some point during this and get the order wrong. But it has that history in the New Deal, in the Depression era. Tell us about the founding, and it has a very illustrious founder.

Samuel Gregg: So as you say, A-I-E-R, that’s how I say it — slowly. Was founded in 1933 by a man named Edward Harwood. He was a graduate of West Point, he was in the Army Corps of Engineers, and he grew up basically in the pre-New Deal world. And as an army officer in a very small army at the time, he did have time to think about other things. One of the things he thought a lot about were economic questions. In the 1920s, of course, you have a time of economic effervescence and economic growth. But he was one of the few people who saw the Great Depression coming. As someone who had studied economics and was somewhat of an advisor to people on how they invested, he very much saw the Great Depression coming. And when it came, he was appalled by the reaction of the federal government. I’m talking, of course, about Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. And there were very few voices, as I’m sure you know Peter, at the time who were saying, stop, or wait, or maybe we should pause before we try to shift the fundamental economic settings of the country. So he was one of the few people doing this at the time. It was, of course, a very unpopular position to take. But at some point, he decided he needed to institutionalize these commitments to free markets and what you might broadly call classical liberal principles. And he did so when he created the American Institute for Economic Research.  So it has been around for almost 100 years, but those principles that I just referred to — classical liberal principles, a commitment to free markets, a commitment to doing economics as a serious social science — were really put into the bloodstream by Colonel Harwood. And that still informs and is still the center of what we do as an institution, whether it’s the research we do, the educational programs that we do, or the strategic outreach that we do to policymakers, legislators, journalists, and other audiences that we think are very important. I should also mention that one of the things Colonel Harwood thought was very important was basic economic education of what you might call everyday American citizens. For a long time, AIER would put out a lot of material explaining things like how do you buy a car, what is a mortgage, what are interest rates, how does the monetary system work, et cetera. So it was a combination of very practical advice, but also deeper long-term thinking about fundamental economic and monetary settings in the United States. And of course, he lived through a time in which Keynesian ideas became ascendant after the Second World War, and he died in 1980 — just before the Reagan Revolution began. So I’d like to think that some of the things that happened from 1980 onwards, economically speaking, would have pleased him very much.  So that’s a brief history of the institution and a brief history of Colonel Harwood. I think the fruits of his work and his investment of time — and really his career — in building up this institutional basis for free market and classical liberal principles has paid off. We are still here almost 100 years later, and that I think is an achievement in itself.

Peter Lipsett: And he did it, as I understand it, through newsletters in those early days. Today everybody has a newsletter — I will send one out later today for something. We’re always sending newsletters. But I imagine that was a lot more novel back then and spread those ideas in ways that circumvented the mainstream media, similar to how X, Facebook, and these platforms circumvent media today. Were those newsletters a way to get around what the Washington papers, the New York papers were putting out about the New Deal, et cetera?

Samuel Gregg: Yes, so these newsletters — which ranged from pamphlets to small books to one-page essays on any given number of subjects — were produced and printed at AIER. If you go to the facility, you can see where a lot of this was done. The printing presses are no longer there, but you can see where it all happened.  This was done because he thought it was very important to put this type of information into people’s hands so that when they read, for example, the New York Times or any number of media outlets at the time, they had an alternative source of reflection when it came to the economy, and alternative sources of advice when it came to things like how you manage your finances, how you save for the future, how you manage your personal financial situation. So this was a way, as you say, of circumventing many of the filters that existed at the time. My guess is that Colonel Harwood would love something like X, or would love some of the social media platforms today, insofar as they enable organizations like ours to get our ideas out directly to people without having to go through several intermediaries.

Peter Lipsett: It’s easy to forget how much technology changes and how things that we think are humdrum were actually pretty revolutionary in their day and in the way that they work. You were at Acton for 21-plus years. Acton’s a great institution. AIER was not as strong as it is today — it’s really what has developed just over the past few years. Why leave Acton? Why come to AIER?

Samuel Gregg: Well, I enjoyed my time at Acton, and I was also very attracted by the mission of AIER because it was very clear that AIER was starting to emerge as a very principled voice for classical liberal and free market ideas at a time when, as you know Peter, we see a lot of slippage away from those ideas — not just on the left and the centre left, but on significant segments of the political right these days. I don’t think it’s any secret that we’ve seen a lot of organizations and individuals who once were strongly free market become more relativistic about markets, more willing to consider things like state intervention, whether it’s tariffs, industrial policy, or any number of schemes, including proposals for price controls that we’ve now seen on both sides. So AIER was emerging, I think, as an organization that was challenging these shifts, both on the left and on the political right.  And it seemed to me that it was an organization that was in a position to really enter into those discussions with an authoritative voice. I wanted to lend my support and whatever human capital I might have to that particular endeavor, because it seems to me that this is really the struggle of our times, at least when it comes to the sphere of economics. We can no longer assume that the assumptions that were prevalent during the time of people like Reagan and Thatcher, and all through the 1990s, are standard reference points anymore for large numbers of people. So I wanted to be part of an organization that was focused on ensuring that good research was being done in these areas, new research, research showing that markets work, but also making sure that we were providing solid education in free market ideas to emerging generations of students, as well as organizations and groups ranging from congressional staffers to policymakers, and especially journalists. Those are areas where those of us who believe in free markets need to be, and we need to be doing it in ways that are creative, faithful to our mission, but also done in a way that doesn’t dumb things down — that conveys solid content that people can nonetheless get their minds around. And AIER struck me as an organization that was starting to do this in a very systematic way, and I wanted to be part of that.

Peter Lipsett: Was there a conscious choice? So many of the organizations on the right — some of the ones that we would know and love — you could look back in the ’80s and the ’90s and the early 2000s and say, well, they all kind of believed the same thing: free market, free trade, and the old fusionist model. And then, as you suggest, there’s been this growing divergence. Has AIER consciously looked at that divergence and said, we want to go that direction, we’re going to make sure we’re in that camp? Or has it been more of a natural shift? Or do you feel like you haven’t moved? How do you look at it in this ebb and flow of the landscape?

Samuel Gregg: AIER has never deviated from its classical liberal and free market principles and ideals. If you look at the history of the organization, it’s been utterly consistent about those things. There’s never been any slippage in that regard. Now, I don’t mean that in a dogmatic or rigid sense — I’m talking about adherence to principle and adherence to what we think are philosophical and economic truths.  So we were always going to keep articulating these ideas. But your question is whether we made a conscious decision to engage this shift, and the answer is yes, we absolutely did. Because it was very evident that this trend was going on. It was evident also that a lot of people across the broad center right were struggling with how to address these changes as they saw institutions, individuals, and publications that once were reliable on these types of issues become a lot less reliable — and in fact, in some cases, adopting and embracing policies not that different from someone like a Bernie Sanders when it comes to subjects like trade, industrial policy, or the use of government intervention in any number of different parts of the economy.  So yes, we did consciously choose to devote a considerable amount of time and resources to engaging this particular fight, because we think: one, we need to shore up the free market classical liberal side of the center right in the United States; but also because it matters for the country. It really does matter for the country. Because if we end up with a choice between one set of policies that are highly interventionist and another set of policies that are mildly interventionist, that’s not much of a choice for the average American citizen when it comes to thinking about who they want in legislatures, who they want making policy, and what they think the general political climate should be in the United States.  So we’ve made a very conscious effort to engage in that particular area. We’ve played a significant role in helping to build up alliances of like-minded organizations — free market classical liberal organizations — who are committed to dealing with this particular challenge. After all, we are not the only organization that has noticed this, not the only organization that is concerned about this, not the only one that has chosen to engage this particular subject. But AIER has played a significant role in coordinating many of these groups in a way that respects their autonomy, but also tries to find synergies and ways in which we can assist each other in shoring up and then advancing the classical liberal and free market agenda on the broad center.

Peter Lipsett: And you had an excellent piece that I read in preparing for our discussion on AIER’s website called “Reimagining Fusionism,” which I was shocked to see was not written last month or even in the last few months, but actually in 2023. It holds up today and in fact mirrors a lot of the questions that I was exploring in a podcast series we did last summer and into this year on what is the right, exploring all these different factions and flavors. Of course, listeners to this podcast know that my theory on the collapse of fusionism kind of comes down to the libertarian wing getting too far out ahead of the virtue wing — that we relied too much on the libertarian ethos and kind of put virtues on the back burner a little bit, which you touch on in this article. And I think that’s what created the opening for the New Right, which led with virtue but went too far in pushing the libertarian side out. How do you and AIER today think we need to reimagine fusionism?

Samuel Gregg: Well, that’s a very big topic, and we have myself and plenty of other scholars at AIER who are actively engaging this question because it’s very important — not just for the center right, but for the country as well.  In terms of the breakdown of fusionism, I think there are many different causes. I think that those people who are primarily focused on the liberty side of things and those people who are primarily focused on the virtue side of things went in different directions, had different priorities, and maybe above all, from 1990 onwards, they lost the common enemy — the common enemy being the Soviet Union and communism. And so when that glue of a common enemy went away, some of the frictions and the longstanding tensions that had always existed on the right about many of these questions, including economic policy — many of those frictions became more intense, to the point where they started fraying and breaking apart.  So that’s part of the explanation. I also think that people come at these questions from different disciplinary standpoints. If you’re an economist and a free market economist, then you’re probably going to be looking at any number of controversial questions through a heavily economic lens. If you’re a moral philosopher or a lawyer or a political scientist, you’re going to be bringing a different type of disciplinary lens to bear upon these types of questions. So I think some of the disciplinary fragmentation that we see in the academy today — whereby there are many people who spend a lot of time writing about one or two particular things and not much else — has itself contributed to this breakdown on the right of what was called fusionism.  How do we deal with this? How do we go forward? Well, I don’t think it’s a question of trying to arrive at a set of principles that everyone completely agrees upon, and more importantly agrees upon what those principles mean. I think it is possible to identify principles that a broad number of people from across the right — ranging from libertarians on the one hand to those whose primary focus is on questions of virtue — can sign up to. And there are a number of organizations and groups that have been trying to do this, and in some cases quite successfully, as long as people are allowed to put their own meaning upon these particular things. Because there’s always going to be disagreement across the political spectrum — on the left and on the right — to think that you can arrive at a position whereby everyone’s in agreement on everything, ranging from economic policy to foreign policy, is a mistake.  But it is possible, I think, to arrive at principles that the right broadly speaking can sign up to. And some of those principles are very recognizable as ones that must be part of that set. Free markets, to my mind, must be part of that set of principles going forward economically. Now, as you know Peter, free marketers have all sorts of internal arguments about any number of things, ranging from the gold standard to monetary policy to things like the proper role and how we interpret the Constitution on particular matters. So all those disagreements are there. But a fusionism that was not committed to limited government, and not committed to free markets, private property, and rule of law — to my mind, that would not be a fusionism worth signing up to. Not least because it would have very little to do with two things that are very important for American conservatism: liberty, especially economic liberty, and the virtue side of things and what virtue suggests about the limits of government power when it comes to the moral and social order.  Does government have a role in those areas? Of course it does. Every piece of legislation, every law has a moral dimension to it. But there are serious questions you have to ask about what is the right, proper role of government when it comes to those cultural questions. The American conservative response to that — the right’s response to that — has generally been, up until relatively recently, that it’s a limited role. There are limits to what government can do in that area. That doesn’t mean taking a position of moral relativism, not at all. It is, however, a question of saying that many of the questions that shape the culture are better addressed through families and civil society institutions rather than the state.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, all well said, and very well said in the article too. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes because in there I think you do a very nice job of tying the libertarian side and the virtue side together in a way that shows their compatibility and indeed the fact that they rely on each other to create a free and prosperous society. So then the question becomes, how do we do all that and how does AIER help us do all that? You mentioned at various times you have research, you have student programs, you have other ways of just trying to get everyday economics into the hands of everyday people. You’re doing more partnerships, so many different directions. But talk to us a little bit about how you are going beyond just research. The research is self-evident — you’re doing a lot of great stuff there — but actually fulfilling Dr. Harwood’s mission of getting that information out there.

Samuel Gregg: There’s a great temptation, I think, for anyone in the think tank business to imagine that you write the books, write the articles, write the op-eds, and these will somehow naturally affect the course of events and history. The answer to that is generally no. There are a few books or publications or op-eds or articles that make an impact on their own for all sorts of different reasons. But you do need to get these ideas and these materials out to audiences that will have an influence, and you also need to get these ideas out to broader audiences of Americans who don’t have the time to think about these things in the way that we do because they’re living what I might call real lives. They have families, they have jobs, they have other things they’ve got to do, and they only have limited time to devote to thinking about the world of ideas.  So our educational programs very much focus upon cultivating the next generation of scholars, but also policymakers, business leaders, and those who are going to be prominent figures in their communities, to make sure that they’re given a high degree of exposure to classical liberal and free market ideas — whether it’s through a seven-day conference, a one-day event, or seminars looking at classical texts, et cetera. Because I often like to say to people: by the time most people get to the age of 25, they’ve pretty much made up their mind about what they care about in the world of ideas. And most people don’t change their perspective in that regard — they tend to stick to those ideas for the rest of their lives. So it’s very important to engage those audiences at an early stage of their life and give them a deeper dive into these ideas.  But you also need to communicate these ideas to audiences that are alive and well and active now. So you need to get these ideas in front of policymakers, congressional staffers, journalists, et cetera. We do a lot of work through our strategic outreach, finding ways in which we can most efficiently put these ideas in front of these audiences. Because they have limited time and don’t have the space to engage with this in a systematic way in many cases. So this involves briefings, turning long articles into short explainers, taking books and turning them into white papers — condensing and streamlining the information in ways that make it easier for people to hear, understand, and absorb them. It also involves a high degree of media outreach.  You’ll find AIER scholars on outlets like Fox, but you’ll also find AIER scholars on Squawk Box and other similar media outlets that cross the political spectrum, because we’re trying to get these ideas across to really anyone who’s interested in the economy, in economic policy, and in some of the wider political debates that we’ve been talking about. And you need to engage popular media to do that. You also need to engage social media. Social media is one of these tools that I have a love-hate relationship with. On the one hand, I’m not sure it’s healthy — it absorbs a lot of people’s time — but it is also a way of getting a lot of information across to people in digestible items that they can get their minds around, and you can do so without the filters that still exist and try to lean people in particular directions. So we have a pretty aggressive social media presence because we want to make sure that those who are on social media — which is a very large proportion of the American population — are able to access these types of ideas. Our strategic partnerships and outreach play a major role in making sure that the research is getting to people who might not otherwise pick up a book, who might not even read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, but are nonetheless interested in ideas. And if they can hear one or two things that equip them to deal with the shift towards interventionism that we see going on across the political spectrum today, that’s a meaningful contribution.

Peter Lipsett: Are you still doing some of that work from the early days — what is a mortgage, what are taxes, these kinds of things? I’m sure I could learn something from some of that, and I know a lot of other people could too. Certainly young adults could, right? If part of your strategy is to reach those younger people, they don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to this stuff.

Samuel Gregg: It’s interesting you raise that because in Colonel Harwood’s time there wasn’t easy access to that type of very specific information. Nowadays, of course, you can go onto the internet and type in “what is a mortgage” and something will come up right away. So what we tend to do in this regard, as part of our outreach to everyday Americans that Colonel Harwood was so concerned about, is to try and make sure that we’re explaining economic concepts and ideas in digestible ways for broad audiences.  If you look, for example, at what we call explainers — pieces that are typically no longer than 2,000 words — they’ll do things like explain what is a central bank, what are interest rates, how do prices work. So very basic building-block information about economics that people can then apply to the practical situations they’re dealing with every day. So when it comes to something like buying a house, they have a better understanding of how interest rates work. Or when they’re wondering why prices are fluctuating in a certain way, they can look and find out what function prices play in the context of an economy. Or if inflation seems to be breaking out all around them but they don’t really understand what inflation is, here’s something we at AIER can provide: what is inflation, et cetera.  Now, for those of us who work in the world of economics and political economy, this is fairly basic material. But I think we often underestimate that people haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time thinking about these things and trying to get their minds around what they mean and what their practical implications are for their daily lives. So what you might say is that we’ve adjusted the focus to make sure that we are giving people economic concepts and ideas in a digestible way so that they can apply that information to the reality they see around them. So when they’re wondering about inflation, they can look at something and say: now I understand the difference between prices rising because there’s demand and prices rising because there’s excess money being pumped into the economy by the Federal Reserve.

Peter Lipsett: As we wrap up here, you’re fairly new to the reins as president of AIER. You’ve really set a direction that I think is great based on everything you’ve described. What do you hope as we look ahead five years, ten years, as you build momentum for all this, as AIER continues to build these partnerships within our organizations and the movement — where do you want to get to? How do you think the country can look different because of some of the work you’re doing?

Samuel Gregg: Well, the first thing I’d say is that I would like AIER to be the premier classical liberal and free market institution in the country — to be the point of reference when it comes to particularly free market economics and a classical liberal understanding of political life. I’d like that to be where we are. I’d like us to become the reference point. That’s a pretty big ambition because there’s a lot of competition out there, as you well know. But I think that’s something we should be striving for, because we need organizations that are unambiguous and clear about their commitment to these things at a time when a lot of organizations have stopped being clear about that, and when we see drift on both the political right and the political left away from these principles.  So that’s the first thing. The second thing I’d like to see in five years’ time is that classical liberal and free market ideas have regained traction on the political right and even in some sections of the political left. Let’s not forget there was a time when a considerable portion of center-left opinion, particularly in the 1990s, had more or less embraced some of these ideas, particularly on the free market side. I’d like to see across the political spectrum a greater appreciation of classical liberal and free market principles and ideas as people are thinking about complicated policy questions.  I’d also like us to be in a position where we’re able to continue building broad coalitions focused on very specific policy issues — ranging from how we deal with the drift in corporate America towards distinctly non-free market positions, to very practical questions like housing policy. And I’d like us to be involved in coalitions that are making the broader case for free market ideas and principles across the board. So that by the 100th anniversary of AIER, we will be able to look back and say, Colonel Harwood, we are being faithful to the mission. The country has moved back in the direction of the principles that you devoted your life to promoting, and we have managed to push back the latest iteration of interventionist policies that you fought against for your entire life.  Because let’s keep in mind: the battle of ideas is never ending. Free markets at different points have been ascendant; interventionism has been ascendant at other points as well. So these fights never end. But I do think that at some point in the next five years, I’d like to be in a position where we can say yes — we have contributed to a distinctive shift back against these interventionist policies. Policymakers are more willing to engage free market solutions to policy problems. Journalists are turning to us for informed, economically solid argumentation when it comes to why markets work and why the alternatives don’t. And we see a younger generation of people who are imbued with classical liberal and free market ideas and are bringing them to bear in every aspect of their lives if they’re involved in the policy sphere. And I’d also like to see more everyday Americans more informed about why markets work, what are the basic building blocks of markets, and the role that markets have played in making the United States the world’s foremost economic power. If we can achieve just two or three of those things in the next five years, I’ll be a very happy man.

Peter Lipsett: Well, I hope that you are a very happy man. Those are great ambitions. And the nice thing about being a cheerleader for timeless principles is that as the fads fade, people look to them again. I’m glad AIER is there to remind them of these excellent principles, these important things, and that you have a path forward and you’re marching forward. Sam Gregg, best of luck to you, and thank you for joining us today.

Samuel Gregg: Peter, thanks for having me on, and thanks to DonorsTrust for this podcast.