The Penn State College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation will host eminent economist Arthur Laffer for a discussion on the Trump administration’s trade policies at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 24 in 112 Kern.

Laffer’s supply-side economic theories and work as an eight-year member of the Reagan administration’s Economic Advisory Board helped spark the massive tax cuts that defined the economic climate of the 1980s. He also advised U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Economics students of all levels remember him as the creator of the Laffer Curve, an economic model that predicts the relationship between tax rates and the government revenue they create. Laffer famously sketched his model, which posits that increased taxation above a specified threshold decreases government revenue, on a bar napkin to explain the concept to Vice President Gerald Ford. Laffer is a founding member of the Congressional Policy Advisory Board and now serves as an advisor to several public and private firms.

His theories have found new life through the Trump administration’s economic policies, which focus on broad corporate and income tax cuts. Laffer co-authored the recently-published “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy,” with Stephen Moore, President Trump’s controversial pick to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“Dr. Laffer is known as one of the most brilliant economic minds of our time and his policy work to further core Conservative principles, such as low taxes and free trade, which work for the betterment of the lives of the American people, is simply unmatched,” College Republicans President Reagan McCarthy said. “His split opinions on President Trump’s economic policies, with regard to taxes and tariffs, will make the dialogue even more interesting.”

Laffer’s discussion on trade comes in the midst of an extensive economic conflict between the United States and China, which has seen the two countries slap a series of tariffs on each other’s exports between intermittent rounds of negotiations.