As Prepared for Delivery on October 16, 2026
G20 Interfaith Forum
Good morning. Thank you for that generous introduction.
I am honored and humbled to address this group and its distinguished attendees. Although I was born and raised in California, my ancestors and many of my extended family have lived in the great Mountain West of the United States, and as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I share the faith tradition that was nurtured in the mountains and valleys here in Utah. But my comments today do not represent the Church, nor do they represent the faith-related policies of the Trump Administration. Rather, I am here to talk about economic policies that will lift people up across the globe.
Almost all faith traditions believe that God expects us to work. Work is not only a moral imperative; it is also a blessing to individuals, families, and communities. At the same time, heaven is not a counting house where God tallies every nickel and dime and measures our worth by our earthly balance sheets. Our economic activity – individually and in communities – should reflect deeper meaning.
In addition, world religions teach us that God expects people of faith to help the poor and the needy, and not to stand in judgment of them.
These teachings can sometimes seem to be in tension. But this tension can be resolved. Governments and religious communities can, in fact, help people meet the material needs of this life while also contributing to their spiritual well-being. Today, I want to address two overarching questions:
The first question is really a two-parter: (1) what kind of society are we trying to create, and (2) what are the economic policies that can support that society?
The second question is: what can faith communities do to support economic policies that are the most likely to achieve the type of society that will benefit the broadest portion of humanity?
So I will first discuss, what kind of society do we want?
Many of our brightest thinkers have discussed this question, with Aristotle and his successors asking “what is the good life?,” or in the more modern parlance of Joseph Stiglitz, “what is gross domestic product good for?”
So a lot of ink has been spilled on this topic, but I think average people know the answer. The Pew Charitable Trust Research Center did a global survey in 2021 asking people across age groups and countries what provides the most meaning in life. The universal answer was family first, generally followed by either an occupation or material well-being[1]. Respondents in the United States and United Kingdom ranked “friends” in the number 2 spot. And you would not be surprised to know that older survey participants rated good health higher than younger participants.
So this is the kind of society we want: one where people can form a family and relationships and also have meaningful work that allows them to obtain a home and achieve social and economic mobility.
I would say that an unspoken dynamic here as well is that people want all of these things together, meaning they want to be able to live with or by their family and friends as they achieve their economic goals. It’s unsatisfying and challenging to have one without the other.
A thriving society like this results in strong community cohesion and a shared sense of purpose. Communities with robust opportunities for work and production are safer than other communities, and they become high-trust societies with low crime and better health and educational outcomes[2]. Importantly, these types of societies value families and children. Policymakers should support economic policies that will promote these outcomes.
Economic policies of course can lead to negative outcomes. For example, here in the United States, and in my own line of work, we are attempting to remedy previous international trade policies that had a negative effect on certain populations. For several decades, U.S. companies took advantage of laissez-faire trade policies to move manufacturing and production from the United States to other countries for a variety of reasons.
This left many Americans previously employed in factories and plants without jobs in their hometowns. Recent studies by David Autor and co-authors show that these policies resulted in unemployment and underemployment among those that lost their jobs to offshoring. Studies by economists from the University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin showed that the North American Free Trade Agreement resulted in negative health outcomes among workers in the United States where that trade agreement changed the fabric of the local economy[3]. Thus, we have had entire communities where the loss of a factory meant lost income for parents, fewer opportunities for children, and second-order effects of increased drug abuse and premature deaths.
In the United States, we are trying to change our policies to avoid these outcomes and promote a society that is fulfilling: one where people can develop relationships with family and friends while meeting their economic needs.
To achieve this type of society I believe you also need to ensure national and domestic security, you need good health and education policy, and you need political rights and freedom of religion and expression. I won’t talk about those today, but I will attempt to answer the question of what kind of economy and economic policies can support a thriving and fulfilling society?
The global economy and international economic policy should operate to bless society, and not the other way around.
Capitalism, market economics, and the protection of intellectual property have led to enormous welfare gains. I take the United States as an example: a long-term commitment to free enterprise has lifted entire generations out of poverty. In 2025, the poverty rate in the United States dropped to 10.2 percent – the lowest since we started tracking these data in 1959.
However, economic policy should not prioritize efficiency and profit-maximizing at all costs. There are quantifiable (and non-quantifiable) harms from extreme libertarian economic policies. For example, unregulated concentration of production can limit opportunities for new entrants or harm consumers, workers may suffer from severe power imbalances in the employment relationship, and firms may engage in business practices that disregard economic or national security.
On the other hand, certain economic policies notionally designed to correct for excesses of capitalism can actually degrade the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. This may include the seizure of private property, suffocating taxation, and corruption that can arise from government interference in private business.
A responsibility of government is to find the right balance among economic policies. Even though we live in an imperfect world, governments can promote economic policies that increase the chances for all to live the good life:
Governments must recognize and encourage the worth of individuals and families as producers, and not just as consumers. Governments should enact policies that help people create wealth, as opposed to simply allocating it or consuming it. Most economic activity fundamentally begins with a person taking something out of the earth and making something of it: crops from the soil, fish from the sea, and minerals from the ground below us. From these resources, we forge tools and machinery, we process food and drink, and we create chemicals and engineer solutions that prolong life and bring convenience. In short, we generate wealth that can translate into well-being.
But in many developed countries, a rush towards financialization and speculation has reduced our focus on manufacturing, agriculture, and the associated services. This trend has turned many of our brightest students to financial wizardry, high-risk derivatives, and unstable Ponzi schemes or multi-level marketing scams. And as some societies shifted away from production, people also began to feel less like participants in the system and more like victims of it.
Instead of generating wealth, the United States and other countries have focused on attempting to print wealth and allocate it around the economy, with middlemen taking their share off the top with each new financial instrument. Obviously, there is a strong need for reliable financial services to help guide capital to its most efficient use, but this must stand on the foundation of the creation of capital in the first place.
In Judaism, the concept of Yishuv ha-olam (yee-SHOOV hah-oh-LAHM) emphasizes that we are to settle or help establish a sustainable world. We are to be stewards of the world we have been given, and not only receivers. In the Book of Genesis (2:15), Adam is placed in Eden “to work it and guard it.” From our earliest days, we were meant to be producers through our labor, not just consumers. As we read in the Book of Exodus, in the Ten Commandments, Moses received instructions for the children of Israel: “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.” We tend to focus on this commandment in relation to the Sabbath – a day of rest—but it of course expects that the other days we will work in a productive capacity.
In addition to prioritizing domestic production first and consumption second, government should provide for fair trade and commercial opportunities.
Trade or commerce on its own is not necessarily good or bad: it just is. The more important question is not just whether enterprise is “free,” but whether it is “fair.”
We have all kinds of policies that address unfairness: antitrust laws, employment and labor laws, anti-corruption efforts, and international trade laws. They all tend to deal with vast imbalances of economic or other power that can endanger fairness and limit opportunity. By making thoughtful corrections where market forces do not prioritize the type of outcomes our countries need, policymakers can promote societies where individuals and families can thrive.
And so, after all of that, the remaining question is how can faith communities and leaders support economic policies that help us move toward our desired society?
Some religious communities have promoted economic policies that attempt to find the right balance. In the United States, we have had faith traditions that promote a political economy based on community cohesion and support. The Transcendentalists of the 19th century sought to live simply and produce only what was need for consumption. The United Order of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sought to have its participants donate all their material possessions and earnings to the Church for an ecclesiastical redistribution. Your countries may have had religious groups make similar efforts. These initiatives have not always been successful, largely due to the imperfection of humanity or structural flaws.
But these traditions do have a few common themes that are instructive, chief among them is that all should contribute to the community economy as producers first and as consumers second. This is a blessing as individuals become contributing participants in the economy and not victims of it.
President Dallin H. Oaks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints recently observed the relationship between family life and making a productive contribution to society. In October 2025, he warned that “[p]arental influences have … been diluted by the way in which [many people] earn a living. In times past, one of the great influences that unified families was the experience of struggling together in pursuit of a common goal—such as taming the wilderness or earning a living. The family was an organized and conducted unit of economic production. Today, most families are units of economic consumption, which do not require a high degree of family organization and cooperation.” As faith communities support families, and support families working together, they will support economic policies that have a broader beneficial effect on society.
Faith communities can also create a fulfilling economy by promoting self-reliance. Contributions to workforce initiatives, training programs, and welfare-to-work programs can answer God’s call to help the needy while also dignifying them as producers and participants in the economy. Leading people to become self-reliant can succor the immediate needs of those in distress while providing them a long-term pathway to partaking in the good life that we all seek.
Religious communities should also support the rule of law by encouraging their members to be civically active and responsible. This may seem unrelated to economics, but a fair and just legal system helps create trust that the economic system will be fair and equitable.
Without this bedrock, it can be difficult for members of a society to believe that they will benefit from the economy, and they may worry that the system is “rigged,” as some say.
Finally, it is critical that faith communities discourage harmful economic behavior, both at the institutional and individual levels.
Practices such as financial speculation and highly-leveraged, high-risk economic activities can put entire swathes of an economy in trouble. Religious communities should also highlight and fight human rights violations that create perverse economic incentives, such as the scourge of forced labor, and they should fight corruption and dishonesty in all its forms.
Religious communities should also combat vice that harms the family economy. This can include addictive gambling, which can bankrupt individuals and families with the illusion of generating wealth. Faith communities should also encourage their members to live within their means, taking a lesson from Joseph in Egypt who warned Pharaoh to put up seven years of storage to prepare for the eventual famine. As people—or countries—turn to credit to support extravagant lifestyles, faith leaders should promote wise stewardship of taxpayer and family funds and preach against envy and greed.
We welcome a gathering like this that can help combine good faith efforts to implement beneficial economic policies with the wisdom and long-term perspective of faith leaders like you. I ask you to have patience with your political leaders as they try to do what is best for their people. And I ask you to do your part to help create fulfilling societies where individuals, families, communities, and entire nations can thrive.
Thank you, and I look forward to the rest of the discussion.
[2] See, e.g., https://www.rwjf.org/en/insights/our-research/2012/12/how-does-employment--or-unemployment--affect-health-.html; https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentary/2016/ec-201612-manufacturing-or-degree-intensive-labor-markets-and-educational-attainment.
[3] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/BFI_WP_2026-33.pdf, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34840/w34840.pdf.
