Christopher DeMuth

Credentials

Background

Christopher Clay DeMuth”⁴ is the former president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a former distinguished fellow⁵ at the Hudson Institute.⁶ He is a former board member of Donors Capital Fund (DCF),⁷ a group that, together with its sister organization, DonorsTrust, has been described as the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement in the US.⁸

AEI is an influential think tank in Washington. According to a July 1997 report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRO), titled “Moving A Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations,” DeMuth commented in AEI’s 1994 annual report that AEI was “delighted to be members in good standing of the Washington Establishment, called upon many times each day for Congressional testimony, media commentary, and advice on all manner of current policy issues.” According to the NRCO report, during the 1990s, “AEI staff … actively sought to influence economic, regulatory, welfare, health, and other social policies, appearing on national media several times a day. […]”⁹

DeMuth is also the chairman of the National Conservatism Conference,¹⁰ a project of the Edmund Burke Foundation that features prominent conservative speakers internationally.¹¹

According to his profile at the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, where he received the 2017 Bradley Prize, DeMuth was staff an assistant to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1970, where he worked on “urban and environmental policy” and served as administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget and executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during President Ronald Reagan’s first term.¹²

According to a National Review profile piece, DeMuth’s grandfather founded DeMuth Steel Products, which is no longer held by his family.¹³ Following his graduation in 1968, DeMuth worked on the congressional campaign of James L. Farmer, co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). After working in the Office of Management and Budget under the Reagan administration, DeMuth became managing director of consulting business Lexecon. He then went on to buy Regulation, a magazine published by AEI, and kept it in print.¹⁴

Stance on Climate Change

February 10, 2017

“[G]lobal warming is not a ‘hoax,’ as Mr. Trump has said. But the public and scientific debates over climate change have involved several hoaxes, one of which is the deliberate conflation of causation, degree, consequence and policy response,” DeMuth wrote in the Wall Street Journal in an article titled “The Method in Trump’s Tumult.”¹⁵

February 9, 2007

“The successive IPCC climate change reports contain a wealth of valuable information, but there has been a longstanding effort to characterize them as representing more of a ‘scientific consensus’ than they probably are, and to gloss over uncertainties and disagreements within the IPCC documents themselves,” DeMuth wrote in response to an article in The Guardian.¹⁶ ¹⁷

September 2001

Christopher DeMuth, writing at “Energy Crunch,” an AEI publication, declared that “The Kyoto Treaty Deserved to Die”:¹⁸

“The key features of the climate change debate are large degrees of uncertainty and a long time horizon. Although it is fairly well-established that the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed somewhat (one degree Fahrenheit) during the past century, it’s not clear why this happened. The warming may have been due to human impositions (the burning of fossil fuels and other incidents of industrial growth), or to natural solar or climate variations, or to some of each. Whatever the causes, we don’t know if future warming trends will be large or small, or whether the net environmental and economic consequences (including both beneficial and harmful effects) may be large or small.”

Key Quotes

October 19, 2022

“In recent years, a strange new ideology, commonly called ‘woke progressivism,’ has swept American institutions—universities and schools, business and finance, media and culture, government and even the military. Central to this ideology are the doctrines of ‘white supremacy’ and ‘systemic racism,’ which hold that African Americans (and certain other minorities) are pitiful, helpless victims of embedded social oppression, with little or no agency of their own. Other prominent woke canons are those of sexual fluidity and transgenderism, elite superiority and fitness to rule over the common man and woman, and the need to police and sanction dissent from the new orthodoxy”, DeMuth commented in a piece titled “How I became friends with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”¹⁹

He added:

“The march of wokeism, like the march of Islamism, is more than an intellectual movement. It has already claimed many innocent victims, from university professors to stand-up comedians. And its victims include its supposed beneficiaries. Many mayors, police officials, and public prosecutors have responded to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Defund the Police’ movements by handcuffing police protection in many neighborhoods and effectively decriminalizing looting, shoplifting, and similar offenses. These steps, taken in the name of ‘social justice,’ have produced a surge in urban crime and killing that has disproportionately afflicted black citizens. Similarly, the aggressive promotion of sex-change surgery on unwitting children has left many girls (and boys) permanently disfigured.”

February 4, 2020

DeMuth said the following during his opening remarks for the National Conservatism Conference in Rome, Italy:²⁰

“Many have convinced themselves that today’s threat of authoritarianism comes from not the left, but from the right. We take a different view. We regard ourselves as direct descendants and rightful heirs of the Glorious Revolution of the 1980s, led by Ronald Reagan and Saint John Paul the Great, and also by Margaret Thatcher. We think we are vindicating the victories of national independence in Central and Eastern Europe of 1989.”²¹

[…]

“[Our world] is beset by hegemonic progressivism, which seeks to quarantine religious observance, traditional culture, bourgeois social norms, and the family itself, and which has set the stage for mainstream anti-Semitism.”²²

[…]

“We have an inspiring European vision of confident democracies devoted to the liberty and prosperity of their people, of free nations, competing and collaborating, admiring, criticizing, nudging and learning from their neighbors, and the occasional ethnographic joke will be permitted too, so long as it is in good taste.”²³

February 15, 2011

DeMuth said in Congressional testimony before the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy:²⁴

“Environmental initiatives are often highly popular, and EPA, beset as it always is by interest groups whose métier is exaggeration and alarmism, may find it difficult to see past the lobbying fog: it may underestimate as well as overestimate popular support in a way that constituency-minded legislators would not.”

February 15, 2000

The following is from Christopher Demuth’s “After the Ascent” Francis Boyer Lecture, discussing “politics and government in the super-affluent society”:²⁵

“A separate problem is presented by the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement placing sharp restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions that the administration negotiated but has said it will not submit to the Senate in its current form. The administration’s efforts to begin enforcing the Protocol by regulation, and Congress’s efforts to prevent enforcement pending Senate action, have obscured a more fundamental difficulty. If the Protocol, or anything like it, were ratified, it would commit the United States to costly environmental efforts under the continuing supervision of one or more international bodies. Compliance would presumably be subject to our domestic legislative and regulatory procedures—that is, to our constitutional form—but, once again, the Executive would have the upper hand in developing policy and presenting the Congress with political faits accomplis. It is important to notice in this respect that the crafting of international agreements involves the participation of “non-governmental organizations” (“NGOs”—the international euphemism for private interest groups) on more formal, quasi-official terms than in domestic rule-making under our administrative procedure laws.”

Key Actions

July 8–10, 2024

DeMuth gave the opening address at the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference in Washington, DC:²⁶ ²⁷

Christopher DeMuth | 5 Years at NatCon | NatCon 4. Source: YouTube:²⁸

May 15–17, 2023

DeMuth spoke at the NatCon conference in London, UK, on Representation and the Common Good.”²⁹

Christopher DeMuth | Representation and the Common Good | NatCon UK. Source: YouTube.³⁰

September 11–13, 2022

The speake rs list for NatCon 3 in Miami, Florida, listed DeMuth as a speaker;³¹ however, his talk did not appear on NatCon’s YouTube playlist for the conference.³²

March 23–24, 2022

DeMuth gave the opening address at the NatCon conference in Brussels, Belgium, on the topic: “The Nation is the Heart of the Matter.”³³

Christopher DeMuth | The Nation is the Heart of the Matter | NatCon Brussels. Source: YouTube.³⁴

October 31–November 2, 2021

DeMuth gave a plenary address at the NatCon conference in Orlando, Florida (NatCon 2):³⁵

Christopher DeMuth | Why I am a National Conservative | NatCon2. Source: YouTube.³⁶

The Wall Street Journal published an edited version of DeMuth’s talk on November 12, 2021.³⁷

February 3–4, 2020

DeMuth gave opening remarks, “Adios Davos,” at the NatCon conference in Rome, Italy.

Christopher DeMuth: Adios Davos | NatCon Rome 2020. Source: YouTube.³⁸

July 14 – July 16, 2019

DeMuth gave a plenary address titled “The Nationalist Awakening” at the first NatCon conference in Washington, DC.³⁹ The Wall Street Journal also published an edited version of his titled “America’s Nationalist Awakening.”⁴⁰

Christopher DeMuth: The Nationalist Awakening – National Conservatism Conference. Source: YouTube.⁴¹

February 15, 2011

DeMuth testified before the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on environmental regulation.⁴²

In his testimony, DeMuth suggested the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) as well as a “regulatory pay-go” proposal which would “require regulatory agencies to eliminate regulations already on their books before issuing new ones of equivalent cost” are “both are worthy of earnest consideration.”⁴³

DeSmog has previously reported how the REINS Act has been a legislative priority for Koch Industries and Koch-funded advocacy groups such as Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).⁴⁴

February 9, 2007

DeMuth responded to an article in The Guardian titled “Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study” that discussed letters sent by AEI offering what The Guardian described as “payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

DeMuth described the article as “shoddy” and claimed it “uses several garden-variety journalistic tricks to create the impression of a story where none exists.”⁴⁷

He added, “a $10,000 fee for a research project involving the review of a large amount of dense scientific material, and the synthesis of that material into an original, footnoted and rigorous article is hardly exorbitant or unusual; many academics would call it modest,” suggesting that it is “the conventional practice of AEI–and Brookings, Harvard, and the University of Manchester–to pay individuals at other research institutions for commissioned work, and to cover their travel expenses when they come to the sponsoring institution to present their papers.”⁴⁸

According to DeMuth, “The successive IPCC climate change reports contain a wealth of valuable information, but there has been a longstanding effort to characterize them as representing more of a ‘scientific consensus’ than they probably are, and to gloss over uncertainties and disagreements within the IPCC documents themselves. Consensus plays an important role in science and scientific progress, but so does disputation–reasoned argument is essential to good science, and competition of ideas is essential to scientific progress.”⁴⁹

Affiliations

Hudson Institute — Former distinguished fellow.⁵⁰
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — President from 1986 to 2007. Searle Senior Fellow from 2009 to 2011.⁵¹ Member, board of trustees, from 1986 to 2008.⁵²
Donors Capital Fund (DCF) — Board member⁵³ from 2000 to 2011.⁵⁴
Searle Freedom Trust — Formerly listed as a grant advisor (as of 2012 990).⁵⁵ According to his CV , he started in 1997.⁵⁶
The Federalist Society — Co-chairman, board of visitors.⁵⁷
Smith Richardson Foundation — Former board member with the grants advisory committee (as of 2007).⁵⁸
Constitutional Enterprises Corporation — Has been a member of the board of trustees, beginning in 2011.⁵⁹
Clean Burn, Inc. — Chairman of the board (1990–2010).⁶⁰
Smith Richardson Foundation — Grant advisor (2002–2008).⁶¹
AHA Foundation — Has been a member of the board of trustees, beginning in 2007.⁶²
DeMuth Steel Products Company — Chairman of the board (1990–2006).⁶³
State Farm Insurance Companies — Has been a board of directors member, since 2004.⁶⁴
University of Chicago Law School — Member, visiting committee (1998 – 2001).⁶⁵
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University — Director, Harvard faculty project on regulation, and lecturer in public policy. Member, visiting committee (1995–1998).⁶⁶
Insurance Services Office — Board member (1990 – 1995).⁶⁷
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University — Taught from 1977 to 1981. Directed the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation.⁶⁸
Lexecon Inc. — Managing director from 1984 to 1986.⁶⁹
Regulation — Editor-in-chief and publisher (1986).⁷⁰“CURRICULUM VITAE: Christopher Clay DeMuth” (PDF), January 1, 2012. Retrieved from ChristopherDemuth.com. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.⁷¹
Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief — Executive director (1981–1983).⁷²
Consolidated Rail Corporation — Associate general counsel (1976–1977).⁷³
Sidley & Austin LLP — Attorney (1973 to 1976).⁷⁴ ⁷⁵

Publications

Example publications and appearances are below:

Articles

Competition and the Constitution — September 21, 2011.
Beware the Erosion of Competition — June 12, 2011.
A Great Economist; A Greater Humanitarian — March 08, 2011.
Unearned Income Tax–name Your Poison — February 15, 1996.
Not Quite the End of Racism — November 03, 1995.
Straight Talk About the Bell Curve — November 16, 1994.

Other Articles

A Trump-Ryan Constitutional Revival — Wall Street Journal (November 25, 2016).
OIRA at Thirty — Administrative Law Review (2011).
Contemporary Conservatism and Government Regulation — The Future of American Conservatism (Joel Aberbach and Gillian Peele, eds.), Oxford University Press, 2011.
Rationalism in Regulation (with Douglas H. Ginsburg). Michigan Law Review (April 2010).
The Practical Liberal — The American (September 22, 2009).
Think-Tank Confidential — The Wall Street Journal (October 11, 2007).
What the U.N. Needs Now (with Herbert London), The Washington Times (September 7, 2006).
Reaganomics: How’s It Going? — National Review (August 28, 2006).
Some Transatlantic Challenges — AEI On the Issues (July 24, 2006).
Unlimited Government — The American Enterprise (January/February 2006).
Why the Economy Must Remain Job One — The American Enterprise (June 2004).
Guns, Butter, and the War on Terror — The Wall Street Journal (April 29, 2004).
Governors (and Generals) Rule — The American Enterprise (January/February 2004).
Practical Environmentalism versus Romantic Environmentalism (with Steven Hayward), AEI Environmental Policy Outlook (July 2002).
The Kyoto Treaty Deserved to Die — The American Enterprise (September 2001).
Smoke and Smearers (with Steven Hayward) — The Weekly Standard (October 30, 2000).
Count Our Blessings, and Failings — The Australian (May 23, 2000).
Why the Era of Big Government Isn’t Over — Commentary (April 2000).
Ozone and the Constitution at the EPA with Randall Lutter — AEI on the issues (January 1, 2000).
Wizards of Ozone — The Weekly Standard (June 21, 1999).