Economist
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump
Both for our and the American economies, prices that are too high are bad because producers within the country using energy resources need to produce other goods within the country. And prices that are too low are also very bad because they undermine the investment opportunities of energy companies. That's a matter for us to discuss.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
Our study is on the basis of the spending boost that it is going to put towards Indian economy. We estimate a push of around 400 to 420 US dollar billion. That's economist Ipanita Mazumdar. The major chunk of it is going to come from the ticket spending. There is going to be a major push from food and beverages and hotels and transport. So demand is there.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
The economy just doesn't work like a light switch. And that's the risk he takes if he is negotiating, is he could get something that looks like a good deal in the end, and it could be too late for the economy.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
It's so hard to answer when you don't know and markets don't know how long term the actual implementation of the tariffs will prove to be. It's one thing that some would argue is by design, but it's one thing that is characteristic of President Trump's kind of approach to this is a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of chaos.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
No, I do not think stocks are due for a quick recovery if we are really moving to a long-term 34% impairment of global trade. We are really looking at taking potentially $500 billion out of US GDP in a year. Those things, if they were really to happen, you could argue that stocks have much more repricing to go. But of course, the upside risk is that you could also get an announcement in 48 hours
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
They got some concessions or some sort of headline announcement that is reversing course on a lot of this. So it's all in flux when it comes to markets.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
I like what Secretary Besson has said to me privately and what he has said on the record publicly in the past about the fundamental problems in the economy being related to too high of debt and too low of growth.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
I do not believe that one of the fundamental problems is what Secretary Lutnick is saying, that we, as a country that exports more services to the rest of the world than anybody but buys a little bit more goods, from the rest of the world than we sell to them, then that represents the core economic dysfunction of our economy.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
Our economy is growing at some part growth because the government debt is too high a percentage. So myself, as one who really believes in the robustness of the private sector, the efficiencies that come from private market resource allocation, not a command control economy, I see this as a non sequitur. I'm not looking for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to run the economy.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
And that includes decisions as to what types of industries you want to prop up and what industries we want to prop down. If we were to be effective, which I do not believe they will be, but if we were to be effective in bringing more domestic manufacturing to America, they can't do that without hurting services.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
And I would rather that our federal government not be in the business of picking those winners and losers.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
My best guess is that some products are going to go up immediately. Some products will lag before they see a price increase. But that the bigger problem to the American kind of middle class economy will be declining economic growth. I'm a supply-sider, and I firmly believe that economic growth comes from the production of goods and services.
Morning Wire
Tariffs Trigger Turmoil & Anti-Trump Protests Erupt | 4.7.25
And that innovation, that capital investment, they're going to be declining in the months ahead. That leads to downward pressure on jobs, downward pressure on wages, and downward pressure on corporate profits doesn't matter. They're going to find out the corporate profits are the mother's milk of economic growth.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
But slowly? We did. The world moved away from protectionism towards free trade. Agreements were made. The World Trade Organization was set up as a kind of referee.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
In fact, in the 1990s, Al Gore was debating Ross Perot. Perot was against the North American Free Trade Agreement. And Gore brought a photograph of Smoot and Hawley to the debate to be like, see where this got us last time?
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
That is the sound of Ross Perot kind of slamming this photo face down onto the desk.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Yeah, he kind of was. A huge difference between the Smoot-Hawley days and the Trump days is that the president now has a lot more power to set tariffs.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And this fact, the fact that the president can now levy tariffs, Doug Irwin says that is part of the legacy of Smoot-Hawley.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Over time, they delegated that power to the executive branch and to the president. They decided that is the better system.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And so we're not seeing hundreds of tariffs like in the days of Smoot-Hawley. Instead, we're seeing these very targeted, very political tariffs. And it could stay that way. But these tariffs still have economists like screaming into their pillows again. Because even narrow tariffs are going to cause the same web of problems. Downstream effects, ultimately shooting ourselves in the foot.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And he was like, who knows? Probably not. But if they do make Ferris Bueller 2, Doug Irwin will be ready.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
So first, I guess I want to ask you, do you know this scene from Ferris Bueller?
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And when it comes to Smoot Holly, you were kind of like the Smoot Holly guy. Is that right?
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And I'm Sally Helm. And did we all skip class on Smoot-Hawley Day? Yes.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
He'd also put some tariffs on washing machines and solar panels.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And also partly a protectionist tax to help people who were a big part of President Trump's voting bloc, a.k.a. manufacturing sectors left behind by globalization.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And a big reason for that is this kind of economics horror story. It's used to scare young economists around the campfire. The tale of Smoot-Hawley.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Farmers were feeling forgotten, desperate even, because they're losing their jobs, the economy is shifting away from them and towards a fancy, newfangled techie industry benefiting the coastal elites. In this case, back then, the hot techie industry is manufacturing.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
So this became an election issue. Save the farmers. Save the people who are being left behind. And the Republicans and their presidential candidate, Herbert Hoover, they win the election.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Do you not like the Muppets? I don't think I'm as big of a Muppets person as you. Whatever. But it's okay. It's good. Good Muppets.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And the two agricultural products that were facing the most foreign competition at that time were wool and sugar.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
But that is not even how the debate went at all. Partly because of something called log rolling, which is basically vote trading. So say you're a representative from a corn state like Iowa. Then you're like, wait, why would I vote for your sugar and wool tariff? I am not supporting that unless you put a tariff on corn.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Are we talking like a little goldfish in a bag in a fair? I think that's what we're talking about. Really? Like an orange goldfish for your bowl at home, like a goldfish.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
There were so many industries asking for protection that the Senate heard from more than 1,000 witnesses who gave more than 8,000 pages of testimony, like when it was all printed out.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And look, of course, Congress has passed tariffs before, since the beginning of the country. But this particular group of congressmen seems to be going pretty tariff crazy.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Oh, what are you doing? Yeah, the economists. When politicians start talking about tariffs, economists get very exasperated. Because tariffs, it might seem like they're solving one problem, but they can cause a million other problems.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
I think we want to sort of help people understand like why this was going to potentially backfire.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And another thing economists hate about tariffs is that they can cause chain reactions around the globe. Like, you can't just put a tariff on something and expect other countries to sit back and let that happen. There will be counter tariffs.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
And before the bill made it to the president's desk, the economists tried to explain all this one more time very clearly. A group of more than 1,000 economists got together.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Easily 5,000 in today's economists. And they wrote and signed a letter begging President Hoover or Congress to stop this Smoot-Hawley nonsense.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Hoover, the politicians, they were like, nah, these ivory tower elites, they've never worked a day in their lives.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
One of the most insane examples is eggs. American egg producers theoretically got the benefit of one of the many Smoot-Hawley tariffs.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Protectionism aimed specifically at the United States. There were a bunch more counter tariffs. Countries formed trade blocks against the U.S. Global trade fell by 26 percent in the years after this.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Yeah. Smoot-Hawley was in the works before the Great Depression, but it didn't pass until things had already started to go south.
Planet Money
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
Economists generally agree, you know, a lot of things caused the Great Depression, monetary policy, etc. But then the passage of Smoot-Hawley, it sure as hell did not help. We tried bouncing some metaphors off Doug Irwin.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Proposes Gaza Takeover, Ko$ta Doin' Business | Julia Stiles
Avocados are going to sell a lot in the next week. It's what, Sunday, the Super Bowl. So if that tariff had hit, the retail price would have jumped up at least 25%, and everybody's guacamole would have been that much more expensive.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid
I feel like in some ways in the economy, this is kind of like a kitchen remodel or a bathroom remodel. There's a bit of a mess at the beginning, but everybody has a long-term look of where we're headed.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Trump Gets Instant Karma as His Plans Crash
Just describe for us, let's take a beat, really frame it for us, how much volume has just dropped off in the last few weeks?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Trump Gets Instant Karma as His Plans Crash
We'll, of course, dedicate time to your poor, but I'm just wondering how you're anticipating this rolls and ripples through the economy from here, how it hits trucking, when this turns up on the shelf. What's the distance, the time, from when you see a drop-off in volume and when we, as consumers, see the shortages?
Today, Explained
The two dolls economy
We see across the industry about a 60% decline in ocean freight bookings from China to the U.S. Yeah, there's been a collapse of outbound freight out of China into the United States. It is really dark times for ocean shipping, especially.
Up First from NPR
Jordan's King In Washington, New Tariffs, NYC Mayor's Corruption Charges
You lose jobs in the manufacturing sector when you put together the higher cost of inputs and the retaliation, which is sure to come like night follows day.
Up First from NPR
Jordan's King In Washington, New Tariffs, NYC Mayor's Corruption Charges
You lose jobs in the manufacturing sector when you put together the higher cost of input and the retaliation, which is sure to come.