Share

cover art for Making sense of Trump's tariffs. With Dani Rodrik

The Economics Show

Making sense of Trump's tariffs. With Dani Rodrik

Tariffs have historically been an important tool of industrial policy. They were used in the last century by east Asian nations to promote infant industries, and are being used today by the EU to help spur the energy transition. But do Donald Trump’s threats to impose a 25% across-the-board tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, or his actual 10% tax rise on all imports from China, have any kind of thought-out policy rationale behind them? And should other countries respond in kind? 

To find out, the FT’s European economics commentator Martin Sandbu speaks to Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard. Rodrik is one of the world’s most acclaimed experts on industrial policy, and someone Martin first got to know as a PhD student in the 1990s.


Martin Sandbu writes a regular column for the Financial Times. You can find it here


Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.


Presented by Martin Sandbu. Produced by Laurence Knight and Edith Rousselot. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com


More episodes

View all episodes

  • Martin Wolf talks to Keyu Jin: Has China’s economy run out of gas?

    30:55|
    After decades of double-digit growth, China's economy has been expanding at less than half that since the pandemic. A property market crash, youth unemployment and now a trade war with the US are all adding to the country’s woes. So has the Chinese juggernaut finally run out of gas? Martin Wolf speaks to Keyu Jin, a Chinese economist who has lived and worked most of her life in the US and UK, and is currently a professor with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as at Harvard. She says that China remains widely misunderstood in the west.Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column hereSubscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Martin Wolf. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • Martin Wolf talks to Adair Turner: Can the world decarbonise fast enough?

    31:25|
    The world economy is emitting carbon dioxide faster than ever before, meaning our planet is heating up faster than ever before. Martin Wolf speaks to someone who has spent much of the past two decades at the forefront of the climate debate. Lord Adair Turner chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank focused on climate mitigation, and was previously the first chair of the UK government’s committee on climate change in 2008-12. While he fears that US President Donald Trump will act as a drag anchor on international progress in cutting emissions, he believes the EU and China can strike a deal to help the whole world transition to cheap renewable energy.Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column hereSubscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Martin Wolf. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • What future for aid and development? With Minouche Shafik

    32:31|
    US President Donald Trump has frozen all foreign aid payments, while Elon Musk is putting America’s biggest development agency, USAID, “through the woodchipper”. Meanwhile, the UK government has just announced it will slash its aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP. So are the days of generous programmes to promote health and education in the poorest nations now over? And should we fear that rising authoritarian powers, most notably China, are stepping into the breach with their own funds and parallel institutions? In an interview recorded just before the UK’s announcement, Alan Beattie speaks to economist Minouche Shafik, who is a veteran of the international development scene. She has worked at the World Bank, IMF, and the UK’s Department for International Development. And she is not optimistic.Alan writes the Trade Secrets newsletter. You can sign up here. He is on Bluesky at @alanbeattie.bsky.social. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Alan Beattie. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • Martin Wolf talks to Richard Baldwin: What’s the future of global trade?

    36:19|
    Donald Trump’s tariffs are a twentieth century tool that simply won’t work in the 21st century global trading system. That’s the view of today’s guest, Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. Speaking to the FT’s Martin Wolf, Baldwin explains how the shift towards global manufacturing supply chains since the 1990s, and the more recent explosion in digital services exports, mean that the impact of across-the-board import taxes such as the ones proposed by the new US administration will be counterproductive and much more limited than in the past. Nonetheless, should we still worry about the harm that Trump’s policies may be doing to the global trading system, and how should other countries respond?Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column hereSubscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • Why are birth rates falling? With Alice Evans

    34:22|
    Birth rates are falling fast and not just in highly developed countries. And as populations age, it’s becoming harder to fund pensions or raise labour productivity. But falling fertility could also be harming social cohesion and impeding the innovation needed to solve problems such as climate change. Today on the show, John Burn-Murdoch talks to Alice Evans, a senior lecturer at King’s College, London, and the author of the newsletter, The Great Gender Divergence. Together, they try to figure out why fewer people are choosing to have children, or even coupling up in the first place, and what should be done about it. John Burn-Murdoch writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it hereSubscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by John Burn-Murdoch. Produced by Edith Rousselot. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • The real Russian economy. With Sergei Guriev

    42:16|
    The war in Ukraine is a humanitarian crisis. It is also an economic problem. Sanctions from the US and Europe are meant to make war too expensive for Russia to continue. President Vladimir Putin claims those sanctions have failed and his economy is strong. But what is propaganda and what is reality? Today on the show, host Martin Sandbu poses these questions to Sergei Guriev, dean of the London Business School, and an economic adviser to Russian opposition figures, as they try to figure out what is really going on in Russia’s economy. Martin Sandbu is a columnist for the Financial Times, and writes the Free Lunch newsletter. You can find it here: https://www.ft.com/free-lunch.  Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • Is innovation slowing down? With Matt Clancy

    34:54|
    Productivity growth in the developed world has been on a downward trend since the 1960s. Meanwhile, gains in life expectancy have also slowed. And yet the number of dollars and researchers dedicated to R&D grows every year. In today’s episode, the FT’s Chief Data Reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, asks whether western culture has lost its previous focus on human progress and become too risk-averse, or whether the problem is simply that the low-hanging fruit of scientific research has already been plucked. He does so in conversation with innovation economist Matt Clancy, who is the author of the New Things Under the Sun blog, and a research fellow at Open Philanthropy, a non-profit foundation based in San Francisco that provides research grants.John Burn-Murdoch writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it hereSubscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by John Burn-Murdoch. Produced by Edith Rousselot. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
  • Can the WTO stay relevant? With Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

    30:34|
    In an interview recorded before President Trump hit China, Mexico and Canada with steep tariffs that disrupt the global trading system, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation, speaks to the FT’s Senior Trade Writer, Alan Beattie, and defends her record and the WTO’s achievements. She outlines how she hopes to engage with the new US administration and how globalisation has been remarkably resilient despite shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of US protectionism in Trump's first term and under former president Joe Biden. Alan writes the Trade Secrets newsletter. You can sign up here. He is on Bluesky at @alanbeattie.bsky.social. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Alan Beattie. Produced by Laurence Knight. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com