Podcasts about International economics

As we continue our “AI With Purpose: Student Pathways to What's Next” series, we are joined by Nicholas Beaudoin, Director of AI Programs at Caltech's Center for Technology and Management Education. He works across industry and education to make artificial intelligence practical and useful for organizations, and he emphasizes that there is no single route into an AI-related career. In this episode, Nicholas explores the expanding range of AI opportunities available to students, including roles in writing, technical documentation, and project management — not only engineering and coding. He encourages students to follow their curiosity, explore passion projects, participate in hackathons, and build community around what excites them most. Whether you pursue an internship, an entry-level role, or another hands-on experience, find out how to stand out as a strong candidate for opportunities with technology companies. ⁠ Nicholas completed his M.I.A. in International Economics at UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, and he received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Government at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves as AI Program Advisor and Instructor at Caltech's Center for Technology and Management Education, where he designs and leads courses that bring faculty, researchers, and industry practitioners together to teach executives, managers, and engineers how to apply AI strategy and implementation. Alongside this, he has advised Fortune 500 companies and U.S. federal agencies through consulting, with engagements spanning Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. His background covers hands-on AI/ML engineering, curriculum design, and enterprise strategy, and he has guided organizations from early proof of concept through production deployment. To learn more about Nicholas and his work, connect with him on LinkedIn.

Visit us at Network2020.org.A major shift is underway in the defense posture of Northern Europe. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, ending long periods of non-alignment. Together, the “Nordic-Baltic Eight” (NB8) give more military aid to Ukraine as a percentage of GDP. Strong balance sheets, driven by innovation and digital transformation, have enabled the region to become leaders in European security.What does this shift in power mean within the European Union and for transatlantic relations, especially following the crisis over Greenland? How have the NB8 countries changed since the invasion of Ukraine, and what do their changes mean for the future? Are they ready for the economic and political risks that come with increased importance in European security?Join us for a discussion with Dr. Hiski Haukkala, Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Dr. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Dr. Kristi Raik, Director of the International Centre for Defence and Security, on how eight countries became leaders in European security — and whether that leadership can survive economic and political turbulence.Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay

The new episode of VoxTalks Economics traces the effects of South Americans populism, left and right. Alejandro Werner (Georgetown Americas Institute) is one of the authors of a new paper that traces populist governments across Latin America back to 1970. He argues that they follow a strikingly similar script: they expand spending, weaken the institutions built to restrain them, and ride the wave until inflation catches up with them. But the most recent generation of leaders -- Chávez and Maduro, the Kirchners, Correa, and Morales -- lasted longer than their predecessors. Why?The research behind this episode:Magud, Nicolás E., Antonio Spilimbergo, and Alejandro Werner. 2026. "Lessons from Populism in Latin America." Paper presented at the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference, June 2026. Forthcoming in Economic Policy.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Alejandro Werner. 2026. "Lessons from Populism in Latin America." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).About the guestAlejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He spent nine years as director of the International Monetary Fund's Western Hemisphere Department, and earlier held senior posts at Mexico's finance ministry and central bank. His research spans macroeconomic policy, fiscal sustainability, and financial crises across Latin America.Research cited in this episodeThe Global Populism Database, built by political scientist Kirk Hawkins and colleagues, codes the rhetoric of presidents and prime ministers on a scale from zero (not populist) to two (highly populist), reading inauguration and campaign speeches for anti establishment language, appeals to "the people," and simple, direct phrasing. Magud, Spilimbergo, and Werner use this index, rather than a leader's policies, to decide who counts as a populist, which keeps their definition independent of the outcomes they go on to measure.Dornbusch and Edwards' "macroeconomics of populism," from their 1991 edited volume of the same name, was the first systematic account of how Latin American leaders combine expansionary spending with price controls, and how the resulting shortages and capital flight bring the cycle to an end. The new paper tests whether that pattern still holds three decades on.Funke, Schularick and Trebesch (2023), published in the American Economic Review, built an alternative populism index from historical case studies rather than speeches, and found that populist leaders leave a drag on economic activity that can persist for up to fifteen years after they leave office. Werner and his coauthors use this index as a robustness check on their own results.Local projections, a method developed by the economist Oscar Jorda  in 2005, trace how a variable such as inflation or the real exchange rate evolves in the years after a shock, in this case the arrival of a populist government, without imposing the structure of a full macroeconomic model.The commodity terms of trade windfall, a measure developed by Gustavo Adler and Magud, calculates the extra income a country earns when its export prices rise relative to its import prices. The paper uses this measure to show that the populist governments with the largest windfalls, including Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, stayed in power the longest.More VoxTalks Economics episodesFiscal Populism and Monetary Policy, recorded at the same EP conference, in which Magud talks to Tim Phillips about how a government's fiscal stance interacts with the credibility of its central bank.The Dollar Anchor Is Slipping, Tarek Hassan talks to Tim Phillips about what happens when the dollar's role as the world's safe asset comes under strain.Related reading on VoxEU.orgFour decades of terms of trade booms, a VoxEU column by Magud and Adler that introduces the income windfall measure used in this paper, and shows how much larger Latin America's most recent commodity boom was than those of the 1970s.Effects of commodity price windfalls on external debt: the role of political institutions, a VoxEU column by Rabah Arezki showing that commodity windfalls tend to be saved where executive power is constrained, and spent where it is not, a pattern that echoes this paper's account of institutional decay under populist rule.

Geopolitical change, product disruption, and technological transformation have all made this the most complicated moment in history to navigate capital markets. CAIA Association spent the last 12 months finding out why. After convening 120 global executives across eight financial centers we're proud to introduce: The World Rewired, a blueprint for the decade ahead. In this episode, we unpack the three structural shifts at its core with four practitioners who were in the room  with us, including Sebastian Mallaby, Stuart Wrigley, Yingwen Chin, and Muneera Aldossary.Guests:Sebastian Mallaby, Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow in International Economics, Council on Foreign RelationsStuart Wrigley, Partner, Head of Asia Pacific and Head of Capital Formation and Strategy International, Sixth StreetYingwen Chin, Partner - Private Markets IDD, Albourne PartnersMuneera Aldossary, CEO & Board Member, Franklin Templeton, Saudi Arabia⁠Episode Sources⁠(00:00) Artificial intelligence as a transformational force, with adaptability and curiosity as enduring traits of successful investors.(01:36) Traditional capital allocation models are becoming outdated amid rapid innovation in products, technology, and investment approaches.(06:40) Global roundtables with industry leaders reveal interconnected themes pointing to a systemic rewiring of capital markets.(18:28) Introduction of three major shifts: macro (geopolitics), industry (market convergence), and organizational (talent and AI).(18:28) Geopolitics moves from background noise to a central driver of capital flows and investment decision-making.(25:45) Geopolitical considerations become embedded in underwriting, with firms building internal expertise and advisory capabilities.(30:22) Long-duration investments such as venture capital and infrastructure require deeper integration of political and regulatory analysis.(35:05) Emergence of new centers of capital, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, driven by sovereign wealth funds.(40:42) Growing debate around US exceptionalism and the potential for a more multipolar global financial system.(46:58) The convergence of public and private markets reshapes investment access, structures, and asset class boundaries.(49:43) Rapid product innovation raises concerns around investor education, alignment, and long-term suitability.(55:34) Industry consolidation and the rise of multi-strategy platforms alter competition and access to top-tier opportunities.(01:02:12) Organizational shifts driven by technology redistribute tasks and reshape roles within investment firms.(01:06:09) Adaptability, intellectual curiosity, and cross-disciplinary thinking emerge as critical traits for investment professionals.(01:09:53) Concerns around AI reducing critical thinking and eliminating traditional entry-level training pathways.(01:13:40) AI impacts all levels of the workforce, increasing the importance of judgment, relationships, and credibility.(01:18:34) Shift from technical skill-based training toward systems thinking, communication, and leadership capabilities

There is a saying in Spanish: get burned by hot milk, and the sight of a cow makes you cry. New research implies that, decades after a populist government leaves office, the central bank it once tried to control is still flinching.Martín Uribe (Columbia) and Nicolás Magud (IMF) have investigated the long-run effect of populist governments that leaned on their central banks to print money and feed inflation. They find that these central banks raise interest rates more aggressively than others when inflation drifts above target, even decades later.This is the second of four episodes drawn from papers commissioned for the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues conference, organised by CEPR, CESifo and Sciences Po.The research behind this episode:Jácome, Luis, Nicolás E. Magud, Samuel Pienknagura, and Martín Uribe. 2026. "Fiscal Populism and Monetary Policy Rules." Conference draft, presented at the 2nd Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference, Venice, 19-20 June 2026. Forthcoming in Economic Policy.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, Martín Uribe, and Nicolás E. Magud. 2026. "Fiscal Populism and Monetary Policy." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).About the guestsMartin Uribe is the Robert A. Mundell Professor of Economics at Columbia University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research spans international macroeconomics and the theory of monetary and fiscal policy, with recent work on tariff shocks, fiscal dominance, and the long-run legacy of high inflation on how central banks set policy. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Economics.Nicolás E. Magud is a Senior Economist in the International Monetary Fund's Western Hemisphere Department. His research spans open-economy macroeconomics, with a focus on fiscal policy, exchange rates, capital flows, and capital controls, much of it drawn from Latin America's long experience of inflation and central bank reform.Research cited in this episodeThe populist leaders database. Funke, Manuel, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch. 2023. "Populist Leaders and the Economy." American Economic Review 113 (12): 3249-88. The authors classify a leader as populist if their rhetoric splits society into "the people" against "the elites," then divide populists into left-wing, whose target is economic elites, and right-wing, whose target is foreigners and minorities. Deficit monetisation and "unpleasant monetarist arithmetic." Sargent, Thomas J., and Neil Wallace. 1981. "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic." Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 5 (3). The paper that established the mechanism this episode turns on: when a government's deficit is financed by its own central bank printing money rather than by selling bonds to the public, the result is inflation. It gives the paper's account of populism and central bank credit its theoretical backbone.Local projections difference-in-differences. Dube, Arindrajit, Daniele Girardi, Oscar Jorda , and Alan M. Taylor. 2025. "A Local Projections Approach to Difference-in-Differences." Journal of Applied Econometrics 40 (7): 741-58. The statistical method behind the paper's headline charts. It compares countries that have just installed a populist government against "clean" control countries with no recent populist history, tracking central bank credit year by year after the change of regime.The Central Bank Independence Extended (CBIE) index. Romelli, Davide. 2022. "The Political Economy of Reforms in Central Bank Design: Evidence from a New Dataset." Economic Policy 37 (112): 641-88. A dataset scoring central bank laws on their independence, including limits on lending to government. The paper uses it to show that countries with a populist past, especially a left-wing one, now have stricter legal limits on central bank lending than countries with no such history.Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. The paper's three historical case studies. In Argentina, governments from Perón onward repeatedly rewrote central bank law to permit financing of the treasury, contributing to repeated bouts of high inflation and, eventually, hyperinflation in the 1980s. In Chile, the Allende government printed money to fund an expansion of the state, and inflation reached roughly 600% in 1973 before the government was overthrown. In Mexico, President Echeverría's public investment drive in the 1970s was financed in part by the central bank, feeding an inflation and currency crisis that culminated in the country's 1982 default. Uribe and Magud point to these episodes as the historical template their statistical results describe.Related reading on VoxEUCentral bank independence: An update, a VoxEU column in which Sylvester Eijffinger and Jakob de Haan argue that legal independence alone does not shield a central bank from political pressure to loosen policy.Recent trends in central bank independence, in which Davide Romelli, whose index this paper uses to track legal independence, documents a fresh wave of reforms strengthening central banks worldwide since 2016.

Kenneth Rogoff, Chair of International Economics at Harvard, warns that rising debt and persistently higher interest rates are leaving the US increasingly vulnerable to the next major shock. He discusses why Washington cannot simply grow its way out of the problem, and why a fiscal crisis may ultimately be needed to force meaningful action. Rogoff spoke to Bloomberg’s Tom Keene on the sidelines of the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Demokratin är på tillbakagång världen över. I år mättes de lägsta nivåerna sedan 1978. Varför backar demokratin så kraftigt just nu och vad gör vissa länder mer sårbara än andra? Sedan millennieskiftet har över tjugo demokratiskt valda ledare – från Ungern och Turkiet till Indien, Brasilien och USA – undergrävt sina egna demokratiska institutioner. Den amerikanska statsvetaren Susan Stokes har studerat varför vissa länder drabbas och andra står emot. Hon finner att ekonomisk ojämlikhet väger tyngre för risken för demokratisk tillbakagång än de faktorer som ofta antas skydda demokratin – välstånd, statskapacitet och demokratins mognad. Samtidigt pekar hon ut Sverige som ett av undantagen. Hur ser vi till att det förblir så? Välkommen till ett samtal med chans att ställa frågor till en av världens ledande demokratiforskare. Vid seminariet släpper SNS en svensk översättning av Stokes essä i Journal of Democracy, baserad på hennes prisade bok The Backsliders (2025).  Seminariet hålls på engelska. Medverkande Cecilia Malmström, tidigare EU-kommissionär, EU-minister och europaparlamentariker samt senior fellow vid Peterson Institute for International Economics och innehavare av Assar Gabrielssons gästprofessur på Handelshögskolan vid Göteborgs universitet. Susan Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, Director för Chicago Center on Democracy Anders Sundell, docent och proprefekt vid statsvetenskapliga institutionen samt forskare vid Quality of Government-institutet, Göteborgs universitet. Anders forskar om representation och kopplingen mellan opinion och politik. Samtalet leds av Ilinca Benson, vd, SNS.

Ao longo da História, o aumento da produtividade permitiu-nos enriquecer e conquistar mais tempo livre – a prova é que hoje trabalharmos metade do tempo dos nossos bisavós. Mas será que esta tendência se vai manter?Neste episódio, o economista João Duarte analisa o impacto da produtividade nas horas que trabalhamos e no tempo de férias que temos. Sabia que na Europa se trabalha menos do que nos Estados Unidos, apesar de Portugal estar mais próximo da realidade americana do que da europeia?A dupla debruça-se também sobre o impacto que o teletrabalho ou a semana de 4 dias pode ter na produtividade e reflete sobre como podemos usar a riqueza que produzimos para comprar bem-estar, educação, lazer e solidariedade.Num mundo onde a riqueza tende a concentrar-se nas mãos de poucos, discute-se ainda o papel da redistribuição e explicam-se conceitos como o «multiplicador social do lazer» e o «rendimento básico universal».No fim, fica a pergunta: será que ter mais tempo livre também nos pode tornar mais produtivos? Para perceber se é possível trabalhar menos e ganhar mais (qualidade de vida), não perca este [IN]Pertinente.REFERÊNCIAS ÚTEISKeynes, J. M. «Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren», (Essays in Persuasion, 1931) Becker, G. S. «A Theory of the Allocation of Time» (The Economic Journal 75(299):493-517, (1965) Boppart, T. & Krusell, P. (2020). «Labor Supply in the Past, Present, and Future: A Balanced-Growth Perspective» (Journal of Political Economy 128(1):118-157)Huberman, M. & Minns, C. (2007). «The times they are not changin'…» (Explorations in Economic History 44(4):538-567)Ramey, V. & Francis, N. (2009). «A Century of Work and Leisure» (AEJ: Macroeconomics 1(2):189-224.)Giattino, C. & Ortiz-Ospina, E. «Are we working more than ever?», (Our World in Data) Greenwood, J., Seshadri, A. & Yorukoglu, M. (2005). «Engines of Liberation» (Review of Economic Studies 72(1):109-133.) Prescott, E. (2004). «Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans?». Minneapolis Fed Quarterly Review 28(1). Alesina, A., Glaeser, E. & Sacerdote, B. (2005). «Work and Leisure in the US and Europe». NBER Macroeconomics Annual 20:1-64.Blanchard, O. (2004). «The Economic Future of Europe». Journal of Economic Perspectives 18(4):3-26. Russell, B. (1932). «Em Louvor do Ócio»;Skidelsky, R. & E. (2012). «How Much is Enough?» (Allen Lane). Reid, D. (1976). «The Decline of Saint Monday», 1766-1876». Past & Present 71:76-101. BIOSJoão DuarteProfessor associado com agregação na Nova School of Business and Economics. A sua investigação foca-se na produtividade, em particular nas razões pelas quais a Europa tem crescido menos do que os Estados Unidos — tema do seu artigo publicado no Journal of International Economics. Manel RosaHumorista. Estreou-se no stand up comedy em 2019, quando tinha 15 anos. Em 2023, lançou «Mais isto do que aquilo», o seu primeiro espetáculo em nome próprio. No mesmo ano, criou «DISNARRATIVO», uma espécie de vlog no Youtube, que manteve até 2025. Juntou-se ao leque de apresentadores do Curto Circuito, um programa da SIC Radical, em 2024.

Textbook economics says a tariff should strengthen a country's currency. Since the start of 2025, as US tariffs rose ... and the dollar fell.In the first of four episodes of Voxtalks based on papers presented at the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues conference, Alfonso Merendino (Bocconi University) and Tommaso Monacelli (Bocconi University, CEPR) tell Tim Phillips what they found when they looked for reasons. Their conclusion: for tariffs, it's not size, it is how permanent people expect it to be. They call this structural trade policy uncertainty. When that uncertainty is low, a tariff behaves exactly as the textbook says. When it's high, the same tariff can weaken the currency, shrink output and pull down inflation instead.The research behind this episode:Merendino, Alfonso, and Tommaso Monacelli. 2026. "Tariffs, Uncertainty, and the Exchange Rate." Conference draft, presented at the 2nd Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference, Venice, 19-20 June 2026. Forthcoming in Economic Policy.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, Tommaso Monacelli, and Alfonso Merendino. 2026. "Tariffs, Uncertainty, and the Exchange Rate." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).About the guestsTommaso Monacelli is Professor of Economics at Bocconi University and a Research Fellow of IGIER Bocconi and CEPR. His research spans international macroeconomics, monetary policy and the business cycle, with recent work on tariffs and monetary policy, supply chain uncertainty and inflation, and heterogeneous bank models of monetary transmission. He is co-editor of the Journal of International Economics and was managing co-editor of Economic Policy from 2016 to 2021.Alfonso Merendino is a PhD student in Economics at Yale University and a Research Fellow at the Social Economics Lab. He recently completed a research placement in macroeconomic modelling at the European Central Bank, and holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Economics from Bocconi University, where this paper was written.Research cited in this episodeStructural trade-policy uncertainty (S-TPU). The paper's central measure, capturing uncertainty not about the size of a tariff but about how persistent the trade-policy regime behind it will be. Merendino and Monacelli split observed US tariff rates from 1990 to 2025 into a persistent component and a short-lived transitory one, using a state-space model with separate volatility for each, and define S-TPU as the volatility of the persistent component.The 2017 US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The authors' example of a pure S-TPU shock. The withdrawal changed no tariff rate on impact, but it reshuffled expectations about the durability of US trade policy, and their index of structural uncertainty spikes at this point."Liberation Day" tariffs, April 2025. The sweeping tariff package announced by the Trump administration on 2 April 2025. The paper treats this, alongside the 2018 Section 301 tariffs on China, as one of two clearly identified tariff shocks used to anchor its statistical model.Aggregate trade-policy uncertainty index. Caldara, Dario, Matteo Iacoviello, Patrick Molligo, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo. 2020. "The Economic Effects of Trade Policy Uncertainty." Journal of Monetary Economics 109: 38-59. This newspaper-based index of trade-policy uncertainty mixes announcement noise with genuine regime change; Merendino and Monacelli show that conditioning on it, rather than on their narrower S-TPU measure, erases the state-dependent pattern they document.Narrative-dominance identification. The technique the authors use to isolate tariff shocks in their statistical model, adapted from Juan Antolín-Díaz and Juan F. Rubio-Ramírez. 2018. "Narrative Sign Restrictions for SVARs." American Economic Review 108 (10). Rather than imposing a full statistical model, the method anchors identification to a small number of clearly documented policy events, such as the 2018 and 2025 tariff rounds, and lets everything else, including the sign of the exchange-rate response, be estimated freely from the data.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThe second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues conference follows the first, held in Paris in December 2025. Three earlier VoxTalks Economics episodes from that Paris conference asked what comes next for Ukraine's economy.What's next for Ukraine: Investment, in which Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Maurice Obstfeld argue that forgiving Ukraine's war debt, rather than treating it as an obstacle, is essential to attracting the $40 billion a year that reconstruction needs.What's next for Ukraine: Reconstruction, in which Edward Glaeser, Martina Kirchberger, and Andrii Parkhomenko argue that postwar Tokyo, not Warsaw or Berlin, is the right model for rebuilding Ukraine's cities.What's next for Ukraine: The labour market, in which Giacomo Anastasia documents the surprising resilience of Ukraine's wartime labour market.Related reading on VoxEUTariffs and US dollar depreciations: Not so surprising after all, a VoxEU column in which Giancarlo Corsetti, Simon Lloyd, and Daniel Ostry argue that the dollar's fall after Liberation Day is explained by foreign retaliation, a different mechanism from the persistence channel that Merendino and Monacelli identify.Tariffs, the dollar, and equities: High-frequency evidence from the Liberation Day announcement, in which Jonathan Hartley and Alessandro Rebucci show that the dollar depreciated on impact on 2 April 2025, against the standard prediction, and trace this to foreign investors rebalancing away from US equities.

More hostages might be released in Gaza. VOA's Jeff Caster reports.加沙可能会释放更多人质。美国之音记者杰夫·卡斯特（Jeff Caster）报道。The U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas said in a statement Friday it is willing to release an American-Israeli hostage, Eden Alexander, along with the bodies of four dual nationals who died in captivity.被美国认定为恐怖组织的哈马斯周五在一份声明中表示，愿意释放一名美裔以色列人质伊登·亚历山大（Eden Alexander），以及四名在囚禁期间死亡的双重国籍者。The statement on Telegram did not say when the release would take place or what the group expected in return.Telegram上的声明没有说明释放时间或该组织期望的回报。Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office is questioning the offer, accusing Hamas of trying to manipulate the ongoing cease-fire talks in Qatar.以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡的办公室对这一提议提出质疑，指责哈马斯试图操纵卡塔尔正在进行的停火谈判。Netanyahu's office said the prime minister will meet with his ministerial team Saturday night to receive a detailed report from negotiators and decide on next steps for the release of hostages. Jeff Caster, VOA News.内塔尼亚胡办公室表示，总理将于周六晚会见他的部长团队，听取谈判人员的详细报告，并决定释放人质的下一步措施。美国之音新闻记者杰夫·卡斯特报道。South Africa's ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in the U.S. That's according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on X on Friday afternoon.南非驻美国大使不再受到美国欢迎，从美国国务卿马尔科·卢比奥周五下午在X上的一篇文章中可以看出。Rubio accused Ibrahim Rasool of being a "race-baiting politician" and declared him "persona non grata." No additional details were available from the State Department.鲁比奥指责易卜拉欣·拉苏尔（Ibrahim Rasool）是“种族歧视政客”，并称他为“不受欢迎的人”。美国国务院没有提供更多细节。An executive order was signed in early February by President Donald Trump that cut aid to the Black-led South African government.2月初，唐纳德·特朗普总统签署了一项行政命令，削减了对黑人领导的南非政府的援助。Trump said South Africa's white Afrikaners were targeted in a new law that allows the government to "expropriate private land."特朗普表示，南非白人是新法律的目标，该法律允许政府“征用私人土地”。Tit-for-tat tariffs from Mexico, Canada, the EU and China continue as the U.S. is set to impose new tariffs on April 2. VOA's Carolyn Presutti has the story.随着美国定于4月2日征收新关税，墨西哥、加拿大、欧盟和中国继续针锋相对地征收关税。美国之音新闻记者卡罗琳·普雷苏蒂（Carolyn Presutti）报道了这一消息。The unpredictability drives U.S. stocks wild. Analysts say if it continues, all governments lose. Jeffrey Schott is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.这种不可预测性导致美国股市疯狂上涨。分析师表示，如果这种情况持续下去，所有政府都会蒙受损失。杰弗里·肖特（Jeffrey Schott）是彼得森国际经济研究所的研究员。"They think that if they protect their economy, they're going to increase the productivity and the competitiveness of industries in their own market.“他们认为，如果他们保护自己的经济，他们就会提高自己市场中各行业的生产力和竞争力。And actually what they're doing is putting them at a disadvantage in terms of price and access to global markets."而实际上，他们所做的是让他们处于价格和全球市场准入方面的劣势。”The U.S. argues economic pain now will yield great results later. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: "the tariffs, we've got strategic industries we've got to have. We wanna protect the American worker that a lot of these trade deals haven't been fair."美国认为，现在的经济痛苦将在以后产生巨大的效果。财政部长斯科特·贝森特说：“关税，我们必须拥有战略产业。我们想保护美国工人，因为很多贸易协定并不公平。”The administration is sending a signal that it's not business as usual here. It's now more exports and less imports.政府发出信号，表明这里的情况并不正常。现在是出口增加，进口减少。The next round of tariffs goes into effect April 2. Carolyn Presutti, VOA News, the White House.下一轮关税将于4月2日生效。美国之音新闻记者卡罗琳·普雷苏蒂在白宫报道。Two astronauts who have been living on the International Space Station since June of last year are about to get their ride back to Earth.自去年6月以来一直生活在国际空间站的两名宇航员即将乘坐飞船返回地球。SpaceX launched four astronauts from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday night to the space station.SpaceX于周五晚上将四名宇航员从佛罗里达州肯尼迪航天中心送往空间站。Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been on the space station since their Boeing Starliner capsule suffered a malfunction and returned to Earth without them.自从波音星际客机太空舱发生故障并独自返回地球后，巴里·威尔莫尔和苏尼·威廉姆斯就一直在空间站上。Wilmore and Williams are expected back on Earth next week.威尔莫尔和威廉姆斯预计将于下周返回地球。

Canada-U.S. trade negotiations fell apart on Friday night, leading to new American tariffs being imposed on tens of billions of dollars worth of Canadian goods. Piya Chattopadhyay explores the implications for Canadian industry. Then, The Economist's Canada correspondent Rob Russo and Inu Manak, a global trade law expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, discuss the political reverberations on both sides of the border.

Despite a major setback earlier this year when the Supreme Court ruled against his use of emergency authority in enacting tariffs back in April 2025 on what he called “Liberation Day,” President Donald Trump continues to find ways to levy import taxes on friends and foes alike. That includes a whopping 50% levy aimed at Canada which, if negotiations fail, will go into effect on August 19th. Meanwhile a new piece of legislation cloaked in the guise of Russian sanctions aims to effectively give the president carte blanche to levy tariffs on whichever countries he wants to. Is the president's “America First Trade Policy” a win for the American people? Inu Manak, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, joins The Excerpt to share her insights.Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

President Trump's frequent tariff announcements have put global trade in a new, precarious position. Chad P. Bown is Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and host of the Trade Talks podcast. He joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how tariffs push up prices, what lessons from history can teach us about this moment, and how countries should adapt to this rapidly changing landscape. His book, written with co-author Soumaya Keynes, is “How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Today, John, Les, and Special Guest Peter Harrell—former Senior Director for International Economics at the NEC & NSC—trace the arc of U.S. trade and economic policy toward China from the engagement era of the late 1990s through future administrations. For decades, Washington operated on the theory that integrating China into the global economy through the WTO would create market opportunities and encourage political liberalization — a paradigm that persisted through Clinton, Bush, and Obama even as warning signs accumulated. The shift came gradually, driven by Chinese malign tactics, Xi Jinping's consolidation of power, and a business community that eventually saw more risk than opportunity in the relationship.What tools — tariffs, export controls, industrial policy — have actually moved the needle on economic security, and which are more political theater than strategy? Did Trump's first-term tariffs reshape trade flows in any meaningful way, or did transshipment through states such as Vietnam and Mexico simply obscure continued Chinese dominance? How should policymakers think about the trade deficit as a strategic variable, and what would it actually take to address it? Check out the answers to these questions and more in this episode of Fault Lines.@lestermunson@johnclipsey@petereharrellLike what we're doing here? Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And don't forget to follow @faultlines_pod and @masonnatsec on Twitter!We are also on YouTube; watch today's episode here: https://youtu.be/Metg6cjphQo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A inteligência artificial promete transformar a forma como trabalhamos, mas os seus efeitos não são iguais para todos. O economista João Duarte explica quais são as profissões que se tornaram mais produtivas com a IA, quais as funções que estão mais expostas à automação e porque é que o uso destes sistemas pode beneficiar mais um trabalhador menos qualificado do que um especialista.Partindo da evidência de que a IA permite produzir mais com menos pessoas, levantam-se outras questões: como gerir o risco de concentração de riqueza e o aumento das desigualdades? Teremos no futuro empresas multimilionárias geridas por uma única pessoa — ou essa realidade já começou?A dupla explica ainda por que motivos o uso da IA se mantém invisível na economia e debruça-se sobre o cenário (provável) de a produtividade descer antes de subir verticalmente.Por fim, olhamos para Portugal. Que riscos e oportunidades se colocam ao crescimento e à competitividade do país? Será que a IA nos vai permitir dar um salto produtivo?Para saber se a IA é uma aliada ou uma ameaça à nossa produtividade, não perca este [IN]Pertinente.LINKS E REFERÊNCIAS ÚTEISArlindo Oliveira, «A Inteligência Artificial Generativa» (Ensaios da Fundação n.º 146, FFMS, 2025). Ethan Mollick, «Co-inteligência» (Ideias de Ler, 2024; original Co-Intelligence, Portfolio/Penguin, 2024)Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, «Poder e Progresso» (Temas e Debates, 2024; original Power and Progress, 2023)Stanford HAI, «AI Index Report» (edição 2026)BIOSJoão DuarteProfessor associado com agregação na Nova School of Business and Economics. A sua investigação foca-se na produtividade, em particular nas razões pelas quais a Europa tem crescido menos do que os Estados Unidos — tema do seu artigo publicado no Journal of International Economics. Manel RosaHumorista. Estreou-se no stand up comedy em 2019, quando tinha 15 anos. Em 2023, lançou «Mais isto do que aquilo», o seu primeiro espetáculo em nome próprio. No mesmo ano, criou «DISNARRATIVO», uma espécie de vlog no Youtube, que manteve até 2025. Juntou-se ao leque de apresentadores do Curto Circuito, um programa da SIC Radical, em 2024.

Convidada: Monica de Bolle, pesquisadora sênior do Peterson Institute for International Economics, em Washington (EUA). Ao longo de julho, os Estados Unidos anunciaram duas bombas tarifárias contra o Brasil: a primeira de 25%, resultado da investigação do Escritório do Representante Comercial dos Estados Unidos (USTR) sobre supostas práticas desleais da economia brasileira; a segunda de 12,5%, aplicada contra o Brasil e outros países que, de acordo com o USTR, não fiscalizaram adequadamente o emprego de trabalho forçado. O governo brasileiro criticou as medidas e anunciou ações para enfrentar o tarifaço turbinado: na economia interna, prometeu um pacote de R$ 18,5 bilhões para os setores mais afetados; na esfera internacional, levou as sobretaxas para arbitragem da Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC). Neste episódio, Victor Boyadjian entrevista a economista Monica de Bolle, que fala diretamente de Washington. Monica analisa que respostas o Brasil pode esperar da OMC e explica outros artifícios que podem ser adotados pelo país: como a Lei de Reciprocidade e até mecanismos legais de retaliação em setores estratégicos para os americanos.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman says he plans to have a markup this summer on his version of the farm bill. New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján joins Newsmakers to discuss his thoughts on the bill and changes he'd like to see in the markup.Plus, Alan Wolff with the Peterson Institute for International Economics explains what Congress was trying to solve with the Trade Act of 1974 and what may happen after the Section 122 tariffs expire.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Nihilistic western leaders have been pushing for decades to have a major war with Russia. Former Royal Navy commander Steve Jermy says they're about to get that war, and lose badly. (00:00) What Is Happening Between Russia and Ukraine? (09:21) Why Would the US and NATO Want a War With Russia? (15:32) The EU's Promotion of Foolish Leaders (20:17) Where the US Stands With Russia and Where We're Headed (43:39) Where Does the West Stand on Energy? As a young naval aviator, Commodore Steve Jermy's first operational deployment was in the Falklands War flying from HMS Invincible. As a senior naval officer, his final operational deployment was in Afghanistan as Strategy Director in the British Embassy, Kabul. In between: at sea, he commanded 4 ships and a destroyer squadron; ashore, he served in 4 policy appointments in Britain's Ministry of Defence and led British naval aviation as Commodore Fleet Air Arm. After leaving the navy, he worked for 15 years in the offshore energy sector. His qualifications include an MPhil from Cambridge University in International Relations, including International Economics, and he is the author of Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century. Having stepped down from the offshore energy sector, he now writes a Substack - https://stevejermy.substack.com - and is a regular YouTube interviewee on geopolitics, war, economics, energy, and their intersection. https://stevejermy.substack.com/p/principles-and-practice-of-air-defence  Paid partnerships with: Ethos: Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/TUCKER Mars Men: For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, free shipping, AND 3 free gifts at Mars Men at MenGoToMars.com American Financing: NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 800-685-5696 for details about credit costs and terms. Visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Tucker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial Intelligence is widely seen as a transformative technology, and its effects are already being seen in stock prices, investment expenditures, and the need for electricity but, strikingly, not very much in labor markets - at least not yet. Jed Kolko joins EconoFact Chats to discuss why we haven't seen extensive labor market changes from AI, the prospects for worker displacement and the creation of new types of jobs, as well as changes in the supply of workers, as AI evolves and its adoption spreads. Jed is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Head of Macro Data Strategy at Rokos Capital Management. He served as Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2022 to 2024.

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:If my podcast guest today is correct, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence "heralds a transformation more profound than anything since Homo sapiens acquired the capacity for abstract thought." That's about as pure a distillation of the San Francisco Consensus view on the importance of this technology as it gets.Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a widely read columnist for The Washington Post. He is also the author of the new best-selling book The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. (Spoiler: It's tremendous book about the man, the company, and the technological revolution. I really liked it.)We discuss The Infinity Machine and the life of Demis Hassabis, including how his original vision for artificial superintelligence compares with the propulsive race unfolding today. We also explore how that competitive acceleration has affected the focus on safety, what role government regulation should play, and why many people may still be underestimating how transformative AI will become.The Quest for “Success” (0:27)Inside the Mind of Hassabis (8:29)The Race for Monopoly (12:31)The Economics of AI Anxiety (17:05)Governing the AI Race (24:17)The Biggest Leap Since Abstract Thought (30:13)A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. (Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)But here are some edited highlights from the chat:On where AI is heading…You look backwards; you see how fast the progress has been. To merely extrapolate forwards is probably to undersell the speed at which we'll accelerate in the future because there's an accelerating phenomenon here where the more advanced you are, the easier it is to get to the next level.On Hassabis's belief that AI development would look more like the Manhattan Project than a multi-country, multi-company competition …In retrospect, it's crazy. All one can say is that ex ante, the atmosphere in the community of AI builders when Demis began his company in 2010 was that this was a thing that simply didn't work. AI could not recognize the photograph of a cat. AI could do nothing. It was deep AI winter. And so, under those conditions, you could assemble the entirety of the world's strong AI believers in one conference in San Francisco, and it felt like a single community. So, this sort of Singleton scenario where you just have one lab, it was a natural outgrowth of that moment in time.How AI competition has overwhelmed that vision…Before 2022, Demis had the freedom because he was clearly the leader to define what the next project should be. He chose at one point to go and do this protein folding project. …This is kind of AI with a smiley face painted on it. Whereas once the chatbot went viral at the end of 2022, ChatGPT, then everybody had to pile in and build a competitor and there's a lot less leeway to define your own path. So, I think the agency of the individual was quite strong until 2022 and thereafter the power of the race dynamic takes over.What skeptics, such as many economists, have gotten wrong and right…The number of improvements before even we talk about Mythos and the cyber capabilities of that one, I mean, it's been an extraordinary ride in what is actually less than four years. So, I don't take back anything I say about the speed of the advance of the frontier. Now that's different to the speed of the deployment. There I have a lot of sympathy with the economist.On the difficulty of AI regulation…I'm actually quite optimistic in terms of the ability of a government agency to regulate… People often think of AI as a bunch of code that flies around cyberspace and you really can't control it. But actually, it's also a bunch of data centers which are huge physical installations. The government knows precisely where they are. They can't be moved or hidden.On his superintelligence timeline…To be honest, I would say it's already true. I mean, you try using Fable and if people are listening and they're inclined not to agree with me, I just ask you, spend a couple of hours with Claude Fable and then see if you disagree with me…I think it is smarter than me by quite a long shot on any topic I ask it about.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

Recorded at the Paris School of Economics-CEPR Policy Forum 2026. Europe is under attack from the US, and under a different kind of attack from China.That is Olivier Blanchard's diagnosis. Blanchard (MIT, Paris School of Economics, Peterson Institute) is one of four economists leading Europe 2050, a new CEPR initiative asking where Europe wants to be in 25 years, and how it gets there. Blanchard's overriding principle: a vision without plumbing goes nowhere, and plumbing without vision is just reacting to the next tweet.Who can combine the vision and the plumbing, and produce ideas that we haven't seen before? Europe might be short of solutions to its current malaise, but it is not short of people with ideas: the project sent out 50 invitations for policy papers. Blanchard expected 30 replies. He got 48.The research behind this episode:Blanchard, Olivier, Pascal Lamy, Enrico Letta, and Beatrice Weder di Mauro. 2026. "Europe 2050: Geometries of Peace, Power, and Prosperity." VoxEU column, CEPR, 16 March 2026.The CEPR Europe 2050 initiative launched by Blanchard, Lamy, Letta and Weder di Mauro is generating a rolling series of commissioned policy papers and shorter open call submissions. The full set of contributions can be found at cepr.org/europe-2050-geometries-peace-power-and-prosperity.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Olivier Blanchard. 2026. "Europe in 2050." VoxTalks Economics (podcast). About the guestOlivier Blanchard is the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at MIT, Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics, and Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is a CEPR Distinguished Fellow. Blanchard's research spans macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, and the economics of European integration; he was chief economist and director of research at the IMF from 2008 to 2015. Research cited in this episodeEurope 2050: Geometries of Peace, Power, and Prosperity is the CEPR initiative behind this episode, launched by Blanchard, Lamy, Letta and Weder di Mauro. It commissions longer policy papers and runs an open call for shorter pieces, five to fifteen pages, on what Europe should aspire to become by 2050. Blanchard describes it as a box of tools rather than a single blueprint, deliberately open to contributors who disagree on fundamentals, including whether Europe should become a federation.The Draghi report refers to Mario Draghi's 2024 report for the European Commission, The Future of European Competitiveness. It diagnosed Europe's weak productivity growth, fragmented capital markets and insufficient scale financing for innovative firms. Blanchard contrasts it with Europe 2050, which he says is not trying to produce a similarly prescriptive plan.The Letta report refers to Enrico Letta's 2024 report Much More Than a Market, commissioned by the European Council, which set out proposals for deepening the EU single market. Letta is one of the four leaders of Europe 2050."Getting to Denmark" is a concept popularised by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 2011 book The Origins of Political Order, describing the temptation to picture a distant, well governed destination without a plan for the institutional steps needed to reach it. Is this a risk for Europe 2050?Schengen is raised by Blanchard as a working example of a "coalition of the willing": a group of countries, not all of them EU members, that agreed to abolish border controls between themselves without waiting for unanimous agreement across the whole Union. He points to it as a template for how Europe might make progress on other issues where full consensus is unlikely.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThis episode was recorded at the Paris School of Economics-CEPR Policy Forum 2026, alongside a series of conversations with forum speakers.Europe in the Middle, the previous episode, features Pol Antràs and Beata Javorcik on how the US-China trade war is reshaping trade flows into Europe, and who wins and loses from it.Related reading on VoxEUEurope's challenge and opportunity: Building coalitions of the willing, a VoxEU column by Blanchard and Jean Pisani-Ferry, sets out the coalition of the willing idea in more detail, working through how it might apply to climate, trade and tax policy.Capitalising on Europe's strengths, a VoxEU column by Debora Revoltella and colleagues at the European Investment Bank, looks at what Europe already does well and how policy can build on it rather than only cataloguing weaknesses.Addressing European competitiveness: Investment, integration, and simplification, another VoxEU column from the European Investment Bank, sets out the scale of Europe's investment gap and where past bursts of EU investment have come from.EU capital markets reform should focus on innovation investment, a VoxEU column, argues that capital markets union, a project Blanchard mentions in the episode, should be judged by whether it gets money to innovative firms, not just by market integration for its own sake.

The world I grew up in no longer exists. The decades after World War II were boom times for free trade lovers. During the Pax Americana it seemed that most diplomatic problems could be solved by exporting blue jeans and lowering the cost of consumer goods for everyone. But in 2026 trade is a serious weapon and economic policy seems less a path to prosperity and more a weapon for waging war.On this episode of Angry Planet, Chad P Bown is here to talk about his new book How to Win a Trade War. Bown is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and co-authored the book with journalist Soumaya Keynes. The book is a brisk walk through a history of economic conflict full of humor and history.The world according to nerd trade economistsIf we must fight, fight this way“It's a China story”Rare earth minerals, magnets, and the weaponization of tradeWhat's the goal of our trade war?The Hormuz of it allThe trade war against China isn't going greatChina's delicate danceTrade war as precursor to kinetic warSome thoughts on robotics and AIBuy How to Win a Trade WarSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the best trade war strategy is to not have a trade war, this seems to no longer be an option. In their new book 'How to Win a Trade War' the goal of Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown is to “… arm you with the knowledge to fight [because] these battles are going to last for a very long time.” Soumaya and Chad join EconoFact Chats to discuss the effects of the rise of China in the world trading system, the policy approaches taken by the United States, the European Union, and other countries, the role of multinational corporations, the intersection of trade and national security, and the efficacy of defensive policies (like limiting dependence on foreign goods) and offensive strategies (like tariffs). Soumaya Keynes is an economics columnist at the Financial Times and host of The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes. Chad Bown is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and served as Chief Economist at the State Department in the Biden administration.

In the United States, inflation is just as high as it is in the European Union—if not higher. Yet it seems to be hurting the American economy much less, according to a report published on Monday by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. So why are Europeans feeling the pain more intensely, and how much higher could prices still go?Production: By Europod, in co-production with the Sphera network.Follow us on:LinkedInInstagramTake your personal data back with Incogni! Use code EUROPOD at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/europod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode unpacks how a major Ebola outbreak in Central Africa exposed critical gaps in global health surveillance and assesses U.S. preparedness for future biological threats.   Host: James M. Lindsay, Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, CFR   Guest: Thomas J. Bollyky, Bloomberg Chair in Global Health; Senior Fellow for International Economics, Law, and Development; and Director of the Global Health Program   We Discuss:   The current state of the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda, and why the case count was already high by the time authorities reported it. Why governments are often slow to report cases during outbreaks, and what delayed reporting may have cost in this instance. Why the WHO has discouraged trade and travel restrictions. How the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO is shaping a more limited response. Whether China is stepping in to fill the global health leadership gap left by U.S. institutional withdrawal. What the politicization of mRNA vaccine technology means for the U.S. ability to respond to future outbreaks that require rapid vaccine deployment. How artificial intelligence creates opportunities to accelerate global health responses, but also introduces new risks like engineered pathogens.   Mentioned on the Episode:   CDC Health Alert: Ebola Disease Outbreak in the DRC and Uganda, May 19, 2026   WHO Disease Outbreak News: Ebola caused by Bundibugyo Virus, DRC and Uganda, May 21, 2026   WHO Declaration of Public Health Emergency of International Concern, May 17, 2026   Bollyky et al., "Assessing COVID-19 pandemic policies and behaviours and their economic and educational trade-offs across US states from Jan 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022: an observational analysis," The Lancet   CDC Mobilizes International Response Following Ebola Disease Outbreak, May 18, 2026   For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President's Inbox at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/presidents-inbox/americas-ebola-preparedness   Opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Conflict in the Middle East has implications that extend far beyond the region itself. For Europe, tensions involving Iran could affect energy markets, international trade, inflation, financial stability, and even the continent's environmental ambitions. Such a conflict could also reshape geopolitical alliances and force governments to reconsider long-standing economic and security dependencies. In this episode of What Matters Today, we explore the potential economic, political, and environmental consequences of a conflict with Iran for Europe. Our guest for this episode is Dominic Rohner, Professor of International Economics here at the Geneva Graduate Institute and a Faculty Associate at the Institute's Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding.

Professor Mark Blyth, Professor of International Economics at Brown University, joins Richard to discuss the influence of the super rich, and whether their displays of wealth are the most brazen that they've ever been.

This episode unpacks how the Marshall Plan transformed postwar Western Europe and why security, allied cooperation, and forward thinking were the real keys to its enduring success.   To mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. declaration of independence, CFR is dedicating a yearlong series of articles, videos, podcasts, events, and special projects that will reflect on two and a half centuries of U.S. foreign policy. Featuring bipartisan voices and expert contributors, the series explores the evolution of America's role in the world and the strategic challenges that lie ahead.   Host: James M. Lindsay, Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, CFR   Guest: Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics, CFR   We Discuss: How the British Empire's rapid collapse in early 1947 forced the United States to assume responsibility for Western European security. What George Marshall's six weeks of negotiations in Moscow revealed about Soviet intentions in Germany and Western Europe. How Marshall deliberately crafted the plan's offer to include the Soviet Union while ensuring Soviet leader Joseph Stalin would reject it. How Congress, controlled by Republicans, was persuaded to support a massive foreign aid program from a Democratic administration. Whether the Marshall Plan's $13 billion actually explains Western Europe's economic recovery in the late 1940s. What role NATO played in making the Marshall Plan work, and why the French and British insisted on security guarantees before cooperating. Why security has to precede economic reconstruction—and what Afghanistan and Iraq  reveal about ignoring that lesson. What Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s 1947 prediction about sustained alliances tells us about the stakes of U.S. foreign policy today.   Mentioned on the Episode:   The 10 Best and Worst Decisions in U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations   Benn Steil, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War   George Kennan's Long Telegram, February 22, 1946   “Sinews of Peace (‘Iron Curtain' Speech).” at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.   Harry Truman, “The Truman Doctrine,” Address to Congress, March 12, 1947   George C. Marshall, Commencement Address at Harvard University June 5, 1947   For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President's Inbox at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/presidents-inbox/america-at-250-the-marshall-plan   Opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

It's 1990. A young staff economist walks into a director's office at the World Bank and says the number he's about to publish is "crazy". The director tells him not to worry about it. The number was the dollar-a-day poverty line. Lant Pritchett, now of LSE, was that economist. More than three decades later, he's still worrying about it. In this week's episode he argues that the dollar-a-day line warped how the world thinks about poverty, by setting the bar so low that we can count billions of deprived people as not poor.In a new paper, co-authored with Martina Viarengo (Graduate Institute, Geneva), their fix isn't to scrap the low line. It's to add a high one as well. They propose a global upper-bound poverty line of $21.50 a day, ten times the extreme-poverty standard, derived from four separate measures of material wellbeing.Above it, you're no longer poor by any reasonable global standard. Below it, you're poor in a sense worth measuring. By that standard, 99% of Pakistan is poor, and almost no one in Denmark is. Should that affect how we think about anti-poverty policy? The research behind this episode:Pritchett, Lant, and Martina Viarengo. Forthcoming. "Raising the Bar: An Inclusive Global Poverty Line." Journal of Development Economics. Available now as a working paper.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Lant Pritchett. 2026. "What the $1-a-day global poverty line gets wrong." VoxDev Talks (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestLant Pritchett is a development economist and Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. He worked at the World Bank from 1988 to 2007 and taught at the Harvard Kennedy School for nearly two decades. His work spans economic growth, state capability, education systems, and labour mobility.The paper is co-authored with Martina Viarengo, Professor of International Economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research spans public policy, labour markets, comparative education, and international migration.Research cited in this episodeThe dollar-a-day poverty line. Created for the World Bank's 1990 World Development Report on poverty and based on the observation that national poverty lines in the poorest countries clustered at a low floor (Ravallion, Datt and van de Walle 1991). Updated for inflation, it now sits at P$2.15 a day in 2017 purchasing power parity. It was only ever meant to mark the lowest a global poverty line could plausibly be, not the line.The focus axiom. A standard property of poverty measures, originating with Amartya Sen (1976), under which changes in the income of anyone above the poverty line do not register in the measure. Pritchett's objection is that this assigns mathematically zero weight to the near-poor; a household just above the line counts the same as a Danish millionaire, namely zero. He calls it an economic bug that became a political feature, because it takes global redistribution off the table.Gresham's law applied to poverty. Pritchett's framing for how the simple headcount displaced richer, distribution-sensitive approaches; bad economics drove out better economics because it was easier to understand. He notes the World Bank of the 1970s was preoccupied with distribution, citing Hollis Chenery and Montek Ahluwalia's Redistribution with Growth (1974), so the idea that economists ignored distribution until poverty measurement arrived is a myth.The two criteria for an upper bound. The proposed line rests on two ideas drawn from the tension between the focus axiom and standard welfare economics. One, material wellbeing achievement; the line sits where a household reaches a standard of living a rich-country citizen would recognise as adequate. Two, near enough satiation; the line sits where the extra wellbeing from another dollar has fallen so low that treating further gains as zero does little violence to reality. At twenty-one and a half dollars the marginal utility of income is roughly three percent of its value at the dollar-a-day line; at the World Bank's current high line of P$6.85 it is still around thirty percent.Four measures of wellbeing. The number is triangulated across an iso-elastic utility function, food shares in consumption (Engel's Law), a household index of six basic conditions drawn from Demographic and Health Survey data, and a cross-national index of basics. The estimates cluster between twenty and forty dollars a day; twenty-one and a half was chosen because it is exactly ten times the dollar-a-day line, a focal point in the same way one dollar was.The six minimal conditions of prosperity. Electricity, improved sanitation, safe water, primary schooling completed by older children, no child dying under five, and no young child malnourished. The test Pritchett applies is whether it would be absurd to call a household prosperous while it lacks one of them.The rich of the poor and the poor of the rich. The tenth percentile in Denmark has higher consumption than the ninetieth percentile in Pakistan or Indonesia. This is why any global line that produces meaningful poverty in rich countries implies poverty rates near one hundred percent across most of the developing world; a point Dani Rodrik (2007) showed is widely misunderstood.The prosperity gap. A distribution-sensitive welfare measure adopted by the World Bank (Kraay et al. 2025) that weights the whole income distribution rather than counting everyone above a threshold as zero. Pritchett offers it, alongside poverty-gap and squared-poverty-gap measures at a higher line, as the practical route to acting on a global upper bound without reducing everything to a single headcount.More VoxDev Talks episodesRethinking evidence and refocusing on growth in development economics, Lant Pritchett on what the problem might be if we rely exclusively on rigorous evidence in development economics as a guide for policy.Rethinking how we measure extreme poverty, Charles Kenny asks: is it time for a new measure of extreme poverty?

As Switzerland prepares to vote on the so-called “No to a Switzerland with 10 million!” initiative on 14 June, questions surrounding immigration, population growth, and Switzerland's relationship with Europe have once again come to the forefront of public debate. Supporters argue that rapid population growth is placing increasing pressure on housing, transport, and public infrastructure, while opponents warn that restricting immigration could weaken the economy and deepen labour shortages in key sectors. In this episode, we explore the economic and political implications of the debate - from the role immigration plays in Switzerland's prosperity to the potential consequences for the country's relationship with the European Union and the future of the bilateral agreements. Our guest is Cédric Tille, Professor of International Economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Head of the Bilateral Assistance and Capacity Building for Central Banks (BCC) Programme, and is a Faculty Associate at the Institute's Centre for Finance and Development.

On this episode of the Trade Guys, Bill and Scott welcome Chad Bown (Reginald Jones Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics) and Soumaya Keynes (Economics Columnist, Financial Times) to discuss the issues raised in their new book, How to Win a Trade War.

“The rules-based system just hasn't worked. China's system is so opaque that you can't see the subsidies. And when you've got China not interested in new rules and the US not interested in a referee, you've got two of the world's biggest actors who aren't on board.” — Soumaya Keynes It would have been nice to get John Maynard Keynes on the show to get his critique of Trump's trade war. But in the long run, we're all dead — even old Maynard. So instead, we found his great-great-niece, Soumaya Keynes — Financial Times columnist and co-author of How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy. Having already appeared on Jon Stewart this week, Soumaya has a bit of Keynesian star quality about her. But she's also a first-rate economist. Her thesis is that the old rules-based trading system that her great-great-uncle helped design after World War II is gone. And it ain't coming back. China's subsidies are so opaque that rules can't be written to constrain them, let alone enforced. The US is no longer willing to submit to a referee. Without the two biggest players, no rules-based system is meaningful. So — now what? Keynes says we must think like a trade warrior. Donald Trump should leverage the tools available — but use them strategically. Trump's error in his second term was not being tough on China while being too tough on everyone else, especially allies like Canada and Mexico. Soumaya Keynes' most contemporary idea might be her most Keynesian one. John Maynard Keynes proposed penalties for countries running large trade surpluses as well as those running deficits — recognising that global imbalances are a two-sided problem. That idea didn't make it into the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. Eighty years later, in equally anxious economic times, his optimistic great-great-niece is reviving it. Five Takeaways •       Can Trade Wars Be Won? Yes, Sometimes: The conventional wisdom: no one wins a trade war. Keynes and Bown agree — in theory. In practice, countries in a weaker position cave. History has examples: France in the late nineteenth century told its trading partners they were renegotiating treaties, and the smaller partners complied. Trump's tariffs in his first term produced concessions. The problem is not that trade wars can't be won. It's that the smaller power's only defence — coordinating with other smaller powers — is extremely hard to sustain. There's always an incentive to cut a deal first. •       China Is the Doper on the Sports Field: Keynes's sharpest analogy: the global trading system is like a sports game that needs rules to ensure a level playing field. China's subsidies — cheap credit, corporate handouts, opaque support for state-linked companies — are the equivalent of performance-enhancing drugs. The problem is that unlike doping in sport, China's subsidies are invisible. You can write a rule saying China won't give these handouts. But you can't verify compliance. And without enforcement, rules are meaningless. The WTO has not solved this. Nothing has solved this. •       Trump Was Right About China, Wrong About Everything Else: Keynes is careful here. She credits Robert Lighthizer in Trump's first term with identifying China as the real problem and building a focused strategy. In the second term, Trump put tariffs on everyone simultaneously — which dissipated leverage, alienated the coalition of allies needed to pressure Beijing, and mixed up the problem of China's subsidies with grievances against Canada, Mexico, and the EU. If you were genuinely tough on China, you wouldn't have put tariffs on everyone. You would have been more targeted. •       The Rules-Based System Is Gone and Isn't Coming Back: Why can't we return to the system Keynes's great-great-uncle helped build? Two reasons. China's subsidies are too opaque to write enforceable rules against. And the US has lost confidence in any international referee — a long and complex story, but the result is that America won't submit to neutral adjudication. Without the two biggest players, no rules-based system is meaningful. Yearning for the old approach is not an option. A new strategy is needed — and that's what the book is about. •       AI and the Next Trade War: Services: AI is central to the US-China conflict already — chip restrictions, military advantage, economic supremacy. But Keynes's less-noticed observation: AI could fundamentally reshape international services trade. The UK, for example, is a massive services exporter — finance, legal, consulting, accounting. If AI eliminates demand for those services, the UK faces a new current account crisis, new trade tensions, a new wave of economic conflict. Nobody knows how this plays out. Which is why, she suggests, the tools in the book will remain relevant for longer than the current tariff cycle. About the Guests Soumaya Keynes is an economics columnist at the Financial Times and host of The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes. Before joining the FT she spent eight years at The Economist. She co-founded the Trade Talks podcast with Chad Bown during Trump's first term. Chad P. Bown is the Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former Chief Economist at the US State Department under President Biden. Together they are the authors of How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy (Simon & Schuster, May 26, 2026). References: •       How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy by Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown (Simon & Schuster, May 26, 2026). •       Soumaya Keynes on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, May 19, 2026 — referenced in the interview. •       Episode 2892: Jason Pack on the Iran war — the companion episode on America's strategic distractions from the China problem. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouT...

India's growth numbers shape how we understand everything from jobs to investment to global standing. But what if those numbers don't tell the full story?  New research suggests India may have both underestimated and overestimated growth at different moments over the past two decades. That insight opens the door to a broader conversation about India's macroeconomic choices, from exchange rate policy to electricity pricing to the quiet persistence of trade barriers. To discuss these issues and many more, Abhishek Anand joins Milan on the podcast this week. Abhishek is the Founder and Managing Director of Insignia Policy Research and a Visiting Fellow at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. He's previously worked as an Economist at the World Bank and was a member of the Indian Economic Service, working in key positions throughout the Indian Ministry of Finance. Together, with Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman, Abhishek is the author of a new working paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics titled “India's 20 Years of GDP Misestimation: New Evidence.”  Abhishek and Milan discuss the controversy over India's GDP estimates, important reforms within India's statistics ministry, and the debate over the Reserve Bank of India's policies to defend the rupee. Plus, the two discuss Abhishek's work on power sector reform and the embrace of non-tariff barriers that stymie the spirit of India's new bilateral trade agreements. Episode notes: Abhishek Anand, Josh Felman, and Arvind Subramanian, “India's 20 years of GDP misestimation: New evidence,” Peterson Institute of International Economics Working Paper 26-3, March 2026. Abhishek Anand, Arvind Subramanian, and Josh Felman, “How GDP data misread the economy, complicated policy,” Indian Express, March 14, 2026. Abhishek Anand and Naveen Thomas, “Free Trade on Paper, Protection in Practice: How India's Policy Interventions Hollow Out Trade Liberalisation,” O.P. Jindal Global University, January 2026. Abhishek Anand, Arvind Subramanian, and Josh Felman, “Going forward, RBI's rupee policy must not repeat errors of recent history,” Indian Express, December 29, 2025. Abhishek Anand, Praveen Ravi, Navneeraj Sharma, and Arvind Subramanian, “To help India's economy, unleash the power sector,” Indian Express, August 27, 2025.

Beijing said on Monday that it was ready to work with the United States to expand cooperation, manage differences and inject more stability and certainty into a turbulent and changing world as it confirmed that US President Donald Trump will pay a three-day state visit to China starting from Wednesday.According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, President Xi Jinping will hold in-depth exchanges with Trump on issues concerning China-US relations as well as major issues related to world peace and development.The visit will mark Trump's first trip to China during his second term in office and the first visit to China by a US president in nine years.Noting that head-of-state diplomacy has played an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-US relations, Guo told a regular press briefing that China is willing to work with the US in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit to expand cooperation, manage differences and provide more stability and certainty for a transforming and volatile world.Since Trump secured re-election in November 2024, the two heads of state have spoken five times over the phone and held one face-to-face meeting, maintaining regular communication as Beijing and Washington seek to keep bilateral relations on a stable track.Speaking on a television program on Sunday, Trump said that he was looking forward to visiting China again and believed the upcoming trip would be "amazing", adding that his relationship with President Xi was "very good".Su Xiaohui, deputy director of the Department for American Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said head-of-state diplomacy has consistently served as the "anchor" of China-US relations.Direct communication between the two leaders, she said, can help both sides better understand each other's intentions, avoid miscalculation, grasp the overall direction of bilateral ties and explore ways to build a relationship that is strategic, constructive and stable.Diao Daming, a professor at Renmin University of China, said that given the complexity of China-US relations, the significance of Trump's visit lies not in resolving all issues at once, but in whether the two sides can use top-level communication to address each other's concerns and send more positive signals to the world.Washington should view China objectively, develop a rational perception of China and work with Beijing in the same direction, rather than approach bilateral ties from a position of strength, he added.Diao said that both sides should expand areas of cooperation, reduce the list of problems, and ensure that economic and trade ties continue to serve as a ballast and driver of bilateral relations rather than a source of friction and conflict.Regarding the technological landscape, experts have pointed out a current "truce" that offers a window for structured dialogue.Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said during an event last week that "the technology front looks relatively calm compared to past administrations".Chorzempa suggested that high-level engagement could help cement this atmosphere, noting that many restrictive measures have been "walked back or paused" over the last year as both nations seek to avoid further escalation.Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, told China Daily that extending the trade and technology truces established at earlier high-level meetings remains a top priority.He suggested that setting a clear framework for conversation is vital for creating a stable environment throughout the current administrative terms. He added that artificial intelligence has emerged as a significant area where both nations recognize a mutual interest in risk management.Scott Kennedy, senior advisor and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said during a news briefing earlier that the current trajectory reflects a period of relative confidence. He said that as the two sides prepare for senior-level dialogues, "China has the right to be confident that they are doing very well bilaterally". He added that as long as the trajectory remains stable, the outcome favors bilateral health.While both sides are seeking to expand cooperation, managing differences and sensitive issues — particularly the Taiwan question — is also expected to be high on the agenda.During a phone conversation with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in late April, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the Taiwan question concerns China's core interests and remains the biggest risk in China-US relations. He urged Washington to honor its commitments, make the right choice and create new space for bilateral cooperation while making due efforts for world peace.Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that stability in the overall relationship is predicated on mutual understanding. Referring to official positions, Lin pointed out that fulfilling international obligations on this question is viewed as "a necessary prerequisite for the stable, sound and sustainable development of China-US relations". Experts suggest that maintaining clear communication on these foundational concerns remains essential for avoiding miscalculations.

Prediction markets have grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. This episode asks whether they are powerful forecasting tools or gambling platforms in disguise—and what their rise means for how risk and information are priced.    Hosts:    Rebecca Patterson, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)   Sebastian Mallaby, Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)   Guest:    Christy Goldsmith Romero, Former Commissioner, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)   We discuss: How prediction markets are turning the world into a “casino” where you can bet on almost anything, from elections and geopolitics to sports and niche events. The evolution of prediction markets from academic tools to mainstream platforms shaping finance, politics, and culture. Why these markets sometimes outperform polls, where they fall short, and how they blur the line between forecasting and entertainment-driven gambling. As Rebecca Patterson asks: “Are these markets actually useful, or are they just gambling dressed up as forecasting?” The legal gray areas that are allowing prediction markets to expand so quickly and the growing risk of manipulation and insider bets. An anecdote from France, where someone allegedly tampered with a weather sensor to manipulate the outcome of a prediction market bet. How governments and regulators are struggling to keep up. Whether these markets truly reflect the “wisdom of crowds” or just loud, well-funded players.   Mentioned on the Episode:    Anthony M. Diercks, Jared Dean Katz, and Jonathan H. Wright, “Kalshi and the Rise of Macro Markets,” Federal Reserve Board   “The Future of Financial Services Regulation: A Conversation with CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero,” Brookings Institution    Adam Hoffer and Jacob Macumber-Rosin, “Expanded Sports Betting Legalization Would Generate Billions in Tax Revenue,” Tax Foundation   Andy Serwer, “Charles Schwab CEO Explains Why Investing Works—and Gambling Doesn't,” Barron's   Want to keep up with The Spillover? Sign up to receive an email alert when new episodes are released.   The Spillover is a production of the Council on Foreign Relations. The opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the hosts and guests, not of the Council, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Fuller Consulting Principal Bryan Fuller is a reinsurance and insurance regulatory consultant with more than 30 years of specialized experience for U.S. insurance regulators and international financial institutions. He holds a BS in International Economics from Georgetown University and professional designations as a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), Associate in Reinsurance (ARe), Accredited Insurance Examiner (AIE), and Market Conduct Management (MCM). He is active in the CPCU Society (former Kansas City Chapter President) and currently serves on the Reinsurance and Excess Surplus Lines Interest Group Committee, the International Association of Insurance Receivers, the Society of Financial Examiners, and the Insurance Regulatory Examiners Society. In this episode of In the Know, Chris Hampshire and Bryan discuss his career in reinsurance and consulting across both the domestic and international spectrum.   Key Takeaways Bryan was first interested in international economics. Working in a small company fast-tracked his insurance career. Bryan's decision to transition to consulting work. The benefit of a CPCU designation in generating new business. Value points of the CPCU designation. The current state of reinsurance. A five-year look to the future of the reinsurance sector. Bryan's collaborative advice to his early-career self.   In the Know podcast theme music written and performed by James Jones, CPCU, and Kole Shuda of the band If-Then.   To learn more about the CPCU Society, its membership, and educational offerings, tools, and programs, please visit CPCUSociety.org.   Follow the CPCU Society on social media: X (Twitter): @CPCUSociety Facebook: @CPCUSociety LinkedIn: @The Institutes CPCU Society Instagram: @the_cpcu_society   Quotes "There are risks with any work, and you always have to manage the risks." "Networking is a key part of getting new business, and the CPCU designation certainly helps with that." "You never know how old coworkers will come back into your career." "Whatever the technology threshold is, we keep getting closer and closer to that line."

In 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao warned that China's growth model was unbalanced between supply and demand, over-reliant on investment and exports. More than 20 years later, the imbalance is smaller — but China is vastly larger. What its economy produces and exports now moves global markets. The argument about China's external surplus is no longer just a spat between Beijing and Washington.Yiping Huang, Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and Bruegel, examining China's structural imbalances from the inside. His argument: the same policies that powered 45 years of growth also suppressed household income and consumption. Factor market distortions, especially artificially low interest rates, kept the cost of capital down and subsidised state-owned enterprises; decentralised GDP-target competition pushed local governments toward investment and industrial expansion rather than services and household support.The result was a powerful supply side with a persistently weak domestic demand side. When you produce more than you can sell at home and you are a small economy, you export the rest. When you are the world's second largest economy, the world notices. China's consumption share of GDP rose from around 50% in 2010 to 57% in 2024, still well below the mid-seventies average of comparable economies, and two fresh crises complicate the path. The property market has been contracting since mid-2021 and it is now a drag on local government finances, household wealth, and bank balance sheets. Local government subsidies have created overcapacity in new industries such as electric vehicles and batteries. Huang's conclusion is that rebalancing is necessary and achievable, but it requires the government stepping back from direct resource allocation, the private sector and market taking on larger roles in innovation, and a significant strengthening of social protection to give households both the income and the confidence to spend.The report discussed in this series of episodes:Rey, Hélène, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (eds). 2026. The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. Free to download at cepr.org.The chapter discussed in this episode:Huang, Yiping. 2026. "Rebalancing of the Chinese economy: Challenges and policy options." In Rey, Weder di Mauro, and Zettelmeyer (eds), The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Yiping Huang. 2026. “Rebalancing the Chinese Economy”. VoxTalks Economics (podcast).Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Paris Report 4The fourth Paris Report, The New Global Imbalances, is a joint publication of CEPR and Bruegel. It was edited by Hélène Rey (London Business School and CEPR), Beatrice Weder di Mauro (Geneva Graduate Institute and CEPR, and President of CEPR), and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (Bruegel and CEPR). The report examines how, in a high-debt and fragmented world, excess savings, rising surpluses, and rising deficits pose a risk to stability and undermine the global trading system. It is free to download at cepr.org.About the guestYiping Huang is Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University. [verify URL before publishing] He is one of China's leading macroeconomists, with research spanning China's economic transition, financial reform, and the political economy of development. He has advised Chinese policymakers and international institutions including the IMF and the Asian Development Bank on issues of growth, financial reform, and structural change.Research cited in this episodeAsymmetric liberalization is Yiping Huang's term for the approach China took when reforming its economy from the 1980s onward. Rather than the shock therapy adopted by former Soviet economies — privatising state-owned enterprises overnight and hoping markets would fill the gap — China used a dual-track approach. It opened the economy to private firms and foreign investors while maintaining state-owned enterprises in parallel, accepting some inefficiency in exchange for stability in output, employment, and growth. To subsidise the SOEs without direct fiscal transfers, the government kept factor markets, particularly financial markets, partially distorted: deposit and lending rates were held below market-clearing levels, reducing funding costs and effectively transferring income from savers and households to producers. The result was a very strong supply side and a structurally weak domestic demand side, which Huang identifies as the root cause of China's persistent external surpluses.Involution (Chinese: 内卷, nèijuǎn) is a term in wide use in China to describe a particular form of competitive overextension: effort that intensifies without producing proportional gains in quality, efficiency, or welfare. In the economic policy context Huang uses it, involution refers to the overcapacity problem in China's newer industries, including electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels. Local governments, motivated by GDP targets and decentralised competition, have subsidised capacity expansion in these sectors without requiring corresponding advances in technology or product quality. The result is high-volume, low-margin competition that can suppress prices globally while leaving firms unable to earn sustainable returns domestically. Huang distinguishes this from the property market crisis, which has a different structure and cause.New quality productive forces is the term used in China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026 to 2030) to describe the supply-side transformation the government is aiming for: a shift away from labour-intensive, low-value-added manufacturing toward high-technology, innovation-driven sectors. It reflects the recognition that the industries China dominated in its first decades of reform — low-cost assembly, commodity manufacturing — are no longer competitive given rising domestic wages and costs, and that the next stage of growth has to be driven by productivity and technology rather than factor accumulation.The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026 to 2030) is China's current medium-term planning document. Huang identifies two key anchors: the development of new quality productive forces on the supply side, and a shift toward domestic demand — particularly private consumption — on the demand side. The plan signals a different role for government, more focused on providing social infrastructure, basic research, and protection for households, and less focused on direct resource allocation and industrial project selection. Huang describes the two anchors as a circuit: if supply-side innovation and demand-side consumption can be connected efficiently, the Chinese economy can sustain growth for much longer without relying on external demand.The Japan comparison is used by Huang to set expectations for China's consumption rebalancing. Japan's private consumption share of GDP was at its lowest in 1970 and did not reach the average of comparable advanced economies — around the mid-seventies — until around 2010: a process of roughly forty years. China's consumption share is currently around fifty-seven percent, still well below that average. Huang acknowledges the parallel but expresses hope that China can close the gap faster than Japan did; the point of the comparison is that raising household consumption is a structural, decades-long process, not a policy lever that can be pulled in a single plan cycle. It requires sustained growth in household income and improvement in the social safety net to reduce precautionary saving.China's current account surplus peaked at 9.8% of GDP in 2007, immediately before the global financial crisis. Huang notes that significant adjustment has already taken place: the average surplus between 2018 and the mid-2020s was below two percent of GDP, and the investment share of GDP fell from a peak of forty-seven percent in 2011 to forty-one percent in 2024. The surplus rose to 3.7% of GDP in 2024 partly as a result of weak domestic demand following the property market correction. Huang's argument is that the external imbalance and the internal consumption shortfall are the same problem viewed from different angles; fixing one requires fixing the other.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThis is the third episode in our series on Paris Report 4. In the first episode, Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics examines the history of global imbalances and what previous episodes can teach today's policymakers. In the second episode, Gilles Moëc, Chief Economist at AXA, explains why the US government is so keen to promote stablecoins and the risks they may pose to the financial system.For an interview with two of the report's editors, Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, on the problem of global imbalances, listen to The Sound of Economics, Bruegel's podcast. Available at bruegel.org.

This is one of my favorite books over recent years. Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Cocker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations and author of 6 bestselling books. THE INFINITY MACHINE tells the story of AI's progress over the past 15 years largely, but not exclusively, from Demis Hassabis as the protagonist and leader of DeepMind', with its 2010 mission statement to achieve superintelligence by 2030. It's a rich, informative, page turner.What We Discussed:—What is an Infinity Machine?—Influence of Claude Shannon's Information Theory and Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach—Origin of DeepMind in 2010. Prescient. Charter, business plan, included use of agents. How Demis Hassabis was made for the mission!—Contrasts with Sam Altman and the other AI leaders, the Oligopoly (cover of The Economist this week). For example, Nature papers vs white papers on company websites. —In March 2016, the same day when DeepMind's AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, Hassabis says it's time to do protein folding (later known as AlphaFold).—Symbolic AI (historic, deductive, rule-based) vs Deep Learning (Toronto tribe) and Reinforcement Learning (Alberta tribe).—The Big Miss: DeepMind's lack of early recognition of the importance of transformer models (leading to ChatGPT), creating a big opening for OpenAI. And why was this missed? The Comeback Story. Is this happening again with coding (not in the book)?—The AI Arms Race and Hyperscaling—How the complex relationship between Google and DeepMind evolved —The Double Cross —With the dangers anticipated (parallels to Oppenheimer, Manhattan Project, and the atomic bomb), how to promote AI safety?—Is the major build up of data centers justified?Thank you Bob Fleischman, Jeanie, Ruben Max, FelonBroke America, Seitzinator ❌

Three times since the 1970s, global imbalances have grown large. In the 1980s, the US trade deficit ballooned under Volcker's tight money and Reagan's tax cuts and military spending. In the 2000s, a global savings glut and then a US housing credit boom pushed the deficit to 6% of GDP. Today, the imbalances are back. The US current account deficit stood at 3.9% of GDP in 2025. The policy medicine this time: tariffs.Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and CEPR has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and Bruegel, examining that history, how policymakers responded, and what it can tell us about the effectiveness of policy remedies in 2026. He tell Tim Phillips that blaming foreigners misdiagnoses the problem if the US saves too little and invests heavily. The gap has to be financed from abroad. Good policy for the new global imbalances would requires three actors to move together: fiscal consolidation in the US, stronger consumption in China, and more investment in Europe. All three would benefit, none are close to doing it. The longer the can is kicked, Obstfeld warns, the greater the risk that the resolution arrives the way it always has: not through policy, but through crisis.The report discussed in this series of episodes:Rey, Hélène, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (eds). 2026. The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. Free to download at cepr.org.The chapter discussed in this episode:Obstfeld, Maurice. 2026. "Global imbalances redux." In Rey, Weder di Mauro, and Zettelmeyer (eds), The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Maurice Obstfeld. 2026. “Global imballances redux”, VoxTalks Economics (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Paris Report 4The fourth Paris Report, The New Global Imbalances, is a joint publication of CEPR and Bruegel. It was edited by Hélène Rey (London Business School and CEPR), Beatrice Weder di Mauro (Geneva Graduate Institute and CEPR, and President of CEPR), and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (Bruegel and CEPR). The report examines how, in a high-debt and fragmented world, excess savings, rising surpluses, and rising deficits pose a risk to stability and undermine the global trading system. It is free to download at cepr.org.About the guestMaurice Obstfeld is Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Research Fellow of CEPR. He served as Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2015 to 2018. His research spans international finance, exchange rate economics, and macroeconomic policy. He is a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama.Research cited in this episodeThe Plaza Accord (1985) was a joint agreement between the US, West Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan to intervene in foreign exchange markets to depreciate the US dollar. It was negotiated because a surging dollar, driven by Volcker's tight monetary policy and the Reagan fiscal expansion, had pushed the US current account deficit to then-unprecedented levels and created severe competitive pressure on US manufacturing. The accord moved the dollar, but did not resolve the underlying imbalances; those were corrected by German reunification and the Japanese asset bubble, which were not planned by anyone.The Louvre Accord (1987) was a follow-up agreement among the same countries to stabilise the dollar once it had depreciated far enough. Obstfeld uses both episodes to illustrate that exchange rate agreements address the symptom, not the cause, and tend to sidestep the hard political decisions about fiscal policy.The global savings glut hypothesis, associated with Ben Bernanke, holds that rising savings outside the US in the early 2000s, particularly from Asian economies building dollar reserves after the Asian financial crisis and from oil exporters, depressed global interest rates and drove capital into US assets. Obstfeld argues that from around 2002 onward the better explanation is US demand pulling capital in: loose Fed policy, the housing boom, subprime lending, and equity extraction from rising home values all drove US spending higher, and the current account deteriorated as the dollar fell rather than rose.The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is US tax legislation that prevents the expiration of tax cuts that had been written into law, effectively delivering a tax reduction. Obstfeld points out that by lowering national saving it pushes the current account in the opposite direction to what the administration wants, partly undoing whatever modest deficit-reducing effect the tariffs might have through their revenue.The Draghi report and the Letta report are European policy documents calling for deeper integration, more investment, improved competitiveness, and a completion of the EU's capital markets and banking unions. Obstfeld cites them as pointing in the right direction for reducing Europe's current account surplus, alongside the defence spending increases that European countries are now pursuing.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThis episode is the first of two published simultaneously to mark the launch of Paris Report 4. In the second episode, Gilles Moëc, Chief Economist at AXA, explains why the US government is so keen to promote stablecoins and the risks they may pose to the financial system in the US and Europe.For an interview with two of the report's editors, Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, on the problem of global imbalances, listen to The Sound of Economics, Bruegel's podcast. Available at bruegel.org.

A radical macroeconomic experiment is under way at exactly the moment the US external position is showing signs of real stress.Gilles Moëc, Chief Economist at AXA, has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and Bruegel, on stablecoins: what they are, why the US government is so keen to promote them, and what risks they carry. His argument is that stablecoins are a fast-growing digital asset backed almost entirely by short-dated US government debt. When investors buy a dollar stablecoin, they are effectively buying into a US T-bill at zero interest; the platform keeps the yield. The US government likes this because it draws global savings into dollar assets at minimal cost, extending the dollar's reach and helping fund the deficit. But the regulatory framework has a three-year grace period and leaves supervision partly to the states, which compete to attract platforms. And there's the historical parallel: find out how the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 give us an insight into the attraction, and risks, of using stablecoins in this way.The report discussed in this series of episodes:Rey, Hélène, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (eds). 2026. The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. Free to download at cepr.org.The chapter discussed in this episode:Moëc, Gilles. 2026. "Stablecoins and global imbalances: Attempting to preserve the US exorbitant privilege." In Rey, Weder di Mauro, and Zettelmeyer (eds), The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. Chapter 9, p. 210.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Gilles Moëc. 2026. "Stablecoins and Global Imbalances." VoxTalks Economics (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Paris Report 4The fourth Paris Report, The New Global Imbalances, is a joint publication of CEPR and Bruegel. It was edited by Hélène Rey (London Business School and CEPR), Beatrice Weder di Mauro (Geneva Graduate Institute and CEPR, and President of CEPR), and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (Bruegel and CEPR). The report examines how, in a high-debt and fragmented world, excess savings, rising surpluses, and rising deficits pose a risk to stability and undermine the global trading system. It is free to download at cepr.org.About the guestGilles Moëc is Chief Economist at AXA and Head of AXA Research. He previously held senior roles at in the French civil service, Banque de France, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. His research covers macroeconomics, monetary policy, and the European economy.Research cited in this episodeStablecoins are privately issued digital tokens whose value is pegged to an existing fiat currency, typically the dollar, and backed by safe and liquid assets, typically short-dated US Treasury bills. Unlike most cryptocurrencies, they are designed to maintain a stable exchange rate with the pegged currency. Platforms issue the tokens and invest the cash received in T-bills, keeping the interest for themselves; holders receive no yield. Stablecoin platforms may have absorbed roughly twenty to twenty-five percent of net US T-bill issuance.The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins) is the US federal legislation organising the stablecoin market. It requires platforms to hold back-to-back liquid assets as reserves and establishes common minimum standards across states. Regulatory competition across states means platforms can seek the most permissive jurisdiction. European regulation, MiCA, is more detailed and already in force but has not yet generated European platforms.Exorbitant privilege describes the advantage the US gains from issuing the world's dominant reserve currency. For decades, foreigners were content to hold low-yielding dollar assets while Americans invested in higher-returning foreign assets; the result was a positive US income balance despite a large trade deficit. In 2024, for the first time in modern records, the income balance turned negative: the US was paying more on its foreign liabilities than it was earning on its foreign assets. The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 created a system of private national banks that issued dollar banknotes backed by US government bonds. The structure is the closest historical parallel to today's stablecoin framework: private platforms issuing dollar-denominated tokens backed by government debt. The system required over-collateralisation (one hundred and ten dollars of bonds for every one hundred dollars of notes) and included a Treasury backstop. Milton Friedman, in his Monetary History of the United States, identified the key flaw: money supply became tied to the quantity of public debt rather than the needs of the economy. The system was replaced by the Federal Reserve in 1913.De-dollarisation refers to the trend in some countries toward conducting trade and holding reserves in currencies other than the dollar. Moëc notes examples such as Iranian demands for non-dollar payments for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Stablecoins work against this trend by making dollar access easier and cheaper for people in developing countries with weak or distrusted domestic financial systems; rather than buying dollars directly, they can buy a dollar-pegged token through a digital platform. More VoxTalks Economics episodesThis episode is the second of two published simultaneously to mark the launch of Paris Report 4. In the first episode, Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics examines the history of global imbalances and what today's policymakers can learn from previous episodes. For an interview with two of the report's editors, Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, on the problem of global imbalances, listen to The Sound of Economics, Bruegel's podcast. Available at bruegel.org.

Today my guests are Arvind Subramanian and Devesh Kapur. Arvind is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. Devesh is the Starr Foundation Professor of South Asian Studies and Director of the Asia Programs at the Johns Hopkins. They are co-authors of the recent book, A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey. We talked about India's redistributive democracy, why Indian states have taken such different development paths, India's socialism and consequent scarcity, manufacturing challenges, and much more. Recorded February 13th, 2026. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Arvind on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:18) - A Sixth of Humanity (00:06:51) - The Effect of Education on State Development (00:13:39) - Redistributive Democracy in India (00:21:54) - One Democracy, Multiple Outcomes at the State Level (00:36:52) - Tamil Nadu (00:38:01) - The Collapse of Punjab (00:42:12) - Shades of Socialism in India (01:08:00) - Upside-Down State (01:26:36) - Manufacturing (01:46:23) - Outro

Sebastian Mallaby is back as a repeat guest on Open Book, with a brilliant new book. He spent 30 hours inside the mind of the man building superintelligence, and what he found should wake all of us up. We're talking about Demis Hassabis, the chess prodigy-turned-AI god who founded DeepMind before Sam Altman even had the idea for OpenAI. This is one of the most important books I've read in years, and after this conversation, I promise you, you will never think about AI, China, or the future of your kids the same way again. Sebastian Mallaby is the author of several books, including the bestselling More Money Than God. A former Financial Times contributing editor and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. This book must be read at this time: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. Get it here: https://amzn.to/48dShY4 Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://linktr.ee/anthonyscaramucci⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and Sebastian Mallaby discuss why tech leaders both fear and accelerate dangerous AI development, and whether open-source models pose unacceptable risks. Sebastian Mallaby is the author of several books including The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. A former Financial Times contributing editor and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.  In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sebastian Mallaby discuss why AI developers simultaneously fear and advance potentially dangerous technology, whether open-source AI models pose unacceptable security risks, and how China and the United States differ in their approaches to AI safety. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following ⁠⁠⁠this link on your phone⁠⁠⁠. Email: leonora.barclay@persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠Google⁠⁠⁠ X: ⁠⁠⁠@Yascha_Mounk⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠@JoinPersuasion⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠Yascha Mounk⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Persuasion⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠Persuasion Community⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On 2 April 2025, the United States imposed tariffs on almost every country on earth. The next day, China responded with export controls on the entire world. In the space of one week, world trade had been weaponised as it has never been in peacetime.Richard Baldwin of IMD Business School, the founder of VoxEU and a former president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, wrote World War Trade to make sense of the events of the last 12 months. The dramatic April salvos have settled into a trade Cold War; US tariffs and Chinese export controls are lodged in place, with neither side expecting the other to back down. And yet world trade grew in 2025; exports from every country rose except from the US, which recorded its largest trade deficit. The rest of the world is self-organising a new order. When one country joins a rules-based regional agreement, the cost of staying out rises for the next. EU-Mercosur and EU-Australia deals, stalled for years, crossed the line. An expanding CPTPP and early alignment talks between the EU and CPTPP blocs are pulling more partners in. The old system was a cathedral built and maintained largely by the US; the architect burned it down. Something else is being built in its place.The book discussed in this episode:Baldwin, Richard. 2026. World War Trade: Conflict, Containment, and the Emergent World Trading Order. Rapid Response Economics 6. CEPR Press. Free to download from CEPR Press.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Richard Baldwin. 2026. "World War Trade." VoxTalks Economics (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestRichard Baldwin is Professor of International Economics at IMD Business School in Lausanne. He founded VoxEU, the Centre for Economic Policy Research's policy portal, and served as president of CEPR. His research spans trade policy, globalisation, and the political economy of trade; he is one of the architects of modern thinking on global value chains and the "second unbundling" of production. World War Trade is the sixth book in the CEPR Press Rapid Response Economics series.Research cited in this episodeTACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) began as a joke in finance markets as a description of the pattern in which the US president announces aggressive trade measures and then partially or fully reverses them when markets react or negotiations begin. Baldwin argues that financial markets eventually priced in a TACO floor; once they believed Trump would back down before a full market meltdown, they stopped reacting to his escalations as if they were terminal. The dynamic makes tariff threats simultaneously more frequent and less credible.Domino regionalism describes the self-reinforcing logic by which regional trade agreements attract new members. When one economy gains preferential access to a large market, the cost of staying outside that agreement rises for its trading partners; that pressure brings in the next country, which raises the cost for the next, and so on. Baldwin identified this mechanism in the regional trade wave of the 1990s and argues it is now operating again, accelerated by the uncertainty created by US and Chinese trade weapons. The EU-Mercosur deal unblocking was the trigger; EU-Australia followed within weeks.G-0 world is a concept developed by political scientist Ian Bremmer to describe a world in which no single country or group of countries provides consistent global leadership. Baldwin draws on this framework to explain why regional conflicts and trade disputes have become harder to contain since the US began stepping back from its hegemonic role; the trade cold war is one expression of that leadership vacuum, but so is the reduced capacity to broker deals in the Middle East or manage the Black Sea grain corridor.CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) is a rules-based regional trade agreement covering eleven countries across Asia and the Pacific, including Japan, Canada, Australia, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom. It operates without US or Chinese membership and maintains deep disciplines on intellectual property, investment, and trade in services. Baldwin identifies it, alongside the EU, as one of the two main "pools of predictability" around which the new post-war trading order is forming. The two blocs have opened alignment discussions that, if concluded, would bring a very large share of world trade under compatible rules.RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) is a large but shallower regional agreement covering much of Asia, including China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the ten ASEAN nations. It involves Chinese leadership and does not carry the depth of disciplines found in CPTPP. Baldwin notes that it is rules-based and that as long as China plays by those rules it could enlarge; but it has not attracted the same wave of new joiners as CPTPP and the EU framework.The EU Anti-Coercion Instrument is a European Union mechanism, adopted in 2023, allowing the EU to retaliate against third countries that use trade or economic measures to coerce member states into changing their policies. Baldwin cites it as an example of the "building bunkers" response adopted by many economies; rather than retaliating directly against US tariffs, countries are changing their domestic laws to give themselves tools to counter future coercion without breaching WTO rules.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThis is the second time Richard Baldwin has discussed the 2025 trade upheaval on VoxTalks Economics. He appeared alongside Gene Grossman of Princeton in What's Next for Trump's Tariffs, broadcast in January 2026, which covered the seismic moves of 2025 as they were unfolding. 

The TDN is proud to announce the launch of its latest podcast, TDN Business Hour. This month's episode explores the international macroeconomic factors currently shaping the market.

Geopolitical change, product disruption, and technological transformation have all made this the most complicated moment in history to navigate capital markets. CAIA Association spent the last 12 months finding out why. After convening 120 global executives across eight financial centers we're proud to introduce: The World Rewired, a blueprint for the decade ahead. In this episode, we unpack the three structural shifts at its core with four practitioners who were in the room  with us, including Sebastian Mallaby, Stuart Wrigley, Yingwen Chin, and Muneera Aldossary.Guests:Sebastian Mallaby, Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow in International Economics, Council on Foreign RelationsStuart Wrigley, Partner, Head of Asia Pacific and Head of Capital Formation and Strategy International, Sixth StreetYingwen Chin, Partner - Private Markets IDD, Albourne PartnersMuneera Aldossary, CEO & Board Member, Franklin Templeton, Saudi ArabiaEpisode Sources(00:00) Artificial intelligence as a transformational force, with adaptability and curiosity as enduring traits of successful investors.(01:36) Traditional capital allocation models are becoming outdated amid rapid innovation in products, technology, and investment approaches.(06:40) Global roundtables with industry leaders reveal interconnected themes pointing to a systemic rewiring of capital markets.(18:28) Introduction of three major shifts: macro (geopolitics), industry (market convergence), and organizational (talent and AI).(18:28) Geopolitics moves from background noise to a central driver of capital flows and investment decision-making.(25:45) Geopolitical considerations become embedded in underwriting, with firms building internal expertise and advisory capabilities.(30:22) Long-duration investments such as venture capital and infrastructure require deeper integration of political and regulatory analysis.(35:05) Emergence of new centers of capital, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, driven by sovereign wealth funds.(40:42) Growing debate around US exceptionalism and the potential for a more multipolar global financial system.(46:58) The convergence of public and private markets reshapes investment access, structures, and asset class boundaries.(49:43) Rapid product innovation raises concerns around investor education, alignment, and long-term suitability.(55:34) Industry consolidation and the rise of multi-strategy platforms alter competition and access to top-tier opportunities.(01:02:12) Organizational shifts driven by technology redistribute tasks and reshape roles within investment firms.(01:06:09) Adaptability, intellectual curiosity, and cross-disciplinary thinking emerge as critical traits for investment professionals.(01:09:53) Concerns around AI reducing critical thinking and eliminating traditional entry-level training pathways.(01:13:40) AI impacts all levels of the workforce, increasing the importance of judgment, relationships, and credibility.(01:18:34) Shift from technical skill-based training toward systems thinking, communication, and leadership capabilities

On this episode, Watson School Dean and economist John Friedman talks with economist Sebnem Kalemli Ozcan about how U.S. economic policy in the last year has changed the American economy, how those changes have rippled throughout the global economic and financial system, and what it means for America's place in a rapidly evolving international order.Sebnem Kalemli Ozcan is a professor of economics at Brown and the director of the Global Linkages Lab, a collaborative research hub dedicated to deepening our understanding of globalization. Starting in July, she'll also be serving as the director of the Watson School's Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance.John Friedman is Vascellaro Family Dean of the Watson School, and Briger Family Distinguished Professor of Economics and International and Public AffairsTranscript coming soon to our website.Watch this episode of Trending Globally on YouTube.

This is Episode 2 of our sub-series "Environmental Issues along the Belt and Road."The series considers the complexities of Chinese actors' impacts on the environment, extractive activities, and role in driving sustainability solutions from the sands of the Mekong River to lithium mines in Argentina. Since 2012, China has invested roughly US$4 billion in 12 nickel projects across Southeast Asia, with a major focus on Indonesia, which supplies 16% of global nickel production. In South America, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina— known as the Lithium Triangle—together hold over 54% of the world's lithium reserves beneath their salt flats as of 2024, and China is the only country to have signed agreements with all three. In this episode, we explore what makes minerals “critical” to the energy transition, how China's long-term industrial strategy and geopolitical struggles has (re)shaped global critical mineral supply chains, and, through cases of Indonesian nickel and lithium in Argentina, how stakeholders in producer countries navigate trade-offs between economic development, sovereignty, & environmental and social impacts.We interview 4 experts: Dr. Jing Li is a professor at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business and holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Investment Strategy. She also serves as the Co-Director of the Jack Austin Center for Asia Pacific Business Studies. Her research explores international investment strategies, joint ventures, emerging market firms, innovation in emerging economies, & the behavior and performance of state-owned enterprises. Related reading here, here & here.Dr. Anastasia Ufimtseva is the Senior Program Manager for International Trade and Investment at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Global Governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, with a specialization in international political economy. Her research explores global energy governance, trade & investment, the political economy of natural resources, & international development, with a focus on Asia. Related reading here & here. Muhammad Habib Abiyan Dzakwan (Zahwan) is a researcher at the Department of International Relations, CSIS Indonesia. He holds an MA in International Economics and General International Relations from SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. His research areas cover sustainable development, critical minerals, & emerging technologies. Related reading here, here & here. Thanks for listening! Follow us on BlueSky @beltandroadpod.blsk.social

EXTENDED VERSION! Brooke spoke to Mark Blyth, professor of International Economics and Public Affairs at Brown University, to talk about what the headlines are missing in the Department of Justice's investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, and why we need to know the trending politics of central banks around the globe.  On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation against the Federal Reserve and its chairman. On this week's On the Media, hear how the Trump administration's pressure campaign plays into a larger trend chipping away at central banks. Plus, how a teacher in Russia stood up to Putin's propaganda.[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone sits down with Mark Blyth, professor of International Economics and Public Affairs at Brown University, to talk about what the headlines are missing in the Department of Justice's investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, and why we need to know the trending politics of central banks around the globe. [16:50] Brooke Gladstone talks with Pasha Talankin, star and co-creator of the new documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Pasha is a high school teacher who made an incredibly vivid and detailed account of Putin's efforts to indoctrinate schoolchildren in Russia. [36:51] Brooke continues her conversation about Mr. Nobody Against Putin with David Borenstein, the film's co-director.  Further reading / watching:Mr Nobody is screening on Jan 21 at the Independent Film Center in New York before expanding to select theaters in the U.S. and Canada. On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.