Martin Wolf on Trump's Shakeup of the Global Order | Odd Lots

[Music] Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio, news. [Music] [Applause] Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLots podcast. I'm Tracy Aloway and I'm Joe Wisenthal. Joe, we're here in London. Still in London. Still in London. It's been interesting. I think I've mentioned so I obviously I went to University here, got my first job here, first at Bloomberg. I left very quickly and joined the FT and I was here for like 10 years and met my husband here. So I've just been walking around the city this week just feeling very nostalgic about everything. This is a

very weird time to be in London. For one thing, I have to say like the whole time zone thing really messes me up. And like I'm like, you know, the concept of time zone still blows my mind a little bit. As an American, I'm not surprised to hear you say the most obvious. It's like I can't believe the market's still open. But also, you know, we're in a time where changing perceptions towards the US are a big story. And normally, if I'm being honest, if I can be a sort of rude American for a moment,

always, Joe, global perceptions of the US are not typically a very big deal to me. They're not something that I think about very often, except in so far as we're in a Period where our president claims to want to be doing trade deals with the rest of the world, at which point these elected leaders around the world have domestic constituencies that they have to be accountable to. And as such, perhaps we're at a period where perceptions of the US actually substantively matter. Well, here's the other thing I was thinking about. I was walking past my

old university and I was thinking both you and I did International relations. Yeah. And I was thinking how amazingly irrelevant that degree has become. And I was thinking back to the reading list we had in the early 2000s about like implementing globalization and globalization colon the way forward and things like that. So much of that just feels completely off the table at this moment. All these like these hopes for like various multilateral agreements and we're going to sign and now but now the plan is to Sign, you know, bilateral agreements with 70 different nations in

90 days. While insulting them on a daily basis while insulting them. I mean, come on. Okay, so I'm trying to unify all these different themes. my former employer, the future of globalization, the fact that we're here in London at a time when Europe US relationships really seem to be in the gutter in many ways. So, we have the perfect guest. We do have the perfect guest. Truly the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Martin Wolf. He is, of course, the chief economics commentator over at the FT. Sometimes described as the most important economics

commentator in Britain, which given that the UK exports a lot of commentators, is really saying something. also the author of a book on globalization of course although as I understand it your feelings have evolved over the years. So Martin welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on. It's A pleasure to be here in beautiful London which feels very pleasingly away from the US. Yes I yes I we're setting the tone for the conversation. Is it amazing to be an economics commentator in the current environment in or is it incredibly depressing in the sense

that you know we're seeing a lot of new and interesting ideas. I'm doing air quotes although I'm on a podcast. New and interesting ideas coming out of certain administrations about how economics Works and how it could theoretically work and at the same time you're seeing the tearing down of a lot of established norms and principles from traditional economics. There's a lot to write about. Yes, this was a question that a lot of people asked me during the financial crisis when it was really at its worst and very very frightening which is in a very different

way the closest to what in my professional career to what we're experiencing now. My answer used to be I Divide myself into two people as a economist and commentator it was the best period of my life as a father and a grandpar grandfather. It terrified the wits out of me and I would say the same now but probably even more so. Wow. By the way, the this is kind of like me and Tracy except Tracy is the side of you that I fully embody the anxiousness and Joe is basically the exhilaration that things are happening.

Well, I said this in a recent interview like I just get so Excited. I just love seeing the line and I feel like I wanted wish I'm taking a moment to hedge that. I actually do have a person side. I am not just someone who stares at a screen all day and I do genuinely care about the actual sort of health of the world. The fact that you feel you have to announce that publicly is slightly worrying Joe, but good. It's good to know. You know, there's a part of me that thinks this is a

bigger story in many respects than the great Financial crisis. Because in retrospect, although the great financial crisis or the global I forget what we call it, global financial crisis was enormous and maybe once in a century, it was a very big bank run. And bank runs happen from time to time. They're not that unusual and there's a playbook and you backs stop the banks and you do some Keynesian fiscal policies. This feels like to me right now something that could metastasize into a truly bigger story in Terms of the lasting imprint it has on the

world. I think that's very plausible now. During the financial crisis, I didn't view it quite this way. because I know a lot of economic history and not least because my parents were from continental Europe and escaped from the most obvious consequence of the great financial crash which was the great depression and Hitler. In history, we have mostly survived huge financial crises, but sometimes people don't deal With the bankrum. And the most famous case obviously in history was what happened in the 30s. And it led the Federal Reserve completely failed to deal with it in any

sensible way. And it led to the Great Depression, which was the biggest economic downturn in sort of modern history of the last two centuries. And that led absolutely clearly, it's a theme of one of my books or part of the theme of one of my books to the election of Adolf Hitler. And That led to certain other events like World War II and the death of 60 million people and so forth. So during the financial crisis, I was really frightened. Now that we they did do the sensible things, all the things I wrote at the

time they should do. So I feel very happy about that. They went back to Walter Bach who knew how to deal with these things and that seemed fine. Now, right now, I would agree with you. Certainly, this is a bigger event Because it's a fun fundamental undoing of the world economic order as created after the second world war. It is, I think, also in the backdrop, a fundamental remaking of the American republic. And right now of course it involves a because it's both of these and because of the extraordinary role the US has played in

the world since the second world war since 41 really with Pearl Harbor it really means a remaking of the entire world order. So we right Now I think the most important thing that I say when anybody asks me what's going to happen next is I really don't know because nobody can. M since you brought up the economic policy of the 1930s and since Joe is currently reading Adam Tus's wages of destruction and everyone who has interacted with Joe over the past two weeks has heard me talk about aware that you are reading about that's what

I do I tell everyone what books I'm reading Adam owes you a Commission at this point because you are literally like hi I'm Joseph Eisenthal have you read the good book of wages of destruction like this is Joe right now talk to us a little bit more about any parallels you're seeing between the current econom eomic environment or I guess the grievances felt by American policy makers versus what we saw in the 1930s. I think that what is striking to me is the differences. I do argue in the book I wrote the crisis of democratic

Capitalism which you certainly should read. It's on the list is is this idea that the global financial crisis was a very big shock. It had uh quite long lasting effects, notably so in the US. And I argue in that book that one of the reasons, probably the main reasons that the Republicans party when they start realizing what had happened shifted from Mitt Romney to Donald Trump as their candidate, which was an enormous revolutionary change, is that that shock Had as it percolated through helped a very large number of relatively conservative middleclass Americans feel that this

Reaganite stuff about free markets and so forth was to put it bluntly crap because these people had led them down the path and they wanted somebody who embodied their ideology their attitudes very reactionary ones in my view but not with that economic baggage and Trump was the perfect person so in that sense I do think the global Financial crisis and it's a theme of my book it's not the only reason de-industrialization and other themes which Trump plays with are also important and I have a long discussion of that going back to the 70s but the

That big shock I think played a very big part in shifting the Republican party in the populist nationalist direction and that's of course why we are where we are now. So in that sense I think there is a link but of course and this is the Contrast the for the reasons we've discussed in the end the policy makers involved basically under the Obama administration many of whom I of course know some of them are quite good friends they did manage it in the way it wasn't managed in the 30s so there was a fairly quick

recovery the financial sector was put back on its feet though with an immense amount of federal support and the economies recovered And what is striking about this revolutionary moment In economic policy we're seeing it is I think sort of unique and I don't fully understand it depresses me because but I have to admit it the American economy has done better than any other developed country since the pandemic. The pandemic was a shock but it's motoring. Real incomes have been rising rapidly. The jobs performance was exceptional. Now that's about as far as Germany in the 33s

you can imagine when unemployment was 25% and it was not much of a welfare State. So the economic explanation in the classic sense doesn't really work. I've been thinking about exactly this because I have been reading Adam D's wage of wages of destruction which is that Martin send him a copy of your book and he will do the same for you. Yeah, I'll plug it for two or three straight weeks. But the only time that I, you know, I have very mixed feelings about all of this because look, I'm in these wonderful Bloomberg offices and

I'm Staying in a nice hotel and I have a job where I get to type for a living. But like America is an incredibly rich country and I always think you know the distribution of financial assets in the United States is as everyone knows extremely skewed to say like the top 1% or whatever but the actual distribution of real resources when you look at the size of American houses when you look at the number of people have cars when you look at the size of American Refrigerators with ice machines that typically work. America is a

extraordinarily wealthy country for a wide swath of the population. And so when I read history in that respect, it doesn't read at all to me like the actual real economic conditions that I would have say associate with the 1930s. I think that's absolutely right. Of course it isn't. And that's created a puzzle. Nonetheless, it seemed pretty clear and I referred to quite a bit of Literature on that in my book that It's not surprising. People are very very concerned about their relative positions. People are very very concerned about their security, their sense of security in

their positions. And those anxieties are often related not just with their economic positions, but also more broadly with their cultural positions. And you know, America is a country that's gone through some big revolutionary changes. De-industrialization, for example, is real. That's a transformation of many, many communities. The push for gender and racial equality is real and it clearly runs up against anxieties and hostility. That was also very, very real. The new economy, well, you're absolutely right. Clearly right, but it's still true. When I go through America and on many occasions I've hired a car and gone

across the country to places like Eerie, Northern California, Way far north. There are lots of poor people in America and most Americans that I know don't see them because they fly over them and but I've actually driven across it. There are lots of poor people and people are frightened of ending up there in my view. They they have a sense, you know, I'm one real hospital medical problem away from bankruptcy. So I think there is in an insecurity and anxiety which comes up with these cultural and economic things Mixed up to which Trump addresses his

appeal perfectly. He's the perfect populist for America. And one of the things I've learned, which is new, because I've never lived through a with a a political demagogue like this, how incredibly good a brilliant demagogue is at exploiting those resentments and offering himself up as the solution to all this. And that's the way I would now see this. Speaking of resentments, I mean it does seem if we zoom out on an International scale, so away from the domestic US economy, it does seem like the Trump administration's major grievance is this idea that the US hasn't

been compensated enough for its role in the international financial system and the fact that the dollar is a reserve currency and all of that. And it's very difficult for me to wrap my head around that particular position. Like I understand there are downsides and upsides to that special status, but The Trump administration seems really committed to the idea that this is a giant burden being carried by the United States. What are your thoughts on that particular argument? Like how true is that or like what are the actual downsides? And then secondly, what do you think

of some of their policy proposals where they're trying to attend to this issue and I guess alleviate some of their complaints? Well, what's particularly puzzling about The position they've adopted is that while they do think it's a terrible burden, they want to cling on to it with all possible might. I mean, the people who made the most sort of sophisticated analyses of this, and that's obviously not Donald Trump, Steven Miran, he's a chairman of Council of Economic Advisors, sort of make it clear. We want to get rid of all the costs. We'll come to that

in a moment. But we definitely want to make the keep the dollar as the World's dominant currency. Have our cake. They really want to have their cake and eat it. Well, this is get is really quite complicated with the right answer is half an hour which we don't have. So the summary of it the argument about whether the dollar is a bur burden or a privilege has really been going on since the 60s and it's when I started studying economics. So I'm very familiar with it and it led to the first attempt to readjust the

cost of this which has The closest parallels to what we are seeing now which is Nixon under Nixon the Nixon shock of 71 when he basically tried to get the dollar devalued sounds familiar right I mean that's what they're one of the things they're trying to do is to get everybody to appreciate their currencies against the dollar and the reason they needed to get the dollar devalued is then is they had a fixed exchange rate system. Obviously not the situation now. The dollar was tied to Gold. Dollar the monetary policy of the US in no

way represented what you should do if you're on the gold standard. They one of my constant points is that lots of people say going off gold in 71 was the worst thing that ever happened. But my argument is that the US was never really on gold. We can discuss that if you want. It's rather remote from this. But the key point is he imposed import search charges. Sounds familiar. And he told them those will remain until you Revalue your currencies. And uh indeed they did get them revalued. John Connelly the Treasury Secretary famously said the

dollar is our currency and your problem. And so he sorted this out as it were and that ended up in the re regime of generalized floating. So the US got its way but after that no real effort was made to readjust it. What is true for reasons that are linked to the Asian financial crisis of the late '9s after a lot I won't go through the Plaza to the L simply because because that's part of you can if you want well it's part of the story of course another period of similar problem arose there are

two two other periods when this problem reared the excessive appreciation of the dollar from the American sense and the sense that was leading to uncompetitiveness and that affected important parts of the economy and something had to be done about it. And so that was Nixon was the first one. The second one was the Reagan era and he introduced has some similarities with subsequent developments, more recent developments. He had Paul Vulkar running the Fed. So hypertight monetary policy and a floating exchange rate and a big fiscal expansion, right? Tax cuts. The combination of very aggressive fiscal

expansion, tight monetary policy is a classic combination in economics to lead to an appreciation of the real exchange rate. And it did. The trade deficit Exploded. Japanese cars wiped out American cars. There was hysteria about this. The Americans introduced voluntary export restraint or impose them. Bob Lighheiser, interestingly, was a negotiator at that time. It has echoes, doesn't it? and finally got so this created so much protectionist pressure in the United States that the Americans decided that they needed to get the dollar devalued and that was what the Plaza court was about and then two three

Years later I think two years later the louver agreement they decided to stabilize it. So the that was another example of this concern about people want the dollar too much. They I want we want it to be the global currency but we don't want too much demand for dollar. The third episode the more recent one is really very interesting and it's a theme of my previous book the chiffs and the shocks which is about the financial crisis is after the Asian financial Crisis two things which came together happened. First was the explosion of China onto

the world markets and China's massive accumulation of reserves as a byproduct of its determination to keep the remnant be fixed against the dollar and that led to the explosion of the Chinese current account surplus. It reached a peak of 10% of GDP in 2008. And the other thing that happened which went parallel is after the Asian financial crisis. Every trading power in Asia decided we could never let that happen again. And what they thought had happened to them was running a current account deficit, a big trade deficit and borrowing lots of dollars because they discovered

well most of the the dollars they borrowed was from Western banks and mostly American bankers. They ran and they didn't have a central bank that could print dollars. So when it they had a run, they their economies crashed. And so their conclusion was we must Accumulate dollars without limit more or less and run current account surpluses to accu to to accumulate these dollars. Those two things came together and that led to an enormous expansion of the US external deficit and that in my view directly led to the global financial crisis. So these are the three

episodes all around this same problem of the dollar's role and that's not wrong. Now the question is how you manage it. It's not fundamentally a trade policy Problem. Pretty obviously it's a exchange rate competitiveness and macroeconomic policy problem interacted and reasonably sophisticated policy makers who handled the previous episodes. In the end, the president's sort of listened largely to relatively competent economists manage these episodes including most notably the global financial crisis which is the biggest of these episodes. The basic point here is yes management of a global System in which the money in the system which

is the dollar is produced by one country does lead to very significant instabilities which is why intelligent people have thought about this have quite logically said we would have a better economy if we had a world currency but we don't know how to produce a world currency the Europeans created the euro for this reason within Europe. I will won't go into the question of whether it worked. But the Point is there is a problem here. Now the problem is how you manage it without blowing up the system. A trade war with everybody at the same

time won't solve the problem because underneath it it's a currency and macroeconomic policy problem. And I think there this mainly nowadays relates to the role of China in the system. They're not wrong about that. I've written quite a lot about this, but unfortunately the way the US is going about it, I don't see how They're going to get to a resolution. But in the end, the US has to decide. Do we really like having the dollar as the global currency? Of course they do. It gives them enormous power. It makes borrowing much cheaper. It allows

the biggest economy in the world to run ridiculously large fiscal deficits, 6% of GDP at full employment with an explosive debt because everybody is invested in holding dollars. And that gives the American policy makers Spectacular room for maneuver. They can have guns and butter. And they've done it many times. And periodically they get very upset about it, but it's a choice they made after the war. They could stop it, but they would lose an awful lot in the process. So the idea that it's an unambiguous loss to the US, as has just been pointed out,

the US is, despite this terrible burden that they are whining about, an immensely rich and powerful country which can spend more Than its income indefinitely and it's not going to go bankrupt. So from our point of view and particularly speaking as a British person who knows what happened when we lost this all those sterling crises when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s obviously wouldn't were all about losing that very very undesirable because people ran from sterling and we couldn't run fiscal deficits of 6% of GDP we would blow up this trust tried

so I we would say stop Complaining guys you're rich you're fat and your currency is basically safe unless you screw up monstrously. So why are you screwing up monstrously? That's where we are now. Joe, can I just say that was such a treat, Martin Wolf, on the three defining moments of the development of the global like dollar reserve system. Absolutely amazing. That was fantastic. I just have one question. Can you give us like the 30 second version of why we weren't on the gold Standard prior to 1971? Because I think listeners might be curious about

that. Well, okay. Well, that that's very wonkish. the or the 45 the he gave you an additional 15. Well, I'll just I'll just start. The gold standard required a very strong relationship. The I'll go go back really let's go back. The how the gold standard operated was defined by of all people not an economist but David Hume the great Scottish philosopher one of the great geniuses all time in the Middle of the 18th century when he explained very simply imagine gold is your currency. In that stage, gold pretty well was a currency though there was

and so if you ran a balance of payments deficit, you financed your deficit with exports of gold. And what that did is as the gold was disappearing from your you were being demonetized and the money in the economy was shrinking. And so what you had to do is lower your prices because he was a monetarist as All economists were and I still am in some ways. And so prices adjust downwards, it makes you more competitive and that will adjust the balance of payments, it will move into surplus. That's how it's supposed to work. So if

you're on the gold standard properly and you have a currency linked to gold with a fixed price, which sterling had before 1931, well, we won't go into the history of sterling and gold and the US was supposed to have until 71. Then if There's a gold drain uh you're exporting gold to satisfy creditors who accumulating claims upon you your monetary base shrinks. So your monetary policy should tighten automatically and that will introduce deflationary pressure in your economy and your price level will fall and that will equibrate equiliiberate it. So in the late 60s and early

70s, let's take this episode, the US ran a huge current account deficit. And the main reason was they decided to Finance the Vietnam war by increasing the fiscal deficit. So they they created excess demand in the US that created inflationary pressure in the US that went on for quite a long time and a huge current account deficit. But they didn't want to allow the Fed to start tightening monetary policy and deflating the American economy to reduce the price level. They were very happy running these huge current account deficits and that meant of course the rest

of the World was accumulating dollar claims at a very rapid pace particularly the Germans the Japanese and so forth and after a while while they start and France and they started saying we don't want all these dollars we want our real stuff and they started converting their dollars for gold and that's when the drain on Fort Nosk happened and then the US had a very simple choice it was pretty obvious we were discussing it when I was a student in the late 60s, They could ignore this and the gold would disappear and then they would

have to go off gold. They could repric gold, which they didn't want to do because it was a recognition of failure, or they could go off the gold standard. And the one thing they didn't want to do was deflate the economy. That meant they were ignoring the rules of the gold standard. The rules of the gold standard were if you were losing gold, you had to deflate your economy to make it Competitive again by lowering your dollar prices in a fixed rate regime. And at these crucial moments, this crucial moment, they chose not to do

that. So the regime collapsed and in the great depression, by the way, even more important, they failed to do the reverse. At that stage, they had a huge current account surplus. America was very very competitive and the US was of course uh price level was collapsing. So it was becoming even more competitive And that was exporting the depression to the whole world through the gold standard system. And so what the US should have been doing instead of allowing the money money supply to collapse, Freriedman of course wrote classically about this in his book with Anna

Schwarz, they should have been expanding the money supply like crazy. So this was the inverse. That was the first great crisis. What I discussed earlier was the second crisis of the Gold standard in the 20th century. So in the great depression, the US failed to follow gold standard rules which was precisely when they had a huge current account surplus and they had this immensely strong position in uh gold inflow. They were not pursuing massively expansionary monetary policy. On the contrary, they were pursuing massively contractionary monetary policy making it all worse and the price level was

collapsing in the US. So again, they Failed to follow the rules of the gold standard. The US showed itself unlike the UK in the long period it ran the gold standard a country incapable of allowing the foreign position basically the balance of payments to force its monetary policy in directions either expansionary or contractionary. So my view is that the gold standard under the US from the 20s onwards that was basically when it shifted from a sterling base to a dollar-based gold Standard. The US never followed the rules of the gold standard in two colossal episodes

it ignored them. So of course the gold sand had collapsed and all these whining about this again is ridiculous because the US has never had any intention and that's what we're seeing now of allow any international rules agreed rules from actually forcing it to do something it didn't really want to [Music] We could happily just keep asking you questions about, you know, financial history, but since we are in London and there is a lot going on, I feel like I have to ask at least one UK specific question. So, I met with some friends of

mine from university. I've been meeting with them like over the past few days. All of them are professionals, seem to be doing pretty well in their career, but the discussion always ended up centering on salaries and real wages. I Knew the UK had a productivity problem and a real wage problem, but I was surprised to hear the extent of it, at least according to some of my friends. What's going on there? Why has this happened? I think the I like what we've been discussing so far. This is one of the great puzzles. I actually wrote

a column about this very very recently or based on recent work and it's not unique to the UK though I will describe one aspect which is an outlier up to 2008. So from about 1990 to 2008 so after the revolution to 2008 British productivity growth was really pretty strong. So between 1990 and 2008 output per head in the British economy rose by I think it was about 38%. Which is pretty good over a period of 17 years. It was around 2% a year and that was much better than our European peers and quite an notable

improvement of what had happened in the 70s and 80s. So we felt pretty happy. we were Catching up again. Since then, since 2008, output perhead has gone up over the entire period by just a little over 5%. Just think of that contrast. It's dramatic. Now, output perhead in other European countries has not been much better over this period, but they were already doing relatively poorly before 2008. The slowdown in the UK has been greater than anywhere else. Up to 2008 we were doing about as well as the US. And since then we've been in a

different Class. Though it should be said if you look at the whole period since 2008 the US has actually been doing worse than it in the previous period. The US looks so great because everybody else has been doing so badly. So the question is why has this collapse in the UK happened? And I honestly think we can think of lots of possible explanations but we don't fully understand it. it you can't identify it in just one sector though there are some sectors which are Particularly important it seems to have happened in most sectors our investment

rate is very low but it's always been relatively low so it's difficult to say the change there is decisive there are some aspects of the public sector which clearly are important the weakening and decline of the oil and ga the oil and gas sector is important the fact that the financial sector has never been as dynamic as it was before 2007 and is important but the Extent of the decline and what is essentially the loss of dynamism in British capitalism if you just look at the footsie look at the stock market index most of the

companies there are old and sort of dying we don't fully understand it is no doubt that the complete absence of a dynamic technological se high-tech sector is important when you start looking at the detail though and that was very interesting in this column and the work I did in this column is it's pretty clear that an even bigger difference is in the use of technology in the rest of the economy compared with the US. So I think that we can see what's happened. There's been a general loss of dynamism in the private sector, but it's

very difficult to ascribe it to specific policy changes because there really haven't been dramatic ones. We very much the tax regulatory system is much like it was before. So what looks like is That there's sort of just dying and this is sort of a European wide problem and two so and of course if productivity growth disappears real wage growth stops because in the end real wages are incredibly higherly correlated not perfectly with the rate of growth of productivity in the economy. The same is true for the US. If you look at long periods, distribution matters

a little. But I mean, Paul Krumman actually said this once a long time ago, productivity Isn't everything, but it's almost everything. So the basic answer to this question is we know as it were what the approximate cause is, but we don't know why it's happened fully. I have lots of theories, but we don't really know why this has happened. And it's a general European problem to some degree. Also in East Asia, Japan is noticeable. Though actually in the recent past pandemic, post-pandemic period, Japan has done relatively well. Since you mentioned Europe, one of the things

people are getting excited about now is the idea that maybe the tariff war, US isolationist policy is going to be this big catalyst for Europe. And we've seen European mainland stocks certainly go up recently. people are getting excited about. Finally, we're going to have, you know, maybe the prospect of some real fiscal integration or if not real fiscal integration, at least a lot more fiscal spending on Things like defense and stuff like that. Is that a realistic possibility in your view? Well, and it just to support this, even though it's partly an economic shock, which

the Trump administration has given Europe two big shocks, it's created a sort of security panic. Is NATO over? And that was particularly focused on the issue of support for Ukraine and an economic shock which was the proposal in now withdrawn for another 80 odd odd days of penal tariffs 24% I can't remember what exactly the figure for the EU was some somewhere in that range you have the two together this is a crisis so if not now when you if you believe as John Manet one of the great founding fathers of the EU said that

Europe is born in crisis. This is a big crisis. The world order is being transformed and the crucial ally, the country on which we heavily dependent has gone absent as it were, possibly even hostile. Yeah. So that's the plus Side. Yes, they really ought to respond. The obstacles to change are also very very big. Europe is fragmented. It doesn't have a genuine people. The Brexiters were right when they always said Europe doesn't have a demos. It doesn't have a people. It has peoples. That's not surprising. Look, you know, the Roman Empire disappeared 1500 years ago

and Europe has effectively been dis divided ever since except under the Catholic Church and we know where that Ended up in the 16th century. So the the answer is that I don't know whether this crisis is big enough to force the sorts of changes economically which Mario Draggy wrote about in his report or politically to deal with the security questions. I tend to be skeptical simply because I know how big these challenges will be and how much resistance there has been to every other necessary change. I think the crisis may have to get bigger, but

I Don't rule out the possibility that the crisis will get bigger because if you ask me what will the American policy look like a year from now, I have absolutely no idea, but it could be much more hostile than it is now. It's quite thickly possible in which case maybe the Europeans really will be forced. At the moment, it looks like individual nation state response, not collective. And there the one really big change I think is that the Germans are panicking and Germany in the center of Europe is always prone to feeling insecure. That's part

of its history. And I think it's pretty clear that the new government coming in will be much more aggressive on economic policy. It's forgotten the debt break nonsense. It clearly will be mount a pretty big defense buildup. It will become a much stronger motor of demand. And all on its own though it can't carry the whole of Europe. That will make a big difference. But I think In the end at least in the next few years we should trust more on what individual nations above all Germany do. It's much more difficult for France which is

also very divided politically. Remember there's a very big what I refer to as fifth column a putinist fifth column in Europe and France is hugely fiscally constrained unlike Germany. So, I'm modestly optimistic about the near term, but a really big leap into union, I don't see. [Music] The idea of 90 days and we're the US is going to sign all of these bilateral trade deals with partners all around the world strikes me as absurd on its face. I mean these you know trade deals take years and years to negotiate and especially the limited constraint just

whatever I strike me as absurd. Nonetheless I mentioned in the beginning you know normally I'm sorry I would not typically Care how you know the approval ratings of the United States and Sweden or Denmark do not typically particularly interest me. But in an environment of attempting to do deals, it strikes me as very relevant that the leaders of these countries have to be accountable to the individuals who elected them. Talk to us about the mood either among the elites who are going to be involved in these theoretical negotiations, which I don't even know if they're

existing, and the Impulse to try to rectify to try to come with to friendly relations with the new administration in the United States right now. How bad is it and how much of a hindrance is that to achieving something that re resembles a happy outcome? So I think this has to be broken down also into several elements. Countries will want to reach a deal with the US. The US is very important. It's a very important partner In terms of both security and trade and the administration is correct that these are linked in people's perceptions and

this is particularly true for the Asians broadly defined particularly a East Asians and Europeans. So they will want to reach a deal if they can. The second issue which is really important is they will need to feel that this is a deal and this is about trust. Yeah. that's particularly if it's got politically painful aspects to it. I'll come to the The substance of the deal in next is they need to feel that the US is going to stick with it. Okay. And there's no doubt whether in a way I think for policy makers who

are reasonably professional whether you like the country or not is not that important. Though of obviously the people really hate the Yanks. It's going to become more difficult. But the crucial question they have is can we trust this? We're not going to go through this every week, Are we? And at the moment, they're not sure if they won't have to do it every week. And there's no doubt in this regard that the treatment of Canada has been quite a shock. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, that really came out of the out the blue sky. I

was always pretty pessimistic about what the Trump administration would do, but this has been really quite out of left field and the Greenland. Well, Greenland, yes, but Greenland is less important than Canada's a real long-term ally friendly. you Trump himself signed the U the United States, Mexico and Canada agreement and then sort of blew it up. So that makes do we trust them. The third is obviously you can't do a detailed trade deal and they seem to have an ambition to somehow link the currency with it. I have absolutely no idea what's going on in

these discussions. None of nobody I think seems to do and that's seems to know in Detail. But there is something that somebody suggested to me and I've been thinking about that the Americans might be saying which might fit into their general theme. Assume that all this smoke and mirrors is basically a cover for the complete decoupling of the world from China. That's all they're trying to do. And this is a uh is Europe willing to do be part of that and having frightened people and shaken them enough with this absolutely ridiculous Bilateral tariff nonsense which

everybody can see is an unworkable way of running world trade. We discussed that too but that's a different matter. So basically what the U let's suppose the US comes um is that we will go back to the status quo ante if you follow our tariffs on China right that's the deal and we promise again this come back to the trust you know if we're going to completely burn our boats with China and this particularly applies to some of the Europeans and Japan all the countries in the region we really have to trust America so so

it's a very big ask, but that's a deal that maybe quite a few countries will be willing to sign, but I certainly wouldn't guarantee it because, as I said, it's a tremendous cost. They all know China is an immense and rising power. For many countries, it's their most important trading partner. For most Countries, they trade with the US, though important isn't that Europe can survive without it. Let's be clear. I mean it would be a real adjustment but it's not you know their most important trading partners are themselves if I remember correctly they part they

trade more with the UK than the US so they can survive but if the US is really after getting everybody else to break with China and or agreeing that they're going to go on holding the dollar they are Going to they're not going to increase their reserves Europeans don't have much anyway but I could imagine a very simple deal like this might work with quite a few countries but It won't work with everybody and it will shatter the world. But at least it sort of makes if you think that really what the US is about

is breaking China, which I don't think they can achieve by the way. I don't think they can achieve. I think China will survive perfectly well. But the It's another matter. But the then I can see something might come out of it. But if they're really trying to negotiate a real trade deal with every single country and it's all going to be different, that's completely impossible. Tracy, there's a good article yesterday on the Bloomberg Trump putting pressure on the Hungarians saying because there's a Hungary is a huge destination for like real capital inflows from China like

we Nick Denton would talk about it. There's BYD factories there. So like the pressure there and you know Orbin is like a Trump guy etc. Like these are really interesting tensions. Well, Orin has a very bad economy. He runs his system as a crony capitalist system. It surprise surprise doesn't work very well. He's desperate and the Chinese know he's desperate and the Chinese are very clever. So, he's playing both sides. My feelings it couldn't happen to a nicer man to be squeezed by the two The totalitarian system and the authoritarian system at the same time.

Victor Orburn deserves it. So I'm just going to ask one more question, the most important one. You know, we started this discussion talking about the development of our current bout of political populism in the states. On behalf of my dad, who believes that the Bank for International Settlements is secretly ruling the world, can you please tell him what actually happens at Bilderberg? You've been there, right? Well, they are two very different things. Yes, I realize. But it sounds as though your dad, I'm shocked to know, is one of these American conspiracy theorists. To put it

mildly, Bilderberg and the BIS are two completely separate institutions to do completely separate things. And all I can say, having followed the BIS pretty closely for a very long time, they might wish to be that powerful, but they surely are not. And one of the best Examples of this I will give you of their failure. I like evidence, right? Strange thing. up to 2007, the chief economist of the BIS was a very dear friend of mine whom I much admire, Bill White, a Canadian, and he was arguing against all the central banks, particularly Greenspan's Fed,

that monetary and then Ben Bernanki's Fed, the monetary policy was far too loose, that as a result, the financial sector was going completely crazy and that if They didn't do something about this, they were going to end up with a whacking great financial crisis and the BIS did a wonderful job of warning people and they really no one listened and nobody listened which would suggest to me it's probably the clearest evidence that they don't run the world and also quite possibly if they had run the world and I wrote a bit about that at the

time I think it was a bit more complicated even than that linked to the Balance of payments and so forth if they had we were might be in great much greater shape better shape now and Trump wouldn't I'll now be president. And so if only the BIS had run the world is a is my answer. Bilderberg was just a very meeting of business people, politicians and so forth created by the Dutch of all people. Hardly the world's greatest enemy of freedom and uh so forth. One might say even the inventors of modern capitalism at a

national level. And Because they thought after the second world war, we needed it informal meetings among elites. Yes, there are elites to keep the transatlantic relationship working. That was what it was for. And it was set up by the Dutch royal family for to build make this work. And and I was at many many of meetings of Bilderberg. I'm very proud of that. They were in fascinating discussions in which people said things that would never I I think have been Said in public and from which I learned hugely. The greatest example to me which was

unbelievable was the relationships between the Americans and the Europeans particularly the French in the leadup to the Iraq war when it became perfectly obvious that the US was crazy. Another example alas again if Bilderberg meeting had been as powerful as everybody thinks it would Trump would never have happened. because that's exactly precisely what Billberg was trying to Prevent. I will communicate this to my dad. I'm not sure this will convince him. He's not going to listen to all I can say is Bilderberg and the BIS have been astoundingly unsuccessful in achieving what they wanted to

achieve. I just have one last question. It kind of goes back to Tracy when we were talking about the dollar and you know and you talked about the mechanics of the old gold system in which you deflate your economy and your exports become more Competitive. One of the things that is a recurring theme on this podcast is that when it come and you talked about de-industrialization when it comes to industrial capacity or even construction capacity, we sometimes talk about nuclear the US is out of practice that setting aside exchange rates etc. that that institutional muscle

to build a new nuclear plant or to build a very you know productive new Carl EV line etc. Even a t-shirt factory. Even a t-shirt Factory, we're out of practice. And it makes me wonder like are exchange rates really even an important lever in the modern economy when we think about it. And you know there's so much about network effects. It's San Francisco. There's only one San Francisco and there's only one Shenzen etc. Just putting on your purely economics commentator hat. Do you see exchange rates as being particularly important in the modern economy to think

about the Distribution of production? The short answer is no. They're not completely unimportant. I mean, if you want to have the capacity to build infrastructure, it's a good idea to build infrastructure. And anyone who wanders around the US a lot realizes you haven't been if you've been wandering around China and wandering around the US as I have over the last 20 years. It's not because of our currency that we're not building. is because you decided to Waste your money on tax cuts instead of build things. When did you last build a nuclear power station? Uh

no, there was the vote the vocal one, but yeah, other than the one in Georgia. Yeah, it's been a long time. So, it's a long time. When did you last build major roads? What happened to your fast highspeed trains, your subways? I mean, that's not a dollar. Nothing. That's because the Chinese invest 40% of GDP. You invest about 20 difference. Yes. and they Invested in infrastructure to make them a modern economy. So they have stupendous capacity to build infrastructure. Do you want to invest 40% of GDP? You can. All you have to do is cut

consumption by 20% of GDP. Good luck with that chs. So obviously not de-industrialization. Every developed world country is de-industrializing because why? consumers aren't spending much as much as before on manufacturers cuz it's a very rich country and every American has every machine you can imagine. So it's just replacement stuff. The replacement demand for iPhones is there but it's small. So in the end of course you're not. Now it is true you could be making more of your consumption at home. That would possibly raise the share of manufacturing US GDP by 3 percentage points at most.

If you eliminated the deficit, maybe four, the maximum five. That's not going to fundamentally transform industrial Capacity because unlike China, which is still a very poor country where people are still buying their first car, their first everything, the US doesn't have the demand. And of course, Chinese wages are genuinely cheaper, much cheaper, cuz it's much poorer. Do you want to be that poor? So, no. Of course, these are real forces. Of course, the trade surplus of China is, I think, a bit of a disruptive factor. And I've argued for 20 years something should be done

about it. But The idea that that's the principal problem of the US and of de-industrialization in the US, it's just nonsense. Tracy, I just got a new fridge with a working ice maker. Don't I'm not signing up for a big consumption decrease. I'm just putting it out there. Aren't you gonna have to buy another fridge with a working ice dispenser in like a month or something? Sure. Those never work. Well, that works if you can scrap you buy a fridge every year and Scrap it and make sure it's an Americanmade fridge. That will contribute that

ramp up in contribute some. But obviously, if you smash domestic consumption in the US, that's not going to do much for domestic manufacturing. It will shift however to the sort of products that go into investment. It is perhaps important to remember the composition of demand is very important in determining the sorts of stuff you make. But as somebody said Or you talked about t-shirt, does the US really want to go back to being the t-shirt hub of the world? And a I mean, it's just ridiculous, isn't it? This is the thing that I really don't

get about the push for the weaker dollar. It's like we're going to trade off slower growth for a few t-shirt factories potentially and a very slight like I guess accounting effect from the exchange rate. It doesn't seem like the best deal to me, but here we are. Martin Wolf, thank you so much for coming on. That was fantastic. Pleasure. Really that was great. Thank you. [Music] [Music] Joe, that was so much fun. That made the whole trip to London basically. I mean, I I imagine if we had cajjolled him, we could have get gotten him

eventually to come on Zoom, but I feel like that made the whole trip worth it. It was definitely better in person. And I have To say, when I used to work at the FT, Martin was there. I never spoke to him. I wasn't like important enough to interact with one of our best columnists. But I remember I used to see him like in the FT cafeteria with like 12 different newspapers spread out in front of him and I was always like a there's Martin Wolf thinking deep thoughts about the world. And there he was. You

know, I'll say two things. one macro thought and one micro thought Which is Martin yet another example of someone who is interesting because he knows specific details which I'm always trying to hammer home like people who know actual dates and figures etc. They're always smarter and better thinkers than the people who don't commit those things to memory. And then the micro thing is I'm really just like interested in this idea that there used to be a world economy in which things adjust right that okay you export your Gold you have deflation your competiti your domestic

industry is more competitive you get sales globally and then you know you reflate your economy etc. I just do not right now believe the world works like that in a such a way that suddenly the US would become a competitive manufacturer of goods simply by dent of having a weaker dollar. Yeah. And certainly not as quickly as certain US policy makers seem to think it could happen. Right. Well, the other thing I Would just say is it's good to talk to Martin for many many reasons, but also I think he's sort of representative of the

fairly like baseline view among European policy makers about everything that's going on right now. And his point about making trade deals with the US at the moment. I mean, I I think that's like the realistic position that a lot of people are taking. It's interesting because one of the things that I've been wondering about, so like that chart that Donald Trump showed on April 2nd was complete nonsense. the board, the job. Yeah, the board, the change the world, the liberation day board. So, it's like what is the ask? Because it's obviously not lower tariffs or

lower non-tariff trade barriers because that's all right fabricated. It is. And people are converging on the idea. The only realistic ask is asking other countries to truly break their relationship with China. And it's interesting that Martin thinks that there could be a number of them who actually would be willing to sign up for that. that the price of free trade with the US is much more restrictive trade with China. I'm glad you also brought up Hungary because I feel like that's going to be a really interesting test case to watch because you know if anyone

is going to walk away from China because the US is telling them to effectively. It seems like it Might be Hungary except that they're such a destination for Chinese capital investment. There was so much in that conversation. There are other things that I probably wanted to mention and pull out, but all the listeners heard them, so those were the things that stood out. Let's go to Nando instead. Okay. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Aloway. You can follow me at Traceeway.

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the stalwart. You can follow an automated feed of Martin's columns at the FT at Martinwolf_. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman. Dashel Bennett at Dashbot and Kell Brooks at Kellbrooks. And thank you to our London producer Moses Andam who made this episode happen. For more OddLots content, go to bloomberg.com/odlotss where we have a Daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you should uh chat in the OddLotss Discord with fellow listeners 247 discord.gg/odlotss. And if you enjoy Odd Thoughts, if you like it when we

take these trips to London to speak to people like Martin Wolf, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely adree. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcast and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening. [Music] Yeah. Woo. [Music]