Tune In Stephanomics

On this episode of Trumponomics, we discuss why India stands to gain from the US trade war with China and the rest of the world. Host Stephanie Flanders speaks with Bloomberg senior editor Chris Anstey and reporter Shruti Srivastava, as well as Bloomberg Economics senior India economist Abhishek Gupta. They look at how India has been able to pull ahead of rivals as the US roils the world, and specifically whether the Republican in the White House may unintentionally be boosting the South Asian nation’s long-term ambitions to replace China as the “factory of the world.”

What are the long-term implications of Donald Trump's attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell? Host Stephanie Flanders is joined by Krishna Guha, vice chairman of Evercore ISI and head of its Global Policy and Central Bank Strategy Team, and Bloomberg managing editor Kate Davidson. “Up to this point, the market has confidence that the Fed will do whatever turns out to be necessary to prevent this initial, very big wave of one-time tariff inflation,” Guha says. “But that’s premised on the idea the Fed is free to do what it judges as needed.” As bad as Trump’s trade war has been for markets, Guha warns that if Wall Street begins to doubt Fed independence, things could get much worse.

On this week’s episode of Trumponomics, we speak with economist Nouriel Roubini about the all-out trade war US President Donald Trump has kicked off with China, and why it’s a conflict Chinese leader Xi Jinping might think he can weather—and even win.

On this week’s episode of Trumponomics, we discuss what the rollout of President Donald Trump’s tariff plan has taught us about the Administration's economic strategy and the future of the US economy. In Trump’s first term, market participants could count on the President adjusting policy if it seemed to be hurting the stock market. Now recession and inflation risks are rising and both the stock market and the US sovereign bond market are flashing red but it’s not clear that the President and his advisors even care. Host Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg’s head of government and economics, is joined by senior editor Ed Harrison, author of Bloomberg’s Everything Risk newsletter and Bloomberg’s senior national political correspondent, Nancy Cook. Making the 2017 tax cuts permanent has been floated as a way to ease the pain for markets and consumers. But for Harrison and Flanders, that raises further parallels with Britain’s Liz Truss: “in the short term we could see recession”, according to Harrison “but longer term, it could mean a depreciating currency, inflation and maybe a crisis of confidence in America’s public finances and its ability to govern.”

US President Donald Trump’s administration said it’s still finalizing plans to unveil what could be a barrage of new tariffs on America’s trading partners around the world. Trump contends he is waging his global trade war to fix a system he considers unfair to the US. On this week's Trumponomics podcast, we’re going to look at this strategy. But rather than analyze the potential economic impact, we instead look at how the world arrived at this moment. Host Stephanie Flanders is joined by Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. They discuss whether the countries now in the firing line of America’s tariffs (and primed to retaliate in kind) should have seen Trump’s trade war coming. They also explore how the trade imbalances the US administration is targeting aren’t an accident and can potentially lead to an unstable global economy.

Last week, while many in the US were focused on court orders and secret flights to El Salvador, something else happened that we at Trumponomics think should have gotten more attention. President Donald Trump fired two commissioners on the US Federal Trade Commission—apparently for being members of the Democratic Party. And while firing federal employees—legally or otherwise—is common practice in Trump’s Washington, it’s not supposed to happen at an independent agency—not like this anyway. But if it can happen to officials there, that raises questions about whether folks at other independent bodies, even senior people like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, could be arbitrarily jettisoned, too. So on this week’s episode, we’ve invited David Wilcox, director of US economic research for Bloomberg Economics, and editor Molly Smith to discuss the historical echoes of Trump’s move. Wilcox addresses existing legal restrictions on the Republican’s ability to fire independent officials, whether the Republican-appointee controlled Supreme Court is waiting for a chance to further empower the executive and what could happen when US economic data can no longer be trusted.

Bloomberg Economics Chief Economist Tom Orlik explores the possibility that the Trump administration is being more strategic than it seems. Orlik offers some historical perspective on Trump’s moves and whether—despite all of the damage inflicted over the past two months—this bumpy road may still take the economy to a better long-term destination.

Over just a few weeks, US President Donald Trump has turned the Western security alliance on its head and unleashed a slew of tariff threats (and tariffs) on China, Canada and Mexico (with many reversals and retreats). At the same time, talk has intensified over a so called “Mar-a-Lago accord” named after Trump’s Florida home and aimed at deliberately weakening the dollar. On this week’s episode of Trumponomics, host Stephanie Flanders discusses this with guests Shawn Donnan, senior writer for economics with Bloomberg, and Mark Sobel, the US chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. What ties together Trump’s security and tariff bluster? A paper written in November 2024 by Stephen Miran, where the idea of such a deal first appeared. Miran, a former US Treasury official who went on to work as a strategist in the private sector, is now poised to lead Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Instead of the “Trump bump” we were talking about at the beginning of the year, a combination of mass terminations across the federal government (many of which may be illegal), sweeping tariffs and a whole lot of uncertainty could be leading to a Trump slump. Or is it, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reassured us this week, just a period of transition? That’s the question we tackle on this episode of Trumponomics. Host Stephanie Flanders speaks with Evercore ISI’s Kathryn Holston, who served as a White House senior economist last year and before that in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank, and Anna Wong, chief US economist for Bloomberg Economics.

On this episode of Trumponomics, host Stephanie Flanders speaks with Joshua Green, national correspondent at Bloomberg Businessweek, and editor Laura Davison about the likelihood of a shutdown, its consequences for the government and for Americans—and whether anything can stop Musk’s efforts to shrink the government.

One month in, Wall Street’s view on Donald Trump is evolving. Guest host Nancy Cook, Bloomberg’s senior national political correspondent, speaks with chief Wall Street correspondent Sridhar Natarajan and finance reporter Hannah Levitt about how finance executives are feeling now. “There is still broadly this palpable optimism,” says Levitt, “but it’s a bit more caveated.” Levitt and Natarajan explain those caveats, discussing what the likelihood of higher volatility throughout Trump’s second term means for the bottom lines of big Wall Street firms and unpack why a deregulatory agenda might have unforeseen consequences.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine in a day. Weeks into his presidency, that hasn’t happened. Now his decision to start negotiations with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin while demanding Europe bear the brunt of future aid to Ukraine has been met with shock—but not surprise. In a bonus episode of Trumponomics, recorded at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, we discuss the cost of Trump’s about-face on American commitments and whether a continent beset by fiscal constraints and political division can go it alone. Alberto Nardelli, Bloomberg’s correspondent-at-large for Europe, and Antonio Barroso, senior geoeconomics analyst for Europe at Bloomberg Economics join host Stephanie Flanders.

Bill Dudley, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and former New York Federal Reserve Bank president, and Bloomberg Economics Chief US Economist Anna Wong join Stephanie Flanders to discuss the Treasury secretary’s plan to reduce the deficit and its collision with economic reality.

In a live taping before an audience in New York, host Stephanie Flanders was joined by Bloomberg political correspondent Nancy Cook and Bloomberg Opinion Senior Executive Editor Tim O’Brien to unpack the way in which US President Donald Trump is making tariff decisions during his chaotic first few weeks in office, whether he has a plan and who his most influential advisers might be. For the second part of the conversation, Bloomberg TV anchor Katie Greifeld and senior editor Ed Harrison discuss how Trump’s economic policy is causing uncertainty among business leaders and why a key metric to look at is the 10-year Treasury rate.

On this week’s episode of Trumponomics, we ask what it is exactly US President Donald Trump may be trying to accomplish with his tariff threats and trade wars. Host Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg’s head of government and economics, is joined by Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg Economics, and Bloomberg reporter Shawn Donnan, who covers economics and trade policy, to discuss.

On this week’s Trumponomics, we look at how Trump's immigration policies will affect the nation’s economy, and especially whether it will be good or bad for American workers. Oren Cass, joins host Stephanie Flanders and Bloomberg Opinion Senior Executive Editor Tim O’Brien. Cass, formerly with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute and founder of the conservative think-thank American Compass, is author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America.

On this week’s Trumponomics, we look at how Trump's immigration policies will affect the nation’s economy, and especially whether it will be good or bad for American workers. Oren Cass, joins host Stephanie Flanders and Bloomberg Opinion Senior Executive Editor Tim O’Brien. Cass, formerly with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute and founder of the conservative think-thank American Compass, is author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America.

The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, once a hub of globalism and progressive ideals, is now seeing a shift towards embracing the ideology of US President Donald Trump. With CEOs and other business leaders trying to get in line with his views, many are abandoning previous initiatives around equality, diversity, free trade and climate change. On this week’s episode of Trumponomics, we discuss how and why so many of the global elite at Davos are pressing “unsubscribe” on their previous commitments in favor of (like Trump’s book) the art of dealing with the new White House occupant. We also analyze the implications for markets and investors. In a live taping before an audience at Bloomberg House in Davos, host Stephanie Flanders speaks with Bloomberg News Editor in Chief John Micklethwait, Washington reporter Jenny Leonard and Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Brad Stone. They unpack how the world order has already changed in anticipation of Trump’s return, what the Republican’s style of transactionalism will look like for foreign policy, and what will be the fallout for the global economy and trade policy.

Bond market investors have been extremely busy so far this year, pushing up the cost of government borrowing—especially in the US but also around the world. On this, the inaugural episode of Trumponomics, we look at whether recent moves in the bond market are worrying the incoming Trump administration, what effect they will have on a narrowly-split Congress and whether concerns on Capitol Hill may put some of Donald Trump’s agenda at risk. Host Stephanie Flanders, Bloomberg’s head of government and economics, is joined by Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg Economics (she’s worked at the Federal Reserve and in the first Trump administration), and Bloomberg managing editor for US economic policy Kate Davidson.

Former Trade Representative and Council on Foreign Relations President Michael Froman discusses what the world can expect from Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and how Harris is breaking from Joe Biden. Hosted by Stephanie Flanders and Adrian Wooldridge.