April 20, 2025

E136: Trump V2: Tariffs, American Dynamism, Higher Ed | Byrne Hobart

1 hour 2 minutes

In this episode, Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart discuss the economic consequences of Trump's tariffs, OpenAI's recent innovations, and their implications for white collar work. They also explore the potential market shifts, the resilience of the US dollar as a reserve currency, and the state of elite higher education institutions like Harvard in the current geopolitical climate.

—

📰Be notified early when Turpentine's drops new publication: https://www.turpentine.co/exclusiveaccess

—

RECOMMENDED PODCASTS:

🎙️Investor and writer of the popular newsletter The Diff, Byrne Hobart, and co-host Erik Torenberg discuss today’s major inflection points in technology, business, and markets – and help listeners build a diversified portfolio of trends and ideas for the future.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-riff-with-byrne-hobart-and-erik-torenberg/id1716646486

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rANlV54GCARLgMOtpkzKt

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRiffPodcast

—

SPONSORS:

☁️Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds and offers one consistent price. Oracle is offering to cut your cloud bill in half. See if your company qualifies at https://oracle.com/turpentine

🕵️‍♂️Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code UPSTREAM at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/upstream

💥 Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist.

—

LINKS:

Byrne’s writing: https://thediff.co

—

X / TWITTER:

@byrnehobart

@eriktorenberg

@turpentinemedia

—

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EPISODE:

Trump's tariff decision was spontaneous, causing market volatility and creating an incentive for China to negatively influence U.S. markets.

Tariffs are inherently inflationary, functioning as a tax that results in higher consumer prices.

Moving manufacturing away from China creates inefficiencies but provides strategic security by reducing dependency.

The U.S. should focus on strategic manufacturing in areas like drones and rare earth processing.

China has demographic disadvantages ("getting old before getting rich") that weaken its long-term position.

OpenAI's memory feature creates user lock-in by personalizing responses based on user history.

White-collar workers may face employment disruption similar to what blue-collar workers experienced with automation.

The U.S. dollar's reserve currency status has a self-healing characteristic - crises often lead to increased dollar demand rather than abandonment.

...more

View all episodes

By Erik Torenberg

4.2

6060 ratings