Over the last several years, the world has watched as China edges close to or past the technological frontier in more and more areas. Earlier this year, US investors were jolted even further when DeepSeek's AI model proved to be close to the state of the art American models. So what is the process by which China actually develops new tech? Why has it worked out so well? And how do priorities set by President Xi Jinping actually get transmitted to researchers and businesses? On this episode, we speak to Kaiser Kuo, the host of the Sinica podcast. He discusses the cultural dimension of tariffs, and what he sees as a fundamentally different attitude towards the benefits of technological progress in China vs. what is seen in the US.

Read more:
I’m a DeepSeek AI Bro Now

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America's textile industry has famously declined over the years, with a bunch of production moving to lower-cost places like China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. Now, with the Trump administration imposing heavy tariffs on exports from these countries, the US clothing industry is facing another big shock. In this episode we speak with Sarah LaFleur, founder and CEO of M.M.LaFleur, which makes high-quality work clothing for women (Tracy is a big fan). She walks us through what the past month has actually been like for a smaller clothing business trying to understand and deal with the tariffs. We talk about the conversations she's been having with mills and factories in China, how the tariffs are already impacting future seasons of clothing, the scramble to secure space on ships before the tariffs hit, and how businesses actually pay the new taxes.

Read more: A New ‘China Shock’ Is Destroying Jobs Around the World
One Ship, $417 Million in New Tariffs: The Cost of Trump’s Trade War

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By now, everyone recognizes that the US and China are in the middle of a trade war, with the Trump administration having imposed tariffs of as much as 125% on Chinese goods. For an export-focused economy like China's, that's a big deal. At the same time, China is pretty much the only major country that's chosen to retaliate against the US with its own set of fresh trade restrictions. So why did it decide to reciprocate? And what's its negotiating position as the US and China head into initial talks? Can the Chinese economy -- and its policymakers -- withstand the pain of a trade war? We speak to Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics and a long-time China watcher, about how China might actually respond to the new tariff regime.

Read more:
Xi Fortifies China’s Economy Before First Talks on Trade With US
What Years of Practice Tariffs Have Done

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Every industry is going to be affected by the trade war in different ways. In many cases, we don't know how it's going to play out. Other industries are seeing an immediate impact. Companies that specialize in computer gaming are highly reliant on inputs from China and other East Asian countries. These companies assemble customized gaming rigs and other peripherals (cameras, chairs, controllers, speakers etc.). On this episode, we're joined by Stephen Burke, the founder of Gamers Nexus, a publication and YouTube channel that primarily exists to review products in this space. When the tariffs were announced in early April, he immediately set out to film a documentary titled The Death of Affordable Computing. In that 3-hour video, he talked to numerous players in the space on their profit margins, and how they will be hurt by the changing trade policy. We speak to Steve about this industry, and what he learned about what tariffs will do to both their profitability, or even their viability as ongoing businesses.

Read more:
Microsoft Raises Xbox and Game Prices, Citing Rising Costs
Amazon, Apple Earnings Show Tariffs Are Coming for Big Tech, Too

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There are several markets that have really settled down since the tumult of early April. But strange, unusual things are still popping up, particularly in the currency space. Over the last few days, we've seen a huge surge in the Taiwan dollar. This is important, in part, because Taiwanese life insurance companies are major buyers of US dollar assets, such as corporate bonds. Suddenly, they're looking at a major hit to the value of these holdings, with losses that are only partially hedged. So why the sudden move, and what does it mean? On this episode, we speak with Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We first talked to Brad about exactly this topic back in 2019, when the story was more of an intellectual curiosity rather than a market-moving development. We discuss the implications, and what it means in the context of the Trump administration's trade strategy.

More:
Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great ‘Whodunit' Of The Financial World
Taiwan’s Markets Jolted as Currency Surges Most Since 1980s

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What does history say about how big the AI boom can get, and who will ultimately win out? When does a boom turn into a bubble that turns into a bust? On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Henry Blodget, the founder of Business Insider (and Joe's old boss there). In the late '90s, Henry was one of the most well-known Wall Street analysts covering internet stocks, before the crash and recriminations, which ended up in his lifetime ban from the industry. His new project is a publication called Regenerator, which will again focus on business and tech. We discuss the state of the AI boom, and what lessons we can draw from the dot-com era. We also talk politics, what's changed on Wall Street over the last 25 years or so, and a bit on the state of the media business.

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Over the last several years, both parties in the US have been drifting away from laissez-faire thinking about the economy, and more towards the view that the state has an active role in shaping markets. You have Republicans talking about stricter anti-trust and sovereign wealth funds, and of course Democrats embracing things like industrial policy efforts in key strategic sectors. But how do you design markets well? When does it fail? And what is the history of this type of thing in the US. In this episode, we speak with Facebook co-founder-turned-economist Chris Hughes, who has published the new book Marketcrafters: The 100-Year Struggle to Shape the American Economy. In this conversation, recorded at the New York Public Library in April, we talk about his research on the history of marketcraft in the US, and how that study of history informs his understanding of today's economic policymaking.

Read more: Markets Plummet as Tariff-War Woes Fuel Exodus From US Assets

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We don't know what the end state for the tariffs are going to be, but inevitably there will be some shifts in the way that goods and dollars flow around the world economy. Of course, some parts of the economy are always subject to changing rules around subsidies and tariffs, and that's particularly true in agriculture. On this episode of the podcast we speak with Murad Al-Katib, the President and CEO of AGT Foods and Ingredients, who is sometimes known as The Lentil King of Saskatchewan. He is credited as being a driving force in turning the Canadian Province into a powerhouse of chickpea and lentil exports all around the world. He explains to us why he saw an opportunity in this space, why it's boomed, how the global trade and supply chain of these plants work, and how his company navigates perpetual shifts in agriculture policy around the world.

Read more: Trump’s Canada Tariffs Draw Lawsuit by Blackfeet Nation Members

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Everyone knows by now that college endowment funds have gone big on alternative investing, pouring billions of dollars into private equity and hedge funds. But that investing model now seems to be under pressure and there are reports that Ivy League institutions like Yale and Harvard are looking to unload some of their more illiquid investments. So why did colleges get into alts in the first place? And how do they select which funds to invest in? In this episode, we speak with Joe Dowling, the former head of Brown University's endowment. Joe is now global head of multi-asset investing at Blackstone, one of the biggest institutional investors around. He talks about the rise of alts, how college funds got so invested, the pressures they're facing right now, and the boom in multi-strats.

Read more: Harvard in Talks to Sell $1 Billion of Private Equity Stakes
Blackstone’s King of Hedge Funds Shakes Up Its Lagging Business

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Gathering official economic data is a huge process in the best of times. But a bunch of different things have now combined to make that process even harder. People aren't responding to surveys like they used to. Survey responses have also become a lot more divided along political lines. And at the same time, the Trump administration wants to cut back on government spending, and the worry is that fewer official resources will make tracking the US economy even harder for statistical departments that were already stretched. Bill Beach was commissioner of labor statistics and head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics during Trump's first presidency and also during President Biden's. On this episode, we talk to him about the importance of official data and why the rails for economic data are deteriorating so quickly.

Read more:
Houston, We Have a Data Problem
The US Economy Is Fracturing Too

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