Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields

Last year, when we talked to Martin Wolf, the global order seemed like it was being upended after President Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs against nearly every US trading partner. A lot has happened since then. In fact, April 2025 seems almost quaint when compared to 2026 so far, from the Supreme Court's tariff ruling to the US-Israel war with Iran. The war's effect on the world's economy is at once stunning and utterly strange: even as the prices of major commodities — oil chief among them — rise, the markets seem unaffected, closing at record levels in recent weeks. Today we speak with Wolf, the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, about all this chaos and why, so far, it seems disconnected from the logic of the market. There is, he says, a great deal of ruin in the world economy, but growth remains a constant fact of life. Why is that? There's no straightforward answer, but to begin understanding how we got here, Wolf takes us to the early 20th century and paints us a picture of the world after the two World Wars. We also talk about the "terrifying" power that the US wields over the globe, how a fragmented Europe is navigating anxious relationships with both the US and China, the Faustian bargain AI represents, and much more.

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