How Donald Trump Is Trying to Rewrite the Rules of Capitalism

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For decades, economic arguments in this country, in the broadest sense, were usually over taxes and spending.

But for a long time, Republicans and most Democrats alike have been in favor of free trade, the idea that the global flow of goods and services should be as open as possible for the sake of growth and efficiency. Even if it hurt some workers, the prevailing economic wisdom was that free trade was a necessary aspect of capitalism. Now, this was and has always been contentious. Unions have fought agreements like NAFTA.

Critics say that the globalized economy led to deindustrialization in much of the country, and that that deindustrialization, as we know, gave real fuel to Donald Trump's populism. Trump has been a longtime proponent of tariffs, and he seems to relish the prospect of a major trade war with the Chinese. Those positions reached their fruition with his highly chaotic tariff rollout recently, which of course tanked the stock market and put us near the brink of a global recession. Even many Trump voters have told pollsters that they disapprove of this tariff policy, at least its its chaotic nature.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (19 minutes, 3,278 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.