YouSaid · the spoken record

Martin Wolf

lines on the record: 65
first: 2026-05-14
most recent: 2026-05-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yes, well, I think the trust us has definitively gone. That's hardly news. I think that's true worldwide. I'm just trying to think, does anyone actually trust this guy? Being unto untrustworthy seems to me the core of his modus operandi. I mean, he wants to surprise people and he does in both directions. So nobody in Europe believes now that there's any promise that will come for this administration that is to be believed. And I think that's true pretty well for everybody. That's understandable because it's consistent with the evidence and the behavior and even what he says. However, Europe is in a very, very unfortunate position, which is that it...”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Immediately come to Henry VIII. Who was our real king, who made probably the single most important decision made by any English monarch, namely to leave the Catholic Church and make himself head of the church? I think Donald Trump would quite like that. Don't you think? And he was an absolute monarch who chopped the heads of”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some sort of maybe it was true social or something else when he referred to there being two kings together. That was, I'm sure, not a joke. I think he would like to be king. But when I think about the king, he would most likely to be.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something like that Clearly it was the king. I think that he, yes, he's also a psycho of people who have grand positions. That's right. Didn't he have a”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really bad, really bad. Maybe the world economy grows at one and a half percent. But it's not a catastrophe. And finally, profits are robust because let's face it, worldwide, labor is weak. So companies can manage their affairs in a way to ensure that they survive. I'm sure lots of looked at this. I'm sure lots of small and medium sized businesses are very badly affected. But the colossi that are generating most of the profits, particularly the tech colossi, they're not affected by this. This is at least exposed, perhaps not a surprising as one might have thought. There's a great deal of ruin in the world economy.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The IMF had a very nice chart on that in the latest World Economic Outlook, which basically showed that, yes, direct trade between the US and China has shrunk, direct trade between the US, Canada has shrunk, but other people have taken its place. And in some sense, it was designed to be porous. Then there are all sorts of exceptions that he's negotiated in return for who knows what with sundry companies like Apple. Apple would have been very badly hit. So it's all very porous and it's all negotiable. So it's not as serious as all that. And then the shock in the Gulf is significant, but oil isn't as important as it used to be, as we discussed, the energy system has changed across much of the world, and this will be accelerated, of course, but that's for the future. And prices have gone up. There will be a slowdown. I'm absolutely sure we might get close.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing is that, and that's why I use the full of sound and fury. If you look at the actual policies that we've ended up with, they're sort of designed, I'm sure they're not intent, not really to hurt. So the protection is very uneven. This was part of, I wrote about this before Trump got into office. And that creates the opportunity is designed in the system for trade diversion, right? You know, if he just put up an average tariff of 40% or 35%, a lot of trade would disappear. But that's not what he did. He ended up with imposing very high tariffs on some origins. China still has very high tariffs, but the trade diversion has been phenomenal. So trade goes through Vietnam. It goes through Mexico.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is it that we've had a genuine recession, a decline in GDP? Now, this isn't GDP per head. There will be more oftentimes when GDP per head shrank. But basically, the world economy is unbelievably robust. And that's because lots of people are providing stuff people want. There are markets, they produce for the markets, they invest to produce for the markets. Investment is very important as a driver of demand, as Kane said. And so it takes something really enormous to stop it. I went through the two oil shocks of the 70s. I was already a working economist. And they were big shocks, and we got terrible inflation and all the rest of it. Volcker came along. And yes, he did cause a recession in the US, but it wasn't global. So I think we have to start off by saying the world economy is incredibly resilient.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they're both perfectly obvious. One was 2009. And even then it shrank barely. It was close to zero because China was still growing. Lots of countries were still growing. And the other was the pandemic, 2020. Otherwise, the world economy grows. And nearly always between 2% and 4%. It's changed over time. Why? Well, because everybody matters is in a growth mode. I could go through what's driving it. I looked at this actually after the pandemic.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a great deal of ruin in a country Which was, if I remember correctly, actually said in response to somebody saying that the loss of the American colonies was a tragedy, a catastrophe for this country. And I think that's the context. I believe that's the context in which you said there's a great deal of ruin in a country. So there's a great deal of ruin in the world economy. I have a favorite statistic which I use in many of my presentations because it surprises me so much when I looked at it. It must be right, there have only been two years in which the world economy shrank.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that's right. And there's been a greater disconnect that I would have expected. And so I've more than once used another famous quote from a British author. Of course, it has to be given the intro, Adam Smith.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About them, Mr. Trump. So, in the end, the losers are Europe and China, not his favorite countries. I think that on the whole, Mr. Trump prefers China to Europe. And the world economy will continue. And there's this huge technological upheaval going on, which is very much what the markets are talking about, which looks transformative. So I think the market's assumption that the profitability. Of companies is going to be fine. The world will have possibly a recession, but that's not the end of the world. World has recessions, probably not even zero growth, and life goes on. Glad that when you”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Demand in time. It might take a few years of world growth will be lower, but what we're losing is about a fifth world output. Oil is much less important than it used to be 70 years ago. Prices have risen. The long history of oil prices since the first oil shock, they're not sensationally high. And so we will adjust to it. And we're very good at adjusting to it. The Garf will end up as a different place because it won't be exporting the same way. But it's not enough to derail the world economy. And incidentally, the country that is likely to be the least damaged are the major ones is the US, which is not a coincidence, after all. They wouldn't have started it if that weren't at the back of their minds. China will be damaged. Russia is benefiting, but I don't think that's going to be going.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I think that's still perfectly plausible, a perfectly reasonable view because he's already sort of stopped the fighting and it feels like he's looking desperately for an end game. The question is whether the other side will play ball. And that is still to be seen. And then there's the other possibility that in the end if the oil were lost, as it were forever, the world will adjust to that. Yes, the output that goes through the straits is very large, but in the longer run, a lot of it can go through pipelines. They can build these. It will take quite a while. And the world can compress this.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose there are so many different things aspects of this. I've been thinking of this wonderful Shakespearean line, life being a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. So one feels that when markets are looking at this, they feel this is full of sound and fury, but it doesn't signify anything. And are I think two possible reasons for that one is the famous taco line from my dear colleague Robert Armstrong that trump all with chickens out. So in the end, he's not going to blow up the world. He's going to find a way out of this, which will have done some damage. It will make, I think, the US look fairly ridiculous, but it can be forgotten.”
2026-05-14 · Odd Lots · Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source