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Soumaya Keynes

lines on the record: 24
first: 2026-05-28
most recent: 2026-05-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And there are right now, and we talk about this in the book, there are some efforts from the Chinese government to curtail those excesses in the Chinese system. And when I saw those, occasionally, WhatsApp chat and be like, are they going to fix it? Are they going to fix it before we write the book? Like, I'm going to be so annoyed if the Chinese sort this out between the however many months between when we filed a book and when the book is published and Chad was like don't worry they're not gonna fix it it'll be fine I mean it'll be bad for the global economy but for the very narrow perspective of the book it'll be fine and he was he was correct”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I paid Chad only a modest amount. His response was about the security concerns, surveillance, that kind of thing. So I thought it was important to include those disagreements there. I think that Chad had recently been in government, right? And I think, you know, obviously he couldn't spill all the government secrets that he learned when he was in government. But it was really great to have the kind of guardrail of like, no, no, this is the important issue. This is what folks are worried about internationally, right? These are the kind of structural issues. There were some moments when the Chinese essentially, the way they're behaving is not some kind of cartoonish quest for world domination, right? They've basically got domestic economic problems and they're trying to export their way out of those. And so, you know, this is what's going on now is ultimately a symptom of Chinese weakness.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Creating possibilities and opportunities for those smaller businesses to diversify. Hopefully that won't make that difference as extreme.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or we might just all collapse into a massive tit-for-tat tariff wars. And then, you know, maybe from that mess, then maybe if things get so bad, there'll be some reckoning and some incentive for everyone to come together and do that mutually beneficial deal. I think that's at the level of a country, though, right? And so the question is, at a lower level, right? So thinking about companies and individuals. I guess I worry that it's going to be the big businesses who are most able to reorient their supply chains to this new era. And the smaller businesses will be the ones who will just find it much harder to cope and sell up those alternatives. But, you know, I think the more we're able to sustain, again, that healthy competition, perhaps those, you know.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Model, maybe adopt, you know, try to preserve the old system as much as they can amongst themselves. Maybe we managed to hold on to some of the good things about the old system in a way that has healthy competition, essentially.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, okay, there's different levels that you could answer that question at. So really big picture, you know, if we're in a world of trade wars, if we're in a world which is more zero-sum, then the winners are at the level of a country. There's a scenario in which China could essentially divide its trading partners. We saw after Trump's liberation day how terrible they were at coordinating. China will manage to divide and conquer essentially make sort of establish, maintain its dominance in manufacturing will essentially have veto power, blocking power over anything other than other government might try to do. So if you think of the metric of winning a trade war is you have autonomy, no one else gets to boss you around. In that case, maybe it's China, there is an alternative scenario in which Weston economies managed to band together potentially protect their own economic”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all of those things are exactly what you see today. So again, trying to use these stories to explain how lasting these conflicts might be, right? It's all very well saying, okay, we'll just get we'll diversify away from these dominant suppliers and then no one will be able to push us around. But actually the reality, the history suggests that these tussles could last for a really long time.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing we do in the book is really look at the history of that. And I think it suggests that these fights, these tussles can last for a really long time. You know, if you go back to the end of the 19th century, Britain was dominant in telegraph cables, right? But the very same factors that gave it its dominance in telegraph cables were the same factors that made it really hard for another government to build its own rival network, right? And so, yes, those other governments, they tried to innovate their way around the problem. They tried everything they could. But the Brits could also move too, right? They looked at the innovation.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the line you sometimes hear about those weapons is that they're one short weapons. So the moment at which you apply one of these weapons, the moment at which you restrict rare earths, for example, you basically force everyone else to find an alternative, right? Before it wasn't urgent, but now it is. And in a sense, that could be comforting, right? It could suggest that like, okay, well, you know, the Chinese, they've restricted their rare earths, but now that's shown us that we need to get other supplies. And so we'll just fix that in a year or two and everything will go back to normal.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now the trillion dollar question is how long these trade fights are going to last? And this is really interesting because just to get specific, one of the weapons that these players have been throwing around is export restrictions. So the Chinese are saying we won't sell you our rare earths unless you behave in a certain way. And the Americans are saying we won't sell you chip technology. And you know, the rest of the world is being caught up in those battles, right? You know, British manufacturers, European manufacturers have been caught up in those restrictions.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think that economic conflict trade wars are here to stay for a good long while. I think under the old system, you essentially had, you know, it was underpinned by the Americans willing to throw their weight around to keep things calm, at least, right, and stable. Now, if you're on the shop end of that, again, it wasn't very pleasant. But, you know, things weren't blowing up as regularly. Now we're no longer in a world in which there's an obvious dominant power. And so the theory is that when you've got kind of more equal powers struggling for supremacy, that's a much more unstable world.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A smaller turn towards populist parties, which are a big influx of imports. So, you know, point one, obviously there were losers from that big trade liberalization episode. And then, you know, of course, that Navy fleet I mentioned earlier, right? They were writing the rules for their advantage. It wasn't like a Kumbaya lets everyone be on equal terms here. power was an input into that system the real feature of that system was that when a dispute arose there was supposed to be a legalistic boring process available to sort out those disagreements in a dull way that no one really cared about and that stopped disagreements from from blowing up and so that's the thing that we don't have anymore because it it broke”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just want to add a bit of nuance to that, right? Which is that obviously, you know, the trading system that we had before Trump and China came along wasn't perfect, right? We shouldn't kind of it delivered many, many benefits. There were also losers and there were obviously cases where those losers were not protected sufficiently. There's some really interesting evidence looking at everyone knows there's a set of papers called the China shock papers which looked at how communities were hurt when there was this sudden influx of Chinese imports and there have been some efforts to look at other countries. So, you know, the UK, there's actually a similar study that finds that there were also long-term economic costs to the communities affected. Interestingly, in Europe, it seems that there is some evidence showing that, you know, where the social safety net was stronger, actually there was”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think one thing we're trying to do is to Say that we can't blindly accept that world anymore, but we also want to be careful about going too far in the other direction, right? Because a world in which we've got trade barriers against everyone, inefficiency, you know, that's not great either. There were advantages to the old system. It is good that we can get cheap stuff. So it's not about a wholesale rejection of that world. It's about, you know, how can we protect ourselves in a world that keeps us open as we can be, right? So how can we work with partners? Could say the UK work with the EU to make sure that we're using trade barriers to solve the real problem and not go too far and start erecting trade barriers with each other. And I think with the US, it's probably just going to be a case for waiting until this Trump administration is over and seeing what's possible there.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I just add one thing to that, which is, I suppose in a UK setting, one of the big challenges, well, not just the UK, around the world, right? Affordability, the cost of living is a huge, huge challenge for people. And in a sense, one of the messages from our book is that there are some products that right now are too cheap. And so that's a difficult message to absorb, particularly when you're struggling with rising prices. And so part of it, part of, you know, One thing we're trying to do is sort of get people ready for this idea that there are trade-offs here, right? And in the short run, it could be that, yeah, some things may need to get more expensive, but in the long run that may make us safer. And it may protect us from shortages in the medium term.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No one trusts the Trump administration to sort of stick by what it says it's going to do. One of the only constraints that has proven effective has been the rule of law, right? And it's actually been incredible that you've seen a small business importing toys. Take the Trump administration to court and win and strike down those tariffs, that first round of tariffs applied after Liberation Day, which weren't on solid legal footing. So you've got these incredible cases of individuals fighting the powerful and actually winning in some cases.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, really moved up the value chain, you can get incredible high tech products from China, great quality. And if you look at the kind of tariff mess that we've got under President Trump, China has been hit harder than other countries. And Chad's been crunching all the numbers on that. But the signal isn't quite as clear as it could be, right? And so, you know, one thing that I think that if you're a small business importing, then I think in the medium term, I don't think it's going to be sustainable to source everything from China in the way that it's just been the default for quite some time. So step one, educate yourself, understand these structural forces, the things that aren't going away. I think in the US, one of the big challenges has been that”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think one of the big challenges, the real challenges in the global trading system today is that we're not just in a world where we can turn our brains off, follow the rules, you know, try and make ourselves richer. Essentially, we've got geopolitics that's infused our trading system. And so one of the things that we can do is recognize where the real structural problems are and prepare ourselves for the medium-term changes that are going to happen, right? So, you know, say in the US, right, you've got small businesses deciding where do we buy stuff from. And right now, China is just incredibly effective. It's very, very good at manufacturing stuff. It's very, very cheap supply. It's also got...”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The point of that chapter is to say that actually all of those allies are impossible to coordinate. They're all sailing in their own directions. They're facing down the Chinese warship. None of them really have strong incentives to cooperate. And so, yeah, we can criticize the pirate ship for pointing its cannons at everyone. And that's a reasonable criticism. But actually the Allies, all the other boats deserve a bit more criticism for failing to coordinate amongst themselves. And so, yeah, I mean, my hope is that the stories and the jokes bring it to life and make it a little bit easier to read than your average economics book, which, you know, is a bit more like eating celery than a nice piece of cake. And thank you. Thank you so much for appreciating that about it.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His tariffs one of the major points of criticism was that he had alienated his allies, right? That there was this big challenge, a real challenge of China. And instead of actually working with allies to tackle that shared challenge, he just blasted them all out of the water.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Making sure that everyone played by the rules. And then there was a mutiny or they got overtaken by a pirate ship, right? And so now the Americans are, you know, blasting their cannons at anyone who moves in the way that they don't like to enforce the rules. They're out for themselves. And then you've got the Chinese of this great big warship, the Europeans are this slow moving merchant ship. They just want to sell stuff. They don't really like all this conflict. You've got the Brits of this kind of awkward dinghy that used to be attached to the European ship and are now kind of floating by the side, not really sure what's going on. And so the point of that chapter was to show, first of all, just how chaotic all of this seems, right? There's another point, which is to show the problem of collective action. So when Trump applied...”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I happen to think that there aren't enough economics books with jokes in them. And so I was trying to fix that problem. One joke at a time. And, you know, I think the other challenge sometimes with tricky economics topics is that economists have a language that they use amongst themselves, you know, models, algebra, that kind of thing. And so what I was trying to do was to bring was to sort of translate that into normal speak by using stories and analogies and historical examples to bring these things to life, right? And so just to take an example, there's a chapter where we talk about the players in trade wars, right? We introduce you to the players and each of the players is a ship, right? And you have the American ship. There used to be this Navy fleet patrolling the seas.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interested in this, maybe the agents were like, yep, could you file this yesterday? We want this right now because, you know, the point of the book is that we're trying to write this guide to what's happening now, right? Because, you know, the headlines are kind of bewildering, confusing, but every single tariff fight has such an important context and background, these aren't things that just suddenly jumped up with Trump. These are conflicts that predated him and will also be around for a long time after he leaves.”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Chad and I have been working together for years during the first Trump administration, right? So we were this kind of trade team. And back then, I think we had the idea for a book of kind of the history of trade wars, you know, one chapter per trade war. And then frankly, Trump lost the election. Trade became a bit boring again. And we weren't really sure that there was demand for the book that we wanted to write. And so life moved on. I actually stopped covering trade for a little bit. And then in 2025, I actually had a baby. So I essentially wasn't, you know, I had a pause from my day job and President Trump had won again. Tariffs were very much back in the news. Trade wars were the hot topic. And when we reached out to some folks asking, you know, do you think people might be...”
2026-05-28 · Intelligence Squared · How To Win a Trade War, with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT