The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes is a new weekly podcast from the Financial Times packed full of smart, digestible analysis and incisive conversation. Soumaya Keynes digs deep into the hottest topics in economics along with a cast of FT colleagues and special guests. Come for the big ideas, stay for the nerdery.
Soumaya Keynes is an economics columnist for the Financial Times. Prior to joining the FT she worked at The Economist for eight years as a staff writer, where as well as covering trade, the US economy and the UK economy she co-hosted the Money Talks podcast. She also co-founded the Trade Talks podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes is a new weekly podcast from the Financial Times packed full of smart, digestible analysis and incisive conversation. Soumaya Keynes digs deep into the hottest topics in economics along with a cast of FT colleagues and special guests. Come for the big ideas, stay for the nerdery.
Soumaya Keynes is an economics columnist for the Financial Times. Prior to joining the FT she worked at The Economist for eight years as a staff writer, where as well as covering trade, the US economy and the UK economy she co-hosted the Money Talks podcast. She also co-founded the Trade Talks podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
July 9 marked the end of President Trump’s 90-day pause on his so-called reciprocal tariffs. Now that deadline has passed … what has actually changed? The FT’s senior trade writer Alan Beattie discusses with former trade negotiator Dmitry Grozoubinski, author of ‘Why Politicians Lie About Trade’. Dmitry explains why Trump’s tariff threats are as ineffective as they are unusual, how countries are approaching his ‘vibes-based’ trade policy, and what Dmitry would advise if he was negotiating with the US now.
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Alan Beattie is the FT's senior trade writer. He writes the Trade Secrets newsletter every Monday.
Read Alan’s columns here: https://www.ft.com/alan-beattie
Sign up to the Trade Secrets newsletter here.
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Alan Beattie. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. Mix by Sam Giovinco.
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In the sixth of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tackle a selection of questions, and even some criticisms, sent in by their audience.
Listen to Paul Krugman’s cultural coda, Carole King’s It's too late, here
Listen to Martin Wolf’s cultural coda, Va Pensiero from Verdi’s Nabucco, here
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
The Wolf-Krugman Exchange was produced by Sandra Kanthal and Mischa Frankl-Duval, and the broadcast engineer was Andrew Georgiades. The sound engineer was Breen Turner. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the fifth of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss the way American politics is crashing against both the guardrails of a stable, democratic system and the rules and norms of the postwar economic order and how this could jeopardise the importance of the US on the world stage.
Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda:
Stephen Sondheim: "We had a good thing going"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTbrbiM-slg&list=RDNTbrbiM-slg&start_radio=1
Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda:
Jonas Kaufmann: Freiheit from Beethoven’s Fidelio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvfhmGsFMEo
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
The Wolf-Krugman Exchange is produced by Sandra Kanthal. The broadcast engineer was Rod Fitzgerald. The sound engineer is Breen Turner. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the fourth of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman ask if advances in artificial intelligence will reshape the working world as we know it. Or are we hearing an old familiar story that has been told many times before?
Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda:
Loretta Lynn - "Coal Miner's Daughter": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9eHp7JJgq8&list=RDf9eHp7JJgq8&start_radio=1
Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda:
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, published in 1924.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Mountain
Read Martin Wolf's selection of the best economics summer reads for 2025 here
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
The Wolf-Krugman Exchange is produced by Sandra Kanthal and Mischa Frankl-Duval, and the broadcast engineer is Andrew Georgiades. The sound engineer is Jean-Marc Eck. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the third of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss the dangers facing the world economy and wonder what outcomes are possible at summits such as the G7 in times of political and economic risk.
Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda:
Peter Gabriel: “Games Without Frontiers”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZmlUV8muY&list=RD3xZmlUV8muY&start_radio=1
Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda:
"The Second Coming" - by William Butler Yeats, 1919
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
The Wolf-Krugman Exchange was produced by Sandra Kanthal and Mischa Frankl-Duval, and the broadcast engineer was Andrew Georgiades. The sound engineer was Breen Turner. Our executive producer is Flo Phillips. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the second of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss the way economic trends have fractured societies on both sides of the Atlantic and the jeopardy that poses to liberal democracies in Europe and America.
Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda: Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again
Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda: The Tariff Song by Dan Shore
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eWtn6kWXAsQ&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
The Wolf-Krugman Exchange was produced by Sandra Kanthal and Mischa Frankl-Duval, and the broadcast engineer was Andrew Georgiades. The sound engineer was Breen Turner. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In part one of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss how trust in the postwar world economic system is being lost and weigh the costs and consequences of that.
Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda: Quarterflash, ”Harden My Heart”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNFSED77-GM
Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda:The Beatles, “For No One”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELlLIwhvknk
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
The Wolf-Krugman Exchange was produced by Sandra Kanthal and Mischa Frankl-Duval, and the broadcast engineer was Richard Topping. The sound engineer was Breen Turner. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In a special six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discuss the economic events reshaping the world in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s election.
Subscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Episodes will also be available on the FT’s YouTube channel.
If you’d like to get in touch and ask Martin and Paul a question, please email economics.show@ft.com
Read Martin’s FT column here
Subscribe to Paul’s substack here
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Churchill never said “we will fight them in the spreadsheets…”. But maybe he should have done. The second world war, like every other war in human history, was decided by how each side allocated its resources. In this episode, Duncan Weldon, author of the new book ‘Blood and Treasure, The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to Ukraine’, explains how countries have historically thought about the economics of war – and how the Ukraine war is changing that. He and host Soumaya Keynes also discuss how conflict shaped economic institutions and the modern world.
Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Further reading:
Vladimir Putin’s war economy is cooling, but Russians still feel richer: https://www.ft.com/content/485aba41-1148-4f2c-b0ab-97aac5e50727
Russia’s war economy fuels rustbelt revival: https://www.ft.com/content/559ca59f-7fdc-4c47-8e87-edb562acdc7b
Defence spending is up – but on all the wrong things: https://www.ft.com/content/11a6b844-fe57-4e39-86ba-bb04e839bf2f
Presented by Soumaya Keynes. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Manuela Saragosa.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The tit-for-tat tariff escalations between the US and China are on pause, at least temporarily. But if the world’s two biggest economies don’t make progress by July, they could return with a vengeance. How can the two parties make progress? And what does China actually want from the US? Soumaya Keynes speaks to Jay Shambaugh to find out. Shambaugh was the US Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs under Joe Biden. In other words, he was in charge of the US’s economic relationship with China. He and Soumaya discuss how the Trump administration could negotiate with China, and how interwoven trade policy and national security have become.
Further reading:
Will Trump’s tariff climbdown save the US from recession?
The markets are declaring tariff victory too soon
US-China trade war is pushing Asian nations to pick sides, ministers warn
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Soumaya Keynes. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Manuela Saragosa.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
US tariffs have sent financial markets into a frenzy in recent weeks, but how much should central bankers be taking trade into account when setting monetary policy? To find out, Soumaya Keynes sits down with Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Swati Dhingra – one of the committee’s more dovish members. They discuss why the UK’s open economy makes it more vulnerable to trade shocks, what Dhingra saw in the data that her MPC colleagues didn’t, and why she didn’t vote for an (even) sharper rate cut earlier this month.
Further reading:
Two BoE policymakers warn against rushing to further cut interest rates
Bank of England vote split hits hopes for faster interest rate cuts
Brexit lessons for Trump’s trade war
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Soumaya Keynes. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Manuela Saragosa.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Donald Trump’s trade policies have put global markets through the mill in recent weeks. But his policies didn’t come from nowhere. Aspects of US protectionism preceded Trump’s second term – and countries across the world have been pushing for greater self-sufficiency for some time. Is this drive for greater self-sufficiency misguided? Is true self-sufficiency even possible? Or might the secret to economic security come from more co-operation, not less? The FT’s senior business writer Andrew Hill sits down with Ben Chu to discuss the findings from his new book: "Exile Economics: What Happens if Globalisation Fails." Chu is the policy and analysis correspondent at BBC Verify and was previously the economics editor of BBC Newsnight.
For further reading:
The old global economic order is dead
Britain’s trade deal with Trump may not be good news for the world
Tariffs are a bet on the free market rather than free trade
The business lessons to draw from Trump’s dealmaking
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Andrew Hill. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Manuela Saragosa.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Over the past 25 years, the Gates foundation has given away more than $100bn. Much of that money has gone to healthcare and education projects outside the US – and the organisation plans to give $200bn more to various programmes in the next twenty years. But as Elon Musk and Doge feed USAID, a key partner of the foundation, “into the wood chipper,” how can Bill Gates press ahead? The FT’s Africa editor, David Pilling, speaks to Gates about running an apolitical, philanthropic entity in a politically challenging time.
Read more:
Bill Gates is giving away $200bn. Can his plans survive in the Trump era?
Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of ‘killing’ children with USAID cuts
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by David Pilling. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Manuela Saragosa.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The US dollar has been in slow decline for around a decade – so says Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard professor, and former chief economist of the IMF. Donald Trump’s trade policies have raised a lot of questions about the future of the dollar – and how its decline could affect the rest of the world’s currencies. Rogoff joins Martin Wolf to discuss how the decline of the dollar could empower China, capital flight from the US, and why cryptocurrency is a bigger threat to dollar hegemony than most people realise.
Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column here: https://www.ft.com/martin-wolf
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Martin Wolf. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound design by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Almost a month since ‘liberation day’, the potential impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariff regime are starting to sink in. US hard data isn’t yet showing much negative impact from changes to US trade policy – but economists are gloomy on US growth prospects. The IMF last week warned of an increased risk of US recession, and lopped nearly a full percentage point off its forecast for US growth this year. Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, joins FT economics editor Sam Fleming to discuss how Trump’s tariff agenda may play out, which forces could force the president to change tack, and what that might look like.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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When China joined the World Trade Organization at the start of this century, its surging exports rattled US manufacturing. Prices fell, jobs became less lucrative, and communities that relied on these jobs were hit hard. President Donald Trump seems determined to bring those jobs back to the US. Is that realistic or even desirable? The FT’s chief economics commentator Martin Wolf speaks to MIT economics professor David Autor about the "China shock" and the (potentially more significant) AI challenge that lies ahead.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Former Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King has never shied away from expressing his opinion. Here, he sits down with his friend Martin Wolf — the FT’s chief economics commentator — to discuss some of the thorniest problems central banks now face: Will rate-setters manage to stay independent in the era of Trump 2.0? What should they do about cryptocurrencies? And how can they regain credibility after getting inflation so wrong?
Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column here
Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Martin Wolf. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music by Breen Turner. Audio mix by Simon Panayi. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As Donald Trump declares a trade war on the rest of the world, it’s time to learn about a field of economic research known as “weaponised interdependence”. The bad news is that The US president’s weapon of choice – imposing tariffs on goods imports – is a fairly outdated tool of economic warfare. Globalisation and advances in financial and communications technology have created an arsenal of additional weapons, which may yet be fired off by the US or by other big players such as China and the EU. To find out more, the FT’s Alan Beattie speaks to the leading world expert on weaponised interdependence, Abraham Newman, professor of political science at Georgetown University. He warns that Europe, in particular, needs to completely change its gameplan in response to this new world of dominance relationships.
Presented by Alan Beattie. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval and Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music by Breen Turner. Audio mix by Simon Panayi. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For the past few years, Germany has begun to look like the ‘sick man of Europe’ again. Its economy has barely grown since 2019, while its famous manufacturing sector has shrivelled. But earlier this month, financial markets were buoyed by a vote in the German parliament to relax the constitutional limit on government borrowing, the so-called debt brake. It means that Germany’s likely new conservative-led coalition government will be free to borrow unlimited amounts to fund a defence sector build-up, and can also draw on a €500bn fund to spend on infrastructure over the next 10 years. But will more government spending be enough to address Germany’s structural economic problems? The FT’s Martin Sandbu speaks to economist Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California, Berkeley, who is a member of the German Council of Economics Experts, which evaluates the government’s economic policies.
Martin Sandbu writes a regular column for the Financial Times, which you can find here. It includes recent columns on Berlin’s about-turn on debt spending, and the economic choice facing Germany.
Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
Presented by Martin Sandbu. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The UK’s Labour government had already inherited a tricky fiscal situation when it came to power last July. But since then, growth has stagnated, borrowing costs have risen, and now the government has committed to a big increase in defence spending. Where will the money come from? The FT’s Sam Fleming interviews Paul Johnson, the long-time director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent think-tank that has been adjudicating the UK’s public finances for more than half a century. As Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver her Spring Statement on Wednesday, should she break her government’s pledge not to raise personal taxes?
Sam Fleming is the FT’s economics editor. You can find his latest features and columns here.
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