US trade officials meeting their Chinese counterparts in London to continue trade talks. The trade policy uncertainty just one of the many layers of worries hanging overhead for the US economy. For more, we're bringing in Princeton University Professor Alan Blinder, former Fed Vice Chair, also served as a member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. Alan, it's always great to get your perspective. I know you also recently wrote about more broadly, some of the policies of the Trump administration. But I do want to get your take on trade, which of course you've also written about extensively. Um, and sort of where we are in the trade talks and whether we could come out the side, the other side better than when we started. What's your assessment of where we are so far?

I'd give long odds against that. You can pray for it, but the odds are very much against it. Look, what I tell my students every year in teaching them economics 101 is trade wars have only losers. The little bit of truth in the Donald Trump dictum is that if you're the 800 pound gorilla on the block, you can probably make the other guy a bigger loser than you are. That is, we could lose a little and many other countries, Canada, Mexico, many, many others, including China, I think, could lose more. You want to call that winning, that's winning, but to me, everybody's losing.

What do you make, Alan, of the basic argument that the Trump administration will put out there, which is, listen, they'll say, we want to reform the global trading system and put American companies on, on fairer, firmer ground. And when they talk about it, Alan, and I'm interested to get your take on this, they'll simply say, listen, as we sit here in June 2025, the global trading system as its engineered, just isn't fair anymore. It doesn't make sense anymore. It doesn't make sense that we impose a 2.5% tariff on auto imports from Europe, and they hit back with a, a 10% import duty on us. It doesn't make sense that we put up with material non-tariff barriers like China stealing our IP. Do you disagree with that premise? Do you disagree with the tactics? Do you disagree with both, Alan?

I don't disagree with the premise, um, the way you put it. But it's easy to exaggerate it. I mean, we put, we have a protective tariff against EVs, for example. We have a high tariff on trucks compared to cars. We're not completely innocent. Now having said that, we're pretty good. We have led the world over decades in bringing tariff barriers down from where they used to be. It's kind of sad to see us leading the world up, and it's even sadder to see us saying, you know, our president saying one day he says there'll be a 50% tariff on this or that, the next day 25, the next day 75. I mean, who in the world knows what's going on?