Episode
How to Win a Trade War
- Podcast
- Paul Krugman Podcast
- Published
- May 30, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2267
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/how-to-win-a-trade-war
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Summary
Chad Bown and Soumaya Keynes have a terrific new book with that title — a breezy survey of our chaotic new world of international economics, couched as advice for nations trying to get the upper hand. The book is here . I spoke with them last week about their book and the world in general. Fun stuff in a slightly grim way, and I hope we kept the acronym level tolerable. Transcript provided by the Financial Times, lightly edited to remove the ums and ahs. u TRANSCRIPT Paul K: Hi everybody. I’m Paul Krugman, professor at the City University of New York, and an independent newsletter writer on Substack. You might have noticed that I’m not Soumaya Keynes, host of The Economics Show podcast. I’m here with Soumaya, as well as her longtime collaborator, Chad Bown, who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, formerly chief economist at the US State Department. Together, these two have just written a book called ‘How to Win a Trade War’, and today we’re going to be asking just that. How do you win a trade war? Soumaya, Chad, hi. Chad Bown: Hi, Paul! Soumaya: Hi! Paul K: So maybe I can start by asking a slightly funny question, which is, who are you? I know you’re Chad and Soumaya, but when we talk about how to win a trade war, who is this? You know, who’s the audience? Presumably not actually Donald Trump. It’s probably not Xi Jinping. I mean, everybody should read it, but who do you think might, in some sense, read it or at least be briefed on people who’ve read it? Soumaya: Well look, if Donald Trump wants to read the book, then we are very willing to sign a copy. We’ll hand deliver it however he wants. The conceit of the book is that you, the reader, are really interested in fighting a trade war, right? And we are the two nerdy kind of rel…