# Power and Geopolitics After Trump

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/power-and-geopolitics-after-trump
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/power-and-geopolitics-after-trump.md
Podcast: [Paul Krugman Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924)
Published: 2026-06-18T10:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/power-and-geopolitics-after-trump
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/202466970/6308792dadd66c6cc40ed17e4492bce0.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/episodes/power-and-geopolitics-after-trump
Duration seconds: 1317

## Resource

Transcript Hi everyone. Instead of a regular post today, I’m going to put up a video. There are a number of reasons why I feel like doing that instead of the usual. One of them is that this is a dry run for a talk that I will be giving virtually later today. There’s a conference on the economics of digital transformation taking place in Croatia, although I’ll be doing it remotely. And they have asked me to talk about global power, geoeconomics, and Europe. Those are all themes that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot. And today’s miniature talk is an opportunity to try talking through those themes. And the way I want to structure it is as what has changed, at least in the way that we all now understand the world, since, well, basically since Donald Trump returned to power. That’s an American-centric point of view, if you like, but it’s kind of a natural bracket. And of course, everything really has changed, mostly not for the better, under Trump. And it has, as it turns out, big implications for Europe as well. So let me just try to get into that. Start by talking about the world as it seemed to be at the beginning of 2025. There were, and still are, three great economic superpowers in the world: China, the United States, and the European Union, in that order. If we measure GDP in 2024 at purchasing power parity, which is basically just adjusting for differences in national price levels, you had China with a GDP of something like $37 trillion, the United States with something like 29 trillion and the EU with something like 28 trillion. That last bit may be a bit of a surprise — maybe all of it is a surprise to some people — but yes, in terms of the actual amount of stuff it produces the Chinese economy is now substantially bigger than the US economy. And the European…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/episodes/power-and-geopolitics-after-trump/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/power-and-geopolitics-after-trump.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.