Trump

Thursday

William Moore

Trump shock, cousin marriage & would you steal from a restaurant?

39 min listen

This week: Trump’s tariffs – madness or mastermind? ‘Shock tactics’ is the headline of our cover article this week, as deputy editor Freddy Gray reflects on a week that has seen the US President upend the global economic order, with back and forth announcements on reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs. At the time of writing, a baseline 10% on imports stands – with higher tariffs remaining for China, Mexico and Canada. The initial announcement last week had led to the biggest global market decline since the start of the pandemic, and left countries scrambling to react, whether through negotiation or retaliation. China announced a second wave of retaliatory tariffs – to

Tuesday

William Clouston

Why tariffs work

To travel by train through America’s rustbelt is to witness the real reason for Trump’s tariff revolution. Miles upon miles of derelict factories and decaying industrial architecture stand as monuments to trade policies which have gutted America’s manufacturing heartland and undermined the families – and the towns – which depended on it. In electing the Trump-Vance ticket last year American voters have called time on decades of elite indifference to industrial production and the liberal trade policies which have accompanied it. It turns out that the transitory profit secured by executives who out-sourced thousands of US industrial jobs to cheaper jurisdictions is no compensation for the loss of your industrial

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Gavin Mortimer, Colin Freeman, Lawrence Osborne, Lionel Shriver and Anthony Cummins

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Gavin Mortimer looks at how the French right can still win (1:48); Colin Freeman interviews Americans who have fought in Ukraine and feel betrayed by Trump (11:01); Lawrence Osborne details his experience of last week’s earthquake, as he reads his diary from Bangkok (18:38); Lionel Shriver defends traditional, monogamous marriage (24:07); and, Anthony Cummins examines media satire and settled scores as he reviews Natasha Brown’s Universality (31:13).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Trump’s tariffs: madman or mastermind?

29 min listen

President Donald Trump has announced sweeping new tariffs, including a 10 per cent duty on all UK exports to the United States, as part of his ‘Reciprocal Tariffs’ plan aimed at addressing trade imbalances and bolstering American manufacturing. This move is expected to impact approximately £60 billion worth of UK exports, with sectors such as automotive and Scotch whisky facing significant challenges. The UK government, while relieved to have avoided higher tariffs imposed on other nations, is now navigating the potential economic repercussions and exploring avenues for negotiation. ​ Freddy Gray speaks with William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), to analyse the implications of Trump’s tariff announcement

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Will Trump’s tariffs unravel the neoliberal global order?

33 min listen

Freddy is joined by James Fishback – writer, investor and chief executive of investment firm Azoria – on ‘Liberation Day’, when Donald Trump is set to announce a raft of new tariffs (at 9 p.m. UK time). They discuss the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the market, whether this marks the upending of the neoliberal economic world order, or if Donald Trump is just a tough negotiator.

Sunday

Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes

Can German cars survive Donald Trump?

In 2003, Donald Trump took delivery of a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, a $450,000 German supercar that blended precision engineering with Formula 1 bravado. Photographed grinning over its bodywork in Manhattan, he looked every bit the unabashed playboy flaunting a new toy. Two decades on, he’s threatening to hammer the very firm that built it – and Germany’s car industry as a whole – with a 25 per cent tariff on European auto imports. Germany’s post-Cold War boom was built on a single assumption: that ever-deeper globalisation was here to stay. As we explore in our book Broken Republik and its German sibling Totally Kaputt?, the country’s carmakers made an all-in

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

The Signal leak isn’t just about Europe – it shows how powerful J.D. Vance is

This is an extract from today’s episode of Spectator TV, with Freddy Gray and Ben Domenech, which you can find at the bottom of this page: Freddy Gray (FG): America is – to use [Vice President J.D.] Vance’s words – bailing out Europe again, and [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth says ‘yes – it’s pathetic’ in capital letters. That clearly shows was they’re thinking about foreign policy. What did you read into it? Ben Domenech (BD): I think you’re completely right to highlight that potion because it is one of the areas where I think we can gather a bit more about their thinking than we have before… They simply do

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What did we learn from the war chat leaks?

27 min listen

Jeffrey Goldberg’s story in the Atlantic is so mind-blowing it’s hard to know what to say in response. It defies belief that Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, appears to have accidentally added a top journalist to a Signal messaging group with senior government officials – including the Vice President, Secretary of State, Defence Secretary and the Director of National Intelligence – to discuss top-secret military action. It boggles the brain that the people running the most powerful country on the planet, the Principals Committee of US national security no less, use childish emojis to discuss a bombing campaign which they helped co-ordinate in order to kill 53 people.

Monday

James Heale

Can Britain dodge Trump’s tariffs?

14 min listen

Reports in the papers today say that the British government is considering scrapping its digital services tax – largely levied at American tech companies – in return for an exemption to Trump’s tariffs that come into effect on April 2. Would this be an effective – or desirable – move on the British part? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.

Wednesday

Sam Leith

Who is Government? edited by Michael Lewis

40 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the novelist and journalist John Lanchester, one of the contributors to Michael Lewis’s very timely new anthology of reportage on the United States federal government, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service. Can the public learn to love a bureaucrat? John tells me why he thinks the workings of government are misunderstood and under appreciated, why we should marvel at the making of the consumer price index, and why he thinks Elon Musk has ‘the wrong handle of the shopping bag’.

Wednesday

Oscar Edmondson

Has Ukraine called Putin’s bluff?

12 min listen

Last night there was a huge breakthrough in Ukraine peace talks, with Zelensky accepting a US proposal for a ceasefire and placing ‘the ball in Putin’s court’, according to Marco Rubio. While getting Zelensky to accept is a huge diplomatic win, the proposal hinges on Putin agree to the terms of the ceasefire – which will last for 30 days but can be extended by mutual agreement. ‘I’ll talk to Vladimir Putin. It takes two to tango,’ said Donald Trump. Can Putin afford to reject the deal? And could this be the basis for a lasting peace? Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has been getting a lot of credit for his role

Thursday

William Moore

Why Ukraine’s minerals matter, the NHS’s sterilisation problem & remembering the worst poet in history

42 min listen

This week: the carve-up of Ukraine’s natural resources From the success of Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington to the squabbling we saw in the Oval Office and the breakdown of security guarantees for Ukraine – we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of geopolitics in the last week, say Niall Ferguson and Nicholas Kulish in this week’s cover piece. They argue that what Donald Trump is really concerned with when it comes to Ukraine is rare earth minerals – which Ukraine has in abundance under its soil. The conventional wisdom is that the US is desperately short of these crucial minerals and, as Niall and Nicholas point

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is China serious about ‘war’ with America?

48 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined with Michael Auslin who is an academic and historian at the Hoover Institute and author of the Substack ‘THE PATOWMACK PACKET’. They discuss China’s response to Trump’s tariffs, whether China is serious about threats of war and how concerned Trump is about China’s relationship with Russia. 

Tuesday

Michael Gove

Is Kemi Badenoch a ‘realist’?

15 min listen

Kemi Badenoch has today given a major speech outlining the Conservatives’ commitment to ‘realism’ in their foreign policy. She said, ‘You cannot help others if you cannot help yourself’, and that the sovereignty and strength of Britain matters ‘above all’. She also pressed Keir Starmer to push defence spending north of the 2.5 per cent target and – as if it was all choreographed – the prime minister dutifully has, announcing in the Commons that defence spending will reach 3 per cent of GDP by the end of the next parliament. This will come at the expense of the foreign aid budget, another suggestion that the leader of the opposition

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Is Trump right about Ukraine?

24 min listen

Donald Trump attacked the Ukrainian President overnight, describing him as a ‘dictator’ and saying he’s done a ‘terrible job.’ In return, Zelensky has accused Trump of ‘living in a disinformation space.’ The West has invested a huge amount of capital in the fight against Russia – and failed to secure peace. Is Trump using these offensive and odious methods in order to secure an end to the conflict? Is he the only person with the power to do so? Freddy Gray discusses with The Spectator’s Russia correspondent Owen Matthews, and Sergey Radchenko, historian and author.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Was ‘free trade’ really working?

29 min listen

Oren Cass, founder and chief economist of think-tank American Compass, sits down with Freddy Gray at the ARC conference in London. They react to the announcement by President Trump over the weekend of reciprocal tariffs: the decision by the US to match import duties levied by other countries.  What’s the strategy behind Trump’s decision? And what could the consequences be for American companies and for global trade? They also discuss the broad political consensus behind free trade in the US since the 1990s. Given the ‘lived reality’ that faced many American investors and companies – for example competing with Chinese Electric Vehicles – was the free trade really working anyway?

Monday

Freddy Gray

Rob Henderson on Musk, monogamy & meritocracy

36 min listen

Political commentator, and author of Troubled, Rob Henderson joins Freddy Gray from the ARC conference in London. They discuss the political reaction to the news that Elon Musk has allegedly had his 13th child – are there signs of a new, more permissive conservatism? They also discuss Trump’s administration so far – particularly his flurry of executive orders – with critics decrying them as the tactics of a populist, yet supporters approving of the speed of activity. What’s the psychology underpins these political viewpoints? Vice-President J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich over the weekend has also left many European leaders reeling – but should they really have been surprised? Produced by Natasha

Sunday

Iain Macwhirter

Elon Musk is America’s Trotsky

I never imagined that I would see a real revolution, at least not in the West. Sure, when I was a student, I fantasised, along with a number of my Edinburgh University lecturers, about a socialist revolution in the UK. Expropriate the expropriators! Ban the bosses! Nationalise everything and abolish money. But, of course, nothing so dramatic ever happens in mature liberal democracies. Except that it just has. Okay, the Trump takeover of the US government is hardly a communist revolution, and Elon Musk is not immediately obvious as a reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, but what is happening right now is revolutionary – just not quite in the way my

Wednesday

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

Trump’s ICC sanctions will test an outdated institution

Once you get beyond trade and maritime borders, you will find that much of international law is, pace Clausewitz, the continuation of policy by other means. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was continuing policy by other means when it issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The two stand accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes over Operation Swords of Iron, Jerusalem’s response to the Palestinian invasion of its territory and mass murder of its citizens on 7 October 2023. Israel has protested the Court’s actions, which were prompted by chief prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan, as a one-sided interference in the military actions of