A Fractured World

WSJ Opinion: Free Expression

Gerard Baker, Editor at Large, The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We may be seeing peace break out in the Middle East, but it’s still trade war elsewhere - especially with China. Donald Trump has threatened a 100% tariff on the rival superpower if Beijing goes through with its plan to impose tough restrictions on exports of the rare earth minerals critical to the U.S. economy. These could well be mere negotiating tactics but they’re a reminder of the wider friction that now dominates global economic relations. On this episode of Free Expression, Gerry Baker speaks with Neil Shearing, Group Chief Economist of Capital Economics and author of “The Fractured Age: How the Return of Geopolitics Will Splinter the Global Economy.” They discuss Shearing’s argument that the world is dividing into two giant economic blocs and what that might mean for stability and peace. They also talk about some unusual developments in global markets of late, especially a weakening dollar and a soaring gold price - the last of which Shearing believes is driven by Chinese official policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Boardrooms love buzzwords. AI, climate, resilience. But what do they actually mean for CFOs and execs trying to survive the next earnings call? That's where the pre-read comes in. Real experts and real talk. Subscribe to the pre-read, presented by Workieva.
0:17.1	From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.
0:24.2	Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.
0:27.3	I'm Jerry Baker, editor at large of the journal. Thanks for joining us.
0:30.3	If you're not already subscribing, please do make sure you subscribe to Free Expression at Apple, Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you do.
0:35.8	You're listening. This week, we may have peace in the Middle East, and now our attention shifts back to war,
0:43.9	well, at least trade war, that is.
0:46.2	The US and China seemed to be very much back in the throes of tension over their trade relationship.
0:53.2	Last week, Beijing announced that it was imposing
0:56.3	restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals, vital, vital commodities that obviously
1:03.4	are used in all kinds of production, everything from cars to batteries to defense equipment,
1:09.7	everything pretty well everything we need, vital to
1:12.3	US economic and national security. China imposed those restrictions with the next day, President
1:17.9	Trump retaliated by once again, yes, we were back there with the 100% tariff back on China.
1:23.3	We are still obviously waiting to see how this unfolds. This trade war, this tariff war between the US and China has gone on now since President Trump came back into office with tariffs going up and being withheld again and then going up again.
1:36.9	Now, the latest ones, of course, have a deadline. President Trump has imposed a deadline on November 1st. That strongly suggests that he expects negotiations. This looks like
1:44.6	negotiating tactic and who knows what we may see in the next couple of weeks before that
1:49.7	deadline. But it does all raise the question and it focuses attention very much in a very timely
1:55.0	fashion on what is the, not only the state of relations between the United States and China,
2:05.5	but what's happening to the global economic architecture, to the global structure.
2:15.1	It's now pretty well axiomatic that the era of globalization that we saw at the end of the Cold War, 25 or 30 years or so, in which trade barriers came down.
2:19.1	China entered the global economy in a serious way. We had largely free movements of goods and services, financial flows, enormous financial flows,
	...

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