Hello and welcome to Unpacking Europe, the podcast of the Center for European Reform.

I'm Aslakberg, Trade Policy Research Fellow. And today I'm joined by a

very special guest, one of the world's most preeminent trade economist, Professor Meredith Crowley

from the University of Cambridge. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Now we are

recording this on April 10th at around 3 p.m. UK time. And the current US trade policy is, as I understand it,

we have sectoral tariffs of 25% on steel, aluminium and autos. We expect more to come on

pharma, copper, lumber. We have a special regime for Canada and Mexico, which we won't get into here.

And then last week, the administration announced these reciprocal tariffs. That means a 10%

across-the-board tariff, and then a varying level of tariffs set depending on the trade

deficit that each partner has with the US.

So yesterday, Trump announced that except for China, all of these extra levels will be postponed for 90 days.

And instead there will be this flat 10% tariff, except for China, which will now get 125%.

And the EU has responded by delaying their retaliatory tariffs for 90 days to give some

space for negotiation. So that means the EU will not face its initial 20% at least for 90 days.

Now Meredith, you have worked on trade policy for well over 20 years at the University of Cambridge

and also at the Federal

Reserve of Chicago. To give us a sort of sense of the scale of the uncertainty and what we're

facing now, how would you compare this to previous crisis? You work through the financial crisis,

the pandemic, the first Trump administration. How does this compare?

So two things.

I think first of all, when we think about a financial crisis or a fluctuation in the business

cycle, so think about the global financial crisis in 2008.

...