Hello everyone and welcome to ESAB's Global Economy Podcast. My name is Frederick Erickson and today.

I am joined by my colleague Eric van der Marl who is Professor of Economics

and Chief Economist at ESEP and we are going to talk about Trump tariffs and the developments

that we have seen over the past weeks since April the 2nd when the Trump administration

launched its new package of tariff against

the world. More precisely, we're going to talk about what have we learned as a result of these tariffs.

So we're recording this in the morning of April the 14th, and I'm saying that because things are changing quite rapidly now.

So we don't intend this to be a running commentary on what actually has been decided or not been decided.

But I think it was a pretty notable admission that arrived over the weekend, which is that the United States have now decided to at least partially exempt some specific imports related to technology products from the super high tariffs that they had introduced on China.

So fearful of consequences, for instance, on access to iPhones or access to different

type of input technologies that you need in order to produce different type of outputs

in America seems to have forced the administration

to at least make a temporary exemption for these type of products. And I think what this

example tells us is that the US economy is deeply plug into global production networks and

global division of labor.

And unplugging itself from all these type of networks and this form of production

is, of course, going to have drastic consequences on different products that America feel are important.

So, Eric, welcome in the first place to the podcast again. And

let's start there in sort of the developments that we noticed over the weekend. I think it's a

pretty strong symbol of an economy which has changed quite rapidly over the decades,

the move away from that quite simplistic idea,

which seems to have guided many in the Trump administration,

...