Michael Froman on the New 'Polyamorous' Global Trading System

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

News, Investing, Business, News Commentary, Business News

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When President Trump announced the tariffs on Liberation Day, it seemed to truly mark the end of the old world trading system. But of course it had been dying for a long time. The first Trump administration erected aggressive trading barriers against China. Then Biden expanded them further. And there were signs of its demise even under Obama. So what was the global trading system? What will come after it? What are the benefits and costs to changes? On this episode, we speak with Michael Froman, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the former Trade Representative during Obama's second term. We discuss how the system began to collapse, and what he sees as the emergence of a new "polyamorous" global trading system, where friends and allies and partners move in a more liquid manner between different poles and blocs.

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1:01.4	Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts Radio News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal.
1:21.4	And I'm Tracy Allaway.
1:22.9	Tracy, you know, we're several months, I guess like five months or so, recording this
1:26.8	September 16th, five months or so, according to September 16th,
1:27.7	five months or so since Liberation Day since the trade war started. By and large, the world is still
1:35.3	kind of working, right? You can see its effects for sure in certain categories and so forth,
1:40.2	but by and large, I don't think the contours of the economy look that much different than they did say in March or April.
1:46.8	Look, I'm still missing my auction item that's supposed to be mailed from the Netherlands.
1:51.2	So it has affected me directly.
1:53.3	Wait, what happened with it?
	...

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