Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter Morgan Stanley's Global Chief Economist.

And I'm Rajiv Sibyl, senior global economist.

Tariffs have been a dominant topic lately. In the news, in markets, just about everywhere.

And today, we're going to discuss how they are affecting global trade and the global economy.

It's Thursday, March 27th at 10 a.m. in New York.

And 2 p.m. in London.

Our listeners are well aware that tariffs have been driving much of the economic conversation lately.

So far, we have seen a flurry of news on tariffs, but it is probably worth recapping just

where we are.

Tariffs were imposed on Chinese imports in the first Trump

administration, and they stayed in place through the Biden administration. And now, so far in the

new Trump administration, an additional 20% tariffs have been put on Chinese imports. Tariffs were

announced on imports from Colombia, but removed before implementation. Tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada

were announced and then delayed, and then enacted, and then suspended. All pending negotiation

among the government. Don't forget about tariffs on steel and aluminum. Oh, that's a really good

point. So a lot has already happened. The administration has also announced that next week, on April

2nd, there will be a whole slate of reciprocal tariffs imposed. Rejeeve, let me turn to you on that.

What do we know and what do we not know about the prospect for these reciprocal tariffs?

I actually think that's the right question. What do we not know? Reciprocal tariffs,

it really depends on the definition you're using. If you're going to take an explicit definition and think about it in terms of the reciprocal quantitative tariff between two countries, the United States actually doesn't have lower tariffs than many other countries. Actually, most of our trading partners are in free trade agreements. And so as a result, like with

Mexico, there are not standard tariffs across most products. The countries where the United States

is facing higher tariffs when they export goods are actually countries that we do not do a lot of

...