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and our annual tradition of taking a look back at the numbers of the year with me, Tim Harford.

As numbers go, 2025 has been a big year for them, from climate

temperature records and the 267th Pope to, and unrelated, the viral question of whether 100

men could take on one gorilla. So we've gathered together some friends of the program to give us their top numbers

of the year. First up, we looked to the United States, where in 2025, White House wings

came down, and global import tariffs went up. Way up. President Trump's big, beautiful year of tariffs certainly had its fluctuations.

The Supreme Court is even reviewing their legality as we speak.

The level of tariff imposed varied from country to country, industry to industry.

So how do you choose just one number to sum up tariffs imposed across all countries?

I'll leave that job to Thomas Sampson from the London School of Economics.

My number of the year is 28%, which was the peak in the average US tariff rate following President Trump's reciprocal

tariff announcements in April of this year.

Finding this overall average tariff rate provides a good indicator for trying to work out

what's going on with America's trade policies and economy.

But as Thomas says, 28% was the peak. The number has actually

fallen since April. Now, some of those tariffs never ended up being implemented. So the average

effective tariff rate by the end of October had declined to 18% according to the Yale

Budget Lab. But that's still substantially higher

than the 2% level in January of this year. And the current 18% rate is still the highest

average US tariff rate since the mid-1930s. But calculating this average is not as simple as you may think.

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