Hello and welcome to our monthly series History Behind the Headlines. I'm Matt Elton.

In each episode, an expert panel will be exploring the historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world.

Each month, I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.

I'm Hannah Skoda, I'm a fellow and tutor in

medieval history at St. John's College in Oxford. I'm Ron Amitter. I'm St. Lee Chair in

US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, and I'm a specialist on modern Chinese history.

So we're kicking off this month with a subject you're unlikely to have missed in recent weeks,

which is the subject of tariffs.

The US has been making global waves with the announcement of high tariffs on goods from around the world,

some of which at the time of recording have subsequently been paused.

I'm delighted to say that to guide us through some of this, we're joined by Frank Trentman,

who's Professor of History at Birkbeck University of London.

Frank, thank you so much for being with us today.

Great to talk to you.

We spoke at the end of March for a separate History Extra podcast on the History of Tariffs.

There's a link to that in this podcast description.

But to bring us up to speed, are there any historical episodes or incidents that you think help explain how this particular war has evolved in recent weeks?

Well, yes, I would point probably to two contexts that widen the discussion,

which at the moment really has been primarily about the economic fallout.

I mean, the first is to point out that in Britain, in the years before the First World War,

Joseph Chamberlain, a liberal unionist, who was allied to the conservatives,

had pretty much the same idea that Trump has now, namely to have a scientific tariff, which gives

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