Welcome to Siren's mini episode. This week we have our full interview with Emily Benson, who you will

have heard in our full episode from this week talking about trade taxes and their impact on the

U.S. economy, the Trump administration strategy, and what we should be looking for in the long run.

So hopefully you enjoy this full

interview. I learned a lot and I hope you all will too. Okay, it is time for warning signs and we

are going to talk all things, trade and tariffs. To help walk us through this, I'm delighted to

welcome Emily Benson. Emily has previously worked at the Department of Commerce,

at the Supply Chain Center, and now is the head of strategy at Minerva Technology Futures,

where she focuses on geopolitical risks that affect trade and investment decisions. So Emily,

thank you for joining us. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's all is a great way to

start the day with something called warning signs. So maybe we'll just start in on tariffs, which is kind of

how did we get here? Sort of what is going on? What is the overall Trump theory of the case

on tariffs? We've talked about this a couple of times on the show,

but maybe you can help just provide a little bit of intro context for our listeners.

So if I could just be a little provocative at the top, I have been on this little tour around

Washington recently trying to correct what I think is sort of a mistaken viewpoint on what's happening with

the administration. And this is that a lot of people think there's no plan. There's no strategy.

We can't make sense of what's going on. And I actually think that's a little bit misguided

because if you look at where we were a year ago, or even in the first Trump administration,

they've been exceptionally clear about

telegraphing where they stand, what the objectives are, and that tariffs will play a very

prominent role in their economic statecraft and domestic defense and economic sense toolkit.

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