Hello and welcome to start your week from the bunker.

Globalisation, as we've known it for the last couple of decades, has come to an end.

That's what the Treasury Minister Darren Jones said on the BBC

yesterday, but has it? And what would that mean for the UK? I'm Ross Taylor, and joining me to talk

about this week's news is Gavin Esler. Welcome to the bunker, Gavin. Hello, hi, Ross. Last week,

as we all know, Donald Trump imposed swinging new tariffs on scores of countries,

and he kicked off a global trade war.

Britain got off relatively lightly with a 10% tariff, and so far we don't seem minded to

retaliate in kind.

Should we, Gavin?

Well, we can't, really.

We can, because we're not the same as the United States, obviously, and it's a much bigger economy. The whole concept of retaliation, I suppose, is diminished a bit by the fact that we have got off more lightly than some other countries. So it would be very interesting to see how Kirstama handles it. I suspect he'll

handle it quietly and may not retaliate in any significant way. We'll see. I could be proved wrong

within a few hours. But I thought Darren Jones' statement was very interesting because it's two parts.

The end of globalization, as we have known it. I think the as we have known it is the

correct bit, whereas the end of globalization is very, very difficult to say that everybody

else is going to stop trading with almost everybody else just because the United States is having

a hissy fit, which is clearly what Donald Trump seems to be doing at the moment. And also, the, you know, the contradictions of the Trump position, which have been kind of obvious, it seems to me, for months. They're even more obvious now. You know, if this is the end of globalization, why bomb the Houthis if you don't believe in global trade? The whole reason they gave for bombing the Houthis was to make sure that global trade would flow to Europe,

even though we resent the Europeans.

Why threaten to annex Panama?

The reason that Trump is threatening to annex Panama is that water levels in the Panama Canal have gone down,

and it may be that that is not the best

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