October 1, 2025 • 23 mins
This week, we're widening the lens a bit with a panel from the Bloomberg event "Women, Money and Power." Host Stephanie Flanders spoke with Alessandra Galloni, editor in chief of Reuters, and Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist, about how their news agencies are grappling with the sheer volume of news coming out of Washington and the Trump administration's aggressive approach to the media. They discuss press freedom challenges, the global impact of “Trumponomics” and how their newsrooms balance independence, fairness and resilience amid political and economic upheaval.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I think the best
way of characterizing this administration it is essentially the kind
of monetization of US hegemony. The left polite way is
something about a mafioso shakedown.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg,
and this is Trumpanomics, the podcast that looks at the
economic world of Donald Trump, how he's already shaped the
global economy and what on earth is going to happen next.
This week, well, we're widening the lens a bit because
I just had a fascinating conversation i'd like to share
with you. The occasion was Bloomberg's second Women, Money and
(00:50):
Power event in London, and the conversation was with Alessandra Galoni,
the editor in chief of Reuter's News Agency, and Zanni Mintembadows,
editor in chief of The Economist. The title of our
session was reporting on money and Power in the current moment,
and there was plenty of Trump andomics in the mix.
But what you'll also hear is how all three of
(01:10):
us have been grappling with not just the sheer volume
of news coming out of Washington, but also the Trump
administration's aggressive approach to handling the media. We see that
obviously in the Jimmy Kimmel saga and the many lawsuits
the President has filed against the New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal, most of the traditional US news networks.
But it's also something we've been living with behind the
(01:32):
scenes since the White House took control of the White
House Press Pool and dramatically cut the mainstream media's regular
access to the president. So yes, it's a little bit
more introspective than our usual discussions on Trump andomics. But
like it or not, Donald Trump is leaving his mark
on journalism as well as the global economy, and sitting
(01:53):
at the helm of these two major news organizations, Zanni
and Alessandra have a bird's eye view of both. I
started by asking Alessandra eight months in how this Trump
administration had changed the way Reuters did its job.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I think there's sort of two buckets, right, there's what
you have to do journalistically, and then instead of how
you go about it and navigate some of the new
rules that have come in journalistically, I think, you know,
the bottom line is sort of a back to the future.
You do what we always do, which is you report
this administration. And what we try to do is we
try to report what matters, you know, what the real
(02:36):
effects of the executive orders are, or what the real
effects of changes in policy new laws are. So for example,
just yesterday, we had a story that looked at how
prosecutions for drug abuse, or for money laundering, or for
crime financial crimes that used to be prosecuted a lot
in the US have now sort of given way to
(02:59):
deportations because so much attention of the Trump administration is
focused on deportations that a lot of the same sort
of prosecutors and officers who are focusing on one type
of crime are now focusing on what Trump classifies as
another type of crime. So again, what flows from changes
in policy. That's just one example. I mean this there's
worth perhaps mentioning a few of the restrictions that we've had.
(03:20):
The new one is on the Pentagon reporting, which all
of us have, which is that there's a new rule
now or a new request for all journalists who cover
the Pentagon to sign a piece of paper saying that
that essentially we wouldn't publish something that could be in
a security interest of the of the US, you know,
without checking with the Pentagon first. Essentially, now, of course
(03:44):
that is something that we can't do right, and that
is something that I think, you know, to my knowledge,
virtually nobody has signed this right and you faced the
same thing. And so we're you know, talking to the
administration about how we can change this. And interestingly, what
we understand is that it's actually aimed more at people
work in the Pentagon to avoid them from leaking. And
of course leaks also have been sort of more kind
(04:05):
of criminalized with a criminalization of what the administration would
call leaks. So I think on the reporting side, we
keep reporting on the news, trying to you know, understand
what is going on, and then sort of try to
convince the administration that, you know, First Amendment press freedom
is something important for everyone no matter where you operate
in the US or in our case, in all the
(04:25):
two hundred other countries where we work.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And I mean as why and news services obviously Router's
and Bloomberg have been affected by just taking what taking
the wires out of the Oval office. As a matter
of course, off the plane, there was always a wire
journalist previously on the plane, or more than one. There's
just a consistent sort of lack of people to ask
questions or questions that aren't along the lines of mister president,
how do you look so healthy and so much younger
(04:49):
than in your previous administration. But I mean, Zami, you're
in a slightly different position with the economists, but I
know obviously you have much the same journalistic mission. How
are you dealing with the different aproach that this administration has?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
You know, what we do is to join the dots
between geopolitics, business technology to help our readers understand where
the world is going. And that mission is exactly the
same as it always has been, and the Trump administration
changed our framework because the Trump's administration is so dominant
(05:24):
in pretty much every global story. And so for me,
one of the things that has changed is that I
spend a lot of time making sure that we differentiate
between the signal and the noise. If you're not careful,
every story about every part of the world could start
with the reference to Donald Trump. And so I spend
quite a lot of time, either literally or at least figuratively,
crossing out first paragraphs that mentioned Trump too much. It
(05:45):
would be incredibly boring if you had every single story
framed in a Trump way. Differentiating the signal from the
noise also means, you know, not suffering from Trump derangement
syndrome and being fair minded about the way you cover
this administration. We have a lot of Republican readers, we
have a lot of Trump administration people read US, and
indeed trumpions read us. And I think it's very important
(06:09):
that even people who don't share the economist's world view.
We believe in liberal values. We were founded to champion them.
They drive what we do. But I feel very strongly
that even people who do not share that view should
find our journalism useful, and so we need to be rigorous,
fact based. We need to really go the extra mile
to make sure we are fair minded in our analysis.
(06:29):
And that's that's doubly important at this moment in terms
of the kind of way we deal with it. I mean,
of course, things have changed for us too. All my
non American journalists when they go to the US now,
including the carrier, I think it's a G twenty nine form.
It's a form that if you are stopped by the
customer border control, you sign it. I'm sure you have
it too, and they have to call our lawyer in
the US. I look at my phone before I go.
(06:51):
I scrub my phone to make sure that just in case.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I have to say.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I've gone to the US every week this month, and
I've sailed in and I have global entry.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And it's also you're not well known. Feel scerless posts exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
But I just think it's prudent, and that is a
weird feeling. I've been to China many, many times, and
I have never scrubbed my phone. I've taken a burner computer,
so for there are different behaviors that I do there.
But so the environment has changed, undoubtedly. It's a long
answer to your question, but it makes me value our
independence more. This sound incredibly pretentious, and I don't mean
it to be, but I think we should all be thinking,
(07:23):
not just about the hearing now, but how are our
successors going to look at what we did. Did we
go overboard with Trump derangement syndrome or did we normalize
totally non normal behavior and fail to raise enough red
flags about what is potentially happening to American democracy? And
I think the balance between those two is what I'm
(07:45):
figuring out.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I think we do find that the White House team,
particularly I think is having to use it thesaurus very
often on different words for unprecedented. That's the way you
put it in perspective and don't normalize it while still
reporting it. Just to come back on you, Sanny, because
I was dropped by this a couple of weeks ago.
There's a version of Trump derangement syndrome when one's thinking
about global affairs and global events, and I was struck
(08:06):
the Shanghai Summit and then the parade in China. A
lot of the coverage saw everything that was happening in
Beijing as a response to Trump, and indeed India Prime
Minister Modis going to China, all of that as being
entirely a response to what Donald Trump had done and
the trade wars and other things, which in many ways
(08:28):
was true, or at least was one way of looking
at it. But there was another way, which I got
from talking to my Indian colleagues and our geoeconomics analyst
in India, that it was entirely in line with Prime
Minister Modi's own objectives. He needed to have a relationship
with China because it's a key part of his manufacturing
domestic manufacturing agenda that he needed access to these inputs
(08:48):
from China, and we could show how many inputs he
relied on, etcetera, etcetera. It struck me that was true
for almost every country there that you could also just
redescribe what they were doing as not putting two fingers
up to Donald Trump, but pursuing their national interests in
a world in which the US has to some extense
step back. So how do you guard against that? That's
an aspect of the same issue.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. That's a sort of
another way of framing the too much focus on Trump.
I think two ways. Firstly, you know, what is happening
right now is a period of extraordinary uncertainty because we've
got at least three massive great shifts going on in
the world economy. One is the geopolitical shift, which is
driven in part by the administration, but was also starting
long before the rise of China, you know, the kind
(09:30):
of authoritarian axis. There were big shifts going on before
the Trump administration. Secondly, the huge economic shift, which again
predated the sort of I'm afraid the sort of end
of the unfashionability of the worldview of the economists started
long before Donald Trump became president. But he's taken it
a step further with massive protectionist turn. And then the
third one is the technological revolution who wins the AI race.
(09:52):
And all three of those are driving the world, and
all three of those are driving what Prime Minister Moodia
is doing, or Brazil is doing, or any country doing.
And so you're right, if you only think of this
through the prism of the US and through Trump, you're
missing something. And once that for this, I think the
US is what you'll know down exactly. I think there's
a sixteen percent of global trade. It's a relatively small proportion.
(10:13):
It's of course it's dominant in global finance, but that
suggests that a lot of what is going on is
actually external to the United States, and so we have
to absolutely make sure that we don't overemphasize the impact
of this hyperactive and of course extremely important administration.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I completely agree. I think nobody doubts that US administration
is important. And what has been happening where this is
like global trade, you know, geopolitics is no question something
that we need to cover. But the risk is if
we only cover it from the vantage point of the US,
we miss what's actually happening in other countries, and we
may find ourselves, to your point, about ten years from now,
twenty years from now or more, we may miss the
(10:54):
applical shifts in places like China and India because we've
only been focusing on them as a result of the
US administration. And then equally, this accounts on one of
the key thing for journalists is to be open minded.
You have to be open to the possibility that your ideas,
your original idea, your original hypothesis, is wrong. And I
(11:15):
think that the mainstream press as we sometimes we're called,
has a certain view of this administration, and we you
need to be open to the possibility that the US
economy is not going to collapse because of what is happening,
because that inflation is not going to be what people
feared because of the tariff policy. That you know, the
institutions of the state of law, the institutions in the
(11:37):
US will not collapse necessarily, that they're strong and that
they will last some of the attacks, right, I mean,
I mentioned before in passing some of the new Attorney
General's rules on against sort of leaks, you know, leaks
by journalists. Well you know what actually what it reversed
was a policy of the Biden administration. It went back
(11:58):
to a policy of the administration visa you journalists, and
so I think everybody was ready. So even though we
are there in the rooms and we are fighting for
press breedo, and we also have to put it into
context right and not criminalize everything that is done by
this administration while standing firm to fact check everything that
is said.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
I want to do a bit more on the economics,
not least because this is going to be getting out
of my Trumpnomics podcast, which you can get anyway. I
can't speak about de arrangement syndrome on the name of
the name of the podcast. I think the closest thing
to a consistent principle of trump Noomics as it's applied
globally has been that the rest of the world should
(12:46):
just pay for stuff that previously it got quote unquotes
for free from the US, whether that's reserve, currency, security umbrella,
a certain kind of global order. And I think the
assumps at the beginning of the year might have been
that countries were going to push back a bit more
than they have. Have you been surprised any by how
(13:07):
effective the administration has been short term at dividing and ruling.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So, first of all, I think your characterization is spot on.
I think the best way of characterizing this administration, and
people have over the last few months have talked about
is it is it isolationist? Is it great power series?
It's not. It is Essentially the polite way is a
kind of monetization of US hegemony. The less polite way
is something about a mafioso shakedown. And you can you
(13:34):
can take your pick which one you want to use,
but that really is the common thread that goes through
all of the administration's international economic actions. I'm struck. If
you'd said to me in March, you know, just before
Liberation Day, and you'd said me, the Trump administration is
going to increase America's effective tariff from around two percent
to about nineteen percent, and it's going to have fifty
(13:56):
percent taffs some countries like India and thirty five percent
on Canada, I would have said, the odds are we
are going to go into some kind of nineteen thirties
style tit for tat trade war. There's going to be retaliation,
And actually you're right. The surprising thing is that two
things happened. Ju Jinping retaliated and America caved very clearly.
Trump realized that he couldn't win that, and then the
(14:18):
other countries have essentially all tried to strike deals, and
what we haven't had is a kind of collective we're
standing up to this. And so in the short term,
you're right, it's been quite successful. I actually don't. I'm
not at all sure it's going to be successful in
the medium term, because I think, firstly, America loses out.
I mean, I'm a card carrying free trader, and I
(14:38):
believe that the country that imposes tariffs does lose out,
the consumer does pay. It's not good for American competitiveness,
and although it may not cause an inflation problem in
the short term, in the long term this is bad
for the United States. And therefore, I think the rest
of the world has shown very clearly that it does
have no intention of going down this route, and so
you will see greater coordination between different regional trees GA
(15:00):
agreements that I actually think. I mean, it won't be
the WTO, it won't be the old system, but you
will have something that resembles a rules based trading system,
increasingly excluding the US, and that is not good for
the US and the medium.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
The system has worked. Ultimately, what you're saying is that
global trade to a certain extent has worked because we've
seen the deals that have been struck. You know, it
has been a huge overhaul of the system. But we
thought that there would be more of a dismantling.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I mean, we have to say we have I think
it is a new system, but I think that it
is there. We will see a limit to the ability
even of the US. That's shakedown. That's where countries over
the medium term. I think this is the height of
the shakedown ability.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And China was and China, as you say, was the one.
There was no way that you could push further with China,
and that's why you're backtracked.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, and there's any points out there's more than eighty
percent of global trade.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Shameless self promotion. Since this is going to be on
your conference RESI is that, as you may know, next
week we're launching the Economist inside US series of video
shows on there'll be specialist ones and I will co
host a weekly one, but the first episode will be
along this track, and as part of it, I am
I have an interesting conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney
on precisely this topic, so you should listen.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
To it right, watch the space.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
The other thing I think we should not forget is
that a lot of Trump's policies that are ostensibly about economics,
or sensibly about global trade, or or are actually about
getting something else in the geopolitical sphere in that his
linkage policy is very strong.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
So I will what the king.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Feels like exactly the court exact king, and the king
likes you, so that then you're going to stop, you know,
sign a piece deal, right.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Alessandra, do actually think in this environment? I think we've
all agreed that there's a kind of short term getting
along with the US, but long term a real erosion
of US position and potentially a vacuum into which other
countries will move in. Do you think there's any scope
for Europe to step up in this environment? And there's
a lot of pressure.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I mean, there's certainly scope. There's a big question as
to whether as to whether Europe will. But I think
another point, and I know we reached the end that
I that I think we also shouldn't forget recently, actually
we were in the room together when we were talking
to the former head of I six, I think at
Davos in January, and one of the things that this
was that was all right, well, what I'm about to
(17:20):
say is pretty thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
From and among friends.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
No. But one of the things that I thought was
very interesting is how much of an emphasis he put
on the fact that leave aside the heads of these
or the organizations, you know, the top organizations of the
US and of the UK, but that a lot of
the work is done at the second and third level,
and a lot of the relations and he was talking
about about security, but you could extend this to many
(17:48):
other areas is actually done not at the top levels,
and that the coordination and collaboration still goes on. And
I was really struck by that because it's suggested to
me that you know, administrations come and go, and they
are important, and this administration may lead to another same administration.
We just don't know what's going to happen, right, But
that actually between countries and among countries, a lot of
(18:11):
the work that and that holds policies together is still
still good.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And that is that is actually a lot of the
concerns were pretty much run out of time. But I
do want to just because you are also leaders of
people and managers of people, and this is a pretty fractious,
often emotive journalistic environment for particularly reporters in the US
to navigate, and we've seen that in spades over the
(18:36):
last few weeks. So I just wondered both of you,
how much are you how much have you had to
think about that? Have you had issues with people either
with burnout or just people struggling to sort of hold
that line because you both stand for objective, rigorous reporting.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The answer is it is people feel very very strongly
about what's going on. I think we benefit from being
we don't have to you know, we do different kinds
of journalism to you too, so we have the time
to discuss and debate. And what's most important to me
is that people feel their voices are heard. And so
we have lots of discussions about a lot of these subjects,
(19:14):
and we may end up often with leader lines that
perhaps I'm fairly sure some of my team don't agree with,
but as long as they've had their voices heard, and
I think it's people. I mean, I can speak for
my colleagues. They have been extraordinary in their sort of
professionalism and the way that they have risen to the challenge.
They understand that our role is to make sense of
(19:35):
what is happening, explain it to our readers around the world,
never never compromise on our underlying values. We are a
liberal newspaper, classic English liberalism. We proudly champion that. But
you can do that and at the same time have
fair minded journalism that distinguishes between the signal and the noise,
and I think everyone is completely on board with that.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
We have a slightly different situation. You know, we're obviously
on the sharp edge of a lot of what happens
in the world, and including in conflict. We've been talking
about economics, but you know, we have the other half
of our newsroom, you know, is in war zones. We
have many people in Ukraine, I mean, on battlefields around
the world. So for us, there's a real imperative to
(20:13):
keep our people safe physically all the time, and that
is becoming increasingly difficult. I mean, I mean it's no
secret I've been in this job as EIC for four
years and we've lost four journalists. So, you know, in conflict,
so the physical remains very, very important because there are
a lot of actual kinetic situations on the ground. But
to your point, which is more sort of the emotional
(20:35):
aspect of it. No, it's very real. I mean, our
journalists in the US are feeling the same sort of
pressures that many of our journalists and other countries feel.
And so, you know, we do a lot of hostile
environment courses. Those are mainly for physical protection, but increasingly
we use a lot of mental health protection and how
to protect your mental health, how to keep yourself safe
scrubbing your phone, you know, digitally. And we have introduced many,
(20:58):
many more sessions on hostile environment writ large in the
US than we ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
We are.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
We're rolling out trainings that we've never before done in
the US. And to your point, people who are in
the Washington Bureau who have come from Latin American countries
and others that are finding this much more familiar territory. Okay, final,
very quick question. We've none of us managed to get
sued our organization so far by the administration. Will you
be a little bit embarrassed if you're not by the
(21:25):
end of the administration.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
No, genuinely, don't think about it. I will be embarrassed
if we haven't done the best possible coverage, and that
is if that leads to us being sued, so being yeah, are.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
You exciting our general council firing.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Up our general councils? You know have plenty of work
to do with all the investigations that we do and
all of the countries we operate in, so I think
they've got plenty to handle.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Alessandro Zani, thank you so much for Davis. Thanks for
listening to Trumpnomics from Bloomberg. It was hosted by me
Stephanie Flanders, and I was in a conversation with the
(22:13):
Reuters editor in chief Alessandra Galonni and the Economists editor
in chief Zanni Minton Beadows. Trumponomics was produced by Summer,
Sadi and Moses and and special thanks this week to
the organizers of the Women, Money and Power event at
Bloomberg's headquarters in London. Sound design was by Blake Maples
(22:36):
and Kelly Gary and Amy Keene is our executive producer.
Sage Bowman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. To help others
find the show, please rate it and review it highly
wherever you listen to podcasts.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I think the best
way of characterizing this administration it is essentially the kind
of monetization of US hegemony. The left polite way is
something about a mafioso shakedown.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg,
and this is Trumpanomics, the podcast that looks at the
economic world of Donald Trump, how he's already shaped the
global economy and what on earth is going to happen next.
This week, well, we're widening the lens a bit because
I just had a fascinating conversation i'd like to share
with you. The occasion was Bloomberg's second Women, Money and
(00:50):
Power event in London, and the conversation was with Alessandra Galoni,
the editor in chief of Reuter's News Agency, and Zanni Mintembadows,
editor in chief of The Economist. The title of our
session was reporting on money and Power in the current moment,
and there was plenty of Trump andomics in the mix.
But what you'll also hear is how all three of
(01:10):
us have been grappling with not just the sheer volume
of news coming out of Washington, but also the Trump
administration's aggressive approach to handling the media. We see that
obviously in the Jimmy Kimmel saga and the many lawsuits
the President has filed against the New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal, most of the traditional US news networks.
But it's also something we've been living with behind the
(01:32):
scenes since the White House took control of the White
House Press Pool and dramatically cut the mainstream media's regular
access to the president. So yes, it's a little bit
more introspective than our usual discussions on Trump andomics. But
like it or not, Donald Trump is leaving his mark
on journalism as well as the global economy, and sitting
(01:53):
at the helm of these two major news organizations, Zanni
and Alessandra have a bird's eye view of both. I
started by asking Alessandra eight months in how this Trump
administration had changed the way Reuters did its job.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I think there's sort of two buckets, right, there's what
you have to do journalistically, and then instead of how
you go about it and navigate some of the new
rules that have come in journalistically, I think, you know,
the bottom line is sort of a back to the future.
You do what we always do, which is you report
this administration. And what we try to do is we
try to report what matters, you know, what the real
(02:36):
effects of the executive orders are, or what the real
effects of changes in policy new laws are. So for example,
just yesterday, we had a story that looked at how
prosecutions for drug abuse, or for money laundering, or for
crime financial crimes that used to be prosecuted a lot
in the US have now sort of given way to
(02:59):
deportations because so much attention of the Trump administration is
focused on deportations that a lot of the same sort
of prosecutors and officers who are focusing on one type
of crime are now focusing on what Trump classifies as
another type of crime. So again, what flows from changes
in policy. That's just one example. I mean this there's
worth perhaps mentioning a few of the restrictions that we've had.
(03:20):
The new one is on the Pentagon reporting, which all
of us have, which is that there's a new rule
now or a new request for all journalists who cover
the Pentagon to sign a piece of paper saying that
that essentially we wouldn't publish something that could be in
a security interest of the of the US, you know,
without checking with the Pentagon first. Essentially, now, of course
(03:44):
that is something that we can't do right, and that
is something that I think, you know, to my knowledge,
virtually nobody has signed this right and you faced the
same thing. And so we're you know, talking to the
administration about how we can change this. And interestingly, what
we understand is that it's actually aimed more at people
work in the Pentagon to avoid them from leaking. And
of course leaks also have been sort of more kind
(04:05):
of criminalized with a criminalization of what the administration would
call leaks. So I think on the reporting side, we
keep reporting on the news, trying to you know, understand
what is going on, and then sort of try to
convince the administration that, you know, First Amendment press freedom
is something important for everyone no matter where you operate
in the US or in our case, in all the
(04:25):
two hundred other countries where we work.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And I mean as why and news services obviously Router's
and Bloomberg have been affected by just taking what taking
the wires out of the Oval office. As a matter
of course, off the plane, there was always a wire
journalist previously on the plane, or more than one. There's
just a consistent sort of lack of people to ask
questions or questions that aren't along the lines of mister president,
how do you look so healthy and so much younger
(04:49):
than in your previous administration. But I mean, Zami, you're
in a slightly different position with the economists, but I
know obviously you have much the same journalistic mission. How
are you dealing with the different aproach that this administration has?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
You know, what we do is to join the dots
between geopolitics, business technology to help our readers understand where
the world is going. And that mission is exactly the
same as it always has been, and the Trump administration
changed our framework because the Trump's administration is so dominant
(05:24):
in pretty much every global story. And so for me,
one of the things that has changed is that I
spend a lot of time making sure that we differentiate
between the signal and the noise. If you're not careful,
every story about every part of the world could start
with the reference to Donald Trump. And so I spend
quite a lot of time, either literally or at least figuratively,
crossing out first paragraphs that mentioned Trump too much. It
(05:45):
would be incredibly boring if you had every single story
framed in a Trump way. Differentiating the signal from the
noise also means, you know, not suffering from Trump derangement
syndrome and being fair minded about the way you cover
this administration. We have a lot of Republican readers, we
have a lot of Trump administration people read US, and
indeed trumpions read us. And I think it's very important
(06:09):
that even people who don't share the economist's world view.
We believe in liberal values. We were founded to champion them.
They drive what we do. But I feel very strongly
that even people who do not share that view should
find our journalism useful, and so we need to be rigorous,
fact based. We need to really go the extra mile
to make sure we are fair minded in our analysis.
(06:29):
And that's that's doubly important at this moment in terms
of the kind of way we deal with it. I mean,
of course, things have changed for us too. All my
non American journalists when they go to the US now,
including the carrier, I think it's a G twenty nine form.
It's a form that if you are stopped by the
customer border control, you sign it. I'm sure you have
it too, and they have to call our lawyer in
the US. I look at my phone before I go.
(06:51):
I scrub my phone to make sure that just in case.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I have to say.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I've gone to the US every week this month, and
I've sailed in and I have global entry.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And it's also you're not well known. Feel scerless posts exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
But I just think it's prudent, and that is a
weird feeling. I've been to China many, many times, and
I have never scrubbed my phone. I've taken a burner computer,
so for there are different behaviors that I do there.
But so the environment has changed, undoubtedly. It's a long
answer to your question, but it makes me value our
independence more. This sound incredibly pretentious, and I don't mean
it to be, but I think we should all be thinking,
(07:23):
not just about the hearing now, but how are our
successors going to look at what we did. Did we
go overboard with Trump derangement syndrome or did we normalize
totally non normal behavior and fail to raise enough red
flags about what is potentially happening to American democracy? And
I think the balance between those two is what I'm
(07:45):
figuring out.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I think we do find that the White House team,
particularly I think is having to use it thesaurus very
often on different words for unprecedented. That's the way you
put it in perspective and don't normalize it while still
reporting it. Just to come back on you, Sanny, because
I was dropped by this a couple of weeks ago.
There's a version of Trump derangement syndrome when one's thinking
about global affairs and global events, and I was struck
(08:06):
the Shanghai Summit and then the parade in China. A
lot of the coverage saw everything that was happening in
Beijing as a response to Trump, and indeed India Prime
Minister Modis going to China, all of that as being
entirely a response to what Donald Trump had done and
the trade wars and other things, which in many ways
(08:28):
was true, or at least was one way of looking
at it. But there was another way, which I got
from talking to my Indian colleagues and our geoeconomics analyst
in India, that it was entirely in line with Prime
Minister Modi's own objectives. He needed to have a relationship
with China because it's a key part of his manufacturing
domestic manufacturing agenda that he needed access to these inputs
(08:48):
from China, and we could show how many inputs he
relied on, etcetera, etcetera. It struck me that was true
for almost every country there that you could also just
redescribe what they were doing as not putting two fingers
up to Donald Trump, but pursuing their national interests in
a world in which the US has to some extense
step back. So how do you guard against that? That's
an aspect of the same issue.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. That's a sort of
another way of framing the too much focus on Trump.
I think two ways. Firstly, you know, what is happening
right now is a period of extraordinary uncertainty because we've
got at least three massive great shifts going on in
the world economy. One is the geopolitical shift, which is
driven in part by the administration, but was also starting
long before the rise of China, you know, the kind
(09:30):
of authoritarian axis. There were big shifts going on before
the Trump administration. Secondly, the huge economic shift, which again
predated the sort of I'm afraid the sort of end
of the unfashionability of the worldview of the economists started
long before Donald Trump became president. But he's taken it
a step further with massive protectionist turn. And then the
third one is the technological revolution who wins the AI race.
(09:52):
And all three of those are driving the world, and
all three of those are driving what Prime Minister Moodia
is doing, or Brazil is doing, or any country doing.
And so you're right, if you only think of this
through the prism of the US and through Trump, you're
missing something. And once that for this, I think the
US is what you'll know down exactly. I think there's
a sixteen percent of global trade. It's a relatively small proportion.
(10:13):
It's of course it's dominant in global finance, but that
suggests that a lot of what is going on is
actually external to the United States, and so we have
to absolutely make sure that we don't overemphasize the impact
of this hyperactive and of course extremely important administration.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I completely agree. I think nobody doubts that US administration
is important. And what has been happening where this is
like global trade, you know, geopolitics is no question something
that we need to cover. But the risk is if
we only cover it from the vantage point of the US,
we miss what's actually happening in other countries, and we
may find ourselves, to your point, about ten years from now,
twenty years from now or more, we may miss the
(10:54):
applical shifts in places like China and India because we've
only been focusing on them as a result of the
US administration. And then equally, this accounts on one of
the key thing for journalists is to be open minded.
You have to be open to the possibility that your ideas,
your original idea, your original hypothesis, is wrong. And I
(11:15):
think that the mainstream press as we sometimes we're called,
has a certain view of this administration, and we you
need to be open to the possibility that the US
economy is not going to collapse because of what is happening,
because that inflation is not going to be what people
feared because of the tariff policy. That you know, the
institutions of the state of law, the institutions in the
(11:37):
US will not collapse necessarily, that they're strong and that
they will last some of the attacks, right, I mean,
I mentioned before in passing some of the new Attorney
General's rules on against sort of leaks, you know, leaks
by journalists. Well you know what actually what it reversed
was a policy of the Biden administration. It went back
(11:58):
to a policy of the administration visa you journalists, and
so I think everybody was ready. So even though we
are there in the rooms and we are fighting for
press breedo, and we also have to put it into
context right and not criminalize everything that is done by
this administration while standing firm to fact check everything that
is said.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
I want to do a bit more on the economics,
not least because this is going to be getting out
of my Trumpnomics podcast, which you can get anyway. I
can't speak about de arrangement syndrome on the name of
the name of the podcast. I think the closest thing
to a consistent principle of trump Noomics as it's applied
globally has been that the rest of the world should
(12:46):
just pay for stuff that previously it got quote unquotes
for free from the US, whether that's reserve, currency, security umbrella,
a certain kind of global order. And I think the
assumps at the beginning of the year might have been
that countries were going to push back a bit more
than they have. Have you been surprised any by how
(13:07):
effective the administration has been short term at dividing and ruling.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So, first of all, I think your characterization is spot on.
I think the best way of characterizing this administration, and
people have over the last few months have talked about
is it is it isolationist? Is it great power series?
It's not. It is Essentially the polite way is a
kind of monetization of US hegemony. The less polite way
is something about a mafioso shakedown. And you can you
(13:34):
can take your pick which one you want to use,
but that really is the common thread that goes through
all of the administration's international economic actions. I'm struck. If
you'd said to me in March, you know, just before
Liberation Day, and you'd said me, the Trump administration is
going to increase America's effective tariff from around two percent
to about nineteen percent, and it's going to have fifty
(13:56):
percent taffs some countries like India and thirty five percent
on Canada, I would have said, the odds are we
are going to go into some kind of nineteen thirties
style tit for tat trade war. There's going to be retaliation,
And actually you're right. The surprising thing is that two
things happened. Ju Jinping retaliated and America caved very clearly.
Trump realized that he couldn't win that, and then the
(14:18):
other countries have essentially all tried to strike deals, and
what we haven't had is a kind of collective we're
standing up to this. And so in the short term,
you're right, it's been quite successful. I actually don't. I'm
not at all sure it's going to be successful in
the medium term, because I think, firstly, America loses out.
I mean, I'm a card carrying free trader, and I
(14:38):
believe that the country that imposes tariffs does lose out,
the consumer does pay. It's not good for American competitiveness,
and although it may not cause an inflation problem in
the short term, in the long term this is bad
for the United States. And therefore, I think the rest
of the world has shown very clearly that it does
have no intention of going down this route, and so
you will see greater coordination between different regional trees GA
(15:00):
agreements that I actually think. I mean, it won't be
the WTO, it won't be the old system, but you
will have something that resembles a rules based trading system,
increasingly excluding the US, and that is not good for
the US and the medium.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
The system has worked. Ultimately, what you're saying is that
global trade to a certain extent has worked because we've
seen the deals that have been struck. You know, it
has been a huge overhaul of the system. But we
thought that there would be more of a dismantling.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I mean, we have to say we have I think
it is a new system, but I think that it
is there. We will see a limit to the ability
even of the US. That's shakedown. That's where countries over
the medium term. I think this is the height of
the shakedown ability.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And China was and China, as you say, was the one.
There was no way that you could push further with China,
and that's why you're backtracked.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, and there's any points out there's more than eighty
percent of global trade.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Shameless self promotion. Since this is going to be on
your conference RESI is that, as you may know, next
week we're launching the Economist inside US series of video
shows on there'll be specialist ones and I will co
host a weekly one, but the first episode will be
along this track, and as part of it, I am
I have an interesting conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney
on precisely this topic, so you should listen.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
To it right, watch the space.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
The other thing I think we should not forget is
that a lot of Trump's policies that are ostensibly about economics,
or sensibly about global trade, or or are actually about
getting something else in the geopolitical sphere in that his
linkage policy is very strong.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
So I will what the king.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Feels like exactly the court exact king, and the king
likes you, so that then you're going to stop, you know,
sign a piece deal, right.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Alessandra, do actually think in this environment? I think we've
all agreed that there's a kind of short term getting
along with the US, but long term a real erosion
of US position and potentially a vacuum into which other
countries will move in. Do you think there's any scope
for Europe to step up in this environment? And there's
a lot of pressure.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I mean, there's certainly scope. There's a big question as
to whether as to whether Europe will. But I think
another point, and I know we reached the end that
I that I think we also shouldn't forget recently, actually
we were in the room together when we were talking
to the former head of I six, I think at
Davos in January, and one of the things that this
was that was all right, well, what I'm about to
(17:20):
say is pretty thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
From and among friends.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
No. But one of the things that I thought was
very interesting is how much of an emphasis he put
on the fact that leave aside the heads of these
or the organizations, you know, the top organizations of the
US and of the UK, but that a lot of
the work is done at the second and third level,
and a lot of the relations and he was talking
about about security, but you could extend this to many
(17:48):
other areas is actually done not at the top levels,
and that the coordination and collaboration still goes on. And
I was really struck by that because it's suggested to
me that you know, administrations come and go, and they
are important, and this administration may lead to another same administration.
We just don't know what's going to happen, right, But
that actually between countries and among countries, a lot of
(18:11):
the work that and that holds policies together is still
still good.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And that is that is actually a lot of the
concerns were pretty much run out of time. But I
do want to just because you are also leaders of
people and managers of people, and this is a pretty fractious,
often emotive journalistic environment for particularly reporters in the US
to navigate, and we've seen that in spades over the
(18:36):
last few weeks. So I just wondered both of you,
how much are you how much have you had to
think about that? Have you had issues with people either
with burnout or just people struggling to sort of hold
that line because you both stand for objective, rigorous reporting.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The answer is it is people feel very very strongly
about what's going on. I think we benefit from being
we don't have to you know, we do different kinds
of journalism to you too, so we have the time
to discuss and debate. And what's most important to me
is that people feel their voices are heard. And so
we have lots of discussions about a lot of these subjects,
(19:14):
and we may end up often with leader lines that
perhaps I'm fairly sure some of my team don't agree with,
but as long as they've had their voices heard, and
I think it's people. I mean, I can speak for
my colleagues. They have been extraordinary in their sort of
professionalism and the way that they have risen to the challenge.
They understand that our role is to make sense of
(19:35):
what is happening, explain it to our readers around the world,
never never compromise on our underlying values. We are a
liberal newspaper, classic English liberalism. We proudly champion that. But
you can do that and at the same time have
fair minded journalism that distinguishes between the signal and the noise,
and I think everyone is completely on board with that.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
We have a slightly different situation. You know, we're obviously
on the sharp edge of a lot of what happens
in the world, and including in conflict. We've been talking
about economics, but you know, we have the other half
of our newsroom, you know, is in war zones. We
have many people in Ukraine, I mean, on battlefields around
the world. So for us, there's a real imperative to
(20:13):
keep our people safe physically all the time, and that
is becoming increasingly difficult. I mean, I mean it's no
secret I've been in this job as EIC for four
years and we've lost four journalists. So, you know, in conflict,
so the physical remains very, very important because there are
a lot of actual kinetic situations on the ground. But
to your point, which is more sort of the emotional
(20:35):
aspect of it. No, it's very real. I mean, our
journalists in the US are feeling the same sort of
pressures that many of our journalists and other countries feel.
And so, you know, we do a lot of hostile
environment courses. Those are mainly for physical protection, but increasingly
we use a lot of mental health protection and how
to protect your mental health, how to keep yourself safe
scrubbing your phone, you know, digitally. And we have introduced many,
(20:58):
many more sessions on hostile environment writ large in the
US than we ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
We are.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
We're rolling out trainings that we've never before done in
the US. And to your point, people who are in
the Washington Bureau who have come from Latin American countries
and others that are finding this much more familiar territory. Okay, final,
very quick question. We've none of us managed to get
sued our organization so far by the administration. Will you
be a little bit embarrassed if you're not by the
(21:25):
end of the administration.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
No, genuinely, don't think about it. I will be embarrassed
if we haven't done the best possible coverage, and that
is if that leads to us being sued, so being yeah, are.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
You exciting our general council firing.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Up our general councils? You know have plenty of work
to do with all the investigations that we do and
all of the countries we operate in, so I think
they've got plenty to handle.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Alessandro Zani, thank you so much for Davis. Thanks for
listening to Trumpnomics from Bloomberg. It was hosted by me
Stephanie Flanders, and I was in a conversation with the
(22:13):
Reuters editor in chief Alessandra Galonni and the Economists editor
in chief Zanni Minton Beadows. Trumponomics was produced by Summer,
Sadi and Moses and and special thanks this week to
the organizers of the Women, Money and Power event at
Bloomberg's headquarters in London. Sound design was by Blake Maples
(22:36):
and Kelly Gary and Amy Keene is our executive producer.
Sage Bowman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. To help others
find the show, please rate it and review it highly
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