America's textile industry has famously declined over the years, with a bunch of production moving to lower-cost places like China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. Now, with the Trump administration imposing heavy tariffs on exports from these countries, the US clothing industry is facing another big shock. In this episode we speak with Sarah LaFleur, founder and CEO of M.M.LaFleur, which makes high-quality work clothing for women (Tracy is a big fan). She walks us through what the past month has actua...
May 09, 2025•40 min
By now, everyone recognizes that the US and China are in the middle of a trade war, with the Trump administration having imposed tariffs of as much as 125% on Chinese goods. For an export-focused economy like China's, that's a big deal. At the same time, China is pretty much the only major country that's chosen to retaliate against the US with its own set of fresh trade restrictions. So why did it decide to reciprocate? And what's its negotiating position as the US and China head into initial ta...
May 08, 2025•52 min
Every industry is going to be affected by the trade war in different ways. In many cases, we don't know how it's going to play out. Other industries are seeing an immediate impact. Companies that specialize in computer gaming are highly reliant on inputs from China and other East Asian countries. These companies assemble customized gaming rigs and other peripherals (cameras, chairs, controllers, speakers etc.). On this episode, we're joined by Stephen Burke, the founder of Gamers Nexus, a public...
May 07, 2025•47 min
There are several markets that have really settled down since the tumult of early April. But strange, unusual things are still popping up, particularly in the currency space. Over the last few days, we've seen a huge surge in the Taiwan dollar. This is important, in part, because Taiwanese life insurance companies are major buyers of US dollar assets, such as corporate bonds. Suddenly, they're looking at a major hit to the value of these holdings, with losses that are only partially hedged. So w...
May 06, 2025•29 min
What does history say about how big the AI boom can get, and who will ultimately win out? When does a boom turn into a bubble that turns into a bust? On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Henry Blodget, the founder of Business Insider (and Joe's old boss there). In the late '90s, Henry was one of the most well-known Wall Street analysts covering internet stocks, before the crash and recriminations, which ended up in his lifetime ban from the industry. His new project is a publication calle...
May 05, 2025•55 min
Over the last several years, both parties in the US have been drifting away from laissez-faire thinking about the economy, and more towards the view that the state has an active role in shaping markets. You have Republicans talking about stricter anti-trust and sovereign wealth funds, and of course Democrats embracing things like industrial policy efforts in key strategic sectors. But how do you design markets well? When does it fail? And what is the history of this type of thing in the US. In t...
May 03, 2025•54 min
We don't know what the end state for the tariffs are going to be, but inevitably there will be some shifts in the way that goods and dollars flow around the world economy. Of course, some parts of the economy are always subject to changing rules around subsidies and tariffs, and that's particularly true in agriculture. On this episode of the podcast we speak with Murad Al-Katib, the President and CEO of AGT Foods and Ingredients, who is sometimes known as The Lentil King of Saskatchewan. He is c...
May 02, 2025•52 min
Everyone knows by now that college endowment funds have gone big on alternative investing, pouring billions of dollars into private equity and hedge funds. But that investing model now seems to be under pressure and there are reports that Ivy League institutions like Yale and Harvard are looking to unload some of their more illiquid investments. So why did colleges get into alts in the first place? And how do they select which funds to invest in? In this episode, we speak with Joe Dowling, the f...
May 01, 2025•47 min
Gathering official economic data is a huge process in the best of times. But a bunch of different things have now combined to make that process even harder. People aren't responding to surveys like they used to. Survey responses have also become a lot more divided along political lines. And at the same time, the Trump administration wants to cut back on government spending, and the worry is that fewer official resources will make tracking the US economy even harder for statistical departments th...
Apr 30, 2025•47 min
When stocks are plunging in a typical market environment, people reach for safe haven assets like US Treasuries. But we've seen that phenomenon break down more and more. It broke down in a sustained way during the intense inflation of 2022. And it's been breaking down again, in an acute way, since President Trump's so-called "Liberation Day." On the night of April 8 and early morning of April 9, we saw a major spike in yields. As Trump put it, the bond market was getting the "yips." But what was...
Apr 28, 2025•43 min
Over the last few years, retail traders have gotten into options in a major way. Selling puts, buying calls, trading volatility — what used to be the domain of niche experts engaged in practical hedging has exploded into the public sphere. And there was a lot of easy money during a time when every dip was bought, and stocks mostly just went up. But what have we seen in recent weeks, with the extraordinary trading since April 2? On this episode we bring back one of our favorite guests, Benn...
Apr 26, 2025•22 min
If you look at most of the official hard data right now, there still isn't much evidence of a sharp downturn. Sure, all the surveys are abysmal, but the actual measures of economic activity are ok. But there is already data showing something severe is happening, and that can be seen in the volume of cargo flowing from China to the US. Of course, this is intentional. This is the whole point of tariffs. But the fear is that this is going to be acute and dramatic to consumer companies, and that it ...
Apr 25, 2025•24 min
For the most part, Americans haven't felt much pain yet from the tariffs that Donald Trump introduced (and then partially walked back) on April 2. The damage is highly visible in financial markets, but for the moment, shelves remain stocked, inflation measures have remained muted, and there hasn't been a significant wave of layoffs in official data. But according to our guest, real pain is coming. And what's going down is worse than a trade war. On this episode, we speak with the one and only Da...
Apr 24, 2025•45 min
When it comes to measuring economic pain, the cost of a humble breakfast sandwich might not be top of mind. But Bloomberg has an index that tracks the rising cost of a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, plus a cup of coffee. And this year, it’s reached record highs.On today’s Big Take podcast, we hear from people up and down the BEC supply chain — from a wheat farmer to a coffee roaster to a guy who turned his life-long love of eggs into a career. What does the most important meal...
Apr 23, 2025•20 min
One of the stated goals for the current trade war is to build more industrial capacity in the United States. So far there doesn't seem to be much of it happening. In fact, all of the manufacturing surveys (and all evidence) so far suggests the reverse. But not that long ago there was a concerted effort to build more factories in the United States. Under President Biden there was a whole host of new industrial announcements funded in part via the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. But did...
Apr 23, 2025•44 min
Martin Wolf has been called one of the world's most important economics commentators, and has for decades written in columns and his own books about the evolution of the global economy, chronicling the rise of globalization and the subsequent pushback to liberal trade. And he's had a lot to write about in recent weeks. President Trump's unveiling of sweeping tariffs against pretty much every single US trading partner has not only roiled global markets, but is shaking up international politics as...
Apr 21, 2025•59 min
Here's Why is Bloomberg’s short explainer podcast, where we take one big news story and break it down in just a few minutes—with help from our experts across the newsroom. We're dropping into your feed with a special episode featuring Joe Weisenthal , co-host of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, who joined us while in London. In this episode: The near-daily shifts in U.S. trade policy have rattled markets and made both businesses and consumers uneasy about spending. What kind of da...
Apr 20, 2025•10 min
Last year, it was announced that the US Department of Defense had failed an audit for its seventh straight year, indicating an ongoing inability to track its hundreds of billions of dollars in spending and inventories. Why does this keep happening? Why does the Pentagon get audited in the first place? And what can be done to fix it? On this episode, we speak with Julia Gledhill, a research analyst at the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center. She explains how the budgetary proce...
Apr 19, 2025•39 min
US Treasuries are the most important market in the world. With some $29 trillion outstanding, they create the benchmark that informs basically every other type of borrowing. Any changes to how the bond market works would be a massive deal. But lately, there's been a lot of chatter about how the Trump administration could radically restructure and refinance the US debt under the so-called "Mar-a-Lago Accord." In this episode, we speak with University of Virginia law professor Mitu Gulati about ho...
Apr 18, 2025•38 min
For years and years now, there has been one winning trade: Go long the US versus the rest of the world. Thanks to tech dynamism and general pro-growth US macro policies, American assets have far outstripped their global peers. Of course, there have been some bumps along the way, but they've usually been global bumps. The financial crisis in 2008-2009 was global. Covid was a shock for the entire world. But with Trump's tariffs, we are now looking at a story that has the potential to be US-specifi...
Apr 17, 2025•38 min
Every time there is tension between the US and China, there are stories about China threatening to withhold exports of rare earth metals, which are supposedly crucial for all kinds of advanced technologies. In this episode, recorded in Bloomberg's London studio, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas helps us clear up some misconceptions about them. For one thing, rare earths aren't actually that rare. Furthermore, the amount of global trade of these minerals is fairly minuscule. The US only im...
Apr 15, 2025•31 min
Everybody loves chicken. And, it turns out, that this humble bird can tell us quite a lot about the way the world works. In this three-part series, the Odd Lots team is exploring some of the thorniest issues facing the US economy, through the medium of chicken. In this first episode, we’re looking at chicken from the consumer side. Why do we love it so much? What goes into the price of something like a hot wing or an egg? And what can chicken tell us about the way we think of inflation? We speak...
Apr 14, 2025•35 min
The Odd Lots team is analyzing the US economy through the lens of chicken. In this second episode of our special three-part series, we look at the birds themselves and the people who farm them. Because the way we actually get chicken has changed a lot over the years, with the industry evolving from backyard birds to huge poultry companies that outsource chicken growing to independent contractors. Farmers often say they are taking on most of the risk of raising chicks, while the big poultry compa...
Apr 14, 2025•36 min
In the final episode of our special three-part series exploring the US economy through the chicken industry, we’re taking a look at market competition. Chicken in the US is dominated by a handful of huge poultry processors. But new technologies, like algorithmic pricing, are also leading to accusations of anticompetitive corporate behavior that can potentially create bad outcomes for both consumers and workers. We’re using poultry to trace the evolution of America’s approach to antitrust and lea...
Apr 14, 2025•34 min
One of the ironies of the tariffs is that, while ostensibly the goal is to reshore US manufacturing, it's actually been US makers of physical goods themselves that have warned about the damage that trade barriers can cause. Or, to put it another way, if we really want to see more domestic US production in order to decouple from China, then perhaps there are other levers to pull besides the tariffs. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Sam D'Amico, the founder and CEO of California-based...
Apr 14, 2025•39 min
Check out the new Stock Movers Podcast from Bloomberg. Subscribe for five-minute episodes on today's winners and losers in the stock market. Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/4kJ43ON Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/mr385jv6 Listen on other platforms: https://link.podtrac.com/h0zn7xir See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 13, 2025•6 min
In a big bull market, people will overlook a lot. They'll suspend their disbelief. They'll buy into fantastical, unrealistic stories about the future. But when the momentum turns sharply the other way, all of this reverses. Then, as the cliché goes, you see who's been "swimming naked." So what have we learned from the recent market volatility? On this episode, we speak with legendary short-seller Jim Chanos, now the founder of Chanos & Co. We talk about cloud stocks and datacenters, A...
Apr 12, 2025•40 min
On Wednesday, President Trump put a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for every country except China. The market, which had been in a state of deep panic, surged massively on the announcement. But then on Thursday, stocks sold off hard again as people woke up to the reality of massive tariffs on China and the new baseline tariffs on everyone else. Plus, even before all this tariff drama, there were plenty of reasons to be anxious about the US economy. On this episode of Lots More , we speak wit...
Apr 11, 2025•12 min
On Wednesday, Trump pulled back from the brink on most of the reciprocal tariffs announced on April 2. The market surged. But we're still in an extraordinarily challenging moment. We have new across-the-board tariffs. We have gigantic tariffs on China. And there's a possibility that a recession has already begun. So what does the Fed do in this environment, with so much persistent uncertainty? On this episode, we speak with Rob Kaplan, former President of the Dallas Fed, and now the Vice Chairma...
Apr 10, 2025•32 min
How should we make sense of the Trump tariffs? They've been terrible for the stock market, obviously. Small businesses seem to hate them. Energy companies aren't fans either. US manufacturers are talking about how the tariffs will make manufacturing harder. And yet we have them. So who stands to benefit? What's the point? And how should we understand this moment in American history? On this episode we speak with one of our favorite guests, Viktor Shvets, the head of global desk strategy at Macqu...
Apr 09, 2025•31 min
