Here's Why Uncertainty Is An Economic Killer

04/20/25 • 9 min

1 Listener

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 damage does all this uncertainty cause to the economy? And is it something we’ll eventually get used to? Joe joins Stephen Carroll to break it all down.

Like what you hear? Subscribe to the Here’s Why podcast for more quick, expert-driven explainers available via the links below every Friday.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

Like what you hear? Subscribe to the Here’s Why podcast for more quick, expert-driven explainers available via the links below every Friday.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Previous Episode

Why the Pentagon Fails Audits Year After Year After Year

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 process works, as well as the prospects for the Pentagon ever actually passing an audit.

Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots

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Next Episode

Martin Wolf on Trump's Shakeup of the Global Order

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 well. Countries around the world are now struggling to understand exactly what the Trump administration is trying to achieve, how far it will go in terms of its political and economic isolationism, and how they should we respond. On this episode we speak with Wolf, the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, about what Trump's reordering of global trade means for the world, how Europe and China might respond, and the origins of the US administration's economic discontent.
Read More:
Trump’s Tariffs and China Collide to Shock the $115 Trillion Global Economy
What’s Left of Globalization Without the US?

Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots

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Odd Lots - Here's Why Uncertainty Is An Economic Killer

Transcript

Speaker 100:00:00.239

Hi. I'm Stephen Carroll, host of Bloomberg's Here's Why podcast. I'm dropping into your feed because we borrowed Joe Wisenthal for our latest episode while he was in London, so we wanted to share it with you. If you like it, you can subscribe to us wherever you usually listen. There is a link in the show notes Enjoy Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I'm Stephen Carroll, and this is Here's Why, where we take one new story and explain