Can the WTO stay relevant? With Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

02/03/25 • 30 min

In an interview recorded before President Trump hit China, Mexico and Canada with steep tariffs that disrupt the global trading system, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation, speaks to the FT’s Senior Trade Writer, Alan Beattie, and defends her record and the WTO’s achievements. She outlines how she hopes to engage with the new US administration and how globalisation has been remarkably resilient despite shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of US protectionism in Trump's first term and under former president Joe Biden.

Alan writes the Trade Secrets newsletter. You can sign up here. He is on Bluesky at @alanbeattie.bsky.social.

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Presented by Alan Beattie. Produced by Laurence Knight. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alan writes the Trade Secrets newsletter. You can sign up here. He is on Bluesky at @alanbeattie.bsky.social.

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Martin Wolf talks to Arvind Subramanian: India, the next economic superpower?

India is the world’s most populous nation, and since the 1990s it has maintained almost Chinese levels of rapid economic growth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to make India a high income country and, by implication, an economic superpower by 2047. But is that achievable? This week’s guest, Arvind Subramanian, is a former chief economic adviser to Modi’s government. He is sceptical that the necessary growth rate can be sustained. Instead, he tells Martin Wolf how he thinks the government has scared off the necessary business investment, and how a serious miscalculation by the country’s central bank may be about to plunge India into a currency crisis.

Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column here

Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Next Episode

Making sense of Trump's tariffs. With Dani Rodrik

Tariffs have historically been an important tool of industrial policy. They were used in the last century by east Asian nations to promote infant industries, and are being used today by the EU to help spur the energy transition. But do Donald Trump’s threats to impose a 25% across-the-board tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, or his actual 10% tax rise on all imports from China, have any kind of thought-out policy rationale behind them? And should other countries respond in kind?

To find out, the FT’s European economics commentator Martin Sandbu speaks to Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard. Rodrik is one of the world’s most acclaimed experts on industrial policy, and someone Martin first got to know as a PhD student in the 1990s.

Martin Sandbu writes a regular column for the Financial Times. You can find it here

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.

Presented by Martin Sandbu. Produced by Laurence Knight and Edith Rousselot. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.