Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️
“And they fail to see that sometimes the madness is actually the method.”
Germany is losing about 10,000 factory jobs a month. Most people call that an energy problem. My guest this week says that’s the wrong way to look at it. He thinks it’s the result of other countries’ trade policy, and Europe has no answer for it.
His name is Michael Every, Global Strategist at Rabobank. The day Trump won again, he wrote that the US would “go back a century or two” in how it runs its economy. Tariffs. The government acting like an investment bank. A new spheres-of-influence foreign policy he calls the “Donroe Doctrine.” He called all of it before it happened.
His big idea is simple. Stop asking what GDP will be next year. Start asking what GDP is for.
This isn’t a recap. It’s the playbook: the six best ideas from the conversation, the exact quotes, and what to do with each one.
POLL: When you look at US policy chaos, what do you see?
About Michael Every: Michael Every is Global Strategist at Rabobank, where he analyses major financial and geopolitical developments for RaboResearch. Based in Asia for much of his career, he is one of the few sell-side strategists who reads tariffs, chip bans, sanctions, and stablecoins as a single toolkit of national power rather than separate policy files. He publishes daily and is active on X at @TheMichaelEvery.
“Economic statecraft is when you look at every single tool that you have as part of a toolkit, which collectively can be used to gain national power in a zero sum international environment.”
Why this matters: Every says we now get “three or four headlines” a day that each would have been the whole story five years ago. Europe is heading into its own trade war with China, and this China is stronger than the one Trump first took on. The Iran talks run on 60-day clocks that he thinks lead back to war. And the US has written its goals straight into its national security strategy: biggest economy, strongest military, energy dominance, AI dominance, factories back home. If your models treat these as separate stories, you’re reading the wrong map. This is the fix.
🎯 Jump to the best parts
00:00 Why the U.S. Entered the Iran Conflict
00:46 Introduction
01:28 Economic Policy vs. Economic Statecraft
03:36 America's Grand Strategy
05:48 Why Tariffs Are Back
06:57 America, China & Europe
08:35 The Iran Conflict Explained
14:57 Taiwan & Semiconductor Geopolitics
16:45 Europe's Biggest Strategic Weakness
21:47 What Is GDP Actually For?
22:59 Do Tariffs Really Work?
24:56 Europe's Structural Crisis
29:41 Why Michael Is Optimistic
32:33 Is Free Trade Broken?
35:59 Why Inequality Keeps Growing
37:24 Lightning Round
42:22 Where To Learn More
Important Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-every-38983214
RaboResearch: https://www.rabobank.com/knowledge/our-experts/011085368/michael-every
Watch or listen now: YouTube • Apple Podcasts
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Our biggest takeaways from this conversation
1. Ask what GDP is for
This sounds academic. It isn’t. Economic policy is one person turning one dial for one goal. Statecraft is every dial at once, all pointed at national power. Miss the difference and a set of planned moves looks like chaos.
“The question that you ask if you are using economic statecraft is what is GDP for? Not what is GDP going to be to 2.1. What is GDP for? If you’re not asking that question, you’re not doing economic statecraft.”
Policy is one tool for one job: tweak a tax, or raise rates to defend the currency. One dial.
Statecraft turns every dial at once, tax, money, budgets, currency, energy, defense, transport, all aimed at beating other countries.
His sharpest line: “confusion and bewilderment can actually be a deliberate policy.” Sometimes the market’s confusion is the goal, not an accident.
What to do with this: when a headline looks irrational, ask which national-power goal it could serve before pricing it as noise. If you can’t find one, then it’s noise.
Related reads:
→ How the U.S. Weaponized the Dollar (And Stablecoins), with Eddie Fishman
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2. America is going back a century
Every wrote this the day Trump won again, and says he was the first on Wall Street to call it. The point isn’t that tariffs are new. It’s that the years without them were the odd ones out.
“Fasten your seatbelt because the US is going to go back a century or two in terms of how it does things going forward.”
Tariffs are “as American as apple pie”: the only era without significant US tariffs was the last few decades.
