Here's Why Uncertainty Is An Economic Killer
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Stephen Carroll, host of Bloomberg's Here's Why Podcast. I'm dropping into your feed because we |
| 0:05.1 | borrowed Joe Wisenthal for our latest episode while he was in London, so we wanted to share it with you. |
| 0:10.2 | If you like it, you can subscribe to us wherever you usually listen. There is a link in the show notes. |
| 0:14.5 | Enjoy. |
| 0:17.6 | Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. |
| 0:23.6 | I'm Stephen Carroll, and this is Here's Why, where we take one news story and explain it in just a few minutes with our experts here at Bloomberg. |
| 0:35.0 | People getting really a bit tired. They don't know, even if something's announced, whether two days later it's not changed again. So you really see some fatigue of decision makers. |
| 0:45.8 | That's the CEO of Logistics giant D.H.L. Tobias Meyer, for executives like him, navigating the near daily shifts in US economic policy. It's like driving through fog |
| 0:55.6 | with no headlights. When the rules are changing so quickly, it's not just hard to keep up, it's |
| 1:00.3 | almost impossible to make decisions. Should a company build a new factory? Order more supplies, |
| 1:05.6 | hire more workers, and where to do any of this. And when you don't know what's coming, you hit the breaks. |
| 1:11.6 | But we haven't, I don't think, spent enough time talking about just the uncertainty out there. |
| 1:16.1 | Operating in this highly uncertain environment means go slow. |
| 1:20.7 | The higher uncertainty and greater risk of recession. |
| 1:23.5 | The fear that on a daily basis you wake up in the morning and not wondering whether which |
| 1:27.7 | sectors are going to have 25% tariffs, which country's tariffs are going to be at 100%. |
| 1:32.0 | That's where the damage is caused. |
| 1:34.6 | So here's why uncertainty is an economic killer. |
| 1:39.6 | Joe Wisenthal, host of Bloomberg's Oddlots podcast is with me in London. |
| 1:42.8 | Joe, great to see you. |
| 1:43.5 | Thank you for having me. Thrilled to be here. Tell me with your brain and knowledge of these matters, |
| 1:49.3 | how can we define uncertainty in this moment in 2025? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. |
... |
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