Interview on Trump's Trade Policies on Australia's ABC

And a tribute to the still independent spirit of ABC journalists

I came to Australia for family reasons two weeks ago. An ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Commission, not its US counterpart with the same initials) journalist Michael Janda got wind of my visit, and immediately arranged for me to be interviewed on their program The Business.

This is such a contrast to what I experienced when I moved to the UK in 2014. In Australia, despite the extent to which the national broadcaster has had its funding cut by government austerity programs, there are still many independent thinkers like Michael amongst its journalists, who pursue what they think will be interesting, rather than doing what might appease management.

In the UK, I am virtually certain that a directive came down from the top to not interview me, after my main “hook” there—my friendship with Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister in the aftermath to the Global Financial Crisis—ceased being a hook, with his resignation from Syriza, in disgust at its capitulation to the EU’s draconian austerity policies. One journalist even invited me in for a pow wow when I first arrived in London, and to have me sign her copy of Debunking Economics. After my appearances on BBC Newsnight criticising austerity and the European Union, I never heard from her again.

Since Yanis resigned (and formed Diem25), I have only been interviewed on the BBC once, with a repeat appearance on BBC HardTalk with Steven Sackur—and coincidentally, HardTalk has recently been shut down itself, to help “balance the budget”.

My belief that the BBC is run top down, with management dominating journalism rather than vice versa, is of course a conspiracy theory. This conspiracy was subsequently confirmed by the BBC! The program “The vetting files: How the BBC kept out ‘subversives’” explains the history of government (read “spook”) control of the BBC, and its origins in WWII. Unlike WWII, this conservative meddling in BBC selection processes, and therefore those selected meddling with news programs, has never ceased.

All that is a prelude to this interview that Alicia Barry conducted with me over Trump’s tariffs. See below—and please share widely.

Also, as usual, an appeal for support from my free followers. There are 11,236 followers of my Substack page, 296 of whom give me between $5 a month and $600 a year to help me get my contrarian—and realistic—approach to economics out to a wider audience. I deliberately make all my posts freely available (except when copyright issues apply) to counter the pervasive myths of mainstream Neoclassical economics. But I can’t produce that analysis for free, and the support of paying members is both much appreciated, and the fuel that keeps me going. Please consider joining them here, or on Patreon for as little as $10 a month if Substack’s minimum of $5 a month is too much for you.