It’s possible that more has been written about tariffs in 2025 than in the previous few decades combined. In the press, the arguments are necessarily rather elementary. David Ricardo’s (1817) classical economics position that all countries are better off if they specialise and trade is the starting point, implicit or explicit, from which arguments on both sides are launched. Briefly, if your country is good at gold mining but relatively (though not necessarily absolutely) bad at making T-shirts, you should concentrate on mining gold and trade your gold with the country that’s better (relatively) at making T-shirts. It is quite simple to show, under certain assumptions, that there will be more gold and more T-shirts for everyone as a result.

It’s possible that more has been written about tariffs in 2025 than in the previous few decades combined. In the press, the arguments are necessarily rather elementary. David Ricardo’s (1817) classical economics position that all countries are better off if they specialise and trade is the starting point, implicit or explicit, from which arguments on both sides are launched. Briefly, if your country is good at gold mining but relatively (though not necessarily absolutely) bad at making T-shirts, you should concentrate on mining gold and trade your gold with the country that’s better (relatively) at making T-shirts. It is quite simple to show, under certain assumptions, that there will be more gold and more T-shirts for everyone as a result.

The falling out between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is one of the more prominent news stories of 2025. We will probably never know the whole story. But at least one part of the argument was over the matter of the US national debt and what to do about it.