Day: April 20, 2025

Putin’s Brief Easter Ceasefire and Trump’s Warning he Might “Take a Pass” if a Russia/Ukraine Peace Deal Can’t be Made

We begin with a brief pause in Russia’s war on Ukraine with Putin calling for an Easter ceasefire on Saturday with fighting to resume on Monday. Joining us to discuss Trump’s threat to “take a pass” soon if Ukraine/Russia peace talks show no progress is Charles Kupchan, who was director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He is now a professor of International Affairs in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and spent the last 3 years of the Obama administration as Special Assistant to President Obama for National Security. He is the author of The End of the America Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order, and How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, and his latest book is Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself from the World.

Trump Threatens To Fire the Chairman of the Fed Which He Can’t Do But That Won’t Stop Him From Trying

Then we examine Trump’s threats to fire the Chairman of the Federal Reserve that he has no right or authority to do but given Trump’s lawlessness, that won’t stop him from trying. Joining us is Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan and a visiting professor of economics at the University of Sydney. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research; a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, as well as a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn; a research affiliate with the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London; an international research fellow with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and a fellow of the CESifo in Munich. We discuss his article at The New York Times, “Your Life Will Never Be the Same After These Tariffs.”

In Picking a Trade War With China, Trump Might End Up With a Real War

Then finally we assess the trap Trump has built for himself by picking a trade war with China that could lead to a real war and speak with Jake Werner, director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute whose research examines the emergence of great power conflict between the US and China and develops policies to rebuild constructive economic relations. Previously a Fulbright Scholar at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan and a Fulbright-Hays Fellow at East China Normal University in Shanghai, he is also a cofounder of Justice Is Global, a grassroots organizing project that advocates for reforms to the global economy, and a cofounder of Critical China Scholars, a network of academics engaged in public education on Chinese politics and society. We discuss his article at MSNBC, “U.S.-China tariff tensions could turn military disputes into something more dire.”