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A
I'm Scott.
B
I'm Bill. And we're the Trade Guys.
A
You're listening to the Trade Guys, a podcast produced by CSIS where we talk about trade in terms that everyone can understand. I'm Phil Luck and I'm here with Scott Miller and Bill Reinsch, the CSIS Trade Guys. This is Trade Guys. Scott. Thanks for listening to the Trade Guys. On this week's episode, we interview Bill Betsy Olin, who is based in Memphis, Tennessee. She's a longtime importer and exporter and runs her own podcast called Export Stories. We compare notes with Betsy and talk many current issues in the world of trade and also talk about the power of stories in international commerce. All this and more on the Trade Guys.
C
Hello. Bonjour. Hola, Konnichiwa, Nihau, Marabin, Namaste and shalom. Welcome to Export Stories Podcast 2025, which is being recorded jointly with the Trade Guys Podcast. So thank you for joining us. I'm your host, Betsy Olam. Let me explain. Ever since Million Podcasts.com named Export Stories Podcast Export as number seven of the best international trade podcast, and I think we've moved up to number six, I thought it would be nice to invite the number two podcast to be our guest podcasters podcasting together. Anyway, they asked if we could double up and have me be on their podcast as well. So I'm delighted to be here with the Trade Guys, Scott Miller and Bill Reinsch. And here we are. Hi, Scott and Bill. How are you?
B
We're delighted to see you. We're delighted to do this with you. Who's number one? Do you know?
C
Wait a minute. I think I have it here somewhere.
A
Well, as number two, we're definitely going to try harder.
C
You got. It's called the two minutes in trade.
A
That's a new one. Okay. We'll have to see what they're doing. They're doing something right.
C
I'm sure they're a lot of fun, but you sounded more fun.
B
So maybe it's number one because it's only two minutes.
C
That's probably.
B
I can see that, but. Well, we're happy to be with you. We don't speak as many languages as you do, so I think we're going to confine ourselves to English.
C
Yeah, that sounds good with me. And I love this idea of being on each other's podcasts. I guess I get to be in the hot seat, too, but if it's okay.
A
Absolutely.
C
If it's okay. I'll start.
B
Yes. We get to ask you questions just like you get to ask us questions, of course.
C
Okay. I'm going to start first, if that's okay.
B
Sure.
C
So just for the sake of export stories, listeners, would you mind introducing yourselves with a little background information?
A
Sure. My name is Scott Miller and I grew up in the state of Ohio and lived and worked in both the United States and Canada. And I worked for a large multinational company, Procter and gamble. And after 17 years of work experience in operations, manufacturing and marketing, they had a vacancy in the Washington office that fit my skills. So I moved my family to Washington D.C. mid career. And my work here in Washington with P and G was basically international problem solving. I was the director of Global trade policy for P and G and worked on both sort of commercial diplomacy with foreign countries and also worked on trade policy with both the Congress and the administration. I retired from Procter and Gamble in 2012 and six weeks later unretired to join CSIS then as the Shoal Chair in International Business. And I remained in the good graces of CSIS over the years. I now am a senior mentor in the executive education part of csis. Basically I'm a storyteller and a teacher myself. And so being on this podcast is a wonderful opportunity and we thank you for the invitation. Bill is my counterpart and I succeeded.
B
Scott as a Shoal chair arriving in 2016 when he moved over to his new role. I also actually have a teaching background. My first full time job was as a teacher of sixth grade and then high school. And I was happy last weekend to go to the 50th reunion of my first sixth grade class, most of whom are still alive, which I thought was kind of nice. They were kind enough to invite me and I was happy to go. It was nice to see some of them again. I learned a lot about memory. Their memories of me I have don't recall at all. And I'm sure my memories of them, they don't recall at all either, but it was a wonderful event. After that I spent 20 years on Capitol Hill working for Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate. I was undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration in charge of the export control program. And then after the 2000 election, I discovered the private sector since my team lost the 2000 election. And I was the president of the National Foreign Trade association that represents large multinational companies including Procter and Gamble, which is a. Oh, actually I met Scott before that, I think when he was lobbying and I was in the government and on the Hill. And so I retired from the government. I retired from the National Foreign Trade Council. And now I'm here at the think tank, heading toward retirement at some point.
C
Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I'm super impressed.
B
Well, when you're old, Betsy, you have a long resume. That's you'll be select territory.
A
You can leave off the bad parts, which I've done.
C
And how did the idea for the Trade guys podcast come about?
A
Well, Bill and I both were working in international trade, and what we knew about the trade policy community is very dedicated, smart, creative people, but they often talked in their own language. It was like they had their code, and it was very difficult to understand what they were actually talking about. And it was a closed circle in terms of who was debating the policy and analyzing it.
B
It's a language of abbreviations, really. TPP, TPA, CTPP, and numbers 301, 201, 232. It's all code.
A
And so these important issues never really made the front page of the newspaper until candidate Donald J. Trump. And President Trump as a candidate and as president, talked about trade all the time. He talked about tariffs, he talked about national security investigations, all sorts of ideas that were unfamiliar to the voters. And so when Bill came to csis, this was an issue that many of us in the trade community were concerned about. And so we thought, well, what if we do a show on trade in plain language that we take what's going on and put it in the language the voter understands? We started off, and we didn't have any idea what we were doing, but we fortunately kept at it, and we stumbled along for a little while, and we hit on a couple of themes. First, we found a role model. Our role model was, of all things, click and clack, the Tappett brothers of the old NPR call in show car talk.
C
Oh, I love those guys. I miss those guys.
A
They were magnificent.
C
Oh, heck, yeah.
A
We'll never be as funny as they were. But having this sense of humor in the podcast and the storytelling was revelatory and important. Second, we learned that brevity is the soul of wit. So we focus three issues, 30 minutes. We want to make our podcast the length of somebody's workout or commute and hope they catch on. And it's worked. We've had a lot of fun over the years, and we're now among CSS's many podcasts. We have the largest base of subscribers, and we have also the highest rating. So we're pleased people seem to like it, and we'll keep stumbling along.
C
Congratulations. I Love the idea. Thank you for sharing that. So the center for Strategic International Studies is a think tank, correct?
A
Yes. Which is a fancy name for public policy research.
C
Okay.
B
It started in the 1960s and really has traditionally been focused primarily on national security and defense. That's how it began. It also began by being affiliated with Georgetown University. It's now independent. It's much bigger. We have our own building and what, roughly 250 people and a wide variety of programs. The Shoal Chair is in the economics program, but there are a lot of geographic programs. Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa. We cover the world and we cover topical areas, too. So there's a health program, there's an energy and climate program, there's a human rights program. The scope of what we do now is quite broad.
C
Wow. And, you know, looking at your podcast topics for the last, you know, I just look at some of the most recent. You do some really deep dives into some very important issues and stories. I thought maybe we could chat just briefly about some of those topics from some of your recent podcasts.
A
Betsy, we think you're onto something of genius in telling stories. And what I learned as years as a lobbyist of Capitol Hill is that losers give speeches and lectures, winners tell stories, and the stories are what's both memorable and relatable for people we admire. Anyone who's a good storyteller, you seem to be one and every interaction we've had. Maybe tell us how you got into the storytelling business and how you stuck with it.
C
Yeah, well, this started back in 2019, and I'll tell you how it started. I to, you know, keep my brain active and challenge myself, I decided to write a screenplay about. And let me just go back for a minute. I started my career in the early 80s. I went through a management training program, and then I went to work for a steamship line selling container space. I was in that business for six years. But anyway, in 1982 and I hate to date myself, but I was in the early group of women who became professionals in that business. And I decided to write a story, a screenplay, because I'm a fan film nut about that first year and what it was like. The idea was started first as the stories about the customers because being in sales, you just meet so many interesting people and they have so many different businesses and backgrounds. And so that's where kind of the idea of the screenplay started. And I called it Export Stories. It keeps changing. I'm still rewriting. And anyway, I thought, well, what about storytelling in my business world? Because I Have an export management company. I work with small to medium sized US companies. And anyway, I thought, what if I reach out to lots of these US companies and let them tell their stories about exporting? And that's how it started. So we have like 61 exposure episodes now and really diverse group of companies, service providers, Ex IM Bank. I've interviewed US Global Leadership Coalition. Just a real variety of businesses and organizations. I'll give you some examples of the different kinds of businesses we've had. International Literary agents. That was my last podcast. Has a boutique bourbon distillery out of Chicago Business that has inputs from the oil and gas industry. A hardwood exporter, I mean, you know, AI in the education field. So yeah, that's kind of how it started and where it's kind of been flowing since then.
A
Well, what these all seem to have in common is a sense of adventure, a sense of discovery about the world at large. Which for me is the most exciting part of being engaged in international commerce is because you run into people, you meet people in situations that are new to you, where a different culture, different people with different work experience come up with a solution to a problem that you'd never seen before. And for me, that's the exciting part. There's a very creative part of trade that almost no one talks about when they're talking about policy. We get stuck in these numbers and abbreviations, as Bill would say, and we miss the adventure. So I'm glad somebody's doing that.
C
Thank you. And I'm glad y' all are explaining the complexity of this world that we're in. I love talking to all these different companies. It's really, you know, kind of a blessing for me just to be able to meet people from all these different businesses. So some of these recent topics, I wondered if I could ask you a little bit about what y' all have been talking about. For example, this last one that I saw was tariffs on furniture, pharma and films, China at the WTO and Agoa Exploration. So you had, it looks like several different topics going there. But let's talk about these tariffs for a minute. I don't mean to be too negative, but did we really think that we were going to bring back furniture manufacturing on a large scale in the US or pharma, which is so critical? I mean, everybody needs our medications, but are we going to just bring all that back? Why are we putting tariffs on things that we need that are so critical to people's health, you know, and vice versa. I don't understand what tariffs on films are either. But, you know, you're making films all over the world. I don't see how that's going to end. But just, you know, let y' all talk a little bit about that. I just gave my two cents.
B
Yeah, we kind of made a joke out of the film thing.
C
Okay.
B
It's a strange story because first of all, we actually have a trade surplus in movies, right? $15 billion surplus. We export a lot of movies. American culture is popular worldwide. So this is not a problem area. And I don't think particularly, it's an area where you want to reshore. I mean, it's a fair statement that these days, Vancouver and Toronto sit in for a long list of American cities. They pretend because it's cheaper. But, you know, at the same time, a lot of movies involve legitimate foreign locations. I mean, the classic example that we talked about in the podcast is the Mission Impossible movie, which, if you saw the last one, was filmed multiple places all over the world. A lot of it in London, but not all of it there.
C
And 007, too. I mean, you know.
B
Well, yes, and it just struck us that trying to figure out what makes a movie American, I mean, it's got those movies, they have American actors, they have foreign actors, they have American and foreign cameramen, they have editors from different nationalities. The editing might be done in the foreign country, it might be done here in the United States, probably both. So how do you decide if it even has a nationality? We thought that would be Mission Impossible.
C
Yeah, that's a good example. No. And you've got American directors, you have foreign directors, you have US screenwriters, you have foreign screenwriters. And they come together to make these really great projects. And I hope they keep doing it.
A
For a global audience. That's the key.
B
Yeah, we'll see what happens. I've sort of learned from Trump's first term not to pay much attention until he says something three times and he said this twice. So he's got one more to go then I think we should be worried.
A
A lot of these come with the. What I characterize as the revitalization of Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion act, which are national security investigations into the capability of an industry to perform against certain criteria. It was a remedy that candidate Trump campaigned on in 2016. He held an event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, campaign event, where he talked about using this statute. So it shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody. And he used it aggressively on steel and aluminum in the first term. What he's done is expand the list. And this is where it gets difficult to understand, because some of these things you can understand why you might want domestic production. Pharmaceuticals, for me, is a good example. Now, most pharmaceuticals are derivative of fine chemicals. And fine chemical manufacturing is a global process. It's available, maybe sophisticated companies, but you can do fine chemistry at a lot of places. But doing it in the United States does provide some comfort to the national security types who worry that all the pharmaceutical precursor chemicals have been outsourced to what's potentially a geopolitical rival like China. So that's the thinking.
C
I don't disagree with the idea, but I'm talking about timelines. I mean, and you also.
A
You can also take anything too far.
C
All right.
A
And I think when you come to. I now live in North Carolina, so the furniture industry is close to the hearts of Tar Heels, but at the same time, they're pretty practical about what's coming back and what's not and what's a national security issue and what isn't. So I think the President has a hammer in 232, and at the moment, everything looks like a nail. So we'll see where it sorts out.
B
Betsy, you made the most important point when you used the word time. The problem that we're going to run into with all this stuff is there's a disjuncture in timing. The tariffs go into effect now or soon, depending upon what product it is. If you actually decide that you want to move your manufacturing here, that takes years. I mean, Scott has commented that it takes several years to build. If you're going to build a pharmaceutical plant from scratch, you don't do that next week. I mean, even beyond the physical construction, which takes time, these things, you know, there are zoning rules, there's financing issues, there's a host of local and state government issues, not to mention FDA regulations. And they're going to come in and want to make sure the factory meets FDA standards. It just takes a long time. And the tariffs might be, in Trump's mind, an incentive to get companies to do that. But if you're paying the tariffs while they're doing it, you're right. You're only penalizing the people who take the medicine. Yeah.
C
I don't understand why aren't there incentives to bring certain industries here?
A
You're on exactly the right issue, Betsy, which is also something that's possible under the terms of the statute. So they could go with only carrots instead of all sticks. And I do think there's some constructive feedback from companies, once again, to North Carolina as an example. In Wilson, North Carolina, the Johnson Johnson Company is building a major new pharmaceutical plant, greenfield site. It's a first class facility, but it's a seven year construction project after they got the permits. So they've gone in, had conversations with the administration, particularly the Commerce Secretary and the people responsible for administering this statute and it's been pretty constructive so far. It's an effort intensive way to achieve a goal, but we'll see what happens.
B
One of the reasons why it happens is that despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, Trump is absolutely convinced that the foreigners pay the tariff. So from his point of view, it won't make any difference to American consumers. There's some early data on this which because it's early, I don't know how seriously we can take it, but it provides actually some weight for his argument. Goldman Sachs put out a pie chart that suggests in the short run, 64% of the tariffs are being paid by American producers or retailers. 22% are being paid by American consumers, which is what we're talking about here. And 14% are being pushed back onto the foreign manufacturers. Because you know, realistically, if you're Walmart, for example, you've got market power, you can go back to your foreign seller and say, look, you need to give me a break here and if you don't eat some of the tariff yourself, I'm gonna buy from somebody else. So some of that is going on. But what we are seeing at least right now is some reluctance by American producers to raise prices. They wanna maintain market share, they don't want to stiff their consumers. And in the short run they don't have to because they did a lot of stockpiling earlier this year in anticipation of, of the tariffs. They stocked up on their inventories and they're still working those down. So their costs are going to go up, but they haven't all gone up yet. So you know, we should do this again around Christmas time and see what Christmas shoppers are experiencing with respect to price increases then. This is going to be a fourth quarter, I think in first quarter next year issue.
C
Absolutely. I think Christmas is going to be very interesting. The what we're going to hear from consumers now, Call me cynical, you can call me cynical, but wasn't the other idea for tariffs, and this is maybe from a political standpoint, revenue, revenue for the government and they are getting revenue from the tariffs, isn't that right?
A
That is correct, yes. $330 billion this year. Keep in mind there's a 10% sort of statutory blanket tariff on most, if not all imports. And we import $3 trillion worth of goods a year. So it's big numbers. And look, one of the things that's true of President Trump's economic team is there are many Wall street players. They take a look at the US as if it's a business entity and they say, look, when you look at the assets, land, labor, capital, ability to succeed in the future, everyone's long on America. It's a great story, but we're burning through too much cash and running up too much debt. And I think Secretary Bessant in particular, but also Secretary Ludnick, who ran Carter Fitzgerald, are genuinely worried about a debt crisis. And they want to take steps like tariffs that help export competitiveness, that soften the dollar a little bit, but also that create the revenue that will help avoid a debt crisis if one's on the line.
B
That didn't start out, I don't think, being the main goal.
A
Right.
B
If you listen to Trump in the campaign, his narrative for 40 years has been a victim narrative. The United States is a victim of the evil foreigners stealing our jobs, undermining our security and hollowing out our manufacturing base. So all our problems are somebody else's fault and we're being taken advantage of. And he initially viewed the tariffs as essentially rebalancing, you know, it's time for them to pay us back because we've been paying them all these years. You can agree with that or not, but I think that was the initial rationale. Over time and after the passage of his one big beautiful bill in the summer, which significantly increased the deficit by trillions, suddenly revenue has become a much more important factor. And it's a fair point that this is going to raise over 10 years a lot of revenue. That's one of the reasons why I think, Scott and I are currently thinking, no matter who's elected in 2028 to be the next president, we think the tariffs are likely to stay because Congress is going to be reluctant to part with the money.
C
Yeah, it's going to be hard to undo as long as the American consumer is comfortable absorbing some inflation, you know.
A
But, well, yes, look, it will make foreign products a little more expensive. It'll make domestic products a little better value. So there are going to be trade offs in this. But at the same time, we have a 50 year current account deficit that was never getting any smaller. And now it is, now it's beginning to shrink. So there are some things in place. And keep in mind that there are Other economic factors that are being promoted now, like lower regulation, like abundant cheap energy that are great for the American economy and will support not so good for the climate though that seems to have fallen into the department of disappearing.
C
Issues, because it really has. I'm going to tell you a story a or is it an historic story? From my memory when I got into international trade. I've been in international trade since the early 80s. You could see it specifically in the steamship business where revenue from imports were much bigger than revenue from exports. But it was the union I wanted to talk about, the shipping itself. Ship. We had a lot of American flag ships in the early 80s, but the union work and the union labor made that business uncompetitive. And so ship building, ship flagging moved overseas like manufacturing had done because of labor costs. Now y' all are economists. I'm not. So I mean, doesn't this go way back to the 70s when goes back.
B
To the Jones Act? Scott will do a rant on the Jones Act.
A
Usually at some point in our podcast the rant is due. So we do try to respond. But one of the last acts signed by President Woodrow Wilson could have been Edith, but it was in 1920 was the Merchant Marine act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act. What this did was it was intended to promote shipbuilding and merchant mariners in the United States, really based on the experience of World War I, where crops were rotting on the dot as European fleets pulled out. And because it's been around so long without modification, it's failing on all its core missions. It basically protected delivery from US port to US Port. It restricted that to American made vessels that are flagged American and crewed with Americans. What that means is 100 years later we build tugboats and barges, which is what moves port to port. And distant parts of the United States, like Alaska, like Hawaii, pay much more for goods because the few Jones act vessels are inefficient. But we lost the edge for a lot of reasons. America, once it recognizes its problems, can usually get its act together. So I don't know how long that'll take. We are fortunate that we have some key allies like South Korea, who are amazing in this particular business and world class. So from a military and national security standpoint, we have treaty allies who are sophisticated as they come in shipbuilding. But what was it that Winston Churchill said about the United States is that we eventually do the right thing after exhausting all of their alternatives. And maybe that'll happen with shipbuilding.
C
Well, we better keep our alliances strong for some of those reasons. And that's, and that's really what we're talking about. We have important alliances like Canada, for example, our largest market. Canada and Mexico.
A
Sometimes you always hurt the one you love. Our five largest trading partners do 60% of the trade with us, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, and Europe. We don't treat them like good customers all the time, and so that's an issue. But look, the commerce will go on. It's always mutually beneficial, and we'll continue to overcome the problems. And thanks to President Trump, we'll continue to have topics to talk about on our program.
C
He is indeed. Before we get into some storytelling, one other topic I wanted to ask you about that you talked about in one of your recent podcasts was farmers in trouble. And I'm here in Memphis, where ag business is, you know, one of our largest industries. And it looks like the government's going to be paying subsidies to farmers soon. I'm not sure where that revenue is coming from, but, well, we've got money. So as I understand it, we're going to be paying subsidies to farmers while we're in this crisis. Will those subsidies trickle down to the businesses that serve agriculture, like chemicals and machinery and that kind of thing?
B
Well, it would be, I think, trickle up rather than trickle down, but probably not. It sounds like they're going to postpone doing this a little bit because of the shutdown. They were scheduled to make the announcement. You're talking about next Tuesday, which would be October 14th, I guess, and it sounds now as of today, that it may not happen then. But, you know, this is what he did in Trump 1.0 when the farmers had a similar problem, and he used money from the Commodity Credit Corporation to the amount of around $23 billion in payments to the farmers to bail them out. I don't know how he's going to do it this time because that fund is depleted. And I don't think they have enough money in that fund, that particular fund, to do another bailout. They're talking about 10 to $14 billion this time, and they seem to be focused primarily on soybeans, although that's not the only crop that's in trouble, and those are not the only farmers that are in trouble. So we don't really know what the parameters of the thing is. Of course, the more farmers you include, the more expensive it is. If you stick with soybeans, you can probably stick within the 10 to 14 billion dollars limit. The thing that frustrates me, of course, is that, well, he says he's Going to use tariff money for this. We'll see. If there's not existing money, Congress is probably going to have to vote it, which will take a little time. So we'll see how that turns out. But in effect, what he's doing is he's going to use, one way or the other, he's going to use taxpayers money to bail out farmers for his mistakes. Because the problem is the tariffs and in the Chinese case, retaliation. They stopped buying soybeans. That was a pretty clear hint from them that they're unhappy with what we're doing. And so soybean sales from the US have gone to zero this year, which is not good news for farmers in the Midwest. And it's one of these odd things where we sort of dig our own hole and then instead of filling it up and climbing out of it, we dig another hole and just make it worse. We've done this before. To me, one of the silliest stories was these things end up sometimes in the wto, the World Trade Organization in dispute settlement. And a few years ago, Brazil took us to the WTO arguing that our cotton subsidies were hurting them. Because we do subsidize cotton in the United States. It's not a food crop, but it's agriculture through and through. But it's a southern crop.
C
There's a long history of that. Memphis used to be the spot cotton trading capital of the world. So I know about cotton.
B
Well, then you know about it. So what happened was we lost in the wto. And when you lose in the wto, you have a choice because the WTO doesn't tell you what to do. What they say is you broke the rules and you should comply with the rules. And then it leaves you up to you to decide what to do. So you have a choice. You can change your laws to comply with the rules, which in this case would have meant getting rid of our cotton subsidies, which is politically really impossible. You can ignore the wto and if you do that, you risk retaliation. Because what will happen eventually, it takes a while, but eventually the WTO would say to Brazil, you can retaliate, they're not. The US is not compliant. Or the third choice, which is the one the US chose in this case, is you can compensate. You can compensate Brazil for the harm that you've done to their farmers. So the way this ended up is we continued subsidizing our cotton farmers and we added to that several hundred million dollars a year to subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers to pay for the case that we had lost and the harm that we had done to them. Now, from an economic standpoint, this makes no sense at all, but here we are.
A
It does keep the trade guys in business, that's for sure.
B
Actually, one of the funniest parts of that episode, which actually is a story we're moving into stories, is I had an intern one year, a brilliant one. He went to Stanford. And actually he was the son of somebody I worked with on the Hill. And as his internship. He was a summer intern. As his internship was winding down, he said he wanted to take a semester or two abroad. And so we helped him get an internship in Geneva. And the internship ended up with the law firm that was representing Brazil in this case. So he ended up. He was an American, but he ended up working for the Brazilian farmers, basically. And he was really smart because the Brazilians were trying to gather and the lawyers, namely him, were trying to gather evidence that the United States was subsidizing. And the U.S. department of Agriculture was reluctant to provide the evidence. They claimed they didn't have it. So the intern was really smart. Instead of asking for subsidy data on cotton, he asked for subsidy data on rice and corn and other products that were not part of the case. And the government coughed that up immediately, which then allowed the lawyers at the WTO to argue that the United States had the data because they provided the data on all these other crops. They had the data. They just were not willing to provide it. So we lost. But the ultimate result of this was the next summer the intern applied to be a summer intern at the US Trade Representative's office. And USTR has an ongoing deal with Stanford in which they agree to take one intern from Stanford every summer. And this was the one. And USTR turned him down because of this case. They refused to take him because he had helped the Brazilians win the case against the ustr. Well, he got even because he then went off instead of going to ustr, he spent the summer working as a summer intern, I think, for Amnesty International and probably caused the US Government more trouble there than he would ever have caused him being an intern at usgr.
C
Oh, man. Why would you want a smart Internet?
A
Betsy, it's been terrific talking to you. Thanks for having us on your program.
C
I have loved it.
A
Maybe we'll do it again at some point in the future, but we wish you much success.
B
We'll do it again when we find out what the price impact of the tariffs has been.
A
That'd be a good follow up.
C
Well, it's been great. Thank you so much.
A
Thank you. Have a great day. You've been listening to the Trade Guys, a CSIS podcast. For more audio content, visit csis.orgpodcasts thanks for tuning in.
The Trade Guys x Export Stories — "Trading Tales with the Export Stories Podcast"
Date: October 21, 2025
Guests: Betsy Olam (Export Stories), Scott Miller, Bill Reinsch (the Trade Guys)
Host: Betsy Olam, Scott Miller, Bill Reinsch
Produced by: CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
This collaborative episode brings together CSIS's "The Trade Guys" and Betsy Olam, creator and host of the "Export Stories" podcast. The conversation explores the genesis and purpose of their respective podcasts, the power of storytelling in making complex trade topics relatable, and dives into current policy debates—especially on tariffs, onshoring, and agricultural subsidies. The tone is collegial, witty, and candid, with industry anecdotes and pointed commentary on the politics and real-world impacts of trade policy.
[02:29 – 08:34]
The Trade Guys' Reason for Being:
Export Stories' Genesis:
Betsy wanted to spotlight overlooked everyday tales from American businesses trading abroad.
The podcast started as a way to tell the underrepresented stories in exporting, drawing from her own career and experiences in sales and logistics.
“Losers give speeches and lectures, winners tell stories, and the stories are what’s both memorable and relatable.” – Scott Miller [08:55]
[08:34 – 12:29]
Both shows emphasize the adventure, creativity, and serendipity of international commerce more than the numbers or legislation.
Betsy recounts the diversity of guests and businesses she's featured: bourbon distilleries, literary agents, tech and manufacturing firms.
Scott notes the policy debate often misses this angle, spotlighting the creative problem-solving in trade.
[12:29 – 23:44]
Betsy challenges the rationale for broad tariffs on critical goods.
Bill downplays the film tariff:
Scott discusses the Trump administration's use of Section 232 (national security-based tariffs) and how that rationale may be stretched.
Bill & Scott on disjuncture between tariffs (immediate effect) vs. onshoring (many years to build new plants):
American retailers and consumers bear the immediate burden.
Recent data: 64% paid by producers/retailers, 22% by consumers, 14% by foreign manufacturers.
Expect more price pressures by the holidays and into the next year.
Betsy asks if revenue might be the political goal.
Bill: The tariff logic shifted over time—from rebalancing foreign competition to also being a budgetary fix.
[23:44 – 26:27]
Betsy recalls the decline of US-flagged ships and competitiveness, linking it to the Jones Act.
Scott provides a "mini rant" on the historic law requiring US-built, crewed, and flagged ships for trade between US ports.
The Act, intended for national security, now often hinders efficiency.
[26:27 – 27:09]
[27:09 – 33:44]
Betsy, based in Memphis, asks about farmer subsidies amid trade strife—especially for soybeans, and whether aids reach related sectors.
Bill recounts the paradoxical US response to WTO losses: continuing subsidies but also compensating the harmed foreign competitors (e.g., the case with Brazil’s cotton farmers).
Anecdote: A savvy intern helped Brazil win a WTO dispute, later snubbed by the US Trade Representative, showing the tangled realities of trade and public service.
On story vs. lecture [08:55]:
“Losers give speeches and lectures, winners tell stories…” — Scott Miller
On film tariffs [15:12]:
"Trying to figure out what makes a movie American...We thought that would be Mission Impossible." — Bill Reinsch
On the logic of tariffs [17:19]:
“The tariffs go into effect now...If you actually decide that you want to move your manufacturing here, that takes years.” — Bill Reinsch
On the Jones Act [25:15]:
“[It] protected delivery from US port to US Port...What that means is…we build tugboats and barges...And distant parts...like Alaska, like Hawaii, pay much more for goods…” — Scott Miller
On bizarre US trade policy outcomes [30:25]:
“We continued subsidizing our cotton farmers and we added...several hundred million dollars a year to subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers...” — Bill Reinsch
On future discussions [33:59]:
“We’ll do it again when we find out what the price impact of the tariffs has been.” — Bill Reinsch
The hosts and guests alternate between sharp policy explanation and approachable wit. They’re candid about both the high-stakes impacts and the bureaucratic oddities of trade policy. Personal stories and real-world examples make the technical content accessible to non-specialist listeners.
This crossover episode blends topical policy commentary, entertaining anecdotes, and straight talk about the real consequences (and quirks) of US trade. The Trade Guys and Betsy Olam succeed in making international commerce both understandable and compelling, reminding listeners that behind every tariff and statute lie millions of individual stories.