Ray Dalio: trade wars lead to conflict

Sara Eisen: Is a trade war healthy? [...]  Where does the trade tensions and tariffs ratcheting it up fit, whether it's the external order of what do you think will ultimately happen as a result of all of this?

Ray Dalio: It's just an extension of the patterns of history.  So for example, if you looked at European countries in the '30s, like Germany in the '30s and taking economic policy, there was write down the debts, create tariff revenue because you can get a lot of money from tariff revenue, then build up your domestic [industry] - be nationalist, be protectionistic, be militaristic.  That is the way these things operate.

So I would say lessons from the past of what that looks like.  And the issue is really the confrontation of all of this, the fighting of all of this.  So tariffs are going to cause fighting between countries.  What kind of fighting?  Maybe military, I'm not necessarily talking military, but think about U.S., Canada, Mexico, China and all of those types of fighting.  There will be fighting and that will have consequences.  And I think that's the main thing to pay attention to.

Sara Eisen: Do you worry about what it will do to the global economy... as a result of all the trade barriers?

Ray Dalio: Of course.  I worry about the global economy and the global well being... but I also should emphasize that in history you can see that there are the major countries [involved in the conflict] and then there are the neutral countries.  And the neutral countries do extremely well during these periods of time.  They get people and capital that go to them, they are able to navigate in a certain way.  The making of great prosperity, it doesn't effect the whole world; there are beneficiaries of this, too.  Like Singapore, if it remains a neutral country - and that's a very difficult thing to do - and it operates this way, it becomes great opportunities.

~ Ray Dalio, "Ray Dalio and Salesforce’s Benioff on AI, trade wars and new world order," CNBC International Live, 18:40 mark, March 14, 2025

Lew Rockwell on how Ludwig von Mises was given sanctuary in Switzerland in the 1930s

This is hardly the first time statism has cast a dark shadow over civilization.  In the years following the stock market crash of 1929, various sorts of socialism battled for control.  In different countries, it had different names - Bolshevism, National Socialism, Fascism, New Dealism, Fabianism - but the essential principles were the same.  As Mussolin put it: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

In Austria, however, one prominent economist refused to go along.  His name was Ludwig von Mises, known all over the Continent for his pioneering contributions to economic theory, his personal integrity, his tenacity, his love of liberty, and his dogged opposition to all forms of despotism.

As the storm clouds gathered, he realized that Austria would fall to either the Communists or the Nazis.  Then in 1934, a letter arrived.  It was from an independent academic institute in Switzerland, offering Mises a position.  It meant a two-thirds cut in pay, but it also meant sanctuary.

He left immediately for Geneva, and for six years, until he emigrated to America, he worked very hard.  The result was the original German version of Human Action, the greatest economic treastis of the 20th century.  Even today, Human Action is a big seller, still educating students in liberty.

Meanwhile, the Nazi armies did arrive in Austria, marched to Mises's apartment, and stole everything, including all the books and papers he had not taken with him to Switzerland.  Mises.e never saw them again, but his ability to research, write, and teach had survived.

People ask, what would have become of the idea of liberty had Human Action not been written.  But another question is just as important: What would have become of Mises had that insitute not existed to provide him refuge?

When I think of the value of the Mise Institute to the world, I think of our predecessor in the 1930s.  The parallels between them and now are obvious, and chilling.

~ Lew Rockwell, November 25, 2021