Noah Smith
Economics Writer & Publisher, Noahpinion. On 3 shows, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
authorjournalistacademic@Noahpinion ↗noahpinion.blog ↗
Noah Smith is an economics writer and publisher of the Substack newsletter Noahpinion. He previously served as an opinion columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and as an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University.
3shows
5appearances
64statements
24resolved
17supported
1contradicted
71%fully supported
6said about them ↓ Everything Noah Smith said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Smith: The China Trade Shock Is Over As Labor Costs Equalize
“The China shock is over. China unit labor costs are now at parity with the United States labor cost, and there is nothing on the horizon that looks anything like China.”
Smith: Success rate of large powers invading smaller states has dropped
“They fail a lot more now than they used to. The success rate of taking places over has gone way down.”
Smith: Gross trade volume matters more than trade deficits
“People focus Obsessively on the trade deficits and surpluses, on the imbalances, on the net amount, but basically the more important effect is the gross, the total amount of exporting that we're able to do, you know, and so in that sense, trade between us and …”
Smith: Germany and South Korea maintain manufacturing despite demographic decline
“Observing countries like Germany and South Korea, where the manufacturing share of industry has remained remarkably high. So I see them with extremely low fertility rates, low rates of family formation, you know, skyrocketing divorce rates, and you know in Kor…”
Smith: US manufacturing indicators slumped following Trump tariff announcements
“Since Trump announced his quote unquote liberation day tariffs, we've seen deterioration in manufacturing PMIs purchasing orders you know, investment plans. Every indication of manufacturing you've had is slumping now and notably beginning directly after Trump…”
Smith: US should have used tariffs against China's 2000s currency undervaluation
“For example, if you had used tariffs as a kind of bargaining tool to force China to stop undervaluing the Yuan, which it did to a significant degree in the 2000. That might've worked. In fact, I think we should have done that.”
Smith: Shrinking trade deficits coincided with flatlining US manufacturing productivity
“Our trade deficit shrank enormously after 2008. However, that is when our manufacturing productivity flatlined, ok? And that is when our industrial output flatlined, is after 2008.”
Smith: US industrial production grew during China shock despite job losses
“During the China shock when our manufacturing employment fell, our industrial production actually rose a bit.”
Smith: US tariffs on China should target strategic industries, not clothing
“Not, not all the tariffs on, I would say strategic industries with China. I don't think we, you know, need tariffs on Chinese clothes because if China makes clothes, that's not a national security threat to us.”
Smith: Every historical technology has complemented rather than replaced humans
“Every other tool that's ever been made, every other technological tool was a compliment to humans.”
Noah Smith: AI reasoning models hallucinate endlessly and gaslight users
“I mean, the reasoning models still go off in these crazy hallucinations that they'll never, like, admit were wrong, and will just, like, gaslight you infinitely on some crap it made up. Like, they'll still, like, just knowing truth from falsehood.”
Noah Smith: Social media drove polarization by eliminating geographic and ideological segregation
“I think it's primarily social media. I think that social media so, so I think that Americans, America was this very big, diverse country. You had ideological diversity. We had geographic diversity, not just like racial diversity, which is what we typically thi…”
Smith: PMC socialism is America's most important political tendency today
“Barbara Ehrenreich called this PMC socialism. She called it professional, professional managerial class socialism. And a lot of people like infinite people have remarked on this tendency. I think it's the most important political tendency in America today”
Noah Smith: Trump immigration crackdown will have negative but modest economic impact
“I think the net impact of the Trump immigration crackdown will be fairly economically will be negative, but not huge.”
Noah Smith: Tariff-driven inflation threat will keep Fed interest rates higher
“The threat of tariff-driven inflation will lead the Fed to keep interest rates higher a little longer, as we just saw with Powell.”
Noah Smith: Tariffs and policy uncertainty will gradually erode US economic strength
“I think that, that those will erode our economic strength in ways that don't look like an abrupt crash, but they'll look like data getting, like, a little bit worse and a little bit worse. That's my prediction, but again, hard to say.”
Smith: Economists Focus on Equilibrium While Ignoring Transition Paths
“Economists often think to the very end and think about equilibrium and ignore the path for how you get there.”
Smith: Access To Cheap Labor Reduces Incentives For Labor-Saving Innovation
“The natural implication of this is that basically the more cheap labor you get, the less incentive there is for labor-saving innovation, for entrepreneurs and technologists to invest in labor-saving innovation.”
Smith: TPP And TTIP Will Not Resemble The 2000s China Trade Shock
“People are talking about TPP and TTIP, which is basically a trade treaty with, you know, Japan and Korea, a trade treaty with Europe. Those are trade with rich countries, and that's not going to look at all like opening up trade with China did in the 2000. It …”
Smith: 2000s US Manufacturing Job Losses Coincided With Productivity Slowdown
“It wasn't until the 2000 that absolute manufacturing employment started to fall and that manufacturing employment started to fall along with manufacturing productivity slowing down.”
Smith: Economic Sentiment Is Driven By Presidential Approval Rather Than Data
“A lot of people are just thinking politically, and when you ask them, how's the economy, they think, do I like the president?”
Smith: Pre-WWI Britain And Germany Prove Trade Does Not Prevent War
“The idea that trade builds bonds between countries, I believe, is an overrated idea. Because on the eve of World War I, Great Britain and Germany were each other's largest trading partners.”
Smith: US Needs An Export Promotion Agency Like Japan's JETRO
“Japan does a lot of things wrong, but it also does some things right. And it has an export promotion agency called Jetro. If you're a small Japanese company, you don't know how to sell stuff to Bangladesh. Jetro will hook you up with local resources and will t…”
The other half of the tape: Noah Smith's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Erik Torenberg 2Dylan Patel 2Alex Kantrowitz 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the a16z Podcast 4
Big Technology 2
2025 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Dylan Patel on the AI Chip Race - NVIDIA, Intel & the US Government vs. China
- Substack Cofounder on AI Slop Content & the Decline of Social Media
- Erotic ChatGPT, Zuck’s Apple Assault, AI’s Sameness Problem
- The Web’s ‘Existential’ AI Threat, OpenAI’s Microsoft Office Competitor, Tesla Robotaxi Launch
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Noah's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Economics Writer & Publisher, Noahpinion | 3 | 42 | 63% 10/16 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| BIG TECHNOLOGYLEDGER | Economics Writer & Publisher, Noahpinion | 1 | 21 | 86% 6/7 | full record on Big Technology → |
 LATENT SPACELEDGER | Economics Writer & Publisher, Noahpinion | 1 | 1 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Latent Space → |