The Twilight of America's Financial Empire? with Kenneth Rogoff

Interview recorded - 29th of October, 2025On this episode of the WTFinance podcast I had the pleasure of welcoming on Kenneth Rogoff. Kenneth is a world-renowned economist, former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund & Maurits C. Boas Professor at Harvard University. During our conversation we spoke about liberation day, impact on global economy, whether it would help manufacturing in the US, deficits, risk of US Dollar supremacy and more. I hope you enjoy!0:00 - Introduction1:42 - Current macroeconomics2:52 - Liberation day5:47 - Manufacturing in the US?8:10 - Concentrated Manufacturing12:08 - Deficits14:32 - Inflation16:57 - Fallout of continued deficits20:10 - Central bank independence26:52 - Chinese deflation29:42 - End of US Dollar Hegemony?34:42 - Replacing the US Dollar39:22 - US Dollar liquidity40:38 - One message to takeaway?Kenneth Rogoff is Maurits C. Boas Professor at Harvard University, and former chief economist at the IMF. His influential 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the roots and aftermath of debt and financial crises. Rogoff is also known for his pioneering work on central bank independence, and on exchange rates. He is co-author of the widely-used graduate text, Foundations of International Macroeconomics. His 2016 book The Curse of Cash looks at the past, present and future of currency from standardized coinage to crypto-currencies. His monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in over 50 countries. Rogoff’s 2025 book Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance and the Road Ahead offers a sweeping view of the post-war rise of the dollar, the challenges the rest of the world has in dealing with it, and how this experience can help inform the contours of the evolving new global financial system.Rogoff is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has long ranked among the top dozen most cited economists, and is an international grandmaster of chess.Kenneth Rogoff - Book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300275315/our-dollar-your-problem/Website: https://rogoff.scholars.harvard.edu/X: https://x.com/krogoffWTFinance -Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/67rpmjG92PNBW0doLyPvfniTunes -https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wtfinance/id1554934665?uo=4LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-fatseas-761066103/Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnthonyFatseasThumbnail image from - https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/our-dollar-your-problem-market-stress-exchange-rate-feedback-and-the-fiscal-reckoning-ahead/