Greg Rosalsky
Greg Rosalsky is the Planet Money host and interviewer in Why economists got free trade with China so wrong. The episode frames his conversation with David Autor as an expansion of a newsletter interview about why economists underestimated the cost of free trade with China.
Rosalsky’s role is to translate a technical labor-economics debate into a public-economics question: if free trade raised total output, why were some workers and towns left with durable damage? That makes the episode a bridge between Economic Way Of Thinking, China Shock, and current tariff politics.
Indicators of 2025 and What to Watch in 2026 adds Rosalsky as the participant pitching tariffs as the 2025 indicator. The source uses his segment to move tariff coverage from the China-shock repair debate into Effective Tariff Rate Shock, where consumer tariff rates, market turmoil, Costco litigation, and Supreme Court review make tariffs a current macro and legal-authority issue.
Spirit Airlines and the future of cheap flights adds Rosalsky as the analyst explaining the decline side of Spirit Airlines. His “revenge of the legacy carriers” frame connects Basic Economy Copycat Strategy, Airline Loyalty Program Moat, and Budget Airline Cost Squeeze into one account of why a once-disruptive low-fare model became fragile.
The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough adds Rosalsky as co-host of the Alien labor-economics episode and as the newsletter writer whose earlier work helped inspire the show. The source connects his public-economics role to Labor Monopsony, The Wage Standard, and Arin Dube’s wage-power argument.
Connections
- Planet Money and NPR - show and network context.
- David Autor - interview subject.
- China Shock and Free Trade Distributional Cost - core topics of the episode.
- Blanket Tariff Limit and Strategic Industrial Policy - later policy questions raised in the interview.
- Effective Tariff Rate Shock, Donald Trump, Costco, and Supreme Court - year-end tariff indicator branch added by the crossover source.
- Spirit Airlines, Basic Economy Copycat Strategy, Airline Loyalty Program Moat, and Budget Airline Cost Squeeze - airline-competition branch added by the Spirit episode.
- Alien, Weyland-Yutani, Arin Dube / Arindrajit Dube, The Wage Standard, and Labor Monopsony - labor-economics-by-pop-culture branch added by the Alien episode.