The Most Powerful People You’ve Never Heard Of (Update)

Stephen Dubner· Host0:00

[upbeat music] Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner, and we are slipping into your feed with this bonus episode. It is an update of an episode we made last year about commodity traders, and it suddenly feels even more relevant now. The war in Iran has already scrambled the global oil markets. In January, after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, President Trump immediately moved to take control of the Venezuelan oil economy. Among the industry leaders he invited to the White House were senior executives from two major commodity traders, Vitol and Trafigura. And it's not just oil. American soybeans and rare earth metals have become bargaining chips in the ongoing trade war with China. And behind just about every headline is a commodity trade. That's what this episode is about. We have updated facts and figures when necessary. As always, thanks for listening. [upbeat music] For the past couple years, I've been letting a very good book collect dust on my shelf. A friend had told me about the book, and I did read the introduction, a wild introduction, about the CEO of a British company who flies his private jet into the middle of the Libyan civil war to make an oil deal with the rebel army, an army which happened to have the covert support of the governments of Britain, Qatar, and the US. So yeah, I probably should've kept reading, but I had 30