Faces, Figures, and Friction: How Journalists Are Covering the Trade War in Real Time

The 2025 Society of Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) conference took place amid rising global tensions and the onset of a new trade war.  Journalists from leading outlets gathered to reflect on how business reporting is evolving beyond numbers to include stories about people, power, and policy. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip emphasized the importance of using data and personal narratives to humanize economic issues, like immigration and trade deficits. “One of the things we’ve tried to do is to tell the story through people and places putting faces and names and locations on how these things affect people. Can we tell a story using charts and data?” he said. 

Meanwhile, Washington Post editors discussed the challenges of maintaining press access under political pressure, reaffirming their commitment to rigorous reporting. “I’m totally fine in every way with pissing them off because of the power of our journalism and our great work — and that’s in some ways what you want to do with every administration,” said Matt Murray, the executive editor at The Post.  

As the trade war escalates between the United States and countries around the globe, newsrooms are working with the information available to keep Americans informed on how these shifts affect their daily lives.