Latest / The Fourcast / How trade wars can lead to real wars | Trump China tariffs

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How trade wars can lead to real wars | Trump China tariffs · The Fourcast

0:00
Welcome to the forecast, this time from Washington, DC, as
0:03
America and China go to war. Not a real war, not yet anyway,
0:07
but a trade war, which is pretty significant when it involves the
0:11
two biggest economies on the planet.
0:13
Now, the market turmoil of the last week, which has had a bit
0:16
of a reprieve because the tariff deadline has been delayed by 90
0:19
days on those tariffs, has raised some really serious
0:22
questions. Can Donald Trump tell the
0:25
difference between friend and foe?
0:27
Can America still be trusted? Is there a cunning plan to all
0:31
the stuff that he seems to be making up on a daily basis?
0:34
Now, these are really important questions because it's only,
0:38
well, not even 100 days into the Trump presidency and we've got
0:41
at least another 3 1/2 years to go of this.
0:43
So where does this all end up? Someone who knows Trump well
0:46
because she works, worked with him and worked for other
0:49
presidents as well. By the way, is Fiona Hill, a
0:52
Russia expert, a foreign policy expert, someone that Trump
0:55
hasn't always been very kind about, but we're being very kind
0:57
to her today because she's here with us in Washington.
1:00
Fiona, what? What did he or his people call
1:02
you? Just remind us.
1:03
Well, according to what I heard, I was apparently termed the
1:08
Russia bitch. The Russia bitch Yes, with a
1:10
nice accent I. Suppose, well, a bit late.
1:12
He called me a deep stiff stiff with a nice accent.
1:15
A deep stayed stiff with a nice accent, yes.
1:17
Exactly in a very formal statement, but the other I guess
1:20
Monica was thrown about behind the scenes at various points.
1:24
And and that's because you testified against him in the
1:27
Russia impeachment trials of of it was 2019, I think.
1:31
And then of course you had your security clearance scrapped.
1:35
But in fact, the truth about that is that you never asked for
1:38
it to be renewed. Is that right?
1:39
Yeah, there's always more than meets the eye to many of these
1:43
performative gestures, but of course you have to take them
1:45
seriously because you're in the crosshairs and that's a shot
1:48
across the bows. Do you feel you're in the
1:50
crosshairs? Well, everybody who has crossed
1:52
in one way or another is absolutely in the crosshairs.
1:54
That's why they're called crosshairs, I guess, in many
1:57
respects. So yes, of course.
1:59
But in in the case of, of my security clearance, it always
2:02
lapses after a certain period of time after you leave public
2:04
office and after you've had your full clearance done.
2:07
And I'd never renewed it. So for me, it was something of
2:10
a, as I said, a performative symbolic gesture.
2:13
You know, it gets attention of everybody else, but it wasn't
2:15
really materially consequential. But it has been for, you know, a
2:18
number of other people. I mean, you know the big story
2:21
this week. Obviously at the markets every
2:23
week we're kind of asking ourselves the same questions.
2:25
Yeah. Is he reliable?
2:26
Is there a plan? Can you tell the difference
2:28
between friend and foe? In terms of friend and foe, it's
2:32
not about America or the United States.
2:34
It's about Trump himself. And Trump has friends who are
2:38
loyal to him. He has friends who are people
2:40
who he's worked with for a long time or people that he admires.
2:43
He often styles all kinds of people like Vladimir Putin and
2:46
many other world leaders, friends because he sees them as
2:49
peers. And although that the people
2:51
that he admires, you know, for the things that they've done are
2:54
the statue that they have in in the world.
2:57
But in terms of allies, partners in the conventional geopolitical
3:02
sense, no, there's no difference between friend or 4.
3:04
They're all adversaries and they're all basically
3:07
interlocutors who have to be shown their place.
3:10
So no, I mean there there is no distinguishing feature between
3:15
the traditional allies and friends of the United States and
3:19
it's enemies when it comes to many of the things that Trump is
3:22
doing. So it's not that he can't tell
3:23
the difference, he's just not interested in telling the
3:26
difference because it's all about him.
3:27
Well, it's about him and he can tell the difference between his
3:29
own friends and those people who are not his friends.
3:31
Getting back to how you started the the discussion, but it it's
3:34
not about America, it's not about U.S.
3:36
National interest. So we have to just accept this
3:39
right from the beginning. And then you have to assess
3:41
things in a very different way. When you look at the way that
3:43
he's handled the markets and the tariffs in the last week, are
3:47
there parallels to the way that he handled foreign policies when
3:51
you were working for him? Yes.
3:53
I mean, he likes to come out swinging many times, but if you
3:55
get some kind of really significant push back, he often
3:58
then tacks onto a different course.
4:00
We saw that over and over again in the first term and we're
4:03
really seeing it very vividly. Everyone's seeing it right now.
4:06
Now, what's interesting, of course, is based on what has
4:08
happened previously, all kinds of people, including the markets
4:12
and American billionaires and other investors, basically came
4:15
to the conclusion that Trump's spark was a lot worse than his
4:19
bite. They weren't really properly
4:20
analysing what had happened in the first term, where he was
4:22
much more constrained. Now he's absolutely
4:25
unconstrained. And the stock market, which was
4:27
seen to be a reliable predictor of the kind of actions he would
4:30
take because he was always emphasizing the importance of
4:34
the increase in stock prices. And they have thought was that
4:38
if it plunged, certainly took the kind of nosedive that it did
4:41
immediate after tariffs, that he would immediately change course.
4:44
Well, it turns out that this time, you know, he was so
4:46
determined to press ahead, the stock market was not an
4:48
indicator. But it turned out the bond
4:50
market became an indicator because suddenly everybody
4:53
around him was warning of his to use, you know, kind of British
4:56
comparison, inevitable Liz trust moment where all faith in the
5:00
British economy disappeared because of basically so many
5:04
switches and twists and turns and uncertainty and frankly, you
5:08
know, assessed ineptitude in the handling of the economy.
5:11
So that feeling, the trust is seeping away from America.
5:15
The trust is bleeding out, which is the kind of what the bond
5:18
markets indicate. That's pretty scary, isn't it?
5:21
I mean, if you're someone who's worked in the administration,
5:23
you live in Washington, DC, you know, you've lived in this
5:26
country for decades. To watch that happening is a
5:29
scary moment. Well, it's pretty sobering.
5:31
Look, I mean, I think anybody who hadn't really been paying
5:33
attention the first time around may be more scared because they
5:35
don't know what's happening. But if you've been well prepared
5:38
and you've analysed the situation, it's more, of course,
5:41
this is of great concern and how we're going to deal with it.
5:43
But, you know, you get scared and frightened when you haven't
5:46
properly assessed what's happening.
5:48
Now, there are some things that I personally hadn't anticipated.
5:51
I hadn't anticipated the emergence of Elon Musk with a
5:54
literal chainsaw to attack the federal government and many, you
5:57
know, distinguished institutions.
5:59
I'd expected that Trump would go after higher education because
6:03
that was already a kind of a pattern that had been set to
6:06
any, any independent entity he would go after in somewhere.
6:10
But I didn't expect that they would go to the extent of
6:13
literally trying to kind of cut off all of the sources of US
6:17
wealth and prosperity. Because I thought someone
6:20
somewhere, including in the people who've joined forces
6:23
within the various billionaires who, you know, reportedly made
6:25
their billions by being very savvy investors and assessors of
6:28
the US economy, might be able to exert some influence.
6:31
But knowing what I know from the first term, I know it's
6:33
extraordinary hard to exert influence.
6:35
There's only a handful of people I think were really very
6:37
effective and the particular group of people around him
6:40
seemed to be much less effective than those previously who had
6:43
some success. Because when you worked for him
6:45
in the first term, they were real expertise, the so-called,
6:47
you know, designated adults in the room, you know, who were the
6:50
guardrails. And all the people who've been
6:52
appointed now seem to be there because either they're mates or
6:56
they're slavishly loyal to him. Oh, they've also got the same
6:58
worldview. Frankly, I would actually single
7:01
out, prior to all of this, some of the people who worked on the
7:04
economic side of things, which is why I think people didn't
7:06
assess things accurately. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin in
7:12
the first administration, the trade Representative Bob
7:15
Lighthizer, you've mentioned Gary Cohen and all the team
7:19
around them. They were really consummate
7:20
professionals. They understood what Trump was
7:23
trying to do, but they also were able to shape what he did.
7:26
And in part, I think, you know, somebody like Secretary Mnuchin,
7:29
you know, he was very distinguished at Goldman Sachs.
7:31
He treated Trump like a high net worth individual, troublesome
7:35
client. And he was extraordinarily
7:37
smooth. I witnessed it many times in the
7:39
way that he managed him. You know, Gary Cohen and others,
7:42
I mean, these are really unsung heroes in many respects for the
7:44
first time around this save this kind of meltdown of the global
7:48
economy. Now they've gone and the people.
7:50
Who have come in? We don't hear from much.
7:52
From themselves. Well, I think probably because
7:55
they're either trying, I suppose, in the case of Robert
7:58
Lighthizer, still to have some kind of influence because people
8:00
in his team, his previous team, are in this new administration,
8:04
or they also don't want to draw attention to themselves.
8:07
Maybe they're working, you know, behind the scenes somewhere, you
8:09
know, to basically also get in the crosshairs because anybody
8:12
who criticises Trump has to be removed, has to be dominated,
8:16
has to be humiliated, has to be pushed away or in some extreme
8:20
circumstances, persecuted. You know Russia really well.
8:24
What you've just described, what you and your, you know, fellow
8:28
members of the administration, the first administration are
8:30
experiencing, sounds a little bit like the kind of stuff that
8:33
Putin's up to without pushing people out of windows or making
8:36
them fall into gaps on the tube. We are definitely on a path
8:38
towards full on state repression.
8:41
There's no question about it. I think that of course, I've
8:44
thought this for an extraordinary long time.
8:46
This was all what This is why I was so outspoken before the
8:50
election, including in conversations with you, and why
8:52
so many other people were as well.
8:54
I mean, there are many academics across the United States who
8:58
have pointed out about the slippery slope to
9:00
authoritarianism and autocracy that we're headed towards making
9:03
comparisons with other liberal settings like Hungary and
9:09
Turkey, for example. But there's a whole host of
9:11
articles being written now about competitive authoritarianism.
9:15
But there's also a heck of a lot of people in this country who've
9:17
experienced that directly, including, you know, naturalized
9:20
citizens, green card holders who are now finding themselves also
9:24
being persecuted. And many people who've seeked
9:27
and sought refuge in the United States who now find themselves,
9:32
you know, being caught up in dragnets in immigration and, you
9:36
know, summarily dispatched to El Salvador.
9:38
And all kinds of jails are frankly deported.
9:41
So look, there are a lot of people who can see what's
9:43
happening here. And in in terms of just basic
9:46
history, you yourself, you know, have origins in Germany and many
9:50
people are making, you know, the comparisons with what happened
9:54
in the 1930s and that slide away from what had been a pretty
9:57
vibrant, you know, society where people thought this can't happen
9:59
here. And even the Chinese have
10:01
started talking about a cultural revolution that's happening in
10:05
the United States, not dissimilar from 1968 in the
10:09
purges that the Chinese themselves under undertook, you
10:13
know, in that kind of Maoist excess.
10:15
So look, everybody is seeing what's happening here.
10:17
It's just Americans themselves, I think, can't quite believe it.
10:20
Is there anything left to America's moral high ground?
10:23
There's a lot left, but it's really a kind of a question
10:26
about how people comport themselves, whether they have
10:29
the courage, you know, to keep taking a stand.
10:32
I would say courage is contagious, not just fear.
10:35
And it it really requires some collective action.
10:38
I'm very worried about the steps that some law firms have taken
10:42
because that's really going to deprive many of the people are
10:44
going to really require now some pro bono support from perhaps
10:47
getting. See, these are the law firms who
10:49
won't be representing clients because they're afraid that if
10:52
they do that, they're going to get clobbered by the.
10:53
Trump and these are many law firms that actually did before
10:56
to step up when they thought it was safer to do so.
10:58
And look, it also depends on how all these billionaires who've
11:01
decided to support Trump, you know, decide where the bottom
11:04
line is. Yeah, many of them are acting in
11:06
their own self-interest and not in the interest of the United
11:08
States. Have to really question how much
11:10
they're being patriotic towards the United States.
11:13
People are always invoking the name of the American people.
11:16
Well, this government is not representative of the entirety
11:19
of the American people. Most governments aren't, but
11:22
they're supposed to be representing America writ large.
11:24
And that's clearly not the case. And you're really going to have
11:27
to have now collective action of others to take a stand to push
11:30
back against this. And frankly, it's the same for
11:32
foreign countries that are basically interacting with the
11:36
United States. We've seen Canada be very firm,
11:39
for example, and the the so-called allies and friends,
11:43
you know, have to then act like friends.
11:45
If this was another country where people were concerned
11:49
about, if this was Germany, if this was France, if this was
11:51
Italy, places where there has been concern, the United States
11:54
would have spoken out in the past.
11:57
It's time I think for that kind of speaking out and and you're
12:00
basically saying what is happening here?
12:03
But I guess what you're saying is that we really need to look
12:05
under the slab at what's happening to government, to
12:08
institutions, to independent minds in the United States right
12:12
now, because this is also a revolution.
12:14
And what's at stake this time is the the future of the Republic.
12:17
Yes. Look, it's a revolution.
12:18
It's a coup. You can, you know, call it what
12:20
you want. It's pretty obvious that this is
12:23
a hostile takeover using, you know, the electoral system of
12:27
the US government, which has happened in so many different
12:29
countries. I mean, many countries that, you
12:31
know, we would have once said were, you know, bastions of, you
12:34
know, economic development or, you know, kind of political
12:37
certitude and, and all kinds of historic and other geographical
12:40
settings have gone down this path.
12:42
The whole idea of the United States on the shine as a shining
12:45
city on the hill as a great beacon of democracy and freedom,
12:49
You know, after World War 2, you know, it has tended to get
12:52
people thinking, well, that couldn't possibly happen here.
12:55
Well, yes, it could. And it is happening here, and
12:58
people have to recognize that. You left the UK and you wrote
13:01
about it in your book There's Nothing for You Here, Love or
13:05
What was it? What's the title of the book?
13:06
But well, there's nothing for you here.
13:07
But my father had said this to me in in 1984, said there's
13:11
nothing for you here, pet, pet, there's nothing for.
13:14
You, but there was something for you here in the US.
13:17
You made your career here. First university, then you, you
13:21
know, brilliantly worked with various administrations, then
13:23
you wrote this book about it. And of course, your expertise is
13:26
kind of comparing, you know, autocratic regimes around the
13:29
world, especially Russia. How much does it hurt you
13:32
personally that you made your life here?
13:35
You know you planted your flag here and yet this stuff is
13:38
happening to this country when you were looking at it
13:41
elsewhere. You know, it's, it's interesting
13:43
because I don't actually take this personally because, you
13:45
know, having gone through things that I did earlier in my life
13:48
when, you know, every industry in my from home region closed
13:51
down, I couldn't really take that personally, although it
13:53
personally affected me. This is having will have and is
13:56
having personal effects, but it's just so dispiriting.
13:59
I think in that kind of larger sense, but also alarming in the
14:03
sense that I want to actually pull an alarm and say to people,
14:06
look, what's happening that is happening here, because in the
14:09
first term and I, I do actually have some questions.
14:12
Did we kind of enable in other people in the sense of having,
14:17
you know, some kind of sense of complacency about Trump?
14:20
Because many people look back and to the first term think,
14:24
well, it wasn't that bad, was it?
14:25
Well, it was actually pretty horrific.
14:26
Behind the scenes. There was all kinds of things
14:28
happening that wasn't normal in an American sense.
14:32
Well. There is the whole issue and you
14:33
know, foreign policy as well where all kinds of strange, you
14:36
know, right wing influencers were involved in setting foreign
14:40
policy. Now all kinds of influential
14:42
people from all kinds of persuasions get involved with
14:45
fringe views in any government. We see that, you know, in the UK
14:48
and and any other setting that we want to pick people always
14:51
have advisors and friends who give them advice, but it relates
14:54
it, it basically resulted in a whole host of chaos and all
14:57
kinds of chaotic actions then as well.
14:59
But we were, they were concealed kind of kind of facade of
15:02
normalcy. You have all the stories of Gary
15:05
Cohn and others, you know, making interventions, literally
15:07
taking things off the Resolute Desk, you know, so that Trump
15:11
wouldn't act on them. I mean, people have now come out
15:13
and talked about all of this, but the But the point is that
15:16
this wasn't well known to the American public writ large.
15:20
I and many others went across the country trying to talk to
15:22
people. But ultimately, what people saw
15:24
often is what they want to see was, you know, somebody who was
15:27
blunt and plain spoken. In the case of Trump, he is,
15:31
he's charismatic, he's funny. He makes people feel good about
15:34
themselves. And they came to the conclusion
15:37
that things weren't that bad because they didn't see.
15:39
So what was? Going on behind the curtain.
15:41
And what was it like behind the curtain?
15:42
What was he like as a boss to you?
15:44
Well, I had very limited interactions with him.
15:46
It was more in Group settings, but you know, kind of, and I had
15:49
limited interactions with him because he didn't take me very
15:51
seriously. I mean, later on he describes me
15:53
as a deep stitch stiff with a, you know, with a nice accent.
15:56
I get this Russia bitch. Moniker's that bitch who works
15:58
on Russia. I presume that they were kind of
16:00
referring to me. So it just shows that they
16:02
weren't taking me at all seriously.
16:03
They didn't really care about it.
16:05
But I saw him treating everybody else like that as well, apart
16:09
from the Super loyalists who were very close to him.
16:11
Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil, one of the greatest
16:15
and most important countries globally, not just in the United
16:18
States, Secretary of State, Secretary of State, dismissed as
16:20
a secretary, just as kind of somebody who's part of this
16:23
stuff. He wasn't very nice about him.
16:25
He was. Terrible about him.
16:27
You know, you just named the number of people who passed
16:30
through basically Trump's entourage as he would think
16:34
about it. But it's his staff and his
16:35
administration and the way that they've been treated and
16:38
continue to be treated. The things that he said about
16:40
people, including to foreign leaders, I mean, the most things
16:44
that were I think most, again, I'm, I'm rarely shocked and
16:49
surprised these days. But at the time I found shocking
16:52
was how easily he would dismiss people and how we would talk
16:55
about them. The Tony would use the
16:58
descriptive factors about them in front of behind the backs and
17:01
in front of people like Vladimir Putin.
17:03
You know, he would say all the things that he says publicly to
17:05
foreign leaders about fellow Americans.
17:08
And no matter you know, what you think about the the politics,
17:12
the partisan politics, you could expect the president of the
17:14
United States to protect Americans, not just those who he
17:18
thinks is loyal to him or have flattered him.
17:21
So again, looking at the events this week, what do you think he
17:24
was really up to with these tariffs?
17:25
I mean, was this about, you know, flexing his muscles?
17:28
Was it a kind of soprano style of politics?
17:31
What was it? I mean, no one thing can can
17:33
make sense even of the calculations of these tariffs.
17:35
Well, it's his calculation, so you have to be, you know, him to
17:39
figure out what the calculation was.
17:40
I mean, I think it's fairly straightforward, honestly.
17:42
I mean, he's said since the 1980s that he believes that
17:44
tariffs are the solution. He still believes that.
17:46
I mean, look, we all know people who will believe something
17:49
irrespective of some of the evidence that keep on going
17:51
until. You know He blinked.
17:53
Even because. Of because of the bond markets,
17:56
because in the end, I mean, he started what he remember though,
17:59
what he said, it wasn't about him and a mistake, he said
18:01
because people were getting Yippy or they were basically,
18:04
you know, getting panicked by it.
18:06
And so he's pulling back probably to, you know, pushing
18:09
pause until he persuades people to go forward again.
18:12
And he's certainly not restraint himself when it comes to China.
18:16
One extraordinary thing is the kind of, you know, attentional
18:19
economy that he is pumped up. He loves ratings, he's obsessed
18:23
with ratings. He wants to get the limelight
18:25
all the time. And you know, whether it's the
18:27
markets or the Middle East or Russia, where's the follow up?
18:31
You know what? What is he actually achieved in
18:34
the first three months of office?
18:37
You know, for all the bananas and all the fireworks that.
18:39
Came to the whole world is obsessed with him and that and
18:42
it makes for great TV. Remember what he said in the
18:45
Oval Office? Well, that's going to make for
18:47
great TV, isn't it? And then he's going to give a
18:49
little laugh. He wants to be the most
18:51
important person in the world. And if one thing doesn't get
18:54
attention, he move on to the next thing.
18:56
There are some things that he fundamentally wants and that he
18:59
holds, you know, as kind of deep seated convictions.
19:02
Tariffs is one of them. He honestly as well look, we've
19:04
got to you know, give some credit where it's due.
19:06
He does want to generally stop the war between Russia and
19:09
Ukraine. I mean, his analysis of it may
19:10
be off, but he wants. To stop the stop.
19:13
Does he want the Nobel? Peace Prize.
19:15
He does want the Nobel Peace Prize, but that's, you know,
19:17
kind of as a consequence of all the things that he wants to do,
19:19
he wants to actually, you know, head off Iran getting a nuclear
19:22
weapon. He's talking about sitting down
19:24
with Iran again, same with North Korea.
19:26
He he actually does want to genuinely make the place safe,
19:29
the world safe against nuclear weapons.
19:31
It is a good thing. It's just the whole way that
19:33
he's going about about everything.
19:34
In fact, a trade war could inadvertently lead, you know, to
19:37
all kinds of other consequences, as you said at the very
19:40
beginning, to some kind of hot version of a war.
19:43
Do you think that's really possible?
19:44
With China, well, look, China is supporting Russia behind the
19:48
scenes in its war in Ukraine. And Russia's see or saw the war
19:52
in Ukraine as a war against the United States, which Trump has
19:55
recognised. And he's trying to pull the
19:57
United States support away from Ukraine.
19:59
But it's still a war against Ukraine.
20:01
And in fact, it's a war against Europe because for Russia, it's
20:04
a war for the future of Europe and Russia's place in Europe at
20:07
the expense of other European countries, most especially
20:10
against Ukraine, but also all of its neighbors, the Baltic
20:13
states, Belarus, which has sort of disappeared into the Russian
20:16
orbits. Poland, Finland, all of these
20:19
countries see that. And as the US pulls away, that
20:22
leaves Europe very uncomfortably juxtaposed against Russia,
20:26
China, North Korea and Iran. And he is Trump trying to make
20:30
his own deals with all of these completely and utterly leaving
20:34
the field that the United States entered 80 years ago.
20:37
We're going to be celebrating VE in a day shortly in May.
20:40
And that was the United States coming in as the guarantor of
20:44
security in Europe. And now the United States looks
20:46
more like the harbinger of insecurity in Europe rather than
20:50
the guarantor of security. I mean, Trump is basically
20:53
pulling out of Europe in the way that Biden pulled out of
20:55
Afghanistan. I mean, you'd think about it in
20:57
that way. I mean, this is a total reversal
21:00
of a historic entry of the United States into Europe.
21:04
And it's the lifetime of Trump. The money's almost dirty.
21:07
So his whole lifetime, his prosperity, his success has been
21:11
based on the transatlantic relationship and the strength of
21:15
that. And, and in a way, he's
21:17
basically undermining his very self.
21:19
Why has he got it in for Europe so much, do you think?
21:21
He thinks that Europeans are vassals, parasites, you know,
21:25
basically ripping the United States off.
21:26
He he said it very clearly. And he's not wrong on the fact
21:29
that, you know, for 80 years Europe shouldn't have been
21:31
relying on the United States to basically underpin its security.
21:33
He's not. His grandfather was from
21:35
Germany. His, you know, his mother came
21:36
from Scotland. Well, again, so it's not
21:38
personal in that regard. He sees this again has basically
21:42
another rupture that he thinks is obviously not to the United
21:45
States benefit, which is when security and economics part of
21:49
company again in the 1980s, which is was the formulating
21:52
period for the whole word that he thinks about things.
21:55
Which is when you get the rise of Japan, a formerly occupied
21:59
country by America after World War 2 and the rise of Europe.
22:03
And it takes a little bit of time, but that's when the EU
22:05
starts to come into its own. And that's when other economies
22:09
become less dependent on the United States and they, you
22:12
know, start producing their own products.
22:14
And no ones running around with a Coca-Cola, you know, bottle in
22:17
every hand, a Ford truck in every driveway.
22:20
And, you know, the United States is having to compete more.
22:22
And that's what he thinks is the big problem.
22:25
He understands that China, you know, doesn't owe the United
22:29
States anything. But he does believe that Japan
22:31
and Europe owe the United States everything in terms of their
22:34
prosperity. And the reason why he and many
22:37
others are freaked out by China is that China is beating America
22:41
on one level at its own game. Correct.
22:44
And I mean, it's basically China, despite still being a
22:47
communist country, at least normally, is beating United
22:50
States at the game of capitalism.
22:52
But the irony in all this, again, just briefly getting back
22:55
to tariffs and trade. I mean, do they really Does JD
22:58
Vance and do Donald Trump, do they really want Americans in,
23:02
you know, Wisconsin or Michigan make Nike trainers?
23:05
Yeah. And I didn't do the basic stuff
23:07
that not even the Chinese are doing anymore.
23:09
They've outsourced that to the Cambodians and the oceans.
23:12
Well, if you judge what JD Vance and others have said, yes, I
23:14
suppose that they certainly do want that to happen.
23:18
But these are proper jobs for Americans.
23:21
All the jobs, I think that's kind of what they would argue.
23:23
And look, coming from northern England, you know, most of the
23:25
jobs now that used to be in coal mines and steelworks in Anaman,
23:29
Amazon, you know, super warehouses, they're in Nissan
23:32
factories. You know, there's a good job,
23:34
you know, in a in a factory, but they're not the jobs that they
23:37
used to be. My dad ended up being a hospital
23:39
Potter. He didn't like that job
23:40
especially, and he sold a hunky back, but it was a job and that
23:43
was it. My dad wanted to work.
23:45
And, you know, if people want to work, they want a job.
23:47
However, it is unlikely that Americans from Wisconsin and
23:50
Michigan are going to move to, you know, Arizona, California to
23:53
work in fields and, you know, in crops or in meat packing plants,
23:57
for example. So there's, you know, a flaw in
23:59
some of this thinking here, that many of the jobs that
24:02
immigrants, you know, kind of fill now in the United States
24:05
will be taking, taking over by Americans because the
24:07
population's in different places because of the larger, you know,
24:10
parts of the economy. Now they, they do want to bring
24:14
back car manufacturing back to Michigan and elsewhere, but
24:19
we're more likely to see such a disruption of, of the auto
24:23
manufacturing sector globally. But it's unlikely again, that
24:26
that that will be a boom in the United States.
24:28
So it's all of these externalities, all of this, the
24:31
fact that the world is a lot more complicated plus even than
24:33
it was in the 1980's, the rise of, you know, the digital
24:36
sector, for example. I mean, people are already
24:39
saying the knowledge economy, you know, all of us who invested
24:42
in, you know, degrees is the next step in my case, out of the
24:45
mind. You know, they encourage
24:46
education to be part of the knowledge economy.
24:48
That's all going to change as well.
24:51
You know, so we're in a period of enormous change in the
24:55
economic structures in the world of technology.
24:58
You know, kind of great breakthroughs in the United
25:00
States was at the forefront of all of this.
25:03
And This is why I think many of the things that they're doing
25:05
with tariffs and other attacks on higher education, for
25:09
example, they're really attacking the roots of research
25:12
and development in the United States that, again, that people
25:14
don't see. the United States has been at the forefront not just
25:16
of technological breakthroughs in Silicon Valley.
25:19
I mean, Elon Musk is, you know, justifiably lauded for these
25:21
great achievements he's had in technology, but also in life
25:24
sciences, vaccine production, breakthroughs in cancer and
25:28
Alzheimer's and all of this. Is going to go that is being
25:30
challenged by? Well, yes, exactly.
25:32
The 9 million grants that are under question at Harvard,
25:36
they're all in the life sciences.
25:38
They're not to the humanities. They're not to people studying
25:40
English, you know, for example. When do people wake up to the
25:44
fact that this is a disaster for this country?
25:46
They don't wake up to the fact usually until it actually
25:48
effects them directly, which of course we've seen in every other
25:52
setting as well. And by that time it's too late.
25:54
So I mean, I think you know, the, the, the message that I and
25:57
other people have been trying to say for some time is look, look
25:59
at the facts, look at what's happening.
26:02
You look at previous history and you know that you have to be
26:04
pushed back collectively. Just on Russia, I mean, what has
26:08
he actually achieved in terms of Russia?
26:09
Because there's no ceasefire. The Russians are, you know,
26:11
they're launching their spring offensive as we speak.
26:15
You know, Putin's, you know, is kind of firmly in power.
26:18
OK. The economy's in a bit of
26:19
trouble, but it's a war economy now.
26:21
Ukraine is struggling. They're constantly hanging under
26:24
this cloud. What are the Americans going to
26:26
do next? What is all that bluster about
26:28
Russia achieved? Well, I think in the way that
26:31
you're asking the question, bluster about Russia and all
26:33
about Russia. It is all about Russia.
26:35
Trump wants to reset the Russian US relationship.
26:39
It's what he wanted to do the first term he wants.
26:41
Because he admires Vladimir Putin as.
26:43
Well, but he also again go back to the 1980s, his visit to
26:48
Moscow, he thinks that Russia and the Soviet Union, by the
26:50
way, just the same thing, just to be very clear.
26:53
So the fact that Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
26:57
you know, you name it, we're all part of the Soviet Union is
27:00
irrelevant to Trump when he talks about Russian deaths in
27:03
World War 2. These are Soviet deaths and and
27:05
Ukraine at that point lost about 20%, maybe even 25% of its
27:09
population. It was the killing fields of
27:11
World War 2. And so, but for Trump, it's all
27:15
about Russia, it's the Soviet Union, it's the superpower.
27:17
His first visit to Moscow in that period, he was wined and
27:20
died. He immediately started writing
27:22
and being interviewed about the trajectory of US Soviets, US
27:28
Russian relations, talking about the importance of setting that
27:32
relationship on a different path then, you know, for all kinds of
27:35
deals and, you know, Economic Cooperation and security
27:38
cooperation. He's still on that tack.
27:41
That's what he wants. He wants to go back to the
27:43
unfulfilled promise of his, you know, the golden period of his
27:48
youth when he is, you know, in his 40s and rising up, you know,
27:51
to kind of the top as a celebrity world figure and
27:54
business person. And Ukraine is in the way.
27:57
It's completely in the way. And he's very.
27:59
Because Russia doesn't want Ukraine to be in.
28:00
I mean, they don't want Ukraine. And also, he doesn't and he
28:03
doesn't want and he doesn't want the war to be there.
28:06
He said it wouldn't have happened if he was in place.
28:08
He wants it out of the way. It's not his war.
28:09
Right from the beginning. He said that to the people.
28:11
He wants to just get down like you and I sitting here and talk
28:14
to Vladimir Putin and make, you know, the kind of the world a
28:18
safer place as he, you know, deals with nuclear weapons.
28:22
And they have a, you know, they go back to Reagan and Gorbachev
28:24
and the nuclear treaties, which, you know, is not a bad thing,
28:28
but it's, it's. The politics of big men, big
28:30
men, and they're sitting across the table.
28:32
Discussing stuff and it's discounting, however, all of the
28:35
other problems that are out there.
28:36
And it's almost as if it's in a vacuum.
28:38
It's like we've all been stuck in aspic, you know, like one of
28:41
those jellied, you know, horrible things that, you know,
28:43
back in our youths, we might have got served for tea by our
28:46
grannies, you know, one of these Jelly things with a piece of
28:48
meat in the middle of it. And that's kind of, we've been
28:50
stuck in that kind of 1980s aspic, you know, for, for, for
28:54
Trump's point of view. But why not?
28:56
But look, I, I really think it comes down to the fact that he
28:58
absolutely and utterly wants as a life goal to reset the US
29:04
Russia relationship and see it through.
29:05
And he and he also is of the view that, look, if everybody
29:08
makes money out of this, everybody gets rich.
29:11
What's you know to complain about?
29:12
So that is really bad news for Ukraine, isn't it?
29:15
It's. Terrible news for Ukraine,
29:16
terrible news for Europe, and it's terrible news actually for
29:18
anybody watching this and wondering, you know, what that
29:21
is going to have in terms of reverberations.
29:24
You know, elsewhere, there's all that sense of aggrandizement.
29:27
You know, I never pegged him for being an imperialist the first
29:29
time around, but I hadn't made the logical conclusion, you
29:32
know, from if you develop real estate that, you know, you then
29:35
want to go further. And that's Greenland, that's
29:37
Canada, that's Panama. I mean, you know, probably I.
29:40
Was going to ask you about that. This is really, this is new,
29:42
isn't it? But is this, I mean, certainly
29:44
new in my mind because I hadn't noticed it before.
29:47
Does he think in these hemispheric kind of neighborhood
29:49
terms, You know, mine, my global neighborhood is the Americas,
29:53
just like, you know, it was Queens and Brooklyn, you know,
29:56
and lower Manhattan. This is now my neighborhood.
29:58
And therefore I want Greenland because it's good for security.
30:01
I want the Panama Canal. I want Canada.
30:05
And Mexico can be a sort of, you know, factory state for us.
30:08
Is that what it is? I think it really, you know,
30:10
that's a pretty good assessment. And look, Trump, you know, is,
30:13
is always pretty straightforward in the way he describes.
30:17
He's very public. I mean, I think taking his word
30:19
on this, Vladimir Putin's certainly taking it, taking him
30:22
at his word. Vladimir Putin has recently made
30:24
a speech, you know, he was talking about the Arctic and he
30:26
starts talking about the validity of US claims.
30:30
There is no validity US claims. It's just that that it is true
30:33
that historically the US has made claims against both Canada
30:36
and, and Greenland and also Iceland, frankly, and, you know,
30:39
other territories as well. So Putin's egging him on at this
30:43
point because for Putin, that's fantastic.
30:45
That means Putin can dominate not just Ukraine and the whole
30:48
former Soviet bloc, but Europe as well, because Russia will be
30:52
the big kid on the block, especially if Putin and Trump's
30:56
vision of a Europe without the EU or a Europe with a very
31:01
diluted NATO if it's still there.
31:03
I mean, neither Trump nor Putin are particularly keen on NATO
31:06
for a whole variety of different but sometimes similar kinds of
31:09
reasons. You know, Europe is really in
31:12
the crosshairs here too. You said earlier that he doesn't
31:15
like wars. He doesn't like to see, you
31:16
know, beautiful young men die and all that stuff that he's
31:19
been going on about. But is it, is there a danger, do
31:22
you think there is a danger that all these things could actually
31:25
lead to a proper shooting war, either because of some mishap
31:29
and, you know, herd pride issue with the Russians or maybe with
31:33
the Chinese? Often trade wars morph into real
31:36
wars. How you know how and what kind
31:38
of danger are we that this will actually become?
31:40
We're already in a situation where you could describe this as
31:45
World War Three structurally. I mean, everybody thinks about
31:48
that and they immediately think nuclear war, nuclear Armageddon.
31:51
And Trump told Zelensky, you know, look, you're gambling with
31:55
World War 3 here because, again, he wants Zelensky to just put
31:58
up, shut up and go away so we can get back to negotiating with
32:02
Putin. But we've got a hot war in
32:05
Europe at this very moment that's had around 1,000,000
32:09
casualties in terms of people either killed or severely
32:13
wounded, millions of refugees and all kinds of knock on
32:17
effects. That's very similar to what
32:20
happened in World War One and World War 2.
32:21
Obviously the scale is different, but they were system
32:24
changing conflicts and they're also multi vector.
32:26
Loads of different countries involved in that.
32:28
And again, we've got China, North Korea and Iran all
32:32
supporting Russia. Some, you know, more material
32:35
ways than others, obviously. And a whole host of other
32:37
countries are happily fuelling this war.
32:39
India's been selling, you know, arms to the Russians.
32:42
Iran's been building drone factories.
32:44
North Korea's been sending troops.
32:46
And now we hear that some Chinese troops, a limited
32:49
number. So there is a Chinese.
32:50
Yeah, there's the Chinese government, you know, probably
32:52
didn't, you know, necessarily send them there, but they got
32:55
recruited and they haven't, you know, going back.
32:57
But then again, you know, lots of people are going to fight,
32:59
you know, foreign legion, like in Russia itself.
33:02
I mean, that's what happened in the Spanish Civil War.
33:03
It happened in all kinds of wars.
33:05
But then we've got conflicts all the way around the world.
33:07
We've got conflicts in the Middle East.
33:09
We've got conflicts in Africa. We've got all kinds of upheavals
33:12
in which enormous numbers of people are dying and nothing is
33:16
being done. So the United States is also
33:18
taking itself out of the game. So we're not going to stop any
33:21
of these conflicts either, including, frankly, in the
33:23
Middle East. Trying to wrap it all up, and
33:25
there's an awful lot to wrap up here.
33:27
I mean, with everything that he's doing both on the global
33:29
stage and at home, do you think that the Republic is in danger
33:34
of disappearing genuinely that, you know that or that even if
33:37
someone else becomes president, a Democrat, I don't know, or a
33:40
nice Republican who's not like Trump?
33:42
I mean, if a Republican who doesn't have the same ideals
33:44
that America can survive the way that we used to know it.
33:46
Or is it? Is it finished?
33:48
Well, America's never finished, and I mean, nowhere's ever
33:51
finished. I mean, no stick collapses
33:52
completely and, you know, completely disappears.
33:55
We could say how well there's been the partition of this, that
33:57
and the other, but there's always some something's still
34:00
there, the memory of it or, you know, some kind of, you know,
34:03
historic, you know, residue that, you know, people will, you
34:07
know, say, has had impact on other things.
34:09
But look, I think in America has been grievously wounded and it's
34:13
been heading in this path for a very long time, to be honest.
34:16
It's the fetishization of the presidency, for one thing.
34:20
The president was never supposed to be above everything.
34:22
And, you know, steadily through successive presidents, frankly,
34:26
including some of the presidents you know, I've worked for
34:29
previously, George W Bush, absolutely, Obama as well,
34:32
frankly, because they all started doing everything by
34:35
executive order and trying to bypass Congress because it was
34:39
deeply frustrating. They've all contributed to the
34:43
kind of path we're on now where Trump believes that the
34:45
presidency as basically the only institution that counts.
34:51
And, you know, we, as we approach the 250th anniversary
34:54
of America and the casting off of Britain and, you know, King
34:59
George and the sort of the tyranny of the empire, America's
35:03
looking remarkably like, you know, kind of a Great Britain of
35:06
250 years ago, complete with a king, which Trump wants to be.
35:09
How ironic that in the 250th anniversary of the American
35:14
Revolution against the British monarchy, we've got someone in
35:18
the White House who's behaving very much like a wannabe model
35:20
Fiona Hill. Fascinating.
35:22
Thank you very much indeed. That's it with Fiona Hill from
35:24
the special edition of the forecast from Washington, DC.