Hello, everybody. Welcome to our very first seminar of the year.
That's our director is here with us.
But normally, we don't always have seminars the week zero, but we are very lucky to have Rob House visiting Oxford just for the day.
So we thought, let's have a conversation. Very informal one indeed.
And I think it's I don't need to introduce Rob.
He has spoken in this room quite a few times.
But let me just simply say that it's particularly interesting and thrilling to have a conversation about the current predicament with Rob,
who has really two sides to his, you know, understanding of the world and approach to the world as on one hand,
a political philosopher and on the other hand, a trade law professor at NYU.
And in his work, he either goes in one or the other.
His last book on the US Trust is a fascinating read if if anyone hasn't read it in in this room.
But he has also written huge amounts of books, textbooks and articles on trade law and and indeed,
when we met and ended up doing this book, the federal Vision Together 15 years ago just came out.
It's time to do another. I know it's time to do another new edition says, Are you going to help us?
And so I think what what one of the things that brought us together were both very interested in the very big picture and in the small,
tiny little details. And that's the in between or something like that.
But in any case, Rob also is very involved in advocacy and on the blogosphere and on the Twitter fear sphere.
And some of you, you know, if you haven't before now, I would encourage you to kind of go and see the stuff that he's blogged and posted,
because if you want to follow in particular, you know, Trump and the global, as it were, it's wonderful to follow what he's writing.
So today we thought because this is very informal, we just have a conversation.
We will start talking, the two of us, and then open it up.
That is that good? Yeah, that's good. Good. And of course.
Yeah, we want to hear what you all have to say.
And the way we thought we would conduct the conversation is to start with kind of Rob's view of the big picture, as it were.
How did we get here? Trump and Brexit, you know,
the people and the elites and all of these big questions and then move on to specifically assessing the Trump agenda, maybe a bit about Brexit.
We'll open it up.
So Rob, can you tell me and tell us a bit more about why you told me earlier that you think there is a lot of mythology in the air these days,
a lot of myths that you're very good at debunking myths.
So tell us a bit more about how you debunk myth. So, you know, Hegel famously wrote that the owl of Minerva only rises after the sun sets.
But the practice today is for intellectuals to write the philosophy of history in and the amount of time it takes to make a a cup of Nespresso coffee.
And I think that's a dangerous tendency.
So clearly there have been surprising and disturbing and destabilising big political events that have occurred over the last year.
And we're going to be conversing about those events in the next hour or so.
But it seems to me that already there has been a rush to produce these instant philosophies of history or historical myths surrounding these events.
And some of the myths that I think are likely to impede a more careful understanding and response are,
for example, that what's happened in 2016, Trump and so on.
Brexit is about populism, the people versus the elites.
If you look at the numbers of you will see that, you know, there is no clear majority or even plurality of the population that,
you know, in the United States that supports those positions.
That are identified as of the new regressive, atavistic positions of the people versus the liberal cosmopolitanism of the elites.
What has happened is that certain political entrepreneurs have, you know,
realised that there are there is a section of the population to which mainstream politicians had not been appealing,
whose views had not been given public expression and to some extent have been simply de-legitimize by mainstream politics.
And what is disconcerting and disturbing in many ways to a lot of us, I think, understandably, is those views have been given a voice.
But the views, I think, were there already, and it was a question of political entrepreneurs,
of a certain kind coming along and and and providing a voice for them and protesting against those views,
simply having been delegitimized or excluded from mainstream political discourse.
So we're talking about a minority,
but a minority that could be used to build some kind of new political coalition in the sense that it's a it's a group
that sort of have been left out of the calculus of mainstream politicians and yet was not sufficiently motivated by,
you know, racist, nationalist ADI, you know, cosmopolitan views as to be attracted to really extremist, you know, political movements.
So they're not anti cosmopolitan. What are they anti-globalization?
I mean, how would you characterise this?
I think they're united by only the fact that their views have been kind of excluded as either politically incorrect or ignorant,
you know, from mainstream political discourse.
And so, you know, when people talk about populism as what's happening, in other words,
that there is a position of the people that is in tension with the position represented by mainstream political elites.
And that's another sense in which it's a myth that there is a position out there.
There's a variety of positions that have cleverly been given some voice or legitimacy by by quite, quite clever political entrepreneurs.
And I think that, you know, Trump is just not a clever political entrepreneur.
What's most frightening is that he's a political entrepreneur who doesn't seem to
have the intuitions or a kind of concentration and analytic ability to govern.
But but, you know, it's you know, but in terms of political marketing, of finding a niche market.
And he, I think, was extremely, extremely clever.
But if you look at the number, if you look at both you look at public opinion polls,
it's fairly clear that there hasn't been any kind of huge upsurge or even really
significant upsurge in in in the kinds of views that that that seemed so,
so disturbing. And to focus particularly on globalisation and adding globalisation.
Another myth associates.
And this again goes to the kind of artificial or mythic notion of populism as an outlook versus versus the views of, of, of elites.
You know, that, that somehow, you know,
the critique or rejection of globalisation is deeply connected also to the rejection of otherness of immigrants,
of minorities, to forms of racism and xenophobia.
And it's not at all true. I mean, if things had turned out somewhat different in the US election,
it might have been that that Bernie Sanders would have been president and who has, you know,
a different critique of globalisation which overlaps and its concerns about the effects of globalisation on inequality and are on,
on you know on the working class are so and Sanders is.
Policies on immigration were. In fact, more open and more cosmopolitan than those of Hillary Clinton who eventually won the nomination.
So there's no natural alliance between the critique of globalisation on on grounds that it exacerbates inequality and
and threatens the lives of working people on the one hand and xenophobic and anti-foreigner sentiment on the other.
Certainly there are people who hold, you know, both sets of views, but there's no there's no necessity or inevitability to doing so.
And I think if you look at the platform of Sanders, which had elements of economic nationalism,
but in terms of human rights and and and and and people was a very cosmopolitan program.
You could you could clearly you could clearly see that in Britain, we have the reverse.
You know, we have those who are and especially on the Brexit side, those who are pro globalisation but anti free movement.
Right. Know. So when you say the two views don't overlap, we have the you know, the Sanders reverse.
Exactly. So there there there are a number of ways in which these views can combine and recombine.
And and they've kind of recombined in a certain way, I think, due again to a certain form of political entrepreneurship.
And and it is true that that, you know,
there is something of an anti-elite story in that in that this kind of political entrepreneurship has exploited the fact that that, you know,
the that certain political and economic elites have simply not been willing to face and answer,
you know, certain of these views or constituencies in a very direct and serious way.
They've tended, you know, to to dismiss them.
But if we take, you know, GLOBE The Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example, it wasn't,
you know, Trump and his supporters who brought down the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It was going down already. Hillary Clinton herself did not support it as a candidate.
Some people said she was insincere and would simply reverse herself.
But I think she was a shrewd enough politician to realise that that the her constituency, the, you know,
the the the centre to centre left constituency was no longer pro this form of globalisation in any kind of, you know, kind of categorical way.
And so there were good reasons for her believing that this sort of agreement would not be, would not be supportable.
It's possible that had, you know, that if things had been different, you know,
President Obama could have, you know, shoved it through a lame duck Congress.
But even there, you know, probably he realised that he just didn't have the numbers to do it.
It's also unclear whether in Canada TPP would have would have gone gone through and the the opposition to TB,
TPP built up over a long period of time and and had to do,
I think with a range of considerations that are related, for example, to the basic,
you know, question of democratic legitimacy in international negotiations.
These agreements were negotiated on the premise of of secrecy.
The draft negotiating tactics were not released to the public.
The constituencies who were able to get near the negotiating room and influence the negotiators were severely limited in,
you know, especially in terms of those who could have influence on USTR.
So many of the criticisms of of TPP from a democratic legitimacy point of view, you know, kind of cross-cut,
whether on balance, you're a person who thinks globalisation is a good thing or or not a good thing.
Can you give us your normative bias, Rob? Because I mean, just for everyone on process, Rob has written many, many years ago.
The amicus brief in WTO for transparent.
For transparency and the right for NGOs and nongovernmental organisation to contribute.
All of that is long story, but also on substance.
Our work together has had to do a lot with the when our trade deals legitimate
and a call for global subsidiarity in particular and democratic government.
So if you take your hat this time, not just analysing the politics of it and understanding why it was wobbly, but from your own viewpoint,
whether it's transpacific or transatlantic or, you know, the kind of global deals we have these days or even the global deal and services anyway.
What counts for the global governance of global trade?
I mean, do you are we saying and we don't want to go forward too quickly to Trump, but in a way, to what extent normatively does Trump have a point?
Well, you know, the and this, I think, goes to another dimension of the the populist myth, which is that,
in fact, many experts and even mainstream economists have started to, you know, question whether,
in fact, there have been, you know, solid gains from the point of view of workers or benefits to the economy,
you know, as a whole from, you know, you know what I would call the post guy trade agreements.
And these are agreements that go beyond removing tariffs and discriminatory border measures to forcing countries to, you know,
give high level intellectual property protection to to limit the ways in which they regulate service industries and in some cases,
to entitle foreign investors to sue the state if the state changes regulations in a way that's economically harmful to the investor.
But, you know, there you know, the economic evidence that I'm talking now,
mainstream economics has become much messier about the overall impact on the economy of trade agreements.
And, you know, the message from mainstream economists ten, 15 years ago was, okay, yes, there is greater wage inequality and so on.
But it's really and and and worker displacement.
But it's really all to, you know, or fundamentally due to technology, it's not due to trade or globalisation.
The more recent empirical work of, you know,
tells us that both are involved and and that there may even be an interactive effect between, you know, the two.
So it seems to me there's no longer the intellectual expert consensus in favour of doing globalisation through these kinds of these kinds of deals.
And, and that's not something that, you know, so that's not something that Trump invented,
it's something that, you know, his hardcore supporters invented.
It's something that's been discussed widely and sophisticated policy for, you know, over, I would say, the last four or five years.
But then Trump is the first one to articulate specifically what he thinks the consequences of this diagnosis would be,
although I'm not sure his diagnosis is as subtle as that.
Basically he says, okay, I want to keep jobs in the US fair and let's let's say we say, fair enough.
Now what we've heard from Trump is that he will slam a tariff or a tax.
It's not clear on the imports of companies who have exported their production in Mexico or elsewhere when they try to sell back their cars, boom.
You know, there'll be a 35% tariff, he says. Just one example.
So we're hearing these things.
We understand, let's say we know, we take in everything you've said, but then mainstream economists have never dared to then go to that.
They would have said, Yeah, we need to compensate for the better, for the, the unfair distribution of,
of the gains from globalisation or we and etc. or maybe need to be more forceful on anti-dumping or but they would stay in the mainstream.
So the question is, if not, you've kind of look pretty closely at what what Trump and his people are advocating, what they look like they'll be doing.
And of course, Congress matters in this story. You know, what do you think?
You know, as a public here, as we're following with what filter?
How should we what what is completely what what is likely to happen?
What are the obstacles? I mean, how do you see the equation there?
Yeah, I mean, especially because every China, of course. So so, you know, one has to.
I think often are separate.
The specific policy threats that Trump makes, which I think are based upon a large a large ignorance of public policy and spend much of his life.
This is an understatement studying or working in public policy.
So what is the underlying theory behind what he's saying that if if if corporations
and major U.S. corporations don't preserve jobs in America and reinvest in America,
the federal government should make their lives difficult and and that is likely to affect their behaviour.
Now that's a kind of, you know, form of industrial policy that often industrial policy scholars recognised as being conducted in,
in Japan and other countries where, where, you know,
the government tries to steer corporate behaviour based on, you know, based on sticks and sometimes carrots.
And and so the idea of the tariff as a crude idea that as most people who who know something about these
things would appreciate is likely to violate the US's commitments under international trade agreements,
including the WTO. But, you know, he could equally say, okay, you know, if you if you send jobs offshore,
well, we the government are not going to procure, you know, your products.
You know, when when the government buys for itself or the Defence Department buys, you know, for itself.
And, you know, and the and those kinds of like threats are used all the time by governments to, to affect corporate behaviour in many countries.
And, and, or you know, if, you know, if you know, if you close your factory here, we will make sure that, you know,
you are given the, the most onerous, you know, tax audit of any company in your in your, in your sector.
And, and and if you want to do a merger or something like that, we will ensure that,
you know, that it is triply reviewed by the Competition Authority, you know.
So, I mean, his idea that we're going to use these kinds of threats against companies to get them to, you know, to reinvest in America.
I don't think this is a a novel conception of how to do industrial policy.
It drives neoclassical economists nuts because it seems to have nothing to do with the efficient allocation of productive resources.
But but where you know, the the where the dramatic threat to globalisation seems to come in is where Trump says, oh,
we're going to do this by slapping on these border tariffs or taxes because they're you either say,
okay, we're going to break the law of the WTO or the law of the door renegotiate.
And, you know, and and and, you know, that's a threat to in a way, to the global audience.
But how how much is he concerned about doing it through through through these means that appear to be, you know,
direct challenges to international trade commitments as opposed to using other sticks of carrots like, you know, distributing it.
He's got a plan for a huge infrastructure program like distributing contracts under the imposition of program.
You know, this, you know, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's hard to know at this point.
It and I say that genuinely and as somebody who who who tries to like read almost every statement that comes out of the Trump,
you know, trade team, which, of course, is supposed to not be what we're supposed to do because we're taking it too seriously.
Well, I, I unfortunately make too much of my living working in this area, not, you know, not to do that.
And, you know, it's all about history.
Right. But one of the things that about, you know, that has happened, you know,
to me since the election is and, you know, some people say I'm profiting from Trump being elected.
Is that is that there's a tremendous demand from journalists to hear from, you know, you know, you know,
academic experts about international trade, concerning the meaning of a number of these, you know, statements.
So so. No one is talking virtually.
This reminds me I'm supposed to talk to another one this afternoon.
Well, you know, since the election, one has been talking, you know, several times a week to, you know, to journalism.
And, you know, trade has become really something that's front page, front page news.
But but often one simply has to say,
I don't know that that different people who represent parts of Trump's transition team or the core group that's supposedly advising him on trade,
his nominees for, you know, for U.S. trade representative, commerce secretary and so on, have said different different kinds of of things.
And there's also, for example,
a basic confusion between a critique of existing trade law that suggests that the U.S. is disadvantaged under existing trade law by in
relation to countries that have VAT and taxes because of the way that the existing rules allow taxes to be adjusted south of the border.
If you if you get more a lot of tax revenue from VAT rather than from corporate income tax,
then then you have the advantage that you can that you waive VAT on exports, right.
Because it's other countries, consumers that are consuming those products.
And and then you impose or border adjust VAT on imports because it's your own consumer.
So where where what's being taxed is the consumers?
Then then you have this situation where you can impose the tax burden on imported products and relieve it on on exports.
And some people in the Trump, you know, team have gotten it in their minds that there's something inherently unfair about that.
Well, the answer, of course, is that the United States is free to adopt a value added tax if it wants and do it that way.
But there's now a tax reform proposal in Congress that would try and kind of imitate or
model the corporate income tax on this kind of destination principle by by taxing revenues,
you know, based upon, you know, them flowing from sales in a particular territorial, you know, jurisdiction.
So all of this is so that the income tax reform proposal and the border tax issue have then become confused with the way that
Trump talks about a border tax as a way of punishing or threatening U.S. corporations that might be moving jobs offshore.
And what he really means by that is not a border tax at all or a tax adjustment.
It's really a tariff. But but I mean, what a border taxes versus a tariff is something he just has no conception of the difference.
So on one hand, there is a package which is issues that have to do with a tax approach to creating incentives for corporations to stay at home.
And that could be 80 or some revised corporate tax, as opposed to a separate kind of murky thing,
which is like a new possible border tax that might greet the beginning of a trade war with China or others,
because that would fall to WTO as opposed to whatever version of the first thing.
Yeah, something like that. Right. So I think you talked about journalists coming to you and asking lots of questions.
I think it's a good moment to to open up.
And I don't mean to, you know, to descend the discussion into this level of technicality about international trade rules.
I mean, we can talk. And I'm also very interested in continuing the conversation about the big picture and
whether there is some kind of values shift and and also the connection with Brexit.
Yeah, and that's what we should do.
But I would say though, you know, there's so much talk out there at the end of globalisation or there anti-globalization.
And you know, for me I missed what I was saying at the beginning and what we have in common is I think the devil is in the details.
You know, if you don't start asking, well, you know, how do you question globalisation?
How do you at least some aspects of it, at least the idea of footloose capital,
where they go wherever they want and to the cheapest labour possible, you know, you need to go into these details.
So I think for me that's very useful. It's not just technicalities.
These details are highly political and they make real, you know, the slogans.
And one small thing I wanted to say, though, on the Trans-Pacific, we're talking about progress and labour and exploitation of labour.
We have had the. A guy from Vietnam who was the negotiator of the Trans Pacific from Vietnam.
And he says that the U.S. really insisted that as a condition to being part of the
Trans-Pacific Vietnam should introduce trade union rights for their workers in Vietnam.
And they ended up accepting that. So this is where the question is no longer capital versus labour in the U.S. but, you know,
in a way, labour versus labour in Vietnam versus the U.S., because now they're losing this.
You know, the workers in Vietnam that were benefiting from this Trans-Pacific, you know, lifting up of their rights are going to lose that or not.
I mean, I don't know if that's going to be reversed, but so I think when we're having this conversation,
you know, there is the whole capital versus labour constrains,
but there is also the, you know,
the question of workers in other countries and how agreements can also sometimes make it harder to exploit workers, you know, elsewhere.
So I'll just respond very briefly to this before we we open it up.
So I think that the and the clearly the the provisions on labour that were put into the TPP and the supplementary provisions in the letter is,
I think with Malaysia and maybe Vietnam or one or two other countries were there to try and get the the unions onside for TPP.
But I can tell you from day one that that wasn't going to happen.
That wasn't sufficient. And so what perhaps the most controversial aspect of TPP was,
which existed other bilateral agreements, was this idea that foreign investors can sue governments,
that they have a right to sue governments for the economic harm from governments changing public policies.
And these decisions are decided by arbitrators who are like judges for hire, who do without the accountability of the judicial system.
And so people said, okay, you have corporations who are able to use this unaccountable system of arbitration to sue governments,
to sue countries on the one hand.
But you look at the labour provisions and they don't give unions or civil society any rights to enforce the labour provisions in the TPP.
So via symmetry between the, you know, the,
the two sets of provisions and the kinds of rights that they provided labour on the one hand
and capital on the other actually I think exacerbated a sense of the unfairness of the TPP.
But, you know, and again here I think you're right club so to say we have to look at the actual
content of these these agreements because my sense was and at one point when,
you know, I was a Bernie Sanders person, but when Sanders lost the nomination,
I wrote some pieces on, you know, how Hillary Clinton should do trade policy.
And I suggested basically probably the TPP could be passed if you fix the cemetery between the labour provisions and the investor provisions.
You know, if you ask most of the critics of TPP in the US what's wrong with it?
Well, those who are really informed would say, well, there's too much protection of intellectual property.
It will increase prices of drugs, there's too much, you know,
discipline of the regulation of dangerous products like chemicals, too much for those industry lobbies.
But most people would just point to investor state dispute settlement,
this mechanism that gives corporations the right to sue investors, have they taken that out and and adjusted a few other provisions?
You know, I think it could have it could have been it could have been a save that in particular,
people like Senator Warren, who were, in a way, leaders of the movement in in the in the US legislature to stop TPP,
you know, I think would have would have a lot of the steam would have been taken out of their criticism had the
investment investor state dispute mechanism been removed or have there been a different kind of mechanism,
more like a court, which is what is now being proposed in the set of the Canada EU agreement, thanks to in part to my dear old friend,
our dear old friend Paul Maynard, who has been the, the Belgian hero in the story or villain, depending on your point, depending on your.
And as you may know, he wrote that.
Yes, you did. We corresponded on this. We did declare the classroom.
The number two lay out the principles. And I helped draft that.
And did you sign it? I didn't for a particular reason.
It was you don't have to justify. It was less to do that with the content.
But to do with some people I was advising about said at the time.
But it would have. It would have been awkward for me to, you know, have have signed it.
Brilliant. Let's open up a detailed question.
Yes. A detailed question. And then. Well, you've you've had your hand up for a while, but you guys could fight it out,
have it to two feet to hand up for its fellows directly on this point.
Yeah, it does. It's around us. Okay, so then and then, as I have seen your act on the point about the TPP, the dispute mechanism,
so you've got a process with governments in negotiating this process in relative secrecy.
I think governments are agreeing to a system where governments can be sued by companies, by in the process itself.
Who is the lobby? I mean, who put these clauses in account, this person.
And this was the person to do this.
Where did this? I've always wanted to see this story analysed why this set of clues is goes there in the first place.
Who pushed for it? Well, there's a that's a long history, but that's this form of dispute settlement,
you know, arose initially in the Cold War context, a context where, you know,
there was an ideological divide east, west, north,
south to try and de-politicize investment relations between countries that had different political, economic, social systems.
And the idea was that, you know, that, you know, instead of, you know,
one system imposing its approach on the other, you would have arbitration to decide these these disputes.
And and in the first instance, almost the first years, almost all the disputes were developed country investors against developing countries,
often countries where there was a, you know, rule of law and so or dictatorships.
And then eventually it just expanded because there were a lot more disputes.
And and when corporations realised that they had this, this form of remedy or recourse,
when a venture went wrong, they and their lawyers started to use it more and more.
And so it became part of the kind of official ideology of of neoliberal globalisation that if a country,
especially a developing or transitional economy, wanted to incentivise investment, you you would need to sign that.
They would need to sign this kind of treaty because it would encourage companies, foreign companies,
to come in if they were protected in this way against political risks and the poor developing countries being weaker,
they they had kind of no choice or else they would lose their investment.
They felt they would. Yeah. And so now there have been numerous empirical studies of whether, in fact,
there is a positive effect on investment flows of these agreements and thus whether developing countries are getting anything out of them.
And the answer is that most of the studies say no.
Very few suggest that there's any positive result in terms of increased investment.
So it seems a bit like a scam actually. I mean,
but you can understand why it started that that investor state arbitration was a way of trying to de-politicize or remove from Cold War politics or,
you know, North-South political tensions, these kinds of disputes,
and put them in the hands of a group of arbitrators who would sort of decide whether,
you know, what what the developing country or the non-market economy was doing was sufficiently unfair that it it's
destabilise the investors reasonable expectations when they entered that you know that political environment.
But as a footnote because then the question is how does it then end up between Europe and the United States or the US and here?
It's kind of an irony. I mean, I think there is a kind of cognitive inertia.
We've had these clauses for 50 years with developing countries exploiting developing countries,
constraining their rightly or wrongly and rightly originally and increasingly wrongly constraining their capacity to be governments, as it were.
And then and then we have we import these constrain to us in Europe, in the West.
And suddenly, of course, our public opinions are perhaps a bit more inert or whatever the reasons,
the political sociology of it, which we can say a lot about.
And so our public opinion say no, no things, but the developing countries, public opinion,
it's not like they knew what was going on or they cared or they have when or whatever.
They don't have the luxury to to care about this.
But it's interesting there's still an interesting part of the story as to why in Europe specifically where government is legitimate to a great extent,
somehow negotiators felt it was right to import these clauses that are so constraining for government.
And in fact, there is a wonderful and I think very persuasive book that by Professor University College London Wild Group,
how Paul's book workshopped this very room.
Yeah. And who I think does a splendid job of trying to understand.
This bandwagon effect in terms of bounded rationality.
And I would really recommend that book because that, you know,
tells the story and they can do it in a much more rigorous way than I'm trying to do now.
And just a few a few phrases, but rather footnote on this.
The footnote on this thing, you've been so patient, I don't know what to say just to stay with the topic.
And then we get just this quick footnote.
I mean, I very much share the direction of this of the document, in particular the points I was making at the end.
I mean, I thought it was essentially just a way of foisting a kind of wider neoliberal agenda on the European economic and social model,
which, for example, you know, that the rules of the clinical trials, the controlled drugs, everything would be passed fairly.
Seriously the way that European countries are not used to the control of companies.
But my footnote is that is that the figures of benefit that were conjured up could
not be verified and it was all it would be criticised a lot in the last year since
2000 means about economic vindictiveness you know the failure of economics overtaking
so so they were claiming 1% or one half per cent growth in international trade,
which would be multiplied into millions and billions of figures.
This is what helped create the bandwagon I think,
and when you actually challenged the people who advocated this, they just couldn't sustain where it came from.
That go with. Right. Get rid of the experts.
Well, I think the fact is that, you know, the you know, the economics profession itself has now become a lot more self-critical are elements of it.
And and, you know, I'm very distinguish economists have you know, have basically,
you know, indicated that there are these fundamental limits to these kinds of predictions.
Danny Roderick is one of them. An economist.
I admire a great deal. And you've been very patient.
Oh, it's a bit of the reason I was just raising my hand at the beginning is that I could not move on from the bigger picture.
Right. And it's still bleak for me because you said there's not one position and not a natural alliance.
And and I could not understand the drive or the vehicle that this political enter for, nor should that embodied in Trump use.
Because you say it's not populism. So what is it?
Well, it you know, I think it's an application of business and marketing strategy to politics.
And that's why I used the word entrepreneurship.
So what was Trump's situation? He he was an outsider in the Republican Party.
Yeah. And he was there in this contrast with a range of other candidates,
not none of whom themselves was, you know, particularly compelling or able to build a consensus.
So, you know, how how could he build the winning coalition?
And it's like finding a product, finding a market, you know, that hasn't yet been exploited.
You know, that's what it is. And and the market, you know, had only been exploited by, let's say, certain extreme fringe groups, you know,
who were on the very edges of the Republican Party and who were unlikely to get access to,
you know, funding and and to what one would call the party machine, you know.
So Trump comes along, he can self-fund, which he did for the first part of his nomination contest.
He basically so funds he he realises that that by saying something shocking he can be the top story in the news every day.
And and he just realises that there are these folks out there who this market what I call a market who,
you know, haven't really been brought into the the mainstream political picture.
And and he promises to bring their voices in.
And and, you know, they're as I say, there are other Republican politicians, fairly extreme people who wouldn't be willing to do that.
But the price they would have paid was, you know, they would have then not had access to the party machine.
And and so because Trump can self-fund, he doesn't need that access.
And so he can build the coalition without, you know,
the the threat that the party will shut him down as the Senate the same way as they would shut down some some extremists who are going to do so.
And moreover, because the extremists really believe this stuff, they're you know, they're they're not very plausible coalition builders.
So, you know, and Trump appeals to working class people to some extent who are xenophobic and anti-immigrant, but also want health insurance.
And and are not necessarily particularly religious.
The other is they're in the other kind of people who would empower the voices of these fringes.
They would they would themselves be, you know, religious zealots or people who, you know, have a set of views.
For example, they might be xenophobic but also want to get rid of health care.
So it's clear what he wants. I mean, it's like he wants to keep Obamacare either.
Well, you know, he's he's managed to communicate, I guess, you know, the details are hard to figure out.
But what he has done is he's is because I think he's relatively free himself of any ideology except the ideology of the self-made man,
you know, that kind of Ayn Rand type ideology. But he's relatively free of political ideology.
He he can he can he can modulate the message.
You know, he can send messages to different news constituencies and and, you know,
and and be quite inconsistent in traditional terms of the Republican Party, you know.
I mean, it was and then he becomes the only game in town because he can send these different messages in a way.
He can appeal to different elements in the Republican Party on the extremes who otherwise were at war with themselves.
And could not any one faction present a candidate who would who would, you know, command a you know,
a large group of a large group of voters if he plan the strategy beforehand or make it as he goes.
I think he made I think that that he probably made it a largely as he went along.
My sense is that that he was unaware of the extent to which the Republican establishment would try and simply shut down his candidacy.
And I think that he made he made it up, in a way, by just like a business, like an entrepreneur,
by seeing how the market reacts to the statements he made and and and and what kind of support those were bringing in different,
different communities. I think he would throw in statements to see whether he would gain a constituency.
And then if a particular statement seemed to make him worse off, he'd walk it back.
So it's like all these test balloons.
So it's totally different than the Brexit because we think that there's this populist tide and the anxiety is tied.
So it's yeah, I mean, that's that's a question.
I mean, if I can expand on on on that, I mean, shall we be listening to you, you know, throw the baby with the bathwater?
I mean, you know, I buy your argument. You know, it makes sense.
Trump is not ideological. There's not this kind of huge populist wave.
It's a number of people who want different things, as only a minority of them are, xenophobic, etc.
Yes. On the other hand, and I'm in here,
I'd like to hear some of our friends and colleagues often has written beautifully on populism and ideas and opera and, you know, others in this room.
So and Anthony is writing a book on Brexit, so we want to hear you on Brexit.
Anthony and and Trump actually. Now his book has been extended from just Brexit to Brexit and Trump.
So it would be really nice to hear you.
And I mean, let's stay a bit on this topic, you know, and whether we want to push back here with with Rob that, you know,
is there still a phenomenon that has rightly or wrongly come under this label of populism,
the notion that some sort of providential person can express the will of a big chunk of the people.
Right. And the elites, you know, I mean, and, you know, I want also to be you know,
to be very clear, I mean, I'm not suggesting there's any reason for complacency.
You know, it is a horrible thing that I mean, what he's done, I think he's done it for reasons of political opportunism, not believe, but unleashed.
And, you know, racism, you know, is a terrible thing.
There are many people who feel it and with some justification,
even physically threatened in America today as a consequence of of the kinds of views that he has unleashed or legitimised.
And I say at least in legitimised, because I'm not sure that what's happened is more people have those views today than before.
And if you look at the demographics, it's fairly clear that people under a certain age don't buy this, you know, really at all.
But still, it's a horrible thing to have happened.
And, you know, it makes me you know, it's made me lose some sleep almost every night since the election.
But I'm. I'm just. It's. It's an awful thing, but I'm still sceptical of the more grandiose explanations for it.
I think it's a combination of different forces and events and personalities more than a sea shift.
And and in the in the fate of liberal democracy, I mean, that's, you know, but but of course, you can have dynamic effects.
And those dynamic effects could be very negative.
So we don't know yet whether there'll be, you know, dynamic effects, in other words,
by being unleashed or legitimised, even if this is not at present anything like a majority, but, you know,
or any kind of coherent coalition, it will it will find a way of becoming so, you know, because of,
you know, of the reaction of the opposition or the failure of leadership in in opposition.
And and and here, you know, I, I think there is a something of a good news story, which is the way in which,
you know, the centrist movement has become, in a way, now the official opposition in the United States.
And and they and Sanders has been very careful.
He unlike much of the, quote unquote, liberal East Coast media, he hasn't demonised Trump.
He said that if Trump brings, you know, has a program to create jobs, infrastructure will be with Trump.
And if he has a program against immigrants will be totally against and against civil rights will be totally against.
So he's saying, you know, my movement is going to judge based on values and policies and it's not going to engage in some,
you know, personal war with Trump as as a villain or or enemy.
And I think that's you know, that's that's the right that's the right approach.
And and and so there is an effective, you know, I think for the moment, an effective, you know, opposition.
And America is also a federal state.
And and there's a lot that's happening at the local and and state level in many places to try and frustrate and counter,
you know, of, you know, some of the, you know, kind of more horrible projects, such as the idea of a registry for for Muslims.
And, you know, it's it's it's almost impossible, given the way that administration works in the United States,
that you could undertake such a thing without the cooperation of state and local, you know, authorities.
I mean, it's just horrifying even to talk about it. But what's involved, right, is going from house to house, place of business.
The place of business.
And if you have widespread resistance, including legal resistance at other levels of government, it's likely to be close to impossible to do it.
And so what I don't what I think the populist narrative says is something that to my mind would be much more catastrophic,
which is that the people has united around this vision.
But I don't see that at all. I see, you know, instead, you know, deep division and very intense opposition,
even to the point where there's a significant part of the the population and and a significant part of the political
and intellectual elite in America that doesn't even believe that Trump has the legitimacy to govern at all.
So, you know, I see, you know, that this is going to be, you know, vigorously contested, you know, and so it's a totally different story.
You know, some people, intellectual, quote unquote, intellectuals, have made analogies to fascism sweeping Europe and the thirties.
And so it's a totally different story because because, you know, Trump has not united the people far from it.
That is not the story of what's going on. But but let's be careful here.
Populists say the people have united around it.
But analysts who still grant room for a populist explanation will say there are people who've gained power who are able to
credibly say the people designating a portion of a people of a population who become the one and only legitimate people.
And of course, our Turkish friends here know this very well.
So there's a difference between the populist narrative that, of course, as social scientists,
we don't buy and us as social scientists saying there is something to this populist wave because it works,
this narrative works, as opposed to this narrative is true.
It works in the body politics. And that then tells us that the story about populism is, is, is one we should pay attention to.
And it's quite a different thing than buying the populist narrative.
Well, I think you know, I think the problem is that that there is a dangerous kind of slippage between the one and the other.
And, you know, I mean, Trump obviously buys the narrative because he it drives him nuts,
but that then then people don't or aren't willing to say then that he has that,
you know, the country and you know that he has the whole people behind him.
I mean, it really bothers him a lot, but it's a reality check.
And and and, you know, he definitely he definitely doesn't.
And, you know, it's it's not as if, you know, people are lining up behind what they you know, what they feel is the strongest force now.
You know, I mean, I want to talk about whether, you know, this is a populist thing or not.
I mean, in this room many times we discuss what populism means, how we should be interpreting it,
and, you know, how we understand different things from populism.
The way you describe what populism is, for me, focusing more like on the demand side, like, you know,
looking at public opinion and whether public opinion is really, you know,
picking up on the messages that are coming from the supply side, meaning Trump.
So I, I feel like if you just focus on public opinion and receiving kind of the message that we get a different picture.
But if we focus on who's giving the message, then perhaps we can still say that it is a populist stick.
And in defining populism is there are various different ways of doing it.
Of course, ideology is one way of defining populism,
but we are kind of contesting that at the moment as well, that definition, because it is restrictive.
But we also see populism as a style, for instance, as far as style.
I saw, you know, style in the style. Yes. Yes.
So, I mean, for instance, there's now a group of people in the literature that focus on populism as, you know, flaunting of the law,
the law meaning the local using local language, local gestures, you know, even local clothing and, you know, picking up on, you know,
local meaning nativist and nativist elements in society, using that in language, in discourse, in a, you know, ways of conveying the message, then,
you know, it becomes appealing to a certain group of people that, you know, vote for that particular political party or leader in that sense.
Would you still say that, you know, Trump should not be defined as populist, as a populist leader?
Um, I think that yeah.
Yes. And that and then I see no shift in, in, in, in behaviour to, you know, to what you describe as a consequence of his, you know, his messages.
I mean, you know, I mean what he has kind of unleashed is, you know, bigotry, uncivil discourse and so on.
But but not, not some return to some conception of of a nativism.
And in a way, he's a representative of what I call in relation to, you know, the left.
SANDERS The politics of expression, you know, what he really looks like style.
Yeah. So, yes, exactly. In terms of style, it's the idea that, you know, people don't just support politicians because they want X or Y policy,
because they want, you know, health care or jobs or whatever.
But because those politicians are willing to give voice to their passions, their prejudices, you know, their anger.
And yeah, so so it's, you know, I think that if one could package Trump's overall style and and and and appeal,
it's reflected in in, you know, what he would say in all these speeches.
Let me be your voice.
In other words, I want you to be able to express these feelings, these passions in politics, and I want to express them on your behalf.
But, you know, expression is a peculiar mode of of political and social being,
because it doesn't necessarily involve changing anything in in in action.
It's it's like being able to get it out there that, you know, you know.
And and so the enemy and I think some of the journalists and commentators who said this are actually onto something.
The enemy in many ways was political correctness, like what was bottling up the expression.
And so, you know, it's like taking it's like saying, I can take the lid off.
And not only can I take the lid off,
I can be your megaphone and I can be the vehicle of collective expression of what you've had to keep quiet about or felt there was no,
you know, public and socially validating vehicle for expressing ideas.
And I would like just to come back to one had one statement you made a little earlier,
which is that the victory of Trump in and of itself is not necessarily it does not signal the end of the liberal Democratic model or whatever.
And if you think about it, then this is precisely the situation for which the liberal Democratic model was invented.
It was invented. And for the system of checks and balances.
Yes, if you have such a person to constrain him or her in through the systemic makeup, because I mean,
the time parties were very aware of this potential to to unite the people in that way.
So in that sense,
I would agree that the election and the strategy that you have outlined and the Democratic Party being slightly differently organised,
maybe we would have had a battle between Sanders and and Trump and then it would be a completely different story to be talking about.
However, I, I think what we need to think now is about the robustness of the American constitutional system and
its and how and you said you said practical constraints in terms of this muscle registry and so on.
But how, how, how strict these are or how how able to defend itself is the system of checks and balances.
If you have such a president, you have a Congress that is run by Republicans,
you have a Supreme Court that, if it does anything, will do it in two or three years time.
So, look. Well, what is there to to actually stop it from doing these things and dismantling the liberal model from within in the second phase,
rather than his election being the dismantlement of the system?
So I wrote about this. Yes. And I think I think you're absolutely right to invoke the framers,
because often we think today of the framers vision of checks and balances is simply about constitutional formalism, but it was also about, you know,
the you know, the sociological reality of US society and the interaction between that and constitutional formalism about the that,
you know, America was not was was a society founded on anti-racist principles.
You know, there is no there is no loyal, you know,
high civil service in America that has been socialised that to serve with complete obedience whomever is the leader or ruler.
Even the military is fairly unruly and will disagree with the president.
And and often it will come close to refusing to do something.
They won't say it explicitly, but, you know, it's very difficult.
As you know, Obama found he was blamed for not engaging in all these humanitarian.
And perhaps it's very difficult in a system like the American one where, you know,
it's not a military junta for for for the for a civilian president to impose a military operation where the Joint Chiefs are completely opposed to it.
You know, so it's a it's there is a kind of and if you look at the sociology of Washington and if you watch House of Cards or West Wing and so on,
yeah, you can see it very much. And in operation, I mean, everyone is ambitious for themselves that on the one hand,
they may supposedly be loyal to the president or the White House, but they're also looking out for themselves and watching their own back.
What will happen in three years time? Will I have a job?
Who will be running? Who will? Who will possibly?
Can I work for that or unite myself behind?
So the system, you know, sociological reality of a political system with many, many checks and balances and egos set against each other.
And in a way, I worry more I worry less about the, you know, the the, you know,
the kind of Hitler or Nazi scenario of the consolidation of power and the destruction of a.
Constitutional order. From the inside. Then, then the ungoverned ability possibility.
Because, you know, what Trump has done is he's appointed all these strong personalities, leaders of business and generals and so on.
I mean, some of these generals themselves have longstanding feuds, and I don't know how they're there.
He's is to govern with the cabinet, with this ersatz group of very different but all very big ego personalities who don't particularly have
a lot of links to gather the kinds of links traditionally that one had through elite institutions,
political, political, party and so on.
It's a it's a strange group of very wilful individuals, very in their own narrow way, accomplished older men, basically.
And we'll just see how that how that works out.
And, you know, let's let's hope that we can we can we can keep them out of the Viagra jar for enough time to actually settle down.
And and and and and and deliberate with each other in the fashion necessary of, you know,
to govern a superpower in the in the complex governance environment we have today.
But I, I seriously worry just about ungoverned ability.
So in that sense, that is shouldn't be too worried about the dissolution of the Liberal order is going to be super liberal.
So I've got, I've got many heads I've got in order.
Paul Memmott, Anthony Joseph often.
Okay. So good. Okay. Thank you.
I agree with most things you're saying, but one thing that you did was you suggested these people were somewhat voiceless before Trump.
And my guess is that they, in fact had already been politicised, mobilised, I think, through the Tea Party.
And talk radio, right wing talk radio to lose coalition of kind of working class,
middle class whites that this was built on this idea of kind of anti needs anti-government.
Now, in a sense what he's turn out to be a message of anti foreigners. I think since the insurgents taken that particular group of people,
can turn that in a direction that became a particular very that's kind of political edge.
The myth he didn't talk about very much was another one, which is, you know, the voter turnout, something like around 60%.
So all this discussion about this somehow this debate or this big election galvanise the American public is brand new ways.
It's still very low voter turnout. And so he's left the 49% off about 59% total.
There's still a huge amount of difference and scepticism. And, you know, as you say, a lot of people were voting for him with this idea.
He can deliver things through the walls mostly, but he can't do that.
This is like what we was about. As for to actually does a lot, lot faster than he did.
So it looks like a potential return to maybe actually initially a kind of encouraging anticipation actually much faster than he wants it.
Absolutely. I agree with everything. And and definitely, you know, you know, the the Tea Party, the and the talk radio and all of that,
you know, was the preparation for, you know, for for Trump in some sense prepare the ground.
But the but what do you what what is what was frustrating a lot of these people was not that they couldn't get on talk radio and express
themselves among each other but that but that what quote unquote Washington or the mainstream media and so on were just ridiculed as extremists.
And so what Trump promised is that we're going to make them hear your voice.
And instead of laughing about, you know, these uneducated yahoos, boy, are they going to be frightened by your voice, you know.
So it was who they wanted to be heard by that that, you know, and that goes to the mainstream thing that because Trump could self-finance and,
you know, could it be shut down by the party machine, he could guarantee them that he that he had the you know, the you know, the nerves, you know,
and the ability to bring their voice and make and make it resound at the national level and get them taken taken seriously there,
as opposed to just marginalise those the Tea Party or, you know, these, you know,
kind of nutcases who the Republican Party has been flirting with on its on its most extreme edges.
And so that that mainstreaming of the voice that I think he he was offering them.
But everything I really essentially agree with all you said and say and would really you know really echo add I mean even
the idea so apparently he said something Trump said something like that the about that he wasn't going to pay any of the,
you know, incumbent ambassadors after, you know, the day after he's in office.
You know, he would fire them and not pay them. Well, I mean, I don't think there's a problem with withdrawing their credentials.
You you the executive could do that, but try stopping, you know, paycheques in Washington.
And one day, I mean, it's just not you know, it's not going to happen.
It's hard to get a paycheque in Washington in one day and it's hard to stop one.
And, you know, I think that this is just a small comic example of the disconnect between Trump's experience
as a as a businessman running a family company where you can hire and fire people in a day,
you know, you can fire your whole team and, you know, they can they can sue or whatever.
You just send a lawyer and deal with that.
And if you if you want to break a contract, you break a contract and you might have to pay a price of a court order.
Is it? Yeah. I mean, this is obviously not the way the government the government works.
And and, you know, I would be much more worried about Trump if he'd had the experience of having been a cabinet officer or a governor or a general who
actually does know how how orders can be given and and people be be controlled in a in a complex political system and bureaucracy.
But he he's never had that experience. He's just had the experience.
I hire good lawyers and and I and I do what I want, you know, day by day, based on bureaucracies itself.
And the checks and balances we were talking about, that is checks and balances,
the inertia of the bureaucracy and rules that mean that will not he can't just do this.
So that's a maybe that's more even more important than the last point that Paul made that the fizzling it out or if won't deliver the outcome.
I mean yeah I mean he won't deliver the outcome because there's anyway limit your next.
And then Anthony and Joseph. And also the component you just on, you just know that nothing is up to all this question.
Yes, I fully agree that it is enough checks and balances in the American system just to control it.
But I'm not, you know, just I can't say this and just as confidently for the international system, for the international system itself,
I think the worst or the scariest danger that a Trump administration may pose is for the liberal international system,
because when it comes to developing countries trying to develop their economies,
one of the most important checks and balances is the normative check that liberal international system is providing for.
But with such a strong culture and discourse in the US coupled with the Putin International's,
let's put it like this developing countries or in fragile democracies of developing countries, companies make some real reversal in this process.
This is the, you know, just come on part. I mean, I also want to ask you a question.
I'm coming back to your comments regarding the trade system and globalisation were
very good mean vehicles of globalisation are really wonderful to hear what you think,
what their trade policy could be, not based on what they said.
You said they said all sorts of things.
But on the one hand me examine examining just in discourse, it sounds like a unilateral policy that he will defend.
But on the other hand, I mean,
the entire administration is made of American corporate system and they are the ones who will suffer most because of a unilateralist policy,
how those two powers will play out. And in relation with this, I mean, we have an international institution, WTO,
that is already under a lot of stress because of the failure of the Doha Round, because of the differences within the institution itself.
And indeed, almost the only strong side of the institution is its dispute settlement mechanism.
If they adopt a unilateralist policy that will put an immense stress on the WTO as well,
and how they see the prospects of WTO under a Trump administration is is particularly important in this country,
because if Brexit ever happens, British politicians would like very much on the WTO and on the existence of the WTO down the way.
It may be a very important challenge for Britain as well, right?
Well, the first the first your first observation and that also worries me a lot.
I mean, the you know, the the legitimation kind of of strongman politics, you know,
I think will have terrible negative kind of vibrations around the world and already has.
So let's hope I mean, from that point of view, I one should be hopeful about that, that he fails to be an effective strongman.
And, in fact, is that he he really comes out of this, you know, New York family, businessman, background.
And, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, it's like it's like, you know, can you be a strongman by tweeting?
You know, I mean, maybe yes or maybe not. It remains to be seen whether, you know, he can he can deliver on on that image.
But the image itself is a harmful one for the reasons that you let you describe on the WTO.
I'm more hopeful on he did Trump at one point called the WTO horrible.
He he's never in the campaign really floated the idea of withdrawing from it although
some people have said that he said that he I haven't been able to find that out.
There will be a lot of disputes on the dispute settlement system.
And in a way, the dispute settlement system may be one of the best buffers for, you know, any kind of trade war.
My view, and I've expressed this in some recent writing, including an op ed from a few weeks ago,
is that is that, you know, China will not go [INAUDIBLE] for tat with with Trump.
Instead, they'll react to actions he takes that violate WTO by going to WTO dispute settlement.
I mean, and they might also react by punishing U.S. companies in China,
especially those companies happen to be connected to some of the key people in the administration.
So there's that side. But I don't think that they I think China has too much of a stake itself in the WTO framework who are to to,
you know, unleash a trade war that would break that framework down.
So I think they'll bring cases and dispute settlement.
And as you know, how long do those cases take to win their way through the system when their way through
the system three or four years through the entire administration will basically.
Send the trade war to Geneva, you know, for the Trump administration.
And, you know, that's a great way I think of, you know, in a way diffusing it or preventing it from, you know,
unravelling, you know, global economic governance on a kind of, you know, 1920s, thirties nightmare scenario.
Anthony. Yeah. I think you may be too sanguine about the company.
He's just a comment that would give us a question about things really important.
And, you know, the hearings were already suggesting the Americans could well trigger a military dispute with China in the South China Sea.
So the Chinese claim is that I have absolutely no basis to justify claims.
Chinese expansionism. And if you're if you're in political trouble and you start a war with the Chinese.
And that's the way in which we felt. I just think so.
I just think, you know these guys.
But the question I've got in passing has struck me is really important, is that Bernie Sanders is becoming the opposition,
the very consistent in his resistance, in fact, to face down and defeat Trump if it's organised.
And it's very unclear whether the Sanders movement and Elizabeth Warren will become the opposition, will define the opposition.
What are the Clintons?
So, you know, I mean, here you've seen in the post Brexit that black in a sense is the the figure of his most defeats is already,
you know, announcing himself as the insurgent and indeed the opposition to Brexit, which is a completely new situation.
But they haven't given up. And I imagine Clinton less than a year and a half ago to $3 million.
So she has legitimate the Clinton wing of the Democrats must feel that in one sense the election has been stolen from with some justification.
So, you know, this game, what is the what are the forces about?
How will the opposition will be organised.
So does is to go to become the next candidate who is trying to they have a natural candidate.
What is that that's panning out.
I've seen the coverage of this. His medicines and. What is going on?
Well, the immediate context is the struggle over who controls the the the the Democratic Party committee,
the committee that basically rules the Democratic Party National Committee.
And and so, you know, the Sanders movement and has presented a candidate, Keith Ellison, from, I believe, Chicago,
who's a very impressive candidate of the centre or centre right of the Democratic Party,
is trying to find new world chair of the Democratic National Committee.
The what I would call the centre or centre right of the Democratic Party has been
struggling to find other candidates who would stand up to Ellison in this contest,
which I believe is in February, I think, or I don't know exactly, but it will be decided soon.
So that's one dimension. Another dimension is the extent to which of the the Clinton apparatus is simply kind of dissolved.
And this kind of surprised me.
It surprised me that that Clinton conceded the election so fast because at the time that she conceded that there was the possibility,
given the popular vote, that that judicial challenges might actually affect or reverse the outcome of Trump's victory.
I mean, it was possible. It was, as it turned out, not something that came to be.
Eventually, there were some some legal challenges.
But my sense is that is that, you know, Hillary Clinton has really disappeared.
Now, is this a tactic to just, you know, be out of the limelight for a period of time and then regroup and and and make a comeback?
I, I doubt it. I doubt it because people are so upset now and so worried that her failure to be a leader at this time, especially given, as you say,
that she did, in fact, win the popular vote, would be terribly held against her if she tried to make, you know, a comeback.
I just don't think. Not just that, but I mean, the whole package is not sellable.
And and is is is Sanders too old?
I'm not sure. You know, young people, you would buy it if you haven't noticed the big bias.
The irony is that the people in their twenties don't think he's too old.
You know, it's true. My kids and older, I mean, I adore him.
You know, I would would Elizabeth Warren make a stronger candidate?
You know, maybe that occurred at the same age.
Well, as seven or eight, I think seven or eight. But she's a woman.
And there are, I think, a high probability that next time around on the Republican side, we will have a woman.
And I've supported and fundraised for a law professor, colleague and friend of mine,
Zephyr Teachout, who has become now a national political figure in the United States.
Zephyr, you know, is part of the centrist movement.
She's around 40. She probably would have won her the congressional contest she fought.
Have the trend been the other way towards Democrats rather than Republicans in the congressional elections?
She's she's a very impressive political figure. And probably next time was too early for her to run for president.
But but she's also she's someone who's now being discussed as a compromise candidate
for the Democratic National Committee because although part of the Sanders movement,
she reached out to the Clinton people in certain ways.
And and and she actually earned the endorsement, for example,
of New York Senator Chuck Schumer when when she was running for the Democratic nomination for Congress.
And that signalled that that Zephyr was somebody who, although she came out of the Sanders movement,
would be acceptable to the centre of the Democratic Party,
or maybe that the centre realised that it would have to reach out, you know, to the,
to the left or what some people would call, like it or not, a populist left of the party for new blood and new leadership.
So I don't think there's an all a sense of, you know, of of despair or disarray.
What it well, what's fairly clear is that, you know, the the party, you know, even before the election result,
it was clear that the party was starting to tear itself apart by by kind of closing, you know,
circling the wagons around Clinton and that it was going to have to open up to forces like the
Sanders movement if it was going to really survive and be viable for especially for younger voters.
You know, going forward, the next, you know, 15, 20 years.
So that was already starting to happen with Wasserman Schultz resignation and
certain other events that showed that the party realised that it couldn't just,
you know, push off, you know, the the forces represented by by the Sanders movement.
So that's that's my take on what's, you know, what's going on now.
I don't think that the centre or the kind of people who saw themselves as kind of naturally aligned with Hillary
Clinton have themselves a group of people who could be future leaders to to propose who are who are plausible.
So so it may be Sanders, it may be Warren.
It may be someone else again. But I think that the next leader going, you know,
and and presidential candidate for the Democratic Party is going to be someone who has a very significant political base in the Sanders movement.
Now, I know we have reached 2:00, and if anyone needs to leave, you know, please do so.
But Joseph and often I know have always interesting things to say.
So, you know, if you don't mind, we have a bit more time.
So we'll we'll continue for a few minutes more. And perhaps, though, you should ask her questions at the same time.
And then so Joseph and.
Yeah. Yeah. I've just had a question about kind of Brexit on trade and so on.
I rebalance gave an interview a few months ago on BBC that I've seen before, and she was just saying that,
well, because the UK is a small market, it's going to be in every case, the the deal taker, deal maker.
And I was just wondering if you had any any thoughts on that? You agree with that assessment or what what kind of.
What do you think of the UK's?
The U.S. trade negotiating position will be that either you get the trade deals back to your U.S. or China and often it's a different thing.
Yeah, I know, obviously. But I think I think when it goes, okay, I'll let you know.
Sorry, I got it. I think I think the negotiations this will not take a long time, sir.
I think the negotiations with non EU countries are not going to be a big problem because the starting point is the WTO agreements.
And, and so basically with respect to non-EU countries, the,
the the UK would have a plausible position that it should simply continue to conduct
trade on the terms which which exist under the WTO agreements and in some cases where,
you know, like agricultural quotas and things like that, there might have to be special negotiations because that,
you know, the EU is part of the overall sorry, the UK is part of the overall EU agricultural quota.
And so there, you know, there would be some technical issues that would have to be managed there.
And the real difficulty is what to negotiate with the EU.
I mean because obviously, you know, the UK is exiting the Customs Union, you know,
the the WTO status quo is not going to be a baseline, you know, for, you know, for trade relations with the EU.
Those really will have to be negotiated. So she added an example and just another EU country.
So she has the example of the Chinese Swiss trade and how it's with the Chinese to deal with.
The Chinese will have access to Swiss markets and then ten years later the Swiss will be able to access the Chinese markets.
And she was kind of like gesturing to these possible kinds of problems for the UK.
I mean, do you think that's plausible or is this is the UK just the difference why?
I don't see why China would object to conducting trade relations with the UK based upon WTO law.
The difference is that what I was saying is basically the UK inherits all of the EU deals with the,
you know, the the 53 agreements and all sorts of other agreements that over there already.
So they're going to be grandfathered. So she wasn't the right analogy because she's talking little Switzerland negotiates with China.
Unsurprisingly, Little Switzerland gets a bad deal.
But this is different because UK was part of big EU.
Going out of the EU keeps the same deals on tariffs.
Now I think there is a caveat. I mean, there's caveats on tariffs, but they're manageable, as Bob was saying.
But there's also the whole big caveat that if it's not tariffs,
then it's much more complicated because there are regulatory agreements, etc., which have to do with cooperation.
And and there might not be, you know, in the long run, as sustainable as with the EU, where there's a machinery to to uphold them.
So that's, you know, a caveat, I think, to what you're saying.
Well well, I'm saying that it's I'm creating what I'm saying myself by saying with other EU countries or the former,
you know, there's going to be it's going to be very difficult.
No, I'm saying even with the rest of the world. So apart from agriculture and maybe textiles, what would be the problem?
I mean, the other services, you know, commitments, yeah.
Or. Yeah, all sorts of mutual recognition of professionals are there's very actually very I mean,
there's a lot there's been there are a lot of aspirational clauses and got to move move towards all those things.
But but almost none of them have have been fulfilled.
So you're saying that the agreements between the EU and the rest of the world are mostly tariff issues?
And that I mean, there might be there might be some services commitments.
So you might have to look out of procurement as well.
And but but procurement was almost like done in a federal way where, you know, I think the commission actually put, you know,
differentiated between the procurement agencies that would be bound in different EU countries and exceptions for individual countries.
So that's already differentiated, I believe so.
So I mean, I think on the WTO front, there is some complexity on agriculture and maybe one or two other areas where,
you know, the EU has a right to a certain kind of quota or, you know, there are quantitative limits that are.
Expressed in terms of being an entitlement of the EU as a whole.
And there you would then have to prorate them in some way to reflect, you know, the UK going its own way on the WTO.
But but apart from those two or three areas, I mean, you know, technical barriers to trade subsidies,
agreement and so on, I don't see anything that would need to be changed.
Awesome. Okay, Rob, I love the beginning of it.
When you mentioned that, you know, you see what's happening as a strategy to work closely done in the force.
And I look at it because that's my kind of approach to work.
So and that also helps me not to compare with the 1950s because I don't see these guys being at your
logical terms about I'm not going to ask you the question that I wanted to ask at the beginning,
okay? Because it's too long and where you can sit and make a fake.
I think the collection of Europe, because that was the part of the left and it was also,
you know, in our paper and because you've done your own vision of what to was.
So there are obvious differences between the two and in my reading.
One of the weaknesses in Europe is the disintegration of social democracy.
I mean, that was a lot for those, you know, parties and movements to be able to get hold of some of those voices.
But my question informs whatever academics or predictions are going to do it.
And that's your last you're the last question. So it's okay.
How do you see the outcome of this election in the United States affecting this, you know, Europe of 2017?
I mean, do you think it's going to strengthen your vision or is it going to be to the opposite direction?
Well, I think I would I would then revert to your comment where I do I do see one of the harmful impacts, as,
you know, the you know, America being big, you know, standing as an example of is strongman type, you know,
a politics where at least even even if there is not authoritarianism practices, authoritarianism and discourse,
and that it's discourse that really carries across the ocean, you know, chastising of the journalists.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, which you know. And so that I think is, is quite negative.
I, I completely agree. I mean, if I were to give policy prescriptions, I would say that one of them is the desperate need to rebuild social democracy.
And and and in fact, a mutual friend of Calypso and mine, you know,
George could frugal is who's the EU minister for he here is in fact you know has this project to you know,
to build or rebuild something like a social, social Europe.
And and it's a very difficult exercise.
You know, it's much harder to rebuild than it was probably in historical circumstances to build in the first place.
But allowing those kinds of institutions to run down, you know, is, I think, more than anything else, what has created, you know,
opportunities for extremist extremist politics, because, you know, it's really institutions like, you know, public universities,
a school system that's relatively egalitarian, you know, enterprises that provide public services to everybody,
that represent the idea of a public order but isn't based upon some notion of race or or hierarchy,
but is based upon it is based upon serving the needs of everyone.
And and, you know, I think it was, you know, very understood by the generation,
you know, that created these institutions at the end of the Second World War,
that they were not just operating out of progressive or socialist ideology,
but a recognition that these institutions would be the major safeguard about Europe falling into darkness again.
And, you know, as the memory of those experiences, you know,
became more distant on the one hand and neo liberal ideology more triumphant, you know, those institutions were allowed to to run down.
And and in many European countries and I it seems to me that that was, you know,
a very dangerous choice or maybe it was not even a choice, but an abdication of responsibility.
But it's. You know, but and it's difficult to build them up again in the current fiscal environment.
And as Joe Stiglitz has suggested in his recent book, The Euro,
there's a sense in which the European framework has acted more as a straitjacket on doing that than as a kind of catalyst.
But but George would like to turn this around in a certain way.
And not only George, but there is, I think, a movement to create a new social Europe.
I think that's going to be, of course, that George, together with support of the others, has also helped in emerging social democracy as it is.
Well, I mean, you know, we are entering into it.
What I was expecting I mean, he doesn't think these guys have.
They may pay lip service, but they, in effect, have even continued to hurt.
That would be a discussion also with Anthony, who is very close to that fact.
So maybe that's like part two of our conversation and well that can we thank Rob for a really wonderful.