Podcasts about trans pacific partnership

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fmDonald Trump blinked, as many people suspected he would. This week, he reduced the embargo-level tariffs he imposed on China a month ago, and did so unilaterally. So in exchange for a month-long crisis, a still-looming supply shortage, lost jobs, and lost wealth, we got nothing! But Trump's supporters are all too ready to cover for him. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:* What does Trump's reversal mean for the economy in the near and medium term?* Will his army of propagandists be able to sell his flailing as a “win,” and, thus, blunt the political consequences of his economic mismanagement?* Would Democrats be better off if their grassroots were similarly cult like, or is Trump's “superpower” actually a big weakness, both for the GOP and the country?Then, behind the paywall, how should Democrats think about the damage Trump is doing, not just in the trade realm but across government? It's (apparently) easy to tweak tariff rates, but much harder to convince trading partners that we're trustworthy. Could this be a basis for Democratic opposition? Should Democrats unify behind a general promise to reconstitute the government Trump broke, and rebuild global faith in the United States? Or are technical questions surrounding how to rebuild destined to leave the party mired in infighting? All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed. Further reading:* Brian argues it's counterproductive to wallow in the fact that building things is harder than breaking them, and that Dems should adopt a posture of resolve and defiance. * Matt on Trump rediscovering the virtues of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and how he succeeds politically by claiming credit for renegotiating shittier versions of deals he broke in the past. * Adam Serwer: “The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying.”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fmDonald Trump blinked, as many people suspected he would. This week, he reduced the embargo-level tariffs he imposed on China a month ago, and did so unilaterally. So in exchange for a month-long crisis, a still-looming supply shortage, lost jobs, and lost wealth, we got nothing! But Trump's supporters are all too ready to cover for him. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:* What does Trump's reversal mean for the economy in the near and medium term?* Will his army of propagandists be able to sell his flailing as a “win,” and, thus, blunt the political consequences of his economic mismanagement?* Would Democrats be better off if their grassroots were similarly cult like, or is Trump's “superpower” actually a big weakness, both for the GOP and the country?Then, behind the paywall, how should Democrats think about the damage Trump is doing, not just in the trade realm but across government? It's (apparently) easy to tweak tariff rates, but much harder to convince trading partners that we're trustworthy. Could this be a basis for Democratic opposition? Should Democrats unify behind a general promise to reconstitute the government Trump broke, and rebuild global faith in the United States? Or are technical questions surrounding how to rebuild destined to leave the party mired in infighting? All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed. Further reading:* Brian argues it's counterproductive to wallow in the fact that building things is harder than breaking them, and that Dems should adopt a posture of resolve and defiance. * Matt on Trump rediscovering the virtues of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and how he succeeds politically by claiming credit for renegotiating shittier versions of deals he broke in the past. * Adam Serwer: “The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying.”

Since Trump's return to office, supply chain leaders have been scrambling to adapt to new tariffs and a culture of uncertainty. This week, Chief Research Officer Kevin O'Marah, VP Research Geraint John, and Principal Analyst Caroline Chumakov reflect on the first 100 days of the President's new term and unpack what comes next.Panic or pause? Leaders' immediate reactions to tariffs (00:45)Next steps for navigating the new trade landscape (4:11)What an impending recession could mean for supply chain (7:51)Product pricing strategies amid inflation (13:45)Is the death of the Trans-Pacific Partnership the reason we're in this situation? (16:15)The implications of China's critical mineral monopoly (19:00)Why it might be harder for US companies to build green supply chains (20:40)The essential change every supply chain should invest in now (23:45)

Jim and Ray welcome Chris Johnstone, a Japan expert and former CIA, National Security Council, and Pentagon official, to discuss the implications of the recently announced U.S. tariffs on Japan's economy, politics, trade policies, and alliance with America.Chris explains Japan's crucial role as a node in America's Indo-Pacific alliance structure, but also, since the 2017 U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Japan has been assuming a greater leadership role in the region.U.S. tariffs will likely significantly impact Japan's GDP growth as well as its ability to finance the U.S.-produced weapons needed to defend itself against a rapidly growing Chinese military threat. Japan, like many other Indo-Pacific countries, will likely seek to strengthen its own domestic industries and diversify its trading relationships to reduce its reliance on the U.S. market and sources for high-end military equipment.Japan's government is facing upcoming elections in which it will need to be seen as effective in countering the U.S. tariffs. The government will not want to be seen as weak or submissive to the U.S. in its responses while still protecting its overall relationship with Washington.Chris examines the pros and cons of various approaches Japan may take in response to reciprocal tariffs, as well as the larger question of how America's abrupt policy changes and dismissal of previous trade agreements undermines the trust of its most important East Asian ally.Learn more about Chris Johnstone at the Asia Group or follow him on LinkedIn.Follow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast, or on LinkedIn or BlueSky under our show title, "Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific?"Follow Ray Powell on X (@GordianKnotRay) or on LinkedIn. Follow Jim Carouso on LinkedIn.Our podcast is produced by IEJ Media and Ian Ellis-Jones, follow him on X (@ianellisjones) or LinkedIn. This podcast is sponsored by BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific.

pWotD Episode 2869: Justin Trudeau Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 251,499 views on Monday, 10 March 2025 our article of the day is Justin Trudeau.Justin Pierre James Trudeau (born December 25, 1971) is a Canadian politician who is the 23rd prime minister of Canada, having served since 2015. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2013 to 2025 and has served as the member of Parliament (MP) for Papineau since 2008.Trudeau was born in Ottawa, Ontario, as the eldest son of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from McGill University and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of British Columbia. After graduating, he taught at the secondary school level in Vancouver, before returning to Montreal in 2002 to further his studies. He was chair for the youth charity Katimavik and director of the not-for-profit Canadian Avalanche Association. In 2006, he was appointed as chair of the Liberal Party's Task Force on Youth Renewal. In the 2008 federal election, he was elected to represent the riding of Papineau in the House of Commons. He was the Liberal Party's Official Opposition critic for youth and multiculturalism in 2009; in 2010, he became critic for citizenship and immigration. In 2011, he was appointed as a critic for secondary education and sport. In 2013, Trudeau was elected as the leader of the Liberal Party and led the party to a majority government in the 2015 federal election. He became the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history and the first to be the child of a previous prime minister.Major government initiatives Trudeau undertook during his first term included establishing the Canada Child Benefit, legalizing medical assistance in dying, legalizing recreational marijuana through the Cannabis Act, attempting Senate appointment reform by establishing the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments, and establishing the federal carbon tax. In foreign policy, Trudeau's government negotiated trade deals such as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and signed the Paris Agreement on climate change. He was sanctioned by Canada's ethics commissioner for violating conflict of interest law regarding the Aga Khan affair, and again with the SNC-Lavalin affair.Trudeau's Liberal Party was reduced to a minority government in the 2019 federal election. His government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, announced an "assault-style" weapons ban in response to the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks, and launched a national $10-a-day childcare program. He was investigated for a third time by the ethics commissioner for his part in the WE Charity scandal, but was cleared of wrongdoing. In the 2021 federal election, he led the Liberals to another minority government. In 2022, he invoked the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests and responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia and authorizing military aid to Ukraine. His party signed a confidence and supply agreement with the New Democratic Party (NDP) in early 2022, which resulted in the enactment of the Canadian Dental Care Plan for residents that meet a certain income threshold and a framework for national pharmacare; in late 2024, the NDP opted to terminate the agreement. In early 2025, in response to the second Trump tariffs, Trudeau announced 25% retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion worth of U. S. goods.Following the sudden resignation of deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland in December 2024 and an ensuing political crisis, Trudeau announced on January 6, 2025, that he would resign as both the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party. He advised the governor general to prorogue parliament until March 24, while the party held a leadership contest; Trudeau remained leader until Mark Carney was chosen, after which Trudeau will resign as prime minister. He will also retire as an MP when the 44th Canadian Parliament is dissolved.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:30 UTC on Tuesday, 11 March 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Justin Trudeau on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Gregory.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership has entered into force between the UK and members who ratified its accession by 16 October: Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. It will enter into force shortly afterward with Australia, on 24th December, and with Canada and Mexico 60 days after they each ratify. Businesses across the UK are set to face lower tariffs and fewer barriers when selling to economies across three continents, with the financial services, manufacturing and food and drink sectors in particular set to benefit. On this episode of Morning Shot, Nik Mehta, British High Commissioner to Singapore shares his insights on how the CPTPP will benefit the UK and other member countries. Presented by: Emaad AkhtarProduced & Edited by: Yeo Kai Ting (ykaiting@sph.com.sg)Photo credits: Reuters / Mina KimSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

英国の環太平洋連携協定加入について記者会見するジュリア・ロングボトム駐日英大使、１３日午前、東京都千代田区日豪など１１カ国の環太平洋連携協定に１５日、英国が加入する。 The Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade framework, led by countries including Japan and Australia, is set to welcome Britain as its 12th member on Sunday.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade framework, led by countries including Japan and Australia, is set to welcome Britain as its 12th member on Sunday.

pWotD Episode 2746: Donald Trump Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 949,465 views on Thursday, 7 November 2024 our article of the day is Donald Trump.Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he is the president-elect after winning the 2024 presidential election and is scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. Born in New York City, Trump graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. After becoming president of the family real estate business in 1971, Trump renamed it the Trump Organization and reoriented the company toward building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. After a series of business failures in the late 1990s, he launched side ventures, mostly licensing the Trump name. From 2004 to 2015, he produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. He and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 legal actions, including six business bankruptcies. Trump won the 2016 presidential election as the Republican Party nominee, defeating Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote, and became the first U. S. president without prior military or government experience. The Mueller investigation later determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. His campaign positions were described as populist, protectionist, and nationalist. His election and policies sparked numerous protests and led to the creation of a political movement and cult of personality. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged, racist, and misogynistic.In his first term, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, diverted military funding toward building a wall on the U. S.–Mexico border, and implemented a family separation policy. He rolled back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which cut taxes and eliminated the individual mandate penalty of the Affordable Care Act. He appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the U. S. Supreme Court. He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted recommendations from health officials, used political pressure to interfere with testing efforts, and spread unverified information about unproven treatments. Trump initiated a trade war with China and withdrew the U. S. from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times, but made no progress on denuclearization.Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden but refused to concede, falsely claiming widespread electoral fraud and attemping to overturn the results. On January 6, 2021, Trump urged his supporters to march to the U. S. Capitol, which many of them attacked. He is the only U. S. president to have been impeached twice: in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden, and in 2021 for incitement of insurrection; the Senate acquitted him in both cases. After his first term, scholars and historians ranked Trump one of the worst presidents in American history. In 2024, a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, making him the first U. S. president to be convicted of a felony. Trump faced more felony indictments related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and interference in the 2020 election, and he was found liable in civil trials for sexual abuse, defamation, and financial fraud.After leaving office, Trump continued to dominate the Republican Party. He became its nominee again in the 2024 presidential election and defeated Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, winning both the popular and electoral vote. He became the second president in U. S. history after Grover Cleveland to be elected to non-consecutive terms.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:28 UTC on Friday, 8 November 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Donald Trump on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm generative Joanna.

Ashish Prashar calls out the Democrats for their complicity in genocide and discusses his "no tax for genocide" which encourages British people to refuse to pay their taxes while their government funds a genocide. Then DNC delegate Nadia Ahmad talks about sneaking a "stop arming Israel" banner into the DNC and being assaulted with a "we love Joe" placard. And activist Lauren Steiner discusses organizing the action. Ashish Prashar is a formerly incarcerated political strategist, human rights activist, and writer. He was an advisor to the Middle East Peace Envoy and worked for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Middle East and West Africa. He was a press secretary for the Conservative Party and Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Ashish also worked on Obama and Biden's Presidential Campaigns. Ashish is a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts and sits on the Board of Just Leadership and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice. Ashish has appeared as a regular commentator in media outlets, including CNN, The Guardian and USA Today. He's now calling out ALL politicians for their complicity in genocide. Nadia Ahmad is a DNC delegate from Florida, DNC Interfaith Council Co-Chair, DNC Women's Caucus Executive Committee member, part of Delegates Against Genocide and a law professor from Orlando. She's filed a complaint with Chicago police against the Democratic National Committee over the "Islamophobic Attack" she experienced at the Democratic National Convention. Lauren Steiner is an activist, organizer and independent journalist based in Asheville, NC. She has fought against fracking, the climate crisis, education privatization and the Trans Pacific Partnership and for net neutrality, clean energy, Medicare for All, racial, economic and environmental justice and Palestinian human rights. On her internet show The Robust Opposition, she interviews organizers, activists, authors and progressive elected officials and candidates. **Please support The Katie Halper Show ** For bonus content, exclusive interviews, to support independent media & to help make this program possible, please join us on Patreon - / thekatiehalpershow Get your Katie Halper Show Merch here! https://katiehalper.myspreadshop.com/all Follow Katie on Twitter: @kthalps

国会の外ではためく英国旗、２０１９年３月、ロンドン【ロンドン時事】英政府は２９日、英国の加入で１２カ国の枠組みに広がる環太平洋連携協定が、１２月１５日までに発効する見通しになったと発表した。 The British government said Thursday that the country is now set to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement by Dec. 15, having secured the sixth and final ratification as Peru completed its ratification process.

The British government said Thursday that the country is now set to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement by Dec. 15, having secured the sixth and final ratification as Peru completed its ratification process.

Kicking off a new season of conversations for 2024-25, Steve has a really valuable with Valeria Vigilante and John Austin-Sheridan from the Free Trade Agreement Utilisation (FTAU) team within the Department of Business and Trade (DBT). The CEPA (UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) was the first trade agreement made after the UK left the EU. The conversation delves into the benefits of the FTA and how companies can find out if they can capitalise on any of the changes. The UK is also reaching the home straight to 'entry into force' of CPTPP (Comprehensive & Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership). Being part of this important trading block will improve conditions for British companies exporting across the region. Browse our wealth of Japan-specific guidance across ExporttoJapan.co.uk, and reach the DBT export support service via our contact page. You can also find export support on Great.gov.uk where you will have access to additional guidance, tools, and services as well as the export support service. https://www.great.gov.uk/ You can check their dedicated market guide on Japan where you can find specific information on doing business and operating in Japan and a link through to the wider resources on Export to Japan, additional guidance on CEPA and CPTPP will be published later in 2024. https://www.great.gov.uk/markets/japan/ Guests:  John Austin-Sheridan: Account Manager – FTA Utilisation team (Department for Business and Trade) Valeria Vigilante: CPTPP Lead – FTA Utilisation team (Department for Business and Trade)

The seafood industry isn't making the most of free trade deals.  FTAs with the UK, European Union, and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership eliminated tariffs on some seafood.  However, at the recent Seafood Conference, it was revealed a large part of the industry is still paying.  Seafood New Zealand Chief Executive Lisa Futschek told Mike Hosking they're working to figure out what's causing this problem.  She says it appears to be at the importer end where the paperwork is not being filled in correctly.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paulo Macro, an experienced trader and investor, discusses his background and career in the finance industry. He shares insights on the commodities space, including metals, mining, energy, and agriculture. Paulo believes that the demand for commodities is becoming more diffuse, with emerging markets like India and Indonesia approaching a tipping point of per capita growth. He suggests that supply underinvestment over the past decade, coupled with emerging demand, could lead to a potential supercycle in commodities. Paulo also highlights the importance of reallocating capital towards projects that are needed for future growth. The conversation covers various topics related to geopolitics, resource development, and investment strategies in the context of South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the copper market. The discussion touches on the missed opportunities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership under President Obama, the shift towards multipolarity in the global landscape, the potential for M&A activity in the copper sector, and the importance of jurisdictional risk in resource development. This episode of Mining Stock Daily is brought to you by...  Arizona Sonoran Copper Company (ASCU:TSX) is focused on developing its brownfield copper project on private land in Arizona. The Cactus Mine Project is located less than an hour's drive from the Phoenix International airport. Grid power and the Union Pacific Rail line situated at the base of the Cactus Project main road. With permitted water access, a streamlined permitting framework and infrastructure already in place, ASCU's Cactus Mine Project is a lower risk copper development project in the infrastructure-rich heartland of Arizona.For more information, please visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.arizonasonoran.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Fireweed Metals is advancing 3 different projects within the Yukon and Northwest Territories, including the flagship Macmillan Pass Project, a large zinc-lead-silver deposit and the Mactung Project, one of the largest and highest-grade tungsten deposits in the world. Fireweed plans to advance these projects through exploration, resource definition, metallurgy, engineering, economic studies and collaboration with indigenous people on the path to production. For more information please visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fireweedmetals.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Vizsla Silver is focused on becoming one of the world's largest single-asset silver producers through the exploration and development of the 100% owned Panuco-Copala silver-gold district in Sinaloa, Mexico. The company consolidated this historic district in 2019 and has now completed over 325,000 meters of drilling. The company has the world's largest, undeveloped high-grade silver resource. Learn more at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://vizslasilvercorp.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Victoria Gold operates the Eagle Gold Mine within the Dublin Gulch Property. Eagle is the largest gold mine in Yukon's long history of gold production. In addition to the long-life Eagle Gold Mine, the Dublin Gulch property has upsized exploration potential including priority targets Raven and Lynx among others. Follow all the gold production and exploration news at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vgcx.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

pWotD Episode 2585: Donald Trump Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.With 289,195 views on Thursday, 30 May 2024 our article of the day is Donald Trump.Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump received a Bachelor of Science in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. His father named him president of his real estate business in 1971. Trump renamed it the Trump Organization and reoriented the company toward building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. After a series of business failures in the late twentieth century, he successfully launched side ventures, mostly licensing the Trump name. From 2004 to 2015, he co-produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. He and his businesses have been plaintiffs or defendants in more than 4,000 legal actions, including six business bankruptcies.Trump won the 2016 presidential election as the Republican Party nominee against Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote. A special counsel investigation established that Russia had interfered in the election to favor Trump. During the campaign, his political positions were described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. He was the first U. S. president without prior military or government experience. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged, racist, and misogynistic.As president, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, diverted military funding toward building a wall on the U. S.–Mexico border, and implemented a family separation policy. He weakened environmental protections, rolling back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations. He signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which cut taxes and set the financial penalty to nil for the individual health insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act. He appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the U. S. Supreme Court. He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials, used political pressure to interfere with testing efforts, and spread misinformation about unproven treatments. Trump initiated a trade war with China and withdrew the U. S. from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times, but made no progress on denuclearization. Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice, in 2019–20 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, and in 2021 for incitement of insurrection. The Senate acquitted him in both cases. Trump refused to concede after losing the 2020 presidential election to Biden, falsely claiming widespread electoral fraud, and attempted to overturn the results. On January 6, 2021, he urged his supporters to march to the U. S. Capitol, which many of them attacked. Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history. Since leaving office, Trump has continued to dominate the Republican Party. He is the party's presumptive nominee for the 2024 presidential election.In May 2024, a jury in New York found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. Trump thus became the first U. S. president to be convicted of a crime. He is facing 54 other felony counts in three other indictments: a federal prosecution in Florida related to his mishandling of classified documents; a federal prosecution in Washington, D. C., on charges of conspiracy and obstruction for efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election; and a state prosecution in Georgia on racketeering and other felonies committed in an effort to overturn the state's 2020 election results. In separate civil proceedings in New York state court, Trump was found liable for financial fraud in 2024, and in 2023 was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Trump is appealing both judgments.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 04:06 UTC on Friday, 31 May 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Donald Trump on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Joanna Neural.

Jim & Ray interview former U.S.Ambassador Ted Osius--now the President and CEO of the US-ASEAN Business Council--about the importance of Southeast Asia's rapidly growing economies, especially as companies seek to de-risk away from China's deteriorating business environment. They discuss the growth and potential of Southeast Asia, the opportunities for US investment in the region, and the continuing challenges faced by American companies who want to operate there. They also touch on America's failed involvement with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and how that has negatively affected its economic opportunities and strategic position in Asia. They further discuss ASEAN's role in regional politics--what it can and can't do in the economic, diplomatic and security arenas.In this episode's "There I was..." segment, Jim recalls how as diplomats in Jakarta he and Ted would meet regularly with a wealthy Indonesian businessman who often had an axe to grind.

Ralph welcomes Professor Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT. We discuss the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/ Palestine and breakdown what the weaponry being used in both conflicts tells us about the intentions and capabilities of all parties involved. Plus, Ralph answers listener questions!Theodore Postol is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy Emeritus in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His expertise is in nuclear weapon systems, including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense, and ballistic missiles more generally. He previously worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations. In 2016, he received the Garwin Prize from the Federation of American Scientists for his work in assessing and critiquing the government's claims about missile defenses.We have a very complicated situation. In some ways, there's no right or wrong. There are different groups of people with deep ethnic commitments, and a central government in Kiev that has acted in a way that's completely intolerant of a significant fraction of its own citizens who happen to be of Russian descent. And right from the beginning, there was hostility from the West.Theodore PostolThere's a long history of the central Ukrainian command not supporting their troops at the battlefront. This is a real problem with the troops. The morale of the troops has been tremendously affected in an adverse way by the sense that their military leadership is not concerned about their life. It's one thing to ask a soldier to go risk their lives or lay down their life for their country and be providing everything you can to protect them and make it possible for them to fight. It's another thing when you're sending them to a certain death just because it looks good.Theodore PostolThe people in leadership roles are clueless, to a point that it's astonishing. The last situation that I know of historically where the leadership was so clueless was Tsar Nicholas II in 1917.Theodore PostolIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 4/23/241. According to AP, the United States has vetoed Palestine's latest bid for full membership in the United Nations. The vote in the 15-member U.N. Security Council was 12 in favor, including close U.S. allies like France, Japan, and South Korea, with the U.K. and Switzerland opting to abstain. Only the United States voted against the resolution. If U.S. had not blocked the resolution, the question would have gone to the full U.N. General Assembly, where no country holds veto power. While the U.S. claims this vote “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood,” these words obviously ring empty. Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination…The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real.” 140 countries recognize Palestine. Palestine currently sits as a non-member observer state at the U.N.2. Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a prominent Palestinian-American academic, was arrested at her home in Jerusalem last week, Democracy Now! reports. According to this report, Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian “was suspended by Hebrew University last month after saying in an interview Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.” Sarah Ihmoud, a co-founder of the Palestinian Feminist Collective who teaches at College of the Holy Cross is quoted saying “We see this as yet another example of Israel attacking Palestinians wherever they are, whoever they are. It underscores that no Palestinian is safe under Israel's racist apartheid rule.” Now, Ryan Grim of the Intercept reports that Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian is communicating trough family that she is being tortured in Israeli custody. Maddeningly, it appears unlikely that President Biden will hold Israel to account for the possible torture of an American citizen.3. Left-wing Israeli journalist Nimrod Flaschenberg reports Israeli refusenik Tal Mitnick and Sofia Orr “were both sentenced this week by the Israeli army to prison terms of 45 days+15 days probation. This will bring Sofia to a total of 85 days and Tal to 150. The Israeli army is relentless. But these brave kids are not about to give up.” This is Mr. Mitnick's 4th term in military prison and Ms. Orr's third, accoring to Pressenza. The international press agency further reports “probation is unprecedented and aims at deterring the refusers by enabling the military court to extend their next sentence beyond the 45-day limit…[and] In addition to Mitnick and Orr, conscientious objector Ben Arad is serving his first term of 20 days in prison.”4. Much has been made of the recent pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University. Prem Thakker of the Intercept reports, organizers of these protests say over 50 Barnard students and over 30 Columbia students have been suspended, with Barnard students losing access to dining and housing services. Reports on the ground show the universities dumping students belongings in the street. At the protests themselves, organizers emphasize that Jewish and Muslim students shared prayer space, and stress “Columbia wants you to believe we are enemies to protect their genocidal investments, but there is no deeper solidarity."5. Following SUNY Binghampton's adoption of a BDS resolution, New York State Legislators sent a letter to SUNY Chancellor John B. King calling for the expulsion of the student leaders behind that campaign. Moreover, this letter calls for “the ouster of any faculty and committee members who played a role in promoting or supporting this resolution.” This letter was signed by both Republican and Democratic state legislators in Albany. As prominent DSA member Aaron Narraph aptly put it, this campaign against the student activists constitutes “our very own mccarthyism.”6. In more campus news, The Lens, a New Orleans based outlet, is out with a blistering report on LSU's pay-for-play arrangement with fossil fuel companies. They write “For $5 million dollars, Louisiana's flagship university will let an oil company help choose which faculty research projects move forward. Or, for $100,000, a corporation can participate in a research study, with ‘robust' reviewing powers and access to resulting intellectual property.” This report links to documents that outline LSU's fundraising pitch to oil and chemical companies, and “Records [which] show that after Shell donated $25 million in 2022 to LSU…the university gave the fossil-fuel corporation license to influence research and coursework for the university's new concentration in carbon capture, use, and storage.” It is telling that, like pro-Palestine speech, the so-called campus free speech defenders are not standing up to corporate capture of research institutions.7. Against the backdrop of escalating diplomatic tensions in Latin-America over Ecuador's raid on the Mexican embassy, Progressive International reports “Ecuador [has voted] NO in the referendum on investor-state arbitration…rejecting President Noboa's underhanded efforts to override the Constitution to protect foreign investors over labor rights, Indigenous communities, and environmental regulations.” The Investor-State Dispute System – which places international corporations on the same legal footing as sovereign governments and hands over adjudication to the World Trade Organization – has come under heavy fire by left-wing skeptics of so-called ‘free trade' in recent years, contributing to the ultimate demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal engineered in the late Obama era. The ISDS has had a particularly troubling history in Latin-America, with tobacco companies suing Uruguay over anti-smoking legislation to name just one example. At the same time however, Ecuador overwhelmingly passed an anti-gang referendum in a victory for Noboa, per Reuters. Expect to see more about Ecuador in the coming weeks.8. Techcruch reports “Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks that it has shipped to date, due to a problem where the accelerator pedal can get stuck, putting drivers at risk of a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” This article goes on to say “The recall caps a tumultuous week for Tesla. The company laid off more than 10% of its workforce on Monday, and lost two of its highest-ranking executives.” The Guardian now reports that Tesla plans to cut prices on the Cybertrucks, which cost over $100,000 each. We beseech our listeners to be wary of these vehicles and to do thorough research on Tesla's auto safety record.9. In more transportation news, transportation blog Second Ave. Sagas reports “The feds are threatening to sue [New York City] if city vehicles [such as NYPD patrol SUVs] do not stop parking on sidewalks and crosswalks in ways that ‘impede the access of people with disabilities to pedestrian pathways.'” According to the Justice Department's letter, “The City of New York (and, more specifically, the NYPD) has failed to ensure that the pedestrian grid is ‘readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities,'... NYPD vehicles and the personal vehicles of NYPD employees frequently obstruct sidewalks and crosswalks in the vicinity of NYPD precincts…a recent study identified parking behaviors at 91% of the NYPD's precincts that resulted in obstructions to sidewalks and crosswalks with the potential to render those pathways inaccessible.” We commend the Justice Department for taking action to ensure the ADA is enforced, even against the NYPD which routinely behaves as though it is above the law.10. Finally, the United Autoworkers have prevailed in their union election at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant, winning by an overwhelming 2,628 to 985 margin, per the Guardian. This marks the first time workers have unionized a foreign-owned auto plant in the South and serves as a repudiation of the anti-union campaign backed by Republican Governors such as Tennessee's own Bill Lee. UAW President Shawn Fain responded to this campaign, saying “They're liars…These politicians are showing that they're just puppets for corporate America, and they don't give a damn about working-class people. They don't care about the workers being left behind even though the workers are the ones who elect them.” Seizing on the momentum of victory,  said “The workers at VW are the first domino to fall. They have shown it is possible…I expect more of the same to come. Workers are fed up.” UAW now plans to target a Mercedes plant in Alabama; according to the union, “A supermajority of Mercedes-Benz workers have filed a petition with the…NLRB…for a vote to join the UAW.” As the Guardian notes, “Mercedes has been considerably more outspoken against the union than VW was, with a top Mercedes official telling workers: ‘I don't believe the UAW can help us to be better.'” Yet Fain is confident, saying “At the end of the day, I believe that workers at Mercedes definitely want a union…and I believe a big majority there will vote in favor.”This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened up 31-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 20,158 on turnover of 3.7-billion N-T. The market lost ground on Tuesday after hitting an all-time intra-day high. Investors turned cautious about a possible major technical pullback from recent sessions. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing served as an anchor during the session to prevent the broader market from falling further. And artificial intelligence development-related stocks came under pressure due to their relatively high valuations. Taiwan Calls on CPTPP to Devise Detailed Accession Guidelines The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is calling on members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership to release detailed guidelines for countries seeking membership in the trade bloc. The call comes as the government is voicing (表達) its concerns that the official Accession Process guidelines are not detailed enough. According to the ministry, the Partnership's "Auckland Principles," which provide three main principles for applicants to meet, are also vague The foreign ministry also says Taiwan has engaged in direct dialogue with key member states, including Japan and Canada. The ministry also plans to send delegations to other members later this year to solicit support for Taiwan's accession (加入) to the trade bloc. Ma Foundation Director Talks "Meeting Old Friends" The director of the Ma Ying-jeou Culture and Education Foundation says the former head of state could meet with Xi Jin-ping when he travels to China next month. Hsiao Hsu-tsen says Ma is currently just "a regular citizen", but Ma and Xi made important history together in 2015, so "of course he hopes there is an opportunity (機會) to see an old friend." Hsiao is refusing to say whether arrangements were being made for such a meeting. He would only say that "like the media, he hopes it will take place. However, the foundation director says "because the delegation will be guests, the specific arrangements are being left up to the Chinese side as hosts." NKorea Rejects Kim Meeting with Japanese PM North Korea's state news agency says the country is rejecting (拒絕) any possibility of a meeting between Kim Jong Un and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. It comes a day after reports that Pyongyang had received a summit request from Japan. Chris Gilbert reports from Tokyo. Ethiopia Recouping Lost Funds After Glitch Ethiopia's biggest bank says it has recouped nearly 80% of the cash it lost during a system glitch that allowed customers to take out more money than they had in their accounts. The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia says around $14 million was withdrawn or digitally transferred (轉帳) during the error. The bank says the value of the transactions ranged from 9 cents to $5,350. The amount lost was initially reported as $40 million. Nearly 15-thousand people have voluntarily returned funds that the bank says were taken illegally. But over 500 individuals have not yet returned money that is not theirs. That was the I.C.R.T. news, Check in again tomorrow for our simplified version of the news, uploaded every day in the afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your day, I'm _____. －－－－以下訊息由 SoundOn 動態廣告贊助商提供－－－－ 您是否聽過孩子抱怨：數學好無聊！數學好難！ 學數學真的只能是一直寫寫寫，不斷加減乘除嗎？ 提供孩子學習數學的新可能！《兒童數學動畫課》 把數學變得好玩、好看又好用！ 輸入 CW150 再享專屬折扣～ 馬上點擊下方連結吧！ https://cplink.co/e71OXAa6

James Keys and Tunde Ogunlana take a look at the use of tariffs in light of recent campaign talk and consider whether in a modern context, they can be an answer to boosting the prospects of American workers (1:21).  The guys also discuss polyamory and the way it seems to be having a bit of a moment in the culture (39:03).How do tariffs work? | CNBC Explains (YouTube)Donald Trump is preparing for a massive new trade war with China (WaPo)Donald Trump wants to impose a 10% tariff. Here's what happened when Nixon tried the same thing. (Yahoo! Finance)Haley hits Trump on tariffs ahead of her Wall Street fundraisers (CNBC)Tariff in United States history (Wikipedia)Historical Aspects of US Trade Policy (National Bureau of Economic Research)Polyamory: Lots of Sex, Even More Scheduling (Wall Street Journal) (Apple News Link)

Back in the early 1900s, the Chicago mafia was known as “The Outfit”, and their frontman was a Harvard-educated lawyer named Abe Pritzker, a man once described as the “clean face of a dirty business”. Out of this situation, Abe Pritzker was able to build a massive empire of businesses, and from there his family built upon his foundation over the next century to create a fortune exceeding $33 billion. These days the Pritzker family is responsible for financing the Rainbow Mafia & Trans Agenda, Barack Obama's rise to power, the Diversity Equity Inclusion push, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and other agendas designed to subvert America from within. From owning the Hyatt Hotel brand & Royal Caribbean cruise line to the TransUnion credit reporting agency & Marmon Group, the Pritzker family runs Chicago and has installed one of their own as governor of the state of Illinois, but there are now some rather obvious cracks in the foundation. Anarchapulco: www.Anarchapulco.com Promo Code: MACRO Sponsors: Emergency Preparedness Food: www.preparewithmacroaggressions.com Chemical Free Body: https://www.chemicalfreebody.com Promo Code: MACRO C60 Purple Power: https://c60purplepower.com/ Promo Code: MACRO Wise Wolf Gold & Silver: www.Macroaggressions.gold True Hemp Science: https://truehempscience.com/ Haelan: https://haelan951.com/pages/macro Solar Power Lifestyle: https://solarpowerlifestyle.com/ Promo Code: MACRO LegalShield: www.DontGetPushedAround.com EMP Shield: www.EMPShield.com Promo Code: MACRO Christian Yordanov's Detoxification Program: https://members.christianyordanov.com/detox-workshop?coupon=MACRO Coin Bit App: https://coinbitsapp.com/?ref=0SPP0gjuI68PjGU89wUv Macroaggressions Merch Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/macroaggressions?ref_id=22530 LinkTree: linktr.ee/macroaggressions Books: HYPOCRAZY: https://amzn.to/3VsPDp8 Controlled Demolition on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ufZdzx The Octopus Of Global Control: Amazon: https://amzn.to/3VDWQ5c Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/39vdKeQ Online Connection: Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/Macroaggressions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/macroaggressions_podcast/ Discord Link:  https://discord.gg/4mGzmcFexg Website: www.Macroaggressions.io Facebook: www.facebook.com/theoctopusofglobalcontrol Twitter: www.twitter.com/macroaggressio3 Twitter Handle: @macroaggressio3 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-4728012 The Union Of The Unwanted LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/uotuw RSS FEED: https://uotuw.podbean.com/ Merch Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/union-of-the-unwanted?ref_id=22643&utm_campaign=22643&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened up 45-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 16,884 on turnover of 2.7-billion N-T. The market closed sharply higher on Monday, as the bellwether electronics sector was the focus of investor interest following gains by tech stocks on Wall Street at the end of last week. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing drove the tech sector's upturn, boosted by optimism over its strong sales report for October However, investors showed an unwillingness to chase prices as the main board closed in on the 17,000 point mark, which resulted in the Tai-Ex trading within a narrow range towards the end of the session. John Deng Points to APEC Focus on CPTPP Bid Taiwan's top trade negotiator John Deng says the main aim of bilateral talks at this week's APEC forum is to build up support for Taiwan's bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Deng is attending the APEC forum in San Francisco and participating in the APEC Economic Leaders' Week meetings. According to the trade negotiator, the forum is expected to serve as an important opportunity for Taiwan's delegates to meet with representatives from trade bloc member countries. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing founder Morris Chang is serving as President Tsai Ing-wen's envoy to the APEC summit and is scheduled to arrive in San Francisco tomorrow. CGA Denies US and Chinese Ships Entered Taiping Island Waters The Coast Guard Administration is denying reports that U-S and Chinese ships entered Taiwan's territorial waters around Taiping Island in the South China Sea earlier this month. The denial comes after K-M-T lawmaker Chen I-hsin accused the administration of attempting to cover-up the intrusions, which he said occurred on November 3. The administration has confirmed that a Chinese warship and an American warship were near the island. However, it says they were operating in waters some 21-nautical miles northeast of Taiping Island and neither vessel entered territorial waters. Indonesian President Visits White House US President Joe Biden is today hosting his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo at the White House to "reaffirm" their joint commitment to the "nearly 75-year-long partnership between the world's second and third largest democracies." The meeting, though, is at risk of being overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war — a conflict erupting thousands of kilometres away, but one that matters hugely to both states. Benji Hyer reports. < [CLIP] Slug: > SKorea President to Discuss NKorean Weapons at APEC South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol says he will discuss international response to the purported North Korean-Russian weapons deal during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco this week. In written responses to questions from The Associated Press, Yoon says the North Korean-Russian agreement not only poses a serious threat to the security of the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia and Europe but also undermines the universal rules-based international order. Yoon says provocations by North Korea will only result in strong retaliation from South Korean and U.S. forces. That was the I.C.R.T. news, Check in again tomorrow for our simplified version of the news, uploaded every day in the afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your day, I'm _____. －－－－以下訊息由 SoundOn 動態廣告贊助商提供－－－－ 轉骨有成，日股長線續航仍強 日股專家－市佔No.1的日本野村資產管理 在地團隊發揮加乘效果 價值投資挖掘潛力企業 由下而上主動挑選優質個股 帶領您重新發現日股投資魅力 了解更多：https://bit.ly/45OUq8p

As New Zealand continues to emerge and engage post-Covid trade it is increasingly clear that many of the old trade and market certainties no longer hold, and new risks and opportunities are emerging on the world stage. Join MFAT Deputy Secretary Vangelis Vitalis as he shares his insights into how New Zealand can steer a leading trade strategy in increasingly turbulent waters. Vangelis was New Zealand's Chief Negotiator who led the conclusion of negotiations for the New Zealand European Union Free Trade Agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement and before that the Malaysia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. He was also a member of the negotiating teams for the New Zealand-China FTA and the P4 Agreement. Recorded at the Red Meat Sector Conference August 2023.

The new President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ambassador Michael Froman, joins One Decision to talk about the China challenge as President Joe Biden prepares to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month in California. Froman was a key player in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations while serving as U.S. Trade Representative under President Obama—a massive trade deal which Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of in 2017— something that Froman says will go down as one of the most "significant strategic blunders in American history." One Decision's resident spymaster Sir Richard Dealove shares his thoughts on the latest news on the Israel-Hamas war.

OUTLINE of today's show with TIMECODES Kevin McCarthy seen at Bohemian Grove. Weaving spiderwebs? Evil always harkens back to archetypes such as this recreation of sacrificing children to Moloch by passing them through the fire (2:54)Listener challenges us to have another American Revolution. Should history repeat itself EXACTLY? What should 1776 look like today? (10:15)FBI asks judge to block release of any Epstein data. Prosecutor is James Comey's daughter (44:03)IRS wants PAPERLESS income tax system by 2025. Remember they tried this last year — and it was NOT going to be a choice (47:39)Elon Musk sues the censors (the Center for Countering Digital Hate) (54:21)Ramaswamy: "Anti-Globalist" Pushes TPP & H1-B ImmigrationWill America be more than just a platform for corporatists like Ramaswamy & Musk to make money? Ramaswamy gives his worldview in an interview with Musk and pushes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and bringing in more foreigners like the ones attacking America and American Values from their high-pay high-tech Silicon Valley perches (1:09:57) INTERVIEW "Alt"-man & "Bank"-man — What Are These Shills Selling? Sam Altman of OpenAI setting himself up as a major power broker with both WorldCoin & AI. And BRICS countdown, Fitch downgrades US credit. Tony Arterburn, DavidKnight.gold, joins. (1:31:01) "Boiling Climate" Lockdown: The Original MacGuffin Returns on SteroidsParis, home of the "Paris Climate Agreement" and the first 15-Minute Cities, is finally cleaning up the Seine River so people can swim in it for the first time in 100 years. Cleaning up pollution was how they sold it, but it was never about that. The climate "crisis" became "pandemic crisis" and now the original "crisis" returns with new found "superpowers" (2:02:00)Arson, my arse. The questions no one asks are:- WHY CAN'T THEY PUT THE FIRES OUT!? - WHY DIDN'T WE HAVE GRID ISSUES EVER BEFORE, WHEN TEMPERATURES WERE MORE EXTREME? (2:18:21)Why Have UFO's Been "Rebranded" to UAP? Why are grandstanding GOP Congressmen hyping it now in their made-for-TV hearings? (2:28:29) Japanese man wants to live as a collie (2:51:44)DeSantis attacks Trump's love affair in Megyn Kelly interview but neither he nor Megyn really understand the depth of what Trump is doing or how to attack him (2:55:46)Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHT

OUTLINE of today's show with TIMECODES Kevin McCarthy seen at Bohemian Grove. Weaving spiderwebs? Evil always harkens back to archetypes such as this recreation of sacrificing children to Moloch by passing them through the fire (2:54) Listener challenges us to have another American Revolution. Should history repeat itself EXACTLY? What should 1776 look like today? (10:15)FBI asks judge to block release of any Epstein data. Prosecutor is James Comey's daughter (44:03)IRS wants PAPERLESS income tax system by 2025. Remember they tried this last year — and it was NOT going to be a choice (47:39)Elon Musk sues the censors (the Center for Countering Digital Hate) (54:21)Ramaswamy: "Anti-Globalist" Pushes TPP & H1-B ImmigrationWill America be more than just a platform for corporatists like Ramaswamy & Musk to make money? Ramaswamy gives his worldview in an interview with Musk and pushes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and bringing in more foreigners like the ones attacking America and American Values from their high-pay high-tech Silicon Valley perches (1:09:57) INTERVIEW "Alt"-man & "Bank"-man — What Are These Shills Selling? Sam Altman of OpenAI setting himself up as a major power broker with both WorldCoin & AI. And BRICS countdown, Fitch downgrades US credit. Tony Arterburn, DavidKnight.gold, joins. (1:31:01) "Boiling Climate" Lockdown: The Original MacGuffin Returns on SteroidsParis, home of the "Paris Climate Agreement" and the first 15-Minute Cities, is finally cleaning up the Seine River so people can swim in it for the first time in 100 years. Cleaning up pollution was how they sold it, but it was never about that. The climate "crisis" became "pandemic crisis" and now the original "crisis" returns with new found "superpowers" (2:02:00) Arson, my arse. The questions no one asks are:- WHY CAN'T THEY PUT THE FIRES OUT!? - WHY DIDN'T WE HAVE GRID ISSUES EVER BEFORE, WHEN TEMPERATURES WERE MORE EXTREME? (2:18:21)Why Have UFO's Been "Rebranded" to UAP? Why are grandstanding GOP Congressmen hyping it now in their made-for-TV hearings? (2:28:29)Japanese man wants to live as a collie (2:51:44)DeSantis attacks Trump's love affair in Megyn Kelly interview but neither he nor Megyn really understand the depth of what Trump is doing or how to attack him (2:55:46)Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHT

"The World Bank and its president have been doing an important, constructive job the past five years," announced The Southern Illinoisan in 1973. "IMF assistance [has] put Jamaica well on the road to recovery," reported The Winnipeg Sun in 1982. The Trans-Pacific Partnership “could be a legacy-making achievement” for Barack Obama, The New York Times suggested in 2015. These are the dominant narratives surrounding so-called "development" initiatives, whether structural adjustment loans or "free trade" deals. Agreements like these, we're often told, have been and continue to be essential to the economic maturation and societal improvement of poor countries. Countries that shift from nationalized to privatized industry and land, so called liberalize trade policies, and institute a host of other free-market reforms are destined for greater efficiency, reduced poverty, and that much-coveted "Seat At The Table" in the global economy. But, all too often, this isn't the effect of these initiatives. What we don't tend to hear about is how economic development "agreements" engineered by wealthy countries like the US — e.g., IMF loans, NAFTA, or the TPP — don't promote, but rather reverse, the development of exploited countries. Media minimize not only these initiatives' destructive effects on economies, labor, and social programs in service of U.S. corporations, but also their relationship to the punitive U.S. immigration system, and their extensive role in mass global displacement. This episode – the last installment of our three-part series on media narratives about immigration (listen to Part I here and Part II here!) – explores the displacing effects of "development" and "free trade" deals, as well as their connection to an increasingly militarized immigration "deterrence" machine, asking why capital is allowed to move freely, but people aren't. Our guest is Dylan Sullivan.

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. **Tai-Ex opening ** The Tai-Ex opened up 28-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 17,061 on turnover of 4.8-billion N-T. The market closed marginally higher on Monday, as gains by artificial intelligence-related stocks offset ongoing losses by semiconductor heavyweights after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing announced that it's cutting its 2023 sales outlook. The Tai-Ex fluctuated within a narrow range throughout the session, as T-S-M-C dragged semiconductor shares lower, while gains posted by artificial intelligence server suppliers lent support to the main board towards the end of the day's session. **Tsai Urges Overseas Firms to Seek CPTPP Backing ** President Tsai Ing-wen is urging the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce to help seek support for her administration's bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Speaking during a meeting with chamber members, Tsai said she hopes overseas Taiwanese businesses can exert (發揮) their influence to rally support for Taiwan's application to join the the trade bloc. According to Tsai, the joining the partnership will strengthen Taiwan's economic resilience. She's also calling on Taiwanese businesses based overseas to invest in Taiwan and build the nation into a key global industrial hub. **KMT Presidential Candidate Hou Yu-ih to Visit Japan ** The K-M-T's presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih will be traveling to Tokyo next week. According to Hou's campaign office, the three-day trip is aimed at (目的是) strengthening his foreign policy credentials. Hou is slated to meet with lawmakers and officials from the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association. Hou's campaign office says he'll also be doing interviews with Japanese national broadcaster N-H-K and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Hou will also be meeting with oversea's Taiwanese in the Japanese capital and will be accompanied by K-M-T think tank head Ko Zhi-yen, and Overseas Department head Chen Yi-xin. **UN Urges Russia to Revive Grain Deal ** The United Nations' highest official is urging Russia to revive a grain deal with Ukraine. AP correspondent Norman Hall reports. **Algeria Wildfires Leave Dead and Injured ** The Algerian government says wildfires raging across the country have killed 25 people and injured about 50. The Defense Ministry says Monday that includes 10 soldiers killed while trying to get the flames under control in the face of high winds and scorching (灼熱的) summer temperatures. The Interior Ministry says at least 1,500 people were evacuated. Wildfires, some spread by strong winds, moved across forests and agricultural areas in 16 regions. That caused 97 blazes in the north African country. The largest and deadliest fires ravaged parts of the Kabyle region east of Algiers. **Musk Reveals New Twitter Logo ** Elon Musk has unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter's famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the smartphone app. In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding (重塑形象) is done, Musk said they would be called Xs. That was the I.C.R.T. news, Check in again tomorrow for our simplified version of the news, uploaded every day in the afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your day, I'm _____.

The government's biggest international trade meeting in New Zealand since the pandemic has just taken place with the UK becoming the newest member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trade ministers and officials from twelve economies were in the country for the event. The gathering comes in the wake of the prime minister's recent trade mission and ahead of yet another trade summit, on China, which takes place in Auckland today. Veteran trade negotiator and former diplomat Charles Finny spoke to Corin Dann.

The UK has made it into the huge trans-Pacific free trade treaty, but there's been no progress on allowing in China. New Zealand hosted the seventh meeting of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership over the weekend. And while much was made of what the 12th country will bring to the pact, members were reluctant to talk about who's in the waiting room: China. Our political reporter Giles Dexter was at the meeting.

China and New Zealand have agreed to scale up bilateral trade and bolster cooperation in e-commerce, trade in services, the green economy and establish a dialogue mechanism for new energy vehicles, according to a joint statement released by the two countries on Wednesday.根据6月28日中国和新西兰发布的联合声明，双方愿加强双边贸易，拓展电子商务、服务贸易、绿色经济等领域合作，推动建立新能源汽车对话机制。The joint statement came after talks between Premier Li Qiang and New Zealand's Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in Beijing.这份联合声明是在国务院总理李强和新西兰总理克里斯·希普金斯在北京会谈后发表的。New Zealand supports China's efforts to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership as well as Beijing's participation in ongoing talks over China's joining the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, the statement said.声明中提到，新方欢迎中方申请加入《全面与进步跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》。关于《数字经济伙伴关系协定》，新方欢迎中国加入工作组正在进行的深入讨论。Li, who hosted a welcoming ceremony for Hipkins at a red carpet ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, said that China will become more open, and the nation stands ready to share with New Zealand opportunities from its high-quality development.李强在人民大会堂为希普金斯举行红毯欢迎仪式，他指出，中国开放的大门只会越开越大。中方愿同新方分享中国发展带来的新机遇。He called upon both nations to forge new drivers for growth in emerging sectors, jointly champion free trade and support cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, saying that bilateral cooperation on education and tourism must be advanced to build up people-to-people exchanges.他呼吁双方打造新兴领域合作“新动能”，共同倡导自由贸易，支持亚太区域合作，推动教育、旅游等领域合作，拉紧人文交往“新纽带”。Hipkins said his country remains steadfast in following the one-China policy and looks forward to opportunities from China's greater strides in opening-up. He urged better bilateral communication and coordination over issues related to Pacific Island countries, and urged joint efforts to promote economic recovery and the response to climate change.希普金斯表示，新方坚定奉行一个中国政策，对中方扩大开放带来的机遇感到振奋，愿同中方就太平洋岛国和多边事务加强沟通协调，携手应对气候变化等全球性挑战。Hipkins also extended an invitation for more Chinese entrepreneurs, tourists and students to go to New Zealand.希普金斯还表示，欢迎更多中国企业家、游客和留学生来到新西兰。The two nations signed agreements to improve cooperation on agriculture and quarantine requirements for the export of kiwi fruit from New Zealand to China.两国签署了关于改善农业合作和新西兰向中国出口猕猴桃的检疫要求的协议。China is the largest export market and source of imports for New Zealand, with bilateral trade volume reaching $25.15 billion in 2022, up 1.8 percent year-on-year.中国是新西兰最大的出口市场和进口来源国，2022年两国双边贸易额达到251.5亿美元，同比增长1.8%。Mongolia蒙古国The Chinese premier also held a welcoming ceremony for visiting Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene in Beijing on Wednesday.6月28日，国务院总理李强在北京为蒙古国总理罗布桑那木斯来·奥云额尔登举行了欢迎仪式。During their talks, Li said that China stands ready to work with Mongolia to continue enriching the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, deepen political mutual trust and win-win cooperation, and accelerate the building of a bilateral community with a shared future. The two nations should extend support to each other on issues relating to respective core interests and major concerns, and deepen pragmatic cooperation in various sectors, he said.在会谈期间，李强表示，中方愿同蒙方一道，落实好两国元首重要共识，继续丰富中蒙全面战略伙伴关系内涵，深化双方政治互信与互利合作，加快构建两国命运共同体。他指出，中方愿同蒙方在涉及彼此核心利益和重大关切的问题上相互支持，中方愿同蒙古国深化各领域合作。The premier urged both sides to better align development strategies, promote the high-quality building of the Belt and Road and enable unimpeded trade and investment. It is also important to scale up cooperation in the mining and energy sectors, strengthen connectivity at border ports, and deepen cooperation over control and prevention of desertification, Li said.他指出，两国要做好战略对接，高质量共建“一带一路”，畅通贸易投资往来，扩大矿产能源领域合作，加强边境口岸互联互通，深化防沙治沙合作。Oyun-Erdene said that enhancing cooperation with China is Mongolia's foreign policy priority, adding that his country looks forward to aligning its long-term development strategy with major initiatives proposed by China.奥云额尔登表示，加强对华合作是蒙对外政策首要方向。蒙方愿加强蒙“远景2050”长期发展政策同“一带一路”倡议及全球发展倡议、全球安全倡议、全球文明倡议对接。The two sides should scale up cooperation over ports, mining and desertification control to elevate bilateral relations to new heights, he added.他补充道，双方应深化两国口岸、能矿、防沙治沙等领域合作，把蒙中关系推向新高度。Bilateral英/ˌbaɪˈlætərəl/ 美/ˌbaɪˈlætərəl/adj.双方的，双边的Cooperation英/kəʊˌɒpəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/ 美/koʊˌɑːpəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/n.合作，协作

President Xi Jinping reaffirmed on Tuesday Beijing's commitment to high-level opening-up, advancing Belt and Road cooperation and upholding true multilateralism, during separate meetings with heads of government from four countries.The president met in Beijing with the prime ministers of Barbados, New Zealand, Mongolia and Vietnam on the sidelines of the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as the Summer Davos Forum, during their official visits to China.He welcomed the countries to share opportunities from China's high-quality growth as the nation moves forward on its own pathway to modernization.BarbadosDuring his meeting with Barbados' Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, Xi said the fact that Beijing is moving forward with Chinese modernization through high-quality development will usher in new opportunities for the Eastern Caribbean country and bilateral cooperation.He called on both sides to deepen political mutual trust and support each other on issues related to each other's core interests and major concerns.It is important for Beijing and Barbados, as two developing nations, to expand pragmatic cooperation and take advantage of the opportunities presented by the joint building of the Belt and Road, in order to advance cooperation on infrastructure development, digital economy, climate change, renewable energy, agriculture and healthcare, Xi said.He appealed for greater unity and cooperation in the developing world to practice true multilateralism, oppose Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation, and safeguard the basic norms of international relations and fairness and justice in the international arena.Xi expressed China's "full understanding" of the concerns of small island developing states like Barbados regarding climate change, and he pledged to further enhance South-South cooperation in this regard, providing assistance and support to developing countries.Mottley applauded China's achievements in poverty eradication and enhancement of public well-being, saying that the Global Development Initiative proposed by the Chinese president "demonstrated outstanding global leadership" and will contribute to common prosperity and development for all nations and people, as well as to better tackling of global challenges.Barbados hopes to strengthen cooperation with China on the response to climate change, as well as water resources, healthcare and tackling the digital divide, she said, adding that her country opposes decoupling or the severing of supply chains.New ZealandIn talks with New Zealand's Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, President Xi underscored that China's efforts to seek self-reliance and self-improvement are never about closing its doors, but rather about better connecting its domestic and international markets.China, with its vast land and huge population, can only seek its development based on its own strength, he told Hipkins, who is making his first visit to Beijing since taking office in January.An open China is crucial to achieving its modernization, Xi said, adding that Beijing will remain unwavering in advancing high-level opening-up and better protecting the legitimate interests of foreign investors.Xi reiterated that China considers New Zealand a friend and partner, expressing willingness to work together with New Zealand to embark on a new era in bilateral relations and ensure the long-term stability and progress of the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership.The two sides should continue to see each other as partners instead of rivals and opportunities rather than threats, and should consolidate the foundation for bilateral relations, he said.He highlighted the implementation of the upgraded version of the China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, as well as promoting trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and providing a better business environment for each other's enterprises.The two nations should jointly uphold true multilateralism and the free trade system and jointly respond to global challenges such as climate change, he said.Hipkins said his country attaches great importance to ties with China, and he called upon both sides to continue deepening cooperation in economy, trade, education, science and technology, and people-to-people exchanges.Differences should not define the bilateral relations, and what is important is to maintain candid exchanges and mutual respect and put aside differences while seeking common ground, he said.MongoliaPresident Xi highlighted the need for China and Mongolia to adhere to mutual respect for national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as respect for the development path independently chosen by each country, and to support each other on issues concerning their core interests and major concerns.He told visiting Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene that developing long-term, good-neighborly relations is a strategic choice made by both countries and fully caters to the fundamental interests of the two peoples.Noting that China is a partner that Mongolia can trust and rely on, Xi said that the nation is willing to continuously deepen friendly relations with Mongolia, strengthen mutual trust and cooperation and inject more stability and certainty into the region and the world.He said that China actively advances global environmental governance and is willing to cooperate with Mongolia on desertification control.Saying that China and Mongolia are both developing countries with broad common interests and similar standpoints on international and regional affairs, Xi underlined the need for both countries to firmly defend multilateralism and build a new type of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice, cooperation and win-win results.Oyun-Erdene said that Mongolia adheres to the one-China principle and supports China's stance on the Taiwan question as well as issues related to Tibet and Xinjiang.Mongolia supports the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative, all proposed by Xi, and is willing to work closely with China to continue to respect and support each other's choice of development paths and the high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road.VietnamPresident Xi called for China and Vietnam to jointly oppose decoupling, disruption of industrial and supply chains and the act of politicizing economic and technological issues, in order to uphold international fairness and justice, during talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.While enhancing bilateral cooperation, the two countries should jointly safeguard their own development rights and interests, and promote the international order becoming more just and reasonable, creating a peaceful and stable external environment for the modernization drive of both nations, he said.Facing the increasingly grave and complex international situation, China and Vietnam should uphold the spirit of equality, mutual benefit, solidarity and cooperation, join hands to seek common development, and inject greater stability into a world full of challenges, Xi said.He called on China and Vietnam, both socialist countries, to enhance the quality of joint building of the Belt and Road, strengthen the alignment of their development strategies, give play to their complementary advantages, and accelerate pragmatic cooperation in fields such as infrastructure, smart customs and green energy.The Vietnamese prime minister said that the sustained and stable development of the Vietnam-China relationship has always been the strategic choice and top priority of the Vietnamese party and government.Vietnam firmly pursues the one-China policy and supports China's accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, he said.He added that Vietnam opposes the politicization of economic issues and is willing to work closely with China to prevent and respond to various risks and challenges and avoid any forces that would divide the Vietnam-China relationship.Reporter: Xu Wei and Cao Desheng

It managed to unite Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in opposition. So why has the UK signed up to the CPTPP (the 'Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership')? In this podcast, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to trade justice campaigner Nick Dearden about the Brexiter push for more global trade deals. In their rush to sign up to these corporate agreements the UK government is signing away the sovereignty it claims to treasure. Are these agreements now ushering in a new era of deregulation and hyper-globalisation? Or are they simply the last hoorah for a government on its way out? And what does this tell us about our changing world? In a wide-ranging conversation we offer some answers. An extended version of this podcast is available for members of Another Europe Is Possible. You can sign up as a member at AnotherEurope.org/join. 

For call center workers in the Philippines, attempts to unionize the workplace don't just entail confrontations with local management—but overseas US-based multinationals and the US federal government's foreign policy agenda as well. Since 2022, the Biden administration has promoted a new economic initiative known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF). Touted as a vehicle for “writing the new rules of the 21st century economy,” the IPEF links 14 nations across the Pacific Rim into an emergent bloc that has been compared to the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership. Like the TPP before it, the IPEF attempts to build an exclusive economic regional pact that excludes China.In a special livestream panel, workers and organizers in the US and the Philippines discuss how trade policy and worker repression in the Philippines go hand-in-hand with the IPEF and the New Cold War on China. The event, moderated by Maximillian Alvarez, Editor-in-Chief of The Real News Network and Ryan Harvey, National Field Director for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, is part of organizing efforts for two upcoming rallies in the U.S. during negotiating meetings for the Biden's administration's largest trade initiative, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). Those meetings and rallies will take place in Detroit in May and in Seattle in August. This event is co-hosted by Public Citizen, BAYAN USA, the BPO Industry Employees Network, and Communication Workers of America.Panelists include:Mylene Cabalona, President, BPO Industry Employees Network (Philippines)Kendra Williams, Member, Communications Workers of America, Local 6215 (US)Adrian Bonifacio, National Chairperson, BAYAN USA (US)Melinda St. Louis, Director, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (US)Maximillian Alvarez, Editor-in-Chief, The Real News Network (moderator)Ryan Harvey, National Field Director, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (moderator)Additional links:For more info about the May 20th Detroit IPEF/APEC rally: https://bit.ly/Detroit-IPEF / asiddiqui@citizen.orgFor more info about the August Seattle IPEF/APEC rally: julie@washingtonfairtrade.orgStudio Production: Cameron Granadino, Adam ColeyHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer: Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-podSign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/newsletter-podLike us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealnewsFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealnews

Chopper is off frolicking in the sun so this week Dia Chakravarty is in the podcast hotseat for an in-depth look at a subject that saw Conservative MPs starting their Easter holidays with a spring in their step - the CPTPP, or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Not exactly catchy, is it?Amanda Tickel, Head of Tax and Trade Policy at Deloitte UK, and Liam Halligan, Economist and Telegraph columnist break down what the CPTPP is and how it differs from the EU. Plus Philip Davies MP and Shadow Minister for Trade Nick Thomas-Symonds give their somewhat different assessments on the possible pros and cons, whether the deal represents the Brexit people voted for, and how Labour might have negotiated differently. For 30 days' free access to The Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/chopper |Listen to Planet Normal: www.playpodca.st/planetnormal|Email: chopperspolitics@telegraph.co.uk |

The government's announced its new plan for water in England. Critics say it's a rehash of previous policies, but the farming minister says there will be £10 million more funding for constructing reservoirs on farms and better irrigation systems and nearly £34 million pounds to help livestock farmers improve their slurry storage. River Action is making a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority about Red Tractor after an internal Environment Agency Report concluded Red Tractor membership was 'not a good indicator of environmental protection'. The charity says Red Tractor ads are misleading as they claim to be a world-leading standard and their environmental standards aren't good enough. Red Tractor says that the analysis of the data is misleading and insists farms that belong to its scheme fare much better in inspections than those that don't. National Pig Association welcomes a government plan to ensure fairness and transparency in the pork supply chain. Egg producers fear UK animal welfare standards will be undermined by the latest post-Brexit deal agreement, the CPTPP. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose members include Mexico, Canada and Japan, will have quotas for imports of ‘sensitive' products like beef and lamb, but not eggs. The industry says 99% of Mexico's eggs come from caged birds, a method of production banned in the UK in 2012. Dartmoor National Park Authority has been granted permission to appeal against a High Court decision in January that led to wild camping being banned. Recordings of skylarks and blackbirds. Presenter = Caz Graham Producer = Rebecca Rooney

UK egg producers say the new trans-Pacific free trade deal is bad for animal welfare and bad for the British egg industry. The British Egg Industry Council fears that UK animal welfare standards will be undermined and producers will be put at a commercial disadvantage by the latest post-Brexit trade agreement, the CPTPP. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose members include Mexico, Canada and Japan, will have quotas and permanent limits for imports of ‘sensitive' products like beef and lamb - but not eggs. The Council's chief executive, Mark Williams, says 99% of Mexico's eggs come from birds that are kept in battery cages, a method of production which was banned in the UK in 2012. We're talking about food labelling all this week. The Government is expected to consult later this year on plans to introduce mandatory welfare labelling for poultry and pork products with labels explaining how the livestock's been farmed. There are already many different voluntary schemes with labels on pork relating to how pigs are reared, but is focusing on production methods alone a good measure of animal welfare? Cambridge University scientists have come up with a system of measuring welfare that uses what they say is a reliable comparison across different types of pig farming. People who want to camp out on Dartmoor may have that right returned. The Dartmoor National Park Authority has been granted permission to appeal against a High Court decision in January that meant the right to wild camp anywhere on Dartmoor was removed. The ruling came about after a landowner challenged a longstanding assumption that the public had an automatic right to camp without permission. Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

The UK is on the verge of joining the Trans-Pacific Trade Pact, or CPTPP. Signing up to the "Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership", to give it its full name, joining Chile, Canada and Vietnam amongst other Pacific-rim countries. The deal has been a cause of concern for farmers who're worried they may be stuck with a bad deal that could also open the door to beef treated with hormones. A Green Finance Strategy setting out plans to encourage private investment for nature-recovery and a ‘Nature Markets Framework' have been published as part of the government's new net zero plan. The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs says there are multi-billion pound opportunities for farmers and landowners in the carbon market and have committed to develop a new harmonised approach for measuring on-farm emissions, as well as greater support for farmers to calculate and reduce their carbon footprint. We ask the Nature Friendly Farming Network what they think of the plans. The Welsh government has set up two new taskforces, made up of farmers, vets and academics, in an effort to eradicate bovine TB by 2041. A refreshed strategy for tackling the disease, which led to the slaughter of almost ten thousand cattle in Wales last year, was announced in the Senedd this week. The new First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf has announced his new cabinet. Mairi Gougeon, who became the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands back in 2021 keeps her job and Land Reform has been added to her brief too. All this week we're discussing how farming and rural businesses are tackling waste and putting it to new purposes. In East Yorkshire two young friends, both farmers' sons, looking for extra work during the winter months found a gap in the market connected to the millions of shotgun cartridges used on clay shooting ranges every year. They collect, shred and clean the used cartridges, which are turned into plastic pellets which can be used to make things - including road surfaces. Presenter = Caz Graham Producer = Rebecca Rooney

The United Kingdom has reached an agreement to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, better known as the CPTPP. It’s the first time a new member has joined the CPTPP since the original 11 Pacific Rim countries, including Canada, reached the deal in 2018. From an agricultural perspective, the Canadian Cattle Association... Read More

Reports abound that the UK will enter an agreement in principle to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sean Farrington asks experts and stakeholders what this could do for British businesses. The UK government announces its Net Zero strategy on climate change - how will it respond to government projects in the US and EU? Plus, Adidas and Beyonce are reported to be parting ways after poor sales - what does this mean for the sportswear giant and branding partnerships?

The Cotswold Hunt has been has been suspended by the British Hound Sports Association, after hunt saboteurs released video footage of a fox which had been tied inside a bag and appeared to have been hidden underground so it could be released later for hounds to chase. The allegations were revealed by Channel 4 News. Gloucestershire Police have confirmed they're investigating. Today has been dubbed "Green Day" - the day when the UK government is expected to announce its revised plans on how to achieve net zero. Government figures show that that agriculture accounts for 11% of total UK net greenhouse gas emissions. We speak to the Green Alliance which has been tracking how well government policy is addressing its net zero targets. It's reported that Britain is close to reaching broad agreement on joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The government argues that joining the trade pact would mean the UK enjoying tariff-free trade with a greater range of countries, but farmers have been concerned it could prove a prove a bad deal for UK agriculture. All this week we're looking at waste on farms.  It's estimated that nearly three million tonnes of edible food is thrown away from farms every year - enough for almost seven billion meals. We report on a charity which is collecting crops that would otherwise have gone to waste, to give to families struggling with the cost of living. Presenter: Caz Graham Producer: Rebecca Rooney

Brian Winter, vice president of policy at Americas Society and Council of the Americas and editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, leads the conversation on U.S. relations with South America. CASA: Welcome to today's session of the Winter/Spring 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Brian Winter with us to discuss U.S. relations with South America. Mr. Winter is the vice president of policy for the America Society and Council of the Americas and editor in chief of Americas Quarterly. An influential political analyst, he has followed South America for more than twenty years and has served as a correspondent for Reuters in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Mr. Winter is the author of several books including Why Soccer Matters, a New York Times bestseller he wrote with the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé. He is a regular contributor to television and radio and host of the Americas Quarterly podcast. Welcome, Brian. Thank you very much for being with us. WINTER: Thank you, Maria. Thanks for the invitation. CASA: Can you begin with a general overview of current U.S. relations with South American countries? WINTER: I can try and actually, as a matter of fact, today is an extremely fortuitous day to be doing this and let me tell you why. A couple of weeks ago on February 10, Brazil's new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made a one-day trip to Washington. He met with President Biden while he was here. He brought his foreign minister with him as well as his chief foreign policy adviser, his finance minister, a couple other members of his Cabinet. One of the biggest sort of concrete results of this trip that Lula made up here was a U.S. donation to the Amazon Fund of $50 million. That is million with an M. Well, today, Lula leaves for China with about half of his Cabinet and a delegation of approximately two hundred and thirty leaders from Brazil's private sector in what Brazilian media are calling the biggest foreign delegation ever to leave Brazil for another country. They will be in China for six days and there is a whole roster of deals on the table ranging from financing to infrastructure to education, environmental, and so on. So the point I'm trying to get across here is one of clear asymmetry and it really reflects kind of the new moment for U.S. relations with South America overall. As Maria mentioned, I started my career in the region as a reporter a little more than twenty years ago. I was in Argentina for four years. I was in Mexico for one year and Brazil for five, and in the course of that relatively short period of time we've seen kind of the power balance in how we think about Latin America but specifically South America. We've seen a significant change in how we think about that region. Back the early 2000s, certainly, during the 1990s, these were the final years of the so-called Washington Consensus, a period characterized by kind of the unipolar moment that came with the end of the Cold War, a certain consensus not only around democracy but around a certain set of liberalizing economic policies as well, and that ran its course. But really, it was around 2003 when everything started to change for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is the one that I've already referenced, which is the growth of China as a trading partner for the region. China had always had a presence in Latin America. In fact, for the magazine that I run, Americas Quarterly, we ran a piece two years ago about the Chinese presence in Mexico going all the way back to the 1600s when they operated barber shops and other sort of forms of commerce. But what's happened over the last twenty years is really remarkable. In numbers, Chinese trade with Latin America and the Caribbean overall went from 18 billion (dollars) in 2002 to a stunning 450 billion (dollars) in 2021. China is now the largest trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, and for South America as a whole if you take all those countries in the aggregate China now outranks the United States. When you look at Latin America, by the way, that includes Mexico. If you take that grouping then the U.S. is still the number-one trading partner but, again, that's almost entirely because of that relationship—that trading relationship as a result of the former NAFTA and now USMCA. Along with that big growth in Chinese trade have come other changes. We've had a lot of talk in the U.S. media in recent days about the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq war. That was something—and I was living in Argentina at the time and you could really feel how that even then carried a cost for the U.S. reputation in some of these countries. I think that with the failure of the—the failures of the war over time I think that that only accentuated the view that—not only a long-standing view that the U.S. was an unwelcome, meddling, and in many cases imperialist presence but it also accelerated this narrative that the United States was in relative decline. More recent years we've seen kind of other things contribute to this diminished reputation of the United States and throughout many countries in the region—everything ranging from not just the election of Donald Trump, who, of course, was not popular in most of the region; but also specific decisions that were made by his government, such as the withdrawal from the TPP—the Trans-Pacific Partnership—that, of course, is the trade deal that was negotiated under the Obama administration that included several Latin American countries, including Chile and Peru—but also the weaponization of tariffs; and, you know, Trump's repeated threats to even cut off Mexican imports. They did—those threats did have the effect of kind of forcing, first, President Peña Nieto in Mexico and then his successor, Andrés Manuel Lόpez Obrador, to cooperate with initiatives like management of migration policy. So in the short term, they, quote/unquote, “worked” but in the longer term it showed Mexico as well as other countries in the region that the U.S. was not a particularly reliable partner. Some of you may be listening to all this and thinking, well, this sounds like the viewpoints espoused by governments in the region that are leftist and have never really cared for the United States in the first place. But another interesting thing about this latest trend and the way that things have changed over the last ten years is that this desire to forge a middle path between China and the United States as their strategic competition escalates is shared by leaders across the ideological spectrum. South American countries in particular are not unlike the United States when it seems like virtually everything is polarized, and yet in this area and specifically the need—the perceived need to have closer relations with—I'm sorry, closer relations with China while maintaining a civil relationship but not siding too much with United States, some of the most enthusiastic proponents of that view in recent years have actually been governments on the center right and right such as Sebastián Piñera, the former president of Chile, Iván Duque, the former president of Colombia, Guillermo Lasso, the current president of Ecuador, who has worked extensively with China, and even Jair Bolsonaro, who was until recently the right-wing president of Brazil, ended up essentially going along with Beijing and allowing Huawei to participate in the recent auction of 5G mobile communications technology there. And so what we end up with as a result is a policy in many countries across the region that some are calling active nonalignment, the idea that governments in the region, regardless of their ideological stripe, need to seek an equidistant or middle path between Washington and Beijing, essentially taking advantage of their relative distance from not only potential conflicts between the U.S. and China but also looking at what's happening in Ukraine right now and saying, look, we need to maintain our independence, not side too strongly with either of these emerging blocs, and see if we can benefit from this by selling our commodities to everybody, keeping in mind that these are economies, especially in South America, that rely extremely heavily on the sale of commodities exports to drive their economic growth. So, you know, in conclusion for these initial remarks that is a huge change in the course of a generation. We've gone in a little more than twenty years from this assumption that most Latin American countries are in the U.S. sphere of influence, to use a very outdated term, which I detest, that they were part of our, quote/unquote, “backyard” to an increasing realization in DC, and I think people are still getting their heads around that, that automatic support, automatic alignment, can no longer be expected whether it is in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, and then on down into South America, which I know is our focus today, governments like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, another country where we've seen a lot of change on this front even in the last couple years and, again, not just because there's a leftist president in Colombia now because his predecessor, who I've already mentioned, Iván Duque, was one of the main people pushing this change. So that's a lot to digest. I'm happy to take any questions and hear from you. So thank you. CASA: Thanks, Brian, for that comprehensive introduction. Now let's open it up to questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question is a written question and it comes from Andrea Cuervo Prados, who is an adjunct instructor at Dickinson State University, and asks, what is your perspective regarding the new leftist president of Colombia and U.S. relations? What is the risk that Colombia could turn into another Venezuela? WINTER: Right. It's a good question. I think that we are still figuring out exactly what Gustavo—not only who Gustavo Petro is but what his ambitions are for both Colombia and for his relationships with the rest of the region and the rest of the world. There is some distance between what he has said he wants to do and what he may be able to do. This is a president who, you know, talks in these grand sweeping terms but ultimately has to get things through congress, and to just cite a result or an example of this that doesn't directly have to do with Colombia's foreign relationships, he said—he gave a very dramatic speech at the UN General Assembly last September in which he talked about the need to legalize narcotics across the board, including cocaine. But then—it was a speech that generated a lot of attention in capitals all over the world and all over the region. But then in ensuing weeks when he was pressed on this he didn't really have a lot of detail and admitted that it was not something that Colombia could do unilaterally, which is all to say that, again, there's this gap where I think it's important to pay careful attention to the gap between the rhetoric and what's actually possible with Petro. I don't personally—you know, the question of could X country become another Venezuela it's a question that people have been asking all over Latin America for the last ten years. I think—I understand why people ask it because what happened in Venezuela was so awful and dramatic, not only with the country becoming a full-fledged dictatorship that represses political opposition but also the humanitarian crisis that has forced some 7 million people or about a quarter of the country's population to leave the country. But, look, Petro is Colombia's first president on the left and I don't think it necessarily follows that—in fact, I'm certain that it doesn't follow that every person on the left wants to go down the path of Venezuela. So I suppose I'm a little more optimistic not only that Petro is a pragmatist in areas like the economy—for example, his finance minister is a quite pragmatic figure, a Columbia University professor who is well respected by markets—and I'm also somewhat optimistic about Colombian institutions and their ability to stand in the way of any truly radical change. CASA: Thank you. Our next question comes from Morton Holbrook, who is an adjunct professor at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Morton? Q: Hello. Yes, I'm here. Morton Holbrook, Kentucky Wesleyan College. University of Louisville also. Thanks for your really interesting comments, especially about China's relationship with Latin and South America. Can I turn north a little bit to Russia? Considering particularly the Brazilian president's upcoming visit to China do you think he might want to go to Russia, too? Bearing in mind that the International Criminal Court just issued an arrest warrant for President Putin, how might that affect Latin American relations with Russia? Do you think some of them might now have second thoughts about Russia or inviting Putin to visit their countries? Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela have all signed the ICC statute promising to cooperate in the carrying out of arrest warrants. Thank you. WINTER: That's a great question and one that is—I can tell you is very front of mind for Brazilian officials and I think others around the region right now. I was just in Brazil two weeks ago working on our—our next issue of Americas Quarterly will be on Brazil's foreign policy and what it means for the rest of Latin America. This is a question that's very front and center. Brazil's foreign minister did say in the last couple of days—he did explicitly almost word for word repeat what you just said, which is that Brazil is a signatory to that treaty. That would seem to eliminate any possibility of Vladimir Putin visiting Brazil. I'm not sure that that was really on his list of things to do anyway. But it was not only a practical signal but a diplomatic one as well. Lula's position on Russia and the Ukraine war has been inconsistent. He said during his campaign last year that Zelensky and Putin bear equal responsibility for the conflict. My understanding is that after that statement, you know, nobody wants to contradict the boss openly and sometimes not even in private. My sense personally based on conversations with others in Brasilia is that at the very least his foreign policy team regretted that he made that statement. Brazil has, in other form, condemned the Russian invasion. Other governments including Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and others have done the same. However, these are countries that, like most of the Global South, are firmly opposed to any sanctions and so their position, again, ends up being I suppose you could call it nuanced. They believe it's important in part because of their own experience as nations to condemn invasions of one country by another. I, personally, think that it's fair to think of what Putin is doing is a kind of imperialist aggression, which these are countries that have certainly objected to that when it's the U.S. over the last, you know, 200-plus years and so you would think that it would be in their DNA to do so in the Ukrainian case as well, and in fairness most of them have. I would just add that, you know, the Brazilian position, I think, though, gets influenced also by two other things. One is, again, this notion of nonalignment. Most people talk about nonalignment in Brazil and Argentina, in Chile and Colombia, and they think about the U.S.-China relationship, as I noted during my introductory remarks. But they also think of it as a helpful guide to thinking about the conflict, the war in Ukraine, as well for reasons that are not firmly rooted in morals or values, let's say, but in interests as, you know, foreign policy often is. To say it in a different way, I had a conversation a couple of years ago with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who I helped him write his memoir in English back in 2006. He was president during the 1990s, and in talking with him about the China question he said, we have to take advantage of our greatest strategic asset, which is that Brazil is far. (Laughs.) And to just unpack that a little bit, I think the meaning of that is clear to all of you. But these are countries that really see an opportunity right now just by virtue of their geographic distance from these conflict zones to avoid being dragged in and also to potentially, at some level, benefit from it through strategic superpower competition for their support as well as through higher prices for some of the commodities that they produce. There's one added element in the case of Brazil, which is that Lula, I'm told by people close to him, sees himself as almost a Nelson Mandela-type figure. He's back now for his third term in the presidency twenty years after he was president the first time. Of course, I'm sure people on this call know that he went through some real struggles in the intervening years including nearly two years in prison over—on corruption charges that were later thrown out and, you know, he may see his presidency as an opportunity to kind of write the last chapter or two in his biography, and there's talk that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize and that he sees potentially helping negotiate a peace deal for the Ukraine war as the best opportunity to do that. I actually think that that idea, which is—tends to be dismissed in Washington as well as in European capitals, I personally think that idea is not as crazy as some people here in Washington think. But maybe I can go into that a little bit later if anybody wants. CASA: Thank you. Next, we have two written questions from the same university that we can take together. They're from Marisa Perez and Trevor Collier, who are undergraduate students at Lewis University. They would like to know what world leaders such as the United States can do to prevent deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and how they can do so without compromising Brazil's sovereignty. WINTER: Well, it's a really great question, in part because it mentions an issue that Americans don't often think about, which is precisely the sensitivity on the sovereignty issue. Brazil, and specifically not only Brazil's military but Brazil's foreign policy establishment, have a long-standing concern that is part of their doctrine, I suppose you could say, that is concerned always about the possibility of territorial loss and about foreigners gaining influence or, in some cases, even control over the Amazon. And I have to say, you know, this is another one of those ideas that I think—I wish we were all together in a room. This Zoom is kind of the next best thing. I could see your faces that way. But sometimes when I talk about this I see people kind of roll their eyes as if it was some sort of imagined conspiracy. But the truth is that as recently as 2019 when the—the first year of Jair Bolsonaro's government when the fires in the Amazon really became a huge controversy, driven in large part by social media and tweets from people like Justin Bieber and Cher, who, to be clear, were, I think, justifiably and quite heroically shining light on what was happening there. In the midst of all that Emmanuel Macron actually proposed that perhaps some sort of international force in the Amazon was necessary, that that deployment of that would be a good idea if Brazil was not capable of taking care of the Amazon itself. That proposal was disastrous because it just reinforced this long-standing fear that so much of the establishment in Brazil has always had, and it's true that Bolsonaro was on the right but you, certainly, in conversations, I think, with people across the ideological spectrum this is something that people think about. So OK. So back to the original question, how can the U.S. help. Well, the U.S. could help by providing both logistical and financial resources beyond the $50 million, which is, you know, the equivalent of about seven seconds of what we're spending in terms of supporting Ukraine right now. I don't know—Norway is the biggest sponsor of the Amazon Fund. I don't have that number in front of me but I think that their contribution is upwards of at least a billion dollars, probably more. Ultimately, though, I do believe that the Amazon is a local challenge and I know that can be unsatisfying to hear in forums like this where we're sort of designed—you know, this is a CFR event. We're supposed to be thinking of ways that the international community can get involved. But it's going to be a big challenge. The good news is that Brazil has shown that it is capable of getting its hands around this problem before. During Lula's first terms in office from 2003 to 2010 his government was able to reduce the level of deforestation by upwards of 75 percent. It was a very dramatic difference in a very short period of time. This was done through a variety of means, both things like satellite monitoring and new technology that let the authorities follow this in real time. They were also able to step up environmental enforcement agencies like IBAMA, whose inspectors are necessary. It's necessary to have them on the ground in order to, you know, stop—actually stop illegal loggers from setting the fires that are the main driver of deforestation. They were also able to build political consensus around the need to reduce deforestation during those years. I don't think it's going to be—in fact, I'm certain it will not be as “easy,” quote/unquote, this time around. A lot has changed. The upwards of 60 percent increase that we saw in deforestation during the Bolsonaro years had the support, unfortunately, in my view, of local populations who believe essentially that slashing and burning will lead their day-to-day economic lives to improve. In the election that happened in October where Lula won and Bolsonaro lost but by a very small margin—the closest margin in Brazil's modern democratic history—the strongest support nationally for Bolsonaro was in areas that have seen the most illegal deforestation over the last four years and what that tells you is that, again, these are local populations that believe that this will lead to greater wealth and greater well-being for all of them, this being deforestation. So that's a big challenge for Lula with a—you know, at a time when resources are fairly scarce. It's not like it was during his first presidency when all of this increase in Chinese trade was really boosting the amount of money in Brazil's coffers. So he's going to have to figure out a way to dedicate financial resources as well as convince local populations that this is in their interest to do it. It's not going to be an easy road. CASA: Our next question comes from Mike Nelson, an affiliate adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Mike? Q: Thank you very much for an outstanding overview of what's going on in U.S. relations to South America. I study international technology policy and data governance but my question is about corruption. You mentioned corruption in Brazil but it's a problem throughout South America, and my three-part question, is it getting worse or better; are there any countries who have really done the right thing and have taken serious measures to address it; and how can the internet and some of the technologies for citizen journalism help expose corruption and make leaders less likely to dip into the public fund? WINTER: OK. Yeah. No, great questions, and reflective of if you look at opinion polling and remember that these are countries that many of them have been dealing with rising crime, rising homicide levels, economic stagnation, the pandemic, which hit Latin America by many measures harder than in any other region in the world at one point—I haven't seen updated numbers on this but it was fairly consistently throughout the pandemic Latin America, which is about 8 percent of the world's population, was accounting for about 30 percent of the world's confirmed COVID deaths. Anyway, amid all of that, and the economic stagnation that has been such a problem over the last ten years, in a lot of countries and in public opinion surveys, the thing that people identified as the number-one problem in their country is corruption. That was not always true. If you look back at public polling twenty years ago, people tended to identify kind of more, what's the word, basic needs—think, like, unemployment, hunger, misery, which often is kind of asked as a separate—that's one of the boxes you can check. Twenty years ago, those were the issues. And as the region became more middle class, especially in the 2000s because of this China-driven economic growth that described during my introduction, a lot of people were able to move beyond their basic needs and focus on essentially what was happening to the money that they paid in taxes, keeping in mind that many people were paying taxes for the first time. Some of it surely was also driven by these things, as you mentioned, mobile phones that not only things like videos of people carrying suitcases of cash, but also the attention that was given to big corruption scandals. Previously in a lot of countries, governments were able to make pacts with newspapers and TV channels, and kind of tamp things down a little bit, and lower the temperature. In an era of Facebook and Twitter, that was no longer as easy for them to do. All of this culminated in several corruption scandals at once in the mid-2010s, the most emblematic of which was the so-called Lava Jato, or car wash, scandal, which originated in Brazil, but eventually had franchises, if you will, in almost a dozen countries throughout Latin America and the world. That story is complicated. Politicians all over the region went to jail. Business leaders did too. Lula was one of them. That was the case that put him in jail. In intervening years, we've discovered that there were abuses and procedural violations, both things on behalf of the prosecutors and the judge involved, who the Brazilian Supreme Court decided, I think in 2021, they ruled—maybe it was earlier than that—that the judge overseeing Lula's conviction had not been—or, rather, it's easier to say—had been partial in his rulings. And so that's left us in a place today where populations are still angry about corruption, as I mentioned, but it is no longer driving conversation in most countries, like it did before. I still believe—and you can probably tell, this is something I've thought about a lot over the years and continue to watch. The first question you asked, in some ways, is the most important one. Is corruption getting worse or better? It's impossible to know for sure. My hypothesis is actually corruption is about the same, and may in fact be getting better, which flies in the face of all of these headlines that we've seen. But to me, the operative question over these last ten years or so has been, you know, not why—I've heard people say, well, why are these—why are these countries so corrupt? And to me, the real question is, why are we suddenly seeing these cases of corruption? Because I think it speaks to not only the technological changes that I referenced, but also the improvement—(audio break)—these are countries many of which transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s. And therefore, it really took a generation for independent prosecutors to show up, to have the training and political support that they needed to go after some very powerful people. So, in sum, I am a believer in the story of rule of law improving in many countries in Latin America. I would recognize, again, that it's a very complex story, in part because of some of the problems around not just Lava Jato but in other countries, such as Peru and Guatemala. But progress is rarely linear. (Laughs.) And I still think that this is something that is likely to get better with time. CASA: Our next question is a written one from Mary Beth Altier at New York University. She asks: What role do you think misinformation and disinformation play in citizens' perceptions of the U.S. versus China and Russia in Latin America? What could the U.S. do better from a strategic communications perspective, if anything? And then—I can repeat this other question later, which is kind of a follow up. So you think— WINTER: Yeah, maybe. Well, that first one—that first one is worthy of a book. All of these are—these are great questions. They're difficult to answer in pithy fashion in three minutes. I am continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America. Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español—(changes pronunciation)—RT en Español—it has one of the biggest social media followings of any “media company,” quote/unquote, in the region. Even people who I know are—who I know to not be pro-Russia, let's put it that way, I see sharing content and videos from RT, which, of course, is just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government. But also, you know, have a whole network of sites that are more subtle and that push very sophisticated and sometimes, you know, not particularly obvious narratives that are designed to undermine the United States or promote the views of China and Russia. I would recognize at the same time that—I referenced this during my introduction remarks, sometimes the United States does not need any help with it comes to undermining its reputation in the region. I mentioned some of the, quote/unquote “own goals” that we've seen over the last five to ten, even twenty years, going all the way back to the Iraq War. As far as actively pushing back, all I can say is this: You know, I think that they're—on the one hand, I think there are concrete steps that are being used. We're still trying to get our heads around this problem to fight misinformation. But I was just in a different forum this morning where I was asked, what—how can the U.S. help the cause of democracy in Latin America. And my answer to that is that the best thing the United States can do to help democracy in Latin America is to get its own house in order, to move past the polarization, the misinformation, and the scorched earth politics that have put our own democracy at risk over the last several years, and try to, you know, recapture some of the consensus, at least around basic democratic rules of the game and how we hold elections that characterized most of the previous two-hundred-plus years of our history. Because I do think that while—you know, look, I lived ten years in Latin America. I know that people roll their eyes at the notion of the United States as being kind of the shining city on the hill. And I understand why. And that was always true, in part because of the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America often showing, you know, some of our worst behaviors. On the other hand, as a Brazil specialist, I've seen how some of the tactics and even some of the same people that were behind our own democratic decay of the last five years, some of those same tactics were repackaged and exported to open arms in Brazil. So I do think that it makes a difference on the ground in places like Brazil, potentially, and other countries as well, when a strong democratic example is being set in the United States. And I think that's the most powerful thing we can do. Some of the other stuff, like what's happening on RT and Telesur and some of these other outlets is relatively outside our control. CASA: We have a complementary question from— WINTER: There was a second part of that question. CASA: Oh, no, you did end up answering, I think, what could the U.S. do better from a strategic communications perspective. I think you kind of covered that. We have another question from Gursimran Padda, a student at Stony Brook University, who asks: Does China's strategy of gaining influence in Latin America differ from its tactics in Africa? And if so, why? WINTER: Gosh, all these great questions. China—I have to start from the beginning. I am not an African specialist. But I can tell you kind of the narrative of what happened in Africa through Latin American eyes, if that makes any sense, because this is a conversation I've had a lot over the years. The perception is that China went into some of these countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and engaged in infrastructure projects and other things that had abusive terms. In many cases, China imported its own labor to do some of these projects. They also engaged in some predatory lending practices. And that was all—essentially the takeaway from actions like that in places like Buenos Aires, Bogota, certainly Brasilia, was that the Chinese would not be allowed to come and engage in those same behaviors in Latin America. And I think, in practice, it seems that the Chinese have realized that. There have been examples, such as the construction of a dam in Ecuador, where the terms ended up being perceived as something of a debt trap. But my sense—again, and this is not so much my sense; it's repeating what I've heard in numerous conversations about this subject with leaders across the ideological spectrum and throughout the region—is that they understand the risks involved in working with China, in part because of the experience throughout parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And they're determined to not let those things happen in their home countries. You know, I know that that's a view that, in places like where I am today—I'm on in the road in Washington, participated in this other conference this morning. That's why my Zoom background is not quite as put together as it sometimes is, by the way. I know people roll their eyes at that notion here, and are constantly warning—you know, kind of wagging their finger a little bit at governments throughout South America, and saying that they need to be eyes wide open about the risks of engagement with the Chinese. The problem is that here in the U.S., I think they're underestimating, in some cases, the sophistication of foreign ministries and trade ministries in places like Peru and Chile when they make those comments. Which is to say, I think that there's something both visually and in terms of the context a bit paternalistic about it, that everybody picks up on and tends to make people in the region justifiably crazy. (Laughs.) And then, the other part is that the U.S. is not really offering much in the way of alternatives. We're at a pretty unique moment in the history of the United States right now where we have both parties—the Republican and Democratic Parties—are pretty much closed to the idea of new free trade deals. That, in my lifetime, has never happened before. I mentioned the fact that Trump dropped out of TPP. Well, Joe Biden has not picked that back up. I think there are domestic political reasons that explain that, but what it means in practice for our relationships with governments in Latin America is that Washington doesn't have a whole lot to offer. Because, unlike the Chinese, we can't just order our companies to go invest someplace. That's not how our economy works. It is very much how the Chinese economy works, where they can decide to make these decisions. They are not necessarily for a short-term economic payoff, but for medium-term reasons, or even decisions that have very little to do with dollars and cents or ROI, return on investment, and everything to do with geopolitics. So wanting to have beachheads in terms of, say, ports in places like El Salvador. So, you know, again, without that—without trade and without that ability to kind of dictate investment, there's not a lot that's left in Washington's toolkit for counteracting this kind of influence. CASA: Our next question comes from Daniel Izquierdo, an undergraduate student at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Daniel. Q: Good afternoon, sir, ma'am. Thank you for taking the time. I just had a quick question on the increasing tensions between China and the U.S., and how that will kind of develop itself in Latin and South America. So given the strategic interests of Latin and South America, and the persistent political unrest, along with increasing tensions between China and the U.S., what do you believe the likelihood to be of proxy conflicts or foreign meddling, similar to what occurred during the Cold War, occurring in the region? And if not, how do you foresee the U.S. and China competing for influence in the region? WINTER: So another very good question. Thank you for that. Look, I think some of this ground we've covered already, but I would say that, you know, you're the first to mention—I had not previously mentioned this idea of a new cold war. And this—you know, this is another reason why so many countries across the ideological spectrum are opting for this policy of nonalignment. Essentially because they believe that the first Cold War went badly, very badly, for Latin America. It resulted in all kinds of traumas, from the wars in Central America during the 1980s to U.S. support for coups in places like Chile, to, you know, Cuban meddling in places like Bolivia and elsewhere around the region during those years, which led to the rise of guerrilla movements like the FARC, that ended up killing very high numbers of people. And so essentially, you know, not to be glib about it, but the reaction that today's generation has is: We want no part of this. Because it didn't go well for us the first time. I think there are obvious differences between a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union back in the 1950s and 1960s, and this strategic competition between Washington and Beijing, that thankfully has not quite reached those heights, at least not yet, here in the twenty-first century. But I have to tell you, and again this is based on conversations I'm having all the time, the fear is real. The perception is that the world may be headed back to that kind of conflict, being driven not only by what's happening in the Ukraine but the increasing speculation of potential war over Taiwan. So this, again, as far as—as far as how it could play out in practice, I think it's still early. I think it remains to be seen. Right now there is—you know, there are clear cases where I think the Chinese are, as I alluded to in my previous answer, making investments not for economic reasons but for strategic ones, with a long-term horizon I mind. Things like the, quote/unquote, “space base” that they've established in Argentina, which really is deserving of the full air quotes when we say the phrase “space base.” I think everyone senses that—you know, that that conflict—or, that competition, if you will, is likely to define the next twenty to thirty years. And I think there's a determination in most countries, it makes a lot of sense to me personally, that they don't want their countries used again as a chessboard amid that larger conflict. CASA: Our next question comes from Damien Odunze. He's assistant professor at Delta State University who writes: Ideas in the long run change the world. Do you think a closer educational collaboration between U.S. universities and those in Latin and South America could help shape and strengthen liberal democratic values in those countries? WINTER: What an interesting question. Look, let me talk first about kind of the—that equation today. There's already quite a lot of connectivity, especially at the—at, you know, not a word I love to use, but at the elite level, the elites in government and business and U.S. education systems. Which is an unnecessarily wordy way of saying that a large percentage of people in South America come from the elite classes and get educated at universities and sometimes even at high schools in the United States. That is one reason why, again, many of these governments are likely to at least forge a middle path between China and the United States, rather than going full-fledged in the direction of China. I think there's a cultural affinity, family ties, cultural ties, educational ties, and other things that are probably kind of the strongest connection that the U.S. has with a lot of these countries right now. As to whether a strengthening of those educational ties would improve dedication and the strength of democracy, whew. It could, but I watched with dismay as poll after poll suggests that younger generations, not just in the United States but across the Western world, are less committed in theory to both democracy and democratic institutions than their predecessors. And so I wonder just—I don't have an answer to this—but I wonder if even, quote/unquote, “even” within the United States, if we're properly instilling an appreciation for democracy in today's generations, which then raises the question of whether we'd be able to do so amongst the youth of other countries as well. I'm not sure. I think this is another area where, you know, in the U.S. we have some work to do at home before we start thinking about what's possible in other countries. CASA: Our next question comes from Mary Meyer McAleese, who is a professor of political science at Eckerd College in Florida. Mary. Q: Yes. Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity. I have, well, two questions. I hope they're quick. The first one is, what do you think the effect will be on Latin America or South America with regard to the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank? I read that a lot of Latin American businesses have had investments in that bank, so I wonder if you could say a bit more about the banking situation and the longer-term effects there. And also, gender violence, of course, is a horrible problem all around the world, but especially in Latin and South America. What do you think the United States and the Americas Society could do to support groups in the region that are fighting against gender violence? Thank you. WINTER: Well, thank you for both questions. Both very good questions. There's been a lot of talk about SVB and possible effects in Latin America. What I've heard from people who are far more knowledgeable about the financial—excuse me—the financial system than I am, is that as long as it does not spread and become a more systemic risk, it should not pose much of an issue for Latin America. In part because—and this is another area where just like—where we were talking about the courts having, I think, been engaged in a thirty-year long process of improvement—I think the same can be said of banking and financial systems around most of Latin America. My first job was covering the financial crisis that Argentina went through back in 2001 and 2002. Which, for the uninitiated, that saw five presidents in two weeks, a freeze of bank deposits, and a 70 percent devaluation of the currency. It was quite a traumatic thing to be a part of. And during those years, we saw similar—well, not quite as bad—but at least thematically similar crises in Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere, following other crises in the 1990s. Which is all to say, Latin America has been curiously quiet this time around in terms of financial contagion. The economies aren't doing well, for the most part, but at least we're not talking about a financial meltdown. And that is because of lessons learned. These are banking systems that now have stricter capital requirements than they did in the past. And the macroeconomic fundamentals, generally speaking, are better than they were twenty years ago. Argentina, of course, is kind of in trouble again with an inflation rate that just passed 100 percent. And that's terrible. But again, the depth—(laughs)—everything's relative. And the depth of just financial devastation is, thankfully, nothing compared to what it was when I was there twenty-plus years ago. So, you know, we'll see. If the bank run spreads and we start seeing other banks come in trouble here in the U.S., then my sense is that, with the whole Credit Suisse thing, and we're not out of the woods yet. But if it stays more or less contained, then the consensus, at least so far, is that Latin America should be fine. Your question about femicide is an excellent one. It has driven the political discussion in Brazil in recent years. It's something that President Lula has spoken movingly about. It has also been, on the other end in Mexico, the feminist movement that has had femicides as one of the main areas of concern, has been one of the most effective opposition groups to President López Obrador, who has often been, sadly in my view, dismissive of the seriousness of that problem. As far as what the United States can do to help, or even what my own organization can do, I think that in a lot of cases these are—you know, like a lot of problems—there are things that the international community can do to help. And certainly, I see things from a journalist's perspective, even though I'm more analyst than journalist these days. I think that shining light on these problems, using vehicles like—platforms like Americas Quarterly, which is the small publication about Latin American politics that I run, that's, you know, my own insufficient contribution to looking at his problem. But it's certainly one—I mean, we look at the numbers in places like Brazil. I don't have those numbers on my fingertips, but it is just an incredibly serious problem, and one that deserves more attention. CASA: Thank you, Brian. We have so many other questions. I'm really sorry, though, we have to cut off now. We're at the hour. But this has been a very interesting discussion. And you've covered an enormous amount of ground. Thank you to all of you participating for your great questions. I hope you will follow Brian on Twitter at @BrazilBrian. The next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 29, at 1:00 Eastern Time. Renee Hobbs, professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island, will lead a conversation on media literacy and propaganda. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. Follow at @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you, again, for joining us today, and we look forward to you tuning in again for our webinar on March 29. Bye. WINTER: Bye. Thank you. (END)

On this episode I speak with Nadia B. Theodore, the head of the Permanent Mission of Canada in Geneva. She is also the Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the WTO. This interview left me in a deep state of reflection. Nadia gave us a masterclass on how to lead with authenticity, and how to carefully think about the evolution of our careers. Enjoy!Nadia began her public service career at the Canada Revenue Agency in 2000. She subsequently worked with the Department of the Solicitor General, and she joined International Trade Canada in 2004. At Headquarters, she has served as director of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, director of the Secretariat for the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and chief of staff to the deputy minister of international trade. Abroad, she served at the permanent mission in Geneva from 2009 to 2012 and as consul general in Atlanta from 2017 to 2020. Most recently, she worked as a senior vice president at Maple Leaf Foods, a Canadian consumer packaged goods company and the world's first major carbon neutral food company.Nadia's Word: Excellence04:15 - Nadia speaks her childhood, and how she started a petition to be allowed to go to sleepovers08:35 - How her thirst of understanding the why and why not, led to her being called Koffi Annan 2.011:32 - Nadia explains the role of a diplomat, particularly in the international trade space, and why she entered this space17:25 - We discuss the idea of power, the evolution of power dynamics, and how we can better support different types of leaders23:15 - On leading with excellence, and the evolution of her stance on it26:05 - We share thoughts on how asking for permission can stunt our growth, and stop us from reaching our full potential35:16 - I ask her on the challenges of being visible, and how she manages the pressure that comes with it40:56 - Nadia's key takeaways: be careful who you give credibility to in your life, and be gracious but not gratefulYou can find Nadia on LinkedIn, and TwitterIf you loved this episode, please rate and review on iTunes!If you want support with your visibility head to www.thebeauvoirgroup.com or book a chat with me here I love to hear from you! Let's connect:www.linkedin.com/in/bibigi-haile Instagram @bibigihaileunleashed@speakeasy.work

The term “free trade” has fallen out of favor in recent years. Trade disputes, economic uncertainty, and a growing income gap have stoked a global protectionist fire. Nationalist parties across the world have flourished on a trade-unfriendly agenda. Latin American leaders run campaigns on “renegotiating” trade agreements. The Trump Administration's loud anti-trade agenda, which led to the US leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and an average 25% tariff on goods produced in China have proven difficult to reverse. What will the world look like with an increasingly protectionist agenda?  Altamar hosts Peter Schechter and Muni Jensen are joined by Chad Bown, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Altamar's ‘Téa's Take' by Téa Ivanovic examines the increase in child labor around the world for the first time in 20 years.   ----- Produced by Simpler Media

Japan's former Prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated on July 8. Japan is one of the world's safest countries, has some of the strictest gun laws and has lived by a culture of pacifism since the end of WWII. Fran Racioppi asked Boston University Professor Bill Grimes to join him for a conversation on Prime Minister Abe, his conservative policies on national defense and economics, his place in Japan's history of charismatic leaders, and where Japan goes from here internationally and domestically. Professor Grimes teaches international relations and political sciences, has authored a number of books on Japanese politics and economics, and has served in the Japanese Ministry of Finance and at the Bank of Japan. Learn more on The Jedburgh Podcast Website and check out our video YouTube versions of all episodes here.Highlights:-Professor Grimes expects Prime Minister Abe's policies on nationalism, military defense and his economic program called Abenomics to continue. -Japan is one of the safest countries in the world with less than ten gun violence deaths per year in a population of 127 million people.-Fran asks Bill to break down Japanese military capability following the WWII policy of pacifism and how Prime Minister Abe pushed to expand Japanese defensive military capability. -Prime Minister Abe was keen on preventing Chinese encroachment in the region but also maintaining China as a strategic trade partner. -Bill shares why Japan is critical to US influence in the Asia-Pacific region across economic, political and defense fronts; including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.-Fran challenges Professor Grimes to define what it takes to be a great world leader.-Bill provides the lesson of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and how just being a good person was the key to his success.Quotes:-”The Abe that we see after say 2013-2014 was a pragmatist, an internationalist.”-”The basic story of Abe doesn't disappear.”-”Until China really started its naval build-up 10-15 years ago, Japan had arguably the second-most capable navy in the entire world.”-”This goes way back with this desire to prevent Chinese encroachment and pressure.”-”Japan is absolutely the linchpin of US Asia-Pacific strategy.”-”Japan is becoming economically weaker relative to China.”-”He learned…that's not that easy to do…Learning is extraordinarily important.”-“He was an extremely effective inside player.” -”He was the one person in Japan…who had both the inside game and the outside game.”-”Over eight years you make enough incremental change you changed the country.”This episode is brought to you by Jersey Mike's, 18A Fitness, & Analytix Solutions.

Peter is a political activist, most famously as a pioneering member of ACT UP — the grassroots AIDS group that challenged and changed the federal government. He founded both the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the educational website AIDSmeds.com. An old friend and sparring partner, he also stars in the Oscar-nominated documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” Check out his memoir, Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism.You can listen to the episode — which gets fiery at times — in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two short clips of my convo with Peter — on how he and other AIDS survivors turned to meth, and Peter pushing back on my views of critical queer theory in schools — pop over to our YouTube page. There’s also a long segment on just the monkeypox stuff. If that episode isn’t gay enough for you, we just posted a transcript of the episode last year with Katie Herzog and Jamie Kirchick. Both of these Alphabet apostates were on Real Time last month — here’s Jamie:Katie appeared alongside this clapped-out old bear:Come to think of it, two more Dishcast alums were on the same episode of Real Time last month — Michael Shellenberger and Douglas Murray:Oh wait, two more in June — Cornel West and Josh Barro:We now have 20 episodes of the Dishcast transcribed (check out the whole podcast archive here):Bob Woodward & Robert Costa on the ongoing peril of TrumpBuck Angel & Helena Kerschner on living as trans and detransKatie Herzog & Jamie Kirchick on Pride and the alphabet peopleDominic Cummings on Boris, Brexit and immigrationCaitlin Flanagan on cancer, abortion and other Christmas cheerGlenn Greenwald on Bolsonaro, woke journalists and animal tortureJonathan Haidt on social media’s havocYossi Klein Halevi on the origins of ZionismFiona Hill on Russia, Trump and the American DreamJamie Kirchick on the Lavender ScareJohn McWhorter on woke racismJohn Mearsheimer on handling Russia and ChinaRoosevelt Montás on saving the humanities Michael Moynihan on Afghanistan and free speechCharles Murray on human diversityJonathan Rauch on dangers to liberalismChristopher Rufo on critical race theory in schoolsMichael Shellenberger on homeless, addiction and crimeCornel West on God and the great thinkersWesley Yang on the Successor IdeologyA Dishcast listener looks to last week’s episode and strongly dissents:I enjoyed your interview with Matthew Continetti. Unfortunately, an exchange at the end reminded me of why I had to reluctantly tune you out for years: your hero worship of Obama. I respect and admire the way you call out the failures and excesses of both sides, including those of mine (the right), which I acknowledge were glaring even before Trump. During the Obama years, however, it was hard not to cringe when I watched you tear up on Chris Matthews’s show and compare him to a father figure. I also recall you yelling at SE Cupp and aggressively pointing a finger at her on Bill Maher’s show for daring to compare the foreign policies of Obama and W Bush:It’s hard to imagine anyone with that kind of emotional response being objective, and sadly, you never were during his presidency.You argued with Continetti that Obama was a middle-of-the-road pragmatist, when nothing could be further from the truth. He came into office with the economy reeling in a banking and housing crisis, and he took the Rahm Emmanuel approach of never letting a crisis go to waste. Even before his inauguration, he begin planning to rush through major legislation on healthcare, climate, and education. These may be worthy goals, but they are not the actions of a pragmatist who wants to govern by addressing the problems of the moment. He then outsourced the stimulus bill to Pelosi, which was a pork-filled bonanza with almost nothing even remotely stimulative. He refused to incorporate any Republican ideas into the healthcare legislation and arrogantly said to McCain that “the election’s over” when McCain voiced some opposition. Obama then lied in selling the bill to the American people by saying you would be able to keep your plan and your doctor in all cases.When Obama lost his congressional majority, he resorted to gross lawlessness, taking executive actions that exceeded his constitutional authority on everything from carbon emissions to insurance company appropriations to immigration, including on measures that were recently voted down by Congress or (as Continetti noted) he previously acknowledged he lacked the constitutional authority to do. He even flouted his ability to do this — knowing the media would cover for him — by saying he had “a pen and a phone.”Obama was one of the more divisive presidents in history. Every speech followed the same obnoxious shtick of chiding Republicans for playing politics and claiming that he alone was acting in the national interest. We saw this again, even post-presidency, during the funeral of John Lewis. For once, both sides came together, and even Republicans celebrated the achievements of a genuine American hero.  But during Obama’s speech, he turned the event into a partisan tirade about voting rights, calling the filibuster a Jim Crow relic (never mind that he used as a Senator).Finally, you argued that Republicans never gave Obama a chance. Not true. When he was inaugurated, his approval ratings were among the highest on record and were even above 40 percent among Republicans. They plummeted among Republican voters because he refused to ever take their concerns seriously or acknowledge that they had any legitimate points. When he finally did something they had even slight agreement with, the Trans Pacific Partnership, most Republicans supported him, while much of his own party opposed him.I respect your objectivity and believe that you are largely back to it. But I’m hoping the next time someone you love comes along, you will remain able to see the forest from the trees. (And sorry about the War and Peace-length email. There isn’t another intellectual I’m aware of who would actually welcome a dissent like that, which is why I wish I became a subscriber sooner.)That’s a lot of political history to litigate, but if you think I was blindly supporting Obama, read “The Fierce Urgency of Whenever,” “Obama’s Marriage Cowardice,” “Obama’s New War: Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb,” “Obama’s Two New Illegal Wars,” “Is Obama A Phony On Torture?”, “Obama Is Now Covering Up Alleged Torture,” “Obama’s Gitmo Disgrace,” “Obama To The Next Generation: Screw You, Suckers,” my reaction to his townhall comments on cannabis, “Behind the Obama Implosion,” and my excoriation of his first debate against Romney, if you remember.Obama’s healthcare proposal originally came from the Heritage Foundation; it was the most conservative measure to move us to universal healthcare access available; he passed it; and it remains the law because Republicans realized it was too popular to repeal. If that’s what you call extremism, you have a different definition of the word than I do.His stimulus was — yes — insufficient to the moment. But that’s because it veered toward a fiscal prudence long abandoned by the GOP. And he put it before any other priority. The GOP still refused to give this new president in an economic crisis any support at all, and acted as if the Bush debacle had never happened.Another listener defends the former president’s record — to a point:Obama had one chance to pass health care reform — something presidents had been trying and failing to do for several decades. In reality he had a razor-thin margin, especially in the Senate. He spent months letting moderates like Max Baucus take the lead in Congress. He gave moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe endless time to pretend to be willing to vote for a centrist bill. Remember: this was largely RomneyCare, an already moderate Republican policy idea and one which had originally come out of a conservative think tank.In the end, no matter how much Big Pharma and other healthcare lobbies had to be bribed and how much Obama compromised — no public option; no federal negotiation via Medicare to lower drug prices — the moderate Republicans had strung him along. He had to give Ben Nelson goodies to get his vote. And, overall, as much as the bill was a corporate sellout, it still — and 12 years on it’s so easy to forget this — still made massively important reforms the public was desperate for: it expanded family access for kids up to 26; it ended the rampant abuse of preexisting conditions to deny coverage; it ended retroactive rescissions in which insurance employees were tasked to comb through patient records and fine print to find pretexts for dumping patients when they needed care the most; it ended lifetime caps on coverage for things like major early childhood diseases and illnesses and catastrophic illnesses in adults; and of course it expanded access to Medicaid (most people don’t realize how stunningly low one’s income has to be to qualify). ObamaCare, flaws and all, was necessary — and a major step forward. There was no Republican compromise to be had in 2010 or ever. Remember what Mitch McConnell said his #1 priority was? Ensuring Obama was a one-term president with no major successes to campaign on. They simply wanted the legislation to crash and burn, similar to how it did in 1994. DACA and DAPA and the rest? Very very different story. And I agree with Continetti: Obama did not have that authority and he knew he didn’t. And after the Gang of Eight fell apart, his second term was all about caving to radical, often openly ethnically chauvinistic, identitarian, open borders advocates. And that’s where the Democratic Party has been stuck ever since. Executive decisions like DACA were a big part of why I soured on the Obama administration. ObamaCare, flawed as it was, was a big reason I volunteered so heavily for Obama in 2012. We’re still not close to the kind of publicly guaranteed, universal health care virtually all peer countries and allies enjoy. But we’re closer due to ObamaCare. And that’s a clear example of what Democrats can accomplish when they’re focused on passing the best bill they can pass (by the barest of margins) for the common good. For the record (see the Daily Dish links above), I also opposed the Libya war, the Iraq surge, and the DACA executive overreach. This next reader is more sympathetic to Obama on DACA:Deporting kids who have never known another country has a 19 percent approval rating. Obama begged Congress for years to do something to correct this. So is the Continetti position that Obama needed to do something that more than 80 percent of Americans don’t want because far-right extremists are holding Boehner hostage? If that is your position, then it’s fundamentally undemocratic.Another clip from last week:Yet another take on the Continetti convo:I’m a moderately liberal person, and I listen to conservative voices to hear good arguments that make me consider more deeply my innate biases. But the conservatism described by Continetti is just uninteresting. Describing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as too large an overreach? Talking about constitutionalism in the same way that Alito does — as frozen, depending upon the section, in either 1789 or 1868? Dissing Obamacare?Obamacare is a big improvement on pre-ACA insurance, and I’m glad Obama persevered after Ted Kennedy's death. Healthcare has a lot of moving parts, but finally we have an individual insurance market with plans as good as those in the employer group market. My kids have used it at various times switching between jobs and school, or even instead of a law school's highly mediocre plan. One of my biggest problems with Biden is that he hasn’t even managed to get the subsidy income limit, which was lifted by the pandemic relief bill, made permanent. My biggest problem with Biden is that I expected that he’d be able to negotiate with someone like Manchin, who’s dim but probably willing to support something. Cranking up the ACA subsidies and funding some solar panel research and LWTR reactor prototypes, with the work being done in part in West Virginia?  It can’t be that hard to cut some deal. Instead, we seem to have nothing.So, until the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, I figured the Dems would get wiped out in '22 and '24. I figured the combination of trans-positive teaching in lower schools and race essentialism everywhere would lead to races like the Virginia governor election, where someone with a sane approach to schools would dominate. Dobbs may change all that.  From a small sample of Republican suburban voters I know, a lot of people are furious at the Court’s decision. They rightly view it as an ignorant decision that makes even pregnancy for wealthy women in red states far more dangerous than it was, since a partial miscarriage with lots of bleeding — not a rare event by any means — will now require sign-off from a hospital’s legal staff before a lifesaving D&C can be performed, by which time a pregnant woman may well be dead. And while Republicans typically don’t mind making life miserable for poor people (fun fact: a family of four has to have an income below $4,700 per year to get Medicaid in Mississippi), f*****g over the upper middle class will not go over nearly as well.Keeping with the abortion theme, another reader:This caught my eye in your most recent podcast email: “[T]he question of when human life becomes a human person is a highly debatable one.”First, thank you for stating the issue correctly! The issue is NOT when HUMAN LIFE begins. Science has answered that question definitively: at conception. It’s not a “theory,” religious or philosophical doctrine or anyone’s “opinion,” and it’s not debatable. We may not know everything that happens during conception, but no embryologist denies that it’s the beginning of human life. The term “person” is not scientific, and that’s why I avoid using it when debating abortion with non-believers. As I’ve noted before, the term “person” arose out of debates about the relations among the Three Persons of the Trinity in the run-up to the council of Nicea. Before that, the Latin term “persona” just referred to public citizenship. Slaves were not legally persons. The Christian philosophers made it into a much richer and more resonant concept, in order to explain that God could be one God but three “persons” — a way of saying that if God is Love, love is not a monism but a mode of relationality. Anyway, for purposes of modern discussion of abortion, the term “person” now means something close to what the pagan Roman meaning of “person” was: a human being legally granted rights by the state, including the right to life. In other words, some human beings are not “persons.”This distinction is morally troubling and creates issues for defenders of abortion. If it’s really up to the state to say who is or is not a “person,” why stop at the unborn? In the Roman Empire, and in later periods (including our own history, of course), slaves were not legally considered full “persons.”Is “personhood” a sliding scale, or an absolute state of being? Can you have “more” or “less” personhood? Are comatose (but stable) human beings persons, or do they lose their legal rights to life, as many seem to think? What about the conscious but mentally challenged? Do high-IQ people have more “personhood” than low-IQ people? You see where this is going, I’m sure. I’ve had many discussions about this, and there is NO criterion that denies full personhood to the unborn that cannot also be used to deny it to the already-born. I think once you hive off human rights from the status of being human, and attach them to some scientifically indefinable status like “personhood,” you go down a tricky path. Because you’re right, of course. “Personhood” is endlessly debatable, because it’s a philosophical and (ultimately) theological concept. It’s like arguing “Who has a soul, and who doesn’t?”But in our tribally inclined species, the question quickly becomes, who is “human” (i.e, like “us”) and who is “other” (i.e., not really “human”) — with the “other” not possessing the same rights. Most names of tribes for themselves translate to “the Human Beings” or “the People” — with anyone outside the tribe being less than human. (Did you ever see Little Big Man?)Of course, as a Christian I believe ALL human beings are also persons, no matter their mental state, helplessness, poverty or low social status. I also agree that all human beings are images of God. For purposes of argument with non-believers, rather than get side-tracked into personhood, I prefer to say that human rights are anchored in (inherent in) humanness, not “personhood.” This requires abortion advocates (if they have the slightest thoughtfulness or openness to engage in actual discussion) to explain how some human beings aren’t “persons” and who gets to make that determination. But any honest abortion defender who doesn’t want to deny non-contestable science must make that distinction.Here’s the difference between personhood in abortion and every other area. One person is literally inside another person’s body. In a society based on property rights, the body itself — “habeas corpus” — is central to freedom and autonomy. Another reader turns to sexuality:I was struck by one of the dissents you ran last week: “No mention of the 63 million babies who were murdered in the last 49 years, but oh how well you stand up for women and their right to have as many one-night stands as they want without consequences, guilt, or their morality even being questioned.”The second half of that sentence is so interesting. The dissenter is not only offended by potential babies not being born, but also by women having sexual fun without life-altering consequences. To the dissenter, one-night stands are an evil (at least, on the part of the woman), and going through a public pregnancy (look at her! shame!) and having babies (no career for her!) is the least punishment the female participants should deserve. The lost babies are bad, but even worse, look at what all those loose women are getting away with!I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that some part of the opposition to abortion in this country is actually driven by people who want to bring back 1950s prudery. They see abortion as an evil precisely because it allows more sexual pleasure — and even more galling, more sexual pleasure on the part of women (because this 1950s prudery so often seems to carry 1950s misogyny along with it). Of course we know many abortion opponents are deeply moved by love for potential babies that aren’t born, but this dissenter shows there’s at least one person out there celebrating Dobbs for the renewed opportunities abortion bans will provide to scare women out of sex or, failing that, shame them and derail their careers as punishment.Another reader turns the focus to me:For some context, I am a Christian who has spent most of my life in the evangelical subculture, but I am more moved in worship by liturgical forms. I am politically anti-Trump and I am abhorred by the current state of the Republican Party, though I am a lifelong Republican. Call me David French-like.I am responding to your dissent from the conservative writer and your comment that consent between adults is the sole limiting factor in sexual behavior. You have likely been asked and answered this question many times, so just send me a link if that’s easier for you: Since you are a Christian, what role does the Bible and/or church teaching have in your understanding of human sexuality? One could argue that in addition to consent, the Bible speaks of fidelity, monogamy, love, nurture, self giving, mutual submission, and adoration in sexual relationships. How do you treat the foregoing characteristics (or others) in your sexual ethic? Does your Christian faith have any role to play in your sexual ethics?I enjoy your writing and the Dishcast, keep it up. Guest suggestions: Kevin Williamson. (He had deep dissents on gay marriage, but culturally that train has left the station, and as you know, he has the added benefit of having been fired by The Atlantic three days after hiring — an early example of cancel culture by the insulated Left). Also Jonah Goldberg.I responded to some of these points on the main page. But I’ve written much more widely on this question — and I recommend Out On A Limb for the rest. The essay “Alone Again, Naturally,” comes closest to answering. But I do not share orthodox Christianity’s Augustinian terror of the body and its pleasures. Your guest suggestions are always appreciated: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Here’s one more from a “20-year Dishhead writing for the first time”:I think Iain McGilchrist would be a great guest for the pod — and for TWO episodes, since the ideas in his recent work are so vast, complex, and far-reaching. (I encountered his earlier book on the Daily Dish.) It seems like IMcG is really working to get out his incredibly important, expansive, but very difficult project out and a couple of good conversations with you would be a great way of doing that, not to mention fascinating for us Dishcast listeners.Thanks for everything that you and Chris are doing with The Weekly Dish — trying to help us all think clearly and openly. My wife and I both appreciate having your voice in our lives each week. She especially likes the dissents!Subscribe to read them all — along with everything else on the Dish, including the View From Your Window contest. There are also gift subscriptions if you’d like to spread the Dishness to a loved one or friend — or a frenemy to debate the dissents with. Get full access to The Weekly Dish at andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Exiting the Trans Pacific Partnership was a costly Trump administration error that Americans will have to live with for a long time. Scott Lincicome explains why. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our inaugural edition of Phone a Friend, where we interview luminaries in different fields, features Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison from the American Prestige podcast. The pair answer some easy questions on lighthearted topics like Israel/Palestine, the war in Ukraine, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and whether the United States even has a foreign policy anymore. Chapters Intro: 00:00:43 Israel/Palestine: 00:07:25 U.S. Relations with China: 00:16:51 Russia/Ukraine: 00:28:07 U.S. Foreign Policy: 00:39:16 Lightning Round: 00:44:37 Outro: 00:48:23 Resources American Prestige Podcast Daniel Bessner Daniel Bessner: Democracy in Exile Derek Davison Foreign Exchanges Substack A History of Modern Palestine w/ Rashid Khalidi Quincy Institute: Ending Primacy to End U.S. Wars Margaret MacMillan: The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 Paul Thomas Chamberlin: The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace Lindsey A. O'Rourke: Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War The Atlantic: The One Key Word Biden Needs to Invoke on Ukraine -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Subscribe to Unf*cking The Republic on Substack at unftr.substack.com to get the essays these episode are framed around sent to your inbox every week. Check out the UNFTR Pod Love playlist on Spotify: spoti.fi/3yzIlUP. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic is produced by 99 and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is written and hosted by Max and distributed by 99. Podcast art description: Image of the US Constitution ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

President Biden said the U.S. Military would defend Taiwan if China invaded. He also announced a new, if nebulous, economic compact with 12 nations designed to counter China's influence in the region — an echo of the major Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement negotiated by the Obama administration and nixed by former president Trump.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at nprpolitics@npr.orgJoin the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.

Colin Grabow is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, and he joins Macro Musings to talk about US trade policies, the Jones Act, and the consequences of this harmful maritime statute. Specifically, David and Colin also discuss the counterfactual world of TPP, the future of international trade, and how to fix the myriad of problems caused by the Jones Act.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Colin's Twitter: @cpgrabow Colin's Cato Institute profile: https://www.cato.org/people/colin-grabow   Related Links:   Cato's Project on Jones Act Reform: https://www.cato.org/project-jones-act-reform   *The Jones Act: A Burden America Can No Longer Bear* by Colin Grabow, Inu Manak, and Daniel Ikenson https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-burden-america-can-no-longer-bear   *Rust Buckets: How the Jones Act Undermines U.S. Shipbuilding and National Security* by Colin Grabow https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/rust-buckets-how-jones-act-undermines-us-shipbuilding-national-security   *The Progressive Case for Jones Act Reform* by Colin Grabow https://www.cato.org/study/progressive-case-jones-act-reform#:~:text=The%20Jones%20Act%20is%20unwise,repeal%2C%20of%20this%20odious%20law   *Candy-Coated Cartel: Time to Kill the U.S. Sugar Program* by Colin Grabow https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/candy-coated-cartel-time-kill-us-sugar-program   *5 Years Later and the United States is Still Paying for Its TPP Blunder* by Colin Grabow https://www.cato.org/blog/5-years-later-united-states-still-paying-tpp-blunder   *The Cato Trade Team's 2022 Policy Wish List* by Scott Lincicome, Inu Manak, Gabriella Beaumont-Smith & Colin Grabow https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-trade-teams-2022-policy-wish-list   *For Inflation Relief, the United States Should Look to Trade Liberalization* by Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Megan Hogan, & Yilin Wang https://www.piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/inflation-relief-united-states-should-look-trade-liberalization#:~:text=For%20inflation%20relief%2C%20the%20United%20States%20should%20look%20to%20trade%20liberalization,-Gary%20Clyde%20Hufbauer&text=With%20US%20inflation%20running%20at,calls%20anticompetitive%20behavior%20by%20corporations   *Biden's Frozen Trade Policy* by Anne Krueger https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-trade-policy-frozen-in-place-under-biden-by-anne-o-krueger-2022-02?barrier=accesspaylog   *Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy* by Douglas Irwin https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo24475328.html   David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth David's blog: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/