B (21:27)

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A (21:55)

President Trump is consolidating executive power by pushing the boundaries of the law. He's usurping powers traditionally left to Congress, the courts and the states. He has tried to undermine his political opposition to ensure they no longer represent a challenge to him and and his allies. Now, in part, that's Donald Trump's transactional approach to power, but it's also political retribution. It is a form of revenge on those that President Trump believes did and tried to do the same to him. Trump has accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice to imprison him, of promoting a cancel culture approach to right wing dissent, including by deplatforming President Trump himself from social media after the January 6th insurrection in the Capitol. President Trump says that the left in America has demonized Trump and his allies as fascists, which they also did with 7 million people demonstrating in the no Kings rallies around across the country this weekend, the largest social dissent that the US has seen since 1969 in Vietnam. And he believes that promotes political violence against him. He can point to two attempts to assassinate him during last year's election campaign, one that missed by this much. Every person in this room would be affected by that for every day of their lives. If that happened to you, if that happened to me. He's got the recent murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as well helping him make that point. Now the president's choices focusing on retribution have wide ranging and lasting implications. Inside the United States, the President has taken and won total loyalty of the Republican Party and the reliable and and consistent support of Republican lawmakers for legislative and executive agendas. To undo checks and balances on the presidency, President Trump has begun a sweeping purge of America's professional bureaucracy, which he and his supporters have labeled the administrative state and replaced career civil servants with political appointees personally loyal to the president. He has weaponized the power ministries that he says were weaponized against him the FBI, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS and many other regulatory agencies against his domestic political adversaries. He secured executive impunity from the rulings of an independent but no longer co equal judiciary. And in foreign policy, the United States remains committed to to existing norms, treaties and agreements only insofar as they serve the interests of President Trump and his political allies. In short, President Trump is replacing rule of law with rule of the jungle, where the powerful, the strong, do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Unlike the Gorbachev and Deng revolutions, Trump's revolution follows no grand strategic plan. Instead, it's a relentless pressure campaign on every political front. It's meant to test the limits of what can be done. It's a commitment to act opportunistically as the crises that these policies create open new possibilities to consolidate more power. This plan was launched by targeting those of Trump's opponents who who are most vulnerable and least organized, like undocumented immigrants, green card holders, transgender people, elite universities. And the Trump administration has since moved into the broader political categories of funders, supporters and enablers of his political opponents. All of this undertaken with the intention of normalizing behaviors that have long been politically taboo. Will political revolution succeed? How much more can President Trump accomplish before next year's midterm elections or by election day on 2028? These are the most essential political questions to be answered in the world today. Partially, it's a matter of degree. The United States already has a structural bias favoring Republicans to because of the electoral college system by which presidents are elected. A candidate, as you know, can win the popular vote but lose the presidency thanks to demographics and distribution of electors, which gives you like a roughly 2% advantage to Republican candidates. If you add gerrymandering, the redistricting of districts in Congress, both parties rigging district maps, elections become even less representative, less competitive, less legitimate. More concerning is the possibility of President Trump deploying the National Guard in Democratic cities under the guise of a declared national emergency to suppress voter turnout. Federal probes that are starting into Democratic fundraising and organizations add to these pressures, making these tactics increasingly plausible. And remember, the election is still more than a year away. I am not suggesting that Trump runs for a third term or suspends elections. The Supreme Court would block both of those moves. But uncompetitive elections? Elections that look more like a single party system than a competitive representative democracy? That is becoming increasingly plausible. The broader checks on presidential power are now in question. Trump's grip on the Republican Party and the Democratic Party weakness and division means that legislative functions now independently, much less so from the executive. Even if Democrats retake majority control of the House of Representatives and flipping the Senate looks Very unlikely. No matter what, they can impeach Trump. They can conduct oversight, they can appear partisan, but with no enforcement power, since the Department of Justice's cooperation with any investigation is is no longer plausible. America's judiciary is still independent, but its power pales compared to the executive. The Supreme Court, aware that Trump could refuse to accept decisions he doesn't like, is limiting the scope of its rulings to preserve its own legitimacy. Lower courts aren't as restrained, but their decisions can and often are overturned. And that gives Trump more leeway to to consolidate authority. The media, constrained by profit driven corporate owners, faces pressure from above to avoid antagonizing the White House. Social media is increasingly controlled by Trump's political allies. Even more when TikTok becomes sold to the US and in the case of Truth Social, Trump owns it himself. There are still US institutions that can check the President's power. The military stands for professionalism. Its culture continues to prioritize service to the country over loyalty to any individual. The Pentagon's purges of some high level military officers have made headlines in the US but not like China's of the last week, and they don't undermine the military's core operational integrity. Shifts in political power towards states and cities also offer a buffer. US Governors and mayors are largely technocratic. They govern independently of Washington, and Trump's attempts to weaken democratic national powers do not threaten state and city level governance. Corporate and financial leadership looks weak. They're uncomfortable with political upheaval. They want to avoid political debate while protecting their interests and their shareholders. Most are focusing on regulatory influence over any engagement that could generate political headlines. And then there are the American people themselves. You've seen the 7 million Americans that turned out in thousands of no king protests all over the country this weekend. But remember, Trump was freely and fairly elected, in large part because he personally embodied the political and cultural disruption that voters wanted. Most American voters who said they cared about democracy in 2024 voted for, not against Trump because they were convinced that the US Political system was already broken and that only President Trump would create the disruption that they wanted. In short, standing in front of you today, the fate of Trump's political revolution remains uncertain. A constitutional crisis before the next elections now looks likely. Possible outcomes of that crisis range from a break from Trump within the Republican Party and the conservative movement towards a sustained political shift towards single party rule in the United States. Nor can we rule out enormous political chaos, realignment and violence that the United States has seen historically, certainly in the decades after the Civil War. What about the longer term US outlook. And here the answer is more complicated because historically the structural advantages of the United States compared to other advanced industrial democracies are based on commitments to a few fundamentals that we should remember. All here today a better post war infrastructure base on which to build, including public and private institutions, strong demographics supported by inflows of hard working immigrants, greater public tolerance of an unequal distribution of society's economic gains and greater tolerance of an ability to engage in deficit spending. All four of these fundamental advantages for the United States are now eroding. There are certainly caveats. The US remains the world's most powerful country and there's a lot of damage that can be done before America finds itself in structural decline, which it's not in now. Even though America is seen as unreliable trade and security partners by its allies. And also the accelerating development of artificial intelligence, first time I've mentioned it, is changing the game. And the US is not the only game in town, but it's one of two, the other one being China. And if you have to make a choice between the US and China on the basis of unreliability, on the basis of lack of rule of law, on the basis of lack of an independent judiciary, the US is a much better bet than China. But there is one prediction that I can offer today with the highest confidence and that is that the United States is not going back to the political culture that held sway a decade ago before Donald Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator to take America's center stage. So to close, how should other countries like Japan respond when you're dealing with a leader of the world's most powerful country who ignores council and acts on impulse, most governments are wise to avoid making Trump unfriendly headlines. This is the logic that led Canada to surrender on its plan to impose a digital services tax earlier in the year. And it's why Japan was wise to make unilateral concessions on on automotive tariffs to safeguard their national interests. If you can avoid a fight, other governments should avoid it by whatever means necessary. Let the spotlight of Trump's anger fall on Brazil or anybody else, just not you. Many US allies have moved to proactively limit damage from any future fight with the White House. The uk, the European Union, Southeast Asian countries have offered non reciprocal trade deals. Other countries have thrown lots of money at the US particularly Saudi Arabia, the uae, some countries with like minded governments like Argentina and El Salvador. Now from governments that have more bargaining leverage like China and India, we've seen that standing up for yourself and a willingness to absorb punches can create needed space. By the way, Putin has benefited from that approach with Trump as well. But this strategy is not going to work for everyone. For Japan, the need to stay on a most positive track with Washington remains a fact of life. All countries though, whatever your current relationship with the White House, have to invest in building your own long term capacity and reinforcing your own stability. You just heard this from Governor Koike. You have to become much more economically dynamic and competitive for the future. That is China's current approach. Beijing has also doubled down on its support for existing international institutions, in part because it calculates that if the United States steps back from these institutions, China can have much more control over them. What's Japan doing to respond to that? In short, when faced with the United States that's become so unreliable a player on the global stage, one that can't be counted on to safeguard allies who have under invested in their own security and competitiveness. The right strategy is defense first, hedge second. America's traditional allies must regain their competitive position. That demands a focus on growth, robust industrial policy, streamlined regulatory and bureaucratic authorities, and expansive investment in new technologies. Allies must extract and invest in entrepreneurship. You have to assert much more diplomatic leadership internationally and accept responsibilities in building multilateral architecture. Models already exist. We see Mario Draghi's crucial competitiveness report for the European Union. There's Mark Carney's thoughtfully crafted Canada's strong plan. And Japan's new Prime minister will need to make a mark at least as ambitious as that. Most of us in this room are probably skeptical. That means it's not enough. The requirement is urgent. The near term politics of making these transformations is daunting. The EU is far from a state and Europe needs consensus rulemaking. They get pushback from weak governments makes it an enormous challenge. There's opposition from the fast rising Reform Party in Britain, provincial governments in Canada, and this government coming in in Japan. A coalition itself is facing a more multiparty UN Japanese system. It's going to be hard, but once all of these economic, political, security and diplomatic investments are made, America's unreliability in the years well beyond Trump will matter less. In short, the defense and hedging strategies are already well underway. And they're likely to succeed in varying degrees in various places over time, even as I am for now at least skeptical about a short term turnaround for competitiveness. So what does all this mean for our future? We're now living in a post American order and no one is willing or able to fill the vacuum. China has its own problems and is not prepared to bite off more than it can chew. Very cautious. All of this means a deeper G0 world. More conflict, more impunity, causing more damage that lasts for longer. This geopolitical trajectory is not sustainable. During the Cold War, it took the Cuban Missile Crisis to convince leaders that armed confrontation would be catastrophic and that new communication channels and agreements were essential. Now we don't know what form the crisis that we need to build. A new post Gzero order will take this time, but we know that crisis is coming. And until then, all of us, governments, businesses, individuals, have to brace for growing turbulence because the old rules don't apply anymore and the new rules haven't been written yet. The next few years are going to be painful, but the good news is that history isn't deterministic. Our trajectories can shift. And they can shift because people keep the possibility of something better alive long enough for an opportunity to appear. We need a lot more empathy, more leadership. We need more cooperation and trust, not just from world leaders, because too many refuse to see the danger or they hope to profit from it. I'm actually talking about us, the people in this room. We can't wait for politicians to act, everyone talking their own book. We can't rely on markets and everyone selling a product. We can't count on Washington to lead, we or Beijing to step up, or multilateral institutions to fill the gap. We have to invent new communities that are grounded in truth, not spin, that are bolstered by action, not just talk and cooperation, not division. That's hard. As I stand up here and I address you today, I understand that. But there's no secret lever to pull. There's no hidden strategy that makes this easier. I just know that we don't have a choice. And for that I thank you. Appreciate all of you being here today and congrats to us. Cheers. That's it for today's edition of the Gzero World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZero World? 5 stars only 5 stars. Otherwise, don't do it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.

B (41:26)

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