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- [00:00]
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- [00:33]
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- [00:49]
Jane Corbyn
let's start a Riot new seasons of
- [00:51]
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- [01:06]
Adam Fleming
hello, an important announcement. We are going to be doing a live episode of Newscast reacting to the result of the Gorton and Denton by election at 7 o' clock in the morning on Friday. I will be joined by Chris, Alex, Joe pike and many other friends of the podcast and it will be live and at 7 o' clock and it will be on all sorts of platforms. BBC iPlayer, BBC News Channel. You will be able to listen to it on the live news stream on BBC Sounds and you can even get it through your smart speaker by asking it to say BBC Sounds Play live News. So there are loads and loads of ways you can hear the potentially quite gonzo episode that we will be doing reacting to this very big moment in the political calendar of this year. But in the meantime, I've assembled some very wise friends of the podcast to talk about some of the other international stories that have been rumbling this week. So that is what you'll hear in this episode of Newscast which was recorded on Thursday tea time and broadcast on BBC1 after question time.
- [02:08]
Gary O'Donoghue
Newscast, newscast from the BBC Fat Boy
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Faisal Islam
Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons. I was the tattletale in the class. Can I have an apology please?
- [02:16]
Unidentified Participant
I trust almost nobody that daddy has
- [02:18]
Gary O'Donoghue
to sometimes use strong language.
- [02:20]
Faisal Islam
Next time in mosque I feel Delulu
- [02:23]
Jane Corbyn
with no Salulu Take me down to Downing Street.
- [02:25]
Adam Fleming
Let's go have a tour.
- [02:27]
Gary O'Donoghue
Blimey.
- [02:28]
Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.
- [02:30]
Faisal Islam
Hello, it's Faisal in the newscast Studio.
- [02:31]
Adam Fleming
Also joining us is filmmaker extraordinaire Jane Corbyn. Welcome back.
- [02:35]
Jane Corbyn
Thank you. And hello.
- [02:36]
Adam Fleming
And also in our Washington studio is our chief North America correspondent, Gary o'. Donoghue. Hi, Gary.
- [02:41]
Gary O'Donoghue
Hi, Adam. Hi.
- [02:42]
Adam Fleming
Right, we are parking British domestic politics and focusing on big international stories around the world. And the first thing we're going to look at is these negotiations underway in Geneva right now, or. Well, we think they might have actually paused while we're recording them between the US And Iran. Although, first of all, Gary, these are not negotiations where they're all sat around a table. They're these indirect talks, aren't they? Where they're all in different rooms.
- [03:04]
Gary O'Donoghue
That's right. And the Omanis are the intermediaries in these negotiations. So you've got Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff from the US Side, you've got the Omanis, and then you've got the Iranian foreign minister. And they've been shuttling back and forward. They had a big session early Thursday morning. They're having this bit of a break while we're recording now, and they should be doing some more after that and trying to hammer out some kind of deal to prevent Donald Trump from taking, as they like to call it here at the Pentagon and elsewhere, kinetic action.
- [03:36]
Adam Fleming
In other words, a war or some kind of military strike.
- [03:39]
Gary O'Donoghue
Brute force. Yeah.
- [03:40]
Adam Fleming
Jane, as somebody who's covered that region for a long time, are you just thinking, here we go again, it's Iran's nuclear program and there's negotiations and they don't seem to be going anywhere.
- [03:48]
Jane Corbyn
Yeah, absolutely. But of course, this time, Trump has built up the biggest, biggest armada that we've seen in a couple of decades in the Middle East. Aircraft carriers, strike aircraft, and it's a massive flotilla, but it can only be kept on station for so long. So every day that goes by, I think ramps up the pressure. But yes, of course, the nuclear negotiations have been going on for decades. And it was Trump, of course, who originally withdrew Drew, the previous deal, which Obama had done. Which Obama had done. And I think that what the message, you know, as Gary was saying, what we're getting from the Iranian officials is they're almost there in having an agreement. But what is the agreement? Because the hard liners on the Trump side, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Defense Secretary Hegseth, they would like to include ballistic missiles which carry so called putative nuclear weapons in the deal. And, you know, that's something, you know, the Iranians absolutely don't want to go there. They do not want to put that into the pot for negotiation. And in fact, they are basically saying that, you know, yes, we have no intention of having a nuclear weapon we never had, but we will not give up our rights to harness nuclear technology for peaceful reasons. So that's where they're standing on this.
- [04:57]
Adam Fleming
And Gary, it is quite unusual for it to be so unclear what the Americans are actually asking for here. Is it Iran's nuclear program and how much uranium they enrich, or is it, as Jane says, the ballistic missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon? Or is it even their support for other groups around the region like Hezbollah?
- [05:15]
Gary O'Donoghue
Well, look, there are unquestionably mixed messages coming out of this administration. You have Donald Trump not just last year, but at the State of the Union earlier this week saying Iran's nuclear capability had been obliterated. So you might think, well, why do we need to discuss it at all? Yet you also have Steve Witkoff, the envoy, saying they could be within a week of producing weapons grade materials. So, you know, which is it? Now, the Americans do also believe, like Jane was saying, that they want to discuss ballistic missiles because they argue that that's not just a regional thing anymore, a threat to Israel and other stability in the region, but also potential threat to, to the US Homeland. So it's a sort of homeland issue as well. And that's why they want to put ballistic missiles on the agenda as well as Iran's general support for its proxies in the region. All that being resisted, as James said, by the Iranians, who also want to talk about sanctions coming off. So there's a lot of places in which there is not a meeting of minds on paper at the moment. But I think if the Americans can get to a sort of base camp on some kind of nuclear deal, they will take that for the time being, even, even if Israel doesn't like it being that narrowly drawn.
- [06:27]
Adam Fleming
And Jane, why are we talking about Hezbollah so much again, as one of these Iranian regional proxies? Because didn't Israel sort of take them out last year?
- [06:36]
Jane Corbyn
To a certain extent, yes. But it's understood that Hezbollah still retains a big arsenal of rockets and missiles largely supplied by Iran or the technology supplied by Iran. And I think the fear is in Israel. And certainly Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister there, has sought to pressurize Trump to come on side with him, not just on nukes and ballist missiles, but on the proxies, the issue of Hezbollah, because Israel is concerned that if Trump and the Americans strike Iran, they will bear the brunt of it because all those Hezbollah missiles that are still underground will be coming over the border at them. And again, we haven't really seen in the past, we've seen Trump and Netanyahu's aims quite closely aligned on Iran, but this time there is a little bit more of a distance and we're not seeing quite so much closeness between them. So Israel, it's very important for is what kind of a deal is done. And if it's just about the nuclear issue, it doesn't make the long term problem go away.
- [07:34]
Adam Fleming
And Gary Jane used the word armada, which is the word Trump has used to describe the massing of the American military in the region. Just how big is this so called armada? I mean, is it true there's two aircraft carriers are going to be there shortly?
- [07:47]
Gary O'Donoghue
Yeah, I mean it's not. And bear in mind an aircraft carrier doesn't just sail away on its own. It has a whole sort of fleet of support ships, destroyers, other things that go with it. They call it a strike group, it's a massive flotilla. And there are two of them out there now. There's a Gerald R. Ford, which is the country's newest aircraft carrier, its biggest aircraft carrier. And the Abraham Lincoln is also there. This is 30 or 40% of America's kind of naval capacity, naval flex, if you like, over there. So the threat is enormous. Now that can of course produce results that the negotiation, negotiating table, it can put pressure on, but also it can look like, you know, it can look like a kind of a bit of a paper tiger if you choose not to use it. So there's this huge balance for Donald Trump here of, of how much he builds up and how far he's prepared to go and what his red lines are. And we're just not very clear what will actually make up his mind. He said at the earlier in the week, look, you know, they just have to say the words. Well, they've been saying the words for some time, so it's not clear that that would be enough to convince him not to have another crack at them.
- [08:57]
Adam Fleming
And Faisal, I can imagine some people thinking, okay, here we go again, but Iran is a long way away. They're not threatening the UK who knows what will actually come out of these talks. But actually there is a global economic impact of all of this. Even just the uncertainty has an impact.
- [09:15]
Faisal Islam
Well, the uncertainty has an impact. We've already seen oil prices go to a kind of seven month high on the speculation. Well, it's not speculation. The reality of, of what's just Been described. It kind of cuts both ways though. I mean, clearly if there was a major war there, the great fear in economic terms, which is parking the sort of human issue here, but in economic terms is that you get a disruption to the oil supplies, not just the oil supplies, to the gas supplies out, out of the Gulf and in particular the Strait of Hormuz that is just between, you know, just sort of south of Iran is easily blocked, you know, just a couple of dozen miles wide at the shortest point. And then you block off a good proportion of the world's oil supply and also its gas supply, which increasingly comes on ships from the likes of Qatar. Now we've talked about this a number of times. We talked about it, of course. I think probably anybody here would have thought this time last year when there was the prospect of an exchange of missiles between Tehran and Tel Aviv, that that would have sparked that type of, you know, chaos in the oil markets and indeed chaos in oil supply. It turned out that, that it sort of the markets went up and then everything was fine. Yeah. So they've sort of, you know, the benign economic implications of what was seen as very much as the worst case scenario have been the feature of the past few months. This may actually answer the question about why there are two aircraft carriers there. Because if there is any kinetic action, as Gary puts it, that' sort of presence that might maintain the flow of oil and gas through the straits no matter what the.
- [10:57]
Adam Fleming
Oh, so you could have to, you could use a part of your Ramada to strike and then the rest of it, global economy going.
- [11:03]
Faisal Islam
But, but, you know, so, you know, this does really matter. We are, because of what's happening in Russia with the, you know, we don't get supplies of gas through pipelines from Russia anymore. Europe is increasingly dependent on shipped gas, even if it's physically coming through. The price that is set in international markets is determined by overall supplies. So yeah, that is the knock on impact at a time of other fragility in world markets as well around tech, tech shares and things like that. So, you know, delicate. But I'm, I'm wary that we will have had this conversation a year ago and if to be honest I had you told me that there was going to be missiles landing in Tehran and missiles landing Tel Aviv, I'd have said, well, the oil price is going to go to 200 a barrel.
- [11:52]
Adam Fleming
But it didn't happen strangely sort of contained last time around, didn't it? Well, and it seemed like each side was telling the other what they were going to do. I didn't let them do it.
- [11:59]
Faisal Islam
And I'm left a bit confused. I mean, Gary raised this question I'd like, what is it? What is it? I thought that they destroyed Fordo and then that would been set back a year or forever and now we're a week away.
- [12:12]
Jane Corbyn
Yeah, they did destroyed Fordo and Natanz, the two main enrichment sites. But then there was this thing about, well, did they actually remove the enriched uranium before the sites were bombed? Because there was a buildup and if you remember, I think it was Trump gave them 10 days and then he actually bombed them after two days. And that was probably because they were given some notice and they were moving it. And so they decided, right, so the
- [12:35]
Faisal Islam
scientists, you can keep it. I mean, sorry, forgive me for sounding like, not like a nuclear scientist here,
- [12:41]
Adam Fleming
but it's been somewhere dressed like one.
- [12:43]
Jane Corbyn
Actually today they will have put it somewhere else very deep underground. But I think, yes, and they did bomb those sites. But now the general. Well, so as Gary said, Witkoff is intimating they're very close to it. Again, there's no doubt they have hundreds of kilos of enriched uranium to 60%. And once you enrich to 60% to get it to the weapons grade is pretty short orders.
- [13:08]
Faisal Islam
So I'm not a scientist, but the centrifuges will have carried on working on the.
- [13:14]
Jane Corbyn
No, they will have had that amount stockpiled that they could squirrel away somewhere else in a very deep place. You can then destroy those centrifuges and they won't spin more. But obviously they have had extra centrifuges to build up more of a stockpile. And the answer is nobody really knows.
- [13:30]
Faisal Islam
Okay.
- [13:30]
Unidentified Participant
Yeah.
- [13:30]
Gary O'Donoghue
You've also got to remember that, I mean, we don't know whether they managed to move any of that material. And it's, you know, it's hazardous and difficult and all that kind of thing, but it's actually quite small amounts of stuff. You're not talking about, you know, huge, great big containerfuls. You're talking about tens of kilograms of material which, you know, has to have all its precautions. But that sort of thing is not that difficult to hide necessarily. So that I think is the question. The centrifuges can, can be rebuilt. There's, there's a third site, Isfahan, which is also on the Americans agenda. They, they essentially want the Iranians to shut those three sites and actually close them down entirely and, you know, and demonstrate they've done it. That's what they want to do with the potential possibly. And this may be part of the negotiation today to sort of allow some kind of enrichment for a smaller reactor, for example, for medical use in hospitals in Tehran and things like that. So that there is a sort of bunch of issues they could be talking about right now. But the big sites where the allegation is they were actually enriching to weapons grade, they want those closed down, it seems.
- [14:40]
Jane Corbyn
And I think, you know, you're right, just allowing them to keep a small amount is a face saving exercise for the Iranians. But someone will have to take that enriched, highly enriched material and Russia has offered to do that. So there could be a way through to allow them, as Gary said, to retain a small amount for peaceful purposes to, you know, give them the, you know, the kudos of that, if you like, and the sort of self determination while putting the. And you know, Russia has helped Iran since the 90s with their nuclear programs at the Bush air power reactor. So they have a good relationship and it is possible that Russia could for once provide, you know, given all the other difficulties with Russia, Ukraine, etc. Could be a bit of a way
- [15:20]
Adam Fleming
out on this one, providing some public goods. Jane, what about the Iranian people in all of this? We've talked about the big geopolitics, but I'm thinking about them.
- [15:29]
Jane Corbyn
Yeah, Faisal's talking about the economic knock on, well, of course the big economic knock on, on all of this is on the people of Iran and they're the one who are suffering under sanctions and that brought them out onto the streets and that first brought Donald Trump out to say, you know, we're coming to your help, to help is coming. So I think it's interesting that we've seen protests start up again in the last five days or so, mainly in universities in Mashad, in Tehran. So I think they're waiting, you know, they are holding protests and we have, we don't think we've seen the kind of crackdown we saw in early January by the regime. So I think everybody's playing a waiting game. You know, the protesters are protesting because it was economic circumstances, if you like, that forced them to that because life was just unbearable in Iran. So everybody's playing a waiting game. The protests have sort of started, but they're not really being cracked down on. Meanwhile, the negotiations go on. But whatever happens for the Iranian regime, getting some kind of sanctions relief is really important because only that will put to rest or at least for a while or dampen down the public protest.
- [16:38]
Adam Fleming
And Gary, Donald Trump, after his brief flurry on truth Social supporting the protesters a couple of weeks ago. He's then gone completely quiet on that bit of the issue.
- [16:47]
Gary O'Donoghue
Yeah, and we've seen this before, I think, haven't we? We've seen the sort of focus of his justifications shift quite markedly in terms of Venezuela. It was at one point it was the sort of supply of drugs. Another point it was the lack of democracy. Then it became the need to sort of capitalize on. On Venezuelan's oil supplies for, you know, for part of his sort of Don Road doctrine, you know, sort of dominating the Western hemisphere. And I think you're seeing something similar in Iran. What is important or what is motivating in his thinking does seem to shift from time to time in the same situation. And that is something that I think they will see in the White House as a bit of a strength because it keeps people guessing. And while they're guessing, you know, your unpredictability can be a real bonus when it comes to these sorts of negotiations. Not knowing how far you're prepared to go or what it is you really want. That is not something they would regard as a criticism here.
- [17:49]
Adam Fleming
Right. We're gonna stay focusing on Donald Trump because this week he did his State of the Union, which is this big address he does to both houses of Congress. I was just checking the running order of my. The running time of my favorite film, Jurassic park, is 2 hours, 2 minutes. So Donald Trump did 15 minutes shorter than the first Jurassic Park. Gary, did you watch the whole thing?
- [18:12]
Gary O'Donoghue
I did. I did my job. I will not get back.
- [18:18]
Adam Fleming
And I'm never sure how much this speech actually matters. I mean, we've all watched the West Wing. We're all political nerds. We know how much effort goes into writing the speech, how much time goes into analyzing it. But is it something we should all give one hour, 47 of our own brain space, too?
- [18:34]
Gary O'Donoghue
Well, I mean, to the extent. I mean, Donald Trump, as we know, is out there every day. So, you know, he's being consumed, as it were, by the American public in various formats, clipped up through their feeds, whatever, on news bullets every day of the week. The most visible and if you like, accessible president there has really ever, ever been. However, the thing I will say is about the State of the Union is that, you know, it does get, and I think, you know, the early. We've got some early numbers, you know, potentially around 36 million people. Now, that is a way big chunk of voters, isn't it, in one go. And that. So that is in itself an opportunity to try and move the needle on, you know, when you're in a two party state like we are here, you know, a point or two in either direction can make a huge difference to your chances. And of course, everyone has got their eye on the congressional elections at the end of the year. What we call the midterms here. Well, let's remind people, you know, every single seat in the House of representatives, all 435 of them, are up for election. The Republicans have a wafer thin single digit majority there and a third of the Senate. So, you know, that can, that could absolutely change the nature of Donald Trump's last two years if the Democrats were to take back the House of Representatives. And the State of the Union this week is a sort of kickoff to that campaign to try and retain control of it.
- [20:03]
Adam Fleming
And even if the speech is quite long and maybe you don't love it, it does always have a nice showbiz element to it, whoever is president. And this year, it was the victorious American hockey team from the Winter Olympics who arrived in proper showbiz fashion. Let's have a little listen to that.
- [20:19]
Unidentified Participant
Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country until you came along with just always losing. But now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men's gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in.
- [21:03]
Adam Fleming
I think they need to give that man a bigger microphone. Like it crackles when he talks. But Gary, I mean, does, does that whole jingoistic Team USA go, go, go. We're winning. Economy's amazing. Does that actually feel the way America feels right now?
- [21:19]
Gary O'Donoghue
No, not largely. I mean, look, you know, that sort of thing goes down pretty well for while it's happening. There was a bunch of theatrics like that. I'm not sure that hockey team stayed for the whole thing. Let's put it that way. It didn't look like it that they were staying for the whole thing. But the central point about this State of the Union and the thing that the Republicans have been telling the White House that they need to focus on is this famous word affordability. How do Americans feel about the economic situation more generally, but also how they're doing in their everyday lives. And Donald Trump says in the State of the Union says I inherited record inflation. Well he didn't. He inherited 3% inflation. It's now down to 2.4%. And of course that's not prices falling, that's prices just going up a little bit more slowly than they were. And despite the sort of, of the fact that wages are also rising and you know that growth is sort of starting to return, Americans don't feel it. And his message really was kind of look, everything's fine, you just don't realize it. And that is not a persuasive thing that Republicans in vulnerable seats can take out to their district and argue. It's not a message really.
- [22:32]
Adam Fleming
Faisal, give us a smart way of thinking about the American economy at the moment. Because I keep seeing things like oh, there's been a massive dip in the American stock market because AI has come along and everyone's realized oh, we're never going to have software anymore and Microsoft will go bust because AI will just do it all for you. You never have to buy another copy of Microsoft Word. What are some thoughts about how it's actually happening?
- [22:55]
Faisal Islam
To be very reductive. There's two big things going on. You have the and we'll get on to talking about the detail of this in a minute. But you have the massive uncertainty caused by constantly changing tariff policy not just in the world but also domest likely in the U.S. if you're a supplier. All those ships come across the Pacific to you know, from Wall for Walmart to supply Christmas. The pricing I remember going out to to to some to am I going out and seeing just how expensive it was and how they couldn't even price the toy catalogs for example in one in one US state. So you had that but as it turned out that didn't damage the US economy or cause as much inflation as quickly as you might think. That doesn't mean it isn't coming but it hasn't come through the pipeline yet. But you have that. But it wasn't great for certainty. But on the other hand you have this astonishing kind of build out of artificial intelligence in terms of data centers. The numbers are mind boggling. And a stock market boom that has fueled that doing hundreds of billions. You're talking about more than I know more than the Manhattan Project that created nuclear power, the dot com investment put together. You're doing staggering sums and that has propelled the US Stock market. It has propelled the real economy too. And it's kept U.S. growth going. But it's gone so far that people now just think it's going to pop at some point. It doesn't mean, it means that there'll still be many winners and the AI change is very real, but you're going to see some fragility in markets and, and, and people are very worried about that, who the losers are going to be. So these are the two competing forces. They kind of inter in complex ways. Some of the people, some of the other sides of the trade, while the Chinese for example, are like, well, we've also got an AI industry that's doing quite well as well. It's totally fascinating. But I would say, I would say the inflate, the key thing if you're Donald Trump standing at State of the Union is that you're like, hey, we're through this now. Everyone said all the, all the economic experts said that there was going to be a massive increase in the cost of imported goods that you were going to pay. It hasn't happened. See, I'm right. That's where we are right now. That might be a bit of a hostage to fortune.
- [25:10]
Gary O'Donoghue
The interesting thing foil talking about the data centers, you know, that's, you know, if you like, that's the trillionaires spending their money building. But it has a real knock on effect on ordinary Americans because the amount of energy that these data centers are going to, going to need could drive up the price of energy in this country. And of course that's one of the big pain points that American consumers, you know, the ordinary Joe on Main street will feel. So they're already trying to talk about ways of sort of making sure that the tech industry pays for that kind of rise in prices. But it's a potential knock on right down to the lowest level.
- [25:52]
Adam Fleming
And Jane, I remember chatting to you last year when you'd done the panorama ahead of Trump's second state visit, actually when he was here and that was then dominated by tariffs and trade. And I remember you were there in Scotland when Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, went to go and sign her deal with Donald Trump, for which she was quite criticized by a lot of people in Europe because she basically caved.
- [26:14]
Jane Corbyn
Well, everyone made a beeline to Donald Trump's golf course in Scotland. Keir Starmer was there. I think he sat through a 90 minute speech by President Trump. I seem to remember thinking, gosh, how long is this? But obviously Gary sat Through longer.
- [26:28]
Adam Fleming
Yeah.
- [26:29]
Jane Corbyn
And they will beat the path to. And you know, she came out of nowhere. No one expected to actually turn up and she did. And she agreed this 15% tariff for Europe. And yeah, she was accused, as you say, at the time of caving, but there was wild talk, 25% for Canada, 50% for Modi in India, because they'd taken Russian energy. Crazy sums were being talked about. So it seemed like a good deal, 15%. But of course then, now the Supreme Court finds this illegal. And I suppose she's open to criticism too, that she made a deal that when in fact it was never going to be legal. But I think the whole tariff situation is so confused. I don't know where we are. Is there a 10 global tariff? Where are we now?
- [27:14]
Adam Fleming
I mean, well, illegal, but still in place.
- [27:18]
Faisal Islam
I told someone that I. The day they came in, the morning they came in, I went to bed having filed a report for Radio 4 saying it was going to be 15, only to be woken up mid morning, sort of, you know, to be told in fact it was. Some report had come out of the Customs Agency saying it was in fact 10. So I had to redo my report. Anyway, that's a minor, minor impact of this. It is a confusion, it is confusing, it is chaotic. Obviously stems back to the fact that they were deemed illegal, well, declared legal, frankly, by the Supreme Court last week. Ten was what he originally said, then he upped it to 15 and then, lo and behold, it was 10 with a idea that we'd move to 15. Now, the interesting thing here is, is this some sort of tell. Be interesting to hear what Gary's view on this, because I know that internationally they were quite hopeful that it would stick at 10. And the difference between 10 and 15 is quite substantial for us in the UK and Australia and Japan, because we negotiated down to 10%. And so what was faced at the weekend was the prospect of the best allies that had done the most friendly deals.
- [28:25]
Adam Fleming
Oh. So just to be clear, so if you've done a deal like Keir Starmer did to get the tariffs down to 10. Yeah. The Supreme Court rules that all the tariffs are illegal. So then Trump does blanket 15 on everyone. The UK's would go, basically.
- [28:37]
Faisal Islam
So we, we would have been the worst hit. Now, that message was conveyed very clearly by people like Peter Kyle, the Trade Secretary, to Jameson Greer, his counterpart, and to Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary. And now at this point there's a black box and then it ends up being 10. Right. I don't know of course, what, what cause and effect there is. Obviously, people in the British government say, well, of course we, you know, we leveraged our contacts. So the, the headline, indeed the report that I filed that we were going to be the worst hit was no longer true. We weren't the worst. It's much the same. But he still says, and he does have the power in the New Deal that He has section 122 to put it up to 15 at any time. But there are still some quite interesting dilemmas here, which is this new power is temporary and it expires in six months time and it puts a lot of power in Congress's hands. Now, this is just asserting what would ordinarily be the case in trade policy. You deal with senators and congressmen and they have sectoral interests and you can play them off as a foreign, foreign state. The EU is very good at this. And I asked a UK Government minister privately, so are we now going to go to Congress? How's that going to go? Is Trump, President Trump going to think we're going, is he going to be angry about this? Because I know it's normal going to go around him. And they were like, we don't know. We don't know. We're just going to have to see how it goes. But they will feel vindicated by the fact that it didn't go up to 15, even though it might and it's currently 10.
- [30:03]
Gary O'Donoghue
No, still his favorite word. Don't forget he has said that it's
- [30:06]
Adam Fleming
the most beautiful word in the English language.
- [30:08]
Gary O'Donoghue
Most beautiful word in the. Now, the suspicion actually after the Supreme Court came down with its judgment was that he didn't realize that he could go to 15%, which is why he said the 10% under, as 5 has said, the 1, 2, 2 provision. And that was his initial point and as you say, 150 days before congressional approval. The thing I've noticed though, in the last couple of months in the run up to this, I think they were expecting to lose this. I think they, despite his anger on the day, et cetera and all the kind of, you know, your families will be ashamed of you, Supreme Court justices, I think they're expecting because he's all he's been saying for some time, we'll do it a different way. And of course, there are different ways. The sectoral tariffs that were already in place on steel and aluminum and aluminum and cars, they're not under the, you know, the AIPA law that was struck down. They're under national security provisions. There are other provisions on trade practices under 301 section, I'm sorry, all these numbers. But there's another section of the Trade Act, 301, which he can bring in.
- [31:17]
Faisal Islam
Now.
- [31:18]
Gary O'Donoghue
They're harder because they're slightly more targeted and you have to go through a process of sort of investigation and reports and all that kind of stuff. But they have options and those other routes have stood the test of some court challenges. So whilst this sort of blanket thing is much easier to do, they do have other options on the table which they are clearly going to try and use and in a combination with threats to sort of even go higher on some of those other tariffs if countries start to unpick the bilateral deals they've already done. Done.
- [31:59]
Adam Fleming
Faisal, you have a very limited bingo window now to trade. More numbers, but it's total chaos, Right?
- [32:03]
Faisal Islam
So you don't know if it's going to be 10, 15, will it go up to 50, 75, is Congress going to hit it? Are the courts even to go after this 1, 2, 2 tariff? And so imagine trying to deal business here. If the central aim of this, which was what President Trump says, which is, there's a credible argument here, you, the rest of the world, are going to shift your factories to the US if you've got no idea what the actual hitting is, that is not. It'll happen a bit, but it will not happen to the extent. And so his ability to point to, I've moved this factory because of my policy is going to be really, really constrained because we've got no idea what the tariff's going to be.
- [32:38]
Jane Corbyn
What about his ability to point to, we've made trillions out of this because of the tariffs that brought in this money to the Treasury. And then others argue and say, well, actually, that's not really happening. That's. I find all of that very confusing as well.
- [32:48]
Faisal Islam
Not quite enough to replace the federal income tax tax, which is what he claims it would do. But it has, you know, it has. It has yielded some, you know, actually, by the standards of the US budget, it's not that much, but, you know, it's definitely, you know, tens of billions, several dozen billion, over 100 billion. So that. That does make a difference. But I was really struck by a British business leader, tell me privately, he is no longer the emperor of tariffs. And it's almost like what we've seen, and this is a very interesting directional shift that almost since what we saw at the World Economic Forum, Mark Carney speech and the like, it was almost like the emperor's new clothes. Not quite. He's wearing no clothes, but he's not quite as clothed as he originally thought.
- [33:29]
Adam Fleming
10 to 15.
- [33:31]
Faisal Islam
So, and then, and so the rest of the world starts to act like, well, you know, we are we this scared, we that scared by these threats anymore. Are we going to do the Vandalayan thing and fall into line immediately, or are we middle power is going to join?
- [33:45]
Adam Fleming
And just makes me think Donald Trump being told that he's the emperor with no clothes, that he's fewer clothes, that he's actually, he's actually quite weak, then makes me wonder what he would do with his giant armada parked off the coast of Iran, if that's what people are saying to him. And that's what.
- [34:00]
Faisal Islam
I don't know if they're saying it to him, but if they're saying it himself. Yeah.
- [34:04]
Adam Fleming
Gary, thank you very much for watching the whole State of the Union and memorizing all US trade law in the space of one week.
- [34:10]
Gary O'Donoghue
Great pleasure.
- [34:11]
Adam Fleming
Lovely to talk to you, Jane, thanks for coming back.
- [34:13]
Jane Corbyn
Thank you for having me here.
- [34:15]
Adam Fleming
And Faisal, always great to catch up.
- [34:16]
Faisal Islam
Great to be here.
- [34:17]
Adam Fleming
And that's all for this episode of Newscast, apart from to say we will be live across various BBC platforms on Friday morning at 7 o', clock, analyzing the result of the Gorton and Denton by election, whatever it is.
- [34:28]
Faisal Islam
Bye bye.
- [34:30]
Gary O'Donoghue
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [34:32]
BBC Newscast Outro Host
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