Chuck Todd is joined by geopolitical expert and Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer to unpack the global implications of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the international order.Chuck opens the episode by examining how Trump’s use of tariffs and his zero-sum approach to foreign policy are dismantling decades of established U.S. trade and diplomatic norms.Ian then joins the conversation to assess the ripple effects of Trump’s tariffs on global trade, how key U.S. allies and rivals are likely to respond, and whether China stands to benefit in the long run.He explains how Trump’s policies may be inadvertently strengthening Xi Jinping, why the U.S. is ill-equipped to operate in a “law of the jungle” environment, and what kind of economic damage could be on the horizon.The discussion turns to the rise of anti-American sentiment abroad, the erosion of the rule of law at home, and why the economic fallout may disproportionately affect red states.They then take a global tour of hotspots: debating the prospects for a renewed nuclear deal with Iran, whether Turkey has fully slipped into autocracy, and the likelihood of a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in 2025. To wrap up the episode, Chuck answers listener questions in the "Ask Chuck" segment.Timeline0:00 Introduction1:00 Trump is creating a new world order2:00 Trump has a zero-sum view of foreign policy4:00 Could Trump break with Putin over lack of ceasefire?6:00 Trump 2.0 and Trump 1.0 are completely different9:00 Ian Bremmer joins the show10:00 Has Trump broken the world economic order, or temporarily disrupted it?11:15 Countries will begin to de-risk away from the US13:30 Trump using emergency powers to unilaterally break international agreements18:00 China will become dominant in the old architecture built by the U.S.21:15 People voting for a second “Trump 1.0” and are getting something vastly different22:30 Instability will force unity on the EU23:30 Americans don’t understand how good we have it*24:30 The future of power seems to lie with the autocracies and not the democracies25:30 Is Trump throwing a lifeline to Xi Jinping?29:30 The U.S. doesn’t have the right political system to operate in the “law of the jungle”32:00 China’s surveillance state will check any type of middle class uprising34:30 How different would things look if we had the TPP?38:00 How should companies navigate the uncertainty Trump is creating?39:30 Products from China are already becoming unavailable41:00 Companies are all lobbying for exemptions42:00 The hit to the US economy is going to be massive44:20 The rise of anti-American sentiment45:45 The first amendment only applies to citizens now?46:45 The hit to American tourism will be substantial48:00 Economic damage will hit red states the hardest49:30 Mexican government has been willing to cooperate51:45 Trump wants to cut a deal with Iran, even if it makes Israel unhappy54:20 Will Erdogan get away with smashing democracy in Turkey?56:15 What to make of the political turmoil in South Korea?58:00 Will Bolsanaro/Le Pen have their charges stick, or could they win office in the future?1:00:30 Biggest risks to the world? Is Trump at the top of that list?1:02:30 Will the Ukraine/Russia war achieve a ceasefire this year?1:06:20 Ask Chuck1:06:40 What books do you assign your class to best understand this political moment?1:12:00 Are we in a competitive autocracy similar to Erdogan’s Turkey?(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Musik
Hello there, welcome to another episode of the Chuck Toddcast. My guest today is Ian Bremmer. He is principal of the Eurasia Group, really sort of one of the foreign policy and national security analysts that I consume the most. If you've followed me down in Meet the Press and the NBC days, you know that I've Used in quite a lot in my expert category when it comes to national security.
He is as wired as there is when it comes to, particularly when it comes to America's closest economic allies, Japan. Japan, Canada, the UK, basically the G7, right? In many ways, the G7 is America's closest allies, the key European countries plus Japan and Canada there. And he's, look, it's not just there that he's well sourced, he's well sourced a lot of key trade allies.
And given what's going on right now, and basically the conversation that I have with him is trying to see, is there a um George H. W. Bush zu bezeichnen, gleich nach dem Fall der Berlin Wall. Damals war es die Erstellung einer neuen Weltordnung. Und das war eine spannende Zeit, um eine neue Weltordnung zu erschaffen. Wir haben eine neue Weltordnung erschaffen, weil die Iron Curtain fiel.
Well, are we now creating a new world order, a different one? Basically, you know, the strongest shall thrive, right? And in many ways, this is, if you examine Donald Trump and what he really thinks when it comes to foreign policy, this really does, you're better off thinking this way than trying to come up with some other reasons why he thinks. He's a very binary thinker in this.
There are winners and losers. There's no such thing in Donald Trump's world as win-win. He may say the phrase win-win. He may want people to believe that when he does a deal that he believes he's gotten the better end of the deal, that he'll call it win-win. But he doesn't actually think there's ever an even split. He doesn't really, truly believe there is such thing as a win-win.
And so when you think of it that way, this is why he almost views every country that's not China and Russia as essentially a secondary power. And that they are somehow having to graft on. They're either a secondary power in Russia's sphere of influence, a secondary power in China's sphere of influence, or you're a secondary power in America's sphere of influence.
And so when you think about it in those terms, it's possible at least to understand perhaps why he has behaved the way he's behaved with Ukraine, for instance. You sit here and you ask yourself, boy, Ukraine has done everything the president's asked. Russia has not. And yet we have no ceasefire. And yet the president is not lecturing Putin for not coming to the table.
But he didn't mind lecturing Zelenskyy when Zelenskyy was already at the table. And I know there's plenty of other nefarious reasons that some people might apply to this idea of why Trump is being more patient with Putin than anything else. But I can tell you this at some point.
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Chapter 2: How is Trump reshaping the global economic order?
I do think that law and if the US were to pull out of the United Nations and decide not to pay, then Chinese would become the dominant country influencing the UN, too. So longer term, I think there are real opportunities structurally for China that other countries don't have. Near term, it's just like cut deals as fast as possible with the Americans, because they can hurt you.
Und ich denke, dass der Staatssekretär Besant, wenn er sagt, dass all diese Länder mich anrufen, um Ziele zu schließen, ist er nicht lügen über das. Das ist wahr, weil ich meine, die USA können viel Schaden machen, wenn man diese Ziele nicht macht. Aber das De-Risking ist, ist ein Hedging-Behörde von jedem Land und Unternehmen weltweit. Reduzieren Sie Ihre Ausführungen an den USA, wie Sie können.
Seems to be another big winner out of this. And I don't think this is what Donald Trump intended. You said the EU quite a bit. This seems to be a real opportunity for the EU, perhaps to sort of flex its muscles and maybe finally sort of get itself on a on a on a not an equal playing field, but on a stronger.
playing field a little bit if they're able to be the western, I guess, way station, if you will, for Asia and Latin America?
That would be the good outcome. That would be the stabilizing outcome if on the back of all of this U.S.-driven geopolitical uncertainty and volatility and shock... Let's underline that.
U.S.-driven global... U.S.-driven. This is what's just so mind-boggling, I think, to so many people in the United States, business leaders, political leaders, you name it, which is like, this has all been self-inflicted. Everybody is behaving as if a war just happened or a pandemic just happened, but instead, Trump just happened. That's what happened. That's right.
A decision. I mean, Trump is symptomatic of an awful lot of Americans that increasingly don't support US-driven collective security, US-driven rule of law, US-driven free trade. So it's not like this is new. This has been coming for decades. But Trump's second term absolutely said, I am going to destroy this old order. Everyone is taking advantage of us. That's not going to happen anymore.
So, I mean, this is what people voted for. He said he was going to do it.
And now he's doing it. Not sure, people, you know, this is, I can tell you, I mean, this is what I think the great misunderstanding of this election, which is, he may have said it, but he said it going into the first election, he didn't do it. There were a lot of people that just assumed, hey, am I going to get Trump 1.0? I'll take that over Biden and Harris 2.0.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's tariffs?
into these new high technologies internally. And, you know, you look at how shocked our friends in Silicon Valley and elsewhere were by the release of DeepSeek, right? That was, you know, Chinese investment into Chinese domestic capacity. Yes, with Western semiconductors, but they're moving as fast as possible to not have that reliance.
This was so naive. So is that good or bad? I know. This was so naive on our part, right? What is the mother of invention, right? Necessity sometimes? Necessity. Yes. I mean, what did you think? They have a billion people. You don't think they can find some that have just as smart of brains as our guys do on this? I mean, it really was, frankly, one of those...
Ridiculous American Exceptionalism moments.
Look, I remember, Chuck, at the beginning of the Trump administration, I had a big debate with Steve Bannon, who, as you know, is no intellectual slouch. And he was making this argument that we have to fight
the chinese now we have to hit them as hard as possible because we're at a moment that otherwise they're going to become dominant in all these technologies globally and if we don't do it now we're never going to be able to and my response to him was you know in order to make that work even if you agree even if i agree with you that the relationship is
has to be zero sum and there's no way to engage with the Chinese long term, you still have to be able to execute on that plan. And that means not just for one term, but over a series of political terms and not just the United States by itself, but combined with allies.
And I go back to that conversation in my mind a lot nowadays, thinking about the Americans just don't have the political system to execute. The reason why rule of law is works better for the United States than it does for China, is because the US is not a multi-generational dictatorship with a single political party.
And so actually we benefit from having some public goods that we constrain a whole bunch of countries around the world to align with, including ourselves. We limit our own power to a degree because we know we can't actually do just hitting countries... Strategisch und konsistente in der Face in the same way over 10, 20, 30 years. Even if you thought that was the best way to run the world.
And I don't. And you know that. But even if you believed it's all the jungle, the fact is, the US doesn't have the best political system to operate with the law of the jungle. And that is something that the Trump team just disagrees.
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Chapter 4: How is the international community responding to Trump's policies?
You're pretty bullish that you think this is a negotiation he wants to get to yes. And in fact, it will be a deal that Israel hates. Yeah, certainly dislikes, maybe hates. Will they try to undermine it the way they did undermine Barack Obama?
They're going to be more reluctant to try to undermine it. You saw the way that Trump acted with the Israeli Prime Minister in the Oval Office. I mean, it was a much politer affair than Zelensky in the Oval.
But he treated him like a subordinate. He treated him like a subordinate, no doubt.
Ja, und, und, und, und, und, und, und, und, und,
70% seiner Taktiken sind ein Fehler, aber es gibt Zeiten, wo man sagt, ich habe keine aktiven Werte in meinem Kopf, aber seit du mich über Iran fragst, ja, und Iran, er versteht, er fühlt seine Schwierigkeiten, er weiß, dass Iran in einer schrecklichen Position ist, er war auch derjenige, der besagt hat, ich werde mit diesen Angriffen auf die Houthis gehen, du erinnerst dich, Vizepräsident Pence war vor, er sagte, mach es nicht, mach es nicht, Signalgate.
Jetzt, in ein paar Wochen, sind die Houthis für Frieden. Sie sagen, wenn Sie einfach stoppen, werden wir die Schiffe, die durchgehen, stoppen. Okay, wo war das in der Biden-Administration, richtig? Also, ich meine, jetzt verliert Iran all ihre Proxys in der Region. Sie haben sicherlich nicht die militärische Fähigkeit, irgendeinen echten Schaden an Israel zu machen.
And so the Americans are saying, look, you better take a deal. And it's going to be a bigger deal than the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA under Obama. Because otherwise we're going to give Israel all the military capability to really, really destroy you. I see the, remember, the Supreme Leader came out a couple of weeks ago and said, I don't even want to talk to Trump.
Now they're talking directly.
So, so far, this looks pretty good. And we know Trump's tight with all the Gulf state leaders and they want him to cut a deal. And every one of them wants him to cut a deal. That feels right. Turkey. Turkey.
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Chapter 6: What would life be like if TPP was implemented?
All right. My clock says we made it just under an hour. Okay, sounds good. I cannot emphasize enough to folks, if you're at all interested in the geopolitical landscape, that GZERO Newsletter. Ian, I've blown smoke up your you-know-what before on this, but I just find it to be, it's better than, there are other quarterly smart foreign policy places out there that do good newsletters.
You do the best one. Thank you, man. It's always great to see you.
Musik
Well, I hope you enjoyed that tour of the globe. And there were a lot of things we didn't get to that we will get to again. I thought the most fascinating part of Ian's, I guess, prognostication is the likelihood that Donald Trump wants to cut a deal with the Iranians and how desperate the Iranians might be to cut a deal with Donald Trump. Not quite. Nixon goes to China.
But I do think if this does happen and he could use he's he could use any sort of positive PR, it'll be interesting. I wonder if it will get them positive PR or if it will divide the right on this. We'll see. And if it becomes an issue in Israel. Netanyahu sabotaged essentially Obama's ability to cut a deal with the Iranians. Would he do the same for Trump? Just something to think about.
But with that, before I go, let's dabble into the Ask Chuck bin and take a look at our questions. Ask Chuck. I gotta have the music. You're enjoying the music, don't lie. You know you like this music. So here's the first question. And it comes from Nicole Mealy. And she writes, you mentioned a few books you assigned to your class. I'd love if you could share the physical lists.
I didn't pay as much attention to history as I should have when I had someone guiding me throughout my education. As I'm getting older and realizing the importance of history more and more, I'd love to have some recommendations to better equip myself and gain a better knowledge of how we got here. Appreciate your time and knowledge.
Well, let me give you a sense of this is the book list I was referring to at McKay Coppins. Obviously, you enjoyed the Coppins interview. And I noted that Coppins' book on Mitt Romney was one that I had assigned a class that I teach at USC. It's a terrific class called How Washington Works. That is my assignment for visiting students from USC who basically spend a semester in D.C.
interning and getting a taste of Washington. And, you know, I'm there and I... My class is designed to sort of teach them how Washington works at the moment, because Washington works differently with every administration. So I'll give you the book list that they got to choose from for their midterm as a way of at least understanding how today's Washington works.
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Chapter 7: How are companies navigating Trump's trade policies?
And that we are at the point now where it used to be the lobbying world was consumed with essentially citizen activists versus corporations. And now it's essentially corporations versus other corporations, right? They're all fighting over regulation that would hurt one business and help another. And somehow the citizens aren't even involved in this operation at all.
But I do think... So those five books... And I and my students, I asked them to pick one and, you know, write me an analysis and a review of it. But if you're looking for five reads that I think can help you understand today's Washington and today's politics in America, those are the those are as good of a first five to read as you can get. So there you go.
And no, I do not get a commission on any of the books if you buy them from Amazon. But perhaps I'm making a mistake. And maybe if all of these books suddenly become overnight bestsellers for a day, I'll know the power that we have already developed here at the Toddcast with you, my incredible listeners. All right, my next question is from GW Joe in Nashville. I like this.
My GW fellow alums are going to refer to themselves with Raise High and with a little revolutionary love there. I appreciate it. And his question from GW Joe is this. Is there an argument to be made that we are now a competitive authoritarian regime? Are we close to Erdogans Turkey than we are to our own democracy circa 1970 or pick any decade of your choice? I think it's worth a discussion.
Congress has self-neutered itself. True. The executive is now ignoring laws. Vielen Dank. Well, look, we are we are I still think we're the cleanest, you know, sort of the I guess one way to put it, one of my favorite expressions. And I learned this during the Great Recession when we were all worried about the state of our economy.
And I had an economist friend use the following expression when he said, well, we're the cleanest pair of dirty underwear in the hamper, meaning you may think our economic system is kind of messy, kind of broken. What we were doing with the housing market, credit default swaps, all that business, except everywhere else is worse to keep your money. Right.
And that is frankly what Donald Trump is banking on with his tariff regime, which is that as bad as these tariffs are, as bad as unsettling as it all is, where else are you going to put your money? China? Rule of law? You really feel good about that? How about the EU? You think they're not going to want to tax your money? Where are you going to put your money?
So that is something that he's counting on. As for your... I don't know if we're at Erdogans Turkey. I'm not that down yet. Erdogan is using the power of government to pick his political opponent. We haven't gotten to that step yet.
We're probably somewhere early stages Orban and Hungary, right, where it is more about trying, because in this way, that's why Hungary is probably the better comparative for now, trying to, you know, this sort of Assault, you know, using the power of government to influence private institutions like universities.
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