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Climate change is "wreaking havoc" on supply chains
Climate change is disrupting industries around the world, and that has a major impact on global trade. On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala lays out the case for diversifying and decentralizing production around the world to build resiliency and reduce risk in global supply chains.
“Climate change is wreaking havoc in so many places,” Okonjo-Iweala says, “If you concentrate your production in any one place, you risk really disrupting things.
The WTO Chief argues that by trading some of the “just-in-time” efficiency of global supply chains for resiliency, we can reduce the risk of climate disruption as well as the geopolitical risk of labor being contracted in a single country, like China.
“You see what is happening all over the world?" Okonjo-Iweala asks. "We do need to diversify if we want to build resilience.”
Watch the full interview: World trade at risk without globalization, warns WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
- Is the global food crisis here to stay? ›
- The geopolitics of the chips that make your tech work ›
- The Graphic Truth: The great supply chain squeeze ›
- Want to fix climate change? This is what it’ll take. ›
- What Africa has to say about climate change ›
- The Graphic Truth: Has climate change hurt or helped farmers? ›
- Ian Explains: Can we save the planet without hurting the economy? - GZERO Media ›
- "Climate is a problem, not the end of the world" - Danish author Bjorn Lomborg - GZERO Media ›
Podcast: Calling for the "reglobalization" of trade: WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Listen: Ian Bremmer sits down with World Trade Organization Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and first person from Africa to lead the organization, for a conversation about the good, the bad, and the future of global trade on the GZERO World podcast.
In the last half century, globalization has dramatically increased economic output, created hundreds of millions of jobs, and lifted millions of people out of poverty. But development between countries has been uneven, and global inequality is on the rise. Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine disrupted exposed weaknesses in the supply chain. And rising tension between the US and China has led to a world economy that’s becoming increasingly fractured.
But is the way out of a crisis not less trade, but more? How do we make sure the future of trade is fair to countries in the Global South, who are reeling from runaway debt and bearing the brunt of climate change?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.TRANSCRIPT: Calling for the "reglobalization" of trade: WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Globalization has lifted up more than a billion people out of poverty. What we need to do is not walk away from it, but reimagine it, to pull those who are left out from the margins into the mainstream of global trade.
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are talking about trade, the complicated business of moving goods and services around the world. Global trade hit a record 32 trillion in 2022 and the World Trade Organization overseas 98% of it. We don't know what happens with the other 2%. The WTO doesn't usually make front page headlines, that's probably a good thing, but it has a huge role in almost every aspect of your daily life. From your morning Brazil roasted coffee to the Chinese made smartphone that you're using to listen to this podcast.
The WTO has been a force for globalization, but it's also received criticism for favoring wealthy nations and exacerbating global inequality. Not to mention its broken dispute settlement system that's made resolving trade conflict, that's what it's supposed to do, virtually impossible. Can the WTO lower tension in US-China trade wars? Can it avoid further fragmentation? Can it effectively address the challenges faced by economies in the Global South? I'm talking about the good, the bad, and the future of global trade with WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Let's get to it.
Announcer:
The GZERO World podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor Prologis. Prologis helps businesses across the globe scale their supply chains with an expansive portfolio of logistics real estate, and the only end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today. Learn more at prologis.com.
Ian Bremmer:
Madam Director General, so good to see you.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Thank you, Ian.
Ian Bremmer:
I want to start, we're here on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, and you have been talking about the need for re-globalization. I'm wondering if you could explain to our audience, what do you mean by that?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Well, thank you so much. We are in an era of geopolitical tensions and many people are very pessimistic about the impact of globalization. Globalization has lifted up more than a billion people out of poverty, but it's true that some have been left behind. Poor people in rich countries and poor countries have been left behind. With that in mind, and with the tensions we've seen with the war in Ukraine, the pandemic and all that, an emerging pessimism about whether globalization can deliver has taken hold. We're saying that, please, let's remember what this globalization has delivered. What we need to do is not walk away from it, but reimagine it, and reimagine how it can help to pull those who are left out from the margins into the mainstream of global trade. That's what we're calling re-globalization.
We're seeing opportunities where people see difficulties. Let me just be clear. We've seen the vulnerabilities of supply chains during the pandemic, and that has made people believe that we should re-shore, let's produce as much as we can at home.
Ian Bremmer:
At home.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Let's produce with our neighbors, our friends, because that's the only way we can be sure. And I understand those sentiments, and we are seeing some of that re-shoring and near shoring. But then there's also the desire to build global resilience, not to rely too much on any one group of countries or any country to produce things. So I'm seeing people saying, "We want interdependence, not overdependence. We want to build global resilience." Well, re-globalization is a tool for building global resilience.
Ian Bremmer:
So when you hear both the Americans, President Biden and others, and the Europeans, Ursula von der Leyen and others, talk about de-risking, and they're primarily talking about the relationship with China, but it does reflect and factor into this idea of global resilience as opposed to national resilience, or resilience with your friends. How do you relate to that concept right now? The concept of de-risking?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Absolutely. I actually think the de-risking language began to come up after we started talking of this issue of building resilience to re-globalization, of not throwing away the benefits. To me, de-risking, when I listen to President von der Leyen talk about it, is very similar to what we're saying. Let us build supply chains, decentralized supply chains to countries where the environment is good, but who have not been in the mainstreams of globalization. And many of those exist. People usually talk of China plus one, and the plus one will be Vietnam or Indonesia or India. But we've got other countries that have the right environment. What about Bangladesh? What about Brazil? Mexico is already in. What about in Africa? We've got Kenya, we've got Rwanda, we've got Senegal, and I could go on. I don't want to say my own country, Nigeria, which is the largest population.
Ian Bremmer:
You just said it. You just said it. Come on
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
In East Asia-
Ian Bremmer:
And the largest economy in Africa by the way.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
And the largest... In East Asia, we've got Cambodia, which is receiving some of that investment, and Laos, so I could go on and on. What we're saying is let's look at others, other countries where the investment environment is right. Let's decentralize supply chains. It's not right that 10 countries export 80% of the vaccines in the world. It's too concentrated. Semiconductors, we know that that's also very concentrated. Rare earths and minerals, let's look, rare earths and minerals. There are many countries in Africa and Latin America that have these, let's decentralize and try to bring those countries' supply chains into the mainstream.
Ian Bremmer:
Global labor has also been very concentrated, right? I mean, for the period of globalization, China was a very big piece of, let's have the factory for the world. It's incredible amounts of inexpensive, very efficient labor. And you're right, some people in developed countries were displaced. But also, there's a lot of concentration risk. And I do think that some of this conversation is about, "Wait a second, we don't need as much labor as we used to. That labor is a lot more expensive than it used to be. Shouldn't we be building things closer to where the consumer markets are?" Irrespective of whether that's at home or not.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Well, absolutely, Ian. You see, business, I mean, labor costs in China were already going up before the pandemic, and that is why you see a lot of businesses also moving to Vietnam to produce things, to take advantage of the cheaper labor there, the higher productivity. So even before all this disappointment, and the disruption we saw in supply chains, businesses were already making wise decisions based on the economics of what they could see. So we should allow businesses to make the wise decisions because I think they'll do the right thing mostly. Now, I think we may have to trade some efficiency to build resilience, meaning that we may need to diversify and decentralize production to many more countries.
Ian Bremmer:
So just-in-time was a little bit too efficient, if you will, too dangerous?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Well, it played its role and the world benefited from it. Those supply chains, and the fact that you could manufacture goods cheaply, benefited consumers in developed countries. It was disinflationary. But now the time has come... Let me say one reason why I think we really need to pay attention to what we're saying, climate change. Climate change is wreaking havoc in so many places. If you concentrate your production in any one place, you risk really disrupting things. There are examples when there were floods in Thailand at one time and then the automobile industry was impacted by that. You see what is happening all over the world. So we do need to diversify if we want to build resilience. Diversified, decentralized production. But you are killing two birds with one stone.
Ian Bremmer:
Who are the champions? I mean, of course the WTO. But when you look at leaders around the world, who do you see as champions for re-globalization today?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Well, I can tell you that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been talking about, how do we decentralize the fertilizer supply chain? Just as an example. He's been talking about this very-
Ian Bremmer:
Really urgent, given the Russian War in Ukraine, of course.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Exactly. That again showed the vulnerabilities of dependence on the Black Sea region for grain feed and fertilizer. So that talk about, how do we decentralize fertilizer production so that the world is not so dependent on any one region? That's what we're also talking about. There you also create jobs in countries that were not part of the global, let's say, fertilizer, or vaccine, or pharmaceutical supply chain. So why don't we think of that? Why is it that Africa, why must it import more than 90% of its medicines and 99% of its vaccines? 1.4 billion people. Why don't you decentralize production there? You create jobs for young people, for women, and at the same time you bring the countries there into the mainstream of trade and better integrate them. So we can kill two birds with one stone. So Chancellor Scholz is there, President Macron is talking about it, and also, the de-risking notion that President von der Leyen is talking about is very related to this re-globalization.
Ian Bremmer:
When I look at the first phase of globalization over the last 50 years, and I see that China became a huge winner through that, there was an emergence of a global middle class, so a lot of countries that were able to become middle income, most of Africa had not made it yet. When you're talking to me about imports of medicines, you're talking about vaccines, Africa hasn't yet globalized. What needs to happen at this United Nations General Assembly meeting? What needs to happen with the Africa Union being a part of the agenda for the G20 now they've brought in? What can we see in the next year or two, three, that would help, meaningfully, Africa to get on the path of globalization?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Well, Africa, you're absolutely right, has about 3% of world trade, and that's too small. But Africa is doing some things that are pretty exciting. The African continental free trade area is an area of the 55 countries and 1.4 billion people. If... When, not if, that experiment really gets going, of Africans integrating better with themselves and trading, and creating a real market of 1.4 billion, equal to that of China and India, that is automatically very attractive for trade for the world. We need to remove the barriers to trade, reduce the costs, because trade costs on the continent are quite high. When you do that, I think that will make the continent much more attractive for investment and bring it into that margin. Then re-globalization can really begin to take place. So the continent has an instrument that it has put in place, we're very proud of that.
Many countries are trying to reduce cost. Actually, the WTO has a trade facilitation agreement, which is aimed at trying to reduce the cost of trade. If they implement that to the maximum, it'll really help to make the countries more attractive.
Lastly, we have an investment facilitation agreement under negotiations now with 110 of our members, many from Africa, that is designed to remove the barriers in the way of investment and make it easier. So the countries need to act, re-globalization will not arrive on your doorstep automatically. You need to make yourself attractive by removing the barriers to investment and trade, and then businesses will want to locate in your country. I think that this is on its way on the continent, so that's how we can get in. We now need to convince businesses that Africa is not the big risk. There's a perception that it's a huge risk to invest on the continent, and perception is running ahead of reality.
Ian Bremmer:
So we've talked about the impact of geopolitics on re-globalization. The WTO, of course, is also caught up in some of this. Since I have you here, Ngozi, I have to ask you about the broken dispute resolution settlement mechanism, and that the Americans have been holding up the appointment of appellate judges. Supposedly, reform needs to happen of the WTO before they're willing to make that happen. Is that moving forward?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Yes. Yes, it is. First, just to correct one thing, the system is really not broken, it's two tiers. There's a panel level, and last year, 17 cases were brought. And cases are being brought every day.
Ian Bremmer:
And they get resolved at the panel level.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Yeah. The panel gives a judgment. The problem we have is, quite rightly, like you said, Ian, the second tier, the appellate body, is not functioning, because as you said, the US blocked the election of judges into that tier. So what happens is if there's a "judgment" against a member, they can appeal it into the void, since that second tier is not functioning. And it's very crucial that it functions, because if you negotiate agreements, it's not good that the mechanism for enforceability doesn't work well and smoothly, so we are reforming it. The US has been very constructive now and they have laid out what their problems are with the system. We have a process ongoing at the WTO. We hope that by the time we have our 13th ministerial meeting in Abu Dhabi-
Ian Bremmer:
Next year, yeah.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Yes, end of February 2024, that we would've gone a substantial way towards agreeing on this reform and the form it should take. So work is visibly underway, and I'm hopeful. I don't want to be too hopeful, but I'm hopeful that we will go a long distance in this reform.
Ian Bremmer:
Does that mean that next year, more likely than not, we actually will have a breakthrough of this impasse on the appellate court?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
I'm hoping so. Actually, at our 12th ministerial, June last year, members signed on the dotted line to reform of this well-functioning dispute settlement system by 2024. I think the issue now is, when in 2024? And we're trying to say, "Let's get it done by February when we have this ministerial meeting."
Ian Bremmer:
Well, we're very litigious in the United States, so we want to be able to bring people to court. Let's get this resolved.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Let me tell you that the US is one of the biggest users of the system, and they've won the most cases. They've also lost, but they've won more than they've lost. So we hope that... Some of the complaints they're making are legitimate. They're not the only ones who have problems with the system, developing countries also find it difficult to access. So let's take all these complaints, let's try and reform the system and make it useful to everyone.
Ian Bremmer:
Madam Director General, thanks so much for joining us today.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
Thank you, Ian.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you did. Why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com, and take a moment to sign up for our newsletter, it's called GZERO Daily.
Announcer:
The GZERO World podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Prologis. Prologis helps businesses across the globe scale their supply chains with an expansive portfolio of logistics real estate, and the only end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today. Learn more at prologis.com.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Ian Explains: What is the World Trade Organization?
You probably don’t spend a ton of time thinking about the World Trade Organization (WTO), but it has a huge role in almost every aspect of your daily life—from your morning Brazil-roasted coffee to the Chinese-made smartphone you’re probably using to watch this video.
The WTO is an international organization that deals with the complicated business of moving goods and services across borders. It’s kind of like the referee for global trade, setting the rules and providing a forum for countries to negotiate agreements and resolve disputes. It’s why you can buy avocados from Mexico, clothes from Vietnam, or cars from Korea in the United States without a second thought.
Global trade ballooned to a staggering $32 trillion in 2022 and the WTO oversees 98% of it.
The WTO has been a force for globalization. It’s opened up new markets, lowered tariffs, and lifted millions out of poverty, but it’s also received criticism for favoring wealthy nations and exacerbating global inequality. Not to mention a broken dispute settlement system that’s made resolving international trade conflict virtually impossible.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer dives into the history of the WTO, why the US is blocking appointments of WTO judges, and what all of this has to do with Japanese octopus.
Watch the full interview: World trade at risk without globalization, warns WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television this weekend (check local listing) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
- World Trade Organization - GZERO Media ›
- Women in power — the World Trade Organization's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala ›
- Hard Numbers: GDP wars, WTO rules in Beijing’s favor, Africans support Chinese engagement, China winning 5G battle ›
- The Graphic Truth: Russia vs. US trade ties in Africa ›
- Graphic Truth: Who Wins From A US-China Trade War? ›
- Crisis at the WTO: Fixing a broken dispute system - GZERO Media ›
Steven Pinker shares his "relentless optimism" about human progress
If you follow the news closely, chances are your view of the state of the world is not super optimistic. From war in Ukraine to a warming planet to global poverty and hunger, there's plenty to get upset about. But what if things are actually getting...better? That's what Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker asks in his interview with Ian Bremmer for the latest episode of GZERO World.
"If you compare the number of wars and the number of people killed in wars in the sixties and the seventies and even the eighties, we're actually much better off today" Pinker argues. "And so if you don't look at data, if you look at headlines, since as long as bad things haven't vanished from the face of the earth, which they never will, you can get the impression that things are unchanged or even are worse than ever, even when they're improving. It's only when you count the number of wars, number of deaths in war, longevity, child mortality, extreme poverty, number of leisure hours, that you see that there actually has been improvement. "
Watch the GZERO World episode: Is life better than ever for the human race?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
- Podcast: The case for global optimism with Steven Pinker ›
- Why is America punching below its weight on happiness? ›
- Is life better than ever for the human race? ›
- Why human beings are so easily fooled by AI, psychologist Steven Pinker explains ›
- Ian Explains: Will biotech breakthroughs lead to super humans? - GZERO Media ›
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Insights on AI governance and global stability
Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, delve into the realm of AI governance and its vital role in shaping our rapidly evolving world. Just like the macro-prudential policies that govern global finance, society now find itself in need of techno-prudential policies to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) flourishes without compromising global stability. AI presents multi-faceted challenges, including disinformation, technology proliferation, and the urgent need to strike a balance between innovation and risk management.
The next global superpower?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take for you and my Ted Talk has just landed. So yes, that is what I want to talk about. Kind of, what happens after the GZERO? Who is the next global superpower? Do the Americans come back? Is it the Chinese century? No, it's none of the above. We don't have superpowers anymore. And that's what the talk is all about.
I think that the geopolitical landscape today unnerves people because there's so much conflict, there's so much instability. People see that the trajectory of US-China relations, of war in Europe, of the state of democracy and globalization, all is heading in ways that seem both negative and unsustainable. And part of the reason for that is because it is not geopolitics as usual. It's not the Soviets or the Americans or the Chinese that are driving outcomes in the geopolitical space. Rather it is breaking up into different global orders depending on the type of power we're talking about.
There's a security order of course, and people that think that international institutions and governance doesn't work anymore, aren't focusing on hard security cause NATO is expanding, and getting stronger, and involving not just the Nordics, but also the Japanese, and the South Koreans, and the Australians. The Americans are building out the Quad and they're building out AUKUS, in part because of growing consensus on Russia among the advanced industrial democracies, growing concerns about China. But then also you have at the same time that the US-led national security institutions are getting stronger, the global economic architecture is fragmenting and it's becoming more competitive. And the Europeans are driving some rules, and the Chinese are driving others, and the Americans are driving others. No one's really happy about that, and it's becoming less efficient, and that's because it's a multilateral economic order at the same time as it's a unilateral unipolar security order.
And those are two things that we kind of feel right now, and it's not super comfortable. It's not super stable. The pieces move and they rub up against each other. The Americans trying to have more dominance in certain areas of the economy. When you can make it about national security, like if you talk about critical minerals and transition energy economies or semiconductors, for example, you see all that investment moving away from Taiwan and towards the US, the Netherlands, Japan, other countries. And you can see other areas where the Chinese have more influence in commercial ties and are getting more diplomacy oriented towards them in the Global South, for example, in the BRICS, and now France saying they want to go to BRICS meeting and that's not about national security, that's about economic integration. So these things, they're like tectonic plates and they don't align comfortably. And when they don't and when they move, sometimes you get an earthquake, sometimes you get a tsunami.
But then you have a global digital order. And the digital order, at least today, has no global institutions, has no real domestic regulatory structure and it's dominated by a small number of individuals that run tech companies. It's Meta, and it's Google, and it's Microsoft, and it's Elon and Twitter, and you know, it's individuals and tech companies. And these companies right now are devoting almost all of their time, almost all of their money, almost all of their labor towards getting there first, wherever there is, making sure that they're not going to be made bankrupt or undermined or creatively destructed, if you will, by their competitors, whether that's in China or whether that's, you know, sort of just a few miles down the road in the Valley or someplace else. And because that's the entire focus, or virtually the entire focus, and because the governments are behind and there's no international architecture, it means that at least for the next few years, the digital order is gonna be dominated by technology companies, and the geopolitics of the digital order will be dominated by the decision making of a very small number of individuals. And understanding that I think is the most important and most uncertain outcome geopolitically.
I'll tell you that if I could wave a magic wand, the one thing that I would want to have happen is I want these AI algorithms to not be distributed to young people, to children. If there's one thing I could do right now across the world, just snap my fingers, wave a wand and that regulation would be in place. Because, you know, when I was a kid, and we were all kids, right, except for the kids that are watching this, it was, you know, how you grew up was about nature and nurture. That's who you were. Emotionally, it's who you were intellectually, it's how you thought about the world. It's how your parents raised you, how your family raised you, your community raised you, and also your genetics. But increasingly today it's about algorithms. It's about how you interact with people through your digital interface that's becoming increasingly immersive. And the fact that that is being driven by algorithms that are being tested on people real time. I mean, you don't test vaccines on people real time even in a pandemic until you've actually gotten approvals and done proper testing. You don't test GMO food on people until you've done testing. And yet you test algorithms on people and children real time. And the testing that you're doing is AB testing to see which is more addictive, you know, which actually you can more effectively productize, how you can make more money, how you can get more attention, more eyeballs, more data from people. And I think particularly with young people whose, you know, minds are going to be so affected by the way they are steered, by the way they are raised, and by the way they are raised by these algorithms, we've gotta stop that.
I think the Chinese actually understand that better than the West does. And you know, it's interesting, you go to Washington, you say, "What do you think we can learn from the Chinese?" Not a question that they get asked very often. It's a useful one since they're the second largest economy and they're growing really fast. I would say when they decided that they were going to put caps on video games for kids, that was one that I remember, everyone I knew who was a parent of a teenager said, "I wouldn't mind that happening in the United States." Something like that on new algorithms, social media and AI for young people, I would get completely behind. And I hope that's something we can do.
But there are a lot of issues here, huge opportunities that come from AI, massive amount of productivity gains in healthcare, in longevity, in agriculture, in new energy development, in every aspect of science, and we'll get there because there's huge amounts of money, and sweat equity, and talent that is oriented towards doing nothing but that. But the disruptive negative implications of testing those things on 8 billion people on the planet, or anyone I should say, who's, you know, connected to a smartphone or to a computer, so more than 50% of the planet, that is not something we're taking care of and we're gonna pay the cost of that.
So anyway, you have just heard some of my TED Talk and what I think the implications are, I hope you'll check out the whole thing and I look forward to talking to you all real soon.
Where the US is gaining and losing influence
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here and a happy Monday from Vancouver. I'm here for the TED Conference. I've never done the main TED conference before, believe it or not, but giving a speech tomorrow and so came in a little early to meet some of all of these crazed public intellectuals and see what they have to say about the world. Should be kind of interesting, kind of fun.
But thought I would talk a bit about where US relations are with other countries in the world. I got a question from someone over the weekend that said, "Are there any countries where the United States actually has better relations today than they did ten years ago?" And I think this reflects, this wasn't an anti-Biden or pro-Trump sensibility, it's more the world feels like it's heading in a difficult direction, America losing influence. How do we think about that?
And it's mixed, right? It's mixed. It's very clear that China is much more commercially and economically powerful than it has been at any point in modern times. And it's also more willing to use its diplomatic leadership as well as the consistency of a single president, Xi Jinping, for eleven plus years now and going on however long he's alive. And so that I think makes people, especially that grew up in a time of more consistent global leadership from the United States, more discomforted or more excited, depending on their background. I think that also the United States is more, and we're looking it's some more divided, there are a lot of questions of why the United States would want to be the world's policeman, would try to drive global trade agreements when people inside the United States don't feel it necessarily benefits them. But the outcomes are a little more varied than that story would give you as a headline.
So for example, it is pretty clear that there's a lot of architecture being built by the United States with its allies in Asia. It's true that the US didn't get the Trans-Pacific Partnership done, and that was Obama's alleged pivot to Asia, never really happened. But now when you look at the Quad, you look at AUKUS, you look at the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and you look at the CHIPS 4. And then you look at all of the alignment of countries that rely on the United States, particularly for national security in Asia and the backlash that you see from a China that is increasingly dominant militarily in some Asian security conflicts and Asian security areas. And as a consequence you have Japan, South Korea, improving their relations with each other and with the United States, you have the Australians much more aligned. You have New Zealand joining AUKUS as a non-NATO nuclear member and much more hawkish towards China than they would've been even two years ago, nevermind ten.
The Philippines pivoting into that direction, Indonesia concerned. So there are some countries that are really dominated by China and Asia. I'm thinking about Laos, Cambodia. But those aren't the countries with geopolitical heft. And for the rest they're more aligned with the United States. In Europe, you'd certainly say that most Europeans are more aligned with the US and yes, you'd probably even say that about France. Now, again, not necessarily Macron-Biden or Macron-Trump, given the personalities of all involved, but the fact that the French have voted along with every other EU country for ten rounds of sanctions against the Russians and to invite Ukraine into the EU and are decoupling their economies from Russia. That is a level of very significant alignment that we weren't seeing over the last five or ten years. And some countries in Europe may not like it, may be discomforted, but they don't necessarily have good alternatives.
And then Mexico and Canada where a level of economic integration, political integration and security integration with the US is just overwhelming. So those are all places where I see the relationship with the US as either as strong or getting stronger, getting more aligned, at least for the present and not really mattering hugely just on leadership, also mattering structurally with what's happening in the world. Then you have the Middle East and you have emerging markets around the world. You have the so-called Global South, and that's where I think the US is really and rapidly getting displaced, particularly in the Middle East where the US is not as focused on fossil fuels from there. And where the security relationship has been more challenged, Congress less interested in allowing the most advanced weapons to go to some of these countries. Some focus on human rights and just less engagement given how much more the Asian and the European environments are just sucking up all the airspace for the US diplomatically.
So there, I think China is displacing the United States in influence and countries in the Middle East are feeling like they need to do everything themselves. In terms of the Global South, also lots of countries that feel a level of hypocrisy from the United States, don't feel aligned, feel that the revealed preferences of US policy are really not supporting what these countries need. Whether it's in response to the pandemic or response to big inflation or response to the Russian invasion. Anything else, climate change, thinking that their relationship with the US is becoming less important. And meanwhile, globalization is less of a benefit for them as Americans focus more on nearshoring and on providing jobs for Americans in the middle and working classes. And this will even speed up with AI developments. Finally, and most dangerously, rogue states, North Korea, Russia, Iran, these are countries that have relations which are not just badly broken with the US but increasingly dangerous.
These are countries willing to be hostile and take risks with their relations with the US and allies. And China, which is not a rogue state, but is a country where there is zero trust between them and the US. And the relationship is at its worst it's been in decades. So if you were to put all of that together and say which world is more stable, definitely not where we are today. Is global power at largely shifting towards the US, away from the US or pari-passu, staying the same? I'd say it's very mixed, but slightly away from the US if you add all of those things up. Still, lots of areas where the Americans have a lot of power, but also a lot of areas where the world and its geopolitical balance is shifting far faster than the Americans and its allies can effectively respond to it.
So that's a little bit of the big picture for me. Seems like the thing one to talk about at TED. We'll do more of that tomorrow and I hope everyone's doing well. Talk to you soon.
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