Ezra Klein: Over the past month, there are two dominant stories in American foreign policy. One of course is the war with Iran. The other is the much anticipated summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping of China. And I think if you look closely at both of these stories, you see that our foreign policies entered into a period of absolute and complete incoherence. Donald Trump said that the point of the war with Iran was to end the threat of the Iranian regime and to forever end their capability to get nuclear weapons.

Trump: They will never have a nuclear weapon. This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces.

Ezra Klein: Now, if you look at what is being considered, it appears that neither policy is going to be achieved. So, what are we doing there? What are we trying to achieve there? Now, and if you look at President Trump's entire time in politics, he's been committed to nothing so much as changing America's relationship with China.

Trump: We can't continue to allow China to rape our country. And that's what they're doing. It's the greatest theft in the history of the world.

Ezra Klein: Containing China, making sure we have power in that relationship or we begin to detach from it. But if you look at our policy not towards China and you look at that summit with China, are either of those things happening or are we in fact moving in the opposite direction?

Trump: The American and Chinese people share much in common. We value hard work. We value courage and achievement. We love our families and we love our countries. Together we have the chance to draw on these values to create a future of greater prosperity, cooperation, and happiness. There is much I disagree with in Donald Trump's foreign policy, but at the moment, there's just reality that it's not clear what it is. It's not clear what he is trying to achieve or what he is simply settling for or reacting to. So, I wanted to do an episode looking at China, Iran, but also just trying to assess Donald Trump as a geopolitical force and as a force that is remaking what America means and what its role is in the world. Ian Bremer is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group and gzero media. He's also the author of among other books, Every Nation for Itself: What Happens When No One Leads the World. As always, my email, Ezra Klein Show at NY Times.com.

Ezra Klein: Ian Bremer, welcome to the show.

Ian Bremer: Ezra, good to join you. So, I was going to do like a direct into the news question on Iran, but I I was reading your global risks report from the beginning of the year, and it made me want to ask a bigger question first, which is what to the meaning of Donald Trump? What does he historically and geopolitically represent? Um, I would say he's first and foremost a symptom, not a cause. Uh, of of trends that have been coming in the United States for a long time. Uh, uh, American people that believe that for various reasons that the political system does not represent them adequately. Uh, that something about it is broken. and needs someone who's going to shake it up, who isn't going to be an establishment figure. Uh I think that you see that reflected in a whole bunch of structural policies like a lack of US support for free trade and instead moving towards industrial policy and nearshoring and inshoring. You see it um in a move away from more open borders uh both in terms of response against illegal migrants but also restrictions on legal migration. Uh you see it in an unwillingness of the United States to get as involved in foreign wars and uh a demand for much greater burden sharing and other countries paying for their own defense. Those are structural things that Obama had to deal with and Biden had to deal with and Trump is benefiting from. But then you have a separate group of things that have to do with Trump the individual where he puts himself above the country. I mean I was in Davos in January and wasted three days of my life. I will never get back on Greenland. Right? That was not a thing for US national interest or foreign policy. That was purely vain gloriousness on the part of the US president to be able to put his name and plant his flag on a territory um that has um some of the strongest alliances around it that the United States could possibly rely on but which don't matter to Trump because he's not getting what he personally wants. And there are many examples of the latter um which are not as important for where geopolitics are heading over 5 10 20 years but they're really important for some of the conflicts that the US happens to be in and how they're addressing them right now. And of course they also play an an inordinate role in driving the headlines and the conversations that you and I frequently end up having.

Ezra Klein: So I take that point that Trump is symptom not cause but then he becomes cause. One of the ways you have described Trump, which I've not really heard many people say, is as the generator of a political revolution, a kind of upending of the American state and the way it works and the expectations one should have of it on the level of FDR.

Ezra Klein: So, talk me through that comparison. Why FDR and and what then is Trump's political revolution?

Ian Bremer: Well, FDR was the last time you had a president in the United States that was truly interested in upending the checks and balances that existed on the executive and in transforming the nature of US power as manifested by the government. Uh and there were some things that he tried to do that he failed at like packing the Supreme Court to 15 members or like uh throwing out purging a number of the members of his own democratic party who had been democratically elected. But there were a number of things that he succeeded at like creating a professionalized administrative state to actually do the business of the government that was independent, that was technocratic, that did not exist before, like the New Deal, the infrastructure of the country that was built, that allowed a middle class um and a working class to emerge in a stable way over several generations coming out of the guilded age and the Great Depression. Um, now a political revolution does not have to succeed and a political revolution does not have to be for for goals that you or I happen to agree with. But the structural condition of a people that are demanding a political revolution, that is something that will persist if it is not satisfied, if it is not satiated. And so what I see right now is President Trump uh driving a political revolution. He is attempting every day to end the checks and balances on the US executive. And you and I can come up with many examples of that. Many of them he is failing at. And it is very clear to me, I have a lot of confidence that he will not succeed in the political revolution that he will drive. But it's also pretty clear to me that um the United the American people are going to continue to demand um some very significant revolutionary responses to a system that they believe is not responding adequately to them and where that comes from. Is it the left? Is it the right? is a new party, what it happens to address, and does it have to be a president who is maximally incompetent um from a policy perspective or authoritarian in impulse um or is personally kleptocratic? Those are three descriptors of Trump that I think apply to a more extreme version with him than with any president in American history. I'm less concerned about the revolution. it it is a natural response to a system that's not seen as performing. But there are lots of reasons to be concerned about what President Trump is doing.

Ezra Klein: So one of the reasons I thought the FDR framing was interesting is that what I think gets right is that FDR exerted tremendous power sometimes through in ways that followed American norms, sometimes in ways as you know that didn't to build professionalized structures. Yes,

Ian Bremer: this is what is always very interesting about FDR. He's somebody who could have become a dictator. And what he creates is a highly professionalized administrative state.

Ezra Klein: He could have become or really asserted America as a global hegeimon in the old style, but instead invests in things like the UN. And that is not to wipe away all the ways in which we did use power, but out of him come the state as we know it and the global order as we know it. And those are the two things that not just Trump but Trumpism, project 2025, the foreign policy thinking of the people around him have really come to target. The administrative state to them uh is a

Ezra Klein: the deep state.

Ian Bremer: The deep state, a tool of weaponized liberal control. Mhm.

Ezra Klein: The global order is a way that America is instead of being the power that acts upon the world is being restrained from using that power and taken advantage of. And so there's been a an extended now concerted effort to to do something to both of those orders, right? To do something to the state, to do something to the global order. So, how would you describe the aim of Trump's political revolution? If if if FDR wanted to construct, does Trump just want to destruct? Does he want to own? Does he want to transact? What is he trying to achieve?

Ian Bremer: Well, it's why I focused on the narcissism uh that that he is above the law. It should not apply to him. It shouldn't apply to people around him. he can have his own former personal attorney as the attorney general, acting attorney general of the United States, and he will weaponize the legal and the judicial system in ways that he perceives it was weaponized against him. But the reality is what he's doing is far far beyond what we've seen before, just as we've had corruption in the country and we and it still persists across the political spectrum. And yet what Trump is personally driving is unprecedented in American history. So I do think a lot of what he's trying to do um is uh specific to his personal character, but I also think a number of the policies that he has been driving are policies that are broader in terms of the more revolutionary aspect of what the American people want. So for example, um we come out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump was the one that basically cut the deal with the Taliban to get the Americans out of Afghanistan. Now, a lot of people will say, "Well, that was a bad deal and you gave away the door to them." But most Americans would say ending 20 years of a failed war with trillions spent and hundreds of thousands of American lives disrupted to say nothing of what happened to the civilians in Afghanistan. Ending that was a positive thing. Trump got that done. Biden finally, you know, sort of got the troops out.

Ezra Klein: Well, they didn't they didn't like it when Biden actually Yes. finished that job.

Ian Bremer: Well, a lot of people, I think, were very happy to have it over. So, again,

Ezra Klein: that might be right, but it was when that's when Biden's approval rating dropped under 50 and never recovered. I always found that interesting because everybody says people hated the war, but they didn't like the they did not like what it looked like.

Ian Bremer: They didn't like the America began to withdraw

Ezra Klein: of the planes and the people hanging off of it and all of the rest. They wanted it to be cleaner. let's say it looked like an America's leaving Saigon and the embassy uh moment. Um and so I understand that. But the the broader point I'm trying to respond to here is that there are an awful lot of Americans that like the idea of the US should stop with all of these foreign wars that are thousands of miles away and have very little to do with American interests. And so if Trump goes to China and says, "Yeah, I'm not gonna I why why do I care about giving military support to Taiwan, which is 9,600 miles away?" Most Americans, not the establishment, not the Republican establishment, not the Democratic establishment, but most Americans would say, "Yeah, why are we doing that?" When Trump kicks Silinski out of the White House and says, "You don't have the cards." Turns out he's wrong. But I think most Americans think we've done too much for those folks. taxpayers shouldn't be paying for that when you're not paying for me. Where Trump then goes wrong, of course, is he had so much of the message at the beginning. He said, "Drain the swamp." And yet it's much swampier now than it was before. He said, "End the wars and now the United States is driving what could be a global recession directly because of him." him. I was just in the Dominican Republic yesterday and I had a meeting with all the CEOs and the president was there um in front of me and during

Ezra Klein: President Trump or the president of the

Ian Bremer: No, President Abanad. Yeah. Um and who's he's a very he's the opposite of Trump. He actually really cares about extending democracy and increasing checks and balances and limits on leaders across Latin America. That is the that that is what he wants to see happen. And I said to all of those all of the leaders in the room, I mean, basically 98% of their economy. I said, I know you're all upset about the inflation that you're seeing right now. And his approval ratings are down to about 55 on the back of that. They were at 70. Um, I said, do not blame your government for that. You can blame my government for that. Don't blame your government. Like literally, Trump is looking for anyone to blame for this war. that is exactly the opposite of how he was elected and yet he has personally decided he was going to do and now he can't extricate himself from and he can't blame anybody for um and so I do think that there was a lot of what Trump's initial agenda was about some of which he has stuck with like actually securing the border with Mexico much of which he has completely jettisoned that that reflects the the sensibilities of what a political revolution would be in service of in the United States. And and they all kind of have to do with with not that democracy doesn't work as a system, but rather that the American democracy has somehow gotten completely subverted by special interests. It's coin operated. It's controlled by money. There's a two-tier system. It doesn't apply to me. It applies to other people. I can't get what I want for my kids. Um, and by the way, I'm super sensitive to this because my mom was just like that when I grew up as a kid and she wasn't she didn't finish high school. Um, she had a feral intelligence that was very supportive of her two kids, but it wasn't books smart. She read the Inquirer every weekend and she a lot of the way she felt about her family. I will steal. I will cheat. I will do whatever is necessary to support them because I know the system is rigged. I I think that there's an enormous amount of that that exists across the country today in 2026.

Ezra Klein: So here's a question about this because I largely agree with that diagnosis and I also agree that American politics is tremendously corrupted by money and that sense that the country the system is not working for Americans.

Ezra Klein: Are Americans right about that? And and here's how I want to maybe steal man the other side of this. A couple years ago, there was this big covering the economist that based if you look at the American economy,

Ezra Klein: it is crushing the economies of the rest of the world. You wouldn't want to be Europe rather than US. You wouldn't want to be China where the medium disposable income is at $6,000.

Ezra Klein: You would want to be Russia trapped in this morass of a war with Ukraine. There's no one you would want to be rather than America. But in this period, the vibes, so to speak, they just get worse and worse and worse.

Ezra Klein: This has been confusing for economists. If you look at most measures, we're not doing that bad. Inflation is not that high anymore. I mean, the price level didn't go back down, but we're back to pretty normal levels of inflation. You have had income growth in the bottom half of the country. You have people acting in a way that does not reveal financial stress. They are spending. They are taking on debt. They are not defaulting on that debt. GDP growth is fine. We're the world leaders in AI. And then if you look at consumer sentiment, consumer sentiment about the country is worsened at the depths of the great recession.

Ezra Klein: There is something here

Ezra Klein: about how bad everybody thinks this is.

Ezra Klein: So how do you understand this sort of divergence between the ways that people would have looked at like the outputs of a system before, right? What is a system supposed to be creating American prosperity and American power? And we were getting a lot of both. And also people hate it and they feel like it is failing them as never before.

Ian Bremer: So I I'm really glad Ezra you you framed the question that way because I think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying. I also think that there are really good reasons that are legitimate for why Americans feel increasingly hard done by. But let's start with the big picture. The macro. The macro is that um so Xiinping recently met with Trump and uh he said we're in a thusidities trap and want to avoid that because that usually leads to war and throughidities trap so that everybody listening here knows what it's all about. It's that historically when you have a a lead power in a system that's in decline and a rising power that's challenging it frequently I mean the lead power is trying to hold on to power hold on to its system hold on to its advantages um for too long and uh the rising power is deeply unhappy about that and challenging challenging challenging and most of the time historically it leads to war right that was the the Chinese narrative and my counter to that uh first of all is that Xiinping did not want to be perceived in the United States as the person that is saying that the US is in decline. Cuz if he comes to Washington in September and does that, he's going to get hammered. It's going to be very different than the coverage he gets when he says it in in Beijing. Uh it's going to be hundred times every focus. This is what he's saying to Americans that we're in decline. Screw that guy. Right? So, number one, he shouldn't want to do that. But also it is manifestly untrue that over the past 2030 years the big structural changes in the world in terms of power is China's rising. The United States is not in decline but American allies are declining and they are declining because their productivity is down. Their growth is down. Their demographics are contracting. They're not investing in defense. They're not investing in technology. Now, there has been a stat that's been bandied around recently that shows that even Mississippi has higher per capita income than every European country. And that is true,

Ian Bremer: but you would not necessarily be happier or better taken care of as a citizen in Mississippi than you would be in lots of European states. Why? Because the social contract in Europe actually takes care of a lot more people. And you see this in terms of health care and you see this in terms of policing. You see it in terms of the educational system, maternity leave, paternity leave, all of these things. So let's recognize that um the the safety net in the United States does not has a lot more holes, is a lot more freight, just does not does not act as effectively as it does in a lot of other countries. in Canada for example, in Japan, in South Korea for example, those things are important. Um, also uh you have uh a a a system in the United States where Americans rightly perceive that if you have access to funds and network, your kids are treated completely differently. They have different opportunities. The American dream is not for everybody, no matter how hard you work. Um I I remember um Operation Varsity Blues and th this was this I mean we barely is a blip in today's like OJ Simpson like oh I remember when uh you had all of these parents that weren't wealthy enough to get their names on university buildings. So they couldn't buy their way in officially. So they had to buy their way in unofficially by like you know sort of giving a bunch of money so that their kids could get to be on a lacrosse team to make sure they were in a final place. But it's like of course it works that way. And we see that in terms of absolute inequality numbers in the economy. We see it in terms of um the ability of class mobility which I mean Americans are far less class mobile today than the Europeans are than the Canadians are. That's shocking. I mean like back in the 70s and 80s the United States had some of the greatest class mobility in the OECD. And in just 40 years that turned completely on its head. Um and then you have a couple of other things which is which is not about the economy but is really important which is the grievancebased nature of the US political system where you increasingly are electing leaders that are saying how much that they are that you are being taken advantage of by X. Um, and obviously Trump is the genius, the master at this, but when I saw Zoran Mandani go outside Ken Griffin's apartment, and I mean this isn't some Arab billionaire that doesn't spend any time in New York and doesn't spend any money in New York. This is one of the the guys that actually has spent the most in developing jobs and his company in this city. And he stands in front of this guy's building and points to the apartment and says, "This is the problem." that like that's not who America is. America as a country is supposed to be everybody builds up. Everyone has an opportunity. When you don't feel that way, you start demonizing these people. And another part of the problem is that if I look at the absolute top billionaires in the country right now, I look at Elon and I look at Jeff Bezos um and I I see I look at Mark Zuckerberg and I see the absolute percentage of money that they spend on charity on public policy related things. I look at their interest in acting as stewards for humanity as it is today as opposed to making, you know, Mars safe for humanity in some undefined future. Like that that lack of stewardship, that lack of belief in your fellow American, not to mention your fellow human on the planet, is something that I think is driving a lot more anxiety and in some cases hate. And that's not to disagree with your initial question of, well, isn't America doing great? Sure, it is at the macro level.

Ezra Klein: I'm strong manning a view. I have my own views on how America is doing, and I don't think we're doing great, just to be clear.

Ian Bremer: But no, but but I understand that that the way you put that out there from a macro perspective, the US is doing great.

Ezra Klein: The other obvious explanation here is inflation. And and let me put the two versions of this to you to see what you think. So, one answer to why the economic vibes in particular are bad is just we've been in a period of inflation, right? That's what turned people on the Biden economy after the pandemic. And then particularly with the war in Iran and the tariffs, Trump is kept in a very salient, you see it on the gas station board, you see it in the news way, just driving up prices of basic things. And so maybe all this is just inflation. People hate prices going up. I hate it.

Ezra Klein: The hard part about this, which an economist will tell you, we've had much longer periods of much more inflation before that. Yes, we had pandemic inflation, but aside from that, you know, 2-year period, I mean, inflation in the 70s, in the 80s, it was just much much much higher and people were much happier with the economy. So, how do you see the prices story? Does that explain enough of this or not?

Ian Bremer: I think it matters in the sense that there's recency bias like you're mentioning the 70s and most people don't remember when they couldn't afford a mortgage for their house because you know the rates were like you know a 10%. And so now when they so when they were basically nothing right and then suddenly they hit 5 67 that feels bad and the fact that this the broad affordability thing after Americans have been taught that you don't need to worry about inflation for decades. I think it's relevant. I think it is a point. I think the fact that Trump began his State of the Union by pointing out that there was a gas station in Iowa that had gas for under $2 a gallon and people go and they gas up their SUVs and they do it every week and they know what that costs. It's a very specific price point and then suddenly it's $4 a gallon. That feels very very different to them. So I I think it is a real data point, but the broader point that you're making, which is there's something much bigger, much more structural going on than purely what you can tease from these economic data points is essential. Let me take postprog I'm going to give because I've been thinking about this question lately and I have my own answer to it. Um because I think some of these answers don't work and and here's why.

Ezra Klein: So the vibes have been bad and getting worse. And when I say the vibes here, I mean a measurable set of things about how people feel about the direction of the country, how they feel about the economy, how they feel about the future.

Ezra Klein: And a lot of we can people tend to look at that and move backwards to things that they have every right to be upset about and maybe have been for a long time. But the social contract, so to speak, the safety net in the US prior, at least to the giant Medicaid cuts and affordable care act increases that are coming in play this year. It has been better here than it has been in the past. So we have gotten closer to where Europe is, not further away. There are more states where you get, you know, prek, more states where you get subsidized childare, more

Ezra Klein: people like Obamacare. People like Obamacare. Absolutely.

Ezra Klein: But the vibes are worse. They were worse in 2014, worse in 2016, worse in 2018. I I think that first you cannot separate this from attentional platforms. I think that algorithmic media is negatively biased. It is towards outrage, towards anger. But if you just go on X, which you talked about, is Elon Musk a steward? I think the thing he thinks he did that was important for the country was to buy Twitter and make it a zone of what he would call free speech so he could tell everybody all day uh about the conspiracies that are obsessing him and about our declining fertility rate and he could let the neo-Nazis back onto the platform. And so you have like one of these central spaces of political information and uh sentiment construction has gone from toxic to unbelievably toxic. And that was the big social investment of the richest person in the world to do that to us. And but I think this is true across a bunch of them. I think and you and I I think would both agree that this was not an actual social investment for the betterment of the people of

Ian Bremer: I don't believe yes I am not a huge fan of the way Elon Musk is trying to shape American and global politics but I think that he believes he is you know trying to save us from the woke mind virus and collapsing fertility and but I think that sentiment is a complex system and what has happened is that there are enough things that have tipped badly that we've entered into a negative feedback loop and it's very very hard to get out of a negative feedback loop

Ian Bremer: Because there's no one thing

Ezra Klein: if wages go up, it's actually not enough. Right? People's view, for instance, of crime, crime is really low in America right now

Ezra Klein: compared to where it was in the '90s, for example. I posted on that just the other day, and people are surprised like that's got to be fake news.

Ian Bremer: People still feel very upset about it, right? And and one reason

Ezra Klein: murder particularly. Yeah. And and so I think what you have is a situation where there's no one thing, but basically lots of negative sentiment get like slingshoted forward on algorithmic media. This is AI. This is everything else. And there's just a generalized sense that things are bad. I mean, Donald Trump is scary to a lot of the country. But even to the people who like him, he's not doing a great job. He's not doing what he said he would do for you, right? And it's chaotic and it's crazy and he is making you afraid of the other side.

Ezra Klein: Again, it's grievance based. It's

Ezra Klein: grievance based, but not just grievance, right? It's conspiratorial. It's scary. It's people trying to destroy the country if you don't like them. And in some cases, right, the stakes here are very high. Like I do think Donald Trump is destroying significant parts of at least what the country has been. And so I think there's always this effort to create an underlying material reality to sentiment. And it's always true that sentiment has some underlying material reality. And there's a lot wrong with the material reality and the way American politics works.

Ezra Klein: But I think sentiment has become a little bit free floating now. And one reason it is not responsive to the economy getting better, one reason it is not responsive to things changing, one reason it has diverged so much from the macro data particularly since the pandemic. Um my wife Annie Larry just wrote a great piece on this in the Atlantic is that there is something happening in the system of attention. Like I think now a system that has just moved into its grammar is angry. So look, I I I I think that we do need there there are there's an interplay between the independent and depend variable here to get really wonky, right? Um in other words, you have underlying issues that come from free trade, robotics, innovation that hollows out a whole bunch of the middle class in the United States and in Europe at to the advantage of emerging middle classes in China and India and the so-called global south, the former emerging market.

Ezra Klein: I just want to stop on that. What does it mean to have hollowed out the middle class if the middle class is purchase purchasing power etc is higher than it's been in the past? This is where you have something tricky happening. I could give you my explanation, but I want to hear yours of what you mean when you say that.

Ian Bremer: What what I mean when I say that is you have large numbers of communities that no longer have the same industrial base, the same civic connection, the same institutions around them, the the Robert Putnham B.

Ezra Klein: So this I think is much more specific and I I wish people would talk in this language. We didn't hollow out the middle class. be hollowed out places.

Ian Bremer: Places. Yes, places. But places that have community and civic engagement and citizens.

Ezra Klein: But this is important.

Ian Bremer: It's super important and we don't talk about those are that's a fair point. But those are the precedents. Those the antecedent conditions that then lead to a population that is mostly male that was that's doing pretty well economically. Um but um and they're not all white. Some of them are Hispanic. Some of them are black. They're living in poor urban areas and rural areas that are doing, you know, again, really feel very differently and are going down compared to where they were. Uh, and they're the ones that are voting for Trump, not once but twice. And the idea that this can be driven by something that is vibe based as opposed to real anticedent conditions. I reject that. But once you have that, there is a flywheel. Once you have that, suddenly those other the algorithmic conditions really matter. And here I want to really get into the macro structural for a second which is that I I had this uh the first big book that I wrote back in 2006 was called the JC curve and I doubt you even remember it right it's a long time ago

Ezra Klein: I who doesn't remember the J

Ian Bremer: exactly it was a small thing um at the time was big for me and it was about how um countries did and didn't fall apart the Jay is the relationship between openness and stability and that you have some countries that are stable able because they're open. Some that are stable because they're closed. Stable because they're open, the United States, Japan, the Nordics, stable because they're closed, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia. Countries that are stable because they're closed want to stay closed because if they open up a little bit, the country can suddenly fall apart. Countries that are stable because they're open are more stable than countries that are stable because they're closed. And the reason I bring it up is because it was not only something that was really really like kind of promoted at the time as wow this is a breakthrough. It's also completely wrong today. It no longer applies because the world has changed. And the thing about the world that has changed is what you just got at. It's technology. Technology back in 2006 was actually advantageous to more open societies. It was the communications revolution. It was bottom up. It's what got us the Arab Spring. It's what got you the colored revolutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. People that suddenly were interconnected that could learn more about their fellow citizens and what they were doing and organize, learn more about their governments and their predation and their corruption even though the government didn't want them to necessarily know about that. It undermined authoritarian systems and it strengthened liberal societies, open societies, right? Um then you move from that system to one where technology is top down. It's a surveillancebased system. It's a databased system. It's algorithmic nudging of people by other people and even by bots. Um, it's attentionbased, it's addictive, and it benefits closed societies, and it undermines open societies, and it's creating a level of stress. It's creating a level of anger, and it's a level of outrage, but it also has a political gravity to it, and it's weakening the United States. And it's much worse in the US than it is in place like Japan or even than it is in Europe, though it's coming in Europe, too. But the Chinese don't have this problem at all because they're able to actually control and nudge what patriotic behavior is.

Ezra Klein: Let me try something here because I think this is I want to build on this in very certain way and get at a difference between China and America.

Ezra Klein: But but let me take what you just said in a different direction.

Ezra Klein: I think one of the fundamental problems in the country is that we have broken the relationship between technology and places. And so we just said a second ago that the problem is not just that we've hollowed out this abstract concept of the middle class because I can show you like the disposable income of the middle class on a graph and it does not look hollowed out compared to 1980. Got it?

Ezra Klein: Like they're richer.

Ezra Klein: But these communities did get hollowed out. And you sometimes hear, you know, self-satisfied Democrats, right? This was Hillary Clinton after the 2016 election say, "Well, the places that voted for me represent whatever it was and twothirds or something of the GDP growth in this country." Right? So, okay. So, so there's a a redistribution of opportunity to these cities. Superstar cities like New York, NSF, and Los Angeles and Boston, they've gotten richer and richer and richer and richer and richer. In the past, what that would have done is create a new engine of opportunity. You move to San Francisco and you're a firefighter, you cut hair, you do, you know, you work in some job and then your kids are there and they get richer and so on. Right? This is what is happening in China. In China, the cities are getting richer and there is this huge movement into them. In America,

Ezra Klein: those cities made it impossible to build housing.

Ezra Klein: And Silicon Valley, I was just driving around the other day where the the part of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara area, where you have Meta and Nvidia, and it is so crazy to me that you do not have places for people to live. Like it's just it's strip malls and it's single family homes.

Ezra Klein: We've not built huge towers connect to them, right? Like you look at what Shenzen looks like. And here where we've invented AI, it looks like an office park.

Ezra Klein: And this I mean this is a major part of abundance obviously, but this is the destruction, the literal destruction of when we talk about social mobility. How did social mobility actually work? What it actually did was places got rich and people moved to them. But we have really really good evidence now that that doesn't happen. And in fact what's happening is richer people move to richer places and poor people move out of them because and this is why uh there's energy in stepping in front of you know Ken Griffin's god knows how expensive apartment in New York is that the thing is you can't afford to live in New York anymore and raise a family.

Ezra Klein: And so Ken Griffin, sure he's here and they've spent a lot of money here. And I'm not saying New York's housing problems are Ken Griffin's fault. I don't think they are. But the feeling that it has not benefited you that it's actually true. Like we know this is true. We know that what used to happen is that it used to be that people would move from the poor areas to the richer areas and now they move out of the richer areas and into the because they can afford gentrification. It's not just gentrification. It is just they cannot afford to live there. And and I just want to harp on this for a minute because I do think it's really important and a thing we miss. We hollowed out huge number of communities in this country and then we gated we gated the places where the opportunity had moved to. And so that has killed mobility. It's not some like nature of the technology. It's not what they've done in China. And we've done it because like the way you used to do this is you built where there were where there's money and opportunity. And instead they've made it very very very hard to build where there's money.

Ezra Klein: Let's not lionize China for a second because you know the only the only way you get into a city in China is a hooku system where the state actually gives you the right to actually move there. They've overbuilt in some places and the real estate crisis is massive. All of those things and you remember that's not just about cities. It's also about experiences.

Ezra Klein: Again, I mean the Disney piece that was done in the New York Times a few months ago.

Ezra Klein: Do you want to describe this? where they followed um this woman who was uh workingass and she had saved up an enormous amount to be able to get to Disney with her kids and she did and it followed um how expensive it was and how difficult her experience was and how Disney which used to be the great equalizer that everyone would go everyone would be a part of it and and her experience compared to someone that just flies in and pays for the skip the line experience and everything everything else. And so even a place like Disney, which is the magical vacation that all Americans get to come and have the same experience, has become completely stratified. And so much of corporate America is stratifying every experience you have, not just place, literally every experience, every ball game you go to, every every airline you fly on, every experience Americans have. If you can make money out of stratification, you will do that and you will do much less to commodify. Of course, the danger and the concern is that when that happens with AI and so the people that don't pay for AI are the ones that get the ads and have substandard AI that's the four you feed and the wealthy people can actually be super empowered and become more than human because they have AI that's giving them real information that's actively curated for them um then can help them to accomplish things that will improve their lives that almost every dystopian near dystopia novel movie in the United States right now is about some form of that shifting of America into halves and have nots where there is no mobility between the two. And again, it's the lack of mobility that comes down. You can't have an American dream if you can't make it. I grew up in the projects and I feel like I was the American dream, but I know how close I was to not actually making it and how kids I grew up with that were smarter than me in high school and in grammar school didn't make it. And most of the people and I still I'm Facebook friends with a lot of them and I go back to Chelsea every once in a while. The kids that I know in those neighborhoods now will not make it to the same degree. That lack of ability to achieve mobility in a super stratified society, technologically enabled, capitalistically enabled, that I think is what subverts the American dream more than anything else that we've done. And this is where I think a lot of our measures of inequality do not capture the modern experience of inequality. You just mentioned how real world experience is stratified.

Ezra Klein: Digital experience is stratified. You turn on Tik Tok, you turn on Instagram and it is feeding you people living better lives than you

Ezra Klein: all the time.

Ezra Klein: You are watching the billionaires. You are watching the influencers. You are watching all these people succeeding in a way you're not. Or you're seeing people who are like drafting off of the anger that creates, right? Those are both there. You're watching people who are better looking than you. I mean, it is

Ezra Klein: the the kind of comparison it has not just gender

Ezra Klein: on that one, but I mean, you know,

Ian Bremer: well, maybe better looking than me. I I take that. Um the the constancy of comparison.

Ezra Klein: Yeah.

Ezra Klein: And the size of the world you're comparing yourself to and also the falsity of it. The way you're comparing yourself to fake versions of other people's lives, right? Not their real life with the diapers they have to change and the fights with their partner, but like the fake curated life. So there's that, right? I think that's a a contributor to all this, too. But there's also just like the wealth you see that you are not part of. Um, and then I I agree with you on AI. This also why I think that people need to think a little bit differently about the data center moratorum questions because it sounds like a good idea if you're not confident in AI, if you're worried about what's about to happen to try to just slow down or shut down the data centers. But what you're going to do is make compute much more expensive. There's we're already we already do not have enough compute for how much people want it. I think a lot of people on the left who have sort of told themselves a story. Yeah. That AI is not powerful. It's not a real technology. It's overhyped. It's [ __ ] So then it doesn't really matter if people don't have access to it because why would you want access to the hallucination machine?

Ian Bremer: Yeah.

Ezra Klein: But actually at its upper levels it's a very powerful technology now. And if it's something that the rich can afford and as you're saying, we get a new digital divide where, you know, the rich get these amazing AI agents that are giving them incredible information and doing all this on their behalf and making sure they get the best deals on everything and they're out there, you know, sorting the internet for them and and then what everybody else can afford is manipulative, crappy, hallucinating. Um, and you never even meet those people, right? I mean like in other words they won't even be part of your experience because algorithmically they'll be sorted out. So you would never date one. Right? I mean again 50 years ago 30 years ago a lot of people would meet people from different classes in their community in their schools in different institutions and you got intermingling that way. Uh that's already not happening because of the gated community issue. Not already not happening because of corporate stratification. AI will end that if it goes in the present direction.

Ian Bremer: Yeah. AI as agents for the rich and erotica and the simulacrum of companionship and entertainment for the poor is a very very dystopian world and I think people underrate its possibility.

Ezra Klein: Yeah, I completely agree. And yet the ch again the Chinese are doing this completely differently.

Ian Bremer: How are they doing it?

Ezra Klein: They don't believe that AI is going to be such a huge advantage for the population as a whole. They really don't like the Tik Tok model, which is one of the reasons why when Trump was so interested in having it, they let him have it without doing other big parts of the negotiations to make that occur. Their focus and they also are deeply concerned about what it means to have people in China hallucinate on the back of AI models. Like, if you're going to hallucinate, it better be proc stuff. It can't be GPT, right? Um and and and yet the Chinese are all in on using AI for defense purposes, all in on using it for industrial purposes, all in in innovating and inventing making sure that all their strategic sectors are at and their government is as fully integrated with the most advanced technologies as humanly possible because that's how they project power. That's how they get growth. So in the United States, it's exactly the opposite. The United States says, "We're going to build these massive LLMs and they're going to create the singularity and artificial general intelligence. We're going to treat intelligence as a utility and human capital will become supplanted by token capital. That's what you're really going to need. But who's going to have token capital? It's not going to be most Americans." And so again, the J curve used to be this idea that more open societies became more stable because they were open. But that is facilitated by technology that makes that system work well. Suddenly when you have AI driving more stability for a closed system like China, at the very least you would say the J today is a U. That there are no longer structural advantages to the stability of a country by being open if you're technologically empowered. And if this trend continues, there would be structural advantages to closed systems as opposed to open systems. It's the opposite of what you want to see.

Ezra Klein: I want to talk about the China US relationship here because one of the things that as Donald Trump rose in 2016 and then in 2024 that he was the most insistent on was the threat to America was China. And the way in which American policy had to change was we had to contain China. We had to stop faffing around in the Middle East and we had to be focused on getting over free trade and recognizing that all of this system had been used for China to rise and to allow America to begin to fall and he was going to change that. We just saw the Trump Xi Jinping summit. What did we see at that summit? And and and how does where we are now reflect the sort of argument he's been making for years?

Ian Bremer: Well, no faffing around the Middle East. There's now lots of faffing. Um, and China is the big threat to now China's the leader uh that he treats with the greatest respect. He talks about a G2 with China. It was a strongly positive summit from China's perspective. They consider historic. They consider a big win. It it helps to solidify their prestige on the global stage acting as equals with the United States which is much bigger, much more powerful. Um Trump failed uh on on April 2nd, liberation day. Uh he was the the intention of the second term was very much a continuation of the first that the Chinese were the big threat and he was going to put heavy tariffs on the Chinese whose economy was not performing particularly well and that was going to force them to capitulate, force them to bend the knee. He was wrong. He failed. And when they hit back, they hit back hard, not just on reciprocal tariffs, but also then took critical minerals and rare earths, put a gun on the table and said, "We will literally shut down your industrial um production."

Ezra Klein: Describe what that was and why were they were able to do that.

Ian Bremer: So for some 30 years now, the Chinese have been investing in um exploitation of critical minerals and rare earths around the world that are essential for a lot of military and industrial purposes, uh energy purposes, other uh infrastructure that we all rely on. Um and the Americans were not investing in it, thinking, well, it's cheaper coming from these Chinese sources, so great, we'll just buy it from them. Kind of like the way the Europeans decided to get a lot of their cheaper energy from Russia. kind of the way all of us decided to get our semiconductors from a 100 miles off of the Chinese coast. All of which is true. If politics don't matter, if politics matter and you don't trust those countries and maybe they might act to make vulnerable your just in time supply chain, suddenly you have a problem. And the lock that China had globally from 30 years of these investments, including in the processing of these critical minerals inside China themselves, suddenly they said, "If you want to get them, you need a license. You need to apply for a license to China. If you're not considered on the right side of the law with us, we're not going to provide you with those critical minerals." And you had suddenly CEOs of big companies going to Mara Lago telling Trump, "You better cut a deal with these Chinese because otherwise like literally our factory floor is going to shut down." And so the Americans had to buckle, had to suddenly say, "Okay, we got to do a deal with these guys. We can't afford a trade boycott. We got to sit down and figure out like, you know, they give us some on fentinel and we give them some on tariffs and let's talk about Taiwan and the rest." And that was a complete climb down turnaround of the sort that we've more recently seen with Trump's war goals in Iran once the Iranians broke glass pull emergency lever and shut down the straight of H

Ian Bremer: for H for H for H for H for H for H for H for H for H formuz which he thought they wouldn't do. In both cases Trump's eyes were bigger than his stomach. He has a big punch but also a glass jaw. Can't take one hard from the other from another side. Um and the Chinese are now in a position of much greater leverage. So the summit that you just had was two leaders sitting together and saying we must find a way to work together constructively. You may not like us, you may not trust us, it's vice versa, but we will ensure that we work together constructively so we don't get into a fight that does a lot of damage that you don't want to see done. And that was what happened.

Ian Bremer: So how would you rate this as a substantive outcome? because you could say either Donald Trump was right about the danger posed by China uh and so this is a problem as he's moving into this more consiliatory climb down posture or you could say you know many of Trump's critics on this you're being too belligerent these countries need to work together and maybe he fumbled himself into a reasonable outcome which is constructive dialogue a relationship between the two leaders and the recognition that in a world of global challenges like AI and climate change and pandemics, it actually is important that we have good relationships. And so, you know, you wouldn't count this as a win from Trump's rhetoric, but should we be happy with where this has ended up?

Ian Bremer: Well, we should be happy that it turns out that Trump does not have the ability to commit suicide on the global stage. If he had persisted with his intended policy, which was we will force these Chinese to capitulate to us, the Americans would have been in a massive recession and and so would the world. Um, he backed out. So, is that a win? Of course, it's not a win. There are big wins under Trump. There foreign policy wins. I mean, for example, in his first term, USMCA, which at the time he said was the best deal ever. Now he says it's a horrible deal. But the re I don't care what he says, the reality was USMCA was a significant improvement over NAFTA. The reality is the Abraham Accords were a big win in creating more stability um in the Middle East and the Gulf.

Ezra Klein: Yeah. Boy, does that look like a stable region of the world to me now.

Ian Bremer: It does not. But at the time, it was something that no one thought could be doable. and it was a stable it was a much more stable region until Trump decided to go in and actually blow up um the Iranians with Israel. Um so again I can point to plenty of places Venezuela on balance a win and perceived as a win by most populations across Latin America because Venezuela had been exporting a lot of instability and now it looks a lot more stable with a government that is a lot more attractable and focusing on long-term economic development. Those are all wins. China is not a win. China's a loss. China's a loss because Trump's intended policy, which is we need to beat these guys and here's how we're going to do it, completely failed. And at the same time, he was pursuing policies to support himself individually. Again, Tik Tok, he got Tik Tok, that that doesn't help the country, that helps him. It's advantageous in the same way that Elon owning X is politically advantageous for Trump. Doesn't help the country. you and I agree on that. Um, so what you have is a more stable environment with a China that rightly feels like they have more leverage over this guy and this government.

Ian Bremer: So one of the dimensions of competition here and one that you all emphasized in that 20 early 2026 paper on risks is energy.

Ezra Klein: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And the way you put it is that America's become the largest pro state in a way I think a lot of Americans have not tracked. It's really a quite remarkable story from fracking to to to where we've ended up as a huge exporter of energy.

Ezra Klein: We produce so much more oil than any country in the world.

Ian Bremer: Yeah, we produce more than Saudi Arabia. I mean, we used to talk about energy independence. We got it.

Ezra Klein: Yeah. But we got independence on the old structure of energy and that China is becoming the largest electrostate. You have a tremendous chart. I say tremendous in the sense that I found it really shocking to see that China's exports of green energy technology are much larger now than our exports of oil and gas. that they're sort of exporting the infrastructure of the 21st century while we're exporting the energy of the 20th century

Ezra Klein: and theirs is becoming so much cheaper at scale.

Ezra Klein: So tell me about that competition because the the energetic foundations of countries are important. Like Trump has really doubled down on America's prostate. Tell me about that competition.

Ian Bremer: I have no problem with Trump doubling down on America's a state. Um, I I think that the United States has the ability to be um more effective on uh efficient regulations on expanding production to have cheap energy uh for Americans and to export around the world. The resources are in the United States. It makes sense. uh Mark Carney in Canada uh leaves Justin Trudeau uh in the dust and he's running the Liberal Party and he's actively trying to ensure that Canada can be more effective as an oil producer and transiting and exporting nation. Smart for them, right? But what Trump is also doing is saying, "I don't want the new energy. I don't actually want wind. I'll shut it down. I don't want solar, which is insane. I don't want electric vehicles, which is crazy. I mean, so, you know, again, go to Iran for a second because it's important. One of the biggest long-term implications of Iran, the war in Iran, is that OPEC is over. Uh, the UAE left OPEC in the middle of the Iran war when they aren't actually able to produce or export much of anything, a little bit. Um, why did they do that? Because they understand that they're going to have stranded resources long term.

Ian Bremer: because there's not going to be as much of a market for their oil. So, they want to get as much oil out as humanly possible as soon as the war is over as soon as the blockade is done and the strait is open so that they can then get on with being a modern technologically empowered citystate. Um, they're doing at a small level and we should be very happy that OPEC is gone because it is a cartel monopoly over oil. That's not good for the United States. It's not good for anyone globally to have a cartel except the people that control the cartel. They're doing at a small level what the Chinese are doing at scale, which is they want to be dominating the investments in energy that will power compute that will power AI at scale and cheap and they want to do it for their own country and they want to export it. Now, Texas understands this, right? Red state Texas at least for now. Um, see where Telerico goes, right? Paxton, whatever. Um point is they are driving more renewable energy production than any other state in the United States. They're also driving more petrol production than any other state in the United States. Um that is the appropriate response for the world's most powerful country is we should be able to do both of those things. But I I want to clarify one thing here because we're talking here about the production of energy.

Ezra Klein: Yeah.

Ezra Klein: China's control, the thing they're exporting

Ezra Klein: is not sunshine, right? the thing they're exporting which we are way behind on and that's true for Texas too

Ezra Klein: is solar cells what you use the physical machinery that turns sunshine into energy

Ezra Klein: and and so that thing right which the Biden administration is very concerned about this was a big part of of their plans to try to reshore some of the supply chain

Ezra Klein: but what China has is the infrastructure of how any country becomes electrostate you buy that infrastructure from them and and so what is the power of that not just of the energy the two states are producing or the kinds of it but we are driving in on energy production but they're driving in on energy electrostate infrastructure.

Ian Bremer: Yeah. So the in the same way that the critical minerals gives you that influence because if you don't have them you can't allow your economy to grow and if you don't have the infrastructure that allows your energy um to be built at scale and cheaply from China then your economy won't grow and you can't have AI if you don't have the ability to drive energy for compute at scale. So, China wants to be at the commanding heights of where the global economy is going. Now, I mentioned before we are very short- term in the way we've thought about these investments. That's why we the Europeans got into trouble on gas. That's why we're all in trouble on semiconductors in Taiwan. You can fix these things. We're doing it with critical minerals right now late. But the Americans are now saying, "Okay, well, we now we need to start investing. The Pentagon needs to invest in these companies. We'll do it in the US. We'll do it in Chile, in Brazil, uh anywhere around the world that we can find the critical minerals we're going to go in. And by the way, the fact that the the Chinese have put that loaded gun on the table, once you do that, you can't do it twice. So now we've seen, oh, they've got this leverage, that's dangerous, will invest. And within 5 to 10 years, they will no longer have that key choke hold over the United States in all of these minerals that we need that we need for, by the way, for our defense capability. So the Chinese, if they were ever to get into a fight with us, the first thing they would do is shut that down because it would strangle our ability to continue to build the military-industrial complex. You're not going to fight a war effectively. People worry about Taiwan. If there were a fight like that, you'd be very vulnerable given all of that. The same thing will happen on energy, but the longer we wait for it to happen, the greater the Chinese lead. And right now we're digging a hole for ourselves by investing as much as we can in the energy technologies that are not getting cheaper at scale and and politically saying that we oppose the technologies of the future that will be essential for growth of our populations and essential most importantly for AI compute.

Ezra Klein: America's lead in AI.

Ezra Klein: It's not a huge lead but lead of you know let's call it 6 months something like that. uh we have the best chips. The B administration put export controls down on that. Trump has sort of unwound those and Trump personally has done that cuz his administration mostly opposed it.

Ezra Klein: Well, let me ask you what you think of that decision because I have found myself a little bit more conflicted on this than many people in the the public discourse. The argument for keeping them back is that if China doesn't have the best chips, we will maintain a lead in AI. The counterargument is that if we deprive them of the chips, they will accelerate and be able to accelerate their chips industry. And we have all these dependencies on China. And China being dependent on Nvidia chips would create a dependency on us, right?

Ezra Klein: And so the idea that you're going to you're not going to stop their AI because they have so much energy. They have like infrastructure we don't have, right? There's a lot they can do to sort of supercharge.

Ezra Klein: But this lead we imagine ourselves of having a couple months, is that really so worth uh making Huawei chips eventually as good as Nvidia?

Ian Bremer: Well, that argument, the second argument you just made was a reasonable argument before the Biden administration uh starts putting all the export controls on. Once you've done that and you've shown the Chinese you've got to invest in your own semiconductors because we will crush you, then they do it. It's just like when the Chinese say, "We're going to force you to have licenses for rare earths." At that point, the Americans say, "Okay, that that's unacceptable. Now, we're going to invest." So, the idea that holding back H200 chips from Nvidia is going to make the Chinese unsee what we have already done to them, that's a that's a spurious argument, right? So once you're involved, once you've declared a cold war on semiconductors, then you should be consistent with that policy. Then all you're doing with the H200s is letting them catch up when they're spending.

Ian Bremer: They are moving as fast as humanly possible in the constraints of their economy to catch up with the Americans on semiconductors. It also matters a little bit less in the sense that if they have really cheap energy, you can run the same AI with more semiconductors. just is more energy to actually make it work. So it's not like you get better AI with better semiconductors. It's just less efficient. Same AI, same AI. So that that is the point. Well, I do think it's both as best as I can tell. So I mean I know people who were just on this big trip and talked to a bunch of Chinese AI firms and every single one of them said what is binding them is compute. That they had better compute. It is true that you can just run more energy through more lower quality chips and and in some way like get to to the to the limit,

Ezra Klein: but the people I know who actually do AI don't think that's quite true. That having access to the best chips and those chips getting better does seem to keep you or help keep you a little bit ahead. Everyone I know in Silicon Valley um were surprised by how advanced Deep Seek was

Ezra Klein: when they released it. So you're right that the gap between the United States and China is less great than a lot of the American AI, you know, sort of leaders were talking about 3 years ago, 5 years ago. My my core point here is that Nvidia is pressing an issue that is of sole interest to Nvidia. It is of no interest whatsoever to the country. It is not aligned with US policy towards China. It is not aligned with a China that is working as hard as possible to build that semiconductor capacity and they will get there. They will get there.

Ezra Klein: So what has happened since Trump lifted the export controls? The Chinese are still are they're trying to promote as much nativeization of Chinese chips as humanly possible. They clearly have a whole bunch of companies that would much rather have access to the H200s, but unless it is a big breakthrough for them. It is not necessarily worth accepting a quid proquo that would clearly be necessary to the United States in saying, "Oh, yes, that's a big give that you just made to us." So, right now, the big argument here is about how fast the Chinese are capable of catching up when that is their overwhelming desire. And that's the only place where they're behind, right? In terms of like the capability of their talent, they're producing an awful lot in terms of um the the the coding uh that they have. Uh they're world class. Um and in terms of the energy and the ability to build and direct, they're there. And in terms of their political focus and I think that brings us back to the question of the Middle East which is one of the arguments of of Trump and the people around him is we need to focus on China. We need to focus on this competition. Instead what the US government is focusing on is Iran.

Ezra Klein: I am myself as somebody who's covered this and talks to people here confused about what is happening. Like is it's like the Schroinger's war at this point. Is is the war alive? Is the war dead? How would you describe the state of America's war with Iran?

Ian Bremer: I actually posted, I think it was last week, a graphic that I put together that showed uh Schrodeners's um Iran agreement like is it a pe is it a ceasefire? Is it a peace deal? Is it

Ezra Klein: great minds cliche like

Ian Bremer: I know exactly. I mean because he says different things inside the same post, right? Um, look, he the reason we don't know if it's dead or not is because Trump is desperately looking for an off-ramp. Uh, but he also wants someone to blame and he wants the offramp to look credible and it doesn't. He understands that right now it looks bad for him. That the outcome if he accepts what is on the table today he'll reopen the straight but Iran will arguably be in stronger geopolitical position in the Middle East than they were before the war. on the table today is the cutteries would unfreeze Iranian assets that would be given to Iran in a lump sum in return for the Iranians ending the tolling of the strait and the Americans ending the blockade and then the two sides would negotiate the nuclear issue. Probably worth noting here that Trump has repeatedly and very loudly denounced Biden and Obama for allowing Iran to have access to money that was frozen. A big of cash spoken about many many times. So in other words, at least at this stage of the deal, you would clearly say that the only thing better about the Trump engagement with Iran over Obama is that it was Trump that did it. That's the only thing that Trump supporters would have to point to. Well, that's my guy because you're in much worse position. The straight had been open before the war. They didn't have that leverage. They wouldn't have gotten that money and their nuclear capacity is still sitting there. So, I mean, are they still going to have the nuclear dust as they call it? Well, that is to be negotiated. Do you trust them? Do you think in some future period in 60 days that they're going to engage proactively with you and the inspectors when the ships are coming through and they're exporting and you're exporting and you need it and you know that it can be shut down again. It it's a it's it's an incredible own goal. It is by far the biggest foreign policy mistake of the Trump administration. I frankly of any administration since the Iraq war. I think you could say that. Why is they why have they failed so badly? And and the thing I hear Trump being confused by when I hear him speak is look, they pounded Iran with bombs. They killed many of the senior people. I think he would have thought by now either the regime would have toppled. That was clearly what he wanted at the beginning. Or it would be so desperate that it would be suing for peace, willing to give up things it would never have given to Barack Obama. Just like China after April 2nd, he thought they were going to sue for peace because their economy was so much weaker than America's. So, what did he get wrong about Iran? Why have why is Iran not desperate for an offramp, but Trump is?

Ezra Klein: Well, one, uh, he he and the Israelis actually assassinated the leadership.

Ian Bremer: So, the reason that they had never tried to close the straight before, which they clearly had the capacity to do, the the military capacity, the drones, the rest, is because they feared that if they did, that would be the end of their regime. people would come after their leaders. The people making the orders would get killed. Well, then you went ahead and killed their leaders. So, they broke glass, they pull lever, right? And that is what actually happened. So, Trump thinking that they were going to sue for peace like Venezuela when in reality they said, "No, no, no, no, no. You you you just broke the whole thing. We don't trust you."

Ezra Klein: Killed the equivalent of the people he handed power to in Venezuela.

Ian Bremer: Exactly. Exactly. Even if they hadn't, I would have been very surprised if this strategy would have worked out. This was incredible overconfidence born of the Venezuela success and also born of Trump's previous history with Iran where they talk big against the United States during the 12-day war in his first term when he killed Kasamsulammani, ordered the assassination, then they didn't do anything. Well, this time you actually went and blew up their regime. And so, yeah, they're gonna it's essentially suicidal response. But anything you can do to to try um to to regain deterrence to try because, you know, you can't trust them for diplomacy. So, there's no credibility with the Americans saying, "Okay, we're going to be Mr. Tough Guy if you don't do X, Y, and Z." I've seen Trump Trump has posted that in the last couple months. I'm going to really be tough guy. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I I don't once you've assassin civilization will die tonight.

Ezra Klein: Oh yeah. Once you've assassinated the leadership, I don't think you can say no more Mr. Nice Guy. I think that that analogy should be off the table for you.

Ezra Klein: So, um he's gotten himself uh in an enormous jam and the only way he can resolve it is by undoing all of his war goals. All of them. All of them. It's there's no more rescuing the Iranian people. There's no more ending the ballistic missile capability. that's for the region to deal with. There's no more ending support for proxies. The military capabilities, the missiles they still have, the drones they still have, they've blown up a lot of the navy. Um, I mean, almost everything they have tried to accomplish, they have failed. And meanwhile, the United States has driven an incredible economic consequence for the entire world. And he is to blame. So allies and adversaries of the United States, they're looking at oil prices and fertilizer and food. Describe this for a minute in detail because I think that people don't quite realize we have suffered some economic pain from this war here at home.

Ezra Klein: The fact that it is much worse elsewhere I think is not fully penetrated. So so paint that picture a bit.

Ian Bremer: Yeah. Well, I mean so I I mentioned before I was just in the DR Dominican Republic, right? And I mean, you know, this had a huge effect on approval for the leader. Um, they're oil importers and the subsidies are much harder to do. Inflation is way up, right? The United States as a major oil producer and exporter is much less affected in the near term by this conflict. you have um Asian economies um who have to ration um and uh the the energy that's available uh for industrial uses uh because they can't get what they need through the straight. Um you've got the global plastics industry, prochemicals, what's it come from? Oil, where's it come through the straight? Most of that is Asia. That production is getting squeezed. Those prices are way up. Those industries are under severe distress. You've got countries like the Philippines that are under a condition of national emergency right now. You have subsaharan African countries that may enter financial crisis because they can't provide. They don't have the fiscal space to provide the continued support for their populations given where prices are going. And that's before the food crunch because the fertilizer has missed the growing season now, but you haven't passed that through to food until the growing season leads to vegetables and fruits and grains that then are exported. The Americans and the Europeans and the Japanese, they'll get the food. It'll just be a higher price. Countries in the global south, a lot of those will not even have access to that food. People will starve on the back of this.

Ezra Klein: Is there an estimate of how big this will be?

Ian Bremer: Um I've heard from members of the United Nations that are involved in global food distribution that the impact on the global GDP uh next year uh could be as much as 1 and a.5%. Again, the United States will be much lower than that, but some of these other economies will be much higher. Um and and look the the danger every country you talk to, every leader you talk to sees President Trump individually as uniquely responsible for this economic downturn. And every day that the straight remains closed is a day that the Americans are responsible further for that. And and I I think that the the impact of that on the trust and the reliability of the United States as the Americans tell the Saudis, well, if you don't do an Abraham Accords deal, maybe we're not going to support reopening the street. The impact on the Saudis are, why are we working with these guys the way we used to? Why don't we engage more with the Chinese?

Ezra Klein: Isn't the Saudis There's been a bunch of reporting, I'm curious what you think of it, that the Saudis were along with the Israelis pushing us into this war.

Ian Bremer: Um, I would say that the UAE along with the Israelis have been much more interested in the war continuing to ensure that Iran no longer has that capacity. That's very different from the Saudi view, which is aligned with Pakistan and Egypt and Turkey, much more of an Islamic block that will find a way to engage in a peace settlement with the Iranians after the war is over. Now I mean the Saudis are not hurt as much economically because they're moving 7 million barrels a day across their east west pipeline through the Red Sea which doesn't need the straight of Hormuz. You've got other countries like Kuwait for example, Qatar that can't get anything out unless the straight is open. So very different perspectives inside the Gulf itself to how this war should be responded to. But with the exception of Israel and the UAE and the UAE, by the way, did not like this war when it started and but now that they've taken these existential threats, I mean, if you're going to hit the or try to hit the Bjalab, you know, if you're going to try to if you're going to hit their airport, suddenly your entire model is is at threat because they've got 10 million people, 1 million Emiratis, and they're not a regional player. They're a global player. They're like a city-state. They're like Singapore, but they're only like Singapore if the Middle East can be like Europe. If the Middle East is like the Middle East, suddenly the Singapore analogy doesn't work very well, right? And so they've got real problems and they don't want to leave the Iranians with this level of strength. Literally every other country in the world is saying this is an unmitigated disaster and it needs to end. There was no reason for it. It was a war of choice. It's gone badly and we want this over now. So Trump is saying and his administration is saying there will be no end without a resolution of the nuclear file. The nuclear file is I guess the new term of art on this.

Ezra Klein: Yeah.

Ian Bremer: Will there be a resolution of the nuclear file? Well um what they are presently negotiating is not that they are presently negotiating uh reopening the strait that will then lead to discussions on the nuclear file. Trump has publicly softened his approach on the nuclear file. He was saying that that all of that enriched uranium had to be removed and had to be sent to a third country, preferably the United States. Now he's saying doesn't matter where it goes. Can be any other third country. He's made it much easier for the Iranians to eventually get to Yes. I could make an argument that long-term the end of OPEC and uh the the shift of the global economy to a much faster degree towards postcarbon energy as a consequence of this war is a really positive thing. I mean there's a huge amount of short-term economic hardship but absent that it was moving more slowly. We're going to move to electric vehicles faster. We're going to move to solar and wind and nuclear faster.

Ezra Klein: Donald Trump, a climate president.

Ian Bremer: Donald Trump turns out to be the guy that has done more to ramp up that shift than any other move except for the Chinese leadership. No question. That wasn't his intention. But that that is the long-term outcome. That is a good thing. Like that the planet has a better shot as a consequence.

Ezra Klein: Is that really true or do you just have everybody building more pipelines to make sure they don't need the straight of hormones?

Ian Bremer: No, it's it's really true. I mean, both will happen. Don't give me don't don't question it. But but there's there's no the fact that oil and gas in the Middle East is this vulnerable. So much comes from this part of the world. Yes, you can move pipelines that'll have more go through the Red Sea. The Houthis can disrupt the Red Sea. They haven't. They've been bought off by the Saudis. But in a world where drones are becoming so much more cheap, do you really want to have choke points that can be hit that easily? I mean that today's problem in the straight of Hormuz could be tomorrow's problem in Malaa. Given that, do do you really want these global choke points on oil and gas or do you want to invest in 21st century technologies? Like if this were to get the Americans ass in gear on on renewables, that would be an amazing thing. Instead, the Americans will fall further behind for now the way the US is now starting to catch up on critical minerals and rare earths. But but leaving that aside, in terms of the short-term impact for this administration, uh one thing we haven't even talked about yet and and and we have to at least mention it is the Iranian people are completely screwed here. Remember this is this was like the whole argument at the beginning is back in January the the believed to be tens of thousands Iranians that were brutally murdered by their own regime and Trump said, "I'm coming to rescue you." Well, he doesn't talk about that anymore. this regime is in place. This regime is so confident being in place that over the last week they even had military leaders for the first time since the war started all showed up publicly for um a memorial service. Um they wouldn't have done that 2 weeks ago or a month ago. So Trump has completely failed in the the the the humanitarian ostensible purpose of the war and on the nuclear file after having blown up obliterated as the administration said their nuclear capabilities which have been set back. That's certainly true. But now getting the Iranians to a place of we will actually allow for uh the end of enrichment beyond civilian purposes with inspections. We're very far from that. So, I would argue that not only are all of the macro concerns uh made much worse by uh near-term by Trump's war, but even the narrowest vision of we're going to do a much better deal than that horrible deal that Obama did with JCPOA at this point that looks unlikely.

Ezra Klein: So, does all this anger from our allies, from other countries actually matter for us? And the reason I ask is that I remember in the Bush era being told America's standing in the world will never recover.

Ezra Klein: Then Barack Obama was elected president and it seemed to recover. Then it was Trump won and they'll never trust us again. Then Joe Biden took office and you know bygones seem to be bygones. This has been a lot worse.

Ezra Klein: But does it matter? Um it does matter. Um but we need to we need to be modest in in the expectations of what that means. So the Europeans today really mistrust the United States. That is not making them trust the Chinese more. Uh China has the one part of China's economy that is really going gang busters is not the domestic economy. It is their export of manufactured goods around the world which is a dumping strategy that is here truly hollowing out industries um in other countries like in Europe. And so it's not like the Europeans are suddenly saying we're going to work with the Chinese and that's going to be our principal alliance and it's no more NATO and that's not going to give them influence with the US.

Ezra Klein: those in those big picture ways. I don't suddenly see this being a cold war, two blocks and the Chinese are picking off a bunch of countries. I think it's much more complicated than that. The Japanese don't suddenly trust the Chinese. In fact, they're in a big fight with the Chinese right now over Taiwan. Um, and the Chinese are cutting off their tourism and not buying the seafood anymore. It's gotten much worse. So the Japanese are closer to the United States despite feeling that the Americans are acting in an extortionate way and their top leaders have told me that directly extortionate in in how badly the Americans have mistreated their best friend, the Japanese. Now having said all of that, we are seeing things that are going to matter long term. I'll give you an obvious example. The Europeans are now spending real money on defense. the Poles, the Germans, other countries, all especially the frontline countries. They're in the Canadians are spending a lot more in defense, but they're not spending on American military-industrial complex. They're spending it on themselves. They're building it out. And that is money that used to go directly into the US and US jobs. And going forward, it will not. India is building out their military to a much greater degree. They're moving away from Russia. first Trump term, the Quad moving more to the United States now much more with the Europeans. That is a long-term move. These are legacy systems that will have parts and service and training that will last for decades. That is money that is not coming to the United States. The EU Merkasaur trade agreement and Trump deserves credit for EU Merkasaur, which I mean from a

Ezra Klein: Can you say what EU Merkasur is?

Ian Bremer: EU Merkasaur is Merkasaur is like the big trading group in uh Latin America. So the free trade association in Latin America and the EU is the EU and and so now there is an agreement for the EU and Merkasaur. It's bringing those tariffs down that will facilitate greater trade flows between the Latin American countries and the European countries which will mean less trade flows with the United States. Trump deserves credit for that. It would not have happened without him, without the tariffs that he put on unilaterally towards all the American allies. And I can give you so many other examples of those things happening. All of which individually are small. Collectively make the United States a smaller piece of indispensability with other countries. And that means less money to the US, less money through the US, less jobs in the United States. Those are own goals that are near-term irrelevant but long and and Trump cares about the near-term but long-term will have real costs for a United States that is the biggest engine of global growth still in the world.

Ian Bremer: Earlier in this conversation we talked about the theidities trap.

Ian Bremer: You've made an argument that that's the wrong trap to think about. So what's the trap that's been on your mind?

Ian Bremer: Uh the trap that's been on my mind is the Grouchi trap. Uh which was when the Grouchi brothers um who had uh policies of grievance that believed that uh there was no more mobility and that the the poorer Roman citizens were never going to have their due started breaking they had their own political revolution and started breaking the norms and the laws of how Rome was run. And the allies of Rome no longer saw Rome as dependable. the enemy was inside the house. It was the political dysfunction of Rome that was defeated the first time, defeated the second time, but ultimately led to the collapse of the Roman Republic. Um, again, internal political revolutions that failed, but that weakened the system and that also allowed people to get used to those norms getting violated so that when when they were violated a second time and a third time by different leaders, they weren't so surprising. Right? And that is what I see happening in the United States right now. That the US is unilaterally withdrawing from its alliances. It's saying we don't want to be dependable. We don't want to be there for the Ukrainians or for the Europeans and helping Ukraine. We don't want to be there for Taiwan. We'll make that a negotiation with the Chinese. We don't want to be there for the Japanese or the South Koreans. You guys should be doing that stuff yourself. We're not going to be the architects of free trade. everybody else should have to come and invest in the United States because we're the big power and you guys have been taking advantage of us and we don't even want to have the best talent from all over the world because we already have the Americans, right? And that's what really matters. Um, and so you guys just do whatever you want. Um, those things are what is driving the geopolitical risk in the world today. The United States is the principal driver of geopolitical uncertainty in the world today. President Trump and the Americans are driving it. They're driving it with tariffs and industrial policy. They're driving it with the war in Iran. They're driving it with the lack of predictability with the Europeans. They're driving it with the change to the structures and the rules and the norms inside the world's largest market. It's not China. China has huge problems. They're not the ones that are driving the change. when when Trump put together the border of peace which we don't even talk about anymore because there's no money for it right no one really cares and again Davos he was there on stage and he had all these big countries like Paraguay and Azarbaian show up with them right the Chinese didn't show he invited him Chinese didn't show they they said no why would they say no well because the Chinese were like well if you guys are going to pull out of the UN we'll just be the most powerful country influencing the United Nations you guys are pulling out the World Health Organization will increase the amount we donate every year to be the people making those decisions. They're not creating alternative architecture. They're becoming the most important country influencing our architecture that we don't care about anymore. That's not at the city strap. That's the Americans withdraw. That's the US acting in a unilateral way and other countries trying to find ways to continue to ensure that we have governance.

Ezra Klein: I think that is a good place to end. Always a final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

Ian Bremer: Um, I three books. Well, first I've got to start with The Hitchhiker's Guide. Um, because when I was in high school in college, there were basically three kinds of kids. There were the Tolken kids. They were way too dorky. Um, they were the Anran kids who you don't trust to run anything. And then there were the Douglas Adams kids. And those were kind people. They were curious. They were interested. And that was a universe that really appealed to me.

Ezra Klein: I love this typology.

Ezra Klein: Do you really? I There's no book I've reread more than The Hitchhiker's Guide.

Ian Bremer: Is that true?

Ezra Klein: Yes. No.

Ian Bremer: Have you said that publicly?

Ezra Klein: Probably not. You've got something new out of me.

Ian Bremer: Interesting.

Ezra Klein: My favorite book growing up.

Ian Bremer: My favorite book growing up. Absolutely. My favorite.

Ezra Klein: Actually, maybe The Dragon Riders of Per, which I reread obsessively when I was like 10, but after that, The Hitchhiker's Guide. And I just and I continue to reread it.

Ian Bremer: And it was the kind of thing that if you meet people when you're younger that really love Hitchhikers and the series, you knew you'd like those people. Like those are your people. That's your tribe, right? And I would say more people like that that like actually like on the global stage, certainly on the American stage in Washington would probably help us, right? Um secondly, I was going to say a world appears by Michael Pollen. Uh I don't know if you've read it yet. I mean,

Ezra Klein: he's been on the show. We had a great conversation.

Ian Bremer: Oh, cool. So I just just this idea I mean I' I've liked him for a long time because he talks about issues that are not super fashionable that are really important to human beings. I really appreciate him doing the work and making us think about like what identity is in this because it's changing so quickly now like the nature of where humanity begins and ends is seems to me very fluid in in ways that people aren't thinking about. And then finally, I was going to say The Chronoliths by uh Robert Charles Wilson, which was written back in 2001, but which I went back and I read recently, and I wanted to see if the book still held. And it was by again a kind of near dwell int intelligent folks but who aren't really succeeding in society who by virtue of being in the right place at the wrong time uh witness something from the future coming back that has the potential to rip apart the society or that they can fix it and it is the book is all about this is before AI becomes like a real thing and yet it's the same exact thing.

Ezra Klein: Ian Bremer, thank you very much. Thanks.