Speaker 1: I think there is a tremendous opportunity there, but we
Speaker 1: have to begin by recognizing the very difficult position in
Speaker 1: which we find ourselves. We've got something like the Spanish
Speaker 1: flu right after the First World War, the Great Depression
Speaker 1: of the thirties, and the need for reconstruction after the
Speaker 1: Second World War all rolled up together. We have to act.
Speaker 1: What you've seen is the shipping company is kind of
Speaker 1: quite without enough space to carry all this cargo, and
Speaker 1: it really, it really could create some problems as you
Speaker 1: head into, you know, the holiday season, and then you
Speaker 1: get into close to Chinese New Year in in February,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of concern. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: Stephano Mix, the podcast that brings the global economy to you.
Speaker 1: And that was Lord Nick Stern, economist and policymaker, painting
Speaker 1: a vivid picture of the challenge the world's facing today.
Speaker 1: The opportunity he talked about is one we also touched
Speaker 1: on last week, the chance to build back greener. The
Speaker 1: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the leaders of the
Speaker 1: European Union don't agree on much these days, but they
Speaker 1: are both formally committed to mending their battered economies in
Speaker 1: a way that also helps to tackle global warming. But
Speaker 1: are the fine words translating into action on the ground,
Speaker 1: and does the future of the planet really rest on
Speaker 1: the outcome of next week's U S election. Lord Stern
Speaker 1: shares his expert view with me on this week's podcast,
Speaker 1: and later on Bloomberg's Trades Are, Brendan Murray will explain
Speaker 1: why the world's container ships might not have enough space
Speaker 1: for all of your Christmas presents this year. That's all
Speaker 1: we need. Brendan also has the latest on a race
Speaker 1: I know you'll be following almost as closely as Biden
Speaker 1: versus Trump, the race to lead the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 1: But first, here's Bloomberg Environment correspondent Jess Shankleman with a
Speaker 1: report on the dream and the reality of that much
Speaker 1: talked about green recovery. It might not be glamorous work,
Speaker 1: but stuffing insulation into drafty homes as winter approaches could
Speaker 1: be exactly the kind of job that's key to helping
Speaker 1: the economy recover and help save the planet. I think
Speaker 1: there's there was always a perception that people weren't interested
Speaker 1: in energy efficiency, and you couldn't ever get consumers to
Speaker 1: interest to be interested in it, and what's happened in
Speaker 1: the last kind of six weeks has proven that kind
Speaker 1: of you to be completely untruck. Um, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got consumers interested who on a gale that are kind
Speaker 1: of totally shocked by to be honest, that's Dave Robson,
Speaker 1: who runs home improvement company Insta Group in the county
Speaker 1: of Berkshire, an hours drive west of London. When I
Speaker 1: first spoke to him a month ago, Dave reckoned Insta
Speaker 1: Group could double its sales in the coming months thanks
Speaker 1: to a new UK government grant giving homeowners as much
Speaker 1: as five thousand pounds that's nearly six and a half
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to make their homes more energy efficient. In
Speaker 1: a year that's seen joblessness saw thanks to the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Britain is one of a handful of countries pushing for
Speaker 1: a green recovery. The idea is that you don't just
Speaker 1: try to rebuild an economy that looks like the world
Speaker 1: of but one that helps to cut greenhouse gases and quickly.
Speaker 1: Research by the Trade Unions Congress shows that some green
Speaker 1: activities like insulating homes, upgrading ports, and even improving internet
Speaker 1: connections to make it easier for people to work from
Speaker 1: home can be some of the fastest job creators. They
Speaker 1: reckon more than one point two million new green jobs
Speaker 1: could be created over the next two years in the UK.
Speaker 1: It's one a very few areas where Britain's trade unions
Speaker 1: and the Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson actually agree. The
Speaker 1: COVID crisis is a catalyst for change. So we need
Speaker 1: to give people the chance to train for the new
Speaker 1: jobs that are being created every day. And there's one
Speaker 1: area where we are progressing with gale force speed, and
Speaker 1: that is the green economy, the green industrial revolution that
Speaker 1: in the next ten years will create hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: if not millions of jobs. That's Johnson speaking earlier this
Speaker 1: month to his supporters at the Tory Party Conference. The
Speaker 1: speech was just a taste of another big announcement that's
Speaker 1: due in the next few weeks of a ten point
Speaker 1: plan for a green industrial revolution, expected to include major
Speaker 1: new investments in hydrogen and a ban on the sale
Speaker 1: of new petrol and diesel cars by five maybe even earlier.
Speaker 1: It's a similar story in Europe. Before co of it nineteen,
Speaker 1: the European Union had already set a course for a
Speaker 1: climate friendly reinvention with a package of regulations known as
Speaker 1: the Green Deal, but it wasn't exactly clear how they
Speaker 1: were going to match words with cash. COVID has changed
Speaker 1: all that, bas I had a Dutch member of the
Speaker 1: European Parliament for the Green Party thinks it could make
Speaker 1: a real difference. The Green Deal was very much a
Speaker 1: kind of legislative package that is turning our kind of lawmaking,
Speaker 1: but without really an investment next to it. And well,
Speaker 1: I mean the terminology comes from the from the New
Speaker 1: Deal from Roosevelt. I think that was an investment package.
Speaker 1: Maybe so a bit of a weird green deal. It
Speaker 1: was from the start, but I think the Corona crisis
Speaker 1: just accelerated that discussion because it was clear then there
Speaker 1: needs to be also an investment need linked to it.
Speaker 1: Of course, one third of the e U s seven
Speaker 1: fifty billion euro Recovery Fund is now going to be
Speaker 1: financed by green bonds. As host of the next round
Speaker 1: of global climate change talks, known as COP, the UK
Speaker 1: is under particular pressure to show leadership on cutting emissions.
Speaker 1: It's even drafted in former Bank of England governor Mark
Speaker 1: Karney for advice but the Central Bank under Carney's replacement
Speaker 1: Andrew Bailey, has been accused of tacit lee undermining the
Speaker 1: government's net zero goal. Earlier this year, climate activists gathered
Speaker 1: on thread Needle Street, where the Bank of England has
Speaker 1: stood for nearly three hundred years and where I'm standing
Speaker 1: now in the pouring rain, a smaller protest than usual
Speaker 1: thanks to COVID restrictions. Protesters wore masks of this bespectacled
Speaker 1: Andrew Bailey, and they accused him of greenwashing. Frown boyd
Speaker 1: from research and campaign organization Positive he was among them. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Andrew Bailey took up his posts and then quite quickly
Speaker 1: found himself in the middle of a pandemic. Now the
Speaker 1: measures that he that they quickly put in place had
Speaker 1: no regard for climate whatsoever. And so they increased their
Speaker 1: corporate bond buying program corporate QUEI by another ten billion,
Speaker 1: and that took into no account the commitment he made,
Speaker 1: so it was still looking at buying bonds in shell BP,
Speaker 1: fossil FHIO companies and high carbon sectors. The problem, she says,
Speaker 1: is that in the Bank's effort to have a neutral
Speaker 1: impact on the market, it's actually favoring the status quo
Speaker 1: of a high carbon economy. At the very least, France
Speaker 1: says polluting companies should have had to agree to cut
Speaker 1: carbon in return for bail ads, And since I spoke
Speaker 1: to fran Bailey has hinted that things could change. We
Speaker 1: don't want to diverge from being neutral in the sense
Speaker 1: that it's not the job of the bank along and
Speaker 1: to go around picking winners as it were. However, neutrality
Speaker 1: obviously can take more than one form if you like,
Speaker 1: in terms of how you define it. So what I
Speaker 1: want to get to is is from being what you
Speaker 1: might call just completely neutral across the whole sex, just
Speaker 1: saying let's be sort of climate change consistent neutral. So
Speaker 1: we will put a criteria in there about climate change,
Speaker 1: and then once we put that climate that climate change
Speaker 1: criteria in after that we will again have a set
Speaker 1: of things with the bonds we can buy, and we
Speaker 1: will be neutral within that. Yet, outside of Europe and
Speaker 1: South Korea, there's not much of a green recovery to
Speaker 1: speak of Globally. Only one of the twelve trillion dollars
Speaker 1: of financial support from governments in response to COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: can so far be called green stimulus. According to Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: an e f in the US, the second largest admitter.
Speaker 1: President Trump has not been talking about a green recovery. Instead,
Speaker 1: he spent quite a lot of energy defending his decision
Speaker 1: to pull the U S out of the Paris Agreement
Speaker 1: to limit global warming. I took us out because we
Speaker 1: were going to have to spend trillions of dollars, and
Speaker 1: we were treated very unfairly when they put us in there.
Speaker 1: They did us a great disservice. They were going to
Speaker 1: take away our businesses. I will not sacrifice tens of
Speaker 1: millions of jerbs, thousands and thousands of companies because of
Speaker 1: the Paris Accord. Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is
Speaker 1: campaigning for an escalating carbon tax that would send a
Speaker 1: signal to businesses that the future will be clean. She
Speaker 1: remains hopeful that Joe Biden could adopt it if elected.
Speaker 1: Coming out of this, I think more countries will be working,
Speaker 1: and I think this is a certain really true if
Speaker 1: um if Biden becomes president in the United States. But
Speaker 1: government's introducing carbon taxes need to think carefully about how
Speaker 1: they do it. French President Emmanuel mccron and the hard
Speaker 1: way after hundreds and thousands of people protested against a
Speaker 1: planned rise in fuel taxes. Here's Morgan du Pray, who
Speaker 1: is head of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors
Speaker 1: for greening the financial system, and he's also deputy head
Speaker 1: of the Financial Stability Department at Bank to France. There
Speaker 1: is this issue of fairness and social fairness, and probably
Speaker 1: what happened in France like two years ago was yet
Speaker 1: another number of people had the impression that as individual
Speaker 1: they were charged for driving their car um, whereas big
Speaker 1: companies were not charged, didn't have to pay any taxes.
Speaker 1: So they may have this feeling that at the end
Speaker 1: of the day was unfair even though they were ready
Speaker 1: to make an effort, they wanted to ever to be
Speaker 1: restributed in a very in a fair way. UM. So
Speaker 1: you have predictibility and fairness which are suddenly the too
Speaker 1: um quite important conditions to success. Back in the UK,
Speaker 1: the Green Homes Grant has had a few teething trouble
Speaker 1: Since I last spoke to Dave Robson. He says it's
Speaker 1: been a frustrating few weeks and while he's hired some
Speaker 1: new people, the government hasn't yet issued any of the vouchers.
Speaker 1: His customers need to get their discounts. I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I kind of run a business that's so very much
Speaker 1: wants to get on with things, So I think there
Speaker 1: is there's a doubt to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: frustration that we've not been able to start before now
Speaker 1: because the demand has been so good. We want to
Speaker 1: make sure that we kind of capitalize on that demand.
Speaker 1: We just want to get going, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really optimistic about the impact that it's going to have.
Speaker 1: So I'm delighted to welcome back to Stephonomics. Nicolas Stern
Speaker 1: Lord Stern, Professor of Economics and Government at the London
Speaker 1: School of Economics and share of the Grantham Research Institute
Speaker 1: on Climate Change in the Environment. He also made a
Speaker 1: name in this field by leading the Stern Review on
Speaker 1: the Economics of Climate Change for the UK Government back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, as well as being chief
Speaker 1: Economists of World Bank and lots of other very distinguished things.
Speaker 1: Very nice to have you back on and there has
Speaker 1: been so much about the opportunity that this awful pandemic
Speaker 1: provides for governments to potentially accelerate their plans on the environment.
Speaker 1: As they try and pull the economy out of it.
Speaker 1: How much do you think that exists? And how much
Speaker 1: is wishful thinking? And it's nice to be back talking
Speaker 1: to you, Stath. I think there is a tremendous opportunity there,
Speaker 1: But we have to begin by recognizing the very difficult
Speaker 1: Asian in which we find ourselves. We've got something like
Speaker 1: the Spanish flu right after the First World War, the
Speaker 1: Great Depression of the thirties, and the need for reconstruction
Speaker 1: after the Second World War all rolled up together. We
Speaker 1: have to act on the unemployment around the world very quickly.
Speaker 1: We saw, of course, during the nineteen just how pernicious
Speaker 1: extended periods of unemployment could be for the political and
Speaker 1: social fabric of societies. So that sense of urgency is
Speaker 1: enormously important. Having said that, how can we act quickly
Speaker 1: in a way which is also sustainable When we look
Speaker 1: at the kinds of things that we need to do
Speaker 1: from the point of view of making our economy is
Speaker 1: much less destructive for the environment. Many of those things
Speaker 1: can be fast in implementation, they're labor intensive, and they
Speaker 1: have strong economic multipliers in large measure because the important
Speaker 1: content is relatively small and of course they had the
Speaker 1: environment environmental benefits as well. I would point to energy efficiency,
Speaker 1: retrofitting of buildings, making our cities more friendly to cycle
Speaker 1: cyclists and pedestrians, making a broadband connections stronger, and of
Speaker 1: course the natural capital side, planting trees, restoring degraded land,
Speaker 1: looking after waterways and so on. So it's a huge issue.
Speaker 1: It's global. We have to act quickly, but so many
Speaker 1: of the things that we need to do from the
Speaker 1: point of view of sustainability and tackling climate change and
Speaker 1: loss of biodiversity are things which fit the bill very
Speaker 1: well for a fast and strong recovery. Is it realistic
Speaker 1: to say that governments, when they think about supporting businesses
Speaker 1: who may be just about to go bust, that they
Speaker 1: ought to be pausing to do environmental conditions and strings
Speaker 1: attached to that money. The timing matters, and I think
Speaker 1: it's helpful to distinguish between rescue and recovery. The immediate
Speaker 1: rescue from a very rapid shutdown is something where you're
Speaker 1: just trying to keep the existing economy running. You're trying
Speaker 1: to keep people in employment, and for that kind of issue,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't press conditionality very hard. But a lot of
Speaker 1: this story will be about loans, and at some point
Speaker 1: in the months that follow. It will depend on the country,
Speaker 1: it would depend on the way in which the support
Speaker 1: had been structured. But much of the support is through loans,
Speaker 1: and those loans will have to be rolled over, redefined,
Speaker 1: perhaps in some cases converted into equity at some point
Speaker 1: in the next six or nine months, again depending on
Speaker 1: the country and the sector, and it seems to be
Speaker 1: at that point it is sensible to try to work
Speaker 1: with firms to foster investment in the jobs and economy
Speaker 1: of the future. Bailout conditionalities is kind of heavy language.
Speaker 1: What we're trying to do is to be constructive and
Speaker 1: look to the future. And so if you converted from
Speaker 1: alan to equity, well you would want to have a
Speaker 1: picture of where that firm was going and support those
Speaker 1: things which were a bit stronger. What do you think
Speaker 1: about the role of central banks has become a bit
Speaker 1: of a controversy and quite a debate in Europe, with
Speaker 1: the head of the bunders Bank, for example, against Fisen
Speaker 1: saying that the central banks, the European central banks, shouldn't
Speaker 1: be making noises about favoring green bonds. For example, in
Speaker 1: the quantitative easing programs, green assets. What do you think
Speaker 1: about that? Do you think it's a job for central banks? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do. Central bank are about inflation, of course, but
Speaker 1: they're also about stable economies and stable recoveries, strong recoveries.
Speaker 1: Any central bank has to think about how to come
Speaker 1: out of this as quickly as possible, and how to
Speaker 1: come out of it in a way that lays strong
Speaker 1: foundations for the future. I think that's perfectly central Actually,
Speaker 1: in the remit of a central bank. Europe has declared
Speaker 1: that their future is strongly in that direction. That is
Speaker 1: a been adopted by their governments right across Europe, and
Speaker 1: the job of the central bank seems to me to
Speaker 1: be in part to promote the kind of economic growth
Speaker 1: that the people of that place have chosen. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, the art of the argument against that would
Speaker 1: be governments are the ones who are elected to make
Speaker 1: strategic decisions about the shape of the economy and the
Speaker 1: things that the public sector broadly conceived, should invest in
Speaker 1: and support, and that if central banks start getting into that,
Speaker 1: they become too political. Central banks in this case would
Speaker 1: be supporting a definition of growth which has been set
Speaker 1: by politicians they're there to help with growth and stability
Speaker 1: and inflation, and it seems perfectly reasonable in that context
Speaker 1: for a Central Bank of Europe to support the definition
Speaker 1: of growth and stability that the European Body politics has
Speaker 1: given call democracy, isn't it? How much does the US
Speaker 1: election matter for this whole conversation? The U S election,
Speaker 1: I think matters greatly from the point of view of
Speaker 1: the sense of direction for the world. We have a
Speaker 1: European Union that has declared very strongly that the future
Speaker 1: is low carbon and it's committed to zero carbon by
Speaker 1: twenty fifty. We have China as of September twenty and
Speaker 1: Chi Jinping speech to the you in General Assembly, we
Speaker 1: have China that is committed to carbon neutrality by twenty
Speaker 1: six So that's close to the world economy or the
Speaker 1: world emissions. I should say, if you had United States, China,
Speaker 1: and Europe, that would be half the world's emissions committed
Speaker 1: to a very strong sense of direction. And I do
Speaker 1: think that that extra momentum that would come from the
Speaker 1: US federal government commitment would be of great value. But
Speaker 1: having said that, those of us who know and love
Speaker 1: the United States have always admired it's it's heterogeneity, how
Speaker 1: different it is in different places. And we have cities
Speaker 1: and states and firms right across the United States constituting
Speaker 1: more than half the US g dB that are rather
Speaker 1: strongly committed. And one thing that is very important in
Speaker 1: all this is the way in which firms around the world,
Speaker 1: many of them US firms have gone out in front.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had declared the net zero by twenty forty and
Speaker 1: indeed to buy back past emissions. Google Alphabet a month
Speaker 1: or so ago, made a similar kind of commitment. You know,
Speaker 1: Walmart has been a leader, Amazon is committed. A lot
Speaker 1: of the energy companies in the US are moving very
Speaker 1: strongly in this direction. So I think you're seeing leadership.
Speaker 1: Brian moynihan, Bank of America. You know, you're seeing leadership
Speaker 1: in American firms, which I think is playing through very strongly.
Speaker 1: So if the federal government, if the White House joined
Speaker 1: the very considerable US momentum in the private sector and
Speaker 1: in cities and states, United States could become a powerhouse
Speaker 1: of this story. And if you put them together with
Speaker 1: Europe in China, I think you would see a decisive
Speaker 1: move in a very good direction, and it would power
Speaker 1: the growth of the next decade. We have a particular
Speaker 1: fondness on Stephanomics for people who look very clearly at
Speaker 1: the potential for catastrophe in this world and still see
Speaker 1: lots of practical grounds for action and hope. Lord Stern,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Thank you, steph And let me
Speaker 1: add one new asked to optimism. I'm enormously optimistic about
Speaker 1: what we can do. I worry deeply about what we
Speaker 1: will do, but it's discussing what's possible, discussing how attracted
Speaker 1: it could be that I think helps translate what we
Speaker 1: can do into what we will do, or at least
Speaker 1: increases the probability of us doing better. Thank you very much. Stuff,
Speaker 1: Thank you now. Dedicated listeners will remember we spent much
Speaker 1: often talking about trade wars, usually with Bloomberg's trades are
Speaker 1: Brendan Murray. The last time we talked about trade was
Speaker 1: probably earlier in the year, in the first weeks of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, when the fear was that global trade lines
Speaker 1: might seize up as a result of the crisis. And
Speaker 1: there's even been talk on this podcast and other places
Speaker 1: about the end of globalization as a result of the
Speaker 1: pandemic and those US China trade wars, but things have
Speaker 1: moved on since then. In fact, shipping companies are reporting
Speaker 1: record breaking loads. We've also got a big diplomatic storm
Speaker 1: brewing over who's going to run the World Trade Organization,
Speaker 1: the body that polices global trade rules and has generally
Speaker 1: keeps the multinatural trading system afloat. So I thought it
Speaker 1: was a good opportunity to catch up with Brendan Murray,
Speaker 1: who's been keeping tabs on all of it. Brendon, it's
Speaker 1: very nice to have you back. Um, tell me first
Speaker 1: about those massive container loads. What what's been happening in
Speaker 1: the first half of the year. The problem was, uh,
Speaker 1: not enough demand. Obviously, people were locked down, borders were closed,
Speaker 1: and the world economy really suffered from a lack of
Speaker 1: demand for all the goods that are produced. Uh. The
Speaker 1: issue that's that's happened more recently in the second half
Speaker 1: of the year is that demand has come roaring back.
Speaker 1: People are not going to restaurants, not taking vacations and
Speaker 1: buying lots of stuff or for around their homes and
Speaker 1: things like, you know, extra appliances and recreational gear for
Speaker 1: their backyards. So what the shipping companies did in the
Speaker 1: first half of the year, is they really geared down
Speaker 1: at the number of ships that were sailing across the Pacific,
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic, and they reduced the capacity to carry
Speaker 1: containers by quite a bit, and that sent the cost
Speaker 1: of shipping through the roof. And remember where a lot
Speaker 1: of air airplanes were grounded, and so air cargo capacity
Speaker 1: also shrank a lot. So what's happened is in the
Speaker 1: second half of the year, all that demand came roaring
Speaker 1: back without a sufficient number of ships to to carry
Speaker 1: it all. And so we've got, you know, ships making
Speaker 1: Transpacific Transatlantic passages now filled to capacity, and that's maintaining
Speaker 1: this level of high shipping costs that we're seeing. So
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm bang on trend because I was
Speaker 1: actually at a big d I Y store at eight
Speaker 1: o'clock this morning buying paint. So I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: embodying that trend you're talking about. But it does seem
Speaker 1: like we're seeing on the oceans the other side of
Speaker 1: the kind of recovery that we've talked about all around
Speaker 1: the world, this difference between what's happening with the good
Speaker 1: side of the economy and services. Oh, is there any
Speaker 1: sense that more ships are going to come on stream. Well,
Speaker 1: shipping is a very as you can imagine, capital intensive
Speaker 1: business where you can't just buy a ship and put
Speaker 1: it online and and have it going. So it's it
Speaker 1: moves in years rather than months. Are definitely weeks. So
Speaker 1: what you what you've seen is the shipping company is
Speaker 1: kind of caught with without enough space to carry all
Speaker 1: this cargo, and it really, it really could create some
Speaker 1: problems as you head into you know, the holiday season,
Speaker 1: and then you get into close to Chinese New Year
Speaker 1: in in February. So there's a lot of concern that
Speaker 1: this peak demand that we're seeing it's really going to
Speaker 1: be maintained over the next couple of months, and ultimately
Speaker 1: the people who import, the companies that import, you know,
Speaker 1: are paying the higher costs and it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time before they start passing that cost onto consumers.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this is really a short term
Speaker 1: thing that's responding to the big rise in demand for
Speaker 1: some of these goods and and the and the lack
Speaker 1: of ships, or does it tell us something about the
Speaker 1: death of global supply chains having been a bit exaggerated, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that I think it's the latter supply chain
Speaker 1: has got a bad rap in the first half of
Speaker 1: the year when people couldn't get you know, paper towels
Speaker 1: and other kinds of things household necessities. But they recovered
Speaker 1: pretty quickly and from a lot of accounts, you know,
Speaker 1: adjusted for this next round of lockdowns, which are likely
Speaker 1: to come in the winter. You know, I think the
Speaker 1: what we're learning, and we're obviously not through the pandemic
Speaker 1: by any means, is that globalization has really kind of
Speaker 1: held the held the world economy together in a in
Speaker 1: a lot of in a lot of ways. You can
Speaker 1: imagine if people aren't able to spend money on the
Speaker 1: services that they do or get the goods that they
Speaker 1: that they need, you know, we'd be in a we'd
Speaker 1: be in a whole bigger world of hurt. So that's
Speaker 1: a nice visual story of lots of stuff sitting on
Speaker 1: ships going from one country to another. But we've also
Speaker 1: got a big storm blow blowing behind closed doors over
Speaker 1: who's going to be ahead of the w t A,
Speaker 1: what's going on the that's right, So there's a big
Speaker 1: diplomatic uh discussion that's sort of turning into a debate
Speaker 1: now in any of the Switzerland where the w t
Speaker 1: O is based uh There are two candidates vying to
Speaker 1: be the director General of the w t O. One
Speaker 1: is a Nigerian her name is Ngozi okonjo Iwala, and
Speaker 1: a South Korean named you Young He and they are
Speaker 1: It's been a fairly close race over the past couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, but it seems to be going the way
Speaker 1: of the Nigerian who there's a sense that the consensus
Speaker 1: could form around her. What's standing in the way of
Speaker 1: that is apparently the US support is not there, and
Speaker 1: the US is obviously a big powerful voice at the
Speaker 1: at the table of the w t O and and
Speaker 1: could conceivably just block this recommendation that has come that
Speaker 1: con jo Iwala become the next leader of the w
Speaker 1: t O. So it's quite ah, it's a storm that's
Speaker 1: sort of brewing right now. And obviously, you know, the
Speaker 1: w t O is the is the is the referee
Speaker 1: of of global trade. So it's a diplomatic spat right now,
Speaker 1: but ultimately it could have a big impact on global commerce.
Speaker 1: If you're sitting in one of these I guess they're
Speaker 1: not smoke filled rooms anymore, But if you're sitting in
Speaker 1: Geneva battling this out. Is this one of those things
Speaker 1: where you're just going to wait to see what happens
Speaker 1: with the U S selection. Does the argument over the
Speaker 1: World Trade Organization's leadership go away? If Joe Biden is
Speaker 1: the next president, it probably doesn't go away, but the
Speaker 1: tactics probably change and the tone of the of the
Speaker 1: reform drive. That's you know that the US government would
Speaker 1: get behind. Obviously if if the Trump administration gets a
Speaker 1: second term, you know they're going to follow through as
Speaker 1: as as as much as they can to to rein
Speaker 1: the w t O in if if if there's a
Speaker 1: Biden administration, I think there are plenty of people in
Speaker 1: those circles who you know, agree that the w t
Speaker 1: O ne needs to be reformed, but it doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be you know, driven to the brink of extinction
Speaker 1: to get there. So that's one another one of global
Speaker 1: institutions waiting and watching to see what happens next Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Brenda Murray, thank you very much, Thank you, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Stephanomics. We'll be back next week with more
Speaker 1: on the ground reporting and analysis from around the world,
Speaker 1: and I suspect a few words about what the next
Speaker 1: four years might hold for the United States. Remember you
Speaker 1: can always find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website, app,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, And for more news
Speaker 1: and analysis from Bloomberg Economics, you can follow at Economics
Speaker 1: on Twitter. This episode was produced by Magnus Henrickson, with
Speaker 1: special thanks to Jess Shan Coleman, Eva Krakowska, Yana Randall, Lord,
Speaker 1: Nicholas Stern, and Brendan Murray. Lucy Meekin is the executive
Speaker 1: producer of Stephonomics and the head of Bloomberg podcast is
Speaker 1: Francescan Levi. Four