PUSHBACK Talks

Staying Sane in a World of Chaos - with NYT Correspondent Peter S. Goodman

• WG Film • Season 8 • Episode 15

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This week, we dive deep into the fracturing landscape of global politics with Peter S. Goodman, New York Times Global Economic Correspondent and author.

What happens when the rules of global cooperation suddenly seem disposable? When nationalist ambitions threaten to unravel decades of multilateral understanding?

Peter Goodman returns to unpack the complex dynamics of trade wars, economic manipulation, and the persistent hope for collective resistance. From the erosion of international institutions to the rise of unilateral power plays, his conversation with Fredrik & Leilani explores how global power dynamics are being dramatically rewritten.

About Peter S. Goodman

Peter S. Goodman is the global economic correspondent for The New York Times and author of How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain Crisis. His work provides critical insights into the intersection of economics, politics, and human resilience.

Purchase Peter's Book / Follow Peter

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Kirsten McRae:

What happens when the rules of global cooperation suddenly seem disposable, when the institutions we've built to prevent chaos start to crumble under the weight of nationalist ambition? This week, we're back with Peter S Goodman, New York Times, global economic correspondent and author who's become a trusted voice in unraveling the complex tapestry of global economic and political shifts. In this episode, Peter returns to Pushback Talks to unpeel the layers of a world seemingly spinning into uncertainty, from trade wars that defy economic logic to the erosion of multilateral cooperation. We dive into the heart of how global power dynamics are being dramatically rewritten, drawing from his deep understanding of globalization and economic policy, Peter, offers a critical lens into how nationalist rhetoric and economic manipulation are reshaping our world. But beneath the chaos, there's a persistent thread of human resilience and the potential for collective resistance Join us as we explore the intricate dance of global politics and economics and discuss connection as the most powerful form of resistance. This is Pushback Talks.

Fredrik Gertten:

I'm Fredrik Gertten and I'm the filmmaker,

Leilani Farha:

and I'm Leilani Farha and I'm the advocate,

Fredrik Gertten:

and the advocate is up in Ottawa, Canada. I'm in Malmo, Sweden. I can see a blue sky. Is still freezing cold, but there is, there's hope, hope. And I know hope is a conflicted word. Leilani, do you feel Do you Do you feel hopeful?

Leilani Farha:

You know, Someone recently asked me if the reason I get out of bed and sit at my desk day after day in this really mucky, horrible time is because I have hope. And I said flatly, no, I don't think hope is a motivator for me, but I think possibility is there's possibility every day for something good, some difference, yeah, possibility. I

Fredrik Gertten:

agree. I think it's, in some way, it's my duty to kind of tell people that we need to stay hopeful, and we don't have the right to take hope out of people. So we, in some way, we need to strengthen each other. So this will then be a hopeful podcast today, this episode, you don't know, but let's, let's try. Let's try possibly, possibly in the in the film breaking social, we have Rutger Bregman and he say he's a possibilist. He's not an optimist, he's a possibilist. There we go. And another participant in that film is now with us in our podcast, and that's Peter S Goodman, the global economic correspondent of The New York Times. And it's nice to see you sit in front of a lot of books you've written, Peter, welcome to the podcast.

Peter S Goodman:

Thanks so much. It's always great to be with you guys.

Fredrik Gertten:

And the last time you were with us, it was, I have to show you. I have your book, Harold your last book, oh how the world ran out of everything. It's an amazing, very interesting book. Thank you. And started off with a container crisis, but it's also very deep understanding on how Tariffs and Trade changed the US and maybe also changed Sweden and Canada. So in some way, your your work is now very relevant. So welcome, Peter.

Peter S Goodman:

Thank you very much. Yeah, no, there's certainly a lot to talk about. Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten:

Well, first of all, I mean, how do you, how do I in you? Leilani, how do we handle this overload of news being bombarded every day, of confusing, horrible, aggressive behaviors? How do we, how do we handle it? How do we understand how to act in this and not only react? How do you do it? Peter, you're also news consumer,

Peter S Goodman:

yeah. Look, it's very, very hard, and we are certainly being buffeted. I mean, every day it seems like three things happen that in a normal time would take a month, you know, to process. I mean, the idea that the United States is has decided to treat both of its North American neighbors as the enemy, the fact that we're we're blowing up. You know, 70 years of tradition in terms of seeing trade as a positive thing. I mean, trade has its has its issues I've written about, but we've discussed many of these issues. I mean, there are the reality of people who've been abandoned and who've been forsaken and who certainly haven't gotten their share of the bounty from globalization, that that's a that's a very real thing and something that has to be reckoned with. But, but it would be wrong to conclude, you know, from the fact that that there are, it. Industrialized communities and and people who have been left without job training, without health care, without support for housing. To conclude from that that trade itself is bad would be a terrible mistake, but that's what we're living through at the same time that, you know, in my own country, there's, there's a war on, on the very concept of a system of law cooperation. I mean terms of government being a positive force, to say nothing of the continued war in the Middle East, there's there. There are so many ways in which we can be overwhelmed by what's unfolding. But I mean, I guess I look at it as you know, in the same way that it was foolhardy for Francis Fukuyama to famously come along and say we're at the end of history when it seemed like liberal democracy was having its moment. It would be wrong to say we're at the end of history when now it seems as if the strong men have the upper hand and and democracy seems extremely fragile. Yeah. Leilani,

Fredrik Gertten:

how do you think about it? I mean, it is a strange time in history, of course, and but this man and his his friend, Mr. Musk, is they're creating enemies everywhere. I mean, with Canada, with Mexico, with Latin America, with South Africa, with China, with Europe. You know it's like it's it's never ending. So how long can they run creating only enemies with

Leilani Farha:

Palestine, with any supporter of Palestine, with any Muslim, any Arab, whether they're green card holder, citizen, who knows it's, I'm trying to come up with a nice way to summarize how I feel. I think, ultimately, I feel assaulted constantly, both professionally and personally, and it's, it's a hard time. I mean, you know, as a Canadian who hates the winter. Where do we look to like for better weather and for some of the most achingly beautiful spots on the planet, just there in our backyard, the United States? You know, Sedona is one of my absolute Happy Places I was I was recently in in this red rock mountain area, and it's just, I mean, it's breathtaking, and now I feel like that has been taken away from me. I don't feel like I can travel to the United States freely and with good heart and with good spirit, not not just, I mean, there's the issue for me, I have an Arab last name. I am pro Palestinian, and unabashedly so. And the Liberation of Palestine really is what I'm not pro Palestinian. I'm pro the liberation of the Palestinian people, and I don't want to have to hide that. And so there's just like that, on that very personal level. I feel angry that I'm being denied just this normal relationship with my neighbors, you know. And then on top of it, there is the, you know, deeply political aspects of this I'm working. I have a big piece on Gaza right now about recovery and reconstruction, which is a joke, of course, but nevertheless, it's part of my daily work life. And I feel there's so much happening. It's like having whiplash, you know, and then even again, on the personal we have a family business that's very much affected by these tariffs, and it just goes on and on. It is a remarkable time. And I really like what Peter said, and I'll end here. I know I'm going on at length, but, you know, in the 80s, I was young, a student, just graduating from high school, and free trade was the issue. And there were many of us who were really anti free trade, because we could see the writing on the wall that it was going to leave some people behind. And then then came globalization, and there were many of us on the front lines, you know, fighting that, because we could see so it's not that we don't have a healthy critique of the way economies are functioning. Now we do. Many of us do, but gosh, what isn't there a better, more constructive way to address the failings of our economies versus, what's, you know, the approach Trump and his guys have taken. I mean, it's, it's too bad, because I would love to see reform, for sure. I would love to see more industry back in Canada, back in the United States, you know, I, you know, Michigan, for example. But anyway, so that's from me. How about you, Fredrik, you're a consumer of news, big time. Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten:

I mean, I know we're talking about two different things, but I mean, of course, the globalization has consequences, and which in that way, in some way, would say, okay, maybe Trump is right. You know, with his critique. But then I remember reading your book, Peter, where Walmart, like the best friends of Trump, were lobbying to get China into the World Trade Organization, which then happened during Clinton. So it seems like it's the same forces that are now supporting Trump who, once upon a time, made a good business out of producing stuff in China.

Peter S Goodman:

Well, I think, I mean, the business crowd is the wild card in all of this, because I think a lot of business interests in the US thought that Trump was basically bluffing on tariffs the understanding after the election, before the inauguration, before this trade war started, was that Trump was serious about so called decoupling from China. Right viewed China as the enemy, both in national security, sense and sense of economic security. Thought that it was a good idea for American companies to get out of China, for multinational companies to get out of China does truly believe that the way to bring manufacturing back to the United States and employ more people is through tariffs, but that that was mostly about China, and if you bought that frame, then Canada and Mexico in particular would logically be seen as part of the solution. You want to make less stuff in China, more stuff closer to home. Well, we have a trade agreement, by the way. It's a trade agreement that Donald Trump negotiated himself in his first term. He said it was the greatest trade agreement of all time, and it advanced the integration between Mexico, Canada and the United States. And I don't know these numbers for Canada, but I know them for Mexico. When Americans import a product from Mexico, somewhere between 30 and 40 cents on the dollar. Of that of the value of that product is made in the United States by American workers. And the counterpart number in China is like three, three cents on the dollar, and Chinese state policy is directed at driving that as close to zero as possible. So business interests assumed, oh, we know what we're going to get from Trump. We're going to get tax cuts and deregulation, which the billionaire class loves, wealthy people love. That's going to make the stock market boom. Yeah, we're going to get a continuation of of the decoupling, but the rest of the tariff stuff, it's all for show. It's a way for him to declare victory quickly. You know, we saw this early on, when he actually happened to take a trip to Colombia and was writing a story about this American medical supply company, med Source Labs, that had moved production from China to Colombia, understanding that China was a risky place to continue to do business, assuming that Colombia would then get closer to home, shipping costs would be lower, they wouldn't have to worry about tariffs, and suddenly, Trump, and I think his first week in office, threatens Colombia with 25% tariffs, demands that they accept deported plane loads full of deportees without any due process, gets the Colombian government to cave. Although they didn't really cave, they just basically reiterated stuff they were already doing, which was the same template then applied by the Canadian government and the Mexican government in terms of getting, uh, delays on the threat and tariffs there. And so business thought that that's how the game was going to be played. But now there's enormous uncertainty. We've had these tariffs on steel and aluminum, a lot of that comes from Canada. We've had continued threats of across the board tariffs, and we've got real tariffs kicking in at 25% on many products coming from Canada and Mexico. And so business itself is worried. So anyway, so a lot of business people who thought they were going to get a stock market rally and some bellicose rhetoric from Trump on trade now don't really know what to expect. And Trump's own people are saying we're going to have short term pain for longer term gain. But a lot of economists say, No, we're gonna have short term pain for longer term pain. And we've seen how trade wars play out. And it's, it's never good. It might be good for a couple of protected industries, for most people, it's it. It lifts the price of consumer goods, which is especially bad the further down the economic ladder you go because, because poor people, they spend more of their income on things like groceries and clothing, and so it hits them hardest. So basically, the people Trump took office promising to lift, I mean, Trump came into office saying, I understand the struggles of blue collar workers. The Democrats are now this out of touch, corporate elite party. I hear you. I'm going to deal with inflation, I'm going to bring jobs home. Those people are now in line to get screwed, and that's all already beginning, and we don't know where this is going. And by the way, just just to sort of put the finish on, on the. Leilani broad thought about, you know, hope versus possibility. The thing that's really striking to me as an American who's been thinking about globalization now for several decades is Trump's whole trade war in his first administration against China was premised on this idea that we're the good guys, we play by the rules. We have strong workplace safety standards and environmental regulations, and we're a democracy, and our industries are getting undercut by this job killing. Goliath, now in my book, I punch holes in this thesis, and note that to your point, Fredrik, that that it was, it was American business interests lobbying heavily to get into China precisely because they wanted the benefits of undercutting union labor and getting out from under environmental regulations. But this whole framing was, we're the good guys. They're the bad guys. They they've got naked power that they're using through their massive population and the heavy hand of government willing to crush any possibility of organized labor, which keeps wages low. And you can do deals transactionally. You want a piece of land you just cut in the corrupt communist party boss in that area, you can get land, you can get resources. So you fast forward to now. Trump is now basically saying openly, we the United States needs to be more like China. We're not going to have systems of rules. We've got, you know, Elon Musk slashing the Environmental Protection Agency. We've got every conceivable kind of bureaucracy, some of which is directed at protecting working people from toxins and abuses. We're gutting these sorts of government undertakings, and we're saying to the rest of the world, hey, we're the biggest economy on Earth, therefore you got to deal with us, and we're just going to do whatever we want while Trump is himself cutting deals for his cronies. He's using his own Justice Department to go after his supposed enemies. I mean, we basically are operating much like the cartoonish depiction of China that prompted the trade war against China to begin with,

Fredrik Gertten:

and that's you're totally right. And that's confusing and overwhelming. I almost land with this. Okay, now you're you're making so many people angry and so many people afraid. So Isn't that an amazing moment for a new kind of coalition between good people, good countries, good nations. I mean, we see Mexico has a decent government, Canada has a decent government. I mean, the European Union, there are a lot of interesting voices out there that are now talking about I mean, you can also hear South Africa talking out, speaking out, and in Brazil, and I guess also then inside the US, there are a lot of good people who say, Okay, we need to do something. Isn't this a beautiful opportunity to to create this kind of united front of of the good people? How do you see Leilani or Peter? I

Leilani Farha:

like to hear Peter's take on that, and whether he's seeing that happening at least even within the US, I can, I can have a more zoomed out, you know, what, what am I seeing, or what am I not seeing? But I'm interested are, is there kind of a rallying in the US of like, Pushback against this?

Peter S Goodman:

I mean, certainly there are a lot of people who are upset, but I think there is a there's a lot of fear really. I mean, in my own industry, I am fortunate to work for a newspaper that whatever you may think about any particular story or run of coverage, or whatever your views may be, and there are lots of accusations about the New York Times, I can tell you, you know, with complete sincerity, that whatever we're doing, it's the product of somebody's journalistic judgment. It's not that some corporate interest is is leaning on us to to be friendly to them. It's not that we are friendly with some ideological wing of a party. Now, do we have values? You know, of course, the individuals have values. Of course, I'm not. I'm not here tap dancing about objectivity, which is a concept that I think most, most sensible people don't really believe in. There's fairness, there's professionalism. These things are real. There are facts, and we live in facts, but I'm not, I'm not going to try to spin you that you know there's objectivity, because I just don't think there's any such but what I'm saying is our operation is pure in that the family running the ship truly believes in journalism, truly. Believes in independent journalism. That is increasingly not true of institutions that you could you know, I was fortunate enough to work for the Washington Post for 10 years under the Graham family Jeff Bezos is very clearly afraid of Trump, afraid of what Trump could do to his his space company, to his E commerce empire and is now using the Washington Post, least from the opinion page standpoint, to be friendly to the Trump administration. You say the same thing about Facebook

Fredrik Gertten:

producing a documentary of the First Lady for tons of money. I mean

Peter S Goodman:

Amazon spending all this money on melania's memoir. The optics of that are not good the LA Times, you know, under the hands of a billionaire biotech guy, Patrick students Young who was, you know, basically lobbying for, for RF, Kennedy Jr, to come in and, you know, pulling, pulling similar strings at the Los Angeles Times. So, you know, that's, that's just in my neck of the woods, right? That's, that's very disconcerting. But, I mean, I think, to answer your question more globally, what's happening is a reversal of decades of American policy during the period where Americans became concerned about China. Now, there's a lot to critique in the Obama administration trade policy, and I don't think it was particularly effective, but the logic was, hey, if we're the good guys and they're the bad guys, then let's join with the good guys. So let's trade more with Europe. Let's trade more with Japan and South Korea, and we'll build these big regional trading blocks, and we'll force the Chinese system to be more like ours, to abide by workplace and environmental standards and pay higher wages and be more transparent and not steal intellectual property. And they'll have to do that in order to get into our club. And what's happening now is the rest of the world is forming its own club. So the result of sticking Canada, our neighbor to the north, with tariffs, is Canadian businesses going to look to Europe for for more trade. And it's highly likely that the US will find itself isolated in a trading block of its own creation. And by the way, I mean, one of the things that I think has been so disconcerting about all of this is the way in which this simplistic, nationalist kind of sloganeering view of trade has saturated the popular culture. And I'll give you an example that comes to mind. I was in Louisville, Kentucky few weeks ago doing a story about how local businesses were preparing for then the likelihood of the trade war, and I happened to take a tour of a bourbon distillery, and the bourbon industry was really unhappy because and they were correct about this. They figured, if we actually go through with these tariffs on the Europeans and on the Canadians, they're going to respond with retaliatory tariffs hitting immediately American spirits, and that's going to hit bourbon. So I wanted to go see that up close. So I'm taking this tour and this kind of young hipster guy showing us around this beautiful, handsome brick building in downtown Louisville, angels envy. You may know this brand from from your own liquor cabinet. And halfway through, he's saying, Well, you know bourbon, 51% of it has to come from corn. The corn comes from a neighboring county. We get some barley. I think it is from someplace in Ohio. And here's the rye that we get from Canada. Some guy behind me says, Why do you buy the rye from Canada? And the tour guide says, Well, you know, they grow a lot of rye in Canada. It's good quality. It's close by. We get a good price. Well, how can you say it's American bourbon if you're getting rye from Canada? And the guy says, Well, I mean, we're an American company, like, here we are in America. We employ Americans. We're selling this stuff to Americans like we're an American company. And I asked the tour guide afterwards, said, How often does that happen that you get that question? He said, two or three times a day. I mean, if we're at the point where we can't buy rye from our fellow democracy to the north, just a few miles over a border, and put it into our production without that somehow tainting the concept of the purity of the nation. Like, what the hell are we doing? Like, how are we supposed to make anything? And you know, on that same trip, I visited a guy who makes pumps, 86 year old pump company, you know, some pumps, industrial pumps. And I said, What are you concerned about tariffs? He said, Well, yeah. He said, we've been in business here for 86 years. He told me he had resisted the temptation to move production. Into China to Mexico, because he's very proud to be a local company. Keep the tradition going. He said, The problem is, you know, we have this company that makes a part of our pump over in Canada, and if you stick me with 25% of tariffs, that's going to be a real problem. And guess what? I'm going to lose business to competitors in places like China, because they're going to make their stuff cheaper. And as well, how do you understand the logic of this? You know, I mean, these tariffs are, are supposed to bring production back to America. You're already here, and you've resisted the temptation to go somewhere else, to change, to chase cheaper wages. And he said, he said, Look, if I'm the bad guy this everybody's the bad guy.

Fredrik Gertten:

It's totally confusion, big confusion for everybody who tried to operate, of course, in this world. Are they doing this because they are smart businessmen, or are this just driven by some crazy idea that they want to rock everything? It's hard to understand. It

Peter S Goodman:

is very hard to understand. The best I can come up with is that that uncertainty is part of a strategy to make it so difficult to do business in the world that the only refuge, I mean, Trump keeps saying this like you're worried about tariffs, make your stuff in the US, but the the Louisville pump example shows like, here's a company making stuff in the US, you just made them less competitive compared to their Chinese competitors. So it's very hard to square that rhetoric, but, but I think the policy is designed to make people anxious anywhere outside of the United States. And then I think that the policy is designed to centralize power. So, you know, it's of a piece in terms of this transition from rule of law to rule of people. And if you are the president that you are demonstrating every day that it doesn't matter whether you yourself negotiated the trade agreement with your neighbors, you will breach that, and you will cite obscure provisions of old laws to justify treating your neighbors like enemies, completely contravening. Forget the World Trade Organization your own trade agreement. Then that puts every business on notice that you better ingratiate yourself with Donald Trump and his administration, which is how Melania gets the check for her memoirs from Amazon Prime. It's why people are buying, you know, the Trump crypto coin, that's why people are are writing giant checks to Maga movement related political action committees as a way to get an audience with Trump at Mar a Lago or wherever they pay

Fredrik Gertten:

$5 million to come and can have a lunch with him, right? You

Peter S Goodman:

are reinforcing the value of your decision making and continually warning people that you could strike without any notice, without any rationality. So there's two ways to be safe, be friendly with Maga and be in the United States, and this policy is consistent with that,

Leilani Farha:

and be white and male. I mean that so much of this is also about, it seems, creating a hugely dominant class of white people, straight, straight, white males, women may play some role in terms of procreation, I suppose. But I mean, if you look at the attack on dei diversity, equity and inclusion, it's really clear, certainly, as someone, I'm racialized, I'm 100% Arab Canadian. It's really clear who's in, who's out, and the DEI stuff is so scary in certain ways. I saw a list. You don't know what's fake news these days? Maybe it was fake news, a list of words that the Trump administration doesn't want to see. I don't know. Yeah, it was really long, yeah, I mean, it included words like, women, yeah, right. Like, so I don't know. Like, is that equality?

Peter S Goodman:

I'll tell you the low point for that for me, sorry. Or did I cut you off? No, please go. Go, go. Well, during the Super Bowl, I don't know if you guys watch the Super Bowl, people people who don't care about phone only the halftime show. Well, no, but that's my point. Yeah, the halftime show. So Kendrick Lamar gives the halftime show, and on Twitter, I still can't say x Elon Musk's social media platform, there's a lot of Maga attacks. Acts on the halftime show as a dei halftime show. Now let us parse this. So if you are a died in the wool racist, the one I mean, according to the stereotype, the one thing, the one area where African Americans, you know, get to have their moment is entertainers and athletes, right? That's the old demeaning, dehumanizing cliche, right? Oh, they're just entertainers and athletes. So here's Kendrick Lamar, a very successful entertainer at an enormous athletic show, and someone is saying that he has not earned his success. He's up there because of dei I mean, it's very hard to read that and not conclude that in the Maga construction, any black person doing anything doesn't have value, doesn't have worth. I mean, this is LeBron James, a dei basketball player. Like, I mean, how far are we going to go with this? Like, exactly, we're already there.

Leilani Farha:

You know what I read the other day, and I haven't had time to do due diligence, but I read that all of the affordable housing programs in the US, there's that main one that enables private sector to work with community based organizations, and they can create affordable housing because you don't have too much social housing in the states that those programs fall under dei because they are obviously aimed at providing housing for groups of people that fall into the DEI category, and therefore those programs are being scrapped. I mean, it's incredible, like the the sort of reach of this. And just to go back to Kendrick Lamar, he has won 22 Grammys. He won a Pulitzer for his album, damn anyway.

Peter S Goodman:

No, I mean, I mean, look, it's offensive enough that you know black journalists, lawyers, doctors, poets, FAA, regulators, like whatever, our personnel you know are having their competence and their achievements you know questioned and undermined in a clearly racist way. The idea that you're going to apply that to an internationally successful entertainer, It's unfathomable. It's just unfathomable.

Fredrik Gertten:

Yeah, but, but, friends, I mean, let's try to zoom out, because this is what happens inside the US, and it's you're in the midst of it. Of course, it's overwhelming, but here, from the outside is like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, we don't want to be have anything to do with with them. And we are. We have Europe. We have So and, of course, and when I meet people who are scared, I will tell them hey, but it's a great moment also to to identify who we can be friends with. You. We can look away from some differences or many differences, but we can still agree on many things. And so in some way, there is this possibility of something else coming up. And I mean, of course, that's a question. Where the global resistance to this weirdness? Where will it come up, of course, and we can see resistance on the streets in Belgrade, or we can see it and in many places around the world, where people go take the streets also, also in the US. But of course, there, I mean the European Union leaders or or other leaders, the Canadians and the Mexicans are they are they don't speak out so much that they do things behind the scenes well,

Leilani Farha:

but are they? I mean, look at what the European Union just did recently, saying, you know, that states should cut their spending in terms of overseas aid and should increase defense spending, a play that goes directly in the camp of Trump, you know, to some degree, look at Kirsten, really taking that, you know, head of England, you know, really, Prime Minister, I should say, taking, you know, a huge chunk out of development aid. And, you know, really not, not turning to the people in his country and saying, Okay, we've got to, you know, shore up against this guy. And I don't know, I I wish I could believe that states will rally all together and form some community against Trump. I just, I don't know. I'm not seeing it happening in

Fredrik Gertten:

one. One way, but you will not see it out on spoken about at this point. Okay, how I think I that's, that's at least my gut feeling that they need to talk to each other, you know, because it's so aggressive. I mean, we on the other side of the water. Here we have Denmark. Who are, you know, being attacked. This small, small US ally are being attacked, you know? I mean, so everybody says, Okay, fuck. We have lost, we have lost a big friend. We still need to say, please them in some way, but the same time we need to kind of talk to each other. We have to see, okay, let's the the EU trade agreement with with Latin America, I think was went, went through, I mean, and I think there were certainly strengths in relations to Canada and so on. That's, that's my, I

Leilani Farha:

mean, our new prime minister, my hope

Fredrik Gertten:

also, but I think it's also important to see okay, now you have a madman with his mask at his side in the US. But we still have a world will also with good people running countries or trying, of course, to do the good things.

Leilani Farha:

Well, I mean, you know, you

Fredrik Gertten:

mean, I mean naive suite. That's my favorite role. We have

Leilani Farha:

a new prime minister in Canada, Prime Minister Carney, for the next few days before he calls an election. And the first thing he did was he went to France to meet with Macron. Whether we like this or not, it doesn't matter. It was a very pointed and then he met with the king. And now he's in northern Canada, you know, in the Arctic. And so I think that was an interesting sign as this relationship building that you're talking about, Fredrik, these new relations.

Peter S Goodman:

It's especially interesting to me given that I lived through living in London during Brexit. Carney, who was then the head of the Bank of England, was the guy who had to clean up the incredible mass of the uncertainty of the Brexit referendum back in in June of 2016 and one of the things that I've been thinking about is that the people promoting Brexit, which was, you know, again, before Trump's first election, it was the first sign, if you were looking at it right, of what happens When you allow inequality to fester when you battle out bankers and screw working class and middle class people by cutting their benefits, and you have this kind of racist nationalist taking back control language, and the people who are promoting Brexit said, Well, this is great. We're going to get out from under the ossified European Union, we're going to forge our own swashbuckling global adventure. We're going to return to our roots. And the colonialist trope was never far below the surface, and the principal place they were looking is we're going to get a great trade deal from Donald Trump. We're going to, instead of dealing with slow growing Europe, we're going to have trade deals with fast growing China and India and the United States. Well now Britain is isolated from the European Union, which suddenly looks to be in healthier shape than Britain itself. And forget trade deals with Trump. You're dealing with trade war and Carney, the guy who had to clean up the mess in England, is now in Canada, having to deal with Trump much closer at hand. You just don't know how the story is going to go.

Leilani Farha:

No, no, you don't. One thing my father said to me the other day, I thought was super interesting. He he said that he thought, now my father's 90, right? So he's been through a few things. He's seen a few things. And he said that if the US wants to be kind of isolationist, which it apparently wants to be, right, its own nation and everything should be us made, etc, then they have to give up their power, like if they want to stop funding the UN if they want to stop funding NATO, if they want to stop, you know, footing the bill for a lot of things, which is what Trump is complaining about, whether it's, I don't know the veracity of his claims, but that's what he's claiming. Then they have to recognize that with that actually comes a decrease in world power, and that, I thought was super interesting. I mean, I don't know how we get there. I would love to see that,

Peter S Goodman:

but, but it's not isolationist. I mean, it's anti it's unilateralist, right? I mean, the idea of multilateral cooperation is over. I mean, isolationist is not, oh, we might go to Panama and take the canal back. True that we're going to take Greenland from from the date Canada, right? Canada, the 51st state like this is not an isolationist. This is heavily interventionist, right?

Leilani Farha:

Manifest Destiny,

Peter S Goodman:

yeah, yeah. It's, it's exactly what we accused China. Russia of doing

Fredrik Gertten:

and what we accuse Russia of doing,

Peter S Goodman:

right? Yeah,

Leilani Farha:

okay, Fredrik, where's the hope? This hope you kept talking about, I'm not feeling very

Fredrik Gertten:

hopeful right now because you shut down my hope. I just opened my mouth. Where's the

Leilani Farha:

possibility? Where's the possibility? I mean, the

Fredrik Gertten:

possibility is, of course, that the people he Trump attacks, and the people that are now feel uncertain and shaken are start to organize themselves. That could be world leaders from other countries. It can be, could be business leaders from the US who are not so happy with this. Of course, it's the I mean, we're talking about unions. We're talking about, you know everybody who lost their jobs right now. I mean, it's there must be tons of communities, and there are, of course, still also a lot of states, part of the United States, who are led by Democrats who are also opposing what is happening. So not much. Shut down again. Boom, boom. The

Peter S Goodman:

Democrat Party is trying very hard to sort of stay out of look, James Carville, who is Clinton's famous strategist, he his prescription was, let's just play dead and hope that Trumpism burns out. And I mean, there's a lot of like, look, Chuck Schumer just upset a lot of his own party. He's the the leader of the Senate Democrats by going along with this, this resolution that actually emboldens Trump and mosque, I mean, hands them greater power to continue their federal government slashing as in order to avoid a shutdown of the federal government, he thought that would be bad for the next election. I mean, there's still a very kind of narrow minded focus on, how do you win the next election? I am not. I wish I was. I am not seeing signs of something has gone terribly awry. If this is where we are, and you know, what do we do about that? There's not a lot of that.

Fredrik Gertten:

But of course, we are, like, one month or two months into this his term. So of course, what is cooking now is maybe not up on the front yet, but, I mean, something must happen, because people can't eat all shit all the time. I that's what I presume. But let's see. I mean, I do

Leilani Farha:

think there will be some blows to his agenda that he won't get his way with everything I have been watching closely. Of course, I'm someone who suffers anxiety when the rule of law as a lawyer and a human rights lawyer, when the rule of law is weakened and disobeyed, or I start really having panic attacks, I have to admit that, and I've been having some that. Being said, some of the judges in the US are holding strong and are, even if they are Republican appointed judges, they are, there's something about the rule of law, right? Judges are not going to let go of the rule of law too easily, even if they're Republican, right? And so I think we're on the cusp of potentially some big Pushback from the courts in the US. I think that will serve a blow. I think Canada has served a blow to Trump. I mean the aggressive stance taken by the Premier of Ontario saying, Yeah, okay, we're going to tax your energy by 25% and all the states that border the province of Ontario are going to be affected in

Peter S Goodman:

one of those states, exactly. And then he's like, personally, close to home,

Leilani Farha:

and you know what, if we have to, we're going to cut it off. And when he said that he got a meeting with Rubio, or whoever it was, maybe so. So I think if we can get some more blows, people will start being a little less fearful, maybe, and maybe come together more I don't know. I mean, I'm not seeing it in my sector yet, all of us are just like, whoa. What is, what is happening here, and scrambling and, you know, decrying racism against Palestinians and their supporters. I mean, right, like it's, it's a kind of madness right now. But as you say, Fredrik, it's month two. Yeah

Fredrik Gertten:

and and Tesla is losing a lot of his its business over here, Peter and here too, and here, yeah, and us too. So at what is there any point where Musk will say this is too much, or he doesn't really care, or, I

Peter S Goodman:

there is a growing sense that he doesn't care that much about Tesla. Wow, yeah, yeah. Hey guys, I apologize. I gotta run. Oh yeah. This, this was great. And I really appreciate you guys hashing all this out. It's great to see you.

Fredrik Gertten:

You are a great inspiration, Peter, can we stay possible? Can we agree on that?

Leilani Farha:

You bet let's stay possible. Thanks so much, Peter. Bye.

Fredrik Gertten:

Bye, wow. Leilani, Peter is a big inspiration. Conversation, he's

Leilani Farha:

amazing. His analysis is great, and his knowledge is great, which is helpful, right? As we're thinking this through and finding our way,

Fredrik Gertten:

I think knowledge is important, and I think we become stronger when we have the arguments, even if I was trying to get some hope, and I was shot down over and over again. No, but your idea

Leilani Farha:

is right, Fredrik, your idea is 100% right, that we have to that there has to be a big coming together of sorts, both like in our own nations, but also internationally. I so it's not that I don't see that as as where we need to go. I just think everything is so destabilized right now, people are really well, I just speak for myself, I'm totally suffering. I told you in a whatsapp right I can barely sustain a good mood for more than a couple of hours. I just the world is really shitty. Both you and I have, you know, young adults, children, and we're thinking like I'm thinking, what kind of a world is this for young

Fredrik Gertten:

that's why we have the podcast. This is the Pushback Talks, and it's the leading resistance podcast. Tell your friends about to resist and get some inspiration, and tell your friends about the podcast and send it on to your friends and subscribe to it and comment on wherever you listen. That's a way of supporting the podcast, isn't it? It

Leilani Farha:

is. And people can also go to patreon.com look up Pushback Talks and send us a little love by money. It helps. I

Fredrik Gertten:

think it's more important than ever to look around you see who are your friends. That's right, who are doing cool stuff. Let's support people who do cool stuff and don't shoot down their hopes. No,

Leilani Farha:

no, I agree with you. I agree with you. And I find that in my my day to day, I'm, you know, seeing all sorts of small groups that are struggling and they're asking for a little money, and I'm, I'm I'm broke now because I just keep giving, giving, because it's so important, all this resistance, you're right. Fredrik, yeah.

Fredrik Gertten:

So we, I mean, this is the way how we can move on, is to support each other and also try to look out for good people doing cool stuff. And I think that's what we can try to do also in this podcast. Yeah,

Leilani Farha:

yeah. I want to say one more thing. I really want people to support documentary films. Documentary filmmaking, I said it in one of our recent episodes. I'm going to say it again. It is such an important vehicle for change. I went on this weekend to two documentary films, one of which is no other land, and which I'd already seen. But I wanted to support it again. But there's so many good documentaries out there, telling truth, exposing things, and really, they can be big sources of motivation. So fredriks made a few folks. You can look them up, WG film, breaking social. His most recent.com WW, well, if they Google WG film, they'll find you breaking social. His most recent film, really, really inspiring, also

Fredrik Gertten:

featuring Peter S Goodman, that's right, so and it but that film is, I think it's more relevant than ever, because it speaks about Kleptocracy, you know, the rule of the kleptocrats, which now actually took over the government more openly in the United States, even if the kleptocrats is being closed or are closed to governments in many, many countries, this is like the most open operation we've seen. But the film also talks about hope, and it also talks about who we are as human beings, that we are born to cooperate. The human race is born to work together, and that's how we survived and thrived as a species. So I think it's important to remember that. And there are a lot of people out there, also in the US, in Canada, Sweden, who work together in communities or in small groups, who want to do stuff. And let's, let's keep doing that. Thank you, Leilani, that's Fredrik, nice to see you now, you know I can see your smile again. I like that. That's good. It's you have a beautiful smile. Keep it up. Yeah.

Leilani Farha:

Every, every two hours or so, there's just Yeah,

Fredrik Gertten:

take care and see you soon. Bye, Fredrik, bye Leilani.

Kirsten McRae:

Pushback Talks is produced by WG film. To support the podcast, become a patron by going to patreon.com/pushback talks. Follow us on social media at Make underscore the shift and Push underscore the film, or check out our websites, maketheshift.org, pushthefilm.com, or breakingsocialfilm.com