 Good afternoon and welcome for members who have not joined a previous IIEA webinar. We wish you and your best and yours the best in getting through this most difficult times. It's our great pleasure today to welcome Tom Wright, a leading Irish export and expert in international affairs at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He is director of the Center on the United States in Europe and a senior fellow in the project on international order and strategy at that institution. He's also contributing writer for the Atlantic and I very much recommend his most recent essay in that publication. His most recent book, All Measures Short of War, The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power, was published by Yale University Press in May 2017. At this moment of unprecedented uncertainty, Tom will talk today about the United States, its politics and its place in the world and he will take questions on these issues and many others no doubt during the Q&A, which will be on the record. Before we get going, let me remind you that we will be live tweeting this events at the handle at IIEA, so please feel free to join in. So with that, thank you Tom and over to you. Great, thank you so much and thank you to everyone at the Institute for having me back. I didn't anticipate the next time I'll be back, it will be from my house over a laptop virtually, but those are the times we're in so it's a great pleasure to be here albeit under difficult circumstances for everyone. So I thought what I would do is talk for about 20 minutes or so about half on what's going on in the United States on this particularly politically and economically and then half on sort of the foreign policy international order questions. I'm sure everyone's fairly sort of familiar with the general trajectory of this over here but I would just make a few sort of points starting out. I mean I think what's really struck everyone is we spent the last three years saying President Trump has his faults and there's lots of problems in the administration but there hasn't been a crisis yet and as long as there's not a crisis maybe we'll be able to muddle through in some way right that all of the daily drama and sort of craziness that you see on your on your TV screen or on your Twitter feed may not matter that much if the economy is going pretty well and if there's sort of generally the US is not involved in a major conflict or there's not a major crisis. Well we now have the crisis and it's not just any old crisis it's probably the most sort of complex difficult crisis that any government will be faced with it's a health crisis first and foremost and but also economic international all wrapped into one and I think it's hard to imagine a crisis that will be less suited to this administration right and it's not just the president and it's also a very difficult crisis I think for the country as well for reasons I will and get into in a second but in terms of the administration they have really not sort of anticipated I think a global sort of pandemic even though there was intelligence warnings on it from probably around December of 2019 John Bolton had dismantled the unit that was set up after the Ebola virus in five or six years ago he dismantled that unit in the fight house and dispersed it to the agencies and the reason really was that he did not believe that that sort of health policy had a core place in the national security infrastructure he saw that as something more for development or for the CDC and it just wasn't in that normal sort of framework and that was you know it's separate to sort of the president's sort of activities now there were some people in the fight house I think who were sort of worried about this more the folks who sort of looked at it from the China side of it and but Trump himself I think was worried more about the economic impact early on and as we now sort of famously or infamously know Dan played it and throughout and I think though he he did undertake the travel bans on China which is a partial ban near the end of January at 40,000 people still came in after that as the New York Times showed over the weekend and it was later sort of a travel ban to Europe but that was really as the crisis was really coming you know was resulting in restrictions and travel everywhere and not many people are traveling at that point but aside from those measures he didn't use that time to build capacity to really rally the state so rally the international community and it wasn't only until late sort of mid-March that we saw this sort of turn around and now we have the daily press conferences where he's sort of saying he's leaning into it and but he's still perhaps more restrained in the use of executive authority than any other president would be a lot of attention here is focused on the Defense Production Act which is this piece of legislation that gives the president right the right basically to command industry to undertake certain production lines if it's in the national interest is usually envisaged for a time of war and conflict and but it's applicable here he only very recently invoke that and so that's sort of one of the leading examples of just how they've been sort of behind on this but I think it's not just it's fair to say it's not just the president either we have a federal system obviously in the US which gives a lot of power to governors which means it's very hard to actually have a unified approach across the country a president could call for a nationwide state home order and that he has not done that so it's up to the individual states the silver lining I think is that the federal system actually means that some governors can be more proactive than the president right so that probably wasn't really imagined sort of three or four years ago when people were wargaming a pandemic scenario they'd be assuming that the states were sort of laggards behind the fight has but in this case New York California Washington many others have been out ahead others have been significantly behind Florida being the most significant of those so it's a bit of a patchwork effort we in Washington have sort of a stay-at-home order but it's more lax I think than what you have in Ireland and there's fewer restrictions there's no sort of limitations for instance on exercise or how far you go from your house or the number of times you go to the grocery store so that sort of partial lockdown may contribute I think across the country to the sort of extraordinary sort of infection numbers and death numbers and that we are seeing now the economic side is sort of interesting I'll just spend a moment on that you know it's I'm sort of struck by the contrast with 2008 where there's basically universal support for massive stimulus packages and the reason is is that nobody believes that the people who've lost their jobs here were to blame for the crisis you see some of the more austerity focused people on Capitol Hill say well look the banks in 2008 were responsible we shouldn't avail them out but the the restaurant sector retail entertainment and they had no sort of control over this and so a lot of the concerns about moral hazard or or you know or debt and sort of long-term viability of the debt are not really operable here and so senators like Tom Cotton, Mark Rubio others in the very conservative types have been basically along along similar lines to the Democrats and the numbers now there are significant differences in some of the details particularly with regard to the conditions that are attached to some of the aid and but for the most part there's broad support for massive stimulus packages and what we saw a couple of weeks ago will not be by any means sort of the last word in it we're expecting you know several sort of more I think over over the duration of this and the numbers as in Europe are very bleak you know we think we're at 13% unemployment now that should go up to about 20% probably at peak and Goldman Sachs I think estimate that even if there's a partial recovery we've been at 9% by the election and so this I think will be a very severe recession and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second just on the politics of this President Trump got a bump and that's pretty normal for president at a time of crisis President George W. Bush's approval ratings after 9-11 were extremely high I think over 75 or 80 percent George H. W. Bush at the time of the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 over 90 percent presidents tend to do pretty well in a crisis but those numbers can head away pretty fast what was striking to me was that President Trump's bump was actually pretty small right so he has 60 percent approval and the handling of the crisis that's not now gone down to less than 50 percent and his overall approval rating was at 49 percent which was high for him was still pretty low and that's declined a bit so I think he's actually going to face quite a challenge if this crisis continues as I think it will and through the election if unemployment remains high and if there's sort of concerns about his missteps or how he's handling so I think he's in he's in sort of a difficult political spot even if the temporary numbers are positive Joe Biden has been fairly out of the picture again that's not very surprising right because in the middle or at the beginning of the crisis all of the attention is on the fight house and the administration and that bully pulpit and that the president has and but I think over the summer we will see sort of Biden come in more in the media and campaigning quite what that campaigning looks like I think it's a huge question no one quite knows the answer to there's conventions scheduled for the end of August and but it's widely believed they may be cancelled obviously mass rallies are probably very unlikely and President Trump will be very disappointed by that of course but it imposes real limitations on Biden too so I think it will be a very unusual election campaign a lot of the real concern is on the election itself and some of you may have seen yesterday where voters in Wisconsin went to the polls in the middle of a pandemic it was highly controversial an opinion from a court and that mandated the election when a lot of people wanted to postpone it and so attention is naturally focused on the November election can that be cancelled can you have mail-in voting what will we do if there's another outbreak then and this is really sort of uncharted territory either the constitution wasn't written with a view to having an election during a pandemic democrats want to have mail-in ballots which are fairly common here but not not universally applied across the states Trump is opposed to that largely because republicans sort of believe that that sort of results in higher votes from democratic and voters and he's sort of made that clear in press conferences so we don't really know what an election would be like if people can't go to the polls and one question people often have is can Trump postpone the election he can't it has to be an act of congress to postpone the election so Nazi Pelosi would need to agree but even if they postpone the election the inauguration date is set in the constitution so one way or the other president Trump's term expires in January 2021 right and if he does not if there is no election or there is no successor then he still leaves office actually and then it goes into the line of succession and so Pence and him their terms automatically end on January 20th this is the 20th amendment to the constitution so he does not have many sort of cards to play in terms of trying to you know stay in power use this to you know to avoid the election altogether but the worst case scenario is probably an election that partially goes all you know some states having it one way other states saying they can't have an election so they're just going to send electors to the electoral college was there entitled to do because the constitution says that only state legislators have to do this and then the state legislators choose to empower that to the people and so this could easily end up in the courts and it could be very messy and but it's not sort of a simple question of Trump just deciding to postpone it or cancel it and try to stay in power so it will be I think a very difficult period and Democrats are trying to use this next stimulus package to attach conditions that would ensure sort of a free and open sort of election by mail and ballots or other mechanisms and that will be a big fight in the coming in the coming weeks and so just turning to the international picture Dan kindly mentioned this piece I had in the Atlantic a few days ago and really that piece was trying to ask what happens if this crisis goes on for 12 or 18 months right we we believe from a lot of our leaders that our leaders seem to believe that it could be over in the summer that if we have this pain up front and that then it will be under control and then it will be sort of back to normal in some way I certainly agree that I don't think we'll see the level of shutdown that we have until there's a vaccine but it seems pretty clear from the health experts and that we won't have a return of normal until there is a vaccine or until there is herd immunity achieved in across the world or at least in some major countries and that that will take 12 to 18 months so for the next year probably up until June, July 2021 assuming that that's when a vaccine comes to the market there will be significant changes to our lives and to the economy and I think that will have a major sort of impact on on the world sort of going forward and the first sort of piece that I'd like to mention is on cooperation because this is really the first crisis that the U.S. has been completely absent as a global leader and has had really zero interest in coordinating cooperation between its allies or between other countries. If you look at 2008 or 2009 the initial shock of that financial crisis was worse than the shock in 1929 to 1933 so the first 12 months were a bigger drop and but then it eased off and it returned to a more positive ground and much better than the 1929 to 1933 crisis because many experts believe in, I don't know if Dan agrees that this is not but one hypothesis is that it was the international response right that the cooperation between countries the enlightened steps that they took meant that it was not as it was not a depression right but it wasn't the initial shock that was lesser than shocks of previous areas and well in this case the shock is incredibly bad but the response is even worse right and so there's been virtually no cooperation at the G20 or G7 level and it's not just Trump I mean I think he's the main culprit he doesn't believe in it but every other leader with the possible exception of Emmanuel Macron basically are focused on their domestic crises because that's sort of the most challenging problem that they have in this sort of current moment and we haven't really seen countries sort of working together we've seen these export controls over medical supplies not just in the U.S. and but in Europe as well and in other parts of the world and I think as we go forward international cooperation will become more important not less important so there's a case to be made and sort of made this in the article that although it's a bad thing at the moment you know leaders should be focused on their domestic issues right they should also be looking at internationally and but international is a smaller piece of this solution currently and but in the future will be quite a major piece so think about how do you actually scale up in the vaccine and ensure that it gets to all of the places it needs to get to how do we ensure that countries that are unable to cope with this crisis in the developing world are in particularly weak states with fragile health systems that there can be support and a coordinated basis internationally to prevent any boomerang effect whereby if we get rid of it in our own countries then it comes back to us from those countries and just to help out those countries too because they're in a difficult position how do we ensure that as we rebuild our economies we do so in a mutually beneficial way not in a zero sum sort of beggar thy neighbor way so how do we how do we look at learning lessons from this to create better international institutions and surveillance mechanisms that can prevent future pandemics because this almost surely will not be the last one in our lifetimes so i think those are the type of things that require international cooperation i think if trump is reelected it will make that cooperation extremely unlikely and so we may go out of that sort of period in 2021 with a much more sort of nationalistic inwardly focused sort of approach to this which i think will be tragic and very sort of damaging in the long term but i think that and i don't know if the international order would really as we know it in terms of institutions and multilateralism would survive that shock in 2021 i think it can survive what's going on this month and over the next few months another sort of concern that people have which is sort of linked to the cooperation side is US-China relations right China obviously made a lot of missteps in this early on knew about it from sort of November of 2019 sort of suppressed information about it and suppressed the experts who are warning and impose sort of partial travel bounds for travel in China but not to the rest of the world pressured the WHO and so there's a lot of anger i would say here and elsewhere where in terms of China's response to that but there's also widespread recognition that we need to cooperate with China even if we disagree with how they handled it and even if we're competing them with them in other areas there was a letter a few days ago by a hundred sort of foreign policy people including Madeleine Albright, Steve Hadley and others calling for exactly this that i signed on to as well but calling for cooperation with China what was interesting about that is you had a mixture of hawks who are quite competitive toward China and people who also favor more sort of engagement but they recognize that superpowers or great powers need to cooperate in global health and there's a precedent for that in Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States cooperated in the eliminating smallpox at the height of the Cold War and also cooperating in non-proliferation and other issues and we've been unable to do that so far with China and I think that is something that will become particularly important in 2021 as well at the moment I think there's a lot of you know there's some sort of thawing we've seen some opening between Trump and Xi after the phone call a couple of weeks ago and you'll see where that goes and one thing that I know is of interest to a lot of a lot of view as well as sort of globalization and supply change and sort of the lessons that will be drawn afterwards I would say I think there are there is a widespread belief across the political spectrum here that it's sort of unacceptable that the US would find itself without any capacity to manufacture and scale up quickly on crucial medical supplies for a pandemic that was widely sort of predicted right and so the lack of ventilators the fact that the US is needing to find those in China or find face masks in China concerned about other critical pharmaceuticals I mean there will be an investigation probably along the lines of the 9-11 commission once this is over or nearly over they will draw sort of major policy conclusions and recommendations and those are likely to be implemented and I find it very hard to believe that a part of that will not be to ensure that the US does not get caught out again on that and I'm sure other countries would have a similar approach the question is what is the solution right is the solution to be more sort of isolationist, self-sufficient you know pull back from global trade impose these very severe restrictions on companies or is it to have more redundancy in the system so even if it's a little bit economically inefficient you're sort of buying insurance against this happening again and you put in place regulations that require companies to sort of double up and or you have sort of trusted partners of like-minded countries that make archived commitments to share this at a time of crisis so I think there's different sort of approaches coming out of it but I think one thing we will not see is just a return to the status quo because too many people have had their lives disrupted from this I think the same is true by the way of the EU I think it's highly likely that Macron and others say that the EU will need a greater sort of internal capacity but the EU I think is even better off than the US in this I mean it's just been really dramatic and part of part of the problems here it could be dealt with by the Defense Production Act and but part of them are separate to that there's just been a real sort of problem in getting companies that want to actually produce some of this equipment to be able to do it given the manufacturing plants that they actually have which are sort of out of sync with what the requirements are I just say a couple of other very brief things just under the World Health Organization that's gotten a lot of sort of attention over the last 24 hours because of Trump's announcement that he will consider stopping funding they're in a tough spot you know it's very difficult for an international institution to operate in an environment where the major sort of powers have a lot of vested interests and are very sensitive to criticism I do sort of empathize in some way that they wouldn't want to sort of aggravate China early on but at the same time they gave advice that seemed to be at odds with what's happening at that particular moment in terms of human transmission praising the Chinese response and advising against travel bans to buy time which had a big impact in small countries in particular in Asia may have contributed to the problem in Europe and I think there will be a real sort of reflection on this afterwards and my main sort of takeaway is that sort of democratic liberal democratic countries need to work together more in these international institutions and engage more to ensure that China or other countries you know have a fair say and a legitimate say but don't sort of distort the objective analysis of those institutions because we really need a World Health Organization that works effectively and efficiently and then I guess I'm just out of time but the very final point is just in the Middle East which gets sort of neglected on this and maybe Africa as well I'm very worried by how this is affecting the Middle East I think it really has ravaged Iran I think Iraq Lebanon Egypt are particularly vulnerable Egypt in particular is a country but I think very limited sort of capacity to deal with this in a health perspective there's some signs that it's already gotten into the regime and all throughout Egyptian society and I think we may see the hollowing out of a lot of these already weak and fragile governments in the Middle East and I worry too it hasn't really really had a major impact in Africa yet but I think we also can sort of see there that there's limited capacity as well and social distancing as many people have pointed out isn't somebody's a privilege rather than you know something that everyone can do a lot of people don't have that option and so if this disease takes the path that we've known it to take I think the consequences could be devastating and that just brings me back to the earlier point it just underscores the importance of international cooperation and of leadership from Europe and the US and others on this to ensure that once we get past the immediate sort of domestic crises that we also work together to provide unprecedented aid and assistance to these other countries that are unable to do it for themselves so down with that I'll stop there and look forward to our conversation. Any thanks Tom and always a pleasure to get your big picture view on things. People would like to ask questions you'll see down at the bottom of your screen a Q&A function if you could write your question in there with your name and your affiliation that would be that would be great. On developing worlds that let me just tell members that our director of research Jill Donoghue is working very hard on our focus on developing world and we wanted the events we'd be running over the coming weeks we'll be looking at the effects of the pandemic on the developing world. Tom if I could kick off with a sort of shared question with Forick Murphy is the chair of our geopolitics group you mentioned the absence this is the first major global crisis without American leadership just wondering if there's any behind the behind the scenes things going on the state department for example which you'd be familiar with I'd be a little bit more positive in terms of central banking cooperation the Federal Reserve is in close working closely with the other big central banks and frankly in the economic response at this point the only institutions that really really matter in just addressing the immediate shocker central banks with central banks to open the taps and be lenders of last resort both in within their own countries and amongst each other so that the currencies can be you don't get a blockage in the currency system so the Federal Reserve has been doing that. Forick Murphy specifically wonders if the US could exploit its reserve currency status in some way during this crisis now I know economics is not your full specialization but if you have any thoughts on that and the prospects of some let's say White House cooperation with other with other countries at the State Department that's it. Yeah no great question so the good news first I think you're right when we do see at the agency level sort of that network cooperation between the US and other countries right so the Fed I think is playing a very constructive role as it did in 2008-09 Federal Reserve is of course independent from the from the White House and the Chair of the Federal Reserve has clashed rather Trump has clashed it up with the Chair of the Federal Reserve over the last couple of years so that has continued to CDC I think as well and other sort of agencies in the US government have maybe slightly reduced them before but still have a significant footprint around the world and I think they are working I'm told pretty sort of efficiently and effectively with their partners and with other countries the exception being China where the CDC's sort of footprint had basically been ended by the Trump administration under fairly sort of controversial circumstances over the last couple of years that they were less engaged in there but I think generally speaking we've seen the CDC and other sort of major agencies remain engaged and the higher up you go the worse it gets though right so Pompeo has really been completely absent as far as we can tell there's been quite a few sort of articles on him in the last week in particular sort of calling to attention to this that he's not actually on the phone trying to rally the world or think about what comes next or are looking for ways that the US can lead on this or try to bring together the G20 or G7 there was a G7 call but actually it was suggested by Macron. Macron did all the work and he let Trump share it and then he did all the follow-up right so and Trump let it be known that he wasn't really that into it that he would have sort of preferred not to do it so it was a positive call I think and it worked out reasonably well but it was just a sign of how the US wasn't all that engaged in terms of the question on the reserve currency I think that's a very sort of interesting one I think it's unlikely because I think when you look at the key players whether it's you know the Fed or whether it's the Treasury Department like Steve mentioned for all of this false is actually pretty multilaterally minded in terms of international economic cooperation coordination maybe not at the institutional level sort of IMF or a bank but he tends to be more mainstream in these debates from what we know compared to somebody like Peter Navarro right and we'll mention I think still is a significant figure in all of this and he's been pretty constructive actually on the on the domestic side of the stimulus negotiations Trump isn't on speaking terms of Pelosi and but Manchin's done a lot of the heavy lifting there I've been pretty critical of him before so I've been sort of pleasantly surprised by the some of the things he's done here and then the other sort of just if you're looking at the internal sort of dynamics of it the other little nuance is just within the National Security Council there are people in there I think who are fairly sort of engaged and inclined to cooperate particularly with allies maybe not so much with China the Deputy National Security Advisor and some others have been have been fairly sort of consistent on that but the problem is of course the president because he's so engaged every day in the press conferences that there's frequently a big gap between what he comes out and says and what his team is saying or positioning for. Forgive me there we're making mistakes with technology. Two questions from two of our members one from Nofahi who was ambassador to the U.S. Ireland's ambassador to the U.S. he's wondering about India whether you've thought in India that you've been in contact with colleagues in India on what's happening there. Noel Hallehan has a question another institute member has a question on domestic politics if there's a high level of deaths in the U.S. in particular what impact that could have on swing states. Yeah so on India I'm very worried about India I think because because of the social distancing problem right it's almost impossible to imagine you know Modi being able to implement sort of an effective social distancing model in India I think it's you know there's been some speculation that maybe COVID-19 might abate as it gets warmer it's definitely getting warmer in India at the moment but there's very little sign that that that will happen right and so I don't think they'll necessarily be saved and by the summer in this there is quite a lot of you know evidence so far that it can you know it may be maybe less severe in the summer but it still persists and so I think India could be in for a real sort of challenge and problem and I think that sort of gets to the to the point about international cooperation you know I think India should be along with some other countries should be sort of Pompeo's sort of top priority list and trying to ensure that everything can be done to help because ultimately we're all only really as strong as our weakest link on this which is not to say that that's India but I think it is by far sort of the largest most significant country that seems to have a real sort of problem in terms of this capacity to deal with it just because of the you know because of the structure of the of the country in terms of the election here yeah and I just read the the question there in the Q&A and it was sort of if there were lower debts than the 240,000 than President Trump has said would it help him in the swing states you know I think he will say that he will say if it's anything less than that that he succeeded I don't really think people will buy it but I think one thing you have to look at though is that's sort of interesting is the granular detail in the state so let's take a state like Florida. Florida is run by Governor DeSantis there he implemented changes to the unemployment scheme several years ago whereby he basically made it impossible for you to apply for unemployment benefit right and he did it because he wanted to keep the numbers low so for instance to get unemployment benefit in Florida you need to prove that you've talked to five potential employers in the last week right so one a day about a job to be able to get that unemployment benefit you have to apply online not in person and the website is sort of underfunded and frequently crashes right they set this up because unemployment was very low and they didn't want anyone to be tempted to go on to it but what that means now is that basically you have an unemployment system that's completely inadequate for the scale of this crisis that has hit and you've hundreds and thousands of Floridians many of whom probably voted for President Trump right you can't get the assistance that they were entitled to under the National Stimulus Plan and the extension of unemployment protection because as you know here obviously the safety net is much worse than it is in Europe that is already shaping up to be a huge political problem for Republicans in Florida and I just think that if this continues and again I think it will and that these economic problems will be very sort of significant and persistent and there will be a real sort of reaction against sort of the the the the holds in the safety net and the problems that the federal government has in helping people because this is not a normal sort of unemployment crisis right this is a cliff that was imposed by the federal government for health reasons some of the other states you know Governor Whitmer in Michigan is sort of emerging as a contender for the Vice Presidential nomination for Joe Biden she's been fairly impressive so far so that could have a bit of an impact there so I guess my answer is is that I think you know Trump will definitely engage in this overall effort to say he's you know had the greatest response ever I think Democrats will sort of point out that he made all of these massive mistakes and it didn't need to be this way and that if you compare it to Ebola or H1N1 that the consequence and cost being amongst the worst of any major advanced sort of industrialized country is really outrageous and that debate will take place but there's also these state level dynamics I think that will work against him and I think Biden is actually pretty well positioned to take advantage of that Biden's very popular in Florida for instance you know and he's quite strong obviously in the Midwest as well good thanks Tom so a question from Majela Odean asking what prospects are there of a federally mandated shutdown that the president would override all of the states and demand a shutdown Bill M is also a member former editor in chief the economist asks bipartisanship on China do you think that will be strong after this and strongly hostile strongly strong visibly China and he asks a second question people have often speculated as to what might induce senior Republicans to break with Trump do you see any signs that could finally happen over the pandemic yeah so in answer to the first one I think there's virtually no chance of a national state home order even though he should do that because he hasn't done a jet because I think his instincts are still to reopen the economy he wants to deflect responsibility to the governor so he wants to be able to say well I didn't close your economy the governors did and I think if there is appetite from certain states to reopen the economy that will push on an open door with Trump right so I think that that is something he should definitely do and it's something factually I think wants him to do I just think there's very little likelihood that he will actually do it in terms of major Republicans breaking I don't I don't expect that to happen either I mean they you know if you look just as an example the other day with this naval issue with the secretary the navy Maudley criticizing this commander of an aircraft carrier he sent a letter because the disease was infecting his his crew and then he was fired by Maudley and there was virtually nothing about him at all from other sort from senior Republicans and then Maudley after Trump criticized him in a press conference or implicitly criticized him and then the secretary defense asked him to resign then all of a sudden all these Republicans and Capitol Hill started to criticize Maudley the secretary and navy for how he handled closure right and what that tells me is that they have no desire to say anything critical of the administration until they have a permission slip to do so right and so Trump says it's okay they'll do it otherwise I think they're just hunkering down so I don't see any major change in that and pattern and there on China look yeah I think there is a bipartisan approach I mean there's very little trust in the Chinese leadership on this issue there's a lot of frustration with how they handled it acknowledging that the US made mistakes too domestically but I think there's a lot of frustration and anger even with how China handled this but for the most part I think people recognize that you need some cooperation with China and there's a real frustration with the administration until recently to be spending most of their time trying to think about what to call COVID-19 and to try to you know call it the Chinese virus which had all these ethnic and sort of racist issues with it and really was at best a massive sort of distraction and from the need to actually have some coordination with Beijing right so I think that for the most part I'd say the foreign policy people in both parties see it that way and there are some sort of dissenters so Tom Cotton you know from from from Arkansas I think has been someone who's calling for punishing China after this I'm not sure that will go anywhere but I think there will be a generally a shift toward a more skeptical competitive approach in that no one's really going to say look you know Xi Jinping is operating in good faith and he should be our main partner in this and we can work together what they will say is we can't really trust him you know we can't trust what's coming out so we need to try to verify it by ourselves but we still need mutual interest based cooperation and to bring China in to that sort of solution because you can't have an approach to pandemic or climate change that doesn't include China. Thanks Tom so three sort of linked up questions Ellen Hazelkorn asks do you think the Democrats will now rally around Biden Peter Gunning asks is there reason for or it works but surely there's reason for optimism if there's a change of president in November or January in terms of international cooperation multi-lateralism the third one from Fergal Nysham on the Department of Foreign Affairs that we just read it under the 20th Amendment who chooses the new president if there is no election the Senate the House or combined choice of both houses that last one's a particularly tough one I don't know the answer to the last one actually I've been trying to find it out I think it's there's no real planning for no election and also it's up to each individual state how they conduct a federal election so you could imagine a situation where you know some states don't have a popular election but vote even remotely in their legislators to send electors you know and then you have other states that have popular votes and there's a question mark about the legitimacy of the election overall I think it's it's not again it's not really within the power of you know the administration to you know to just not have the election or to unilaterally postpone it or cancel it and but let's say that there isn't actually sort of a legitimate election because the pandemic is maybe as bad then as it is now then I think it's just really actually a simple matter of the lining succession right so you know Trump and Pence are no longer president in January 20th the House in the Senate will not have sent in sort of the the the president-elect right there's a process for that where the electoral college meets and then it's ratified by congress so that will not happen so then in default it will go to the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi if for some reason she's not you know elected then it will go to the next person with a president pro-term and and down but it would it would you know probably go no more than fourth in terms of the president pro-term who will be there which is sort of ironically the oldest person in the Senate in the majority party so I think it's pretty it's a it's a it's a drama set for sort of a West Wing episode or or has the cards I think in some way we don't really know that much about it but I suspect there'll be a lot more attention but I do think the election will happen but I think it could end up in the courts in terms of the mechanism of it on Biden yeah I think you know you do see that already I mean Democrats are rallying around Biden the only thing that hasn't happened yet is Sanders hasn't dropped out but for all intents and purposes he is the designate nominee there's a big question mark around the convention I think it's unlikely probably the convention happens they've already bestown it by a month but it can take place virtually once that happens he's officially nominee but I think you know he is widely seen now as the actual sort of you know nominee elect as it were and then the other down what was the middle questions that Peter Gunning asked about or posed the the idea that a change of president will surely lead to more and better international corporations absolutely I mean absolutely and I think it's you know all of Biden's instincts on this are to do an international cooperative and I actually I have a hopefully of a piece coming out on this exact topic actually the next few days which I'll share with you once it once it publishes but I think the other reason to be optimistic about Biden if he were to win is as I mentioned earlier the need and demand for international cooperation will be more will be greater in 21 than it is today right so most of the heavy lifting on the multilateral front shouldn't take place at the moment right it it will take place in six or eight months in terms of you know planning for after the crisis putting in place new institutions you know ensuring that the economic rebuild is coordinated helping out developing countries that are still struggling so all of these all of these questions I think will be for the next president so we're sort of a little bit lucky in that regard but of course the flip side of it is if Trump is re-elected then I think we will see a real hemorrhaging of the international order and I would just sort of point out that it's interesting my my understanding of it is that other leaders like Macron and Merkel you know initially they were petrified of Trump then they thought they could deal with them and muddle through now they're back to being petrified right because they realize what it's like to have a leader of a major ally that has zero interest in working with them and it's actually pretty difficult and doing things that are kind of productive and and I think that will actually be worse even next year in the Middle East this year. Okay Marie Cross a board member of the Institute asks do you think that Iran will be weakened by this epidemic to an extent the politics in the Middle East has changed and David Kelly of Libya asks let go with that one and I'll um yeah look I think this is really affected Iran very badly and very early you know I mean it seems like the city of calm years with this religious festival that the COVID-19 got out and affected a significant number of people in the regime there was those extraordinary videos early on of you know the health minister saying there's no problem when he was coughing and sick and then the next day he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and senior members of the establishment have died from it already and maybe a lot more than we know of so I think it is you know they it is a very very fragile I think what's been happening here in terms of reinforcing sanctions is unfortunate because even if you're very critical of the regime I think it's important that the Iranian people can deal with this sort of effectively and again where you're only as strong as a weakest link ultimately on this so all countries should be helped to deal with this pandemic and I think we do need to take a tough look at that and and a tough look at sanctions and suspend them temporarily perhaps and try to get more international assistance into Iran to help them deal with this but I think and not because of the regime but because it's affecting sort of the Iranian people whether it leads to a change I've been asking a lot of my colleagues this to work in the Middle East and what they basically say is that it won't because at least not in the short term because there's no organized opposition in these countries include Egypt in that but you'll see it's just a collapsing capacity and a collapsing governance and maybe the emergence of zombie governments that aren't really able to deal with the problems that are affecting their societies but it will be so severe that there really won't be space for normal sort of politics right there's no mechanism by which there now if if a leader were to you know if the Ayatollah were to get this or you know CC you know were to you know were to to get it you know obviously there would be a change but no one knows what that change will be it would more likely be somebody from within the regime than sort of a change of regime I think overall does it affect the power balance in the Middle East I think it weakens you know all of the Arab states and and Iran you know weakens all of them I think Israel is a separate you know case here it's a very separate society and deals with this moral kin maybe to a European country or to the US or Canada but I think it's a very bad news for the Middle East of all David Kelly's question what will asking impact the COVID could the COVID-19 crisis have on state versus federal authority how united will the United States be after the crisis and the director general here at the institute Michael Collins asks you how would you evaluate how the media the US is dealt with the pandemic and the crisis yeah so I think that it depends partly on the election right I think if Trump is defeated I think you'll probably see a pretty unified approach because everyone recognize a huge mistakes are made you know there needs to be a real accounting for what happened you know there will be a a look at a stronger federal authority the next time and more redundancy within the system and a set of protocols to follow if Trump is re-elected on the other hand I can imagine him being very defensive about it and saying he didn't do anything wrong so everything's absolutely perfect so no need to do anything different and he probably opposed the commission to look into it but I think assuming that it's Biden just for the sake of of the question I think we will see major changes I think each individual state will have to improve their protocols and response to it but I think also we'll see a call for a much stronger federal response at the next time so a federal stay at home order you know federal supplies of PPE and other critical medical supplies rather than saying to the states like you guys go do it and if you get stuck let us know we'll see what we can do so I think there'll be a lot sort of there on Michael's question on the media I think the media has actually handled it reasonably well I mean there's been some extraordinary reporting on it particularly from the Times and the Post and some others just repeating details about the original outbreak and then some of the some of the faders here in the U.S. and the response and some of the stories in Europe I think some of that reporting has really been extraordinary and they were on it early you know from sort of middle age generally on and so I think they really sort of did pretty well in terms of the broadcast media you know obviously Fox I think has really failed on this because it was part of this echo chamber saying it wasn't really anything different than the flu but I think for the most part cable has been reasonably you know cable is never sort of great and you know socratic and Jeffersonian about this but I think I don't think it sort of made you know the problem much worse than it needed to be so I think the media did okay but I think the print media in particular have just been sort of extraordinary on it okay good Nora Owen amongst other things the former minister asks do you have any insights into reports around Biden's help I haven't heard that but I'm sure you're closer to these things I think yeah I think there's you know I think he's doing well I mean I haven't I'm not totally sure about the rumors see our reports he's referring to but overall I mean before this there were questions about his age and you know and just hit you know that his interview style and whether or not it was to do with this old stutter or something else and I think that's sort of an ongoing you know just political conversation here and but based on everything we know and based on his medical sort of records he's in he's in good health I mean he is sort of sequestered at home at the moment like everyone else and there's been a few challenges early on because his home actually isn't set up for broadcast or anything like that so he did a couple of media speeches and other set piece events and they're a bit like us here you know just sort of speaking from your desk over zoom and so they've been working on that I think just from an image point of view but I think we will see more of him I think in the next month or two it's very hard to compete in the early stages of the crisis with the president who has a hour and a half long press conference every day you know so I think his health is good but look I think for either Trump or Biden COVID-19 is a big personal risk you know they'll be out there they'll be campaigning if it was your you know it was a relative you'd be saying you know do not go out of the house for the next sort of eight or nine months and you know don't be going out next October November when it could be quite bad you know try to remove yourself from people Biden is 78 79 you know Trump is 74 so they are at risk there's no doubt about that but but I don't really have any reason to think you know that they're sort of it's affected either of them sort of yet okay Connor Fagan from the Department of Enterprise and Trade wonders what impact all this will have on cooperation specifically on climate change making more difficult or more likely yeah I think you can sort of tell either story here you know the positive story is it reminds us of these long-term risks and actually being prepared and working together I certainly hope that's true and the other side of it is is that the governments just are going to be completely preoccupied with COVID-19 and the aftermath for the next few years because even if there's a vaccine and this is over we're still dealing with the repercussions of it right in terms of economics politics institutionally preventing it from happening again so if you look in in Europe for instance at van der Leyen you know I think she thought her commission presidency would be about climate change and the Green New Deal now I'm pretty sure she thinks it's and knows it's about COVID-19 right and so I think you just see a shift in the emphasis and then the time that leaders are dedicating to this I don't think anyone's going to say climate change doesn't matter or we shouldn't really work in it I think they'll continue to say those things but the type of actions that we needed I think we'll see some of them but not maybe as many as we would have seen you know had this not occurred so but I could sort of you know I think you can make either deductive case at the moment we don't really know where it's going to come down on okay last one or two Tom Ferris a life member here at the institute asks about the impact of the virus on the southern US states and I suppose more generally you know is there going to be a regional pattern will the poorer US states be hit further or will federal funds ramp up to to affect the most affected areas yeah look there's no reason to think this is not going to affect all of the country right and the White House has said they are worried about hot spots in red states you know as they're called politically Louisiana I think it's a particular concern you know Florida is a coastal state but maybe a separate but you know in rural areas I think because there's not as much density of population is probably slower to spread and but only slower not that it won't spread and so I think it will affect the whole country and I think they are worried about that I think for the last few weeks it's been easy in a way for Fox and some others to tell a story that this is more a city-based thing and you don't really need to worry about it in the rest of the country but I think Fauci and others in the administration sort of understand that that's not the case I think that we will see that I think in the next month or so and I do think Trump will for obvious political reasons you know be more responsive to some of those states you know Danny has been to New York or to Michigan or to Washington state so I think that's sort of just an unfortunate reality about how this White House operates very last one Tom from Tom Hennessey again the Republican Affairs just picking up well I'm picking up on one of the quotes from your piece you spoke to an EU official about how things would work out in Europe and he told you that quote it would bring out the best and the worst in us maybe both simultaneously Tom Hennessey's question is about EU-US cooperation where do you see that point EU-US cooperation yeah um well yeah on the quote I think it was it was interesting that they um yeah I think they're worried about you know the politics of this as it goes forward in Europe right that on Euro bonds, Corona bonds sort of a common response that right now the the feeling you know there's a lot of sympathy but over time it may be more difficult especially in Germany and we've already seen that last night you know with this rather difficult Euro group meeting and so you know ultimately people tend to sort of hunker down into their national perspectives and I think that's what that person was saying in terms of US EU again I think it comes back to the election you know Trump has had this real being responded about the EU you know Biden I think is a very strong supporter of the EU and you will see a massive uptick in engagement with the EU if he wins in November but I think that the real sort of question is what is the substance of that and I think that brings us back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of the vaccine in terms of a coordinated preparation for the next time the real lessons learned you know mechanism to try to figure out the failings everywhere over the last few months and presumably the next six to eight months so I think there's huge scope because you know in the US is I think a lot of people on the call know when people think of Europe they tend to think of NATO and it's like how do we work with NATO on this but NATO has very little role on this I mean maybe a tiny bit but you know there's no real capacity for health and pandemics in NATO it's a little bit but it's much more in the EU and at the national level and so engaging on that now in the EU too as you know you know health is not a really a core competency of the EU right so EU is not super strong on that either but I think maybe to turn around one of the questions that someone else had earlier there might need to be a reassessment to that after the fact in the same way that there will be in the state federal basis over here but I think the US needs to engage at Europe at multiple levels on this next year. Tom as ever it's fantastic to get reviews look forward to catching up in person when this is all over or there's some sort of normality has been returned so many thanks for joining us. Thank you all of you thank you to everyone as well and please all stay safe and I look forward to being over with you in person at some point in the not too distant future. Many thanks good and everyone all the members thank you for joining thanks for your many questions just to flag our next event next week we'll be with former Italian Prime Minister in Hupelepa. Many interesting things to say about his country and the future of Europe. We look forward to welcoming you to that event and in the meantime very best to you and yours.