 Actually, we're looking to the east, we're looking to the west, we're looking globally today. I love this kind of show. This is a multi, this is a, I'm Jay Fiedel, this is Think Tech. And we are joined by Steve Zercher, who's a regular host at this time on Mondays. And a colleague of his, by the way, Steve is in Japan, in Kobe, Japan. And a colleague of his, it's Paul Scott, who is in Paris, France, in Lille, France. I get that right, Paris. Paris, but Lille is all the same. It's all 12 hours difference. So what we have is roughly what, four or five hours difference tomorrow in Kobe, and then we have 12 hours difference tomorrow in France. And I guess the first thing I want to say is thank you, Paul, for staying up late. Because if you do the math, it's one o'clock in the morning in France, in Paris. Thank you for joining us at this ridiculous hour. Well, it's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. So Steve, can you, can you introduce Paul in a better way than I did? It's, it's not, it's my great, great pleasure. Paul and I, as our viewers know, I'm a professor and dean at Kansai Gaida University, which is in Osaka, Japan. And when I joined that institution, roughly Paul, it was 10 years ago now. It's hard to believe, but 10 years ago I joined. Paul became my de facto mentor and helped me to understand not only academia, but also the inner workings of Kansai Gaida and how that all works. And without his assistance and guidance, I don't think I would have become dean. So I have a great sense of appreciation of what Paul did for me when I started my new career, my mid-career move into academia. So Paul retired a few years ago. So he's a professor emeritus now from Kansai Gaida University. And as noted, he's an expatriate living in Paris, France. So his education includes the University of Virginia and also Tokyo University, which is the number one university in Japan. He taught at Kansai Gaida for about 30 plus years and was a very successful professor and leader in the organization. So I was thinking as we were getting closer to the election, Jay, you and I share the view of how Japan and China and Korea is thinking about what's going on in the United States because believe me, everybody in the world is paying attention to this election. So I thought it'd be a good idea to invite Paul because Paul now has been living in Paris and absorbing the European perspective. So that's how this all came about. And also I want to offer my thanks as well, appreciation to Paul for drinking less of coffee tonight to stay up at one o'clock in the morning. I offered to do this as a recording, but Paul volunteered to do it live, which I think is best. If there's any viewers who have questions, please let us know. How much of what Steve said you agree with? I wholeheartedly agree with everything he said. Hey Jay, thanks for checking Jay. Just doing my fact checking. Well let's start off with you Paul. I mean you're in Paris and Paris follows what happens in the US very closely. I imagine you get all the channels we get and you probably get them with French overdubbed on it or something, but you get all the news we get and people must have specific views. You must have specific views about how things are going. What are those views? Well it's an interesting question of course. The name of this show is Europe and how Europe looks at the election. And the problem is which Europe? And when we're looking at France and especially Germany, they definitely, absolutely, fundamentally, do not like the presidency of Mr. Trump for a variety of reasons. And some of them are legitimate and some of them are not legitimate, I think, in my eyes. But when we look at another part of Europe, which would be central and eastern Europe, if there still is a central and eastern Europe, you know all Europe is Europe is under the European Union, but Poland loves, I don't want to say, well maybe that loves, but they appreciate Mr. Trump. They certainly strongly encourage NATO expansion. They were going to name an American camp in Poland, Camp Trump, but that hasn't taken part. So Europe, of course, Europe was, like I think the rest of the world, they were shocked by the Trump win in 2016. And they're waiting, I think they thought they could wait out until they get a good president. But that I think is also very wishful thinking on their part. And it's not an anti-Biden comment on my part. It's exactly what Jay said, you know, before we started to record this is that the world is changing. So the old transatlantic alliance from the Cold War and then to the Clinton administration, where the U.S. was the indispensable power to the Bush years, and now and the Obama doctrine, which is sort of bush light, that world doesn't, has changed. America is no longer the indispensable power. And the Europeans, and I, if there was a European in the room, I would say this to them bluntly, Europeans have to grow up. And they talk about autonomy, but they're still overly reliant on the United States. And so Mr. Trump has hit a lot of hot buttons asking the Europeans to pay more for defense, 2%. And the Americans also don't like a pipeline that is going from Russia through the Baltics. And that's not Trump. That's the U.S. Congress as well. And Mr. Biden agrees with this as well. So I think Europe is, you know, if you do risk analysis, or if you do any type of financial analysis, what people hate more than anything else is uncertainty. So there's still uncertainty with if Mr. Biden wins. We don't know. And so we're getting nervousness in Europe, whether Trump will have another four years, or even when Biden is elected. People don't know, except that things have fundamentally changed. Because of Trump, in spite of Trump, these things were changing. And I think we didn't fully appreciate it. It's a multi-polar world. It's not bipolar. It's not unipolar. And all of us, the three of us, have witnessed America as the indispensable power, as a unipower. And it's a different world. So yeah, when you take off COVID and just look at the way the EU and Europe have operated, it's a profound change. And when you put COVID on, and then you seal the borders, and you stop travel, you stop tourism between the US and Europe. It just seems to me there must be a sense of distancing, a sense of disconnection between the average European country and citizen and the US. We're not there anymore. We're not we're not a tourist. We don't have a presence. And all Trump does is beat people up. So what you get is a whole different relationship. Do you feel that in the past few years, people in Europe, they like the US less. They are not enamored with the US as they were. They don't like Mr. Trump. American people, American culture, is still strong. They dislike the international treaties and the agreements that Mr. Trump has rejected. They don't like that. But they're smart enough to, well, to know number one, you know, you don't, you know, the US still has a $21 trillion economy. And it's, and that the American people are looked at in a very kind way. You know, when I was in Europe, when President Obama was elected and people were, I don't know how they knew I was an American, but they were shouting at me and raising their fists and say, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I said to some of my French friends, you know, do you think someone from North Africa or West Africa, an immigrant or migrant, would ever be elected president of France? And they said, of course, not of course, this is wonderful. This is wonderful. And, you know, I was doing a lot of traveling during the, during the Bush years, and people were not happy with America during the Bush years at all. And I never liked to, and I don't want to apologize for my country. So I never liked to be put in that position. And I don't want to do it publicly. Other people can, but I, it's not my, I don't like to do it. One last, one last question about that, before we go to find out what's on Steve's mind is this, do people feel that Trump fairly represents America now? After all, people voted for him. He is the product of the process by which we select our leaders. He represents the country. Do they feel, you know, that the country is behind Trump, that Trump is a statement of the leader of this country? Well, you know, when we look at the rise of right wing parties throughout Europe, in Germany, in France, in Britain, and right wing populism, right wing populist nationalism, that Europeans understand polarization, and that they understand that Trump is appealing to many segments of society. You know, five million manufacturing jobs were lost in the United States between 2000 and 2016. And both political parties ignored those people. And this is a failure of, if you let me talk just for another minute, this is a really, really, really failure of political parties, the traditional ones. And in the United States, in France, we have a president, is it president in France, that started his own political party, and won. And we have the ultra right in Germany that is now the alternative for Germany, the alternative, what do they call it, AFD, that the German populist right wing neo-Nazi party, if you like, is Germany's largest opposition party. So to answer your question, I'm sorry, people understand that Trump is a symptom. And I think that's really critical that he didn't come out of, people are focusing too much and the media loves him here. He's on every, you're completely right. He's on all the major studio, television stations. Trump is big business. So they understand that. So I think the analysis here in Europe is much more nuanced than in the United States, where they look at the causes of Trump, not just the personality and not just his rhetoric. And all that is sort of noise. It's important noise, but it's noise. So there's that distinction between Trump and some of his policies. Well, Steve, this is my favorite question. Steve, how much of what Paul said, do you agree with? I think there's some differences, but I agree with Paul's conclusion. And that's my conclusion as well, if I can jump ahead here to my ending note. I also think that over the last four years that the damage has been done. And much of it can be traced to Trump and his policies and how he's addressed Asia and taken the United States out of a lead role in many areas, where the United States traditionally had been a leader. And that no matter who wins this election going forward, Asia will respond to America in a much different way than it would have done under a different president in 2016. So I do agree with that for sure. But let me go to my beginning notes. I just want to go back to the original days when Trump was elected. The response that I picked up when I was in Japan was one of a little bit of derision. So I was at Chamber of Commerce events. I was the ACCJ vice president of a concierge. So I had to go to all these formal events. And I was surprised kind of in the same way that Paul was talking about this feeling of not wanting to apologize for your country. I certainly understand the negative aspects of the many mistakes that our country has made over the years. But I guess still because I'm an American, I feel a sense of patriotism. And I was a little bit surprised at the jokes that I heard over and over again. That was in the beginning. That's in 2016, 2017. I think now Japan in particular and the rest of Asia is frankly worried. They're really concerned because the last few years have been, there's been at best an absence of leadership and where there has been an effort to try and change things like in the case of North Korea, which I think everybody will admit what Trump did there was a total failure. So that affects Japan. That certainly affects South Korea. That affects China. So there's a sense of deep concern about this. Regarding the prospects of the election, I think a lot of this, at least for us, and Paul kind of alluded to this, it's no longer a unipolar world. China is the 800 pound gorilla in Asia. I think the United States still has effective influence in the region, but China has dramatically improved their position economically and also militarily in Asia, in part because Trump has withdrawn. Like for example, the TPP, he withdrew from that like on day one. So all of a sudden that international collaboration to try and contain the economic growth of China make them more reasonable and play by the rules Trump unilaterally just withdrew from. So there's a great concern about that. So Japan, because China is its number one economic partner as true for most Asian countries, China is the number one economic partner now. The United States has gone off the number one list a long time ago. So from an economic perspective, Japan has to focus on that. Japanese businesses, for example, need to be aware of the relationship with China and so forth. But on the other side, the United States is in some ways trying to break the relationship between Japan and China that may continue or may not continue under different administrations after this upcoming election. But that indeed is how the election is viewed is through that screen, through that color. How will Biden affect the China-US relationship? How will Trump affect the China-US relationship? It's really, sometimes when I talk with my colleagues, they don't want to admit how important China is now, but China is really important. I think Paul would agree with me in Africa and Europe and the rest of the world, China also has a much stronger influence. So then just in conclusion, as I mentioned before, I think that no matter who wins this election, by the way, 538 and the economists, they're all putting Biden at 88%, 89%, 91% to win. But people in Asia, they just they're not aware of that. They really think that Trump is probably going to win. And this is a legacy of the 2016 election, when at that point everybody thought Clinton was going to win. I mean, everybody in Japan thought Clinton was going to win. Everybody knew Clinton. They were convinced. And then on that election day, Trump won. So even though the numbers are showing that he will not win, the perception in Asia is that he still might. He still may. And if he does win, I don't think anybody will be surprised. Well, that may be the case. We have a question from a viewer, you guys. And I'd like to ask you both this question and ask you to weigh in on it. The viewer asks, are the East and the West updated with all the issues in America? For example, Black Lives Matter, the immigration issues, and so many others. Or does the East and the West, both Europe and Japan and other parts of Asia, they just focus on the excitement, the drama of this election process that we're faced with every day. So, Query, you said before, Paul, that they had a nuanced view in Europe, what was happening in the U.S. But do they understand all our domestic issues and our questions of morality and the rule of law and all those things that people are in controversy about? Well, that's a great question because it's not just the we can say the popular view, it's also the elite view. And, you know, Steven and I are both in the business of making sure that our students become good Japanologists or sinologists. And that, you know, people can look at a country different than theirs and and and and go to the heart of matters and not to be distracted. It is sort of what I call an entry point. And for the U.S., there's so many entry points. So, I think that Europe fundamentally understands the crisis of migration because they're in a crisis of migration as well, north south to north. And this drives right-wing populism. And I, so migration is a hot topic throughout Europe. The president of France just a couple of days ago said that there is not going to be any separatism in France. In other words, you become you come to France and immigrate. You become French. And that is a that imagine me saying that on a crowded street corner in the United States. I'd have to have police protection if there were police. Racism, of course, racism in the U.S. is U.S. looks at things mainly from a race angle in Europe, more from a class angle. But everyone in France, for example, understands that if you have a name from North Africa or West Africa, that your application is not going to go to the top. So, but you, it's not that it's not as emotional in the United States. And I teach, you know, I teach, it's awful to say this, Stephen and I teach students that were born in 2002, 19 years old. So they, they, you know, my point is that the emotion in America, I think, and the violence, and where the camera lens goes as well, you know, is is shocking. We don't see that in France. We don't we see protests in Germany. Right wing protests. And I have one more point is the left in Europe generally has not developed an effective counter narrative to the right. And Mr. Biden, by the way, is not is not a counter narrative, except I'm not Trump. So my feeling is the real election in the United States will be 2024, where the Democratic Party will have to do things, perhaps choose a more progressive and the Republicans will have to go up. So that that that discussion is happening in Europe, because there are elections happening in France in two years. And so those same issues that are making America seem so chaotic. It's not chaotic. These are things that have been have been left on the on the stove, bubbling for a long time. And Europeans understand this, the Americans should understand it a little bit more. Yes, I certainly. So Steve, what about Asia? What about Japan? Yeah, well, I can speak for Japan. I was, I was shocked that in Tokyo and Osaka, there were Black Lives Matter protests. Interesting. Yeah, mostly young people, but not necessarily all young people. You know, there's inequities in this country. I think most people view Japan as homogeneous Japanese people certainly view Japan as homogeneous. But it's about 2% foreigners here now. And there are multi generational Koreans that have been here that are still not full citizens. So that spirit of minorities being overlooked and taking advantage of and being economically disadvantaged, did transfer over to Japan. You know, Japan tends not to be a country where protests are seen that often. The only ones I remember are against the Iraq war. The Japanese people certainly understood that that was a disaster. The leadership, of course, did not poison me, but the people did. They were in front of my apartment every day protesting. So on the Black Lives Matter, BLM, yes, Japanese people are aware of that and they understand the social inequity that occurs in the United States and has been traditional as Paul was talking about. But they also recognize that that's a problem here. We also have income inequality in Japan, which is almost not quite at the levels of the United States. So there are a lot of people who are doing well and more and more people are being pushed into poverty in Japan. So that sense of frustration and unfairness, unequaleness was captured by Black Lives Matters and it actually resulted in protests. But just very quickly, the biggest thing that's non-election related that the Japanese people are focusing on, and this is a part of the reason why the United States reputation has gone down so dramatically in Asia, is how the pandemic has been handled. So we were talking before the show started. Japan's approximately 90, maybe 95,000 infections now. It's going up by maybe 200 a day. But a few days ago in America, it was 60,000 in one day. So Japanese people look at America and they cannot understand how the richest, the number one economy, the number one military could just so totally fail at protecting its people from this pandemic while the rest of Asia, for the most part, has done a superb job. China is bouncing back now economically. Jay, I don't know if you've noticed, but flights are now at 100%. The economy is going to start growing again. It's miraculous. That's where this pandemic started. But they managed it in a completely different way, an authoritarian way, granted, that was probably not possible in Japan or other countries. But still, it's all guns blazing now for China and the United States is still in a mess. So Japanese people look at that and they go, what the hell is going on with America? You know, part of it's related to Trump, but it's looking at the country as a whole. How could the whole country fail so badly? That the Japanese people are very aware of. Interjected the National Endowment for Democracy came out with a report just a couple of days ago talking about how COVID has strengthened authoritarians. And who's doing really well in Europe? Hungary, for example, Poland. So people can't, when they look at America, they see, oh my goodness, even public health becomes political polarization. Wear a mask. Confinement is another issue, whether it works or doesn't work, but wear a mask. And so I agree with Stephen completely, this lack of lack of leadership or lack of a lack of a coherent strategy is, you know, if you want leaders, you have to have followers. And COVID for Europe is, my goodness, what are we following? The Trump administration seems incompetent at this. And by the way, the Boris Johnson administration seems incompetent as well. I want to wrap up this show. I want to thank Paul Scott from Paris again for staying up late in the evening and providing his commentary on how Europe is viewing this election. Paul, those really interesting insights. Fascinating for me to see where Europe's perspective and Asia's perspective is similar and also where it diverges as well. So thank you so much for being on the show. And we definitely want to have you back again, maybe after the election is over so we can get a post-election view from Europe as well. Okay. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to talk to you and I hope to be back soon. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you, Paul. Thank you everyone. Thanks for the question that came in too. Appreciate that. We'll see you in a couple of weeks on Looking to the East.