Majority rules: Britain’s new Parliament sits

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. President Donald Trump has proved to be a big fan of imposing financial sanctions as a backdoor to foreign policy without the messy business of military action. But the old-fashioned front front-door diplomacy might work better and spare unnecessary misery. And there are just 4,000 tigers now in the wild, but more than twice that number are being held in farms across Asia to meet demand for illegal products like tiger bone wine, skins, and jewelry. Our correspondent tries at least to visit one. But first, when asked as a child what he wanted to be when he grew up, Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly replied, "World king." His sights have lowered, but not by much. Today, he'll retake his seat in Parliament with a vastly strengthened majority of 80. Not since Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1987 has Mr. Johnson's party had so much power. And first on his agenda, to follow through on his election mantra to get Brexit done.

With this mandate and this majority, majority, we will at last be able to do what?

Get Brexit done!

You're paying attention. Because this election means that getting Brexit done is now the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.

The British divorce from the European Union now looks certain to happen by the end of next month. Not only that, Mr. Johnson wants to make it law that the subsequent trade negotiations must be concluded concluded by the end of next year. Such a push once again raises the specter of a so-called hard Brexit. But unlike Theresa May before him, what Mr. Johnson wants, Mr. Johnson is now very likely to get.

I think when Parliament resumes this afternoon, the scenes will be pretty raucous.

John Peat is our Brexit editor.

There'll be a lot of young MPs, new MPs who don't even know their way around the building. But I think there'll be huge cheers for Boris Johnson, who won a massive majority last week. And the Labour Party will be feeling pretty crestfallen.

And the single most central issue in all of this has from the start been about Brexit. How do we think Brexit will now proceed?

Well, Boris Johnson will bring back the withdrawal agreement bill that he actually tabled just before the election, and then the election was called, and he hopes to ratify that very quickly. And then after that, Britain will leave the European Union on the 31st of January next year and be plunged straight into negotiations about the future relationship. Which are due to end at the end of next year. But that's an extremely ambitious timetable.

And there's talk of new legislation surrounding Brexit and the timing. What's that about?

After the 31st of January, Britain moves into what's called a transition period, when actually it continues in effect to be a full member of the European Union and to observe all its rules. Currently, the transition period is due to end on December 31st, 2020. But there is a provision in the treaty agreed with the European Union that it can be extended by 1 or 2 years. Boris Johnson says he doesn't want to extend it, so to make certain he doesn't extend it, he's putting into the withdrawal bill a clause that will say it is unlawful for the government to seek to extend it. Of course, he could change his mind and make it lawful if he got to the end of next year and hadn't done a deal, but the gesture is clearly intended to reassure MPs and voters that we will be fully out with a new trade deal in place by the end of next year.

Does that create any new risks? I mean, we've been from one deadline to the next and the fear has always been of a hard Brexit.

I think there is a risk at the end of 2020, if there's no trade deal in place, that in effect, Britain will crash out with no deal and revert to trading on what are known as World Trade Organization terms, which could be fairly disruptive, could include tariffs on trade and other barriers to trade. And during next year, I expect the risk of that sort of cliff edge exit into no deal deal will be causing some concern. Whether some way can be found round it, even despite the new law that says we cannot extend this period beyond December 2020, will be a matter of big debate during next year.

Because it's unlikely that a trade deal and all that comes with it can actually be hammered out by that time?

Trade deals take a long time, typically. Britain is now sort of doing, if you like, a reverse trade deal. We're in the single market and the customs union and trying to leave both. So that's quite a complicated procedure. And the risk that you can't to actually do everything in that year and ratify it is extremely high. So what is perhaps more likely is that you'll have just a rather bare trade deal that you might be able to put in place that covers goods only at the end of the year, and you'll leave aside quite a lot of other stuff about the relationship for future negotiation.

And if we look perhaps mercifully aside from Brexit for a moment, what else is on Mr. Johnson's agenda? What else is going to be brought to the table in the coming weeks and months?

Well, there's quite a lot of other legislation that has some impact on Brexit. We need a new immigration law, we need new trade laws, there's the security issues, and there are other things that came up during the campaign. He's talked about doing something about the BBC. He's got other priorities that he wants to deliver to his new voters. So there'll be quite a lot of legislation unveiled in the Queen's Speech, and with a large majority, most of it should be quite easy to get through Parliament.

What do you mean by looking at the position of the BBC?

Well, during the campaign, Boris Johnson raised the question of whether the license fee was the right way of financing the BBC.

You have to ask yourself whether, whether that kind of approach to funding a TV, a media organization, still makes sense in the long term, given the way other organizations manage to fund themselves.

That's all I will say. This has been looked at repeatedly in the past, but I think it's fair to say that there are people around Boris Johnson who are quite critical of the BBC and think the BBC is sort of pressed against the Conservatives. And now that they've won a majority, they might well want to review, you know, how the BBC is structured and how it's paid for.

Why wouldn't that be looked at as a sort of veiled threat of a sort of, uh, an unfriendly media?

The issue of paying for the BBC has arisen from time to time anyway, but I think there is a sort of feeling of some triumphalism around Boris Johnson, and they see a sort of what they might call a Remainer establishment, which would include people like the BBC, as people who've been very firmly against Brexit. And now they need to be sort of taught a lesson. So I think there is a bit of an issue there that you see parallels in some other countries, possibly even America, where elected officials are sort of being rather aggressive towards their media critics.

Well, exactly. I mean, there's been growing talk of the degree to which Boris Johnson has become somewhat Trumpian in his ways and his demeanor. Do you see that?

I think there is a sort of element around him of feeling that he speaks for the people who feel left out. And he has made a bit of a campaign since becoming prime minister and since winning the election of saying he's against the establishment. He's against sort of business interests, media interests, people in London.

Populism classically defined.

It's a sort of populist agenda. I think the difference with Trump is that I don't think he could ever be sort of described as a sort of illiberal far-right figure. He does want to cut taxes, but he also wants to raise spending. So I don't think he's likely to sort of drift in a rightward illiberal direction. But I think he is, he does see an establishment there that he thinks needs sort of changing and shocking into shape. And Brexit is designed partly to do that.

And not so long ago, people were predicting that perhaps Mr. Johnson's tenure as Prime Minister would be the shortest in history. And now he has this thumping majority. Do you think he's in it for the long haul? Can you imagine him being Prime Minister in 5, 10 years' time?

I think he'll certainly see out the current term, which is 5 years. And in that sense, he will deliver Brexit in one form or another. And assuming, you know, the economy holds up and so on, there's every reason to expect that he might win another term in office. The opposition Labour Party seems in quite a mess, and it has a long way to go. After an election win for the Tories on this scale, you would expect that it'll take another election before the opposition has any chance of sort of coming back and actually taking power. So I think Boris Johnson could easily be prime minister for another 8, 9, 10 years.

John, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

There's a tool of international persuasion that America uses frequently these days.

We have just sanctioned the Iranian National Bank.

We're going to announce sanctions against Petróleos de Venezuela. Since Donald Trump's presidency began, the number and the scale of sanctions applied by the U.S. Treasury has surged. Sanctions authorities that can be targeted at any person associated with the government of Turkey.

Sanctions will not be lifted. They will be tightened.

American sanctions are crippling because of the country's position at the heart of the world's financial system. When individuals suffer Treasury sanctions, their assets in America are frozen. But the effect goes further. Firms that operate in America or make payments in dollars can't easily deal with people on the list, and penalized individuals struggle to open bank accounts, own assets, or be paid all over the world.

So in his first 3 years in office, Trump has added around 3,100 people and entities, you know, ships and planes and companies to the Treasury Department sanction list.

Daniel Knowles is our international correspondent.

Almost as many as George W. Bush added in his whole 2 terms in office.

So why do you think the president is so keen on sanctions?

For one thing, it seems to suit his personality. Sanctions are something that allow you to send a message quite quickly, cheaply. In big disputes such as his targets with Iran, with Venezuela, he's wanted to bludgeon foreign governments with sanctions by putting lots of individuals on the sanctions list. You know, he sort of threatened to destroy Turkey's economy when Turkey invaded Syria. So Essentially, it's a financial bomb that he can drop. You don't have to send troops, you don't have to send bombers, but it's more powerful than just sort of sending a strongly worded press release. And that seems to suit Donald Trump's personality quite well.

So Mr. Trump is doing this more often and in this sort of showy way, but hasn't America always used sanctions to get at countries that it's unhappy with?

He's gone kind of beyond just the targeting of countries and of big foreign policy disputes. He also introduced the operation of the Global Magnitsky Act, which passed under Obama, but Trump kind of started using it, and he's targeted lots of people in places like Africa.

And what is the Magnitsky Act?

So the Global Magnitsky Act, and it's named for a Russian accountant who died in a Russian prison, came into force in 2016, and it allows America to sanction people from countries where there's no national sanction program in place, just people who are accused of human rights abuses or corruption. So, for example, in the end of 2017 in Congo, they put an Israeli billionaire who was a supporter of the then-president Joseph Kabila under sanctions. They wouldn't have been able to do that without Global Magnitsky because he was Israeli. America doesn't have a sanctions program against Israel.

Okay, so they're not just being used against countries or people with whom Mr. Trump is having a public spat. They're being used in more obscure cases as well.

Yeah, so if you sort of go one level below Trump, his administration at least has also had a huge number of sanctions on people accused of corruption and human rights abuses, even in countries where, you know, Trump hasn't got a great interest. Lots of places in Africa, for example.

And do you have a sense for whether this has an effect? How have people reacted to the kinds of sanctions the Trump administration is handing out?

So when you're put on the Treasury's sanctions list, it makes it very difficult for you to do business with any American companies or even any companies that kind of operate in America, or you can't take payments in dollars. A lot of banks won't deal with you. So people really don't like it and kind of tactically absolutely works as a kind of way of putting pressure on people. And there are definitely cases where that has changed behavior. You know, in places like Liberia and Sudan, you can point to places where sanctions have got people to change their behavior, to make commitments not to engage in corruption, that sort of thing. But on the big question, the big foreign policy goals, it's not so obvious that creating all this pressure actually changes anything. You know, what Donald Trump seems to want from the governments of Iran or Venezuela or even Zimbabwe is essentially a full capitulation. And however miserable sanctions make people in those countries, they're not going to give up power completely just to get off a sanctions list. So in that sense, it's— strategically, it's not clear it's working as well.

So you mentioned these sort of hopeless cases where governments don't seem likely to cave into the pressure that the sanctions are supposed to bring about, but you hinted there's a terrible set of human costs here. Do you have a sense for the cases where the benefits outweigh the disadvantages?

There are different sorts of sanctions, and Donald Trump's expanded every type. And the big nation, national-level ones, such as the ones that have been put on Iran and Venezuela, absolutely make life much harder for people. If you look at the other thing he's expanded, these targeted sanctions that go after individuals, well, it's not so obvious they really do just hit individuals. They shouldn't hurt a whole country's economy. But even then, there's a risk. And if you look at Zimbabwe, for example, it's individual Zimbabweans sanctioned. It shouldn't hurt the Zimbabwean economy. But in practice, what a lot of banks do to try and comply with these sanctions regimes is they just cut off Zimbabwean banks entirely. Because otherwise the risk of non-compliance is too high. And so it can have— even these targeted sanctions can have unintended consequences that hurt people who aren't just the people targeted.

Okay, hang on. On the one hand, you make it sound as if this is an effective way essentially not to have a war but still exert some influence. But on the other, it sounds as if there are all kinds of unintended consequences that make these sanctions not so desirable. Where do you come out on this in the end?

Well, I think it's to be seen. I mean, at the moment, you know, lots of people are quite pleased with the way that the Trump administration has targeted a lot of corrupt officials in countries that are generally quite neglected by America, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the thing is, over the long term, if you don't get change, if the sanctions are just sort of used as a form of punishment, and if other countries begin to find workarounds and individuals begin to find workarounds, then there's a risk that you make this quite powerful financial bomb that America has and can use into something that's a little more partisan, a little less effective, and in the long run maybe damages America's ability to make these changes.

It sounds like you're saying sanctions emerge as kind of a blunt tool, not really a substitute for good old-fashioned political diplomatic engagement that other administrations have made more use of.

Yeah, so that's really the problem with the Trump administration. You know, its overall foreign policy is so sort of chaotic that using these tools to put people under lots of pressure doesn't necessarily work if you don't really have a great strategy for what you want at the end of it.

Daniel, thank you very much for your time.

Oh, thank you.

Tigers once roamed freely in the jungles of Asia, but over the past century, their numbers have dramatically declined. Now, a large fraction of the world's tigers live in illegal farms where they're bred for their body parts.

About 100 years ago, there were about 100,000 wild tigers, but today, due to habitat loss and poaching, there are now just 4,000 tigers in the wild.

Charlie McCann is our Southeast Asia correspondent.

They're more than twice that number held in tiger farms across East and Southeast Asia. There's an estimated 200 farms which range from small sort of backyard farm affairs to much larger ones in which tigers are bred battery farm style.

But why are these tigers being farmed, as you say?

So there's an ancient view which is prevalent today in many Asian countries, and especially in China, that tigers have medicinal properties. So if you ingest a bit of tiger, it might cure your rheumatism, your gout. Tiger penis is believed to cure impotence. And at the same time, tiger bone wine, tiger skins, and even jewelry featuring claws and teeth have become status symbols to the point that in Laos carcasses could sell for as much as $30,000.

Right. So to get that kind of price, tiger parts must be in extremely high demand.

Yes. There's a lot of demand from Chinese tourists in particular, and they are flocking to a place called the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, which is a 3,000-hectare patch of land in northwestern Laos. And they can buy illegal wildlife parts there. The zone is run by a man named Zhao Wei. He's a Chinese businessman whom America's Treasury last year accused of engaging in illegal trade in wildlife, in addition to trafficking drugs and people. These are allegations he denies. But in 2014 and 2015, investigators from the Environmental Investigation Agency agency went to the special economic zone and they found there restaurants that were openly advertising sautéed tiger meat and tiger bone wine. They found shops selling tiger skins and ivory tusks. And in front of the casino, they actually saw a tiger zoo. They counted 26 tigers there.

And they spoke to the zookeeper who told them that the tigers were there to be bred for their And so in general, these tiger farms that are out there are just out in the open? It's an open secret?

So they certainly were until October of this year, when it was reported that there were several tigers remaining in front of the casino. When I went there in November, there was no sign of those tigers. But I hopped in a cab, pretended to be a tourist who was interested in seeing tigers, And eventually the taxi driver took me to a location about 10 minutes outside of the city, got out of the car, approached what looks like a kind of a compound that was being built. They were still erecting the fencing on the outer perimeter and approached the guard who wouldn't let me in. But I later discovered via a source that the tigers were there to be bred for their parts.

So where does this end? How do you think the trend will go?

Well, unfortunately, unless governments really commit to doing something about this problem, I think we'll see more tiger farms being opened. The demand isn't going anywhere. More and more people want these tiger parts. And unfortunately, we don't see governments like Laos really committing to tackling this problem. In 2016, Laos said it would phase out the tiger farms, and that was a great start. But in 2018, it said that existing tiger farms would have to transform themselves into safaris and zoos. Because law enforcement is so poor in Laos, that's tantamount to a green light to these illegal wildlife traffickers to keep on doing what they're doing.

Charlie, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

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