As the world navigates a year of major elections and shifting alliances, the global standing of the United Kingdom is at a crossroads. At Fortune Global Forum in New York City, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson sat down with us for a conversation on the reelection of Donald Trump, the implications of Brexit, and the evolving dynamics between the U.K., U.S., China, and other global powers.
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00:00The United States is the hegemon.
00:01It's going to be the hegemon for our lifetimes and our children,
00:04grandchildren's lifetimes.
00:06I'm absolutely convinced.
00:07But the Europeans can't just free ride.
00:10They need to step up.
00:11And I think economically and on defense,
00:14I think the Trump administration throws down a big challenge.
00:19Boris Johnson has a unique relationship with Donald Trump.
00:23You know who this is?
00:24Has everybody known?
00:25It's going to be a fantastic prime minister.
00:27And while Johnson is no longer prime minister of the UK,
00:31he still holds strong views on just about everything.
00:35Don't let Putin's pet parrots give this entire country
00:40psittacosis, which is a disease you get, by the way,
00:44from cozying up to pet parrots.
00:46I sat down with Johnson at the Fortune Global Forum,
00:49where he weighed in on the impact of potential tariffs,
00:52the European economy, China's economic
00:55and military standing with the U.S.,
00:58and what it all means for the future of the U.S. and Europe.
01:03Boris, many of the CEOs who are with us here
01:07are finding that their relations with China
01:12are not quite as friendly as they had been.
01:14The president-elect is promising to put heavy tariffs on China.
01:21How do you think that the U.S. and the West generally
01:23should be reacting to China as an economic force?
01:27So I think China is a great strategic competitor.
01:30It presents a huge challenge for everybody in the West.
01:36The rise of China is a huge fact of life.
01:40But I think my advice to everybody would be,
01:43don't freak out.
01:44And yeah, look, I have been worried about China
01:47having too much of a role in nuclear power in the U.K.
01:51or in 5G, and we spent a lot of money getting them out.
01:54But on the other hand, I think that it'd be crazy
01:58for us to kind of turn our backs on a fifth of humanity
02:02with all the genius, all the talent, all the potential.
02:05China is integrally intertwined with the U.K. economy
02:10and with the U.S. economy.
02:12Big companies, big U.S. companies like Walmart
02:16get a huge proportion of their stuff from China.
02:18To try to deracinate, to try to uproot Chinese presence
02:25altogether in the U.S. or the U.K.
02:27would be a tremendous destruction of value,
02:30and it would lift costs for ordinary people.
02:33I mean, be tough.
02:34China, they don't respect you unless you're,
02:37you've got to be frank with the Chinese.
02:38So when it comes to issues like Xinjiang or Tibet or Hong Kong,
02:45where we have disagreements of principle about things,
02:50you know, they're going to expect to hear that.
02:51And if they don't hear that,
02:52they're going to think you're a bit wet.
02:54Let's see what happens with the tariffs and all the rest of it
02:58that President Trump has threatened to impose.
03:01Tariffs, where they're not necessarily a very bad idea.
03:03They put up costs for both sides.
03:06They're crazy.
03:06They're economically illiterate.
03:08On the other hand, sometimes China dumps.
03:12And when China dumps, you've got to take anti-dumping measures.
03:15China has become the primary adversary of the United States and vice versa.
03:20Each country's military is now gaming combat with the other one.
03:26Can the two countries maintain such a high level,
03:29such an enormous amount of trade
03:32while also becoming more and more adversarial?
03:35I hope that they do.
03:36And I hope that that means that they don't become adversarial.
03:39I think that one of the ways to fix the problem of
03:43Chinese aggression, for instance, against Taiwan,
03:46is to make it very clear that the great democracies
03:49led by the United States won't stand for aggression.
03:52And the theatre where that is most obvious is Ukraine.
03:55And I think there are clear reader crosses
03:57between what's happening in Ukraine and other theatres,
04:01particularly the South China Sea.
04:03So, you know, we can take the temperature down, everybody.
04:06Take the temperature down.
04:07Fix Ukraine.
04:09Get Putin out.
04:10You know, find a way forward then.
04:12I hope that President Trump can do that.
04:15But then I think that will take the temperature down with China as well.
04:17We have a lot of misinformation spread about China.
04:21And you have a lot of misinformation spread about other different places.
04:24I think I'm going to get along great with China.
04:27President Xi of China and I were very good friends.
04:30And you had effectively endorsed him in your,
04:34or at least said there's a good case to be made for him.
04:39That's right.
04:39In your new book.
04:40In my new book, Jeff, Unleashed, which you very generously alluded to.
04:45Look, I don't think it's the job of UK prime ministers or UK politicians
04:49to get involved in American domestic politics.
04:52I think it's not welcome in my experience.
04:55But I was just trying to make a few points about the Trump that I knew,
05:01who is, I think, very different from the left-wing caricature
05:04when it comes to some of the areas of foreign policy
05:07that I had direct experience of.
05:09So when it was Iran or Syria or even Ukraine,
05:13he was actually very robust.
05:15He was robust against Putin.
05:17And, you know, people, I think people sometimes they forget that.
05:25We can get Brexit done.
05:26We can move this country forward.
05:28I hope very much that you'll support us as a party of progress
05:31that will take this amazing country forward,
05:33unite it and vote for a one nation conservative government on Thursday.
05:37There continues to be debate, controversy in the UK about Brexit
05:43many years now after it became reality.
05:47What's the argument in favour of sticking with it?
05:51Well, there's a million arguments for sticking with it.
05:55The most important is that, I mean, actually, contrary to what you say, Jeff,
05:59people don't talk about it that much anymore.
06:01It's sort of, it's down the political agenda.
06:03To imagine that Brexit will be reversed,
06:08you've got to imagine that the British people are going to vote to pay £20 billion,
06:13to have their laws again decided elsewhere,
06:17their borders under the control of others and give up the control of their currency.
06:22So it's not going to happen.
06:23The advantages of Brexit in a globalised economy are huge
06:27and it just needs the government to exploit them.
06:30One of the things I point out in Unleashed
06:33is that it was very, very significant when we were dealing with Covid
06:36that we faced this appalling threat, you know, and lots of people were dying.
06:41By March 2021, our government, my government,
06:46had vaccinated 45% of the adults in the UK, almost 100% of those over 80.
06:53The corresponding figure in the EU was 10%
06:57because they'd waited so long to get the approvals.
07:00And so in that sense, Brexit saved lives
07:05and saved lives within months of it formally coming into effect.
07:10And, you know, you won't read that in the New York Times,
07:13you won't read that in the left-liberal media, but it is the truth.
07:17Today, how would you compare the European economy with the US economy?
07:24The EU and the US were both worth about $14 trillion in 2008.
07:30Today, the EU is worth about $15 trillion and the US is worth $26 trillion.
07:38And even though the US has far fewer people, right?
07:41So the growth rate in the US has been absolutely extraordinary,
07:45vertiginous, compared to Europe.
07:47Europe is very sclerotic, very overburdened, far too much regulation.
07:53That's why Brexit offers such hope for the UK.
07:56Partly it's a function of legislation and regulation,
07:59but it's also to do with culture and aspiration and dynamism and guts
08:04and admiration for money.
08:08Because the people who appear in your pages,
08:10the people who appear on the front of your fortune magazine in America,
08:14they're people who are held in esteem, right?
08:19In the UK, it's much more, I'm afraid, tragically,
08:23it's much more even-handed.
08:25Under President Trump, the second time around,
08:29how do you expect relations to be between the United States
08:34and Europe and UK economically?
08:38I think that they will continue to be extremely good.
08:41For my own country, for the UK,
08:43the US is by far our biggest individual national export market,
08:48our biggest trading partner.
08:50I think there are two ways in which the Trump agenda will be healthy for Europe.
08:56I hope that it will force an argument in our own societies
09:04about our economic model and the way it works
09:07and the low growth, high tax, high spend cycle we've got ourselves into.
09:14I hope that the Trump agenda will challenge that.
09:18Second, I think the Trump administration's frankness and candour
09:23about the European need to spend more on defence will also be healthy.
09:29The world depends on the United States for its security.
09:32The United States is still 25% of global GDP.
09:36The United States is the hegemon.
09:37It's going to be the hegemon for our lifetimes
09:40and our children, grandchildren's lifetimes.
09:42I'm absolutely convinced.
09:43But the Europeans can't just free ride.
09:46They need to step up.
09:47And I think economically and on defence,
09:51I think the Trump administration throws down a big challenge
09:56to us to emulate the American approach.