Transcripts For ALJAZ Counting The Cost 2020 Ep 2 20240713

Hello im daryn jordan this is counting the cost on aljazeera your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week. We are now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent and we do not need middle east Oil President trump wants u. S. Troops out of the middle east we take a look at the trillions spent on wars and the billions of men tainting us military bases. Also this week the hog and pork industry has taken a hit from african swine flu in china and asia but does the Meat Industry need to change to save the planet. Frances digital tax on big Silicon Valley tech that could escalate a trade war with the United States. Well right now there are 200000 u. S. Troops stationed at more than 800 bases in 70 countries and territories outside the United States despite President Trumps pledges to end the endless wars the number of troops in the middle east has increased well the assassination of irans 2nd most powerful figure qassam soon the money by u. S. Drone strike has led to the deployment of more troops to iraq and one iran hit back and tensions appear to have eased for now a shadow war goes on which raises the question how much does the United States spend on its presence in the middle east well since 911. 00 taxpayers in the United States have spent 6. 4 trillion dollars on wars in afghanistan iraq and syria thats according to the Watson Institute of international and Public Affairs at Brown University more than 800000. 00 people have died as a direct result of fighting according to u. S. Central command there are between 60 and 70000 u. S. Troops in the middle east well this is just a quick snapshot of that Troop Deployment 14000 in afghanistan more than 7000 in kuwait 13000 cattle and 3000. 00 in saudi arabia and the cost of maintaining bases and troops including in war zones is as much as 200000000000. 00 a year thats according to david vine author of base nation how u. S. Military bases abroad harm america and the world will host nations do pay directly or indirectly for that deployment after sending 3000. 00 troops and patriot missiles to defend Saudi Oil Fields following an attack which washington blamed on iran trump said the saudis a paying for it already arabia at my request has agreed to pay for everything were doing at the 1st. 30 arabia and other countries through dow 30 arabia has agreed to pay us for everything were doing out there well joining me now via skype from boston is glenn kahl glenn is a. Deputy National Intelligence officer at the cia the Trans National threats hes currently an assistant professor at Boston College and is the author of the interrogator and education glenn the u. S. Maintains numerous bases right across the middle east and the Rand Corporation estimates it cost between 50. 00 to 150000000. 00 a year per base and that takes up a huge chunk of the annual 700000000000. 00 u. S. Defense budget so do the host nations really pay anything towards those costs well ive done a Little Research on this too and the answer is a little murkier than i expected to find. It depends on which country were talking about japan south korea pay substantial amounts and in europe there are substantial contributions of various natures financially accountable for the American Military presence in iraq im not so clear that they are actually making a formal contribution to hosting us and much as they are happy to have as im sure so there will be ancillary or secondary indirect costs that the host countries paying certainly and i dont think that theyre paying some serious wish to host 6000 american soldiers known simply as yet lets just stay with us issue of cost then because the u. S. Seems quick to get into a war but its not very good at winning the peace is it time this still is very very costly Something Like 6 trillion dollars spent on wars since 2001 and here we are again with iran how do you see this all playing out then oh goodness well thats the question that no ones been able to work out. When the american political system is largely paralyzed so that any sort of coherent action in International Relations is very hard to do theres been strong inclination long. Part of half the country to to remove the american presence from iraq which is viewed as a disaster and and yet most i would say professional National Security officials are preferred or individuals think that its necessary for us to have some sort of a presence there. Which is independent of whether we are the ones who broke the crockery or try to put it together but that to leave now would be a problem so i dont see us leaving anytime soon unless the inquiry into here and in the precious man in the oval Office Actually manages to act upon his and potions yeah and thats an interesting point you make then because President Trump says the us doesnt need middle east oil and wants to get us troops out of the region so whats the main reason then why the base thats still there one of the actually doing well i think in the broad sense the american. Presence in the middle east is in. A recession evidently are slowly withdrawing i would say from it being used as an existential vital National Security interest because it is true that just in the last 2 years i thank you for the 1st time since 9 159. 00 the u. S. Has become a net exporter of energy and alternative sources to petroleum are rapidly rising so so that is true the u. S. Says it less direct Energy Financial interests there nonetheless. Petroleum will be central to the World Economy political systems the ability for the remainder of your in my life times and therefore the middle east is a strategic the vital area and i dont see us using our National Interests there in that regard any time soon there len lets just take a look if we can irans pasta in the middle east i mean we know it has. Than iraq syria yemen lebanon but of course lets remind our viewers that iran is on the crippling us sanctions on how is it funding its influence and its wars right across the region yeah well im glad you raised that point is something to that we should bunk right away is the assertion that donald trump has made since he came on to the National Scene politically and just made recently again he makes it all the time that the nuclear deal with iran gave obama then gave 150000000000. 00 i think he said it was the figure to iran with which iran is now funding terrorism thats a typically grotesque misrepresentation of the truth what happened in the agreement was that the funds that had been sequestered or or frozen as a result of the seizure of the American Embassy in 1979 were released so this was a rainy and money that he was going back to them it is does appear true however that the iranians used some of those funds to fund their proxies and their activities in the in the beyond the Iranian Border rather than building highways or schools so that is true. You know you can always print more money and the people can it can tighten their belts a bit more so that you can buy more guns i mean this tends to be Governments Fund themselves so those who suffer most immediately from financial sanctions and penury are the average citizen rather than the governments militaries that which are as i then call we have to leave it there thank you very much indeed for talking to counting the cost and time well as tensions between the u. S. And iran escalated economics at its i doubt he caught up with the chief executive of Rolls Royce Motor Cars the luxury brand was reporting record sales as a strong presence in the middle east when he began by asking toast and my boss about uncertainty in the region and would that have an impact on the company. Are in there is very hard to forecast as you can imagine we are always watching closely what happens in all our markets worldwide i mean we are not immune as a luxury brand thoughts and you just drop sions like political things going on or whatever so for that reason we are looking we are watching it but i cant tell you anything on what will happen over the next weeks or months so lets look into it so far i can tell you that the order bank coming from the middle east the market is pretty robust for us and looks good and we havent seen any decline over the last days so for that reason it is as it was in 2019 but lets wait and see what happens i want to focus on Climate Change and we are seeing the impact of that around the world what is rules royce doing to make sure its reducing its Carbon Emissions in this decade rose royce will go electric thats already decided we are working on it it will happen step by step by step and our Long Term Strategy is also clear we launched you might remember a couple of years ago the you want all 3 excel we call it our vision car which was the lighthouse for 2040 and that clearly set the pos electrified future so we will go electric step by step by step and that happens over or in this decade and over the next decades rest assured that we are on it and there we are aware of it. Now home production and the pork market in china were valued at 213000000000. 00 in 2018 but african swine flu a contagious disease has wiped out 200000000. 00 pigs on farms all over asia particularly in china well the chinese love eating pork but shortages of their favorite food has pushed chinas Consumer Price index to its highest in 7 years chinese demand is also reshaped global meat markets and the government looking overseas to satisfy domestic appetites katrina you reports now from beijing. You shredded pork and braised. Just some of the most popular dishes served during the Chinese New Year holiday. But as families in china welcome the year of the rat few a pork items may be on the menu in recent months prices have more than doubled not i know you would if prices keep going up like this then i will order and eat pork or even try to not eat out as frequently as before. African swine flu has wiped out hearts of chinas heads up to 200000000. 00 farm pigs have died or been culled since the outbreak began a year ago harmless to humans the contagious disease kills pigs within 10 days there is no vaccine. China has 26000000 people. In the 3. Has caught everyones attention including Farmers Consumers and the garment. The Chinese Government has released more than 100000 tonnes of Strategic Reserves to ease demand and lifted environmental restrictions on peak farming china consumers hoffs the worlds pork and during the Chinese New Year holiday demography seeks to address the source its the Chinese Government hasnt. Quite the new spring to buy more. And its pushing up poor prices worldwide beijing is ramped up pork imports from the European Union and despite the trade is awaiting tariffs on u. S. Pork its also boosting imports of other meat protein including australian musson beef and chicken from brazil. Agricultural experts say the poor could effect eating habits in the long term. For now. Chinas Favorite Meat but with no when to the shortage in sight it will continue to be more costly to bring home the bacon. Now the whole question of how we get our protein fix has gained prominence against the backdrop of Climate Change Animal Agriculture is responsible for about 9 percent of human caused Carbon Dioxide emissions globally and with a growing population a rising middle class that can only increase so lets bring in a leading expert in this field from tract in the netherlands we have Justin Sherrod and justin is the global strategist on Animal Protein a dutch bank robber bank just in so lets pick up on this issue of animal production we know its a huge contributor to global c o 2 emissions so tell us what needs to change or are we just so addicted to meat thank you derek i dont think were addicted to mate i dont think thats the right way of thinking about it mate is a staple part of diets of most people around the world in the way that you think of of rice in the way you think of bread as being a staple part of the diet so i dont think its about addiction what it is about is how were going to change the emissions signature associated with make production and consumption in the future and in on a Positive Side we start to see commitments being made by some of the larger lady Animal Protein companies in europe and in the United States about reducing the Greenhouse Gas emissions associated with the whole supply chain were not seeing the action just years were not seeing enough companies and as many players as we need to see along the supply chain making those commitments but i do believe were going to see much more of that as we move through the 2020 is the decade where we really need to deliver on the World Sustainable Development goals the 20 yet and just and we know that african swine flu has taken a devastating toll on the pig populations in china and asia but its also reshaped the International Market with more exports from places like europe from latin america so what can we expect for the rest of the year youre right its had a devastating. Impact and and it that they the level of devastation is something that will continue with us for over the coming years we have never seen in in our living memory the type of reduction in Coal Production in an Animal Protein production in the world that we saw in 2019 as an impact of african swine fever and principally that was because of the impacts of this deadly disease with on the pork production on the pig population in china this year we are going to see more reduction in pork production in china china which constitutes about half of the worlds total pork production up until 2018 last year sorra a quarter taken from its total production so down 25 percent in 19 it will be down by about 10 percent to 15 percent maybe closer to 15 percent 12020 ok so lets talk about your outlook for this year 2020 you talked about wildcat seafood being in decline is this due to warming sea temperatures i mean whats causing this oh look wild catch seafood this is were talking here about tom hundreds and hundreds of different species across the pacific the indian the atlantic oceans its not easy to put your finger on just one thing that is contributing to year to year changes in some cases warming sea temperatures may be contributing to a decline but probably the bigger factor than that is the way that regulation. Around the el hour will catch is the legal catches it made it is starting to do well is continuing to tighten up and we see a slight reduction in total allowable catch in some of these fishing waters just in lets just talk about the move to non meat based products like plant based theres plant based sausages we see compass. Its like impossible foods making a big statement in the marketplace whats the potential for the industry here but i think theres 2 points to make about this type of product the plant based at the plant by sausage citrus the 1st point to my just think is the obvious one which is there seems to be enormous attention and enormous potential around these products and the 2nd point to make you know its equally important is that they are starting from quite a lot of bodies and we need to take that into account when we think about what their potential is and what they contribution is the worlds population of feeding the worlds population protein in the future as a category in general in places like north america and europe weve probably saying growth of somewhere around 15 in some cases maybe as high as 20 percent year on year in this category when you Start Talking about something growing at 15 to 20 percent and doing that over a period of a couple of years its not surprising that they get a lot of a lot of attention and and they and they are set to continue growing well into the 20 twentys but they are still at quite a load bias in europe for example if you think about they scattered greek you probably have at the moment somewhere around 200000 tonnes of these products being consumed per year now while that might sound like a big number 200000 tonnes you probably need to compare that to Something Like 16000000. 00 tonnes of meat and seafood which is being consumed at the same time just ensure out we have to leave it there thank you very much indeed the talking to al jazeera thank you don now Silicon Valleys big tech giants have often been criticised for not paying their fair share of taxes much of the problem exists because of International Laws that allow corporations to book their earnings and pay their taxes in the country of their choosing but france is leading a group of nations in imposing a tax on the revenues of Google Facebook and amazon and thats threatening to escalate a trade war the United States has proposed tower of some 2. 4. 1000000000. 00 of french goods but the french have warned the e. U. Will retaliate its only austria am turkey have imposed their own levies and the u. K. Is about to follow despite wanting to sign a trade deal post brigs it with washington so lets break this down now with julian david who joins us from london then julians executive director of tech u. K. Thats a Digital Technology trade association so julian Tech Companies like facebook Amazon Google or love talking about disruption but i mean one area they seem to have cause disruption controversy is this low level of Corporation Tax which they pay so what exactly have they done wrong and other breaking the law well obviously no company should break the law and the problem here isnt really about breaking the law darron its about the way that taxation is still stuck in an old model and it doesnt just apply to Tech Companies its any Company Using Digital Technology remember one of the original cases that came to prominence was about coffee chains and it applies to pharmaceutical companies and Financial Services companies ecommerce Online Sales Companies including obviously Tech Companies so the problem here is that the taxation system isnt fit for the new world that we live in its an interesting point you make julian because these companies will say look as you just said that whats broken here are these rather antiquated Corporation Tax laws and theyre really not fit for the digital age of today well exactly youre out on it and it thats the problem and its a problem of the fact that trading these days is international all sorts of companies every type of company is now operating across multiple fees multiple textures dictions and everything is now becoming more and more digital because thats what customers want customers want the convenience of the on line world they want to use these new tools they want to use these new ways of doing business and the taxation provisions havent kept up with that and thats what needs to be changed and you know we know that the organization for Economic Cooperation and development was working on a fix. Make the tax much fairer but that seems that been sidelined for now so whats the latest with that well this is part this is partly the problem which is it does need to be fixed at a global level because if not then what youll have is complication people trying to arbitrate between the tax regimes which is part of the problem thats going on at the moment and the o. E. C. D. Is working on what they do to to produce things this year and whats happening there is that because of a populist sort of approach to this that some governments are responding to theyre actually bringing out their own versions while its only going to make things worse and if you look at the french example in the u. K. Example which weve looked at in detail both of those have got really strong problems in them and they add more complexity and complication yet judy let me try and broaden this out because i mean could this issue of a digital tax actually escalate a trade war between countries because weve already seen the usa and france as you just intimated come to blows over this well exactly its already clear that the u. S. Has said look what youre doing in france is just targeting our companies and the example they gave is advertising revenues so what they say is if you look at Search Engines most of their revenue comes from advertising and and the french have devised the tax the Digital Services tax which just aims at that kind of revenue but if youre another advertiser in france you dont have to pay this tax even though you might be using a Search Engine in order to allow your customers and your Business Partners to operate so the americans have said very clearly this is just a tariff its a its a barrier to business and youre targeting our companies and thats going to be a problem and we think the same will happen with the u. K. s proposed age of service tax the the u. S. Will say well look at this this is just aimed at our kind of companies and therefore any kind of agreement we have you have got to remove this so we do think its going to be a problem of the e. U. E. U. Where you weighing in on the side of the french not going to make life better do lets just talk about gu. Well if we can because google recently said it would no longer use its irish the netherlands tax work around how much does that have to do with the us putting pressure on these companies to pay more tax in the u. S. Well here you go i mean if you can have more of a consistent approach to taxation Corporation Taxation then you will stop the kind of unusual behavior a particular approach is that there will irish if you will all those kind of things that companies have in some ways been forced to to deploy because remember these people have additionally judy to their shareholders to the company itself to pay only the tax that theyre due to play that theyre not supposed to pay more as some sort of voluntary agreement to let me get a final thought from you because with more trade and commerce taking place online i mean how do you see Companies Responding to the political and social pressures even of a digital tax well heres the thing i think companies these days recognize the imposed the communities they operated they recognize the services of those communities rights and the contribution they should make to that and i think the Companies Want a fair and reasonable system they also want to make sure and we need to really focus on this in the u. K. As as we go into that the new relationship with the e. U. The new Global Britain that doesnt this incentivize people from investing so for example were very worried about the way the Digital Services tax might be viewed by investors if you get to a certain size an Online Platform in the u. K. Has some fantastic on Online Ecommerce platforms food delivery and other types of Convenience Service platforms once you get to a certain size then you become the target this time so the unintended consequence can be that we discourage the Digital Economy growing in the u. K. And its one of the u. K. s Great Success stories or i join in david thank you very much indeed for talking to counting the cost thank you. And thats our show for this week but remember you can get in touch with us via twitter use the hash tag a j c t c when you do drop. An email account in the cost of aljazeera net is our address. But theres more for you online at aljazeera dot com slash c. T. C. Take you straight to our page which as individual reports links an entire episode for you to catch up. Well thats all for this edition of counting the cost im down in jordan for the whole team thanks for joining us the news an aljazeera is next. Almost the last time you were out on the streets protesting whether on line you feel the weight of the system we do walk through each and every lug with or layer further and further into the jail or if you join us on say retention has to start from day one whether again you in detention or your incarceration this is a dialogue everyone has a voice for the not just those 50 parkash coverage will be varying accounts but i want to give people the reason for joining the global conversation on out is iraq. Both the number 2 stories from asia and the pacific on aljazeera. No breakthrough but warring parties in libyas conflicts agree on a draft deal for an unconditional ceasefire. And across in ankara leaders of turkey on at least confirmed they will attend next weeks libya conference as International Efforts gather steam. And watch aljazeera live from a headquarters in doha. Also ahead he shares army chief is sacked after dozens of soldiers are killed the spike in via