develop as computer scientists, we can go back and forth between that you really when we focus more on the engineering and making a system that works with often putting things that are hand coded or manually specified in order to just get the kind of outcome will looking for and then we tweak it to behave well in the snares we wanted to. as we try to extract that theoretically we tried to move to a more general concept. i would say those two kinds of things are always there mutually hand-in-hand in the scenarios and when we're making better progress of understanding of the higher level we are pushing to these more theoretical abstractions but we also make a huge amount of progress by just making specific decisions. i would think they are both useful systems but maybe a philosophical issue to decide whether you think of them as actual intelligence or not.

>> professor always gets a fibrous presentation. i think i discovered my next career which will be providing consultation to social media users. i'd like to get an early start on that by telling you you are all better looking and smarter because you attended this talk. [laughter] with no fear of contradiction. i would like you to give a very warm thank you to jennifer. [applause] >> coming up tonight on c-span2 its booktv in prime time as we talk with politicians about books they had written.

>> booktv in prime time on c-span2 starting at 8 p.m. eastern. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. here's what's coming up this weekend.

>> most people in america never have really been on a farm. maybe they would go to the county fair but they don't know what it is to be a farmer, which is not a romance. and so there's this kind of romantic view of agriculture, which i find actually exasperating because it makes it impossible to think about agriculture clearly.

>> go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule. >> coming up next on c-span two, political editor susan glasser on a recent essay "covering politics in a post-truth america" from the brookings institution here in washington, d.c., this is about an hour 15 minutes.

>> good afternoon, everybody. i'm strobe talbott. welcome to the brookings institution. for today's afternoon event, which is a panel of four distinguished journalists who are going to be talking about a very, very topical subject right up there. but first i'd like to give you just a little bit of background on how this particular event came about. about three years ago my colleagues here at brookings and i felt that, like a lot of revolutions, the digital revolution, exciting as it is,

and in some ways may be very positive that it is, has also produced some victims. and one of those victims is long-form journalism. so to try to keep that genre alive, we've launched a periodical series of what we call brookings essays. they are web-based. they take a lot of advantage of new technology, but we keep a premium on high quality, in-depth writing relevant to the big issues of public policy. and an example is the disruption of the fourth estate, in particular, the rise and the spread of fake news. so that led to us asking susan

glasser if she would be good enough to write a brookings essay that tackles that challenge in the context of the 2016 campaign and its outcome. it's harder to imagine a better author for this venture. she has extraordinary insight, experience, and i might add a whole row of building to meet deadlines. -- wrote ability -- she answered often on the other side of deadlines. as i think you all know, she has made politico a supreme platform for reportage and commentary. earlier this year she and her husband, peter baker of the "new york times," moved to jerusalem.

yesterday, they announced that they're going to be returning to washington to cover the u.s. role in the world and in a very interesting era that we are now entering. so welcome back to d.c., susan, and welcome back to the brookings institution where you've been a real good friend to a lot of us around here, both institutionally and also personally. she's now going to offer some opening remarks, and then she will moderate a discussion and will introduce jim and shani and glenn. and the podium is now yours. >> well, thank you, strobe come

in particular, i thank you to all of you for sharing some of your time this afternoon with me, with brookings and with my colleagues in a few moments. i want to say first of all that writing an essay about 2016 and donald trump and the media, and putting it out there in the context of a post-truth world is kind of like inviting the trolls to a dinner party. and so we can discuss a little bit what their reaction has been to the piece. first of all i do want to thank strobestrobe, because not only e had the vision to really embrace long form and put the commitment of brookings nine this very provocative and powerful series of essays, i've had the privilege of both writing one and editing and partnering with the brookings on versions of these pieces that it had life in many different mediums as a result. i think it's a very valuable contribution. this is finally my moment as a

journalist where i'm not entirely sure that the class of transformation is half-full. certainly we are here today as a result of one of the positives -- positive aspects of immediate transformation in the digital revolution, which is is that everybody can potentially be a publisher. brookings has the same tools we have at politico or at the "new york times" for a buzzfeed. we are all grateful to brookings for putting some of its muscle into thinking about how to publish big, thought-provoking ideas in a new world on a new set of platforms. that being said, this is my moment when i finally after 25 years as a congenital digital transformation optimist have sat back down at the table, looked at the class and wondered if i've been misreading it a little bit. i appreciate strobe doing the hard work of explaining why the

entire conclusion of my essay, which is i'm going to leave trump to washington and moved to the middle east is not now account operative. so, yes, i am retracting the conclusion of my essay. i like to say that after three weeks in the middle east got it all cracked. i fixed it all and we are returning to washington with a politics is really dysfunctional. [laughter] jerusalem very, you know, a very same place in comparison these days. in all seriousness it is dizzying and extraordinary what the response both has been to try to come to terms with the role of the media in the 2016 campaign, and even in the short not even two weeks since this essay was published by brookingsbrookings, let's stop a second and think about the incredible series of new cycles over and over again that we been living in. this is just in the last 10 days since we published this piece per we've been living in the

great fake news panic of 2016, and here as washingtonians we are particularly aware of its iteration in coming to our favorite neighborhood pizza place and the moment when fake news became real threats is something that we're going to be thinking about i think a long time after we've been living in cia versus fbi versus trump news cycle over the question of russia and its intervention in the united states election, and to what extent is that real news or is it fake news. the thing i have noticed which is really striking and won't be a surprise to anyone who's read this piece or thought much about the media, who now is claiming fake news around every corner and under every bed? will donald trump himself, right? you have this incredible circle classy upon itself whatever

metaphor you want to have but a person who is now complaining about fake news is the guy who the journalists are busy try to figure out how to cover and stop from purveying fake news. we are living in a fully realized hall of mirrors that results from some of his long-term trends i wrote about. light has the reaction to the essay been? wellwell, i think that metaphorf inflating trolls to the dinner party is not entirely unwarranted. know when you will be surprised to know that either this was a wildly pro-hillary essay in which we were basically making apologies for the democratic nominee and none of it was her fault and that it was the journalists vault pick or conversely there was a lot of people felt that absolutely completely failed to account for the fact that it was the media fault that hillary clinton lost because we over covered her at the extent of not covering

donald trump sufficiently. then, of course, there's the part believes it was a big settlement a cover-up donald trump that hillary clinton's true evil and it was written with that in mind. another strand of criticism if he will which i've encountered perhaps not surprisingly is that we wrote too many hard-hitting stories about trump. also we were covering up russia's intervention in the election by spinning our time writing the hard-hitting stories about trump or writing to hard-hitting stories about clinton. and also of course i think one of the takeaways, and that's what i think might be there a little bit, was that i wrote this summer as a way of making journalists you'll better about the fact that nobody cared about what to do anymore. i'm not entirely sure about that line of attack, but it recovered enough in online commentary that i thought i would throw that out there for you. -- recurred i. there was many people i would

say also objected to the notion that i wrote the sentence about the media being smug, insular and out of touch in the past tense. and many readers of this as he would like you to know that they believe that the media is in the current present tense smile, insular and out of touch. i think that's a fair critique, and my point was slightly a different one. there are enough. then there's just a lot of people who no matter what you say about election 2016, given a raw feelings are, they would want you to know that we don't understand just how angry white america is and how much we don't get it. that's probably an inevitable table stakes. what can we talk about going forward? we are not going to be relitigating campaign 2016 except in learned discussions and academic papers for the next few decades. we have to figure out a way for

both as a country and as a profession of journalism. that's where it's been most surprising and most interesting. so many people have come forward with very concrete ideas in a a way that i'm not familiar with. most of you have a sense of journalists and you know us well enough to know that we are the type who like to sit around and criticize, much more than we like to build things, much more like then we'd like to solve problems, much more than would like to take action. we like to criticize those who take action rather than ourselves. i been quite surprised at the number of people who have come forward including one of our panelists today with specific concrete ideas. we've got to do something about it has been a refrain that haven't heard very much up until now in my career in journalism. i really have been surprised and struck by the extent to which people, some people say we should really fight back with

lawsuit. other people say we should create a new website and we should police fake news out there. we should find a way of betting news organizations that we believe are trusted providers or individual stories or in my view, one of the most promising ideas is to get out there and find a way for journalists to affirmatively make the case for reporting come for independent journalism, for facts and why they matter. we have taken it for granted. it's been a part of our social contract that we thought was so much a bedrock assumption that we haven't need to do anything about it. it strikes me perhaps this is a moment, conflict democracy itself where we have to change when we think of it. it's not a a spectator sport anymore. these are things we value, how do we out and bring a new generation of people? how do we bridge this incredible

divide in the united states between those who accept and have come are part of the consensus that exists in washington, here in blue america, how do we broaden the circle of people who understand why in fact that old adage still rings true, which is you can have your opinion but you can't have your own set of facts that you are not entitled to own set of facts. i feel like that consensus is frayed and i've never seen that in 25 years in washington, and i think i'm excited about the prospect of taking concrete steps that address really the crisis of legitimacy of american journalism and the way we haven't seen before. when we get to the questions i hope you all will step up not only with questions but also with ideas for all of us. i want to invite the panel to

the stage right now and is a very quickly, this is a conversation about washington journalism, about political journalismjournalism, about howt here and where we going forward. we could have a version of this talk at silicon valley but i'm just delighted because these are people the wife learned a ton from and who i think help explain why we're not just talking about generic digital journalism but we're talking about the role that reporting place in our democracy and politics. so jim glassman is our first panelist. jim was really the person who taught me most of what i know about journalism. all the good part. he's not responsible for the bad parts and he was the editor and publisher of roll call newspaper which was my first job out of college and about a bit about that in this essay and i think he's a real visionary when it comes to washington reporting so i'm delighted you could join us today. vetting from buzzfeed news is teaching all of us i think -- shani hilton -- the

possibilities that we haven't thought through for new blood from the new ideas when it comes to taking real old-fashioned ideas about reporting and why it matters in journalism and showing how we could develop a new formats and a new media and in news organizations that didn't exist 30 years ago. i'm delighted that she could be here. and then the other panelist is my friend and colleague glenn thrush with whom i worked very closer over the last few years in launching political magazine and he's been our chief political correspondent at politico this year throughout the crazy 2016 campaign, and comes from the world of new york tabloids. i think as taught me a lot about reporting and thinking about politics in this crazy moment we live in. so with out further ado please come on up and we will yak. [applause]

>> thank you, everybody. i thought we would just really jump right in, and the first question i wanted to ask everybody is one that i have probably spent a lot of time thinking about since this crazy election and i'm sure you have, too, which is what could we have done differently? you know, what do you think about what it's going to take for us to cover a president of united states who doesn't share many of the consensus views about the role of independence

reporting that most of the people pop in this room and certainly on the stage and do? what did you think? >> let glenn start. >> what did we screw up? >> what didn't we screw up? first of all i want to generally kind of question what one of my sources, a guy named david plouffe says about democratic politicians. the bedwetting was very reflective to the point, you know the extreme of being so reflected, being narcissistic. i think to some extent we are being, spending way too much time scouring our own mistakes and try to forget what we did wrong. i think anyone who read the aggregate of the coverage of the campaign cap more than enough information about both candidates to make an informed decision. there were ignominious moments in his campaign giving donald

trump 30 minutes of unmediated empty airtime of his podium. i recently did a piece about the 10 turning point at the campaign. we make a decision saying there's an empty podium that all trump will eventually occupy that a full podium with someone speaking, you are elevating him to a level that one should elevate him to. but in general i think we are in an environment where we have people who are attacking the press systematically, who are essentially attacking the legitimacy of all institutions broadly in order to make a profit or make a political profit. and i think we need to understand that we ar are in i wouldn't say it's a war, as it is in or position called info war, but i think we need to i think the somewhat less reflective and somewhat more deflected. >> we didn't screw up anything? >> we screwed up a lot. but in the aggregate i think we

informed i think voters at more than enough information to make a decision spirit glad jamaica point because i should say cannot say the right of the beginning of this essay, and probably that wasn't the thing that pissed off more people than anything else about the essay was the idea that isn't nice your job yourself from all blame? but i still think it's true and i think it's pretty clear cut just for the record, journalism about washington, about government, but this campaign is better than it ever has been before. jim and i will talk a little bit about when i first started out in the late 1980s. the truth was we were not nearly as good reported as they are now. no way. we didn't know most of the things that people know now in real-time. what we expect of our reporters and of our journalists is much more now than it ever has been in the past. that to me actually is the real scary part but i'm glad you brought that up. tranoneshani, we did screw up, ?

>> i largely agree with glenn. by the end of the campaign, there's a lot of information to information out there. i think donald trump was actually fairly easy to cover in that digging into his past and his background, a type of business bene is, he's been a public figure figure for so long, a celebrity figure for so long that finding to information about them and publishing it wasn't a difficult thing to do. >> so why did nobody care? >> that's actually the bigger question, which is what you have up there, a post of post fax. for a lot of people it's very clear that if given up under trust of institutions. if there's anywhere we screwed up, it's like how do you bring that back? >> well, so i don't disagree with anything anybody said so far but but i really do think e

problem is people not believing or not really caring about facts. that a subject that i think a lot of people have tackled and i certainly spent a lot of time on ever since i've set the state department, which is now eight years ago where i was confronted with a lot of conspiracy theories and the question why do people believe these things can look can you do about them? the answer is in things like michael lewis is new book, or jonathan heit at nyu, something we all understand i think, which is that intuitively our intuition and our emotions are much stronger than our reason. that presents tremendous problems for an institution that sounded unreason. the fact is we are on teams. what we constantly look for is good news about our team and bad

news about the other team. i think this election provided opportunities thanks to the revelation that the internet caused for us to find whichever team we are on, that whatever proof, in quotation marks, we decide that we want to discover. i think that's really what happened. i'll give just one little example. the trump team has been saying that donald trump has won a landslide victory. i'll bet if you did a survey of his supporters they would say he sure did. the fact that he got few electoral votes as a winter than two-thirds of the recent presidential winner, lee since 1900 including both terms of barack obama, both terms of bill clinton and so forth, doesn't

really matter. because it is this emotional connection account. i think the real issue for us is how do we counter that? things are slipping away i think very quickly. >> i was on npr show a couple weeks ago, and we had a trump supporter on the line pair were talking about the point of donald trump's tweet about the what, 3 million illegal votes which is i made of crap, crap, that assertion spirit i hate it when you're pulling her punches. >> we are pressing the person on this and she actually said, this is what she said. she said unfortunately, there's no such thing as tax anymore. and the explanation of that argument was well, you believe there wasn't 3 million illegal votes, but so many of mr. trump supporters really to believe there were 3 million votes. she really i don't believe in that moment, she will understood

the fundamental difference between those two things. that is been the mindbending aspect of this campaign. not that donald trump one. i think donald trump when he was always a possibility in our mind but the notion that so many people were not inviting fact, the process of assimilation of fact and decision-making is much different than what i think we assumed or what i've assumed in a two decade career. >> i want to hone in on that because conspiracy theories have been around forever. partisan media has been around forever. i divided country has been around forever. we fought a civil war. you can go right back to alexander hamilton to see the evidence of media that spread untrue stories and that people believe different things. so what is it that's different about now, or that we feel to be different about now? or is that we feel it to be different and it's not different but we are exposed to it?

i think it's important to hone in on that because that's what we start to look and understand, are we facing a different and more existential threat either to our democracy or two independent journalism than conspiracy theories lies and falsehoods of the past? that's one bucket a question for everybody. i want to come back also to jim's point which i think is very important, looking at almost the social science rationale behind this. you could sort of reframed that as narrative versus respect. and that one of the things about donald trump as a politician i think, his particular skill and genius is understanding narratives and deathly not understanding facts. he's pretty divorced from the world of facts and he's pretty genius at the narrative. he understood i think in ways that we had a hard time grappling with, that creating or reinforcing a narrative around hillary clinton and whether it

was e-mail or her corrupt hillary, lying hillary, was going to be a very successful way for him to use facts that were irrelevant and discard facts that were inconvenient. as a journalist we all know the power of narrative and how hard it can be to disrupt narratives even those that are fundamentally untrue or misrepresented. to me that's what a lot of the election was about, was that we couldn't in fact no longer the power to disrupt narrative or perhaps the one part of the media, the narrative was stronger than that. let's go back to this question of, is there any truth anymore and is there something really different? what do you think? >> a chunk of the media really wrapped the concept of a fact check around themselves like a

blanket, as if this is how we're going to penetrate the narrative. but we have long known that people like you said people really resist facts that challenge what they truly believe. unlike journalists who generally speaking, when you get the fact they take that information, incorporated into the future of how they tell their story. the average person doesn't do that. so thinking about that clinging to act checks i think that was it. >> fact checks, one of the things i did discover, when you trietry to refute a lot it only emphasizes the line of first place. i'm not a big fact check band. i think people should correct mistakes but don't expect that to have much of an effect. i want to go back to your very first question of the two-part question. once happen is people, people are wired to respond to narratives come to respond to

come if i say once upon a time, you will all pay a lot of attention. whereas if i say this is 50% greater than -- you probably won't. so we are wired to want to listen to narratives and we are very intuitive, but the big change what has been technological. i don't think there's any doubt about that. when i was in college i wanted to start my own newspaper and i got it at a did that. it was really hard because of the three biggest expenses i had were paper, ink and distribution. and now it's not so hard. everybody is a publisher, as you said. brookings is a publisher. actually brookings was a publisher before the internet. we are all publishers, and to quote susan glasser, this is going to be a golden age for anyone who cares about journalism and access to new ideas and information. this is something she wrote

before the election started. at its true. it is a golden age but it's a paradox because at the same time it's a golden age of everybody has his or her voice. those voices are not necessarily factual. i've got to say, i'm going to sound like an old fuddy-duddy but i was trained, i was trained to respect facts. i knew what the rules were, and when i was in college and we went to the same place, if you come if you were a competitor for a place on "the harvard crimson" and you made one mistake, you are out here one factual error, that was it. it was very, very serious. now everybody is a journalist. nobody is really a trained journalist. and so i think that a lot of those problems occur. it's sort of the collision to these two things. the technology and the way that we are wired. and by the way, i also want to say one of the good things about the internet is it does correct

things and does -- there are 1,000,000 voices side to want to repeal it. i think it's great but it does cause problems. it does cause serious problems when people believe things that are not true. >> we are not in the golden age, sort of in the -- it's devastating, the fact you can't rationalize your way around it. i have an alternative three. we have to wrap fact around -- i think we've got to fax the way that people like donald trump during the campaign and this is not a buys of my, this is been damaged by fact checkers, have left a lebanonized false fact. we have to push the stuff as he is. he is a part of the tablet environment anything people come at people in d.c. may not understand that everything trump

does is configured to appear on page six of the near post pic is entire public is based on that priority. i think the way you go after somebody like that in terms, by go after i mean correcting the record and holding him accountable is by using the tabloid tool. one thing i would disagree with i don't think we're in an age of fact versus narrative. we are in an age of fact versus branding it presupposes the consistency engines of storyline. what this guy does is branding. look at what susan was saying about fake news as a brand or as a hashtag. three weeks ago it was a weapon. now if you look at my trolls, and please don't, everything i will tweet they don't agree with is now a hashtag fake news. these are folks and it's not just consigned in one particular political movement though it does seem to be more on the right, right now. people really understand

branding in an intuitive way and trump is teaching his people branding. this thing is really snowballing. we went to figure out a way to not stop the snowball but to make our own. >> okay, i think your point is well taken but i would argue that brand is sort of a subset of narrative. we do now to watch soap operas. donald trump is a soap opera. alto is a running show in which we're not all the extras. what you are calling branding, we followed his ups and downs. it's not that he is a dramatic fashion and type character and goes away, which would suggest the absence of narrative in fact what he is genius at, he almost needs to be thrown in the court in or to fight his way back out. that is much more of a soap opera type character. i want to come back to a couple quick points and bring it to does because i think the structural shift in immediate is what glenn was talking about. when you in college, there were a less strict by the time i was

there. i should say as a boss he did not fire people who made mistakes in the reporting. thank goodness otherwise i would've been fired in my first week as a reporter out of college. but there is a structural shift. when talking about what you guys see as consumers of journalism. a structural shift and i've long thought again that was a positive. we've got to basically a scarcity economy, would you graduate from college and start a newspaper. you had to pay to buy ink, a for the printing press. paper was expensive. you couldn't print a lot of pages that dictated the content even of the journalism that people saw. my dad who is your today which is great, he always said to me never get into argument somebody who buys ink by the barrel. it was a scarcity economy and those who could afford to own a platform to own a newspaper or

magazine had outside impact on our public discourse and on what fax were allowed in a democracy. the gatekeepers are gone. met has fragmented. we all know the consequences of it but what we are really dealing with now is the fact even though we knew this, this is not the first election cycle in 2016 in which a plethora of information and news and differentiated has been thrown at us. that's been true at least for arguably the last decade. but we are still grappling it seems to me with the consequences of that on our political process. we are overwhelmed by information. the relative costs in economic terms of reporting journalism, communicating your fax and your ideas have now dwindled to zero or two less than zero. in the buzzfeed world, the costs

remain, the human costs of putting reporters onto a story. i think that's an interesting question, how do you as an editor not old and new media organization but one that has unleashed a flood, a torrent of content -- i hate that word, content -- had to think about what matters among that. are you publishing too much? do you ever wake up and think i wish we did less but more impactful or better? >> every once in a while, let me tell you a story. once upon a time, two years ago we may remember there was a flood of content on facebook that was, you never believe what happened next. that has largely gone away. because facebook made it go away. that in turn became a bonanza for a lot of publishers like buzzfeedbuzzfeed, like the "wasn

post," of the mainstream publications. it has become a bonanza for fake news sites who figured out how to gain the system can come up with headlines that do not flag or trigger that and you will never believe what happened next algorithm. but actually your macedonian team getting their fake stories out to your grandmother and ohio or whoever it may be. part of it, i think we can't have have this conversation without talking about facebook. they are going to reckoning right now internally in trying to figure out cheryl sandberg said giv you today she doesn't believe fake news on facebook at anything to do with the election outcome. we recently did an analysis of the top 10 most shared stories both fake and real, the fake stories were shared much more widely than the real stories. that's happening in other countries. it's happening in brazil right now with her presidential scandal with the biggest stories that being shared are also fake.

>> we have a graphic in the answer for those of you haven't seen. this reminds me of what happened actually with the techno- optimist when he came to an national politics just of years ago. we are having our domestic american version of that, which is i was editor of "foreign policy" magazine a number of years ago, right around the period of the arab spring. up until that moment we felt like facebook and google and twitter, these are discrete empowerment tools and there are flash mobs and democracy activist are gathering, and death to tyrants and this is incredible and the world is going to see a whole new forcing a freedom. today on the date of the death of aleppo which is not something we talk about it and washington, we should be talking about it. today on the date of the death of aleppo, remember where we started in syria which is with young people coming out to make a peaceful metaclass revolution

in one of the middle east first care needs. instead what happened is we found out that the bad guys have facebook, too. the bad guys have twitter. in places like iran they banded for the regular people and kept it for themselves. i feel like in some ways these conversations were having about american domestic politics is very reminiscent of the dissolution that a techno- optimist race when it became clear that the arab spring revolution for going to lead to -- hopes. glenn, i know you wanted to jump in. >> i just think we're talking about mediated content, curated content. the age of, and buzzfeed i think it's a bad rap on that. that story you guys did on the fake new stuff really change the game. it changed peoples perspective of the campaign. you are very carefully mediated and curated. the thing that facebook and

twitter have to face up to is the fact that there got to start generating content and you cannot have this, using the platform. the internet internet, the web s a much larger question and it should be i believe it should be unmediated platform these are privately owned platforms. i view it, people want to move sewage, they don't have the right to have a pipe. and i think facebook and facebook recent instituted what, seven new measures and all seemed low -- woefully inadequate. it will cost them a lot of money to get intermediate. didn't they dismiss some of the editorial staff? >> yes spirits i think that is over. the notion that zucker bird can think is not running a newspaper study? to what it can gather information from newspapers from print sites, eight out of 10,

from facebook. i think that age is over. i think these guys really need to take responsibility. >> just to be clear, and the defendant surveys of the pew research center does about how americans get news about campaigns, more americans in 2016 gather information about the campaign from late-night comedy shows than from journalism. so there we are. but i want to go back to what none of us know about algorithms that none of us on this stage are engineers or write computer code. let's talk about journalism in washington and in sort of national news, and what we are responsible for and what we are not responsible for. remember, people called ronald reagan the teflon president. is donald trump more teflon, armored with a new kind of teflon at the technologists have given him? or is it something really

different in american politics? >> it's different in the sense that he understands media and he has been able to tell the story to the way he wants to in unmediated medium way. i think that's important to think that's the reason there wasn't any twitter. i guess you could keep having press conference at every night but he would have a hard time getting your story out in any other way. i do want to just comment about something you said earlier. i'm a techno- optimist i sell anything whatever thinks about technology is it sort of a cliché that in the short term tends to disappoint and the long-term it tends to be more rg than anybody ever belief. i think we can see that now finally with television which is kind of really good, the content part of television. >> parts of it. >> parts of it. in fact the news part is terrible. you talk about aleppo, this morning i watched the cable networks in vain to hear

anything about aleppo. unbelievable. this is a really seminal event in world history, and nothing. but i think what will eventually solve or help solve the problem is, is people finding ways using technology itself. and i think the basic issue is the one that shani and glenn brought up which is duration which is what we used to call editing. and we will get to my i get some point, but i think are lots of ideas floating around about how to do that. but i do think it will happen. if we look back on this we will say wow, this is kind of a period of tremendous chaos. everybody, people will believe conspiracy theories. they will believe the lies forever. there's no doubt about that but the facilitation i think is going to become more difficult in the future.

>> the land, yet to cover the trump white house. this is not under hypothetical. this is an actual real life which are filing the suit on and jeff to cover the trump white house. you talk about weaponizing facts and reporting. but in a prodigal sense what does that mean? politicians have always lied. what is it you're going to do differently cracks. ..

i think it lies at the extreme end of it, so when it's appropriate we have to call that stuff out. i hate this form normally come this term, normalization, but you can allow these guys to dictate the terms of the debate based on this information, so they are going to essentially create a playing field in which you you have to accept their terms based on false promises and the last thing and i think i be the most important thing is we have to not die that for every shiny penny. donald trump has the capacity to change the subject and i'm not calling anyone out on this, but there was the day, i forget he

put out some tweet on something, saturday night live tweet and there was a whole state of stories that had come out and it donald trump changed the narrative on one of our internal stories like okay, guys we have five reporters that need to be deployed to cover this donald trump tweet on saturday night live. the guy is using this platform and i think it's important for us to say no, we won't play along with it and as print folks we need to pressure and shame basic cable. if they are going to play along with this guy and give him a platform, we have got to be more adversarial. i cover the white house for three years, but there's always been tension in the briefing room we don't even know if we will get a briefing room, by the way. between the print folks who would prefer things not to be on camera and the people in the front row who are wonderful,

brilliant journalists, but the need to visual and i think we as print folks need to be a bit tougher on our cable brother and if they continue to give this guy a platform. >> i can challenge a bit on this question of whether the president using his bully pulpit and whether the bully pulpit is an old-fashioned bully pulpit or press conference or twitter is probably in my view unreasonable to expect a certain larger percentage of the media isn't going to amplify that. that's the power in part of the office, but i want to get to this question of whether you think there are concrete things you plan to do or things you could be done differently in covering a troubled presidency then we covered a trump campaign >> that's a hard question. i think we don't buy paper and ink, but we come out of a newspaper peart-- tradition is

which you dig into the circumstances and you cover what happens. it's hard to imagine, i mean, we'll plan to become an advocacy organization, so we will continue doing the same things we been doing one area we can improve his understanding the people on facebook who are sharing fake news and understanding the conversations they are having and i think it's something a lot of publishers have done as invested in facebook as a tool and fire hose for traffic because it made news so viral. without understanding the people who are actually looking at that , so we can get those stories. >> the questions and what is people's response and as i said i have sensed a tremendous desire on the part of the journalists i know to find a way to take some more concrete action.

tim sent me his idea for sort of a good housekeeping seal of approval, if you will. what did you have in mind? >> it pains me to think it's come to this because i think journalists have always resisted any kind of accreditation and it should not be a state accreditation, but i think the idea of having some sort of optional accreditation agency, a nonprofit, good housekeeping seal of approval, a bug that is a result of some kind of audits i think is a good idea. sites, individuals, laws don't have to subscribe to it, but if they did they would get some kind of an assurance for the readers that these folks follow certain standards and i think you can-- when i was ahead of the broadcasting board of governors and i'm sure they still do it, we used to do

annual audits of all of our many 60 languages services and they were quite effective, so you could have one part could just be standard, people had to be trained in certain things in another part could be an audits and another part could be some sort of response to criticism and it could be funded by the sites, the purveyors let's call them, themselves and that would also-- it could be part of whatever facebook and google and everyone kind of mysterious algorithms are and i think it's sort of a market base, not a government kind of solution and it's not really a solution, but he gets people thinking in the right way. we were talking about fact checking and i don't think the fact checking is the answer.

you're constantly running to catch up and also i think it emphasizes the lies, so that doesn't really help, but to save these people are serious and you can take what they say as being the truth or they have shown in the past but they haven't been truthful and i think that will work. >> if there is one large platform that does not have problems about apple news, which is on the left us a home for anyone with an iphone and that's because apple news uses human beings like lynn said he do that every single partner in the platform. >> i think the solution is local news. i think it is no accident, no coincidence this is taking place at a time when we have seen that extermination of viable local news outlets. soe good to know reporters and

people trust fax when they can verify on the ground and when you see them walking up your block take a picture of neighbors dog running we are a dehumanized industry. he talked about what ticks you off and what ticks me off and i have nothing against the news, but what i would like to see is a percentage of the money that goes into building these beautiful buildings to maybe investing in local news coverage so people can have more of a textile experience with newsgathering because i think that is the way people will really understand what the truth is when they are able to relay this struck into their lives and at the other problem in our society in general, becoming more fragmented and disconnected. without a lot of these institutions would be community holding. >> we are too busy staring at our phones to interact with anyone. >> i also think there's a

national security issue and we've seen in the last election. this will get worse and worse and if internationally i think the russians are terrific at this, no doubt about it. as in a semi- other things, they will be the model for the chinese will be the model. of chinese will follow the russians. we will see this more and more and they do think that maybe some kind of accreditation or something might help with that. >> i went to invite all of you to join in with questions and also ideas, but do try to keep it short in a question form an idea yourself if you could. we have some microphones around the room. >> former editor of the boston newspaper and popular journalist in london.

the thing that strikes me about the us is the lack of direct questioning by politicians. of the president does not hold press conferences and has not held-- he does not have to reply on, you know, the prime news every night. in the uk of some story happens overnight the bbc radio will be outside the minister's house at 7:00 a.m. questioning him directly. and you also television programs where you people from different parties cross questioning each other and i don't see that in the us. politicians stand at a podium like trump did at weeks on end and reported uncritically. >> i completely agree. i'm so sick of what goes on especially on cable news where first of all you have surrogates who know what the talking points are for the day, but i completely agree with you. i don't understand why a

reporter can tolerate someone just mouthing the latest talking points. you know, just going for the kill. the bbc's premier program like this, i would love to see a hardtop in the us. you actually need to just ask tough questions and i don't know the answer. >> well, i think it's a fair point that if we were voting in this room we would probably also for that. with a question back in the red. >> i'm an independent researcher and writer. i want to hear from the palace what they think about the suggestion that donald trump was playing to an audience that did not care what the facts were that responded only to the narrative especially as it is underscored by the race issue.

i think that had a big impact on the gathering of his audience and if that is the case, then are you continually to in presentation by someone who is a skewed to picking up those kinds of divides the in the culture? >> i just want to say that, i mean, you know i don't disagree with anything you said, but i think we are all wired it this way, whatever side we are on. so, think people on the left are also more willing and eager to hear things that may not be true or that are slightly shaded and people on the right. i'm not sure there's that much of a difference. the difference in this election was you had someone who is very adept at exploiting the fact and also adept at using the tools of

dissemination to get his ideas across. >> do you get a difference response, glenn, from different parties? having do you feel like this is a bipartisan problem even if it's been more pronounced? >> there have been studies that show that i might be getting these numbers wrong. between 70 and 80% of democrats may trust and that numbers in the 24 republicans and a lot of it has to do with the fox news phenomenon and something obama has spoken about. the one thing i would guard against here is over-- over reading the results and i know it's been an incredibly dramatic thing that has taken place, but there's a lot of factors. let us not forget-- i forgot the number of counties, but in a lot of these planes states the blue

wall state, like counties previously obama counties and two elections flipped for trumpet he was expressing something and i think there is no question that there is a racial component to some of his support, but i think it is a misread to say that's the only reason. there are people who really want a change is not like hillary clinton, so i think. i think trump's appeal, a lot of people to look at the numbers and look at his disapproval at the time of his election it was 67%, so there was a large number of people who went into the voting booth disapproving with donald trump at a higher number who were cool with that. so, the notion that every person who flips the switch for donald trump bought the whole package, i think, is a misnomer and i think that's where we'll get interesting. >> does that make it more reassuring or less reassuring? >> i'm not reassured by

anything. >> is suggested-- job description as president that many voters have in mind is not the same job description as president that we hear on the panel might have in mind. lets bring more folks into the conversation. right here in front. >> i wonder if there is somewhat of a smugness within the washington press looking for validation and what makes me ask that is the series of "washington post" articles by mr. frei conferred, whatever-- >> david thayer and hold. >> whatever. 's-- i don't be smart, but the point is it was like a bulldog looking for a bone and he clearly didn't expect to be writing big stories when he first is started looking at the

charitable contributions and it became harder and harder for him to track it down and an editor who let him do more tracking down to find out that there was no there there as it were. the post wasn't going to be rewarded for that story. the people who like trump are going to ignore it and the people who didn't like trump are just going to like him less, so my point is maybe you shouldn't be looking for validation when in fact you're doing good work. >> you know-- >> i have struck a chord. >> dangerous when glenn has a chord struck. >> i don't think we're looking for validation. there was a component of the electorate that were educated whites and it's funny we were talking about the post- swing, post battleground with a lot of -- the truth of the matter would-- was it was a bottle part of the electric and that part was white educated voters and

there is evidence that the james comey letter per stem in that direction, but we are talking about-- [inaudible] >> documenting donald trump's history of his charity distinctly uncharitable, so when you say he was finding nothing he was literally finding nothing because there were no contributions, so why shouldn't he have done that? that's the kind of work a reporter does. the other thing about him is we are talking about weapon icing fax. he did this clever thing where he had a yellow legal pad and he would write the names on the pad. if you think they did not have that on an excel spreadsheet you are crazy. they used the yellow pad to demonstrate to people and people would check in on it and it was a perfect example of how to do this. i thought the whole thing was brilliant.

it's not going to sway the election, but one thing that moves the number was that access hollywood tape. the problem is you had trench warfare, world war i with this volatile group of people moving back and forth. >> again, to me that is the point. i'm glad you raised this issue, maybe not the smugness part because i'm not sure it's the best demonstration, but he gets back to the basic question of do have impact or not and this is where some of glenn suggested we need to weapon eyes reporting. i feel it's not that we're not done that. there are great examples whether it's the "washington post" series and accident "new york times" aggressively reported on the taxes and many other issues. that succeeded. it succeeded with the part of america that was already not going to vote for donald trump. if you took a survey, a scientific rigorous survey or

even those who are exposed to the "new york times" coverage, probably it was a pretty unprecedented turnout against a donald trump if you correlated the votes in readership of the stories. we are living in a country in which people are in a cloud of not only like-minded fan on their facebook feed, but also with media brands that supports the version of truth that they supported, a cultural choice now that is reflected in our politics and that's what scares me. >> most people mail a donald trump had it screwed around that stuff, so people knew that and they still voted for him anyway, so it's not an issue of it's not penetrating people understood he was then charitable guy but they did not care enough to vote against him. >> all the way in the back, sir. >> john cummings. not so much a look at the past,

but looking at the present, the biggest thing on the horizon is the voting by the electoral college. why isn't this plastered, you know, studied inside and out. what did the founding fathers intended? what is the responsibility of it? would trump characterize as an unfit president? why isn't this dominating the front page of every one of your things and looked at in every possible angle? >> good question. on the one hand i would say the electoral college is getting more attention this year than it has gotten since 2000 in some ways. on the other hand, it is basically perceived as a sort of antiquated 18th century, and appendix, a belly button on our democracy. no one is really sure what function it plays and there's-- so therefore we have not been viewed it with function you could argue, but the bottom line

is the numbers are the numbers and i don't think there is anyone who thinks that any outcome will change. it's a nice thing to talk about it. i believe jim has been in favor of abolishing the electoral college. have it you? >> no. >> great writer of editorials about eliminating structural flaws in our democracy. >> no, i'm for something less popular, which is adding to the number of the members of congress after every census, which we used to do and then we stopped doing in the 20s and as a result the average member of congress represents two or three times as many people i she is to. i think that would be good. i am in favor of structural changes as far as the election is concerned such as changing the rules that the presidential debates, which basically exclude anyone but a democrat and republican. i think that there's a great middle in this country that is

not represented by the two parties and i think this election shows because of the candidates that each of the two parties put up-- the bankruptcy of the party system, but that's for another brookings discussion thanks for letting me get that in. >> now, everyone wants to jump in. in the middle. this lady here. >> thank you. on the congressional correspondent for the hispanic outlook magazine and i write a lot about immigration and latinos. i know lots and lots of people who voted for trump and none of them are angry white men, none of them. most are highly educated international and many speak many languages and their women. i just think this conversation is missing it, the issues, certain issues.

it didn't matter what his predications were for women. it didn't matter that he's on intellectual. he was saying things about issues that they needed and wanted and had not heard from a democrat and one of them was immigration immigration in terms of law and order, not anti- immigrants, racist, neo-nazis, you know. they want law and order and you never hear democrats talk about enforcing immigration laws, deportation comes-- becomes like a crime against humanity. it's a big issue and then the supreme court and i think all my friends, the supreme court was the thing. they didn't care as long as he was going to change and get a antonin scalia type guy and i think the democrats missed that. i think the press mystic, also. >> glenn, you covered president obama on this question of

immigration deportation, i mean, obama was very aggressively deporting immigrants. >> why do you keep giving me the tough ones? yeah, in fact it was a huge issue particularly with both bernie sanders and hilly country cannot against the deportation of the american miners and by minors i'm young people not minors. when you crunch numbers in a certain way he had more deportations than any president in history, so again there are differing facts there on that. >> i think we only have time for one or two more questions. >> stuart brown. i'm wondering if this is discussion only taking place on the left. when i talk to my clients or friends on the right, they simply don't believe there was any false news out there.

they don't think there was any fake news. when i report that there was a 4.6% employment they go are you nuts, there's a hundred million unemployed americans right now. where do you get your information from, "washington post" or "new york times" they go, there you go. if the number came from the department of labor they are like yeah, see what, i mean,. >> thank you. we journalists worry every day we are talking to ourselves. this question-- >> because i'm a right-winger. i served in the name part-- republican administration and voted republican for president every year since 1980, except for this time. i'm deeply concerned about what's going on. i don't necessarily-- i do not think that donald trump won this election because of fake news, no doubt about that and i think if donald trump did not even exist this would be a gigantic

problem that needs addressed. >> lots of hands is still up. sir? farther back. sorry. >> thank you. my question is, what plans with the media have with respect to handling what i call this handling of the facts and specifically what-- with respect to mr. trump, his tax issue. the claim was that he did not pay his taxes, which implies that he did not pay the proper amount of tax due. if has reported, he took a net operating loss which allows you to carry back a certain number years and carry it over. he didn't pay the proper amount of tax due. that amount was zero, then fine, but the allegation was as the

statements were made as though her-- as though he didn't contribute etc., but i thought the media had an obligation to point out it's like asking the average guy to forgo their standard deduction to get a few bucks extra in the pot. that was something that became a central issue, one of the central issues and i think the media has obligation to treat him fairly. >> you want to take that one? >> i would say the reason we did a central issue is because people wanted to see his tax returns and had not, so i think that's where that came from. >> that's the bottom line is that every single president and presidential nominee going back really to the last several decades has released their tax returns as part of the campaign. this is not the only normative presidential politics, but a significant one and in fact now, we will they say interesting question because presidents also

have historically every year as a matter of course released their tax returns every spring. is donald trump going to find a way to blow that norm up also? >> yes. >> if we took a vote we know where the answers will be. i'm afraid we are just about out of time and i want to thank everyone here it's a great conversation when we leave semi- questions on the table. i hope you will continue the conversation. thank you. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> c-span where history unfold

daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable-television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> shortly we will take you live to the u.s. senate for a brief pro forma session. no legislative business is scheduled to, generator, is opening day for the incoming congress newly elected and reelected senators will be sworn in and we will have live coverage on c-span2. led to the senate floor. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable roy blunt, a senator from the state of missouri, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: orrin g. hatch, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 4:30 p.m . on tuesday, december 27, 2016. december 27, 2016.

>> join us tuesday, generator, for live coverage of the opening day of the new congress. watch the official swearing-in of the new and reelected members of the house and senate and the election of the speaker of the house. our all-day live coverage of the events from capitol hill begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio at. >> coming up tonight on c-span2 if the build tv in prime time as we talk with politicians about books they have written. starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern senate majority leader mitch o'connell and his memoir took outgoing california senator barbara boxer: the art of tough , fearlessly facing politics and life. former oklahoma congressman jc watts author of: dig deep, seven truths to fighting the

strength within. we close with virginia commerce and dave bratt who two years ago one a primary against eric cantor, the second ranking republican in congress. his book is american underdog: proof that principles matter. book to be in prime time on c-span2 starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. the washington international trade association recently hosted a discussion on us trade policy in the upcoming trump administration. we will hear from representatives of the european union, world bank and mexico's embassy in washington. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good morning. thank you all for being here this morning. i am ken levinson, director of the washington international trade association and we are delighted so many of you have joined us in person and pleased to welcome c-span and their viewers who are interested in international trade and learning about the future of trade. before we began, i would like to thank our partners at the ronald reagan building and international trade center who

work with us on this event and all their events and we are grateful for their partnership. i would like to give all of you watching a heads up about our upcoming events including ambassador mark-- mike froman will give his keynote address as us trade representative genera 10th. that same evening we will have annual members meeting and welcome to the new year party. later in january and into february we plan to hold discussions about some of the hot issues being talked about today including nafta, china and the trade implications of us tax reform efforts, which we are hearing a lot about these a day's. this election, people and been asking about future of us trade policy and at our website www.america's trade policy.com. and with our next john trade initiative we will lead a conversation about the future of international trade policy. we have ideas about the direction of us trade policy, but us trade policy is not made

in a vacuum. it's made in the context of a global and globalizing economy and that's what today's discussion is about why it's so important. in order to understand the future of american trade policy we need to understand what's happening globally in international trade investments. today's panel will shed light on that topic. i'm pleased to turn the microphone over to my friend steve lamarr executive vice president of the american and apparel that where association. steve. >> thank you and good morning, everyone. thanks for coming out on such a cold windy morning here in washington dc. there is no question that the next couple of years it will be a time of change and certainly anticipation on trade in international trade and competitiveness. certainly, i'm getting a lot of questions from the folks with whom i work and i know probably a lot of people have a lot of questions out there as well about what will happen and what

will we see occur. we have a great panel of experts here, but this is the panel that will not answer those questions. those questions will come after january and after january 3 when the new congress takes office and after january 20-- 20th we will see some of the campaign rhetoric and policy pronouncements in the suites to become translated into policies, actionable events and so forth and that will be an opportunity for folks to learn more about what will happen. what this panel can do is help us understand was the reaction around the world and how are our friends and trade partners around the world in key areas observing the events unfolding in washington and the country with the news coming out on a daily basis and how are they reacting to it and plenty 41 other perspectives and what do they think should happen or what

are their perspectives as well, so with that i will introduce them and we will ask each of them to speak for about five to seven minutes and then we will have questions afterwards. they do have answers to some the questions. i'm just not sure which answers they will have, citing it will it will be great. to my immediate right is wendy cutler. vice present in managing director of the asia policy institute of the washington dc office and it joins the policy institute following three decades of a diplomat and negotiator in the office and most recently she joined as active dean-- acting deputy working on trade negotiations in the asia-pacific region. anabel all this-- gonzales. her time as minister limited more than 50 years of service or she held a-- held various

positions. damien levy's head of trade in our culture section of the european union and the collation in washington. he's been with the commission since 2001. bobby pittman to his right is the managing director of the pond at capital, boutique investment platform focused on africa and most recently he was the vice president of infrastructure, private sector and regional integration at the african development bank from 2009 till 2012 and previously held senior positions at several us government agencies where he worked on a variety of us african economic policy issues. last but not least, kenneth smith almost as the head of trade at the nafta office of the

ministry of the economy of mexico in washington dc and prior to serving in his current post he was corded or general for international affairs and a mexican ministry of agricultural life stop, world of element and food and previously worked at it mexican federal competition commission at the ministry of economy. he started his professional career working from mexico's nafta negotiating team and is a fellow board member here. without further delay i'm going to turn the panel over-- i guess the microphone over to wendy. >> thank you so much, steve. thank you for turning out this morning. i just learned about the january 10, event with my former boss. i can't wait for that events. that should be interesting. this morning i went to share with you kind of what i'm hearing from asia. i'm just back from asia. i'm in daily contact with my new position with former asian trade officials, current trade officials and other opinion

leaders in the area, so i wanted to share with you kind of their perspective, recognizing there is not one asia. asia is a huge continent with a lot of different views are in there are common thread that i wanted to maybe go through a few the first is what we are hearing is that asia really wants continued us leadership and engagement on the trade agenda. second, they are very concerned about rising protectionism and here we're not just talking about tariffs. and they're also concerned about maybe a robust use of us trade laws. third, they are concerned, not only about things i have been set with respect to possible actions or measures against asian countries like china, but they are broader concerns. their concern, for example, and

i mentioned this to 10 as we were coming up to the stage about what will happen with nafta because let's remember a lot of number of asian countries have moved production to mexico and they would be affected by nafta and so i would say while we are speaking about different regions there's a lot of overlap with respect to the impact of any measures taken on trade through the whole global trading system. also, they want a stable us china relationship and this isn't just trade. it's kind of overall, but in the trade arena remember for many asian countries china is their biggest trading partner may be the us. they feel that they will be in the middle if there is a back-and-forth in terms of react -- retaliation or members between the two countries. finally, i would say like everyone in the trade community they are waiting to see who be

on the trade team. what i want it in my minutes is to talk a bit about ttp and how asian countries are responding to president-elect tron's recent announcement that the us will withdraw from ttp on day one of his administration. there's a lot of concern, i mean, that ttp countries feel they did a lot of heavy lifting and spent a lot of political capital responding to us priorities in the negotiation and so right now they feel that the us is not, you know, living up to what they had hoped for. i will just say a number of ttp countries are still going forward with the ratification process. most recently, japan past ttp in their diet. just last week and as someone who spent a lot of time

negotiating the japan part of the ttp agreement, if you're told me a few years ago that we would end up where we are now that we would be withdrawing from ttp and japan would be passing this agreement, i would not have believed you. so, how are ttp countries or what options do they had to respond to what's going on in the region and not just ttp countries, but other countries as well. first, as i mentioned a number plan to go ahead and plan to proceed with ratification. japan, just a few weeks ago ratified ttp. australia has announced that they are going ahead, mexico and others. vietnam conversely has announced it's not going to proceed with ratification, but very interesting vietnam has said they will go forward with passing reform legislation and a lot of the areas called for under ttp and other countries i

hope as they upgrade their fta's with other countries in the region or enter into new or other negotiations will try to push ttp standards. a number of ttp countries including prime minister all they have said they are going to try to persuade the president-elect to take a fresh look and really understands how it advances us interest both on the economic front and the geostrategic front and also regional interests. other ttp countries are talking about, could they do ttp without the us and all that 11 agree, excluding the us, by keeping that door open for the us to join later. most important right now, i think, a lot of countries are looking at plan b.

a lot of countries rely on trade and recognize that trade contributes to growth and jobs and they want to attract foreign direct investment they don't want to stand still, so they are looking at other negotiations in the region and i think what we will see and what we already see is they are stepping up their activity with ongoing negotiations, but i think we will also see new negotiations announced in the coming weeks and months. as long as ttp was going on and looked alive a lot of these countries did not have the wherewithal to kind of give all of their resources and all of their attention to a number of negotiations, but with ttp sidelined as it is now, they will have the resources. they will have the attention and the personnel to put into other negotiations. the regional comprehensive economic partnership is, you know, the most viable alternative to ttp. a negotiation underway for about five years now including 16

asian countries, not including the united states, but including china and india. negotiators just met last week in indonesia and are making good process and talk about including these talks next year. a number of people have called that china dominated negotiations and the reason-- region. i don't agree with that. is essential negotiation of a china now has all of scott a renewed interest in this negotiation and is really stepping up its engagement as well. there are other negotiations underway. japan and that you are trying to see if they can at least conclude their agreement in principle by the end of this year and their chief negotiator from the eu is in route to tokyo, australia and indonesia are working on an fta. new zealand and china agreed they will upgrade their fta.

canada and china are exploring an fta, malaysian trade minister just expressed interest into entering into an fta with mexico and the list goes on and on. maybe i can just conclude. you are looking at me and i'm sure my time is almost up, but i want to put on the table and maybe we can get to it more in the q&a, when the president-elect announced he wanted to read-- withdraw from ttp he said he was more interested in bilateral deals, so i know there's a lot of discussion in the trade community about the merits of bilateral deals and that it can be moved in that direction what would it mean and i think a lot of countries in asia are also examining that and trying to think through these issues. the one country in particular, the name comes up when people talk about bilateral's is japan and in my conversations with the japanese they made it clear that

they are focused on ttp and believe getting the regional benefits of this deal is very important and what the deal having just past the diets, this is the course they want to go, so i will conclude there and just pass the microphone. >> thank you very much for having me here and i'm going to talk a little bit about latin america and in a similar sense to asia it is a diverse region as we know, so when we talk about latin america we need to keep that in mind and that diversity imagines itself in several ways, but to that are important for discussion is one, the structure of their productive system with some countries more oriented towards commodity production and others more-- [inaudible] >> another difference relates to their trade with some being more open than others and i will come

back to this. having said that i think there are three key features of created investment in latin america. first, there are 77 free trade agreements that latin american countries have entered into an most in the past have been 12, 13 years. of these 11 are with the us and the fta on average, about 50% of latin america trade. additionally, three latin american countries as we know, mexico, chile and peru are part of ttp and at least i believe it to more interested in becoming part of it, columbia and costa rica. in addition to this, latin america has also been very active in terms of their relationship with china and asia more broadly.

three latin american countries have trade agreements with china. they have also been active with the european union. and there are agreements with a number of countries in the region and finally latin america immigration has also been undergoing changes and i would like to highlight the specific alliance. this integration effort that includes mexico, chile, columbia and prove, but increasingly more latin american countries including argentina have expressed interest in the ttp and it's an interesting model because it's basically presenting a model of not only free flow of goods, but also services, capital and labor particularly, by labor, so this is an interesting model to watch in the region. it's so interesting that last

time i count there were over 30 countries including many countries in asia and i think in the future this is it important connecting point between latin america and asia. 's second feature want to highlight is that there has been -- there is this globalization black clash in some advanced countries. some countries in latin america are going in opposite direction and this is the case in the chick there i would like to highlights the case of argentina because in argentina there undergoing major decisions and economic policy. they have streamline imports and eliminated control over remittances in the country is a

full-fledged efforts to reintegrate into global markets and attract foreign direct investments and i think that's a important change in the region. as a matter of fact, countries reignited again the-- [inaudible] >> third feature that i want to mention is that there are others in the region that are not part of the efforts, notably venezuela and ecuador. though, ecuador has also negotiated an agreement with eu zero-- you, that there is a question as to how sustainable the economic models of some of these countries are in going forward. having said that it's clear latin america continues-- that most latin american countries continue to face important challenges, need to further integrate, they need to increase productivity and very recently

the world bank came out with a study that the future of latin america, not the super cycle of commodities, but the future of latin america is actually in trading more with the global economy, so interesting enough while all of this is happening in the us, eu and other places in latin america there's a lot of excitement for what created investment had to offer. in terms of what the future means, i think that latin america is increasingly more in land of opportunity. despite the commodity prices slowdown, despite all of the challenges from an economic perspective, you see stable countries with consumers, middle

class that has grown tremendously in the region. i have to say they buy more from the us than china, so it's still oriented to the us, but this country have to say i believe has taken their destiny in their own hands and they consider the us eight important to trade partner, but they are also looking to other regions of the world, again, europe, china and asia. peru just announced they would like to revive their agreement with china to modernize that agreement and i would not be surprised if other countries in the region would also go that way. let's remember that china has also interesting investments in some latin american countries, so i believe you will see a strengthening of the presence of china in the region and finally this entry latin american integration process and particularly in the pacific

alliance. i believe it will continue to grow and expand, so you are having latin america i believe a more mature trade partner, more stable trading partner and that is interested in working with the us, but i will not wait for the us, but will continue to look at europe and china and asia and enter latin america integration to find opportunities to grow and open new opportunities. >> thank you. welcome to all. if you worked on europe next year. 2017 is kind of halfway through our cycle of five years. started the new year, the new parliament in 2014, new commission and there have a new elections in may 2019. is the year of delivering results. this week, parliament agreed on the parties for next year,

economy, double leads-- investments, completing the banking union, addressing our borders, better border control, reformed migration and so forth, so it's a year of very intense reform, copyright reform and telecom reform, so i think you can expect a lot coming out from the european institutions, from brussels next year. on trade policy-- first of all i would like to remind everyone when six countries decided to create the european communities in 1956, they immediately saw that if you create one common market you need to have internally one commercial policy and when internationally, so it's just that impossible to do separate deals on trade policy

with other countries and that is still the case today with a 28 countries. if you want to do bilateral with europe you do a bilateral with the european union. it next year, we will harvest the results of negotiations with our canadian partners. we expect the european parliament the first quarter. of vietnam next year as well will-- we will ratify vietnam and also singapore. where does the-- where can we draw the line between the european union essentially on investment protection. then, we continue in negotiating an agenda and wendy mentioned

japan fta. trying to wrap up an agreement in principle. in any event, we would have to wrap up the negotiations next year. we have the upgrade of our fte with mexico and we are also-- we find very experienced negotiators after having done that ttp negotiations and eager sss possible. also, in nature we have launched negotiations with indonesia. i don't mention them all, so very active negotiating agenda from the european union union next year. we are also continued reform of our trade defense. you have may seen this week there was an agreement among

member states for the first time in more than 10 years of the reform of laws in particular and what kind of exceptions can we create. faster proceedings and also creating the commission to self initiate a case and we know that has been an issue before and some countries. 2017 i think will also be here to reflect on the perception of globalization and what do we need to change. i think it's quite clear number of member states with a significant backlash against more integration what has happened. may be this is where i should mention that we will launch brexit talks with united kingdom the talks are being prepared thoroughly on both sides and we will wait for the plan of the

united kingdom. of course, then the world trade organization at the end of the year where we will also be working with the partners on a successful outcome and it's quite clear, i think, the us will have to be active to move these forward. ..

to resume the talks to see whether or not they want to continue these negotiations. we think we can get a good agreement, agreement for both. what is being done now is we're taking snapshots in each of the areas, 20 or more areas to see what we've achieved, what are the areas of agreement, disagreement so that we can properly resume when the u.s. is ready. and with the new administration we have a lot of things to discuss. our companies are facing, challenges in emerging markets. there's work to be done together on these various challenges for sure. someone reminded me recently that compared to the last republican administration, this one at 16 years ago, this one is ahead of schedule.

and so i think we will be patient and stand ready to talk later. thank you. >> good morning. i think it's fair to say that even the most generous person in the room would not consider me a trade expert, especially amongst others up here. but as i thought about it coming and i thought maybe that's appropriate to talk about the africa region because i think, i think it's fair to say that we haven't really been having u.s.-africa strategic trade policy discussions or thinking for quite a long time. the policy discussion in this town probably for 20 years is when is the agoa renewal? do we have the votes to continue agoa? that's basically i think has defined u.s.-african trade policy for almost two decades.

what i thought would be interesting then is to talk about some of the underlying dynamics at least that i see as a private equity investor that i think is going to potentially change some of those discussions. those discussions are not necessarily based on policymakers of use in a vacuum. they're based on policymakers is connected with the companies and the businesses that are actually happening between the u.s. and africa. looking at trade data can really take you in the wrong direction. most of the trading relationship between the u.s. and africa, africa and some parts of the world is defined by abstractors. and has been for some time to eat you look at the number, it's changing. it's it's changing quite a bit. if you take a big step back, so for us as investors we are very data focused. we have spatial statistic statil that helps us identify pockets of demographics and consumer

behavior and spending power. and so for us with very data driven in terms of where we make our choices. when you look at data-driven multinational and look at their behavior in the last just i've used. this i think is very recent and i think the more data-driven multinationals are at the front edge you see the making quite significant bets across africa. you already see it yielding quite significant results. the one i think you're the most is general electric. when i was living in north africa we would see that your electric team from time to time, very rarely. obviously probably on the infrastructure side of our portfolio at the african development bank i would take 60-70% 70% of the procurement was china. these are significant numbers, tens of billions of dollars. after that it's primarily europeans, italians, french.

and all of those countries and their associated trade experts i think were taken for strategic use on the agreement. most u.s. companies were not even competing in this process. not even submitted bids. you look at your electric today, 2010, doing maybe 1 billion in revenues in africa. today they are doing 5 billion. that number is expected to be 10 billion within the coming just a few years. and i think when you think about john electrics growth of the top line globally, that's where the growth is coming from. and i think when you look at large multinationals that are looking to increase their top line, these are the ones that are now making a bet on africa. another example that some people are not talking about as much which i think is pretty dramatic is anheuser-busch, owned by 3g. take time people to take time

response to date and they just bought sab miller in africa for $100 billion. that's a bit of effort. in terms of where they think some of their topline growth is going to come in the coming years. i think also talks about how the tray dynamics are going to change quite considerably intrudes from extracted to consumer and other types of products. the numbers are there. you don't have to look out too far to say the top three most popular countries in the world are in africa. two of the largest cities in the world in the coming decade. i'm from south florida site get a lot of cuba talk all the time in my house and in my neighborhood. my response is always i look cuba, i love visiting cuba. it's a dynamic place that the gdp of legos is not equivalent to cuba.

i is not going to now. it's going to widen. nigeria has another 20 cities that it would going to have more than 1,000,00 1 million people a million consumers. when i look at those trends, the demographic trends, economic growth trend, it's going to drive a lot of a large corporate, their behavior at a think that's going to follow and create a much more strategic dialogue on use africa trade policy i think in some ways i think it's fair to say we are behind on this. as an investor i would say the chinese have bilateral investment treaties in almost every country in africa. the germans, the french, a number of european countries. i think we have bilateral investment treaty maybe three or four countries across 55 and most of those were negotiated in the '80s. most of those were still driven by extracting. so i think for me i look at the top and i say what's going on at the bottom and striving to top?

the plot of a shifting quite a bit. would mention which maybe will sound a little out of left field if i'm not already in left field, but is when we think about the sharing economy is something we talk about a lot the u.s. weather is uber, airbnb, i think i think about both in sharing of assets and supply chains but also the ability to aggregate smaller items. we are invested in a company in new york, a marketplace really high-end african fashion, kind of luxury fashion from africa. about 30 designers. most of those designers are not shipping the goods to the u.s. previously. the ability to share in existing supply chains, the ability to aggregate people that small production, create are too small type brands, the ability not to hire a new york big marketing firm, new social media get your brand out.

our lead designer, beyoncé, the ability to do that and have that reach and not become part of use africa trade story you think about how those voices are now going to play into a trade policy discussion. in my penguin moving from a place where you had a very small number of interested parties primarily extractive, and that's on top of the repeal industry is been very aggressive pricing in exploring and thinking through the african opportunity. i think a stroke primarily been a small handful of extract is defining the discussion. now we're moving to it looks to be quite democratic discussion from both large and multinational but also small players better think are going to start thinking about trade, global markets and regularly. in africa they were also drive a lot of more so than in the u.s.

for in europe also drive public opinion. i would argue more people would look then might listen to the present. these folks are becoming very much global traders. i think that's also a dynamic that not fully taken into account i in these discussions t a big driver in the africa region. >> thank you very much for the invitation to come in to give the perspective of mexico on north america and where we're headed with the north american free trade agreement. i believe we're at a important crossroads in trade relationship within north america. we are 20 years of free trade, manage a great probably the greatest free trade area in the world. trade has tripled between the three countries and now over $1 trillion. between u.s. and mexico that figure has reached 530,000,000,000 dollars and with increased dramatically the flow of investment between all three countries.

the aunt of the numbers what aspect that will exceed all expectations of anybody who's involved in the nafta negotiations at the time was making predictions as to where we would be headed within the nafta region is at the level of supply chain integration with created. the way we have create interconnected industrial clusters across mexico, ds and canada where we exchange products, products across the board eight or nine times before winding up in a final product that is either consumed in the region or exported to the rest of the world with a very dramatic can put an edge, are the other countries when had that level of division of labor and enter industry trade. that's one of the key elements and why when mexico exports to the world, not just with the nafta but within its network of 11 trade agreements with 46 countries, 40% of what we export comes from the united states. we are building products together. we are working towards increasing the compactness to get in the manufacturing of

north american products. that is a key element we must take into consideration when we analyze where we should be headed with nafta. in terms of a lot of the talk itself in terms of impact of trade agreements and jobs, look at the fact five my jobs in u.s. depend on trade with mexico and another nine with trade with candidate. almost 59 jobs in u.s. related to trade with number one and number two customers in the world, canada and united states. that's a a very peculiar element of north american integration that have to be taken into consideration. there is the employment aspect of companies in the u.s. exporting to the nafta partners but increasingly in the case of mexico over the last 15 years we have almost $50 billion of accumulated foreign direct investment from mexican companies into the united states that great over 125,000 jobs. this means thousand bs