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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Is the Iran War Really Over?; How Low Will the Price of Oil Go? Interview With Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Ben Taub; Interview With Author Carlos Barragan. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired June 21, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:36]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you this week from London.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, Donald Trump has spent more than a decade criticizing the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran. Did he get anything better even after waging war against the Islamic Republic? I talk with Phil Gordon, a key negotiator on the 2015 nuclear deal.

Plus, how will this agreement affect the flow of oil out of the Gulf? How long will it take the world economy to stabilize? I'll ask an expert.

And --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want Greenland.

ZAKARIA: We'll take you inside the president's quixotic quest for the world's largest island, Greenland. "The New Yorker's" Ben Taub tells us why he wants it so badly and what he's doing to get it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

Last Friday, the U.S. government did something extraordinary. It effectively forced one of America's leading artificial intelligence companies to withdraw its most advanced product from the market. Anthropic, the maker of the frontier A.I. model Mythos and its commercially available cousin Fable, have been given little warning and according to reports, roughly 90 minutes to comply.

If you missed the story, that's understandable. It unfolded in the shadow of the administration's retreat from the Iran war. But in the long run, this may prove more consequential because the fight between Washington and Anthropic is not really about one company. It is the first visible battle over who governs artificial intelligence and whether that governance will happen through rules and institutions, or improvisation and raw power.

By now, it should be clear that A.I. is a general purpose technology that will flow into everything human beings do, from business to government to personal life, and increasingly, it's clear that it may be as powerful as imagined. Senator Mark Warner recently recounted testimony from General Joshua Rudd, who heads both the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, that Anthropic's most advanced model Mythos was able to penetrate almost all of the government's classified systems, not in weeks or days, but in hours.

The question now is not whether to regulate A.I., but how. The Trump administration's approach has been deeply confusing. Over two and a half weeks ago, President Trump signed an executive order establishing a voluntary review process for frontier A.I. models and giving agencies 60 days to design a framework for identifying systems that required heightened scrutiny. It pointed toward something sensible, structured oversight, advanced testing, clear thresholds.

But before that process had even been created, the Pentagon had declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, and the Trump administration at one point directed federal departments to stop using its systems.

The administration's concerns are not frivolous. Anthropic appears to have made real mistakes. A "Washington Post" report suggested that it expanded access to Mythos beyond what officials believed had been approved and moved too slowly in responding to concerns about who was being allowed to use it. Intelligence agencies reportedly favored a tougher approach. But that is precisely why process matters.

When a technology becomes this consequential, decisions cannot be made ad hoc by whatever faction wins a weekend bureaucratic battle, which might then get reversed the next weekend. In its 90-minute demand to Anthropic last week that effectively forced the company to take its new model offline, America was telling partners around the world, if your economy becomes dependent on American A.I. infrastructure, Washington can arbitrarily and without warning or explanation, use its on-off switch.

Unfortunately, personalized, arbitrary and unpredictable regulation seem to define this administration's approach to business. Rather than doing even industrial policy by setting out rules and criteria that all can play by, it simply jumps in to take a stake in Intel, forces Nvidia to pay a special tax, takes a golden share in U.S. steel, often with unclear legal basis for its actions.

[10:05:18]

On other cases, its actions seem tied to connections and investments made by the friends and family of the president.

This is no way to run the world's most advanced capitalist country. There is plainly bad blood between the Trump administration and Anthropic. In the initial fight between the company and the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of betrayal and duplicity. Senior administration officials have repeatedly criticized the company, saying it was woke and hired too many Democrats. President Trump has publicly mocked the company.

A.I. is too important for this kind of score settling. There's a better way forward, one rooted in an American invention that has worked extraordinarily well. Banks became crucial to the capitalist system, providing capital which was the lifeline of the American economy. But banking is prone to crises which have huge consequences. So the United States created institutions.

The Federal Reserve remains one of America's greatest institutional inventions because it combines public authority with private expertise. It communicates constantly with markets while preserving independence. It conducts examinations, runs stress tests, establishes capital requirements, publishes guidance, and intervenes in graduated steps. Most importantly, the rules apply broadly and consistently.

This is roughly what advanced A.I. needs. We should create a Fed for A.I., an independent institution staffed by experts and technology, national security and business. It would require frontier developers to provide prerelease access for evaluation, establish transparent thresholds for dangerous capabilities, build a ladder of responses, warnings, remediation, conditional deployment, restrictions, rather than abrupt bans, and make those rules apply equally to everyone.

America should build such a system. Europe and Japan could create parallel institutions. Democracies must coordinate standards, just as central banks do coordinate for financial stability.

This is not an argument for slowing innovation. America's banks have dominated the world because they are well-regulated, not despite that fact. But speed without institutions is not dynamism. It's dangerous volatility.

A.I. will become the most important technology of our age. It deserves regulation that is intelligent, transparent, flexible and consistent, not personal, punitive or improvised. The challenge is not choosing between innovation and oversight. We've shown that we can build institutions capable of preserving both.

Go to FareedZakaria.com for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

President Trump signed the memorandum of understanding with Iran on Wednesday evening at Versailles. Iran's President Pezeshkian displayed his countersigned copy shortly thereafter. The agreement has drawn backlash from all sides in the United States. Many argue it achieves less than the deal signed with Tehran in 2015.

Joining me now is Phil Gordon, who was a top official in President Obama's National Security Council, was instrumental in that earlier deal with Iran. He is now a scholar at Brookings.

Phil, welcome. Let me first ask you, when people are looking at this, can they expect that the war is over? Is the 60-day truce going to hold?

PHILIP GORDON, FOREIGN POLICY SCHOLAR, BROOKINGS INSTITUTIONS: Look, I think there's a decent chance at least that the truce holds simply because it is in the interest of both sides. This deal gives Iran, starting right away, a significant oil revenue. Iran is now allowed to sell oil, not only sell oil as it was before in a discounted way, but to earn hundreds of millions of dollars per day.

So Iran has an interest in sticking with this. And the United States certainly has an interest in sticking with this, because it doesn't want to resume the war. So Iran and the United States will do what they can to keep it alive. That is not to say that there aren't a million things you could think of that could go wrong, starting with Lebanon, because as you know, Fareed, Iran insisted that ceasefire in Lebanon be part of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran.

[10:10:03]

Indeed, the MOU itself, the very first paragraph, mentions Lebanon three times, which underscores how significant that is to Iran. So if the United States can't keep a ceasefire in Lebanon, too, the whole MOU could fall apart. But I think the core interest of the United States in Iran, again, means a decent chance that at least the first part of the deal sticks. Whether we get to a longer, comprehensive deal, we can discuss that seems much more -- much less likely.

ZAKARIA: When you look at the broader deal, is the big stumbling block likely to be what to do about the 400 kilograms of enriched uranium the Iranians have?

GORDON: So, yes, I think on the nuclear side, there are two things. There are the 400 kilograms, which Trump talked about from the start, getting out that HEU, because as you know, that is enriched to 60 percent, which is a short step away from weapons grade. And they have 400 kilograms of it, which is enough for more than 10 nuclear weapons. So there's that. And there's the state of Iran's enrichment program.

And one of the reasons there wasn't a nuclear deal, notwithstanding all of these negotiations before the war, is that the Trump administration was insisting on zero enrichment, and Iran said no, and that led the Trump administration to launch the war. So those are the two big things that would have to be agreed if there's going to be this comprehensive nuclear deal to get rid of or down blend the highly enriched uranium, and to have some sort of cap or ban on enrichment.

But once again, just like on the first part, Iran seems to have all of the leverage here. It's the Trump administration that doesn't want to restart the war. So you can be sure that Iran is going to demand a very big price if it's going to concede on the HEU or enrichment. And lastly, even just the other day, Trump, who is now like making the case for the deal by embracing Iranian arguments like its neighbors have ballistic missiles so it deserves ballistic missiles, Trump was saying, well, if the neighbors have nuclear programs, Iran should get one, too.

So it looks like we've tipped our hand even on these nuclear issues, which is ironic and tragic, because those are the things we refuse to concede on, which led to the war. ZAKARIA: On the Obama nuclear deal, you had ferocious critics from

Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump, all these people. In light of what's happened, what do you make -- you know, what happened to their criticisms? Have any of them been in some way, you know, kind of, fulfilled? Have they been able to get some traction on the issues they were concerned about?

GORDON: No. The comparison with the Obama nuclear deal, the JCPOA, is really interesting because, you know, Fareed, normally in like political science or international relations, unlike hard sciences, you don't get a chance to rerun an experiment. Like what would have happened if we had done something different? But this is kind of a replay of JCPOA.

President Trump and others, for more than 10 years, were very specific in saying the JCPOA was a bad deal. If we only use maximum pressure and a credible threat of force, we can get them to do a much better deal and we can do that without a war. And they even got irritated when people said, well, you could try that, but it might lead to a war. And then they got a chance for a do-over essentially. They were in charge. Trump tore up the JCPOA, said we're going to do this differently.

He did his maximum pressure, but he didn't get the deal and he did get the war. In fact, he didn't even get the deal after the war. Now we'll see where this lands. But an important point about the comparison between the JCPOA and this is that the JCPOA actually existed. It was a comprehensive nuclear agreement with all sorts of texts and annexes. It was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. It was implemented. It had major verifications, provisions.

All we have now is a commitment by Iran, essentially, to talk about nuclear issues, which they were prepared to do even before this war.

ZAKARIA: Phil Gordon, good to have you.

GORDON: Thanks for having me, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Donald Trump says the Strait of Hormuz is open for business. Is it? And what will that mean for the global economy? I'll ask an expert next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:49]

ZAKARIA: Clearly, one of the main reasons President Trump wanted to end the Iran war was to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war, it handled roughly 20 percent of the world's oil. The memorandum of understanding signed this week says Iran, quote, "will make arrangements for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman."

But questions remain, including what happens after that period of 60 days and what effect the agreement will have on oil prices. Joining me now to discuss all this and more is Karen Young. She is a

senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a senior research scholar at Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy.

Karen, welcome. So the price of oil has already dropped. Is it likely to stay where it is now, drop further? What is -- where is supply and demand going to meet here?

KAREN YOUNG, SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR, CENTER ON GLOBAL ENERGY POLICY, COLUMBIA SIPA: Well, thank you, Fareed. I don't think we're out of the woods yet. I think we should expect a period of volatility and that all depends on the stability of the ceasefire in place. And you know, certainly we don't want to see any accidents, any ships that might encounter a mine. All of those things would, you know, negatively affect oil prices and we'd see a spike again.

[10:20:06]

But for now, you know, the opening has certainly put a dampening on prices. And as soon as we see volumes that are laden on ships ready to exit, that could be quite a, you know, a bit of a flood.

ZAKARIA: So when the crisis happened, everyone talked about, you know, countries were shifting. They were moving to green technology. They were, in some cases, burning coal. How likely is it that all that reverses and people say, oh, now we've got the oil back, we're going to go back to the old ways?

YOUNG: I don't think this is going to be reversible in that countries are now thinking more about energy security so they want to have a diversity of supply of oil, but also a diversity of supply of energy resources. So in many places that will mean a move to renewables, especially in transportation, electric vehicles. It will also mean thinking about our electricity generation mix. This will affect the amount of gas that comes out of the Persian Gulf and where its consumers will be, and how much they will demand.

And in many countries, you know, it's not necessarily a climate friendly outcome. Many countries are going to be switching from gas for electricity generation to coal use. So it's about what you have at home, what's accessible and not being dependent on any one source, certainly for oil, but for any kind of energy fuel.

ZAKARIA: Now, the agreement says that Iran agrees to open the strait essentially for 60 days only. And referring to the not charging for it. Does that mean that, in your view, they are likely to then start charging? And if they do, this would be a toll, which is not really common, is it?

YOUNG: No, it's not common. And this would be a real departure and send a signal to other chokepoints, certainly maritime ones, and give other countries this sort of opportunity to hold global trade really in a -- around the neck, so to speak. So, yes, the terms of the MOU are that 60 days are free of tolls.

Iran is already setting up this Persian Gulf administration. And, you know, the idea is that ships that are trying to exit need to register or signal to Iran their intentions to move. Now that administrative capacity could in the future become one which also has a cost applied. What that cost might be, we don't know. How is that administered and communicated and negotiated with the neighbors, it's not clear.

But I think the overall signal is that this is not something that the other Gulf exporters are really favorable or feeling good about. And that's why I think we won't see a return to the same amount volume of traffic before February 28th, which was about 20 million barrels a day of oil and refined product. Those pipelines that go through Abu Dhabi to Fujairah and through Saudi Arabia are going to become more and more important and probably become a more permanent fixture, and will have even more pipelines where oil will be avoiding the Strait of Hormuz.

ZAKARIA: So this may be a kind of five to seven-year window that Iran has, where it can kind of milk its capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz, after which there'll be pipelines, there'll be EVs, there's all kinds of ways in which this chokepoint becomes less of a chokepoint.

YOUNG: Yes, I think it's actually sooner than that. We could see the completion of a second UAE pipeline within a year to 18 months. And a third one is under discussion. You'll probably see a second pipeline running across Saudi Arabia. That will happen quickly. And then on the demand side, you know, we can project a significant reduction certainly in the transport sector.

What happens for petrochemicals, for maritime and jet fuel demand is a little bit harder to slow down. We're going to have that a bit more persistent for a time. But, you know, Iran is now in a bolder position. It's going to be wealthier with the ability to export and not be under sanctions. That's important, too. And have this ability to control the traffic flow and at least, you know, perhaps even commercially gain from it. That really changes, you know, their position within the region and globally. It is, I think, a dangerous precedent.

ZAKARIA: But it sounds like one that will mean they will pump out more oil and the price of oil will go down.

YOUNG: Well, Iran can certainly increase its production capacity. And as long as there are not sanctions in place and there are these waivers that would allow them to export to China, to India, to anywhere, any customer, we certainly will see them take advantage of that. They're going to do that right away.

[10:25:00]

So when we start seeing ships exiting the strait, you can bet that a lot of those are going to be carrying Iranian crude. That's something that is not in the MOU. You know, how is Iranian crude treated perhaps differently than those of neighboring exporters? So that's going to be important to watch as well.

ZAKARIA: Karen, thank you so much.

YOUNG: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, now that the war with Iran is cooling down, will Trump turn his attention to Greenland, which he has seemed quite obsessed with? I'll talk to a "New Yorker" writer who has done a deep dive on the subject.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: With the Trump administration's military actions in Venezuela and Iran, it's easy to forget that not long ago, the president was threatening to annex another territory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We need Greenland for national security. We want Greenland. We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Greenland, the world's largest island, is governed as an autonomous territory within Denmark, a member of NATO. Trump's rhetoric cooled off as the war in Iran heated up. But now, with the potential end to that war, is Greenland back on the agenda?

Joining me now is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and staff writer for "The New Yorker," Ben Taub. He has a new article out, "Inside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland."

Ben, welcome. Tell us, for those of us who didn't realize this, the idea of taking over Greenland and annexing Greenland is not something that Donald Trump has really stopped wanting to do, is it?

BEN TAUB, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: No, that's correct. And in fact, during his first term, while it did surface briefly in the summer of 2019 in the form of a leak to "The Wall Street Journal" that he hoped to acquire Greenland, it seemed like it disappeared from public view and that it was not very sort of long standing interest. But actually, what happened during the second half of his term is that the National Security Council formed a committee that was entirely focused on acquiring Greenland and accelerating Greenlandic independence in ways that would bring about a greater reliance on the U.S.

So the professionalized national security class has been working on this for eight years, really, with interruptions and breaks, no doubt, and turnover. But this is a long standing pursuit of his that just because it's not in the news has certainly not gone away.

ZAKARIA: And there was a feeling around Davos that the situation had been defused. Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, had sort of brokered some kind of compromise. But that again, it's just put the thing on the back burner. Trump still wants Greenland.

TAUB: That's absolutely right. The rhetoric in early January, right after the kidnapping of Maduro and the operation in Venezuela was so intense and the signals were so ambiguous towards the Danish government and all European allies that Denmark and seven other European countries actually deployed troops to Greenland.

And the Danes were operating under standing orders to shoot at any invading forces. They carried with them live ammunition. They carried explosives to blow up the Greenlandic runways in case of an invasion. And they also had blood packs in case of casualties.

You know, there was never an expectation that they would ever be able to defend Greenland for long against a full scale, you know, invading U.S. force. Nor were there -- was there particular clarity that the Americans would do something. It was merely as someone involved in the planning put it to me, it was to raise the cost, to send a signal to the Americans that if you attempt this, you are going to have to shoot at European troops and kill European troops because we will fight back.

But as you said, Rutte did defuse this. It's unclear exactly what he said to Trump. It may have been something that was kind of welcomed by the Trump administration to just to get -- give everyone a bit of an out when things were getting too hot.

ZAKARIA: And so what is the strategy of the Trump administration now to get Greenland?

TAUB: Yes, it's a bit of a refocusing and a strategic pause. Last year, we saw a lot of private influence operations by people who worked in Trump's first administration and are in Trump's orbit, influence operations involving sort of goodwill, promises of money, promises of investment that never actually panned out and things of that ilk.

Now, things are going in a more professionalized channel. The conversations since January have been through a proper channel between Denmark, the United States, and Greenland, where it seems like the U.S. is doing and pursuing what it really could have done all along.

The U.S. has had with Denmark, since 1951, a treaty under which it could expand its military presence pretty much however it saw fit. And until a year and a half ago, an expansion of a U.S. military presence in Greenland would have been most welcome by the Danes and by the Greenlanders alike.

Now, the talk of expanding the presence arouses great suspicion in both countries. And it's a real shame because there's been so much damage to the alliance. That's something that should have been a routine sort of bolstering of arctic security for all parties involved under the sort of NATO alliance, and through this existing 80-year-old treaty, is now something that, you know, locals are concerned that an expanded U.S. military presence is a kind of soft annexation anyway even if it's a perfectly routine change and development in our arctic security strategy.

A few years ago, I was working on a different project about arctic security, and I was living at the Norwegian-Russian border for several months. And as part of that project, which was about, you know, Russia's nuclear submarine force out of the northern fleet and its ballistic nuclear missiles based on the Kola Peninsula, there was a lot of work on -- I was doing a lot of work about Russian hybrid warfare operations in the region.

[10:35:12]

And, you know, it's sort of very sad to be using the same terminology when it comes to influence operations and sort of strange characters who are connected to the administration or, in the Russian case, to the regime, who have military backgrounds, who are doing activities that are obviously suspicious and then going back home and briefing government.

The rhetoric and the -- rather the language of the operations and the kinds of characters you're seeing are reminiscent of that work that I did at the Norwegian Russian border in ways that make me profoundly uncomfortable and frankly sad.

ZAKARIA: Fascinating. Ben Taub, keep on the story because we need to -- we need to keep track of this. Thank you.

TAUB: Thank you so much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, a fascinating look at Nigerian scammers. These ones don't promise you great wealth. They prey on something other than greed. Perhaps, more powerful, loneliness, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:50]

ZAKARIA: You've probably heard of the classic Nigerian Prince Scam where a person in a far off country promises great wealth in return for your financial information. But now a new generation of scammers is emerging, promising not wealth but love, through fake social media or dating app profiles.

For his new book, "The Yahoo Boys," Carlos Barragan spent years getting to know a group of these internet scammers in the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria. He joins me now.

Carlos, it's a great book. Tell me, what got you interested in it? There's a personal story here.

CARLOS BARRAGAN, AUTHOR, YAHOO BOYS: Thank you so much. My mom is a single mom. And in 2015 --

ZAKARIA: Living --

BARRAGAN: In Madrid. We are -- we are from Spain and we are three brothers. I'm the youngest. So I encourage my mom, why don't you join Tinder? You know, it was a different time, 2015. And she met this wonderful, beautiful American soldier. It all sounded very weird because he said he was in Syria and he was in the military, but my mom fell for it.

And they started talking by email. And at some point the guy told my mom he was going to ship some gold bars to our house. By then, my mom was already into it. My mom didn't care about the gold bars, but she had fallen in love for him. Brian had told her, we're going to live together in Madrid, we are starting a new life.

So that was when I thought, I have to prove this is a scam. And I traced the I.P. email address before my mom sent any money, and I proved that he wasn't in Syria. He was in Lagos.

And fast forward to the pandemic, obviously, this was pretty devastating for my mom. And in the pandemic, the lockdowns were very strict. I saw my mom struggling with loneliness.

I was very curious about these kind of scams in Nigeria, and I couldn't find more information about the so-called Yahoo Boys Romance Scammers. So I decided, what the hell, I'm going to Nigeria to try to find my mother's scammer, not out of vengeance, but out of curiosity as a reporter.

And I didn't find him, but I decided to write a book following the lives of four romance scammers in a poor community in Lagos. Because once I was there, I saw that the socioeconomic conditions and their lives were way more complex than this stereotype it has been created about the so-called Nigerian prince.

ZAKARIA: So to me, the most interesting thing about the book is the way that they have figured out that the key here is that there are a lot of single, lonely people in the -- in the West, and that you prey on people's loneliness, right?

BARRAGAN: So you said before -- exactly. They moved from targeting greed in the 90s and 2000. Now, they are targeting loneliness.

It's important to note, though, there are scammers in other parts of the world, especially in Southeast Asia, where there are compounds and mafias have slaves that are working for them. But in Nigeria, what is different is that these boys, because they are in their teens and early 20s, they work for themselves, so they have to learn about the loneliness epidemic in the West.

And you know, if you're a small boy from a slam in Lagos, you don't know much about the atomization of the western world but they have scripts. They have this -- they call it formats. And these are written guides on how to scam men and women. And they are very detailed. They know that we are going through a lot in terms of loneliness.

And one of the characters of the book, I followed a 14-year-old boy from a village. He's talking to this truck driver in California, and he gets $5.00 out of it because the guy is also so lonely. And it's important, that story, because if a boy, age 14, can scam a war veteran or a truck driver, that tells you a lot about the loneliness epidemic that we are going through.

ZAKARIA: So what is the lesson for you, for us in the West?

BARRAGAN: It's a good question. It was striking to see these small boys carrying gold rings in their hands, in their fingers, and iPhone 17s.

[10:45:07] So maybe their parents (ph) -- they struggle to eat. You know, life in Lagos, especially after the pandemic because of inflation is really hard. I've seen families who have to split an egg in four ways.

And the fact that we are falling for it and the numbers keep rising because of the loneliness we're going through it made me see the gold cages of isolation tech companies have built in our countries. And it made me realize how important it is to remain connected to the people around you. So now with my mom, I'm always like, anytime you see something weird online, just tell me.

ZAKARIA: Well, it's a great read. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

BARRAGAN: Thank you so much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, 10 years ago this week when Britain voted to leave the European Union, its leaders envisioned a post-Brexit country that could thrive a punchy, free trading Singapore-on-Thames. What happened? I'll tell you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:48]

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. Here's a question, why would a prosperous democracy look at a deeply integrated economic relationship with its nearest neighbors, one of the world's largest trading blocs, and choose to walk away?

As this week marks the 10th anniversary of Britain's 2016 vote to leave the European Union, many are still asking that question. At the time, much of the world still lived under the post-Cold War order, globalized, open and governed by shared rules. When Brexit leave campaign promised to take back control, for millions, that slogan answered a growing unease about where that open world was headed. They wanted tighter borders and to reclaim an eroding sense of national sovereignty.

In addition, Brexit's leading advocates saw another opportunity to remake Britain as Singapore-on-Thames. This was a vision of a buccaneering, deregulated, low tax competitor right on your doorstep, which would strike great trade deals with the wider world and in particular with the United States.

But a decade on, that order has come apart. The U.S. elected Donald Trump just months after the referendum. Brexit supporters who cheered his victory as vindication found an uncertain world of trade barriers and a weaker transatlantic alliance. Even Singapore, Britain's supposed model, has warned that this new era would be very hostile for punchy economies built on openness to global trade.

And in any case, Britain never built that nimble Singaporean style economy. Boris Johnson governed as a big spender who briefly pushed the country to its highest tax burden since the end of World War II. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge note in Bloomberg, Britain under Margaret Thatcher, prospered by forging many of the rules of the free trade era. But now they write, as a more nationalistic world has fragmented into competing trading blocs, Britain has fallen through the cracks.

Today, the economic data continues to show Brexit's persistent harm. Figures published by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimate that by 2025 Brexit had reduced Britain's GDP by between six and eight percent, higher than earlier forecasts.

The UK's own government watchdog says Brexit will lower U.K. trade by about 15 percent. But as "The Economist" argues, the real issue is that Brexit lingers like a toxin in the economy's bloodstream, binding itself to long-standing weaknesses from higher energy costs to weak investment.

Harder still to measure is the cost of everything else Britain did not do, while its politics were consumed by a revolving door of leaders at number 10 Downing Street. And an endless argument over how exactly to leave the E.U. knowing every version of that answer would make it poorer.

And after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the cost of being outside the E.U. became strategic as well as economic as British defense firms have been largely shut out of the EU's new rearmament program at a pivotal time.

Britons themselves have soured on Brexit without yet agreeing on what comes next. New polling by Ipsos and King's College London finds that the share who say Brexit is going worse than they expected has nearly doubled in five years, from 28 percent in 2021 to 48 percent today.

But while many feel regret, the man who did more than anyone to bring it about is closer to power than ever. Nigel Farage's Reform U.K., a revived version of his Eurosceptic U.K. Independence Party, leads the national polls and swept last month's local elections, eroding the century long dominance of labor and the conservatives.

Ten years on, Brexit continues to define Britain's voting lines. Reform has absorbed much of the anti-E.U. coalition, older, more male, less likely to have a college degree, and driven above all by cultural anxiety over issues like immigration and race.

[10:55:12]

The lesson of the past decade is that there are no clean exits and no clean returns either. As Martin Wolf of the FT argues, a reversal of Brexit would be unrealistic. And, he argues, unnecessary.

He advocates for a third way, modeled on Switzerland. It would not involve E.U. membership, but rather a patchwork of treaties to align closely with the bloc on trade, education, science, and security.

This is far from perfect. Britain would become a rule taker in Europe rather than a rule maker. But with the promised rewards of going it alone still nowhere to be seen, it may be a move worth making.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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