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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Bill Maher; Interview with Brett McGurk. Interview With CNN Global Affairs Analyst And Author Brett McGurk; Interview With World Bank President Ajay Banga; Interview With Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis; Interview With The World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired October 04, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:01:03]

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.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, the U.S. midterm elections are less than a month away. Are we watching the end of Trump and MAGA? Do the Democrats deserve to win? I'll talk to the ever opinionated political satirist Bill Maher.

Also Biden's Middle East envoy Brett McGurk on the state of the Middle East three years after the October 7th attacks.

Then the World Bank president, the prime minister of Greece, on whether A.I. will steal your job.

And a surprising, optimistic message from the head of the World Trade Organization.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

It strikes me as bizarre that today in the United States, a new pill to treat heartburn would have to go through months or even years of government approvals and testing before being released to the public. But the most powerful technology ever developed, capable of breaking into banks, shutting down power grids or helping build bioweapons, can be released without even a preliminary government review.

We're having a collective failure of imagination about artificial intelligence. While many closest to the technology have issued grave warnings and urged oversight, it doesn't register as a major public concern. Congress has, of course, so far abdicated its role as a lawmaker, and the Trump administration is delighted to let the industry regulate itself.

President Trump is right that the term artificial intelligence doesn't capture the phenomenon. It is super intelligence, analytic capacity greater than that of any human and perhaps even large collections of the smartest humans.

We reach for analogies. The Industrial Revolution, electricity, the internet. But electricity does not get exponentially smarter every six months. The internet cannot solve mathematical problems, diagnose diseases, or design new weapons.

Bad people can use these superpowers for bad purposes. But that's not the scariest scenario. We have seen models hack into databases and computer systems while pursuing unrelated goals. Suddenly, the old thought experiment about an A.I. told to maximize paperclip production, which then proceeds to commandeer all the world's energy and resources maniacally to make more paper clips, seems a little less fanciful.

The danger is not that the machine becomes evil, it is that it becomes massively and unpredictably destructive while pursuing its legitimate goal. You cannot self-regulate. If one A.I. lab spends six months testing a powerful model while its competitors release theirs, prudence will carry a commercial penalty.

The companies themselves understand this. Read the calls issued over the last two years by researchers and top executives at almost all the leading A.I. companies, and they warn of a race to the bottom in which everyone might prefer greater safety but no one can afford to slow down first. That is a classic collective action problem, and precisely what regulation is designed to solve.

For a start, many of the voluntary safeguards the industry has proposed could simply be turned into mandatory ones.

But what about China? The argument that U.S. regulations will simply let China win starts with a false premise.

[10:05:04]

China is not racing ahead without rules. Beijing already regulates powerful A.I. systems requiring security assessments and restricting how models are developed and deployed. Nor does history suggest that technological competition must mean abandoning safety. During the Cold War, the U.S. was locked in an existential nuclear race with the Soviet Union. Yet we required civilian reactors to be licensed and meet federal safety standards.

In fact, the Soviets were the ones with a weak safety culture and inadequate oversight, which produced the Chernobyl disaster. After it, Washington and Moscow actually expanded cooperation on nuclear safety, recognizing that some risks transcend national rivalry. The fiercer the competition and the more consequential the technology, the more important it becomes to establish some rules for the race.

Reasonable regulations can make you stronger. After the 2008 financial crisis, Washington imposed major new rules on American banks, higher capital requirements, stress tests and restrictions on risk taking. The banks screamed bloody murder. The chairman of Wells Fargo called the stress tests asinine. Washington, we were told, was shackling one of America's great industries.

But guess what? In the years after American banking boomed. According to Quartz, from 2012 to 2022, the sixth largest U.S. banks made $643 billion in profits more than they had in the decade before. And they didn't just get richer. American banks came to dominate the world like never before. Today, the top six American banks have a combined market cap larger than the top 20 European banks.

In the early 2000, the market capitalization of JPMorgan, today the U.S.'s biggest bank, was 40 percent smaller than HSBC, Europe's biggest bank. Not only has that reversed, but JPMorgan now has a market cap bigger than Europe's top four banks combined.

Regulation was not the only reason America recovered faster, Europe stumbled and U.S. banks benefited from tax cuts, but forcing banks to raise capital, shed risk and test their capacity to survive severe shocks did not destroy their competitiveness. It enhanced it.

A.I. will be the commanding technology of the 21st century. America should want to dominate it. But dominance will not belong simply to the country that builds the most powerful model fastest. It will belong to the country whose A.I. the world is willing to trust with its data, infrastructure, businesses, and perhaps even its weapons.

China will build A.I. that is very powerful. America should build A.I. that is powerful, but also safe with the human being in the center and in control. American technology, combined with American values, will be our best competitive advantage.

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

We are 30 days away from the midterm elections, and President Trump is in full campaign mode for GOP candidates despite his approval rating hovering near its post-January 6th lows.

I wanted to talk about all things midterms with a man who aims his political arrows at both the right and the left, Bill Maher. After appearing on his HBO program "Real Time" on Friday night, we turned the cameras around and I interviewed him. I should note CNN and HBO share the same parent company.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Bill Maher, pleasure to have you back on the show.

BILL MAHER, HOST, HBO'S "REAL TIME": The tradition continues. You do my show, I do yours.

ZAKARIA: Absolutely. And it's a pleasure both ways. So I want to talk to you about the midterms, because I was reading Nate Silver and he says at this point, anyone who tells you that the Democrats are not favored to win both the House and the Senate is just being overly cautious that if you read the polls, it's a 10-point -- you know, a gap now between Republicans and Democrats on the House and in the Senate, if you look at the races, most of them that the Senate -- the Democrats need to win, they are leading. By small margins, but they are leading.

That's a long way from where it looked -- where things looked a year ago. What do you think has happened that has -- you know, that has kind of collapsed the Republican support?

[10:10:01]

MAHER: Trump screwed the pooch. That's what happened. He got drunk with power as -- this is the pattern in this country. Somebody gets elected. They go way too far with their side of things. Biden did it to a degree with wokeness, and he was too feeble to fight the far left.

ZAKARIA: And particularly on immigration, where he just left in way too many.

MAHER: Absolutely. And then the other people get in and they reverse everything. But not just reverse it. We're going to be shooting people on the street. How about that? And it just -- he's lost even a lot of his own people. I mean, that's -- that is, it was so easy just to come in and undo the bad but nobody does that. And so this is going to be, I don't care what they say about, oh, well, maybe not. It is. Sorry, guys. It is.

It's going to be a classic historical ass whooping. Now 2028 is a different story. The Democrats have a crazy animal living in their house called the DSA, and they believe truly insane things. And they're the energy of the party, and they're going to make Gaza is a genocide, a litmus test, and a lot of other really stupid stuff. But this electorate right now is saying we will get to that issue.

Right now, we have one piece of business in front of us, and that is to let Donald Trump know we don't like what he did. He went too far. He didn't keep his word on the things that were important to us, ranging from Epstein to no wars to the economy is going to be better. Inflation, gas prices, all that stuff. And this is what we need to register our feelings on in 2026. We'll get to the other stuff later, perhaps. But right now we have one message. Donald Trump went too far and his party will pay.

ZAKARIA: Trump had -- has or had good political instincts. I mean, he's, you know, he's -- you've got to give him that, right?

MAHER: Totally.

ZAKARIA: What's changed, do you think?

MAHER: I don't know. That's -- that is that is the question someone should write the book about because I don't know. You're right. He had a connection to his voters that nobody else in the party had, which is why they all feared him. And some still do. I mean, we saw this Eric Schmidt guy make a fool of himself this week because he was still -- and I just wanted to say, and John Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, who I had on the show recently, and I liked him very much, and he's not a dumb guy at all.

And he was saying to Jack Smith, you know, you made me throw up in my mouth. And the other guy was saying --

ZAKARIA: Who throws up in their mouth? Do you even get that?

MAHER: It's just so graphic. You know?

ZAKARIA: I didn't understand that.

MAHER: And the guy is calling him a dirtbag. And I just wanted to say to him, guys, this is so a year ago. You know, you're kissing ass with the big man who doesn't have that kind of pull anymore. In fact, it may be more dangerous for the Republicans to be seen with him. And we've seen a lot of this already. People who have taken the endorsement off the Web site, people who are campaigning. Republicans now, and who are disavowing specific issues like in Florida about the immigration.

I mean, he's losing a lot of the people that he did well with last time or better than we thought, like immigrants.

ZAKARIA: Part of the problem, I think, for the Republicans is he's still at something like an 85 percent approval rating among Republicans. He's at a 2 percent approval rating with Democrats. But it's those independents that he's losing very fast. And it feels like the Republicans are still worried because he can still primary them. Right?

MAHER: Or it's somebody who just doesn't want to give the pollster the satisfaction of saying, I'm not with Trump because all the other eight times you called me about this, I said I was. And now I kind of feel bad about it. You know? You kind of have to own it. It's sort of like the guy who leaves scientology.

ZAKARIA: Do you think the polls could be wrong in that way, that there are still --

MAHER: No.

ZAKARIA: There aren't shy Trump voters?

MAHER: No. They're going to get their ass kicked. It's going to be brutal.

ZAKARIA: When you think about the Democrats, because if that is true, do you worry that it then emboldens the Democrats to think, oh?

MAHER: Totally. Of course. That's the big worry. I do. They will misinterpret this. They will misinterpret the thumping that the Republicans get as an endorsement for the insanity that a good part of the party wants to march toward. And I'm talking about DSA ideas about like abolishing the police. And some of them have walked back what they said. It was only a couple of years ago. Some of them, oh, I don't know, I was -- you were in your 20s.

Only in this country is someone in their 20s, a child, how can you trust me what I say? Well, I do trust that you meant what you said then. I mean, communism? You know, we did try it. I put the blame on this with our educational system.

[10:15:00]

If you haven't taught kids what communism was, if they just have this very sort of airy fairy idea that it's, oh, it's everybody from each according to his needs. Yes, we did that. We tried that. Somebody had that idea. Maybe it was worth trying.

ZAKARIA: What do you make of AOC saying woke one was crazy and just laughing it off?

MAHER: Woke two is right here. I saw a story this week about this woman. She's a CEO at some company and she and her family took pictures with a sweatshirt that said "Lake America" because Trump has renamed one of the lakes. It's one of those things he does like the Reflecting Pool, the ballroom that I don't care about. I said before he got elected the second time, I'm not going to do what I did the first time and worry about every little thing he does.

I'm going to worry about the important things. I don't really care about the ballroom. We probably could use a ballroom. OK. Reflecting Pool, renaming things. She got fired. Fired for a picture that said "Lake America." And it wasn't even a political statement. They said they were just having fun with it. And there was a statement, sorry for the pain this caused members of our -- the pain? You know, if you think a sweatshirt is causing pain, woke one either isn't over or woke two is just as bad.

This stuff has not gone away. I'm sorry. Not dead, just resting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: And we will be back with more of my interview with Bill Maher.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:20:55]

ZAKARIA: And we are back with more of my interview with Bill Maher.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: What's your reaction to Trump deciding that he's going to go after you again?

MAHER: He's been going after me since right after the first dinner when I went and came back and did my job here, and did what I always said I would do, which is honestly tell you what I think about what he's doing. And he was very angry at me.

ZAKARIA: And in person he is very charming, but he can -- but were you surprised that he then turned that?

MAHER: Of course not. He did it this weekend, he said, oh, his ratings are low. He's so sad. It's sad how bad he's doing it. And I was like, you know, this is like getting called a hockey puck by Don Rickles. You know? It's like I don't even hear it anymore. It's so constant. You know, when he tried to stop me from getting the Mark Twain Award, I just -- I was like, that's the game.

ZAKARIA: Did he actually try to stop?

MAHER: He tried and it didn't happen. I did wind up getting it, but I mean, that's what the game is. I'd rather be involved. You know, I'd rather have the conversation going. I still want to talk to him. I mean, I feel like --

ZAKARIA: You'd still -- if he invited you to dinner, you'd still go? You'd go?

MAHER: Totally. Absolutely. Because, look, not talking guarantees you nothing. And he is not a guy with a lot of fixed opinions. You know, people do change his mind all the time. And he's also a guy who doesn't exactly --

ZAKARIA: He was against wars.

MAHER: He was against --

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: Did Bibi Netanyahu talked him into that?

MAHER: Well, something happened. And I think he was always pretty consistent about that. But I mean, the first time I was with him, I tried to tell him that I thought the Obama deal should have at least been given a chance, but he was fine talking about it. Didn't agree. It's water under the bridge. Fait accompli. We're in a different place. But yes, he does not read the briefing books. Everything is done by people who are saying, so be one of the people saying, you know, he needs more people like me talking to him, not less.

I think he actually doesn't like the fact that all he has around him are boring ass-kissers. He's that guy who wants you to kiss his ass, but then he doesn't respect you when you do. You know?

ZAKARIA: If it's a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, what do you think happens to Trump? Does he -- how does he behave in that situation?

MAHER: What can he do? What can he really do? You know, look, I was one of the first --

ZAKARIA: I think he fights. He gets more assertive. He asserts executive power even more.

MAHER: But power begets power. And he's losing power. The more power you have, the more you get, the more you lose, the more you continue to lose. People don't fear him like they once did.

ZAKARIA: So you really (INAUDIBLE) speak Trump and we're just going to see him decline? MAHER: I don't know what he can do. I mean, if it really was going to

be as bad as I thought it was going to be 10 years ago, he would have shut down "The New York Times." "The New York Times" has never stopped printing everything it ever wanted to say about him. I have never pulled one punch, which is why he got mad at me. Again, saying, you know, he had on somebody recently was interviewing him and they mentioned the No Kings Day. And he said, if I was a king, I wouldn't be talking to you.

ZAKARIA: On that hopeful note.

MAHER: It's funny. You got to give him that.

ZAKARIA: Bill Maher, pleasure to have you on.

MAHER: All right. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, it's been three years since Hamas's October 7th attacks, and I'll speak to a man deeply involved in the diplomacy that followed. I ask him how these attacks have reshaped the Middle East.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:43]

ZAKARIA: This Wednesday marks three years since Hamas's October 7th attack. My next guest was at the center of the American response.

Brett McGurk was President Biden's coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. He spent more than a year in the White House Situation Room and in capitals across the Middle East, shuttling between leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He's written about all of it in an important new book called "Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages."

Welcome, Bret. Let me first ask you, it is three years since October 7th. It feels like so much has changed because of Israel's response, because of America's response. Now the war in Iran. Sketch for us what you think the major power shifts have been since that.

You know, if you looked at the Middle East three years ago and you look at it today, what's different?

BRETT MCGURK, FORMER MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA COORDINATOR, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Well, first, Fareed, thanks so much for having me. I think, I mean, and first we just have to, I think, commemorate all the loss of life since October 7th in that horrific attack and everything that happened afterwards. It was the most difficult, horrific thing I've ever worked on as I describe in detail. But if you look back three years, you've had had just a fundamental kind of balance of power shift in the region.

[10:30:00] You've had two military campaigns, one, Midnight Hammer taking out Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but more significantly, the conflict this year which started on February 28th, which the concern there, Fareed, as you've covered so well, is that it really started with an infinite kind of regime change type objective. And once you go down that road, you can find yourself very much trapped in kind of how you actually wind it down.

If I had to make a prediction, this is going to go on through the end of Trump's presidency, and it'll go into -- the next president will have to deal with this chronic problem of Iran that has -- every president has really dealt with this revolutionary system since Jimmy Carter. It's been a perennial problem. I've dealt with it now, you know, across administrations.

I don't see the kind of the end game until ultimately this regime changes either fundamentally changes its character and its policies which right now is hard to see, or eventually the regime comes apart. But again, that is going to be, I think, way down the road.

So, I think we are in this period and it's going to last for some time. Serious economic pressure. You'll have occasional tit-for-tat military exchanges. You might have occasional interim cease fire deals, interim agreements, but a kind of a comprehensive deal that really settles the nuclear program in which Iran finally says we are giving up our determination to enrich uranium and basically have a nuclear program that has all the accouterments of a of a military program.

But right now, that path does not appear to be open. And there are voices in the -- in the corridors of Tehran, whoever's actually making decisions that surely are saying, we can never give up our nuclear -- being a threshold nuclear state, that is our ultimate deterrence. And so, getting that deal on the nuclear side it is going to be really hard.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you about one more place and where you think it's likely to go, Gaza. There was meant to be, you know, a kind of movement towards some kind of self-governance in Gaza with Palestinians. The key was Hamas had to relinquish control. Despite all the -- you know, three years of ferocious Israeli response Gaza is leveled, but Hamas is in control. What's going to happen there?

MCGURK: On the positive side, there is a U.N. Security Council resolution 2803. And this whole issue is so difficult, so polarizing, so hard. But in that resolution, it does lay out what I think is really the only feasible path.

Number one is that Hamas does have to give up its claim to power and authority over Gaza. That's very clear.

Secondly, Israel cannot annex or occupy Gaza. Israeli forces ultimately have to have to leave Gaza. There has to be a credible pathway to Palestinian state -- Palestinian self-determination and ultimately statehood. International security force to provide security structures in the interim phase and an interim Palestinian governance structure, which has now been set up to kind of oversee this transition there and a massive reconstruction effort.

That is all in the U.N. Security Council resolution that passed unanimously with two abstentions. And I think that really is the path. And then how do you actually move from A to B? That's what's so hard. And it is --

ZAKARIA: And none of these sides trust each other. And as I say, Hamas seems to be obstinately sitting there and nobody seems able to do anything about it.

MCGURK: Fareed, Hamas' core demand, and this goes back to the hours after their attack on October 7th, they stay in power. The way forward has to include Hamas relinquishing its power in Gaza. Otherwise, we are stuck.

And on the Israeli side, they're going to have an election on October 27th, and Israel has to have, I hope, a different configuration in its governing coalition so we can find -- try to find some political space to move forward after these -- after these very difficult three years.

ZAKARIA: Brett McGurk, pleasure to have you on.

MCGURK: Thank you. Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I'll speak to two global leaders about a big question on everyone's mind. Will A.I. kill jobs?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:38:58]

ZAKARIA: The big question that every world leader is grappling with is, does an age of A.I. mean an age of joblessness for humans? I recently moderated a panel on this subject at Columbia University with two global leaders.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the prime minister of Greece, which has been one of the more enthusiastic countries on A.I. Ajay Banga is the president of the World Bank, which has a new report out on A.I.'s promise for the developing world. Here's part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: When you look at it, President Banga, how would you describe the impact of A.I.? There is some difference between the developed world and the developing world here.

AJAY BANGA, PRESIDENT, WORLD BANK: So I mean, large language models and gen A.I. is what tends to be discussed in the developed world. And the reality is for the emerging markets, Fareed, what does LLM actually need to run? It needs computing power. Lots of it. It needs energy. A very large amount of it, which I would argue even the developed world is struggling with.

[10:40:02] It needs data. It needs people who know how to manage that. And then it needs capital. There are very few emerging markets with that combination of five things.

And therefore the emerging markets -- actually, what's really an opportunity there is what we call small A.I., which is predictive tools used to improve the productivity of farmer, of better education and skilling, or of improved capabilities in healthcare.

So in Uttar Pradesh, in India, we've launched applications with Google, for example, where illiterate women farmers connected to a cooperative. So, we give them a tool that she can speak into a 3G phone, point the camera at the back of a leaf of a diseased plant, and it spits back at you that disease, this insecticide for 25 Rupees from your local cooperative. You press the button. It's yours.

Now, you sort of have democratized the access to amazing knowledge for an illiterate woman farmer. And that to me is, again, A.I. at work. The same in healthcare. And you can see the opportunities.

ZAKARIA: You have done in Greece a lot of very innovative work in bringing A.I. into government. Explain some of it.

KYRIAKOS MITSOTAKIS, GREEK PRIME MINISTER: Well, first of all, back in 2019, the Greek bureaucracy made the life of the average citizen of ordinary business people miserable. And we started rolling out very basic tools or Gov.gr site, which is our main national interface, is now probably the most popular brand in Greece, private or public, because it has changed the life of ordinary citizens, has improved productivity, has saved millions of hours of waiting in lines to get, you know, a certificate.

And of course, the next step is to connect all the databases. So if, for example, you want -- if you want to open a gym, you need maybe 16 different documents in order to get your permit. I mean, if the system is smart enough, you should know that the 13 of the 16 are already in the system.

So, find them. You don't need to submit them and you just submit the other three digitally and you can have your permit in an hour.

So, these are the sort of tools. They may sound basic, but they actually are transformative in terms of improving the efficiency of the state.

Education is also another example. We did a pilot with OpenAI focusing on teachers, and the task I gave them is very simple. I don't want teachers to spend time doing back office work. So, how can I help them in terms of either grading or, you know, preparing the next the next lesson, not very complicated things that frees up time for the teacher to spend more -- to spend more time in the classroom.

ZAKARIA: So let me ask you the kind of big question I think we have, which is at the end of the day, if A.I. is going to enhance productivity almost by definition it means you are going to have fewer people doing more stuff, which means some people are going to lose jobs. And you can see that when you think about almost any one of these professions.

You look at law and you look at what the junior people in law do. It's a lot of document discovery. You know, looking up cases. This is, obviously, stuff the A.I. can do fast, much faster, or much more accurately than they can. So, how do you achieve these gains without laying off lots of people?

BANGA: I mean, what you're saying is true for a fully self-actualized economy where people have got access to all these things. The countries I'm dealing with, this is a long way away, Fareed.

You've got a huge opportunity of growth before you encounter that. In fact, in the developed world, while one-third of jobs could potentially be impacted by LLM, which is your point. But the moment you get to a middle income country, that number is in the single digits. By the time you get to a low income country, it's zero.

MITSOTAKIS: But if you look at it from a different perspective, I mean, from the perspective of a developed country, I was thinking about the career path that we offer. You know, let's say in the United States to our, you know, bright young kids. You work very hard, you take on a loan, you go to Columbia Business School, and suddenly you find yourself -- because exactly these are the more advanced markets and the more advanced companies that will be the first to use A.I. as a productivity tool that indeed, suddenly you have less fewer entry level positions. And then this will be the job of the governments to say, OK, if there is a total productivity gain, how do we split it? What's in it for me?

Because you're absolutely right. If you -- for the -- for the farmers in India, this is great. But for, for a middle class in the developed world which has already been battered by globalization, and now you have A.I. going after the white collar jobs, and robotics going after what's left of the manufacturing jobs that doesn't really leave, you know, a lot of room for optimism regarding the future.

[10:45:19]

ZAKARIA: Gentlemen, fascinating conversation. Thank you all very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I'll ask the head of the World Trade Organization why she's fundamentally optimistic about free trade.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: The global economy has seen its fair share of stresses so far this year.

[10:50:02]

The Trump administration's aggressive tariff policy, the ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China, and the increased pressure on the global oil market as a result of the Iran war. All of these have certainly added to economic uncertainty. But according to the World Trade Organization's yearly report, just released last month, the outlook is actually positive. I sat down with the director general of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to discuss it all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Welcome, director general.

NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA; The world seems to be going through a real shock in terms of disruption, in terms of trade, because the world's leading free trade power, which is the United States, has become essentially a protectionist country.

I mean, the U.S. used to have the lowest tariffs among the advanced economies. It now has the highest tariffs among the advanced economies. And yet you say there is a surprising resilience to global trade. Describe what you mean by that.

OKONJO-IWEALA: Well thank you, Fareed. And I will be very truthful and say that even we are surprised by the resilience and grateful for it.

We look at how much of the world's trade is actually taking place according to the rules of the WTO. I mean, given that, as you said, the world is not the way it used to be, global trade rules are under stress, we find that 72 percent of world trade, world goods trade is still taking place on WTO terms on most favored nation terms. That's what we call a predictable stable.

ZAKARIA: These are the kind of rules of the road with the World Trade Organization kind of at the center of it.

OKONJO-IWEALA: Absolutely. You've got that. So, why is that?

We talk to businesses, and businesses need some stability and predictability in the way they trade. And this provides them that call.

A second set of numbers I just want to say is we are looking at the growth in trade. Last year we had projected about 2.4, 2.5 percent for growth of goods trade. It came in at 4.6.

ZAKARIA: Almost double.

OKONJO-IWEALA: Almost double. And I said, break it down. Why is this happening? And the staff, when they broke it down, they saw that a lot of that momentum comes from trading A.I. goods.

Forty-two percent of that growth last year was contributed by trade in A.I., semiconductors, processors. All the things hardware and software.

ZAKARIA: So, it's not just the U.S. It's the whole world is now -- OKONJO-IWEALA: Well, but I'll come to that because there's a bit of a caveat I want to put. I just one last number is that this year, 2026, because of all the things happening not -- it's not just about tariffs, it's about the choke points, the Strait of Hormuz, we projected 1.9 percent, you know, and high energy prices, et cetera. First quarter numbers, 3.2 percent.

ZAKARIA: Growth, global growth.

OKONJO-IWEALA: Growth. Growth in global trade, in --

ZAKARIA: Yes.

OKONJO-IWEALA: -- global goods trade. So again, far more than what we had projected. That doesn't mean we should be complacent.

On A.I. I say there's a lot of uncertainty. We don't know whether this can be sustained or it's a bit of a bubble. So, we have to watch out for that.

The second thing is it's quite concentrated. The benefits are going mainly to East Asia and North America, the United States mainly. And you know, we're saying if this doesn't include the rest of the world on A.I., that could be a bit problematic. But there you are, resilience.

ZAKARIA: And, you know, to me, there's a story here that seems interesting, which is the United States set up this system, you know, broadly speaking, after World War II. It has been a huge beneficiary of it at the center of it. But now it is in many ways rethinking in some ways actively disrupting.

I think a lot of people thought the whole system will unravel, but it turns out so many other countries benefit from this system of predictability, of stability, of rules that maybe the system will be able to survive even with its founding nation turning its back on it. Or do you worry that, you know, this is -- it's a slower unravel, but it is going to unravel because it did go from 80 percent to 72 percent?

OKONJO-IWEALA: You know, I used to think that with what is going on the worst disruption for global trade in 80 years that we wouldn't see these kinds of numbers. I'll be honest with you. But now I'm seeing some persistence in those numbers that lead me to believe that there's a core of the rules that really work, that it was largely well built, has benefited the world, you know, made prosperity, 1.5 billion people taken out of poverty as a result of this. However, I want to say one thing.

[10:55:01]

It doesn't mean that the system is resilient, but is it robust? And I don't think it is.

ZAKARIA: Are you fundamentally optimistic for trade, for free trade? OKONJO-IWEALA: You can see I am. You know, it will not be the way it was, Fareed, because -- look, let me also be very honest. There's a trust deficit among my members. So, it's not going to be easy to do these reforms.

But for whatever reason, they've come to accept that if we are going to be a modern organization and maintain that resilience and robustness, we talked about, they have to reform. So, I'm optimistic.

Guess what? There are also exciting things happening in trade. Digital trade is growing. And digitally delivered services, meaning things traded electronically, is growing even faster. Services trade, people don't talk about it. The U.S. has a positive balance on services trade --

ZAKARIA: U.S. dominates --

OKONJO-IWEALA: Yes, dominates. So many. So, there are good things happening. Even green trade is growing more than $2 trillion now.

ZAKARIA: All right, some good news.

OKONJO-IWEALA: Yes.

ZAKARIA: Ngozi, thank you so much.

OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Fareed, for having me. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

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