Emmanuel dexterity: Trump and Macron chat

0:02The Economist

0:10Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

0:25In Norway, wild salmon stocks have been on the wane for some time. But the problem is getting swiftly worse. One of the biggest causes? Farmed salmon. And lots of foodies still fetishize Michelin stars, the mark of fine dining for very nearly a century. But deep into the Internet era, the Michelin brand is finally at risk of losing its primacy as a tastemaker. We look at how it's trying to keep up.

1:02But first...

1:10When you look around this news-saturated landscape, there are these increasingly common, confusing, split-screen moments. As darkness descended in Paris yesterday evening, the Eiffel Tower was lit up in the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag to mark three years since Russia's invasion. Camera pans to New York, where the UN Security Council was forced to vote on a watered-down resolution on the war, one drafted by America which called for an end to hostilities but placed no blame on Russia for them. Among the five countries that abstained, France. Camera pans to the White House, where two presidents with very different views on Ukraine's war and Russia's place in it sat down for what seemed a chummy chat.

2:01Europeans seem to be in a state of shock as they've been watching the transatlantic alliance collapse around them. And this meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump in the White House was the first attempt by the continent's leaders to try and sort of push back and bring Donald Trump back from the brink. Sophie Petter is The Economist's Paris bureau chief. In the meeting itself and the comments afterwards, there was plenty of back-slapping and sort of prolonged handshakes. There was a little bit of that bromance that we watched in the first term between the two leaders. I just want to tell you a little story.

2:40So we were at the Eiffel Tower having dinner with your wonderful wife and with my wonderful wife. And we came out and he started speaking the French deal. and we didn't have an interpreter and he was going on and on and on and I was just nodding yes, yes, yes. And he really sold me out because I got back the next day and I read the papers and I said, that's not what we said. So the mood was, I think, on Macron's side, you know, cautiously upbeat, actually, about what he'd managed to achieve in his talks, which lasted about three hours. After his talks with President Trump, I'm convinced that there is a path.

3:15We have shared our convictions, our demands. But there were also some quite sharp moments when Macron corrected the president, reminded him that it was Russia who was the aggressor here, and it was Russia who should be paying for this, not the other way around. Just so you understand, Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back. Now, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60 % of the total effort. So it was a firm but courteous French president who was, I think, trying to do what he could to talk reason to Donald Trump. And so, Sophie, what, to your mind, was concretely achieved during all of this?

3:54Well, there was no detailed plan announced, that's for sure. But it was interesting to me to see Macron being cautiously upbeat about what had been discussed. And I think there were two points in particular that emerged. One was that Macron clearly thinks that he has got Trump to agree to some form of American backing for European peacekeeping forces should they be deployed by Europeans to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. Now, Macron called that a turning point. That was his phrase. And it was interesting that Trump didn't correct him. But there was certainly no detail on that at all. It's something that the French and the British have been discussing quite a lot in recent weeks, but they certainly need American military support and intelligence support for that to be credible.

4:38And the other point was that Trump said very clearly that Putin would not object to such a European peacekeeping force. So that as well, you know, remains to be seen, but it looked as if there was movement on that front as well. All of that depends on working out the details, testing whether that American offer is genuine, and the French and the British building a sort of coalition that could deploy. But those two points seem to be reasons that Macron was feeling relatively or cautiously upbeat about those talks. So I guess what's substantive there is what is behind the word backing, the degree to which Europe can do anything without full bore American backing, which now seems to be on the wane.

5:19What's your take on that? Donald Trump has been pressurizing NATO to raise defense spending to 5%. The bulk of the NATO countries currently spend 2%, which is the minimum that NATO has requested its allies to spend. And there's been a lot of criticism of some of the low-spending countries. And France only just makes that 2 % threshold. But it's doubling its spending. And Macron did say in Washington that it was something that Europe needed to do and was ready to do to increase its share of spending in order to carry the burden of its own security. And Germany's likely new chancellor, that's Friedrich Merz, has said that the debt break should be removed in order to enable Germany to spend more on defence itself.

6:03But there's an awful lot of space between those sorts of verbal commitments and actually doing it. Most European countries have very tight budgets and there's really not an obvious way for them to spend more and certainly not to spend more on European or non-American equipment, which is what the implication would be if they're really to make themselves, you know, sort of more autonomous and strategically independent in terms of their own security. So quite apart from the kind of high level thoughts about defense and defense spending, there is the question of a looming possible peace deal in Ukraine.

6:35Do you think we got any closer to one yesterday? Well, it's very hard to tell because even Zelensky himself has said that he's only learns about what goes on between Russia and America through the press, which is kind of extraordinary situation to find himself in. And Europeans have also been completely excluded from any discussions, and certainly the ones that took place in Saudi Arabia last week. Now, Macron in the past has said any peace deal needs to be negotiated with Europeans and Ukrainians around the table. There were no signs from his Washington trip that he was any closer to making that happen.

7:05But he did say in an interview with Fox News that a peace deal was feasible within weeks. So something seems to be moving. And Macron went in to those talks in Washington with the conviction that he wanted to make sure that Donald Trump did not concede endlessly to Russia on any kind of deal and that he was going to try to persuade the American president that it would be weak for America to give in to Russia and that it was not in Donald Trump's interest to go down in history in a way as a leader who was weak over a peace deal. So yeah, a long way to go, a lot of claims and counterclaims, but the two leaders certainly were suggesting that something could happen quite fast.

7:46But it all depends, of course, on what the terms of such a deal are. And Sophie, we've been talking about Mr. Macron for really quite some time. Back in 2019, famously, you interviewed him and he warned of the brain death of NATO, something that quite rattled the rest of NATO allies. That idea that European countries couldn't really rely on America any longer. That now looks fairly prophetic, doesn't it? I think it's interesting to go back and look again at that interview, Jason. I read it again the other day because you could transpose it onto today And it's the same line that Macron was making.

8:18That's to say that America is turning its back on us. We can't rely on its support. It doesn't share our idea of the European project. All of those things that he said to us in 2019 are still there. Now, the difference in a way is that Donald Trump then was a lot of talk, but actually didn't do anything drastic for European security. This time, things look and sound very different. And the other thing that's changed is the European attitude. You've had the war in Ukraine, which continues. You've had Friedrich Mertz saying that Europe needs to achieve independence from America. You're hearing European leaders who previously were absolutely staunch Atlanticists begin to talk about European strategic autonomy in a way that we haven't for many years.

9:03So in some respects, the war in Ukraine revived NATO's legitimacy and its importance for Europe. But Donald Trump's re-election has put that question back in a lot of people's minds in a way that, you know, they ridiculed Macron for undermining NATO at the time with those comments. But I think that it now looks as if they weren't quite so absurd as they may have appeared to some at the time. Sophie, thanks very much for your time, as always. Oh, it's always a pleasure. Thanks, Jason.

9:45The West Coast of Norway is a place of cinematic beauty. John-Joe Devlin is the deputy editor of The Intelligence and is based in Oslo. You can find soaring mountains, deep blue fjords, and streams of glacial water that wend their way down into the sea. 72 cm. Every summer, Atlantic salmon make their way up these rivers to breed, attracting anglers from across the world hoping for a big catch. In a normal year, the whip swoosh of fly lines can be heard above the low rumble of white water. But in June last year, just three weeks after the fishing season began, angling for salmon was banned in 33 Norwegian rivers and across vast stretches of the country's coastline.

10:34There simply weren't enough of them coming home. This is all the fish we caught yesterday and today. So it's some salmon, some escaped farm fish, and mason trout, sea trout. At the Etna River Research Station, ecologists have been studying the trend. A floating trap spans the water from bank to bank, and fish that enter it are inspected on their way upstream. So we stand on the edge here with a weight sling, put the fish in, and then we take length, scales, DNA sample, and the side sex of the fish. Then we take the weight and release it into the river. Wild Atlantic salmon stocks have been in decline for decades.

11:20But in 2024, researchers saw an even greater problem emerge. The number of mature fish coming back to lay eggs collapsed. Too many females have been dying at sea, spelling disaster for the next generation.

11:38Norway's multi-billion dollar fish farming industry shoulders much of the blame for the death of wild salmon. Parasites and diseases thrive amongst captive fish, which then spread beyond their nets. The Etna River site opens out into one of the busiest fish farming fjords in the country, and every single fish I saw was infested with lice. Escape farm fish also pose a genetic risk to their wild cousins. So the wild salmon, they are adapted to each and one river, very specialized. They spawn at the right time, they hatch at the time in the spring where there's food available, good temperature. Eva Torstad is a member of the Norwegian Scientific Advisory Committee on Atlantic Salmon.

12:19Yeah, farm salmon have been many generations now in the farming environment. And they are adapted to be a farm salmon. They have a higher growth rate. They have different aggression levels. They're less adapted to the rivers. When you have SKBs, they spawn with the wild salmon in the rivers. You get the salmon that's less suitable for that river, for life in nature. so you get a changed genetic makeup of each population. You get less salmon. They survive. But for all the problems caused by fish farming, scientists say it's probably not responsible for the rising death toll among larger females.

13:02That trend is being seen across Norway, even in places where there is no fish farming. So something else is happening out in the open ocean.

13:15One theory is that there's just less food to go around. Atlantic salmon are born in freshwater, and as they grow older, they head out into the open ocean. In their first year in saltwater, Atlantic salmon travel north to the Norwegian and Barents seas to feed, while older fish tend to visit Greenland's coastal waters. Data from the past year shows that schools of Capelin, a favourite dish of the salmon, have been migrating away from these traditional feeding grounds, possibly because of changing currents and warming seas. Another theory put forward by Dr. Kjell-Rong Utne at Norway's Institute of Marine Research is that predators are to blame.

13:52Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to more ice flows bobbing past the eastern coast of Greenland, and he wonders whether these might provide platforms for salmon hunting. And that area has, the last two years, seemed to have had a shift, become at least much more sea ice, probably getting colder. and my hypothesis is that those shifts are affecting salmon and I believe that since the growth is still relatively good for the big salmon then the reduced return rates is related to increased mortality. It could be seals, it could be something else. To get a firm answer on exactly what's happening however scientists would have to carry out research in the deep Arctic.

14:39In that area during late autumn winter I would say maybe not even possible with the sea ice with the rough weather conditions with the salmon being relatively scattered out in that area right there's I question if it's even practically possible to do that and then it's the economical question which is without a solution to what's happening in the open oceans the communities that rely on wild salmon fishing want the fish farming industry to do more to help. At the very least, they want outdated technologies such as open-neck cages to be done away with and make way for escape-free aquaculture methods.

15:24At the Etna River Research Station, they're doing their part by stopping farmed salmon from swimming upstream. But euthanisation, as they call it, is still pretty low-tech in rural Norway. So you're going to be doing the euthanizing? Looks like it, yeah. Okay. Can you just describe what you're holding in your hand here? Yeah, so I'm not sure the actual description of this, but this is just an offcut of a piece of construction wood. Henry Weiss is a technician at the research station. ...thick plank, because we've lost the good stick that we used to use. I don't know why it's gone. The dog took the stick.

16:08I used to watch a dog and he really likes sticks, you know, as dogs do. And so he sort of chewed the good stick to bits and now we've had to resort to this piece of construction plank. And I'm going to use this to hit the fish on its head a couple of times. Either I kill it then or it just knocks it out. And then what we do is we'll cut the gills to let it bleed out. The research station is coming up with some high-tech ways to protect wild salmon too. An underwater camera is being used to train an AI model to spot the difference between farmed and wild fish. That model will inform an app to help anglers decide which of their catch to release and which to kill off.

16:49But large solutions are needed. On top of fish farming and climate change, Atlantic salmon also have to contend with increasing numbers of invasive species, rising levels of pollution and acid rain. It's a big ask, even for a fish that's used to swimming upstream.

17:22When the Michelin Guide was first published more than a century ago, its focus was on French motoring rather than food. In 1900, the Michelin brothers wanted to increase interest in cars and traveling in them, and in turn to sell more tires. They later realized travelers wanted fuel for themselves as well as their vehicles, and in 1926, the guide first introduced its star ranking system for restaurants. Nearly a century on from that, the system has more than a few challenges and challengers. 30 million copies of the Michelin Guide have been sold, making it about as widely read as Gone with the Wind.

18:05Dolly Seton is a data journalist at The Economist. Its stars are like the Oscars of fine dining. The highest award, three stars, has been given out to only 149 restaurants in the world. But for a few reasons, the star system is now under threat. What is it? Are they actually running out of stars to hand out? Too many fancy restaurants out there. So they've had a longtime emphasis on fine dining. and many people associate it with high prices and tasting menus with seven courses. However, I spoke with the international Michelin Guide director, Gwendolyn Poulenac, and he said that any restaurant now, any style can win a star and that what they are looking for is quality, not luxury.

18:49An informal barbecue restaurant in Texas and a taco stand in Mexico both won stars last year. Even so, a few chefs have refused to start because they feel like it brings huge pressure. And sometimes suppliers use it as an excuse to jack up prices. But the biggest challenge to Michelin is the internet. In the sense that they have a lot of competition when it comes to opining about food? Yes, exactly. So the internet has democratized food criticism. People all over the world share reviews on websites like TripAdvisor and Yelp. There are bloggers everywhere listing local spots. So online reviewers are covering a huge range of food places.

19:34On TikTok, videos about food have more than a trillion views combined. For example, there's an influencer named Toby Inskip at Eating With Todd, with more than 25 million likes on TikTok. That seasoning is literally fizzing around my mouth. From tastebud to tastebud, like it's electricity. It is ridiculous. He will sometimes try$500 tasting menus, But a lot of times he's pointing out trendy new spots with affordable food for as low as a few dollars. Here are three of the craziest cheap eats in London. And after he highlights these places, often there'll be these huge lines that form. So it has a lot of influence.

20:11So how has the Michelin Guide then dealt with that huge influx of people who claim some authority in the food world? So Michelin started out in France and until 2004 they were only in Europe. But now they have reviewers of 30 different nationalities who go to four continents, and they're producing guides in 43 countries. The number of guides have increased by about 50 % since 2020. For the first time, they launched guides in Lithuania and Mexico in 2024, and restaurants in Slovenia and Thailand recently won three stars for the first time. Mr. Apulinek has said that 20 new locations are being scouted, which includes India.

20:52And they also have another category called the Bib Gourmand, and that highlights quality food for a reasonable price. There are almost now as many of those Bib Gourmands as there are starred restaurants. And of the 3 ,274 Bib Gourmands, 134 of them are street food vendors. Michelin also launched a Green Star in 2020, which goes to restaurants that demonstrate a commitment to sustainability. So they're taking in more of the world. They're going a little bit more mass market. There's even a sort of a green tinge to some of it. Do you think it's enough to keep Michelin relevant in the changing world?

21:32Well, Michelin said its traffic to the website has doubled in the past year, which suggests that Michelin is accruing trust and more interest. People realize that Michelin has a standardized approach. They visit several times in secret. They don't tell anyone who they are or that they're going. And that gives people greater trust in the evaluations by Michelin. On the internet, anyone can have an opinion, but not everyone is an authority like Michelin. Thanks very much for your time, Dolly. Thank you.

22:21That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.