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We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients. Becky Berry is a beef farmer in the Wiltshire countryside who supplies beef to McDonald's for its iconic burgers. I'm part of a group of farmers and we've been on a journey that McDonald's have sponsored to help us with learning more about regenerative practices...
and how that can benefit us, our farms, the people and the animals that we're producing. It's a way of McDonald's giving back to the whole industry. What we're trying to do now is move the cows from where they've eaten and they're moving into a longer, lusher pasture. And part of that reason is to help the biodiversity.
As you can see here in the long grass, we've got moths and butterflies that have just hatched out. We can hear in the hedgerows around the outside of the field the birdsong. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website. At Leidos, a brilliant mind is smart, but a brilliant team is smarter.
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Toby Gillis, joined today by Alex Dibble. On The World in 10, we promise analysis not just of global security, but also diplomacy. And this story impacts both. In fact, it threatens to be one of the largest global diplomatic rows of 2025.
Donald Trump has threatened to impose huge tariffs on his nearest neighbours, Mexico and Canada, to the tune of 25% for all imports from them. On top, he's vowed to impose 10% tariffs on China, all on his first day back in the White House. The global reaction has been unanimous, Germany summing it up best, suggesting nobody would win a trade war if Trump follows through.
So what is his thinking and why, if you don't reside in one of the affected nations, should you care? Let's ask David Hainig, a trade policy expert and former trade negotiator for the UK. David, Trump hinted at this during the election campaign. Did you expect the levels that he's now revealed?
I think we always expected that Trump was serious about tariffs, not necessarily literally. These are slightly different to the plans he said on the campaign trail where Mexico was going to get 10% along with the rest of the world and China was going to get 50 or 60%. This is slightly different. They keep varying, but he is serious. He likes tariffs and we're going to see tariffs from the US in the next four years.
David, imagine you're sat in the EU or the UK, Australia, Japan. Why is this a big story in those countries? Why, essentially, if you're not in the US, Mexico or Canada or China, should you care about this? We're accustomed to...
75 years of the US helping to build up the global economic system that we have today. And so it is a big deal if the US is threatening to pull back on that. Not only that, but that system is already breaking down with the rise of China. So there's a good deal of uncertainty around the world that we're going into. If the US pulls back, this is something we won't have seen for nearly 100 years. And obviously, there's the fear of what happened then with the global depression. I don't think it would be the same now. The world is very different now.
But that memory as well, when the US pulls back, it's not good news for the rest of the world. If you're Germany, you have a huge trade surplus with the US and you may be next in the firing line. Less so if you're the UK, but if you're the UK, you've spent all this time wanting to be an Atlantic bridge trade with both US and EU. And suddenly that's not looking so easy. So, you know, all the traditional allies of the US have an interest in
in this and just this does look like a historic pullback by the US that's got to be a big deal David you've been at the coalface of international trade negotiations what do you think the conversations behind closed doors look like at the moment between the US and these affected nations
In preparation, I'm quite sure in pretty much every capital around the world is a list of American products that are going to see tariffs on them should the US take action. And they will be seminal products like Harley Davidson, Jack Daniels. That's to be fair. That's the easy part. Next part that's more tricky is then what other stuff can we do that differently?
threatens US interests in various ways, things around services potentially. Maybe we threaten to shut down X stroke Twitter.
and attack Mr. Musk. On the other hand, then there's also the list that is probably, here's the traditional things we can offer, like we can offer the US that we'll spend more on defense or we'll spend more on border patrols. And then there's another list, which is the ones for friends and family. Here's the things that we can do personally for Trump. So there's all of these different lists in play, I think. And all these countries are just going to
Well, actually, I don't think they are going to be issuing warnings to US officials. I think they're going to be trying to keep their heads down and just make it clear that should they get caught up in a Trump tweet, there's a long list of things in which ways in which they've prepared. But I suspect you don't really want to do it unless you're very confident. Most countries, I think, hope to try and avoid Trump in negotiations, basically.
What about the impact this might have on global security? Does damaging the Chinese economy risk your negotiating position when it comes to something like China invading Taiwan or supporting Russia? There are schools of thought that Trump's threats actually help
security that help bring European nations to their senses in paying more as well, that make people realize that there is an unstable world and that somehow add an unstable world to a chaotic presidency and you actually get something positive out of it. For me, that sounds like a stretch.
What I'm seeing in trade certainly is that with the US withdrawing, with the EU pulling back to a certain degree, you're actually leaving global competitiveness to China to take on and that the US will have to reverse this in time. Taiwan's obviously a very different issue, but it's not clear what the Trump administration's view on China is. Similarly, it's not really clear what the view is on Ukraine.
It is hard. You know, we've got a situation where you get posts on the basis of being Trump loyalists, not necessarily for a coherent body of thought. So I think the idea that this all makes us more secure at the end of the day or that the threats are carried out in the trade system survives, I think.
That's on the assumption that there's actually a master plan behind it, whereas actually I think it's a Trumpian chaos. And I think that that's the danger is that you don't quite know where any of that is going. And that's what keeps everyone on their toes. But almost certainly that's not a good outcome.
Finally, David, I wonder if this might damage NATO in any way. I mean, for example, Canada, they recently vowed to increase their defence payments to 2% of GDP, albeit in 2032. Presumably these tariffs are a blow to GDP there, though. So in actual terms, that would reduce the cash flow into NATO, wouldn't it? It's not a direct... If the tariffs go up by 20%, your GDP falls by 5%. But there is an expectation that...
trade wars are costly for GDP, particularly if the country retaliates, which you're under political pressure to do so. So the chances are this does hit GDP. The chances are now it has been argued that some countries will might say to Trump, we'll spend more on defense, but we won't be able to afford to do so if you impose tariffs. So in order to do it, please don't impose tariffs. All part of the bargaining that I expect
to see in doing so. But yes, I would expect some of the forecasts for growth next year to take account of the fact that tariffs are likely to reduce economic activity. Trade wars reduce economic activity. Okay, David Hennig, trade policy expert. Thank you for joining us.
To Ukraine now, where The Times foreign correspondent Mark Bennett has revealed that tens of thousands of people are returning to their homes even though their towns remain under Kremlin control. That includes 50,000 in Mariupol, the beleaguered city in the Donetsk region, whose infrastructure is reportedly up to 90% destroyed.
Mark joins us now to explain this. Mark, why would any Ukrainian want to live under Kremlin rule inside Ukraine? The 50,000 figure of returnees to Mariupol was voiced by an advisor to the exiled pro-Kiev mayor of the city.
There certainly seem to be tens of thousands of people going home anyway, put it that way, which isn't actually that many in the large scale of things, because there are 4 million Ukrainians displaced across Ukraine right now, and a further almost 7 million who have fled the country. Some of these people are quite likely to have been anyway, at least before the war, kind of pro-Russian. So I don't know who the people going back are, but I don't mean to kind of over-exaggerate the number of Ukrainians who support Russia.
But more likely the people going back, well, to their hometowns, which are now occupied by the Kremlin, they're returning because Kiev has failed to provide them with housing, social assistance, failed to get them any work. All the work they've been offered is so low they can't afford to pay their rent. Another senior MP with Zelensky's party said that Kiev's efforts to provide assistance to internally displaced people has been a complete failure.
So what help does the government offer these displaced people? And are they failing to meet their promises? Or is it just understandably low because, you know, wars are expensive and this area is just too costly within a war economy?
Yeah, I mean, there is government assistance. I met some people who said they struggled to get it. They struggled to complete the paperwork. But I don't know how widespread that is. That's just some individuals I've spoken to. But if you do get it, you're entitled to around, well, the equivalent of £430 a month for an adult or the equivalent of £650 a month if you have children or disabilities, which isn't a great deal.
seeing as you have to kind of pay rent off that as well and provide for yourself so a lot of people are kind of going back mark bennett's the times foreign correspondent thank you very much for joining us and thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of the times we'll see you tomorrow so
We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients.
Sophie Bambridge grows quality potatoes for McDonald's Iconic Fries in Norfolk. I think McDonald's are one of the biggest supporters of British farming. They have a real commitment to British potatoes. The Sustainable Fries Fund is a collaborative investment by McCain and McDonald's to help us understand and try different growing techniques.
for potatoes so that we can understand what we can do to help reduce our impact on the environment but still produce a good quality potato. It helps enable us to try things without having the risk and cost of potentially it going wrong. The support from McCain and McDonald's is really useful to us. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website.
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