Lowering the steaks: a Mercosur deal at last
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.4 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From Argentinian beef to German cars, a freshly inked deal between the EU and a bloc of South American countries should ease trade barriers—and is a sign of global trade’s topsy-turvy time. Foreigner-bashing is politically fashionable in Japan, but focuses on the wrong problems. And a look at Parkrun, a free weekly event that has unwittingly made many Britons healthier.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:10.3 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:13.3 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:15.3 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:23.6 | In Japan, it's become politically expedient to do a little bit of foreigner bashing. |
| 0:29.6 | But perhaps more than most countries, Japan needs its gaishin. |
| 0:34.6 | Our correspondent unpicks the rhetoric from what really matters for the country. |
| 0:40.3 | And every Saturday morning across Britain, |
| 0:43.3 | thousands upon thousands of people get up early and head to the park. |
| 0:47.3 | For a run, appropriately called park run. |
| 0:51.3 | We look into how one small get-together turned into a national public health |
| 0:55.8 | success story. |
| 1:01.7 | First up, though... |
| 1:07.0 | At daybreak in Paris this morning, a serious traffic jam started to develop. |
| 1:15.6 | 350 or so tractors rumbling toward the Arc de Triumph. |
| 1:21.6 | Traffic jam is intentional, and it isn't the first. |
| 1:25.6 | On Monday, producers and tractors gummed up Lugo in Spain. |
| 1:30.3 | On Sunday, it was Tarragona. |
| 1:33.3 | The roots of this wheeled protest go back, way back, to the last millennium, in fact. |
| 1:39.3 | In 1999, talks first began on a trade deal between Mercosur, a block of South American countries, |
| 1:46.2 | and the European Union. Long story short, they didn't get anywhere for a really long time. |
| 1:52.1 | An agreement in principle was laid out at last in 2019. An agreement in practice was announced |
... |
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