Speaker 1: It's the Big Take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Cosova today why China is winning over some
Speaker 1: of America's closest neighbors. The other day on the show,
Speaker 1: we talked about how China is spending hundreds of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars on big energy and infrastructure projects to set
Speaker 1: up their economy for the future. Today, we're taking another
Speaker 1: look at how China is thinking ahead in a way
Speaker 1: the US is in. This time, it's not the money
Speaker 1: China is spending inside its own nation, but the enormous
Speaker 1: amounts it's lending to other countries across Asia, in Africa,
Speaker 1: and our focus today in Latin America, right next door
Speaker 1: to the United States. China is building deep trading partnerships
Speaker 1: and economic ties with several of America's neighbors in the region.
Speaker 1: And that could also pay off politically for China in
Speaker 1: the ongoing rivalry between Washington and Beijing. To unpack all this,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to welcome Rebecca Chewing Wilkins back to the podcast.
Speaker 1: She's a government reporter for Bloomberg based in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: Rebecca China has spent that sums helping nations a cross
Speaker 1: Asia and in Africa, Latin America build huge, expensive infrastructure
Speaker 1: projects that would have been out of reach for a
Speaker 1: lot of them otherwise. This is part of the huge
Speaker 1: Belt and Road Initiative or b r I that President
Speaker 1: Jumping had made a centerpiece of his agenda for the
Speaker 1: country's future. Can you explain what's the big goal? What
Speaker 1: is China aiming to achieve with these foreign investments. Well,
Speaker 1: China has ultimately sought to reshape the global order. It's
Speaker 1: ultimately about trying to create this counterweight to US dominance
Speaker 1: as it perceives it, and that's primarily been exercised through
Speaker 1: season pings sort of landmark foreign policy agenda which you
Speaker 1: alluded to. So it's the Belton Road Initiative. It was
Speaker 1: really focused around investment, building out infrastructure projects, so railway projects, stadiums,
Speaker 1: and doing that brings other benefits, right, yes, so in
Speaker 1: some sense this this was also of course about creating
Speaker 1: diplomatic ties with many of these countries, and over the
Speaker 1: last twenty years we have seen China sort of using
Speaker 1: some of these financial incentives that it's rolled out through
Speaker 1: b r I as it's known, in order to for example,
Speaker 1: build votes in the United nations and further its objectives overseas.
Speaker 1: China extended many of the big loans for these projects
Speaker 1: back when its own economy was rapidly growing. Now j
Speaker 1: Ping has solidified his power at home. He was just
Speaker 1: recently installed for an unprecedented third term, but China's economic
Speaker 1: growth has dramatically slowed, along with a lot of the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, and he's facing challenges at home.
Speaker 1: So has this ambition outside its borders paid off in
Speaker 1: the way that China anticipated. The consideration here is about
Speaker 1: when we look at the past decade of season Ping
Speaker 1: and power, whether or not b r I has been successful,
Speaker 1: whether it has successfully created a network that China is
Speaker 1: able to leverage and extent um and increasingly, one question
Speaker 1: is becoming whether or not the sort of spending the
Speaker 1: extent of it. By some estimates, they spent about one
Speaker 1: trillion dollars on b r I and the majority of
Speaker 1: that I think about six of Chinese loans to overseas
Speaker 1: nations now are now with countries that are in financial distress.
Speaker 1: So one big question for China is whether or not
Speaker 1: it's now willing to ultimately become the world's distress Debt creditor,
Speaker 1: and so China increasingly is having to face the reality
Speaker 1: of having extended all of this credit across the globe
Speaker 1: and what that means for its role and the financing
Speaker 1: itself to China. I think isn't sort of substantive enough
Speaker 1: to really threaten China economically, but it is sort of
Speaker 1: putting China into a corner. The critics have often viewed
Speaker 1: China's attempts to extend influence through this lending as debt
Speaker 1: traped diplomacy, and so it's also concerned with that narrative
Speaker 1: trapped diplomacy. Can you say a bit more about that,
Speaker 1: is that the idea that China has leverage over these countries. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the debt trapped diplomacy, as you say, is this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, debt is extended to somehow deliberately
Speaker 1: exert influence in a way that really compromises that borrowers
Speaker 1: ability to operate. Although in some ways, of course, having
Speaker 1: conditions of lending is quite normal, and it is important
Speaker 1: to remember that in many cases, for example, when we
Speaker 1: think about Latin America, China lent quite substantive large amounts
Speaker 1: of money because actually Latin American countries weren't able to
Speaker 1: seek that type of lending from say the I m F.
Speaker 1: They weren't able to meet those conditions. And increasingly the
Speaker 1: investment that we've seen has gone from just sort of
Speaker 1: infrastructure projects like building a railway, say, to actually investing in,
Speaker 1: for example, key raw materials, so investing in lithium or
Speaker 1: copper I m F. That's the international monetary fan helps
Speaker 1: developing countries with financing. Given the economic climate in China
Speaker 1: and in the countries that lends to, is China still
Speaker 1: making these big investments abroad now when it comes to
Speaker 1: be R I. I think there has been somewhat of
Speaker 1: a reconsideration of how effective that's been. We have seen
Speaker 1: a pull back, for example, in the spending of the
Speaker 1: b R I that it could fell in the first half.
Speaker 1: There has been no new projects issue to countries like Russia, Egypt, Pakistan,
Speaker 1: So there does seem to be some re calibration here.
Speaker 1: And we also have these reports that they may now
Speaker 1: finally be considering writing off some of these loans and
Speaker 1: potentially even perhaps offering depth forgiveness, and that really is
Speaker 1: a shift for China. We haven't seen them offering that
Speaker 1: in the past. They've sort of tended to prefer this
Speaker 1: so called extend and pretend action plan for years, g
Speaker 1: and other senior of Chinese officials, they talked about Belton
Speaker 1: Road all the time, but more recently now a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about that instead. Now we're hearing all that
Speaker 1: from Beijing about the Global Development Initiative for all you
Speaker 1: acronym fans as g d A instead of b r I.
Speaker 1: So is the g d I the Global Development Initiative
Speaker 1: rebranding of Belton Road to make us sound more like
Speaker 1: it's about helping other countries instead of being about China,
Speaker 1: or is it something new? The key difference that we
Speaker 1: really see is the difference in focus. So b r
Speaker 1: I very much focused on infrastructure and investment via infrastructure,
Speaker 1: whereas the g d I is much more focused on
Speaker 1: this idea of development. And the other really key distinguishing
Speaker 1: factor here, I think is this alignment between the g
Speaker 1: d I goals and aims and the u n's own
Speaker 1: sustainability goals. So we see China somehow looking to operate
Speaker 1: or move within a framework that is aligned more with
Speaker 1: the United Nations. That's very very different from the b
Speaker 1: r I, which is really a kind of China constructed notion,
Speaker 1: how's all this sending abroad playing at home in China.
Speaker 1: Part of that China dream that sees in Pink set
Speaker 1: out right at the beginning of his leadership was this
Speaker 1: promise for national rejuvenation, essentially to restore China's place in
Speaker 1: the world economically but also politically. And so I think
Speaker 1: for the average Chinese citizen there's definitely an increased sense
Speaker 1: of nationalism, of Chinese pride, and this idea that China
Speaker 1: is an operator on the global stage that can rival
Speaker 1: the US. Is there any feeling among Chinese citizens that
Speaker 1: their leaders are spending a lot of money overseas when
Speaker 1: workers at home are struggling. Is has been interesting because
Speaker 1: the discussion about Chinese debt forgiveness, for example, has actually
Speaker 1: stoked some resentment that we've seen, So, for example, this
Speaker 1: resentment about China going abroad and offering aid when actually
Speaker 1: people at home domestically are having a really tough time
Speaker 1: under these very stringent COVID lockdowns, under the economic slowdown,
Speaker 1: and of course the property crisis. So Rebecca, for this episode,
Speaker 1: we're looking at how all this is playing out in
Speaker 1: one region where China has invested heavily Latin America, and
Speaker 1: it used to be that the US was the major
Speaker 1: investor in the region, but China has moved in in
Speaker 1: a big way. Well in Latin America, for example, China
Speaker 1: in some ways has gone there to create markets, but
Speaker 1: it's also used all of these commodities to help fuel
Speaker 1: its industrial boom. So lots of commodities, and of course
Speaker 1: it has invested in things like copper, in things like lithium,
Speaker 1: and so countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela rely on being
Speaker 1: able to export to China that piece off in raw
Speaker 1: materials China needs. But there's power things at work here too,
Speaker 1: right absolutely, I mean China has rapidly increased its influence
Speaker 1: in Latin America over the past twenty years. There is
Speaker 1: that asymmetric tension here. For many of the Latin American countries,
Speaker 1: China is this key strategic partner. China, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: while it does to some extent rely on exports from
Speaker 1: those countries, as we say, there's these these crucial commodities,
Speaker 1: has really sought to use the diplomatic ties that that allows.
Speaker 1: So if we think about Taiwan, for example, which we
Speaker 1: know is really important flashpoint for China. The number of
Speaker 1: countries in Latin America that officially recognized Taiwan over the
Speaker 1: years has dramatically dwindled, and that's been linked to other
Speaker 1: financial incentives. So we can see how China is quite
Speaker 1: explicitly using these ties to advance its own diplomatic goals.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Jiman Wilkins, thanks so much for talking to me.
Speaker 1: After the break, we take a look at what it's
Speaker 1: like when China comes calling with a load of cash
Speaker 1: for your country. One South American country China has invested
Speaker 1: a lot in is Argentina. Jonathan Gilbert covers commodities for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg and he's been writing about this growing relationship. He
Speaker 1: joins me from Buenos Aires. Jonathan, can you describe the
Speaker 1: partnership between China and Argentina. Argentina had credit ward was
Speaker 1: for a long time. It obviously had a big default
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one two thousand and two, and
Speaker 1: even with a market friendly government in the two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen to nineteen period, it's never really recovered it's
Speaker 1: credit respectability, but it's obviously needed to be able to
Speaker 1: build things, and China has emerged in that time frame
Speaker 1: as a lender of last resort and has been able
Speaker 1: to spend billions and billions of dollars on all sorts
Speaker 1: of things. It probably started with infrastructure with railroads and
Speaker 1: power plants, and more recently has evolved into different things
Speaker 1: like lithium projects and nuclear power plants. And Argentina's first
Speaker 1: COVID vaccines were from China. Then investment from China is
Speaker 1: now around twenty four billion dollars. What's that money being
Speaker 1: used for. What we've seen in Argentina is a couple
Speaker 1: of interesting deals. One going back to Patagonia at this
Speaker 1: time in a slightly more northern region called nail Ken,
Speaker 1: and there's a space mission center there which has drawn
Speaker 1: a lot of eyes. And that deal was with the
Speaker 1: nail Ken provincial government. And then where I was doing
Speaker 1: my reporting in the north of Argentina in Quahoi, we're
Speaker 1: seeing the Chinese government goes straight to the governor who
Speaker 1: has present vential ambitions himself and strike deals for the
Speaker 1: solar project, which is perhaps going to be a thousand megawats,
Speaker 1: which is huge. And also as a sort of a
Speaker 1: quid pro quo, China will provide security cameras for a
Speaker 1: lot of Hahoi's government buildings. So what you're seeing is
Speaker 1: a relationship that started at the federal level is now
Speaker 1: trickling down to the provincial or state levels, which really
Speaker 1: shows sort of the efficiency and the strength of Chinese
Speaker 1: international relations in the region. You said earlier that this
Speaker 1: started in part with Argentina's credit problems. Have these Chinese
Speaker 1: investments helped Argentina with that? Like any of these infrastructure deals,
Speaker 1: they take on debt that they have to end up
Speaker 1: paying back. I think the benefit for Hahoi was it
Speaker 1: it got a lower rate from China than it would
Speaker 1: have done from Western companies. There's no doubt that when
Speaker 1: you take on these Chinese projects and you take on
Speaker 1: debt for them, then you're then saddled with, you know,
Speaker 1: a contract that you have to fulfill. In the case
Speaker 1: of It's interesting because that solar farm is now hooked
Speaker 1: up to the grid, and the energy that they can
Speaker 1: sell to the grid, they're now making tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars a quarter of so you know there's an
Speaker 1: immediate return there and immediate revenue stream to be able
Speaker 1: to start paying back the debt. Johnathan, you spent time
Speaker 1: in Hawaiian northern Argentina and you asked people and government
Speaker 1: officials about Chinese investments, what did they say? I think
Speaker 1: the excitement was definitely amongst the government officials. So I
Speaker 1: visited several government officials. One was the Energy secretary, one
Speaker 1: was the Production secretary. And I mean, just to give
Speaker 1: you a flavor of the Energy Secretary's office, the first
Speaker 1: thing I noticed when I was in there waiting for
Speaker 1: him was that he had a small photo behind his desk.
Speaker 1: It was a Chinese peasant with a what looked like
Speaker 1: a field, and it had the Energy Secretary's face superimposed
Speaker 1: onto the as Chinese peasants. So, yeah, they're in his office, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in his office. In his office and other bits of
Speaker 1: paraphernalia from China a winter bine, even though they are
Speaker 1: a soul of producing province. But it said create our
Speaker 1: future together, I think was the inscription. And when you
Speaker 1: spoke to Mario Passaro, which is the name of the secretary,
Speaker 1: he was just, you know, very excited to be dealing
Speaker 1: with the Chinese and just because of what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about that they've been able to spur these opportunities
Speaker 1: faster than you know, Cocoy could ever have hoped for.
Speaker 1: But then I think if you go to the sort
Speaker 1: of the street level, I got a more nuanced view.
Speaker 1: Let's let's say, I think people knew that China were investing,
Speaker 1: that they looked at it very suspiciously. I remember talking
Speaker 1: to one woman who said that her brother worked up
Speaker 1: in the minds. I remember her telling me about her
Speaker 1: brother being scared that, you know, to put it in
Speaker 1: quotation marks, the Chinese were taking over, and that everything
Speaker 1: that he could see there was was Chinese. Latin America
Speaker 1: has a history of colonial powers coming in and taking
Speaker 1: things away and taking away the riches and Latin America
Speaker 1: staying poor. And I definitely feel in amongst the people
Speaker 1: in sans Avodor that that was the fear that China
Speaker 1: was going to come in, sell its expertise, take away
Speaker 1: the lithium, and perhaps KAHOI wouldn't read the benefit. China
Speaker 1: is now looking to invest eight or nine billion dollars
Speaker 1: in a nuclear reactor in Argentina. If it happens, that
Speaker 1: could help Argentina, of course, but also paid dividends for China.
Speaker 1: Once again, that's an example of China expanding its influence
Speaker 1: and also exporting its knowledge and expertise across the world.
Speaker 1: But the interesting caveat here is that Argentina wants to
Speaker 1: be able to have the license to develop the nuclear
Speaker 1: fuel itself. If you look at other parts of nuclear
Speaker 1: history and you see that countries that have acquired nuclear
Speaker 1: reactors from say Russia, have been a prisoner to Russian fuel,
Speaker 1: which obviously today is a big problem. So this might
Speaker 1: allow China if it agrees to export its nuclear reactors
Speaker 1: to countries across the world who are looking for diverse
Speaker 1: fuel supplies, so they're not only reliant on China. So
Speaker 1: it would allow Argentina to develop its nuclear fuel industry.
Speaker 1: So when you look down the road, where do you
Speaker 1: see the relationship between Argentina and China going And where
Speaker 1: does that leave the US. I mean, if I look
Speaker 1: at Argentina and I look at all the different areas
Speaker 1: of cooperation, it's not just trade. Argentina cells, its soil
Speaker 1: be insto China. Yes, it imports hundreds of different things
Speaker 1: from China. Yes that's true, but then you've also got
Speaker 1: the COVID vaccines, the potential to develop these pig farms,
Speaker 1: the nuclear power plant, the train lines, the hydro electric
Speaker 1: power plant, the lithium, deposits, the solar farms, deposits of
Speaker 1: want into the Acentine Central Bank to help his currency position.
Speaker 1: I think China's influence has been so overwhelming that the
Speaker 1: US has really fallen behind. Jonathan Gilbert, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time talk to me. No problem, it's
Speaker 1: a pressure to do it. You heard Jonathan say just
Speaker 1: now that the US has fallen behind, why would Washington
Speaker 1: let that happen? We answer that question after the break.
Speaker 1: Why has the US let China start getting an economic
Speaker 1: and maybe a political leg up Right next door, Dan
Speaker 1: Tan Kate is here to help us understand. He's based
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong and overseas Bloomberg's government coverage across Asia. Dan,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about this idea that
Speaker 1: g is trying to present an alternative to the Western
Speaker 1: lad world order. We've seen this for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and it's really been more prevalent after the trade war
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump. You know, the last Party Congress, which
Speaker 1: is basically China's version of election, was in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: and at that event she basically said China's standing tall
Speaker 1: in the East. And after that, the US sort of
Speaker 1: took that as China coming out in the world and saying, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, they're really catching up to us quickly here.
Speaker 1: And you saw Trump with the trade war trying to
Speaker 1: keep China down a little bit. All that's done is
Speaker 1: kind of reaffirm China's notion that, okay, the US and
Speaker 1: the global institutions that existed for the past forty years
Speaker 1: and basically since World War Two that have helped, you know,
Speaker 1: fuel the world economy don't work for China anymore in
Speaker 1: the same ways that they do, and that the US
Speaker 1: is kind of actively using them now to keep China down.
Speaker 1: So we saw that last month when she shimping the
Speaker 1: latest Party Congress and essentially set himself up to rule
Speaker 1: China for at least the next ten years, if not
Speaker 1: for life. And in that speech he basically made the
Speaker 1: point that China, first of all, I wasn't backing down
Speaker 1: on any of its core interests, and secondly, that Chinese
Speaker 1: modernization offers a new choice for humanity. That was a
Speaker 1: phrase he used. So what does she jumping mean by
Speaker 1: Chinese modernization. It's the Chinese system. It's the legitimacy of
Speaker 1: a system that doesn't depend on elections, and you know
Speaker 1: a lot of what she jumping and Chinese officials have done,
Speaker 1: even when they contrast with America, as they say, look,
Speaker 1: America has its own version of democracy and that's great.
Speaker 1: China has its own version of democracy and that's also great.
Speaker 1: And china version is, of course, um not democracy at
Speaker 1: all in any sense of how one would define it
Speaker 1: in terms of elections and transparency and openness and reinformation
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So essentially, it provides authoritarian regimes
Speaker 1: cover to go along their merry way in a in
Speaker 1: a way that's you know, they don't have anyone judging
Speaker 1: them or seeking to overthrow them, or you know, in
Speaker 1: any way sort of sanctioning them or punishing them. She's
Speaker 1: m paying really now on a conservative diplomatic mission to
Speaker 1: win over kind of the third countries or the swing
Speaker 1: states you might call them. And Laddam is a huge
Speaker 1: part of that, um just winning over these countries that
Speaker 1: really don't want to pick sides between the U S
Speaker 1: and China. Has the US been kind slow to recognize
Speaker 1: and to respond to China's advances throughout that region. Definitely,
Speaker 1: there's really no doubt about it. And what it comes
Speaker 1: down to is basically just um the US is sort
Speaker 1: of handcuffed on what it could do economically. We've seen
Speaker 1: that not just in Latin America but in Asia as well.
Speaker 1: The cp T p P as it's now known, the
Speaker 1: trade deal that Donald Trump pulled out of when he
Speaker 1: took office, that actually had three Latin American countries in it,
Speaker 1: and it was seen as something that you know, would
Speaker 1: include kind of the Apec economies. So Chile, Mexico, and
Speaker 1: Peru were all in that deal and still aren't in
Speaker 1: that deal. It's still exists, just without the US, and
Speaker 1: that was open to other deals. But that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be kind of the vehicle that America would use
Speaker 1: to kind of reduce the economic dependence on China and
Speaker 1: balancings out a little bit more in the region. Now
Speaker 1: that's gone, d US replaced it with something called the
Speaker 1: Indo Pacific Economic Framework, and this doesn't include any Latin
Speaker 1: American countries for instance, It just as Asian Pacific countries
Speaker 1: and it doesn't even do that much. It doesn't reduce tariffs.
Speaker 1: People are very unclear what the economic impact of this
Speaker 1: is at all. So it's this kind of this window
Speaker 1: dressing type of thing to say, hey, we're doing stuff,
Speaker 1: but substanttly it's not that much. So why has the
Speaker 1: US been so slow to try to reinforce these relationships,
Speaker 1: these longstanding trading partnerships and allow China to kind of
Speaker 1: move in with loans that are favorable with certain kind
Speaker 1: of political strings attached when it comes to Taiwan and
Speaker 1: other sorts of things that work against the US position.
Speaker 1: I think in some ways it's a matter of bandwidth
Speaker 1: for the administration's um you know, lad him often just
Speaker 1: takes the back seat to whatever is happening in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, or with China, or with the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: That's traditionally where the eyes of the administration are and
Speaker 1: they haven't been able to walk and chew up so
Speaker 1: while they've been focused on those sorts of things. Afghanistan
Speaker 1: another one. You know, China's quietly just gone about its business,
Speaker 1: putting out cash, putting in investments, giving loans, starting projects,
Speaker 1: having their companies go into Latin America in a way
Speaker 1: that the US really isn't built to do because they
Speaker 1: don't have this kind of state directed economic model that
Speaker 1: China does. So China can just kind of go along,
Speaker 1: secure these resources and that is primarily China's main objective
Speaker 1: when it comes to foreign policy. They're not out there
Speaker 1: fighting wars, are getting into those sorts of entanglements there.
Speaker 1: Foreign policies mainly geared at securing resources for the domestic economy,
Speaker 1: so it's a priority thing to some degree. Now it's
Speaker 1: definitely on the radar again, but so much has happened
Speaker 1: in the past two decades that the US is suddenly
Speaker 1: waking up and finding itself way behind the curve here,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to play catch up a little bit now,
Speaker 1: but still if you look at what they're doing, it's
Speaker 1: not that much. Biden and the G seven announced this
Speaker 1: thing called the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment p
Speaker 1: g I I UM, a new acronym for everyone, very catchy, yes,
Speaker 1: a very catchy new acronym. So this was rebranded from
Speaker 1: the old back Better World UM. It was the first
Speaker 1: iteration of this that they now, I've changed and this
Speaker 1: is meant to counter the Belton Road and Biden, when
Speaker 1: he was at the G twenty all all throughout his
Speaker 1: Asia trip, has talked about this is as being, you know,
Speaker 1: the next big thing they're using all the great buzzwords transparent, sustainable,
Speaker 1: good government's, climate friendly private sector. You know, this is
Speaker 1: meant to showcase what an alternative to the Chinese system
Speaker 1: would look like. Yeah, if you look at what they're
Speaker 1: actually doing, the most substantive thing that they've put under
Speaker 1: this umbrella now is twenty billion dollar financing deal to
Speaker 1: help Indonesia transfer from coal into a green economy. If
Speaker 1: you look at all the projects they list, they really
Speaker 1: list only two for Latin America. One is just a
Speaker 1: thirty million dollar investment in Brazil and another one is
Speaker 1: is fifth D two million loan guarantee for a project
Speaker 1: that could buy US solar equipment. So, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk right now, it's not a lot
Speaker 1: of action. And I think that's where the REBBE will
Speaker 1: hit the road in the next couple of years. Can
Speaker 1: they mobilize billion dollars which is what they've talked about.
Speaker 1: China is actually opening up the checkbook and giving these
Speaker 1: governments money. So even if they don't necessarily want to
Speaker 1: take Chinese money, and there is a backlash to some
Speaker 1: Chinese money in the region, and there will be everywhere
Speaker 1: in the world that this happens for these governments it's
Speaker 1: often a choice of Okay, I'm gonna take several billion
Speaker 1: dollars or I'm going to have nothing. And you know,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do? If you're trying to
Speaker 1: show your population that you're delivering for them, You're going
Speaker 1: to take the money and you're gonna use it to
Speaker 1: win political support at home. D'antan Kate, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. Great to be here. You
Speaker 1: can read more by Danton Kate, Rebecca Chewing Wilkins, and
Speaker 1: Jonathan Gilbert on Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: us here at The Big Take, the daily podcast from
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