Speaker 1: The fabulous Ian Bremmer and what we all ought to
Speaker 1: be worrying about. It's Armstrong and Getty extra large.
Speaker 2: Because four hours simply.
Speaker 3: This is Armstrong and Getty extra large. So Ian, we're
Speaker 3: making this part of our podcast. The highlights will air
Speaker 3: on the radio show are.
Speaker 4: The reason we've had to put you on the podcast
Speaker 4: is because of your merchant Marine foul mouth. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you remember this from years ago. Play the clip, Michael, Yes,
Speaker 4: you dropped an S bomb on our radio show, nearly
Speaker 4: causing us to lose their jobs.
Speaker 3: You have no self control. So now we're on. Now
Speaker 3: we're on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Wow I want.
Speaker 2: Does that mean I can say whatever I want?
Speaker 3: You can say shit shit shit? Yes, you're in good
Speaker 3: shape Mouth.
Speaker 1: I think you're better than that. But feel free also,
Speaker 1: And before we get started in earnest, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember this, Ian, but we have a bit
Speaker 1: of unfinished business.
Speaker 3: I remember one half of this.
Speaker 2: Bet.
Speaker 1: I bet you my thumbs that Joseph R. Biden would
Speaker 1: not be the cannon date in November. I can't remember
Speaker 1: if you put anything up, but I'm glad I get
Speaker 1: to keep my thumbs.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you get to keep your thumbs.
Speaker 5: It was such an embarrassment and so clear that he
Speaker 5: should have stepped down so much.
Speaker 2: Earlier than he had.
Speaker 5: And you know, the idea that he he somehow voluntarily,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of for the grace of the country abdicated,
Speaker 5: of course, is crazy. He was basically utterly forced and
Speaker 5: still was dragging his feet at the very last day.
Speaker 2: It was not a great moment for the country.
Speaker 4: Well about you, But as a fan of a history,
Speaker 4: I can't wait to read the books that are going
Speaker 4: to be written about a lot of that decision making
Speaker 4: and behind the scenes and people who knew and what
Speaker 4: they knew and what they saw and didn't say, And
Speaker 4: it's going to be unbelievable over the next twenty five
Speaker 4: years to read it.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, George Clooney apparently had the inside information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no kidding, and was in charge.
Speaker 1: So Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group also its founder
Speaker 1: political risk research and consulting firm, and every year they
Speaker 1: put up put out the list of global risks which agreed,
Speaker 1: disagree are both. Is just always such a great and
Speaker 1: interesting read and we look forward to chatting with you
Speaker 1: about it. Ian. Your first risk is funny because we
Speaker 1: get your newsletter, the G zero, the email every day
Speaker 1: or whatever you put it up. It hadn't occurred to
Speaker 1: me to ask, what does G zero mean? Well, your
Speaker 1: risk number one is the G zero wins. What are
Speaker 1: we talking about.
Speaker 5: We're talking about the law of the jungle, right, We're
Speaker 5: talking which which, by the way, the jungle is a
Speaker 5: great place for an apex predator, but it's not so
Speaker 5: great if you're weak and not and don't have a
Speaker 5: strong government.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're seeing play out. We're seeing the.
Speaker 5: United States embrace unilateralism, reject global rule of law, reject
Speaker 5: the idea of being the world's policeman or the architect
Speaker 5: of free trade or the promoter of democracy, and instead
Speaker 5: say we're going to.
Speaker 2: Do things the way we want to.
Speaker 5: You guys are weaker, and you better get along with that.
Speaker 5: And both America's adversaries and its allies are a lot
Speaker 5: weaker right now, economically, technologically, militarily, and also in terms
Speaker 5: of their governments just in trouble.
Speaker 2: Right. Look at South.
Speaker 5: Korea and Germany and France and Canada these days. I mean,
Speaker 5: this is a this is a really interesting time to
Speaker 5: be someone like Donald Trump coming into power and saying
Speaker 5: I'm going to use that power, and I'm going to
Speaker 5: use it in ways it's going to force you to acquiesce.
Speaker 2: So ajzero world is a very volatile it's.
Speaker 5: A very unstable world, and it's one that comes from
Speaker 5: the Americans and some allies no longer willing to play
Speaker 5: the role they had been.
Speaker 2: Told to in the world over over decades.
Speaker 5: It's come from Russia not being integrated with the West,
Speaker 5: being angry at the US about that, and alliging with
Speaker 5: chaos actors like North Korea. And it's come from China
Speaker 5: that was integrated into the global economy, but on the
Speaker 5: presumption that as that happened, they would become more westlike,
Speaker 5: you know, more political, open reforms, rule of law, free market.
Speaker 5: None of that happened, and now the US is angry
Speaker 5: about it. So you put those things together and you
Speaker 5: get this geopolitical disorder, which is pretty unique, and it's
Speaker 5: pretty unique for a country that created a global order
Speaker 5: to start taking its own order apart.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're living through in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Nice job not cursing during that answer, by the way,
Speaker 4: good self control. So even if Kamala Harris had won.
Speaker 4: Even before we go into the future, where do you
Speaker 4: rank the lack of world order compared to recent history.
Speaker 4: I remember I heard hearing Henry Is Kissinger talk about
Speaker 4: it back when he was alive. He thought we were
Speaker 4: at a pretty bad point. We are slash were.
Speaker 5: I think that again, bad point depends on whose perspective
Speaker 5: you're taking the I think the United States is going
Speaker 5: to get a lot of wins in this environment. We
Speaker 5: say that this is the most dangerous period since the thirties,
Speaker 5: but you know, there was a lot of appeasement going
Speaker 5: on in the thirties. There's a lot of appeasement that's
Speaker 5: going to happen in twenty twenty five. I mean, Mark
Speaker 5: Zuckerberg looked like he was appeasing yesterday, right, And if
Speaker 5: you think that he's in a weak position, you haven't
Speaker 5: been talking to the Canadians or the Danes in the
Speaker 5: last forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: I think the United States is actually going to get
Speaker 2: a lot of wins in the early days.
Speaker 5: But it's going to be unnerving for people that feel
Speaker 5: like they're being targeted. It's unnerving for countries that feel
Speaker 5: like they're on the wrong side of this, and that's
Speaker 5: going to lead to a lot of fragmentation and a
Speaker 5: lot of hedging around the world. But the funny thing
Speaker 5: is when we talked about this last year, you and I,
Speaker 5: you know, we were were about these big wars that
Speaker 5: were going on in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and
Speaker 5: even the growing fighting happening inside the United States.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing about twenty twenty five is that
Speaker 2: all of those wars are receding. Right.
Speaker 5: It's a good chance that the Middle East wars are
Speaker 5: going to be fought less strongly than they were, in
Speaker 5: part because the Israelis don't have much more to hit
Speaker 5: when it comes to Hamas. Secondly, in the Middle in Russia, Ukraine,
Speaker 5: there's a good likelihood we're going to get a ceasefire
Speaker 5: over the course of the year. And in the US,
Speaker 5: despite all of the fighting over the elections, the fact
Speaker 5: is that nobody thinks that Trump stole it.
Speaker 2: It was free, it was fair, it wasn't rigged.
Speaker 5: And whether you like Trump or not, you recognize, yeah,
Speaker 5: he won the presidency, he's going to mandate. So those
Speaker 5: things that were bothering us so much in twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four and played out over twenty twenty four in ways
Speaker 5: that we're very damaging for twenty twenty five have actually
Speaker 5: started to started to hit the rear view mirror so well.
Speaker 1: Not only am I one of the great prognosticators of
Speaker 1: our time or any other ian, I'm also willing to
Speaker 1: offer my services to go abroad and explain Trump's negotiating style,
Speaker 1: because I see on your list of risks several of
Speaker 1: them are related to Trump's governing style, whether the checks
Speaker 1: and balances of the American system will hold, whether alliances
Speaker 1: will hold. And you know, I look back to his
Speaker 1: first term and he has said some outrageous things about
Speaker 1: NATO that bothered me. I don't particularly appreciate his negotiating style,
Speaker 1: but the threats to like disband NATO or let anybody
Speaker 1: attack him or whatever, I found wildly inappropriate. But the
Speaker 1: net result was a stronger, more responsible NATO in terms
Speaker 1: of self funding.
Speaker 5: Absolutely and when he said that Mexico was going to
Speaker 5: build a wall and pay for it, they paid for
Speaker 5: absolutely nothing on the border, but they did strengthen their
Speaker 5: own border security in the South, which led to far
Speaker 5: fewer illegal immigrants going through Mexico into the United States
Speaker 5: under the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1: That is super interesting, And I would also cite China
Speaker 1: where Trump was maybe you know, more blunt and hard
Speaker 1: ass than he needed to be, but that relationship really
Speaker 1: need to be turned around. How do you see that
Speaker 1: progressing this year? The US China breakdown as you put it.
Speaker 5: Let me say first broadly that Trump is because he's
Speaker 5: in a much stronger position internationally because power is relational
Speaker 5: this time around, and also because he's in a much
Speaker 5: stronger position domestically. He's got the House, he's got the Senate,
Speaker 5: but he also has the entire GOP that recognizes they
Speaker 5: need him and all of his appointees a loyalist that
Speaker 5: you don't see any Nicky Haley's or Mike Pompeo's or
Speaker 5: mad Dog Matis's in this bunch. People are not going
Speaker 5: to be able to get around him to try to
Speaker 5: moderate his impulses.
Speaker 2: So that's going to lead to Trump being able to
Speaker 2: do more of what he wants to do.
Speaker 5: And what he wants to do is not make Canada
Speaker 5: the fifty first state, but he does want to change
Speaker 5: the nature of US trade deficits with countries all over
Speaker 5: the world. He wants to use tariffs to accomplish that.
Speaker 5: He also wants to get rid of a lot of
Speaker 5: illegal immigrants in the US deport them, and I think
Speaker 5: he's going to do that too with China.
Speaker 2: That means that in.
Speaker 5: The early weeks of this relationship, we are going to
Speaker 5: see more tariffs from the United States against China. We're
Speaker 5: going to see more export controls on semiconductors. And if
Speaker 5: you look at the people that Trump has appointed, like
Speaker 5: Mike Waltz and Marco Arrubio, who I think are quite capable,
Speaker 5: and I'm known for a while, they're very hawkish on China.
Speaker 5: They are people that are not trusted by the Chinese
Speaker 5: to engage the way that say Jake Sullivan and some
Speaker 5: of his team have been. So I think that the
Speaker 5: relationship between the US and China, which has been comparatively
Speaker 5: well managed in the last year and and in a
Speaker 5: way that did not give away the store to the Chinese. So,
Speaker 5: I mean, Democrats and Republicans largely think that Biden's done
Speaker 5: a pretty good job on China. It's one of the
Speaker 5: few things they agree on when it comes to Biden's
Speaker 5: foreign policy. I suspect that's not going to hold. It's
Speaker 5: going to break down and so we will start slipping
Speaker 5: into an active trade war between the US China, and
Speaker 5: we'll see more of an act of decoupling between the
Speaker 5: two economies than we've presently had.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Do you think at some point like Apple can't make
Speaker 4: phones there anymore and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I think that's already happening.
Speaker 5: We already see Apple putting a lot more money into
Speaker 5: India and to Vietnam and to Indonesia.
Speaker 2: Now some of that is not political.
Speaker 5: Some of that is because the Chinese economy is really underperforming.
Speaker 5: Hijinping has made it tougher for the private sector. He's
Speaker 5: supported state owned enterprises, and consumer sentiment in China has
Speaker 5: fallen off a cliff, so people aren't buying as much.
Speaker 5: They're not they're they're keeping money in savings because they
Speaker 5: don't really trust the Chinese government to be able to
Speaker 5: perform the way they had. Some of that was the
Speaker 5: pandemic in zero COVID too, which they handled.
Speaker 2: Really badly in my view.
Speaker 5: And so when you talk to Western multinationals about China,
Speaker 5: they're saying, we're reducing our exposure, we're firing people, we're
Speaker 5: ending strategic partnerships. Then you add on top of that,
Speaker 5: Trump saying I'm going to come in and put a
Speaker 5: sixty percent tariff across the board, and even if you
Speaker 5: expect that is exaggerated, and I do, it is hitting
Speaker 5: China at a time that frankly, no one's super excited
Speaker 5: about spending more money there.
Speaker 1: You know, anybody who predicts the imminent downfall of the
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party as a fool. But they do have
Speaker 1: unbelievable headwinds, including demographics. How bearish are you on China
Speaker 1: and xesiin Ping in the medium to long term?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean in a sense.
Speaker 5: The fact that chijin Ping reached out to India, had
Speaker 5: a two hour plus summit and and pulled back Chinese
Speaker 5: troops from their contested border shows that China knows they've
Speaker 5: got big headwinds and they don't want a big crisis
Speaker 5: with India.
Speaker 2: They reached out to Japan and asked for a summit.
Speaker 5: Usually it's the other way around, and they offered to
Speaker 5: start buying Japanese seafood, which just a few months ago
Speaker 5: they said you can't sell here because it's all radioactive
Speaker 5: because of Fukushima. I've seen them do a lot of
Speaker 5: this around the world, Now, some of this is because
Speaker 5: they're worried about Trump and the uncertainty coming from the
Speaker 5: US that they don't think they can manage. But some
Speaker 5: of it is a recognition that they're in a bad position,
Speaker 5: and so frankly, it behooves them to stabilize these relations.
Speaker 5: And that comes from a deep concern that you just
Speaker 5: asked about.
Speaker 2: Do I think they're about to fall? No, But I
Speaker 2: mean they're demographics.
Speaker 5: They're at what one point four billion people right now,
Speaker 5: and expectations for twenty one hundred, when you know, you
Speaker 5: and I are going to be pretty pretty geezerly is
Speaker 5: that they're going to be down to five hundred million
Speaker 5: to seven hundred and fifty million. So I mean a
Speaker 5: significant I mean the biggest contraction of a population that
Speaker 5: you would ever see in an economy outside of like.
Speaker 2: War or famine.
Speaker 5: It's peacetime in China, and they're just saying, we just
Speaker 5: don't want to have any kids, and there's nothing the
Speaker 5: Chinese government can do about it. This is not a
Speaker 5: five year a ten year problem. Their retirement age for
Speaker 5: men is fifty five. They can extend that for five
Speaker 5: or ten years. They're not very urbanized. They can move
Speaker 5: more people into cities. They can make agriculture more efficient,
Speaker 5: they can lean into AI. There's a lot of things
Speaker 5: they can do that can give them a ten year buffer,
Speaker 5: But they don't have a generational solution here, so long term,
Speaker 5: I think they're in very big trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you read David Sanger's book New
Speaker 4: Cold Wars, but he opened yeah, great book, but he
Speaker 4: opened with the quote, which I think is underappreciated. When
Speaker 4: it was hot on a hot mic or on purpose,
Speaker 4: I don't know when she was talking to Putin before
Speaker 4: he got in the car and said basically, you know,
Speaker 4: we're gonna change the world order. We're gonna drive, and
Speaker 4: we are going to drive these big changes. Do you
Speaker 4: think he's still focused on that or are think he's
Speaker 4: gotten so tough internally that he can't be focused on
Speaker 4: that anymore.
Speaker 5: I think that he at a very minimum recognizes that
Speaker 5: the timing for such a statement, for such policies is inopportunite.
Speaker 2: I mean, when I was last in China two.
Speaker 5: Months ago, two and a half months ago, they were
Speaker 5: telling me that they've pushed out their projections of when
Speaker 5: China would become the largest economy overtaking the US by
Speaker 5: five years, so they're not looking at being able to
Speaker 5: take over Taiwan by twenty twenty nine the way that
Speaker 5: many in the US included had expected was sort of coming.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 5: Does that mean that she Ping actually believes that he
Speaker 5: no longer is going to have the ultimately the world's
Speaker 5: leading economy, that his plans for global domination and artificial
Speaker 5: intelligence are going away. I wouldn't go that far, but
Speaker 5: I mean, he's not getting any younger. I mean, and
Speaker 5: at some point kicking the can down the road does
Speaker 5: become a strategic change of mind. I wouldn't dare to
Speaker 5: say how far in his personal mental processes he's traveled
Speaker 5: along that road, but I mean he certainly started the path.
Speaker 1: He's no kid either, right, absolutely right. Risk number six
Speaker 1: Iran on the ropes. They are a cornered beast. Are
Speaker 1: they a dangerous cornered beast?
Speaker 5: I think less so what we have seen over the
Speaker 5: last years, they've been hit pretty hard, particularly by Israel,
Speaker 5: and the response has been very little. You'll remember when
Speaker 5: the head of Hamasa's political division, their leader, was assassinated
Speaker 5: by Israel on the day of the Iranian president's inauguration,
Speaker 5: in Tehran, and the Iranian response was essentially nothing.
Speaker 2: They didn't blow up Israel on the back of it.
Speaker 5: They didn't blow up Israel on the back of taking
Speaker 5: out Hazbala, their most important proxy.
Speaker 2: They didn't blow up.
Speaker 5: Israel on the back of launching a series of missiles
Speaker 5: against Iran. So I mean, I think the Iranians recognize
Speaker 5: that they've lost their deterrent capability and they just don't
Speaker 5: have an effective way to hit the United States or Israel,
Speaker 5: which has made them very cautious and very risk averse. Now,
Speaker 5: the one thing, of course, they could do, and President
Speaker 5: Macron or France has been warning about this in the
Speaker 5: past couple of days, is they could significantly ramp up
Speaker 5: their dash to a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was going to ask you about that. Is
Speaker 3: Trump Israel?
Speaker 4: From what I read the other day in some publication,
Speaker 4: Israel can't do it on the realm, they'd need our help.
Speaker 4: Is Trump willing to help Israel take out their nuclear
Speaker 4: facilities their bomb making program?
Speaker 3: Can we do it?
Speaker 5: There are certainly people around Trump that are coming into
Speaker 5: the administration that believe that is what the US should do,
Speaker 5: that this is a historic opportunity to take out America
Speaker 5: and Israel's top enemy in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Is Trump personally willing to do that.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's very reluctant to use military force. He
Speaker 5: doesn't want to get involved in new wars. He's proud
Speaker 5: of ending wars, not starting new ones. And he also
Speaker 5: knows that a war with Iran would lead to significantly
Speaker 5: high oil prices, though they're low right now and there's
Speaker 5: a lot of oil and reserve that's not being produced,
Speaker 5: but it would certainly impact the stock market, all things
Speaker 5: that he doesn't really like.
Speaker 3: He took out Solem Mooney.
Speaker 2: Look he did.
Speaker 5: He did take out Solomoney, the head of the Iranian
Speaker 5: defense for but he did it after months of Iranian
Speaker 5: strikes against Saudi Arabia, including their largest refinery in the world,
Speaker 5: including the UAE, and including even American bases in the region.
Speaker 5: And then finally he hit Sulimani assassinated him.
Speaker 2: So again, I think it is possible.
Speaker 5: I think at a minimum, Trump is going to put
Speaker 5: much more pressure against Iran, including shutting down a lot
Speaker 5: of these illegal, non flaged tankers that are helping Iran
Speaker 5: get oil out illegally, which the Chinese will not be happy.
Speaker 2: With because they're the ones buying most of it.
Speaker 5: I think he'll do that, so he's gonna put Iran
Speaker 5: under a lot more economic pressure. Would he support nat
Speaker 5: YAHOO directly in strikes against the nuclear facilities?
Speaker 2: I think in the early days the answer is no, But.
Speaker 5: I suspect if Iran started to go towards the bomb,
Speaker 5: he probably would.
Speaker 4: That's gonna be an interesting one to follow because I
Speaker 4: don't know what it's going to happen there. I've listened
Speaker 4: to a bunch of different policy podcasts where people talk
Speaker 4: about it. A round's never going to be in a
Speaker 4: weaker state than they are right now, if not now when, So.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's a good one. Could happen, It could
Speaker 2: easily happen.
Speaker 5: I think at the very least, US pressure economically much
Speaker 5: more meaningful. And the Israelis continuing to hit them with
Speaker 5: cyber espionage.
Speaker 2: Hit the critical infrastructure assassinations.
Speaker 5: All of that is putting more pressure on the Iranian regime.
Speaker 5: And they've lost their empire in the Middle East, they
Speaker 5: lost the axis of resistance, and now there's growing insurgency
Speaker 5: inside Iranian provinces too. So I mean, it's also plausible
Speaker 5: that we would see internal regime change. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: these things happened.
Speaker 2: Very slowly and then very quickly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no one expected Asad was going to suddenly fall
Speaker 5: after fifty years of dictatorship. And yet two weeks after
Speaker 5: the revolution started with some rebels, suddenly he was fleet
Speaker 5: being the Moscow where he awaited getting poisoned.
Speaker 4: Hey, it was it last year of the year before
Speaker 4: you made some big AI predictions. Is AI further along
Speaker 4: then you thought it would be, or did you think
Speaker 4: it would be further along?
Speaker 5: I think it's further along, And we've been pretty bullish
Speaker 5: on AI, and yet we continue to be pretty as
Speaker 5: staggered by just how many use cases there are for
Speaker 5: industrial innovation in every sector, every company around the world.
Speaker 5: We're pretty staggered by, you know, the fact that you know,
Speaker 5: the touring test has basically been shattered, and that human
Speaker 5: beings engaging with boughts can no longer tell if it's
Speaker 5: a boud or human being. In fact, the only way
Speaker 5: you can really tell is because they're faster and smarter
Speaker 5: on a lot of on a lot of aspects.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Ian, I heard a story I was
Speaker 4: talking to some of yesterday, was in a meeting with
Speaker 4: a bunch of farmers who are single and they've gotten
Speaker 4: into chat GPT girlfriends and they and I mean this
Speaker 4: is like this is the last crowd in the world
Speaker 4: you'd think would in brak this sort of thing, but
Speaker 4: kind of like really like the companionship of So getting
Speaker 4: to your whole turning test, can you tell if it's
Speaker 4: a human being or not? I mean they are like
Speaker 4: getting comfort from talking to some chick on whose AI.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's where we're headed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I do think I've never been a
Speaker 5: big one for pronouns, but I'd go gender neutral when
Speaker 5: it comes to AI.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, as the guy who predicted Biden dropping out, Ian,
Speaker 1: AI will be the undoing of mankind. It is the
Speaker 1: fruit of the true knowledge from the joke of Genesis.
Speaker 1: Soon it will be our end. A bit of a
Speaker 1: lightning round here. How screwed up and horrible is Africa.
Speaker 5: They're they're slipping farther behind in terms of, you know,
Speaker 5: the the how their economy is going.
Speaker 2: I think the the upside.
Speaker 5: Of AI is that you can actually get access to
Speaker 5: world class knowledge, medicine, education, and the rest without having
Speaker 5: to build a lot of expensive infrastructure, which will create
Speaker 5: opportunities for Africans that they otherwise don't have. That's a
Speaker 5: really good thing. But they're getting hit harder by climate
Speaker 5: change than anybody else. That were hit just harder last
Speaker 5: year by El Nino than anybody else. I mean, there
Speaker 5: isn't the money to do a lot of the you know,
Speaker 5: the big state building in nation building. Even China's Belton
Speaker 5: Road is you know, a fraction of what it used
Speaker 5: to be given China's economic challenges. So I'd like to
Speaker 5: say that there are some silver linings here, but generally speaking,
Speaker 5: Africa is not hitting where we want to go.
Speaker 1: Horrifying, blood letting, violence, instability, starvation. There we know you're
Speaker 1: up against time. You have to drop out. So another
Speaker 1: very quick question, to what extent is this true? America's
Speaker 1: neighbor to the south, Mexico, is a highly unstable narco state.
Speaker 2: False, It is not highly unstable.
Speaker 5: In fact, it has one of the most popular governments
Speaker 5: of any democracy in the world that won on the
Speaker 5: back of the same a leader from the same party,
Speaker 5: so easy transition, and they have a pretty capable cabinet.
Speaker 5: They also are incredibly well integrated in terms of investment
Speaker 5: in supply chain with the largest, most robust economy in
Speaker 5: the world, which is a great place for them to be.
Speaker 5: But they are going to have to step up their
Speaker 5: game on fentanyl. They're going to have to step up
Speaker 5: their game on border security, and they're going to step
Speaker 5: up the game on allowing China to pass through a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of goods from China through Mexico into the
Speaker 5: United States.
Speaker 2: And that's going to be very hard for them. So
Speaker 2: this is going to be a tough year.
Speaker 5: They'll get there, they'll get there with the Americans, they'll
Speaker 5: stabilize the relationship.
Speaker 2: They'll do what they need to do because they have
Speaker 2: no choice. But I think this is going to be
Speaker 2: tough year from Mexico.
Speaker 4: Bueno on that answer, Trump was going to send Persia
Speaker 4: down to fight Pancho Villa and now he doesn't have to.
Speaker 1: Right that Excellent Ian Bremer of the Eurasia Group Global Risks.
Speaker 1: It's such a great read. We suggest you downloaded. Ian.
Speaker 1: It's all it's a pleasure. Thanks a million, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nice job of not cursing. Also great self control.
Speaker 5: I did if I You guys always were like the
Speaker 5: biggest joke tellers when I was talking to you. You
Speaker 5: are like just having a party, and so I ipself loose.
Speaker 4: You slipped into regular talk. But hey, thanks for the time.
Speaker 4: We appreciate it.
Speaker 2: How long have I been How long have I been
Speaker 2: suspended for?
Speaker 3: Well, obviously you're back, so.
Speaker 2: That's good. I love it. OK, good to talk to
Speaker 2: you guys. All right extra large