It's not any surprise that professional prioritize the business as opposed to partisan loyalty.
I'm speaking now with my american head on.
I'm concerned about other countries.
I'm particularly concerned about china.
The us is trying to save the economy using the tariff or using the other kind of reform, but we clearly do not see that this kind of reform is successful.
Top US business leaders are quietly fuming.
They say Washington's policies hurt innovation, raise costs, and undermine competitiveness.
But why won't they say so openly?
What risks do they fear?
Under what conditions could the White House reverse course and what does it mean for US-China business ties?
Welcome to the chat lounge.
I'm Tuyen.
Joining me for a chat on this session Harvey Zeldin, a senior fellow of the Center for China and Globalization, David Blair, a senior economist at the Alliance of Global Talent Organizations, and Alex Sili-Zhou, an associate professor of economics and finance at the University of Macau.
Thank you all for joining the discussion, gentlemen.
So let's first take a look at a recent Yale School of Management survey.
It found more than 70 percent of dozens of top U.S.
CEOs, including those from General Motors, Pfizer and Motorola, say the Trump administration's tariffs have harmed their businesses and 80 percent believe pressuring the Federal Reserve to cut rates is not in America's best interests.
Reports say Of those CEOs, about three quarters are Republican.
So Harvey, let's start with you.
Are you surprised that so many Republican business leaders disagree with the policies of a Republican White House?
No, it's really not at all surprising that such a large majority of Republican business leaders disagree with Trump's tariff policies.
Because the business leaders prioritize economic stability and global market access over political alignment.
And the free market conservative.
US president Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, once said the business of business is business.
It's not about politics or it's about business.
But now we've seen too much politics now in play.
Yeah, exactly that.
I think it's true that rational, republican business leaders have to invariably favor free trade and they have to demand predictability and predictable regulatory environments.
Otherwise it's really not possible to make decisions for the future.
So tariffs by executive order, imposed with little or no warning, are not only illegal, except in the cases of real emergency, but Trump is using this tool.
So tariffs are disrupting business and business planning and they're raising costs.
They're causing uncertainty.
They're inviting retaliatory measures from trading partners.
It's not any surprise that professional prioritize the business as opposed to partisan loyalty, especially when policies are having a negative financial consequence for their business.
David.
Some CEOs however, stopped short of opposing the policies, or at least avoided saying outright, even in private, that the measures were harmful.
So which industries might they represent?
Well, let me back up and give a little background.
I want to push back some on the point.
Sure.
I have to be contrarian here.
I'm not surprised that a large company CEO disagrees with this, most of them.
And who is the CEO of a large company?
Well, he represents the stockholders.
He represents the capital owners.
And most directly, his interests are tied in with bonuses due to returns to the capital owners.
But there are other people that are also interested.
There are workers.
There are suppliers.
There's long-term survival of the company as an organization.
And by law, none of them are the CEO's direct concern.
So I'm not surprised that they oppose something that's actually reducing their profits.
In economics, there's a term called incidence of taxation.
And if you tax a highly competitive company, yes, the consumers are going to have to pay the tax.
But if you tax a company in a monopolistic or highly oligopolistic industry, then it's very likely that the shareholders will have to pay the tax.
The capital owners will have to pay the tax because the company has already raised the price to the maximum level they can get out of the consumers.
So I think the evidence so far is that the tariffs – have been largely paid out of the pockets of the major, frankly monopolistic companies in the US and inflation hasn't occurred.
I'm speaking now with my American hat on.
I'm concerned about other countries.
I'm particularly concerned about China because I consider China my second home.
And also, more importantly, because I think it's important for China and the US, for the future of the world, to have as good relations as possible.
But in this case, I think Trump actually did what he said he's doing.
He imposed a tariff that ended up benefiting workers instead of capital owners.
I think David raised a very important point.
I want to add up something here.
So I guess the companies in the U.S. are very different.
The NASDAQ components together with those monopolies like Navida or the other kind of AI companies.
So those companies are actually using I mean US media words waiting to kissing the Trump or trying to show him for the mercy.
So they are paying for the tax.
But as a cost for those majority, maybe the other 493 companies in the SP 500 indices.
They are actually suffering a lot from the tax payments as well.
But the voice I mean.
These surveys actually are more representative for those companies who are not a big giant in the US market.
So I'm not surprised either that they are complaining.
They are not big.
They are not a monopoly.
So maybe they feel hard. to transfer this tax to their customer, maybe they suffer.
This is something I actually a little bit disagree.
Maybe they are very challenging to transfer their tariff to their customer, to their suppliers.
So they are suffering.
They are actually harmed by this tariff a lot than those monopoly like David, what are you saying?
You're saying those CEOs are whining about you know the tariffs, but actually they they don't suffer that much, or?
Yeah.
I mean, if I hear a CEO talking, I know that he is speaking in his own best interest.
And the next step is in the interest of his shareholders or his major shareholders, at least.
And that's not surprising.
That's his job.
But his job is not to determine the best policy for American workers or American consumers, or for suppliers or anybody else.
So you have to take that into account when listening to what they say.
Right.
So you're saying those policies like tariffs or visa fee hikes or those immigration policies, they are not that disruptive to the US economy?
So far, I think the bulk of the evidence is they've been borne by the shareholders, by the capital owners of the large companies.
That could change, but we haven't seen inflation as most economists were predicting six months ago.
You say you haven't seen an inflation.
Maybe probably it's because you're living in China for quite a long time.
And back in the States, the general public is complaining about the inflation, right?
There's been horrible inflation over the past years.
I mean, every time I go back to the United States I'm shocked by how much food costs and housing costs and gas costs and everything else.
But the prices haven't gone up at a faster rate before the tariffs.
I mean, after the tariffs than before the tariffs.
So, yeah, there's been horrible inflation, especially in the past four or five years or so.
But it's due to monetary policy.
It's not due to the tariffs.
There are problems with the tariffs.
I'm not saying that.
But it's not showing up as being very damaging to the U.S. economy at this time.
Yeah, but there are fears for, you know, mid or longer term effect, right?
The impact could be much worse.
I can't predict the future, but the people who are predicting very fast price increases, that the increase would the tariffs would flow directly to the consumers, have been wrong over the last six months.
So I discount their projections for the future.
I know something about economists making modeling and predictions, and they're seldom accurate.
Alex, according to your study, what's the situation back in the States right now?
Well, from my China's head, I think the situation is getting better, right?
We see some chaos before, but it's getting better now.
But still, I mean, the U.S. system, they have some kind of the deglobalization parts.
And also they try a lot of methods. to try to save the US economy from collapsing.
So I just saying that the US is trying to save the economy using the tariff or using the other kind of the reform to do that.
But we clearly do not see that this kind of the reform is successful.
But of course Donald Trump claims that the market has been rocked up and also the other kind of things has been better.
So they win a lot.
But actually, if he studies economics, we actually would like to know that the cost is killing the dollars, as David has said.
The inflation is incredible in the US.
I mean even though they claim there is no inflation.
I mean the Fed and also the monetary policy.
They see some kind of the forecasting in the high inflation in the future.
So that's why they are hesitant to cut interest rates.
They are debating on this.
So I mean, in terms of the globalization from the US role, China or the global should be prepared well.
I think what the US has done is pushing the other country to reduce reliance on US dollars or Western payment system.
So that is kind of the opportunity.
I mean if the US did not change their policies in the future, at least for the three years later.
I think Hong Kong, or maybe most of the financial centers in Asia, can use this opportunity to plan to launch some gold trading systems or maybe some tokenized systems just against the dollar paying system.
So I think this has created very good opportunities.
Even this opportunity was given by the US financial systems to China or the other emerging market to build up so-called Enbridge or certain kind of century bank liberalized paying system for RMB or for the BRICS system to kind of build the most so-called 3.0 for the Brandon Wood systems aside from the US.
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It's probably the longer term implications that those policies may have that worry those CEOs that much especially.
I think it's 70 or 80 percent of them are saying so.
So Alex, watching from the outside, which policy shift do you think could be more disruptive to the day-to-day running of major corporations?
For the US firm.
The easy way for the CEO to mitigate this risk is they try to move their factory back to US right.
But this is what Trump demanded.
But next, what are the risks in the future, as David told about and also Zee having told about?
We cannot predict the future stuff.
If they have faith for a higher interest rate or higher kind of the inflations in domestic market and there may be some kind of shock of the labor force because of the immigrants shortage or some kind of the other stuff in the US.
That is something they needed to decide it whether they want to move their factory back.
Okay, especially when China has growing to be the largest factory in the world with a cheap labor and maybe not cheaper anymore, but especially they have very good, experienced workers in global setting.
So they have to trade off between move their factory back or keep their factory outside of the US.
Say China, Vietnam or the other country are paying for a higher tariff.
So that is a trade-off for their daily business they have to face recently.
We don't know what will going on, but I think they have type B plans for maybe make additional investment in the US, but keeping their factory still outside of the US.
Apple also did that, but I'm not sure whether other company will follow.
I guess this is maybe the only decision the CEO can have in recent day-to-day operations.
That's what they're concerned.
So Harvey, your take here?
I believe that it's one thing to say that you could move an operation from a foreign country to US soil.
It's just not that simple because of the fact that wages in the US and benefits and things like that are just much higher.
I don't think American workers are as hardworking as they are in some other countries.
And I think that the answer does not lie in building more factories foreign countries building more factories in America and capitulating to Trump's tariff policies.
I think the problem is lies with the whole unpredictability of the Trump administration in applying all these tariffs by executive order which is illegal except in cases of emergency.
Now, Trump says that these are all economic emergencies and he's invoking powers he has.
I don't agree with that as a lawyer.
There are emergencies, but these are not emergencies.
So I believe what Trump's doing is hurting American business, not helping it.
I believe that all this unpredictability of the Trump administration is driving business away.
And for businesses that are in America.
For American businesses, even executives can't make decisions, because decisions are based on predictability.
If anything is lacking in America today, in this administration, it's predictability.
There is no predictability because Trump changes his mind faster than a Sichuan mask changes masks.
And also, his policy is not just limited to tariffs.
There are other policies, like its immigration policy.
The steep H-1B visa fee hikes, things like that.
David, do you think the harm brought about by such policies wouldn't be as big as those CEOs are concerned?
Well, I do think the H-1B issue is not of very much importance.
The H-1B program was designed to bring in highly talented people who could not easily be – there aren't people with equivalent talent in the US labor force.
And it was being used by some of the – especially the tech companies to bring in cheap labor, to drive down the price, to drive down the wages in their labor forces.
Is it just cheap labor?
I think they're about the smartest brains in the world that they're trying to bring in.
No, I said that there are a large number of very smart people, but there's also a big group.
That is not so.
I mean, they're smart, but they're not that distinguished.
And the 100000 I mean, if Google or Meta or Microsoft want a highly skilled person or whoever or whatever McKinsey or somebody who hires a lot of H-1B workers.
Want a highly skilled person, $100,000 is not going to stop them.
This is a way to try to ensure that higher qualified people get into the mix, instead of going through a lottery, as was intended by the law.
I do want to jump in and say I agree with what Alex said.
The role of the U.S. dollar is at risk.
I know I'm very much in a minority, although I've heard Scott Besant say similar to the Secretary of Treasury say stuff that might imply this that the role of the dollar has not been good for the United States as a whole.
It's good for monopolistic.
It's good for some companies.
It's good for the financial sector.
It's good for the government borrowing.
But it's not good for the working class.
And so I would like to see us move to a position exactly where BRICS is heading, where there are alternatives to the US dollar, where there's not so much reliance on it.
I think that would be better for the United States in the long term.
I agree, the US economy is at extreme risk now.
We have had 30, 40 years of increased concentration, increased monopolization, very loose monetary policy and we reformed the banking system where it is not aimed at supporting the real economy anymore.
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
And let me ask you, you're saying that the role of U.S. dollar might be hampered by his policy.
Then what's the decisive factor?
Isn't it people's expectation of the U.S. economy and the policies the government is adopting?
Well, it's an expectation built up over decades, and I think it will stop.
The value of the dollar as opposed to just about any other currency.
The euro is slightly different is determined almost entirely by financial flows, often short-term financial flows, rather than by trade or by equivalence in standard of living or anything like that.
So this is not due to other countries' manipulation of it.
It's due to U.S. manipulation of it.
It has driven up the value of the dollar where it doesn't represent trade values.
It certainly doesn't represent quality of life values.
Isn't that because the policies the US government has adopted that affect inflation or other aspects of people's daily lives that we see this situation now?
Yeah, I agree.
Absolutely.
It's policy.
It's.
It's a policy which, over the last 40, 50 years, has transferred wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest class.
We've seen the percentage of income of GDP going to labor by six percentage points.
That's a lot over the last 50 years.
The American median real wage has not increased since 1979.
This is a real crisis.
And we just keep putting it off because we don't know how to deal with it.
Tariffs aren't going to solve the problem.
I'm afraid for the future, definitely.
Am I cutting for some kind of point here?
I think it's an interesting part.
So I think there are two types of the Americans or two types of the U.S. citizens.
One is working class.
The other is what you said is Wall Street maybe added there.
So I guess the Democratic or kind of the other things they are working on liberalizing globalization parts?
So there are benefits from the dollar kind of appreciation of strong dollar parts.
But the working class are paying because the U.S. have the deficits for the global market.
So they understand that this is called the Triffin dilemma.
They understand about it.
So, in terms of sustain for the status of world reserve currencies, The working class of the US are being harmed because everywhere in the world needed the dollar to pay to buy goods.
So they needed to generate, they cannot print the money from their system.
They needed to trade with the US.
So the US must have some deficits with the global market.
So that's why they can destroy the manufacturing. in the U.S. market to some lower cost regions.
That's why they destroy they actually destroy their manufacturing bases in the US and create such trade imbalance.
But the benefits goes to the Wall Street.
Now the main street wants the Wall Street to pay for their cost.
I mean, if it's not Trump, it's other working class representatives, they can do that.
But Trump is a businessman.
He is not willing to ask the Wall Street to pay their costs.
That's why you can say the commodity price, the inflation, is higher now because of the tariff, because they enjoy many years of low prices.
Commodity prices because they trade from the rest of the world with lower manufacturing costs.
So that's why this is a side effect from maintaining the world reserve currency for the dollar now the dollar needed to pay for their, for their many years enjoy, for the low cost from benefits from the globalizations and also the strong dollar effect in many years.
So that's why I'm viewing this point, that they are actually destroying their basis, because the US faces kind of dilemmas for many years.
I agree with everything you said.
It's absolutely right.
Now we can have another session for this Lessons of Finance.
But back to our topic today.
I think we're saying that those CEOs, they do have their own reasons to be upset about those policies, right?
But if such policies are so damaging, why aren't we hearing more open pushback from the countries of, you know, largest and wealthiest corporations, like Alex just mentioned those on Wall Street, especially Nvidia?
CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly praised the Trump administration, particularly regarding its policies and vision for US technology.
So why the disconnect between private frustration and public statements?
Harvey?
I think It's because these CEOs are deathly afraid of Trump.
Whose method of operation reminds me of going into a business and saying, Oh what?
And your business was destroyed.
And I think that's exactly how Trump is operating.
He's making these business leaders so fearful that they capitulate to him and they're not pushing back in public.
Like.
The Yale survey that we started to talk about before showed 70 of the businessmen oppose these policies, but that's only in private.
In public.
They're afraid to oppose Trump because they know the consequences of crossing this man, because he doesn't like any kind of criticism or opposition and he'll crush it.
And so I think it's out of fear.
And David, do you have a different interpretation of that?
Well, I pretty much agree with that, except I think they deserve it.
I mean, I think the elite business class has been doing a lot of damage to the United States for many decades and it's good to put a little fear into them.
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Welcome back to the Shop Lounge.
We continue our discussion on U.S. business leaders complain about their government's policies.
Harvey? isn't enforcing the antitrust laws and things like that and making competition more fair.
We really need to get back to that to have a more level playing field.
So I think we need to go in that direction.
But the businesses are pushing against more regulation and trump is against regulation as well.
So we have a bunch of factors that are coming together and i think, as david said before, there's a high probability that we're going to have some kind of a crash economic political, maybe some combination and that has terrible consequences not only for the us but for the global economy as well.
And then beyond, venting behind closed doors, do you think those ceos, They've got any realistic steps they can take to change?
You know the situation.
I think that they can band together.
They have a lot of lobbying groups.
They have a lot of groups like the Chamber of Commerce.
And if there's anything that Trump does understand, it is a forceful pushback from let's call the other side.
So I think if they could overcome their fear, not by acting as separate companies, but as industry groups and so on they could make a difference.
I'm sure they're complaining to their so-called representatives in Congress.
But the problem is those representatives are mostly also called by Trump.
So I think it's time, if business want to have a good future and not a depression or recession, that they have to push back and say enough is enough.
And they're not doing that.
David, do you think it's necessary for them to do so or there's no need at all?
Well, I'm sure they're going to be paying lots of money to their congresspeople very soon.
So that's one strategy they can use.
But, you know, we're really in a difficult situation.
It's like a drug addict.
We've gotten addicted to loose money, especially after the quantitative easing in 2010, 2012.
And that has created a huge bubble which, once you get addicted to a drug, it's very hard because you have to go through withdrawal.
And nobody wants to do that.
So that's really where we are at the moment.
We've made a lot of, in my opinion, very bad policies that have been very bad for the average American for the past 30 years.
And we've gotten ourselves into what looks like a real mess to me.
And I'm very afraid of that.
I don't think Trump's doing anything that will do very much to fix it.
But nobody else has either, because it's very difficult politically and it's difficult for a leader to take hard measures which are going to be harmful to his own position, which may be beneficial in the long term.
No president has been willing to do that for a long time.
So it seems you totally agree with what Trump is doing.
No, I don't think it's enough, but I don't know what to do.
I mean – You're an economist.
Well –
Economists are not prophets.
As I said, I know what to have done starting in 1990, but to fix the damage that we've done since 1990, I don't know what to do.
I do want to point out that one thing, the tariffs are primarily to do with Europe.
China knows, I mean, Trump knows, China's in a good bargaining position.
Only 12 of Chinese exports go to the United States, and China has a lot of bargaining chips on its own.
So Trump is not going to put real pressure on China.
He talks about India, but India doesn't depend on the United States very much.
It's primarily Europe.
I looked up the data and 14 of total Chinese exports go to the US.
But 20 percent of european eu exports go to the us and these are primarily very high value products, primarily pharmaceuticals, but it also includes a lot of luxury products and some high-end automobiles.
And, on the other hand, what the united states sells to europe is almost entirely 75 petroleum products.
So the United States has a lot of leverage over Europe.
What the deal he made with the EU does is.
It forces European countries to invest a lot of money in the United States.
I think you'll see it was already happening, but you'll see the big German car companies making very large investments in South Carolina and Alabama.
And that would be good for the company's bottom lines, but it's certainly not good for German workers.
But they don't really care.
Yeah.
I don't think those CEOs will complain about that.
That's what they want, right?
Well, they're not going to say that's what they want, but…
One of the things he's trying to do is he's trying to get lots of foreign investment in the United States, and that will primarily come from Europe.
So when we talk about trade, it's very little to do with anybody else except Europe, the UK.
The United States and China are very similar.
We're not very highly dependent on trade.
If you look at measures of gains from trade in the United States, They're not very large.
So you're saying those CEOs, or those executives of big US companies, they should thank the Trump administration for that, for such policy.
No, no, no, no.
This is competition for them.
The European investments, they're competition for the already existing U.S. companies.
I'm sure they don't like that, but it's going to employ a lot of people.
So you're saying that actually Trump is trying to make America great again, but those CEOs, they also want to make America great again, but it's just probably with a different approach.
Is that what you mean?
No, I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying that the CEOs' jobs are to make their shareholders great again, not the country great again.
So sometimes they can be right, but you have to look at what their interests are, and they're acting in their own interest, which is to protect their highly – their monopolistic and oligopolistic positions.
We'd be much better off if we could just use antitrust law to break them up.
We could do like Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower did, call them in the office and say you know, there are criminal penalties here.
You better shape up.
But we haven't done that for 50 years.
Why are those CEOs complaining?
You're saying it's just for their own benefits, but they represent – you know the lion's share of the economy, right?
They represent the lion's share of profits?
Yeah, but their profits artificially driven by their monopolistic positions.
I mean, if you look at the gains in the us stock markets over the last 10 years, it's predominantly been, you know, seven or eight big tech companies and they're making huge monopolistic profits.
That doesn't mean they're providing benefits to anybody else in the economy other than their shareholders, And the same with the big banks.
During the 1990s, the Clinton administration, with the collusion of the Republican Senate, eliminated all the New Deal era restrictions on banks operations.
And this allowed the banks to become much bigger and to control a much bigger sector of the economy.
So, based on what you said, there is no hope for those CEOs to see that one day those policies, including tariffs or immigration policies, to be changed under the Trump administration.
Well, what I'm saying is I really don't care what they say.
There's only one number I'm interested in.
It's real wages.
If we can increase the real wages of American workers, I'll be happy.
And I don't really care whether it increases the returns to capital owners.
Yeah, you don't care.
They are there to affect the US economy or even, like you said, the economic relations between the US and China or the rest of the world.
That's not their job.
Their job is to maximize their profit, particularly to meet their short-term goals.
So they'll get their bonus.
That's their job.
I think it's a very interesting contrast between, let's say, the US capitalist system and the Chinese system.
I can summarize it very quickly here.
I would say that the US system, when it comes to business people, is about self-service.
Whereas in China, it's about serving the people.
And the things we are talking about today and some of the shortcomings in the US are the fact that businesses are serving themselves.
They're not serving the people.
So we need to have some kind of a shakeup.
Hopefully it's a managed shakeup driven by policy, not driven by the fact that one day we're going to wake up with a recession or depression, which depends not only on economic facts but also on emotional situation as well.
And so I think this is why I think all of us have talked about the fact that there's a reckoning coming and we really have to worry about it and we're not doing anything about it.
And Alex, you were saying right, i think uh well, this is a very different uh features, i mean unique features between the us and china.
But i'm saying i was actually was very surprised what david told me, that the us has double like manipulations than what china has.
But if that is the way, i guess the us needed to.
Well, I mean, if we believe the competition is always good, so maybe regulations or the government should do some things to make the economy more competitive, because everyone believes the competition is good, at least for the majority citizens, for the real gain, wage gains or kind of the activities.
So that is something I think it's not the CEO's job, but the economy should.
Of course, the regulators should take care of that.
Also for the CEOs, I think actually they cannot do more than what they have in charge.
They are not very brave to speak against Donald Trump.
You can see the case for Elon Musk.
So the market, the price of the Tesla has dropped a lot, even though this is a rebounded back.
But the shareholders are paying for the cost for what Elon Musk said to the Trump.
So that is the kind of examples when CEO, if they want to say something bad or say certain things against what Trump believes, certain things will happen.
People will vote by their voice or maybe vote by their foot, by selling off their stocks.
So that is something I believe.
I don't have a solution yet, as our discussion has, but I'm pointing out that the tariff may be distracting everyone and the CEO is concerning.
More than half of the CEO is concerning about the tariff policies, especially for the EOSA.
Survey shows.
But in public they cannot say that because they worry about their going revenge from the government or something here.
I'm just finishing up a book due to the publisher next month.
That's on the subject of how China succeeded.
Now, as I said, I've concluded that China is much, much more competitive in almost every sector than the United States, and that's because the Chinese government has enforced antitrust law.
It's also the Chinese government has adopted the common prosperity policy, where for the past –
Well essentially, since 2000, wages have been growing faster than the GDP growth rate, which is very different from the United States or Western Europe, where wages have been stagnant.
And the Chinese government has made investments in infrastructure that make it much easier to do business.
And they've made a lot of investments to sort of improve people's daily lives and allow people to live cheaply and well.
So that's the difference, I think, that we're seeing in the two economies.
That's quite interesting.
Two American scholars are looking to China.
But our session this time is more about America rather than China.
So, with those policies introduced one after another, like tariffs or immigration restrictions or anything like that, do you think America can truly or this administration can truly make America great again?
Or has that ship sailed?
Maybe first, Harvey?
I don't think so.
I think this administration is challenged in so many different respects.
I don't believe they're typical at all.
The administration seems to be people, by incompetence, by people who may know how to read a teleprompter, but that's about all that they can do.
And in previous governments, in most governments in America.
Whether you agreed with them philosophically or not, They were people by experts and by people who were outstanding in their fields.
But now there are not any adults in the room.
And Trump changes his mind so fast and seems to be so mercurial.
I think it's a really difficult time for America.
And I don't think they're going to make America great again.
And if we ever have another election, which Trump has been on record as saying that we don't need anymore, if we ever have another election, I believe that we have to make a change and to go back to a different kind of government that will try to strive imperfectly perhaps to make America great again.
But we're not headed in that direction.
No, not at all.
David.
Well, obviously, I disagree with most of what Harvey just said.
You always do.
Yeah, that's true.
There's some of it I agree with, but I think the past administrations he is praising are the ones that have gotten us into war after war and have driven up huge budget deficits.
And those budget deficits, by the way, have not paid for the kind of infrastructure building we're seeing in China and who have essentially created an economy based on loose monetary policy and highly concentrated industries.
Those are not the kind of people we need.
Now, do I think Trump is going to be – I mean, we're in a real mess.
Do I think Trump is going to be able to solve the problem?
I hope so.
I think.
In contrast, I think the people that we're seeing in the government now are much more competent than anybody I've seen for the past 20 years.
But their job is a very hard job, and I'm skeptical that they're going to succeed.
But we can hope so.
I mean, my hope is that the US can move to.
This is just my hope that the United States can move to something like the New Deal economy and that, in terms of foreign policy, we essentially withdraw into North America and stop messing around with the rest of the world.
That would be sort of my dream as to where we're going.
And I think that's where we're going.
But I hope we get there peacefully and without too much damage in the meantime.
Yeah, you hope so.
I think the rest of the world, including Chinese people, hope so too.
But what's the reality then?
It's a terrible job.
I mean, as I say, the best analogy is a drug addict.
And once you get hooked on heroin, it's a painful process to get off of it.
And that's essentially where we are now.
The concern is, with all those commonly believed disruptive policies in place, America wouldn't be able to get great again.
Or might, what's the word?
Drown itself before it reached the bank right?
Well, no, I think the voters decided, look, we've had crap for 30 years.
Anything's worth trying as an alternative.
That's where we are.
All right.
And maybe a last minute for this discussion.
I think David mentioned what's your most concerned is the relations, or economic relations between US and China.
So what do you think these tensions mean for US-China business relations, especially in technology and trade, if American firms feel squeezed at home but see opportunities abroad?
As I say, China is a highly competitive economy and it's difficult to win here because the competition is so strong.
They're used to a much less competitive environment and some of them will succeed in going overseas.
But I don't think it's a panacea to solve their problems.
A lot of companies that have come into China.
American companies have just failed because they can't stand up to the competition.
So I don't see that as a solution.
Actually, I think the United States and China are very.
They're the only two countries that are very similarly positioned.
They are almost in a position where their economies depend primarily on their internal economy and to a lesser extent on their nearby neighbors.
And so I don't think there's going to be there's going to continue to be the huge interaction that we saw 20 years ago.
I don't think it's going to be anything like that.
And I think in tech, China is the only country that's able to develop an alternate tech stack, as they say.
And I think that's good too.
I'd like to see competition in tech stacks.
I don't want to have one monopolistic tech stack and i i think i'm not an advisor to the chinese government, but if i were, i would say you know, you need to do whatever you need to do to develop your own tech stack and issues like that.
All right, and alex, you're taking.
Yeah i, i think you, you ask a very good questions for what what china and the us can do.
I think i just use more quotations from some of the ones here.
I mean is like Pacific is very, very large.
It can have both China and the US.
So China and the US are very much like a mirror kind of the economic situations.
Both of them have a very big domestic market.
So in that world, we can either rely on the foreign market or maybe on the domestic markets only.
But US.
Clearly they choose the other side to de-globalization, to decoupling with the rest of the world.
This is their choices.
But of course, they can have other choices as well.
Well, I just read a book saying that maybe in a very short ways, the US government can choose inflation default or maybe assert nice choices called the softer default on the dollar rather than on the bond market.
In terms of that, why is it important for China?
Because Chinese investors hold a lot of the U.S. bonds or treasures in these markets.
We trade with U.S.
We have trade plus from China's side, but we also are biggest investors in the U.S. bond markets.
So if the U.S. government wants to solve the default, from these markets.
Actually, I think the Chinese government are well prepared for this scenario and say for the trade imbalance with financial market imbalance as well, external balance as well.
But still, China has its own issues.
I don't want to consume a lot of your time here, but China has its own financial system issues.
US also have their own as well.
So I think we can sit down to negotiate or talk with others.
I think the mutual communication are important as Harvey has tried to introduce foreigners to understand the Chinese system.
That is a very better way to understand each other as well.
And also I hope for the CEOs, because there are a lot of CEOs buy a lot of goods from China, for example, like a Walmart, like the other kind of the US manufacturing.
They import a lot from China.
And also there are kind of the company like a Boeing, they sell a lot to China.
So I think they are kind of to be unified together to lobby the US government, saying maybe we can talk, we can try to talk with each other in terms of the fight with each other.
So I think we have a lot of things in common, rather than things in difference, which I hope we can collaborate.
We can coupling the world.
We can become the greater two to make the world a better place, to make the workers on both sides, or citizens on both sides, a better place for the business and also for the economic communications.
That's something I think is something I hope can solve the issues, with the two countries working together.
More straightforward, those policies, especially those CEOs, are dissatisfied with such policies.
If they feel they're squeezed at home, would it be possible that they might shift their production or their investment to China, thus affect Sino-US economic relations or cause more tensions between the two countries?
Would that be a possible scenario?
Well, I think it is the US government who are stopping the US firms to invest outside of the US.
So, for example, like Navida, if they want to build a factory in China or in Europe, then they are not happy with that.
I think the China are welcoming, see like Tesla, see like Elon Musk cases.
So I think China are very open to welcome the, especially the high tech companies, to invest in their mainland.
So this is the kind of the huge difference between these two.
But if they change their mind, they allow for a fair competition within this big two.
I think the world will be better.
I mean they can utilize the benefits of both market, for example the cheap labor relatively in China and the very cheap capital costs maybe in the US.
But then the working class in the U.S. will be suffering.
So that's a dilemma.
You see my point?
So this is a kind of the cost that they needed to pay.
So if we want to make the US great again, maybe we can hire more US laborers, but they have to work hard to compete with the Chinese labor.
Okay, so that is the hard job, but that is something we have to do to solve in the near future.
If I was the consultant to the US government.
They needed to train their workers better and they needed to, step by step, to work harder to compete with the rising giant, maybe like China, like Europe or the other potentials.
All right to Harvey.
Looking beyond China, how might the current government's policies ripple across the global economy?
If America is perceived as turning inward, will other economies be able to seize the chance to position themselves as more reliable hubs for global business?
For instance, after Washington raised H-1B visa fees, Britain began considering cuts to its own visa application fees.
To attract foreign academics and digital experts would actually create more advantage for other countries rather than the US itself.
I think so.
I believe, although there are hopeful signs that, at least in the short term, there might be some kind of rapprochement between US and China.
But I would say in the longer term that if america is perceived as turning inward, that in our fast evolving multi-polar world that regional and other groupings are going to be able to create a new economic order.
So bricks is one example.
We talked about that a little bit earlier.
That could evolve into south south cooperation, even into a new South EU constellation, or one that includes Central Asia or the South Caucasus.
And I take a lot of hope actually that there was a recent agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia to put their fighting behind them and to start to work together, And so I do think that new kinds of groupings, unimaginable even a few months ago, is that we can seize the moment and we can actually start to do what the management guru, Peter Drucker, said.
So instead of all this unpredictability, we can do what Drucker said.
And that's the best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Right now there's so many uncertainties, especially with the lack of coherent decision making in the US, that if we can get back to basics by other groupings in our new multipolar world that maybe we can actually move forward in ways that we haven't moved forward recently.
All right.
David, you got any disagreement here?
No, I agree with the goal.
I think it will be good for the world and good for the United States if we move to a more multipolar world.
I don't think we have more uncertainty now than we've had in the past.
I mean, it's hard to create more uncertainty than fomenting wars and invading countries.
And, in economics, probably the greatest uncertainty was trying to use the dollar as a strategic tool.
And that's naturally led people to develop a BRICS monetary system.
But I think in the long term that this is good for American people as well as for everybody else in the world.
As I say, we're going to get to a multipolar world.
I just hope we can get there with some prosperity and certainly peacefully.
Yeah, that's what the rest of the world is hoping for, but not necessarily what Washington wants the multi-polar world.
And on that note, we wrap up our chat.
Many thanks to David Blair, Senior Economist Alliance of Global Talent Organizations, Harvey Zeldin, Senior Fellow Center for China and Globalization, and Alex Tsui-Chou, associate professor of economics and finance university of macau, for your time and insights.
You can find us on all major podcast platforms.
Please email us your comments at radio at cgtncom.
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