Walter Isaacson & Business Roundtable CEO Josh Bolten 5/19/25
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Bring in show music, please. This is SquawkPod from CNBC. Here's what you need to know today. Unpacking President Trump's relationship with America's CEOs. First, with best-selling author and biographer Walter Isaacson. I think you've got a transactional president. It's interesting to see one that's pretty transparent. And with the CEO of the Business Roundtable, Josh Bolton.

As high tariffs might be, equally damaging right now in the economy is the uncertainty about where the costs are going to be highest and it's freezing investments.

Plus, today's headlines, including an update on the reconciliation bill in D.C., a downgrade of U.S. credit, and that DNA you sent to 23andMe might end up in pharma. I imagine that data is what Regeneron is effectively buying. I'm CNBC producer Zach Valisi. It's Monday, May 19th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now.

Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1. Cue, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Joe is off today. Now, the major averages are all coming off their best week in more than a month. You have the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both on five-day winning streaks up to this point.

We'll also be watching very closely what's happening in the Treasury market. Right now, yields are higher across the board. In fact, the 30-year topping 5%. Right now, it's sitting at 5.024%.

It's a little lower than it was just slightly earlier this morning. Earlier this morning, it yielded 5.028%. That's the highest level we've seen since November of 2023. And the highest level that November the 2023 number was the highest yield we'd seen since 2007. So once you see treasuries get up to these levels, it does change the perspective for a lot of things. It's going to increase borrowing costs for

Anyone trying to buy a home, buy a car, pay off a credit card. And it will be more expensive for businesses to buy money, too. There's been some unease in the Treasury market over the last week or so. And again, this all happening because of what we saw with that downgrade from Moody's over the weekend. A lot of commentary on that. We're going to dig into that in just a moment. But we're also watching the dollar this morning. And in fact, if you take a look right now, you'll see that the dollar is down by about 1 percent as a result.

Meantime, the House Budget Committee voting now to advance President Trump's multi-trillion dollar domestic policy package. The vote late last night was 17 to 16 along party lines. Four Republicans who opposed that bill when it failed in committee on Friday voted present.

last night, effectively allowing the measure to pass. Now it would extend President Trump's tax cuts from 2017 and cut Medicaid food assistance, also cutting clean energy funding as well as pay for immigration enforcement and provide more money to the military. On Truth Social, President Trump congratulating Republicans. The bill looks

Like it will need changes, though, before it can pass the full House. Chip Roy, one of the Friday Republican holdouts who voted present last night, said on exit the measure, quote, does not yet meet the moment. Next up for the bill is the House Rules Committee. And just a short time ago, it said it will meet Wednesday morning at 1 a.m. Eastern time to take up that bill. Yeah, 1 a.m. Eastern time. Right.

I think has something to do with how many hours you have to wait from the time it is passed out of committee before you can get to the next step. And I think they're trying to move this along as quickly as possible. Does that mean they really meet at 1:00 a.m.? Or does that mean they will start meeting at 1:00 a.m.? Or they'll say... I think it means game on at 1:00 a.m. We'll see. That's as fast as they can move it.

In the meantime, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on Meet the Press yesterday morning with plenty to say about Moody's U.S. credit downgrade and Walmart's appetite for tariffs. Eamon Javers is here. He's been covering all of this in a very busy weekend. Good morning, Eamon. Hey there, Becky. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant blamed Biden-era government spending for Moody's decision to downgrade U.S. debt on Friday. On NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Besant said the downgrade reflects government behavior in the past.

Moody's is a lagging indicator. I think that's what everyone thinks of credit agencies. Larry Summers and I don't agree on everything, but he said that when they downgraded the U.S. in 2011. So it's a lagging indicator.

Besson also minimized Walmart's decision to raise prices due to President Trump's tariffs this week, arguing that the retailer is absorbing some of the costs which are not being passed on to American voters. I was on the phone with Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart, yesterday. And Walmart is, in fact, they are going to, as you describe it, eat some of the tariffs.

And on other topics, Besson said that neither side had backed down in the tariff standoff with China because the situation was unsustainable for both sides in the end. And he defended President Trump accepting a new luxury jet from the government of Qatar because it is a gift to the U.S. government, not to Trump personally. Guys, back over to you.

OK, Eamon, a lot to go through with this. Maybe we start on the Moody's downgrade. Scott Besant is right. This is not something that's happened in the last hundred days. However, he said this was the Biden administration. Moody says this was more than the Biden administration. Obviously, the deficit went up substantially under the Biden administration, but it did under the Trump administration before that to the first Trump administration. I think what's key here and probably the timing with Moody's

has to do with whether or not Congress is going to take action and start to cut into that deficit or whether they're going to continue to expand it over several years before any of those cuts really take place.

Yeah, I mean, you heard Besant there saying that it's a lagging indicator looking backward, but also they're looking forward at this idea of whether or not there's any kind of deficit relief coming from Congress. And there doesn't seem to be, right? I mean, both parties have struggled, no matter what configuration of the government you have, Republican president, Democratic president, Republicans in control of Congress, Democrats in control of Congress, both parties have struggled to make meaningful cuts in the deficit.

because when you're an elected official, it's just politically better for you to spend money than to to anger people by cutting back benefits and cash that they've been depending on. Right. So it's politically really challenging. And even though you've got all this deficit rhetoric in Washington and we had Doge, you know, making significant cuts,

through the early part of this year, we don't see any sustained deficit cutting ability up on Capitol Hill over the long term, right? You know, next couple of years baked into law as opposed to one-off cuts by the executive branch.

I was going to pivot to Walmart just because I'm so fascinated by it. And I don't know if you were reading the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal this morning. Donald Trump goes full Kamala Harris in demanding that the retail giant not raise prices. And then actually they juxtaposed a

A quote that he had made about her and then with a quote that he had made at both of which. Calling her a Marxist for doing right. For trying to put price controls. For trying to do this. So the question I think the real question, even underlying all of that, though, is actually how much of these tariffs companies like a Walmart are going to ultimately eat versus how much the customer is ultimately going to eat.

Yeah, it's really interesting, Andrew, to watch the president of the United States tell Walmart basically how much profit they can make by eating these tariffs and whether or not Walmart will respond to that. Walmart signaling last week that it was going to have to raise prices.

And then you heard Secretary Besson in that clip that we just played saying, well, what Doug McMillan told me is that they're going to eat some of the tariff costs. Right. So they're not going to pass it all on to Wal-Mart shoppers who are, broadly speaking, American voters. Right. So this is a fascinating moment where companies have to decide whether

How much of their margin do they want to protect here? And what's the political risk and downside to a company if they anger this president of the United States? And it's a fascinating moment because, I mean, this is a Republican Party that used to be against the idea of

of government telling business what to do, right? And here we have a very literal case of government telling a business what to do. And that business now has to wrestle with, you know, how do we play this and what are the downsides for us, either in passing these costs on to our customers or in terms of our margin and eating these costs.

Well, ultimately, look, every retailer, every one of the major retailers, I'm sure the minor retailers, too, are trying to do their best to rein in their own expenses. They are trying to do their best to pressure their suppliers to not raise their prices as a result of the inflation that they might be seeing. It's what we saw, and Besson pointed this out yesterday, it's what we saw in 2018, 19 and 20, all of the major retailers increasing.

very much tried to absorb as much of the 10% tariff that they possibly could. It really comes down to how big these tariffs are. If you're talking about tariffs that are 20, 30, 40%, it's a lot harder. Some of that will get passed on. It's inevitable that that inflation is not going to be completely eaten by the retailer because in some cases you're dealing with pretty thin margins, particularly if you're talking about groceries, which

which traditionally move on a margin of 1 or 2 percent, maybe 3 percent at top. And so many of the products that we're importing, things like bananas, we get almost all of our bananas from Costa Rica. You can't turn around and make them in the United States. So, you know, it's going to depend on what is hit, and it's going to depend on how high those tariffs are and how long they last.

And then the business has to factor in this question of, you know, President Trump saying, I'll be watching you. You know, what does that mean in real terms? And what is the risk there for the business in getting some kind of additional regulatory scrutiny or regulatory burden placed on them because the president decides that,

They're passing along too much of that cost. And that's sort of, you know, one of those things that you just kind of can't calculate. You have to think about as a business, but you can't really figure out what it is that the president might do to you. And that I think that's how you will be watching. Who else will be watching is the market and shareholders. So they're caught in a very difficult position because if you don't pass the cost on your shareholders will sell your stock. Well, that's why they get paid the big bucks.

But there's sort of another piece to this to me, which is it's not just being caught between the shareholder and the president. You don't want to turn off the customer. No, no. But I was going to throw in another sort of version of this, which is depending on how aggressive the president decides to be or not about any particular company. So there's the regulatory regime, which is, you know, he could he can try to use that arm to do something to Walmart if he so chose.

But he can also galvanize Walmart's customer base in a very interesting way. Walmart has always protected its customer base. That has been since the creation by Sam Walton. They have always thought about the customer first. How do we get the everyday low prices to the customer? That has been their brand and their absolute mission. Sure, but I'm saying if the president decides to target a particular company and say this is un-American what's going on,

Given actually Walmart's customer base, which actually is probably more 50-50 or maybe more red than blue or whatever it is, then it creates a demonstrable issue to the extent that then he can say, go over to these guys. The question is, who do you go to? I don't know if there's some other retailer that somehow is going to be eating the prices. And so therefore, there's cheaper prices. It's really hard to undercut Walmart.

Because they are so big and because they're focused on the bottom line, it's really hard to undercut them. So it's hard to imagine that anybody can come in and say that we're going to eat this, whether that be Amazon, Target or anybody else. It's next to impossible to undercut them on pricing.

But to Andrew's point, it doesn't have to be necessarily competition on the merits, right? I mean, this is a president of the United States who leads a vast social movement, and he can move those voters and those shoppers with social media posts. And he could just sort of shift them to another retailer and say, hey, Target is doing the right thing, and Walmart's not. Let's all go shop at Target. That would have a measurable effect on Walmart if he did that.

We'll see. That's what the question of what does I'll be watching and so will your customers mean in real terms. Yeah. You also had President Trump talking about his difficulties with Tim Cook. I don't know if you guys covered this on Friday. Yeah, we did. Right. But again, this was, you know, we don't want you building things in India. We want them built here at home was his point with that, too. So it's just about any company probably trying to keep their head below the radar at this point.

And is that even economically workable for each of these companies? That's a real question for them to decide. Amy Javers. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Eamon.

DNA Genetics Company, 23andMe announcing it has now reached an agreement to have Regeneron acquire that company for $256 million. Now, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year. It's part of the court-supervised process. Regeneron will have to abide by all of 23andMe's privacy policies. That's what I was waiting for. Yeah. Having said that, you know, the privacy policies, I mean, we need to sort of delve into that at some point.

I imagine that data is what Regeneron is effectively buying. Now, it may be that they can't share that data beyond Regeneron, but I don't know when people first got involved with 23andMe whether they were anticipating that it was going to go to a company that makes and manufactures drugs and things like that. I was not. And I was somebody who gave them my, you know. So they have my DNA, too. They have mine, yeah. And it's interesting, $256 million, not a lot of money. You can go back and look.

what the valuations of that company had been at one point. I will say there's a way to take yourself out, your information out. But when I tried to do it, the system was overloaded with too many people trying to do that. I don't know if it's too late to still be able to do that. But there were several days where you couldn't get through or you had great difficulty trying to get through to be able to shut off those purchases of it.

My guess is that it is something that will draw the attention of Congress at some point if things go down that line that you were just talking about. It's kind of creepy new world, right? Very much so. Very much so. But you know what? We should talk to the guys at Regeneron and find out what they're planning to do with the business. That's a good idea. If they want to come on, we'd love to have you.

Next, on SquawkPod, best-selling author Walter Isaacson gives his take on President Trump's cut on the government funding of research and development. For 80 years, our nation has led government-funded basic research, which led to CRISPR, which led to the internet, which led to search engines, which led to America being the strongest, most innovative nation. That's being cut.

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Ask your vet about NexGuard Plus Choose. Welcome back to SquawkPod. Three, two, one. Up in Andrew. Cue. Here's Mike.

We want to get to the intersection of business, science and politics. Just in the last week, we've learned about some huge breakthroughs in gene editing and biotech to cure diseases. But at the same time, some of those very labs making these discoveries are having their federal funding cut. Joining us right now to talk about it all is Walter Isaacson, Perella Weinberg Advisory Partner, Tulane University history professor.

and author of many, many best-selling biographies, including Elon Musk, and maybe more specifically to this topic, Codebreaker, your 2021 book that took a look at where we are on this brave new world in terms of what we are coming up with. It's the biggest revolution happening other than AI. Yes.

And the code breaker was about using new gene editing tools called CRISPR that Jennifer Doudna and others created. And now this past week, we've seen Sam Sternberg at Columbia, who was a graduate student of Jennifer, use jumping genes to be able to put new genes when somebody has a genetic illness. Likewise, David Liu won the Breakthrough Prize. It was very moving to be there to watch the 17-year-old he had cured

and just last week announced another cure for an infant by using this. A nine-and-a-half-month-old baby. But what makes it really sad is the devastation of these labs happening right now at Harvard, which is where David Liu is, Columbia. They're just having to fire everybody. I mean, I shouldn't say everybody, but decimated, really firing more than half the people, bringing on no new... So we're going to quit this research that kept America in the vanguard.

I mean, I think this is so important. When you were talking about CRISPR in 2021, I thought it was still at least a decade away, if not two decades away. What we have seen over the last four years has been astounding. People are being saved from diseases that would have killed them.

uh... it's actually these rare genetic diseases but you'll soon see it with cancer or are they seeing some of that which is immunotherapy requires using it we have three major attacks on this one is just the cut back on research and development

For 80 years, our nation has led since Vannevar Bush and Harry Truman and Roosevelt at the end of World War II created government-funded basic research, which led to CRISPR, which led to the Internet, which led to search engines, which led to America being the strongest, most innovative nation.

That's being cut. Secondly, they're targeted attacks because of anti-Semitism, which I get, it's important to fight that. But when they attack a university for anti-Semitism, say Harvard or then Columbia,

It's actually the graduate students in the labs doing science research that get hurt, because that's the government grants that get cut. Can I ask you, someone who knows Elon Musk probably better than just about anybody else, and whether you think about this in the context of Doge, or whether you think about it just in the context of the administration, or USAID, or all the things, which in very many ways are all interrelated, he thinks what about what you're discussing right now? Well, I don't channel his thoughts at the moment, but I know that he understands.

that research and development is what got him into space, got the type of things he's done, allowed GPS to be widespread. So it affects every business, whether it's Tesla, Starlink and all. I do think that he and anybody who has been in the technology business understands that the seed corn for innovation is research in basic science

And when you cut that for either political reasons, because you're targeting a university, or you just want to cut back somehow National Institute of Health funding, or you have a fear of the letters RNA, which is what some people have. Look, the biggest issue is everything is facing cuts. The only ones that aren't going to get cuts are the ones that have the biggest, loudest lobbyists. And I'm not sure that the research and development have the biggest, loudest lobbyists.

lobbyists. I think, too, that people are mistaking the fact that, oh, we don't like elite universities. And I get it. Maybe there were some problems and everything from anti-Semitism. And so you want to attack it. But why is it that the blows to those universities, the grants you're cutting, aren't, you know, for admissions offices. It's

for research and development in basic science, especially life sciences, that's saving lives now. And we are letting go of doctoral students and the graduate students who are doing this work. It's a brain drain. I think you make the point that the big issue is we could lose a lot of them to China or to European universities. Well, absolutely. We now have seen in these clinical trials and these things you talked about that happened the past few weeks,

in which people are being cured of genetic diseases, there are now more clinical trials in China than there are in the United States. For 80 years we've led the world. When you start seeing more basic research and clinical trials being done in China, you know,

That's not going to be good for the next decade. It's not just the funding issues. It's also whether you have the regulatory structure to allow those things to happen. The FDA has kind of been gutted over the last two months. Right, right. And it's a complicated thing you were talking about. Regeneron having all of our DNA now because of 23andMe. In China, you have no privacy protections that way we hope we could have here.

So there are a lot of complex regulatory issues, but the main one right now isn't is there too much or too little regulation on health research. It's why have you decided to just get rid of all this basic science funding? Love this. I would love to have you back to talk more about it. Very quickly while you're here, though, why don't we talk about the business world's relationship with the White House at this point? Mm-hmm.

Where are we? It's complicated with tariffs. We just saw this huge tour in the Middle East with a lot of investment that came in as a result. I think you've got a transactional president. We always look at presidents, are they realists or are they idealists on foreign policy? It's interesting to see one that's pretty transparent, meaning that President Trump is very transactional and brought the head of NVIDIA, Elon Musk, of course, was there.

all to the Middle East. And I think this is a major rebalancing in this world. We're used to have a world of China, maybe Europe, the United States, the U.S. alliance with NATO and Western Europe. And now you see a transactional, in many ways, great investment things being done in AI in which the Persian Gulf states are the ones that will be part of a new economic alliance with the U.S.

i have an ai related question yes for you while we have you here which is it's a grok it's again an elon musk question it's a grok question you've seen some of the stuff about white supremacy in south africa that's shown up

last week on Grok. How do you think that happens? Do you think that that happens by accident? Do you think it happens because it's directed by some... What do you think is going on when we're seeing stuff like that appear? I think all AI is as good as the data upon which it trains.

And one of the things that Musk got almost serendipitously when he bought what was then Twitter was he got the billion tweets a day as training ground for the new AI company he was starting. And so I think that's one of the reasons. Are there people there trying to please the boss and put a finger on the scale when it happens? I don't know, but I will say that Grok AI is actually now better than

in terms of timely things. Oh, I think for timely things, if you just want to know about the news, most of the time it's much better. And I think that it's really good to have many competing AI companies, which is why I hope OpenAI stays a bit open with its source, because...

If you have one that goes off the rails and decides to be politically this way or that, we don't want to have just two or three AI companies. It's useful to have six or seven. Walter, there's 15 other topics I would love to discuss with you. Come back when you're in town again. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Good to see you all. It's great to see you.

Up next on SquawkPod, the Business Roundtable represents over 200 American CEOs across every sector. The organization's own CEO and president, Josh Bolton, weighs in on the Trump tariff agenda, as seen by his members. Most retailers operate on very thin margins, maybe 3%, 4%. Some of the tariffs that have been threatened or imposed would be 10 times that much.

Bolton spent time in government and trade himself, serving both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. We'll hear from him right after this break. How will you shape the future of consumer products in retail with confidence? Behind every favorite product or seamless checkout, there's a series of strategic decisions to make.

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You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC with Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Well, it's been a busy few months for CEOs as they navigate the new Trump administration's policies. Joining us right now to talk about everything from taxes to tariffs and share what CEOs are thinking is Josh Bolton. He's the CEO of the Business Roundtable, which represents over 200 CEOs from America's leading companies in every sector of the U.S. economy. Josh, good morning. What are CEOs thinking about the economy right now?

Good morning, Becky. Well, CEOs are always optimistic. They're always looking ahead to what's good in their business. But they've got to be concerned about the business environment that they're operating in. Two big things are going on here in Washington that are affecting the level of their optimism. One is the reconciliation bill, the tax bill that's working its way through Congress.

That's huge for our membership and critical that that get done. So far the news seems pretty good about how that bill is coming out. The other policy element that's important to all of their businesses here in Washington is what's going on with trade and tariffs, and that has many of our members concerned. - All right, well let's start with the tax legislation since we've got the biggest news coming out of that this morning overnight with it passing through a House committee.

First of all, as somebody who's been in Washington for a long time, as somebody who has steered some of this from the White House, what is your timeline and your expectation in terms of this bill getting passed?

The important thing is that it get done this year. Now, the Speaker has set himself a very ambitious timeline, and he's proved himself and his team to be pretty able at navigating a difficult political situation with a razor-thin margin of majority in the House.

And he set a timeline of trying to get the bill out of the House by Memorial Day. That would be great if that happens. It doesn't need to happen. The important thing is that this bill get enacted before the U.S. starts to bump up against the debt ceiling, because it's important to remember that an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling is also included in this legislation.

Treasury is saying that August or September may be the deadline. So from the business standpoint, I think everybody's going to be pretty confident and optimistic about the outcome as long as they get the bill done before they go. Congress goes home for the August recess. As you've mentioned, this is very important to your membership, just getting those tax cuts extended at the 21 percent rate.

I guess business appreciation, research and development would be other important issues for you in this? Yes. The important elements of this are a continuation of the overall corporate rate and the R&D tax credit, which expired a couple of years ago.

depreciation elements, and there are important international tax elements. I mean, Becky, everybody should appreciate that if the Congress doesn't get this bill done, there's a massive four-plus-trillion-dollar tax increase that's going to hit both individuals and business. It's critical that it gets done. Right now, it looks like they're on a pretty good path to get it done.

I know that's something that has business leaders thrilled to have the tax cuts coming through. When you put that in conjunction with the potential for tariffs and what's happening with trade right now, how do CEOs measure or weigh the two sides? They come out on top or are they under additional pressure that they didn't see coming?

Well, they want to come out on top on both sides. And it's important that the tax, that we keep a competitive corporate and small business tax rate going to keep the economy humming. It's also important that the trade situation not go off the rails. There was a pretty sharp reaction from

when the president announced a whole bunch of tariffs at the beginning of April. And then pretty substantial relief, as you saw in the markets, when it was clear that

The president was going to try to negotiate to get some good deals overseas that would make it possible for him not to impose the draconian tariffs that he originally put on the table. And that's what our members are hoping for. They completely support the idea.

of putting pressure on our trading partners to level the playing field, to treat us as well in their markets as we treat them in ours. And so they don't mind that kind of pressure being put on our trading partners. The important thing is we use that pressure to get the trade barriers down because

uh going both ways because uh it's uh our economy is so globally intertwined at this point uh that raising a lot of barriers uh on either side on imports or on our exports

will really damage the bottom line of a lot of our businesses. Josh, what do you think about the political pressure that might come from the White House, not might, that is coming from the White House on American businesses to hold the line on prices, to effectively eat the tariff costs? And I'm referring specifically to the comments

that the president made over the weekend about Doug McMillan at Walmart, and then separately even a week or two ago when there was a possibility floated, I think incorrectly, that Amazon was considering, for example, at least being transparent about if prices went up, why they were doing so for a specific part of their business.

Well, Andrew, Walmart and Amazon aren't alone. The concern about having to raise prices is shared across certainly almost all of the big retailers in America and a lot of other producers here in the United States as well.

The challenge is that, like Walmart, most retailers operate on very thin margins, maybe 3%, 4% is their margin when they put the product on the shelf.

some of the tariffs that have been threatened or imposed would be 10 times that much. And so every company does everything it can to keep its costs down and not pass them on to the consumers because the consumers aren't going to come in to shop if the prices go way up. But a tenfold increase in their costs above their margins

That's not something that any typical company can eat. So the imperative from their standpoint is reach a deal that makes those makes those tariffs go away and levels the playing field for Americans. But Josh, as somebody as somebody who spent a lot of time in the White House yourself before, historically, Republicans did not make comments or specifically try to target businesses. By the way, Democrats often did.

And we're criticized by Republicans for doing so. This morning, the Wall Street Journal effectively criticizing this Trump administration, saying he's doing what Kamala Harris would have done or has done in the past. And I'm curious, given the seat that you sit in, what you think of those comments? Well, there's there's nothing historically similar about this Republican president to previous Republican presidents. And I think he'd probably be proud of that.

So none of our members are surprised at the kind of rhetoric that might be coming out of the White House. What matters is what do they do? And the important thing for them to do is not try to force companies into, you know, with jawboning of some kind, into making uneconomic decisions. The important thing to do is wrap up the negotiations

uh get the get those tariff rates back down and very importantly andrew reduce the uncertainty that all of our members are facing right now about where they ought to be putting their investment because

As bad as high tariffs might be, equally damaging right now in the economy is the uncertainty about where the costs are going to be highest, and it's freezing investment. So our encouragement to the administration, which they've heard and they understand, certainly Secretary Besant and Ambassador Greer do,

is go do the negotiations and get the barriers down and get the tariffs down, and the economy will hum. Josh, your members overall on the outlook for the full year, I would assume it's heavily dependent on what happens with tariffs after this 90-day pause.

Yeah, you know, you saw a good example on Friday with Walmart where the CEO gets on an earnings call and he can't give any forward earnings guidance because the variability in what their earnings are likely to be is too wide because of the threat of tariffs for him to make a

make a reasonable prediction, which is what people expect on earnings calls. So the I mean, our members are remaining optimistic, but they're optimistic depending on a good trade environment in which they can operate. All right, Josh Bolton. Josh, thank you for the update. And we'd love to hear from you again soon. Thanks, Becky.

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