The CDC’s Vaccine Advisors & the PA Governor on LA Protests 6/10/25
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Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, his state making a major deal with Amazon, and he weighs in on the civil unrest hitting another Democratic governor in California against the White House. I think it is important that police in the communities are the ones that are stopping the violence and restoring order.

Trade talks with China reach a second day. We're not friends. We have to do business with them, though, because the global economy depends on it. What's at stake? Long-term China business consultant James McGregor joins us from Beijing.

What we have here are two very different systems that are successful in their own way, but they're incompatible with each other when they get out into the international marketplace. Las Meta in the AI race and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fires an entire panel of vaccine experts. He may have fanned the flames of the COVID vaccine, but the COVID vaccine in and of itself

has become very controversial regardless of him. This has been a long-term project for him with vaccines. It's Tuesday, June 10th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back, keep by in three, two, one. 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 Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed all members of a panel that advised the CDC on how to use vaccine and says that he will replace them with his own picks. Kennedy claimed the

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest, though committee members undergo vetting before they're ever appointed and they are required to disclose conflicts. One member of the panel told the Associated Press that he and others got an email late yesterday saying that they'd been terminated with no reason given.

Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who is also a physician, responded to the news on X. In February, Cassidy said that Kennedy had promised to maintain that panel without making changes, which is part of the reason that Cassidy agreed to vote for him and support him.

In his ex-post yesterday, Cassidy said, of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I've just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I will continue to talk with him to ensure that this is not the case. But again, he's got those promises to Cassidy ahead of time. He has a journal posted an op-ed from Robert F. Kennedy. And you figured he would be able to at least make his case.

He says some of the appoint some of the 17 were just recently appointed by Biden in the last year. He says that whatever you think, either pro or con, that there is a very big gap.

gap in how the public views pharmaceutical industry. In large part because of RF Kennedy's own... I don't think he had nothing to do with... He may have fanned the flames of the COVID vaccine, but the COVID vaccine in and of itself

has become very controversial regardless of him. But this has been a long-term project for him with vaccines and saying that it causes autism. And autism and everything else. It says that if they hadn't done it now, they would have had to wait until 2028 to reconstitute the panel. It just says that that's when they would have been. Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028. So I don't know what kind of... You know, he...

walks the line between his anti-vax history and reputation and says he's not really like that. But then there are times when he then seems to show his two colors once again. I know a lot about molecular biology, everything else. I don't see that the messenger RNA

I don't see that as a negative. I think it's a way of upgrading software very quickly for new pathogens. And I think it served us well during the pandemic. Then again, I'm not sure what to think in terms of how many vaccines kids get by the time they're five years old. I mean, do you know how many it is? It's a lot.

- My kids are fully vaccinated. - Right. - It's a lot. - And it's nice to, for the body and the immune system to see these things early and get a head start. But then again, you're asking your immune system to do a lot of things

that we don't completely understand what some of the long-term effects of some of the things. I guess, but we've been fortunate enough to be able to forget how terrible some of these diseases are. Things like polio, things like measles, things like the mumps. Well, take COVID for example. Those are things we don't know. COVID, the COVID vaccine, there are some negative effects

long-term effects on certain people. I don't know, on certain people. I hope that I don't have myocarditis. I mean, I took two or three of those. That was the risk factor, especially for young men, young boys. Right. Did they need the vaccine?

Did young people who could have, you know, I remember when I had COVID the first time, the flu I had two months later was 10 times worse. Yeah, except for it depends on the variant. Our 22-year-old daughter got Delta when I came out of college, and she has a marathon runner who couldn't walk up a flight of stairs. But did young, healthy people need it as much as really okay? My argument would be, like, depending on the variant and depending on when you get it. Right. We have gotten, I don't know, 50%.

I think Kennedy thinks we're over-Medicated across the board. And then the pharmaceutical industry is a huge lobbying group and they spend a lot of their money with showing me Broadway productions of people dancing around that have nothing to do with what they're selling. I don't think Kennedy has shown the evidence that this stuff is as bad as he says and claims in a lot of ways either.

Yeah, he's you know, he's going to look at food safety and dyes and for whatever reason and he's probably right that

I agree with him on some of the things. He's right in terms of the health of... By the way, that's what the Democrats are in terms of a nanny state. People... Right. But people in this country are less healthy than a lot of other countries around the world. I agree. There's a lot of reasons for it. There are. Drugs... I'm not opposed to going after the food industry to say, we don't need some of these things in it. We should have healthier foods. We should have more whole foods. I'm in favor of all those things. But by the way, that is not what the Republican, a traditional Republican, would say.

in terms of the nanny state and saying, which again, I can't do. Well, look, I don't like him, you know, looking at scans at McDonald's. You know, that's where I draw the, or Taco Bell. It's like, chill, man. You know, once in a while, Warren, Cherry Coke, 80, 95. The hilarious thing has been watching RFK Jr. eat some of this on Air Force One. Yeah, where he's like, yeah.

Kind of like gagging on a duck. Here you go, have another Big Mac. But I do wonder what the implications are of this. We'll see more about it. And watching Cassidy, Senator Cassidy, is a good one. As a physician, as a Republican, he's not somebody who is taking any of this lightly. Right.

An additional 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines are headed to Los Angeles as California clashes with the White House over Trump administration immigration policies. The state sued the Trump administration yesterday, arguing the deployments

violate federal law and state sovereignty. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged to carry out even more operations to detain suspected immigration violators. That crackdown is what first sparked the protests several days ago. It was a little weird reading where, you know, how the efforts, the ICE efforts got ramped up. Apparently, someone told either Stephen Miller or the president that

The Trump administration was lagging far behind the Biden administration in the in the in the what they had deported in the last year. So what the Biden administration was averaging per month in his last year, it was far behind what they had done, which we didn't hear a lot about that as that was happening. And then that's when they decided we need to. There's a good I don't know if you hate the Wall Street Journal. Fine. If you don't, it's a good thing.

Lead editorial just about, here you go, Gavin, this is your issue, with people seeing basically a lot of the same demonstrators, rioters in a lot of cases, that every time they get a chance, whether it's, take your pick for whatever cause. I mean, Greta Thunberg was just pulled off a boat going to the Gaza Strip. I thought she was a climate tip. But people love to protest.

And these are some of the worst that are out there. And they're burning American flags or waving Mexican flags. They're breaking windows. They're looting. They're burning cars. And we're we're supposed to you know, we're supposed to believe that it's the National Guard's fault or Trump's fault. I mean, did you read the I was laughing at the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times for a couple of reasons. But that's how they characterize it. Trump leaps at chance.

for clash in california well and that's what chuck schumer but this is the one that really cracked me up democrats see positive uh some positive trump's bill they like the tax exempt tips and the overtime the two things you hate the favorite democrat you gotta you gotta get it you gotta get your priorities straight here you have no idea what i think with this stuff

I don't like it either. I don't. It's giveaways. It's giveaways that add up to the deficit and the debt. It's 100 to nothing on the tips. It's ridiculous because nobody wants to take a stance, an unpopular stance, a stance that's not populist.

by the definition of and say that we should not be doing this if you are concerned about how we fiscally run things um by the way we have josh shapiro on today because this is interesting for the democrats to have the governor of pennsylvania who's much more moderate than gavin newsom to have somebody like rahm emmanuel who is much more moderate and to have somebody even like andrew cuomo all of them are talking about this from a very different perspective and thinks that the newsom wing of things

is taking this terrible direction. It's a losing argument. I'm going to listen carefully to what the governor says. Because moderate Democrats are searching for a message. Right, and Gavin Newsom would not be their face, I would think, at this point. But again, Governor Shapiro will be joining us just a little later this morning in the program. ♪

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly making a new push to try and achieve artificial general intelligence. Bloomberg says that the Meta CEO has been frustrated with this company's progress in the AI race so far and is putting together what's being called a super intelligence group inside Meta. The report says that Zuckerberg's goal is to beat other tech companies to reaching the point where AI can perform as well as humans do so that it can incorporate the technology into its range of products.

According to reports over the last few days, Meta is in talks to invest billions of dollars in an AI startup, Scale AI.

Bloomberg says that Zuckerberg is personally working to recruit dozens of people for Meta's new effort, driven by frustration over the response to the latest version of the company's Lama large language model. It's very similar to what we've heard from Sergey Brin getting kind of reinvigorated by this a year or two ago, a couple of years ago, actually, and building up and spending a lot running that team himself. AI is definitely the thing that has all these original coders running.

super excited, super competitive about. And Zuckerberg's apparently moving desks in the office so that all of these people can sit right by him. Well, hurry up. It'll be interesting to see. It is breaking. It seems quantum. Like you made that quantum leap. And now we're really moving quickly. We'll see. It's amazing now. I am impressed at times when I ask something. Yeah. Like, wow, how does that work? Tease will be next.

Coming up next on Squawk Pod, Pennsylvania's Governor Josh Shapiro. He weighs in on the protests and the federal involvement happening across the country in Los Angeles. I think it's also really important to make sure that our military personnel are not engaged in local law enforcement activities that, quite frankly, they're not trained for. And the doctrine of posse comitatus makes it really something that they should not engage in, but for the most extreme circumstances.

Demonstrations, democracy, and state sovereignty right after this.

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You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. Amazon announcing plans to invest $20 billion in Pennsylvania to build high-tech cloud computing and AI campuses across the state, hoping to create over 1,200 jobs. Joining us now, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Is this the biggest ever private investment in Pennsylvania, Governor?

The biggest ever by a factor of three. And I think it's important to note that this is just an initial investment coming from Amazon of at least $20 billion. So this is going to grow. Pennsylvania is going to be better off. I think America is going to be better off because we're going to win the battle of AI supremacy. And it's going to be done right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

So since 2010, Amazon has invested $26 billion. So that's with the $20 billion we're talking about now, or they've already done that? With the initial investment here of $20 billion at these two sites, and again, it's going to grow. We anticipate creating nearly 10,000 construction jobs, about 1,250 permanent jobs just in these two facilities alone.

And the Commonwealth is investing in this deal not by providing any funding to Amazon, but actually investing in workforce. So we've created a nexus between our community colleges in the area, our high schools in the area, to be able to train students, to be able to train folks, to be able to go and work directly in these AI facilities. This is a win all around. Amazon is going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in local taxes.

to support our local police, our local schools, parks and trails, roads and bridges, things that are going to enhance our communities. And I think Pennsylvania is going to be better off for it. This is the biggest

private sector investment deal by a factor of three in the history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We got it done here. Pennsylvania is open for business. Amazon spreads it around a lot. I think you're the eighth on number eight on the list of states that getting big investments from Amazon. Governor, do you remember the biggest? Do you remember when we were going to get some in New York? And I think it was

AOC decided that there shouldn't have been tax breaks or something that she thought it meant that kind of figure that it was almost like money being given away to Amazon and said it was just really sort of a it was an inducement for the company to come. Have you had to give away the farm to get Amazon to invest in? Are you subject to criticism from someone like Congress?

Congressman Cortez, go ahead. As I just said a moment ago, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania did not provide any cash incentives to Amazon here at all, zero. We are investing $10 million in workforce development. And I want to tell you, those dollars are going to our community colleges. Those dollars are going to union apprenticeship programs. Those dollars are going to other training programs because we want to make sure our workforce is

gets the skills they need to be able to work in a facility like this. You know, yesterday I was in Luzerne County with the folks from Amazon making this announcement. This is a community that over time has been hollowed out, that's been desperate for job creation. And we delivered that yesterday, and that was only one of the sites

that we announced. Now the important thing is making sure we give the skills to those who live in Luzerne County, love Luzerne County, this rural wonderful county in Pennsylvania, so they can stay in the community that they love and they can work and be a part of this. Listen,

Pennsylvania has a rich tradition when it comes to innovation and when it comes to leading the world. It was the people who went down in the coal mines who created the energy we needed to be able to win battles overseas and to be able to provide for people here at home. It was our blast furnaces and our steel mills that helped create the weaponry that made up the arsenal of democracy. We now face the next generation

big national security test in this nation. And that is, are we going to win the battle of AI supremacy or are we going to cede the ground to China? I do not want to cede anything to communist China. I want to win here in America. And the way we win here in America is with the hands of Pennsylvania workers

just as we've done throughout our history. So we're investing in Pennsylvania workers. We are thrilled to have Amazon here helping us in this battle of AI supremacy. And there's a whole lot more to come. Governor, I'm reading everywhere in the notes, moderate. I see moderate. They never just call you a Democrat. They always call you a moderate. So there's a couple of things I'd like to get your- I don't-

I don't listen. I don't I don't believe in these labels. I believe in common sense governing. You know, I'm I'm the governor of the ultimate swing state in the nation. And by the way, a governor who earned more votes, anybody in the history of Pennsylvania running for governor. I say that not to pat myself on the back, but I say that with purpose. And that is the only way you earn those votes is

is by getting, yes, of course, Democratic votes from my party, but also getting a whole lot of votes from independents and Republicans. And I've tried to stay true to that as I've governed. Bring Republicans and Democrats together to get stuff done. We've heard about some of the...

hand-wringing in circles about the Democratic Party at this point. So maybe you're a good person to talk about it. We could talk about a couple of things, your preference, whatever is the most pressing issue that we talk about, anti-Semitism on college campuses and the way it's being handled with the Trump administration. Then again, I look at what Governor Newsom and this kerfuffle between the governor and some local politicians out there

in the Trump administration with with the National Guard. I just wonder and I don't know how you feel about ICE and immigration, but if you had government agents that were at risk and you had some of the things that we've seen happening out in California, would you have called in the National Guard in Pennsylvania? Would you have tried to help them?

What was going on? And then if the president found the need, would you have said it's your fault that all this is happening? I just don't think that's a winning issue. If I was going to give advice to Democrats, I'd say, you know, you're lost in the woods again. Well, let me say at the top very clearly and very succinctly, violence has no place in our communities.

Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. There must be order in communities. And by the way, you can have order and you can still allow for peaceful protest. That is the American way. So there is no question violence is unacceptable. Period. I think the question you're asking, the underlying issue here is who is best equipped to create order to tamp down violence in a community?

Look, I'll speak for us here in Pennsylvania. I take very, very seriously the leadership role I have of the Pennsylvania State Police and that I am the commander in chief of the Pennsylvania National Guard. I've deployed our guards people here inside the boundaries of Pennsylvania after, say, a natural disaster. They do great work.

I've also deployed our National Guard troops to the southern border to work with our federal partners to make sure the border is secure. I share that with you because I want you to know we've been involved in both federal and state-run operations.

The key to all of that is making sure you have organized communication between the federal government and the state government. I think it's also really important to make sure that our military personnel are not engaged in local law enforcement activities that, quite frankly, they're not trained for, and the doctrine of posse comitatus makes it really something that they should not engage in but for the most extreme circumstances.

I think it is important that police in the communities are the ones that are stopping the violence and restoring order. I think it's also not helpful when the leaders of the federal government and state government are pointing fingers at one another. So we focus on making sure that people are safe, first and foremost.

that our police have the tools that they need to keep our community safe, that our military, our guards people do the things that they are trained for. And I take my role, my responsibility as a governor quite serious in that space. Governor, let me just take that a step further. What do you think of what Governor Gavin Newsom is doing right now in California?

Well, I think it is important that the federal and state government in California get on the same page, work together to stop the violence, work together to make sure that those who are sent to the streets to deal with the violence are properly trained, have the skills that they need, and are part of a unified command structure. It's incredibly dangerous.

to send our troops into a situation where there is not a unified command structure. By the president making this call to federalize the Guard without the permission and without the consultation with the local governor, I think that that creates a situation

that is rife for miscommunication and rife for potential conflict. I think what we need to do is turn down the temperature there, stop pointing fingers,

make sure the people who have the skills necessary to restore calm and order and deal with violence are the ones on the front lines. So is the governor right to be suing the federal government for sending in the National Guard? Look, I think that's a question for Gavin Newsom, and I've not seen his lawsuit. I've not seen the nature of his complaint. I think that's a question for the governor of California. I'm telling you how we do it here in Pennsylvania.

how seriously I take my responsibility as Commander-in-Chief and how we work together with our federal partners on deployments. I would not want the President coming in here to Pennsylvania and taking our National Guard without consultation with me, the Commander-in-Chief of the Pennsylvania National Guard. There are ways to facilitate the kind of coordination and communication that's necessary to make sure we have order in our communities and to protect

our soldiers to protect our guards people to protect our police who are on the front lines.

I know you maybe University of Pennsylvania is more within your purview, but I don't know if it's fixed in terms of anti-Semitism. I certainly don't think Harvard's fixed. Things keep happening. I mean, you're living proof of some of the worst things that have happened. But I mean, it's almost I mean, it probably more than weekly. But the things that we see in the headlines that are really just beyond the pale in terms of.

um yeah you know it's horrific and horrendous how would you fix harvard do you think harvard's fixed at this point i i just i don't see any evidence that that i would feel safe if i were a jewish student at harvard i would not feel safe right now if i went there well let me say i'm speaking to you today from a college campus i'm on penn state abington's

campus as we conduct this interview. And I will tell you, I think Penn State, largest school in our Commonwealth, has done a wonderful job creating space for students to peacefully protest, but also making sure that hatred and bigotry do not carry the day on a campus, that Jewish students can get to campus free of any sort of anti-Semitic fueled violence, that they're able to live out

their time as a student, that the legal responsibilities on a chancellor, on a college president are upheld. We've seen that at Penn State. And I will tell you that as it relates to the University of Pennsylvania, which I think was part of the top of your question there, I literally just met last week with the president of the University of Pennsylvania and we continued our conversations in this space. I will tell you, I think they've made a lot of improvements from where they were before. It is incredibly important that

that every single student on campus, regardless of what they look like, where they come from, who they love, who they pray to, has the ability to go to class, get to their dorm room and be able to participate in campus life

free of violence, free of threats. That is both a legal responsibility here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and across the country, and it's a moral responsibility. And I do think some of the universities got out of whack, especially last year, and they are now correcting for that. And it is important that those corrections

continue. As I said before, there is a place in this country for peaceful protest. What there is not a place for is violence. What there is not a place for is chaos on our campuses. What there is not a place for is targeting someone because of how they pray. I think at this moment in time, leaders from governors to university presidents,

all have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity and universally condemn anti-Semitism. When we do not condemn anti-Semitism, when we do not condemn other forms of hatred and bigotry, it leads to the kind of political violence that we've seen throughout this Commonwealth and throughout this country. We saw it in Butler, Pennsylvania, with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life.

And we saw it less than two months ago at the governor's residence here in Pennsylvania while my family and I slept. We have got to all stand up, Republicans and Democrats alike,

alike and condemn the voices that are leading to violence in our politics, on our campuses, on our streets of our cities and towns. It is not okay. And we all have to forcefully condemn it. And we have to not create space for it. And we have to not reward political actors who decide to engage in it.

Hey, Governor, I'm not going to, I want to say yes to all the things that you just said. And I'm not going to ask you about Iowa or anything, if you've got plane tickets or anything. That's for another conversation, maybe at some point. Good to be with you guys. It's 2025. I mean, we've got to relax. It is. But, Governor, we'd like to have you back to talk more about the business initiatives you're working on. And everything else. That's right. Governor Shapiro, thank you. Listen.

I'd love to come back on and talk about how Pennsylvania is open for business. We've sped up our permitting time. By the way, we were in the bottom of the pack in the country. We're now in the top of the pack. It's a big reason why Amazon picked Pennsylvania. We've got the best workforce. We've got an abundance of energy, particularly natural gas. We're competing again here in Pennsylvania. I'd love to keep talking about it with you in the future.

Thanks so much, guys. And the Eagles. Thank you, Governor. Sure, you got a lot to talk. Governor, thank you. Go Birds. Next on Squawk Pod, U.S.-China trade talks continue another day in London. We tap the expertise of James McGregor, China chairman of the consulting firm APCO, on the tricky diplomatic dance.

We want to control what technology we give China, but then China wants to, you know, they've got some leverage over us with all these rare earths and materials that we need for anything from a fighter jet to a telephone. We'll be right back.

This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening to Squawk Pod. Here's Joe Kernan. Three, two, one. Here's Mike. Here we go.

American and Chinese officials are meeting for a second day in London to try to ease trade tensions. Join us now on the progress and possible sticking points. Jim McGregor, APCO, a worldwide greater China chairman. I was just thinking, James, about how daunting it is.

to figure out what we really want in our relations with China in terms of trade, because there's so many different moving parts. I'm talking about, yeah, we'd like less of a trade imbalance and we'd like them to be more fair in the way that they trade. That's one thing. But then there's security. We don't want to give them all this high tech stuff because we know what they're eviscerating.

eventual goal is in terms of their place on this planet. So we're being pushed and pulled in a lot of different directions. We need them as trading partners, right? So how do we walk this line? What should our negotiators, what should President Trump be trying to accomplish? Well, I think that, number one, they want to try to build some trust. You know, things have kind of, China and the U.S. have not been talking at all for a while, and now there's a lot of dialogue going on, including with the new ambassador who

who arrived here in Beijing two weeks ago. The thing is, we want to control what technology we give China, and we do that for good reason. But then China wants to, they've got some leverage over us with all these rare earths and materials that we need for anything from a fighter jet to a telephone.

So people are looking at what's going on in London right now is maybe they'll make some progress on that. The U.S. will reduce some of the controls we have and they will

open up more of the minerals. And this is, you know, this is, I think, going to be a back and forth for a while. There's a lot of trade that is outside those parameters. And, you know, China's actually been pretty good about market access right now because they're feeling a lot of pressure from the U.S. trade. And that's been good for business here because China's government being nice to foreign companies, American companies, because they don't want to lose them. Yep. Big drop in exports. They've

They've got, once again, though, they can feel the pain, but they're people, the president, President Xi's willing to...

over or at least not really dwell on how much pain the people in China are feeling. So they've always got that ace in the hole as well. Jim, they can they can stand more pain. I'm sure it's tougher on their economy than ours, but they don't. I don't know. I think we have political pressures over here that that President Xi is not under. You said we need to trust them more. Do we do we want to get to a point where we trust China? Should we trust China?

Well, you know, for both countries to trust each other, they got to have some parameters on where they can talk. You know, they always used to say the known feature used to be that let's get past our differences and force and, you know, talk about where we agree. At least we can get some things where we both agree to get some conversations going. But, yeah, the

This is, look, what would the U.S. ask be in a big trade deal? It would be China, change your system. Get rid of those SOEs. Get rid of all the subsidies and all of the state enterprise you do and basically the authoritarian capitalism. China would say, okay, well, then you guys get rid of any controls that we have access to, all technology. And neither of those things can happen. So I guess we both have to just slip a little back and forth and

and, you know, work it out piece by piece. But this is going to be a forever process. Hey, Jim, we were talking yesterday about how the team in India working on those trade talks had agreed to stay longer than had been anticipated. We assume that's because some progress was getting made. We haven't heard anything today. Do you have any insights as to what's happening with India?

With India, no. I'm a China guy. I'm sitting in Beijing, which is quite a ways from India where we're working. So, Jim, if they agreed to just level everything out in terms of what you were saying, you know, the subsidies and all the ways that they've they've gamed the system, then are we willing to to compete head to head on on on really who is the

preeminent power on the planet if we do it fair and square. Are we willing to do it that way? Are they willing to do it? I wouldn't mind a fair fight, maybe, but at this point, I just worry about how they go about things. And, you know, I guess all's fair in love and war, but I don't want them to win in 50 years.

You know, what we have here are two completely, not completely, but very different systems that are successful in their own way. But they're incompatible with each other when they get out into the international marketplace. China's system works well in China, but once these subsidized companies get out of here, they can be looked at as predatory because it's hard for a company that has to make money to compete with them. So, yeah.

I don't know. We have to figure out a way for these two systems to coincide in the world somehow. Neither is going to change. Right. But we've got Taiwan and spy balloons and buying up farmland near all of our military bases and Uyghurs. And I mean, we're not friends. We're not. We have to we have to do business with them, though, because the global economy depends on it. I probably just got blacked out in China.

Well, our people also are quite intertwined. You know, the people-to-people stuff is strong. The businesses are so tight. I would just hope that the temperature can be brought down and we can just step by step just make it a little more normal, you know, and emphasize. Look, I'm no panda hugger. I've been here watching what China's been up to. Panda hugger. I like that.

I like that. We know some. Yeah, we know. Yeah, right. I'm not very clear on what China is doing, but I'm also clear on how we've got to live together in the world. They are cute. You got it, especially with the Cubs. Oh, my God. All right. One last question, Jim. Can we trust them if we do have a deal that we reach? Well, what did Ronald Reagan say? Trust but verify. I think that's what we got to do. He said he said a lot of good things. I'll tell you.

I am from the government. I'm here to help. Run. All right. Thank you.

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We are clear. Thanks, guys.

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