Transcription
We look at the problem of the dollar, and indeed of many other problems facing the United States, as falling under the heading of the very kinds of problems that you would expect in a declining empire. That is, in a global empire past its peak and now in the very unhappy position of having to face, slowly, relentlessly, that it doesn't have the power, and it doesn't have the wealth it once had, and it can't solve these problems in the ways it once did.
And so, it needs first of all to face the basic problem, which we do not do here in the United States at all. I mean, if you remember last November, we had a presidential election in which three candidates, Biden, Harris, and Trump, never uttered one word about a declining empire or a declining US capitalism declining because its empire is gone. The very same people who could and did look at Great Britain and say the sad condition of that society and of that economy has more than a little to do with the disappearance of the British Empire. They can say that, they can show that, but they cannot allow even the question to be applied to the United States, as if, in some bizarre way never specified, all other empires that are gone mean nothing because the American empire endures in some magical way.
So, the dollar, you know, you mentioned Bretton Woods, right? The dollar becomes the world currency after the British pound and any other aspiring currency had been destroyed by World War II and couldn't possibly play that role. John Maynard Keynes had hoped to preserve that role for the British pound, but the American counterpart, Harry Dexter White, made it very clear to Mr. Keynes that that was not going to happen, and it didn't. And Mr. Keynes accepted it because he basically had no choice. The dollar became the world currency. The United States was producing half the traded goods in the world economy. The United States had the nuclear weapons. The United States—I can fill in, you all know that history. The dominant position of the United States was wrapped up in the role of the dollar. It quickly became not just the currency in which world trade was evaluated and conducted. It became a reserve alongside of gold, uh, to support the currencies of other countries by being held, um, in that form as a dollar in the central bank portfolios of that time, or US treasuries, which is the equivalent.
So, in that situation, everyone who thought about it would have known that this empire cannot last. Not at all forever. No empire ever has, but not even for very long, because of the bizarre situation that the other countries that would be contesting would be coming back from wartime destruction, because you can do that relatively quickly, as both Germany and Japan showed us in the years afterwards. So, it should have been understood that the dollar cannot play that role.
Well, the irony, and if I had time, I would go through it with people, is that this already happened by the 1960s. The gold brought the gold back. Didn't want to leave it here. Uh, we all know that story, or we should. And then the United States went off the gold standard in order to basically force the rest of the world to deal with the dollar. And that gave the dollar a little more time, two or three more decades. But by the end of the century, the process of decline had never stopped.
The American capitalists participated and accelerated the decline when they made the decision, about the same time that the US went off the gold standard, to move production to Asia, but in any case, out of the United States. The development of the jet engine and the development of the internet made it possible to supervise production as easily in China as before you did it in California, or as easily in São Paulo, Brazil, as before you did it in Chicago. And so, the wages being much lower there, those economies being desperate to bring jobs to their country, the American corporations saw enormous profit and moved out hundreds of billions of dollars of investment abroad, crucial to the development of the Brazilian economy, the Indian economy, the Chinese economy.
So, the United States, which, by the way, sometimes likes to take credit for the economic development of China, and it deserves some credit. To take it away from the Chinese is childish, but that's what passes for politics in our country. But there's a grain of truth. It's partly what American corporations and European corporations and Japanese corporations did. But the end result is all of that development outside of the United States would sooner or later mean that the United States dollar wasn't necessary, did not need to play this role. And then big countries like China and India and Brazil began to learn from their own economists the privileges and the benefits you get if your currency is used around the world. And they wanted some of that for themselves. Which again, is what I mean by a declining empire facing demands that are natural as other economies grow.
And one last thing, we might have not been talking about this now. It might have gone on for another two or three decades. It really might have, but there were two things that bring it to a head now, and that suggests to me it's not going away, and there's nothing Mr. Trump basically can do about this. The first is that the Chinese and the Indians are catching up, found a way to achieve much faster economic growth than the United States, which meant that the Chinese catching up, which could have and should have in many ways taken longer, has been compressed into a much shorter historical period. And the Chinese are literally discovering each day what their enormous industrial situation permits them to do. And that accelerates the decline of the dollar beyond what I think it might otherwise have been. The rapid economic growth and the inability of the United States, at least so far, to copy that, being held back by the ideology of the primacy of the private sector and the quote-unquote inefficiency of the government, limiting the role of the government. And doing this, even though it's contradicted by other things that Trump is doing, he is a Republican. He is part of that tradition, and that tradition precludes the United States from copying China. They make a virtue out of it. "We won't go in that authoritarian direction." But, but again, that's childish. They're not going to catch up to China if they don't. And they will be falling further behind, including the dollar, unless they do. And there is, there is no escape, uh, escape from that situation.
And finally, the other thing that made it go faster is this war in Ukraine, which, you know, couldn't have been foreseen, or maybe it should have been, and I didn't, and most of the economists I know didn't. But that war has produced, um, a rapid acceleration in the whole BRICS phenomena. And one of the ideas of BRICS has always been to not necessarily do away with the global role of the dollar. That's really not relevant. The dollar will be important as long as the United States is as big a player in the world economy as it still is. But it will diminish, and that's for sure. And the BRICS, with the consequence of what's happening, and I say that even before dealing with today's tariff increase on India by Mr. Trump, but you could see all of this coming. This only makes the decline of the dollar happen even faster. And I think you can therefore see Mr. Trump promised to protect the dollar, and the dollar has really gone down sharply, literally from the day he was inaugurated on the 20th of January to my speaking with you right now. It's down, depending on which currency you compare it to, but it's down 8 to 12%. Uh, and that in a short half-year period is a very serious comment on the wisdom of him protecting the dollar. That's not happening.
>> Well, Trump, um, his main objective though was to reverse some of America's relative decline as the rest of the world also catches up, and the dollar system and the US-centric economic architecture appear to have, well, had its day in the sun already. Uh, but, um, the, the efforts or policies he had to do this, they seem to have not gone as expected. As you say, the, the, the tariffs, which could, you know, function under, you know, if they're used cautiously, also in cooperation with other states, so we put tariffs on this, and you put tariffs on this, so we can all, you know, develop our strategic industries. But instead, uh, it wasn't harmonized with an industrial policy. Instead, it's used as a sledgehammer against other states, often, as we see in Brazil, directly for political objectives, such as getting Bolsonaro out of trouble. Uh, um, I'm not sure how this, uh, what kind of job numbers you're sitting with in terms of how, how, uh, yeah, this has developed. But I also wanted to, as a second question, and, you know, squeeze it in there, uh, one of the strengths of the America of America, even though its finances is going south, the technology. I mean, the US and China are the two tech giants here. But in a direct competition, we see that the Chinese are racing forward. They have, I guess, better supply chain control. You know, they get everything from the mines, the river minerals, the processing, all the way to the finished product, which the US doesn't necessarily enjoy. We see the energy, which is needed to sustain the data centers in this AI revolution. Nothing is, uh, while the Chinese has, you know, has the infrastructure better under control. He spends decades on building this. Uh, how, how do you see, how do you assess Trump's efforts to turn this whole thing around? Uh, you know, maybe bring the Chinese down a peg or two while also reversing the relative decline of America.
Well, I must say, I am continuously underwhelmed by what Mr. Trump is doing. I see it more and more as a kind of ad hoc mixture of a little bit of economic strategy, a little, but it is an economic strategy that is overwhelmed almost daily by some political need he sees, correctly or incorrectly. Let me give you an example. Um, everyone now knows that the best quality electric vehicle at the lowest prices is produced in China. China has a dozen or more companies competing, has had them doing that for quite some years now. And as a group, they have outcompeted their counterparts in Europe, the United States, uh, Japan, anywhere. And yet, here in the United States, we currently have a 100% tariff. Uh, was 25% in Trump's first, um, presidency. Then Mr. Biden, by the way, on the same strategy of supporting our automobile industry here and bringing manufacturing back to the United States, raised it to 100%. And Mr. Trump has left it at 100%, even as he negotiates, uh, with China about other tariffs. All right. The result is that in Europe, you can see BYD automobiles all over the roads. In the United States, I've never seen one. Uh, nobody buys. There is no dealership, there is no repair system, there is no infrastructure, and there is no business. Okay, let me explain why this looks good. Because it says to the American people, as Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden both did, "We're going to protect auto workers." An interesting idea. You're going to protect auto workers because you make it impossible for American businesses who purchase electric cars and trucks, because that's the future of the world. They have to buy inferior vehicles at a higher price than their competitors around the world. So, an American company that, for example, makes books like this book here, when it buys cars and trucks for its personnel, it can't buy the cheapest, best truck in the world. It has to buy an inferior vehicle at a higher price. Now, I'm an economist, and I know what I just said amounts to a competitive disadvantage for American employers relative to their foreign competitors, because the foreign competitors are buying BYD cars and trucks. So, yes, you are saving jobs for General Motors and Ford and Toyota here in the United States because they don't face the Chinese competition. But are you protecting American manufacturing in general? Not at all. I would argue you are destroying it. And the longer this continues, the more and more the rest of the world will make do without trading with the United States. It's not reliable as a place to export to. That's the tariff problem. And it's not reliable as a place to do business if you would need to import anything because of the tariffs. And inside the United States, you are creating a globally uncompetitive economy. Now, that'll take years to play itself out, but I don't see anything contradicting that. Nothing. Nothing at all. The advantage the United States had in high technology that has now been compromised by the Chinese demonstrating they can do pretty much what we can do, and they can do it with or without cooperation from the United States. The Huawei Corporation itself has demonstrated that from the time that the United States arranged for the arrest of the CEO's daughter in Canada to the present, when Huawei is outcompeting American—I mean, you're looking at it, and the results. Look at Apple. Apple, to escape the problem of being in China, moved to India, which is now turning out to be as big or maybe bigger problem for Apple than China was. But therein lies a lesson, a lesson everyone is learning by looking at Apple. If Mr. Trump's goal was to move production from the rest of the world to the United States, the herky-jerky, up-and-down, temporary delay—these are all reasons not to be productive inside the United States because you have no idea what the conditions are into which you would do what? Spend the money, spend the time to move production from overseas into the United States under these circumstances. And I'm not even talking about a society splitting apart in which half of the country sees Mr. Trump and his program as a kind of fascism. That's that word is being used often enough now that it ought to worry any responsible CEO about moving your—you know, for me, this makes as much sense as making a big relocation decision to go into Ukraine. What? No one is that stupid. And I don't think you're going to see Mr. Trump even talking about moving production here because even the few examples he's able to point to are very, if you look at them closely, very flaky. They have big numbers, but it's over a 10-year period. Mr. Trump will be gone as president long before that, and so will all the people making these promises. They mean nothing. They are theatrics to help Mr. Trump play the game because he can't do the reality.
>> Well, you mentioned the use of the word fascism and, uh, deeply split society. A lot of this, uh, resembles pre-revolutionary indicators. That is, if you want to see a society heading towards revolution, you would look for things such as, yeah, the loss of legitimacy of the ruling class, the economic hardship, growing economic inequality, increasing loss of cost of living, um, more protests, uprisings, polarization, and of course, rejection of the dominant ideology. I mean, a lot of this is already here. It's strange that only a year ago it would have been weird to have Washington, you know, pushing tariffs as its, uh, as its new ideology almost. This is, uh, do you see, as the dollar goes south, and, uh, indeed much of the dominant economic architecture of the United States, that is, the, the, the infrastructure of the US empire, do you think this could also have, uh, I guess, destroyed the republic as well? Because there are some profound social tensions. I'm quite aware that, uh, you see the same in Europe, but what are possible, I mean, consequences on, on society?
Well, I think you are seeing this splitting. You see it almost every day. I have been struck, as I assume you have also, Glenn, by the explicit move of the president with his governor of Texas to redistrict so that they can defeat the Democrats and take over enough seats to hold on to control of the Congress. I mean, this has nothing remotely to do with anything that the word democratic is supposed to signify. And that's already been true in Texas for a long time. But these are levels of out-front, explicit, universally visible. The Republican Party of Missouri has announced it may do what the Texas Republicans have done. So this may now become a game. Mr. um, the governor of California has said if the Texans do that, then he will do it in reverse against the Republicans in California. And you can just see all of this. Here's another dimension. I live in New York City, and we just had an election in which a Muslim supporter of Palestine won the mayoral primary of the Democratic Party for mayor of New York City, which is the largest city in the United States. Zohran Mamdani is his name. And I live in New York. Become very aware of the political situation. At this point, it looks like he will win the general election in November, where he will be the Democratic candidate. And the effort of the old machine, which will do everything it can to prevent this, um, at this point looks very weak and very disorganized and unable. In the city of Indianapolis, a major American city in the middle of the country, there's another non-white Islamic person running for mayor, and he may win. And Seattle has yet another. Now, they are still working inside the Democratic Party, and that is a significant decision they made. But I can assure you, hundreds of thousands of pairs of eyes in the United States are watching with enormous interest what Corbyn and Sultana are doing in Great Britain by having broken away, formed their own third party, and seeing 300,000 British citizens sign up to join that party within 72 hours of announcing it. By the way, if we did that in the United States, and I can assure you from personal knowledge that the effort to do that is underway, we would also get 300,000. We would probably get more. And while the road is more difficult here, we have a tradition of two parties operating a duopoly politically for a long time, and people are used to it, and it will be more difficult to break them away. But that possibility, which would have been laughable two years ago, no one is laughing now. No one is laughing at all. And so, I think the answer to your question is, yeah, there are many signs. We're not at that point yet. We are not a fascist country yet. But when people start talking the way they do, and when you see the close alliance between Trump and Netanyahu, then you begin to know we are in, we are in a very serious situation because of its role in European history. You might be interested to know the Jewish community in the United States, which is several million people, is split in a way that I doubt will ever be overcome. The majority here cannot and will not endorse Netanyahu and his policy in Gaza. The wealthier, the older, the traditional, the politically connected, they will. And if that means fracturing what is already a small community with a long history of persecution, which usually has meant they've hesitated to do anything that might make them vulnerable once again, they are now split in a way that I, as I say, I do not see a recovery. And if there is one, it will take longer than you and I will live. Much longer. And the cynical use by the Trump administration of claims of anti-Semitism to impose a right-wing restructuring of universities only makes it all worse.
Well, I, uh, I thought what is interesting with, um, Washington's efforts to go after countries, be China, Russia, Iran, or others, is usually when you want to destroy an adversary, efforts are made to single out a single state to be targeted and isolated. What is interesting, though, is the United States tends to now go after, well, everyone at the same time, not just its adversaries. But we also see the efforts to, well, I guess, restructure the relationship with allies or partners, which has good relations under the premise that they have been taking advantage of America's goodwill. So we see countries like India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the Europeans. Um, the one that surprised me perhaps the most was the Indians. They, they, they're often a weak link, if not the weak link in BRICS, in terms that they, they want to almost do anything possible to have a good relationship with the United States. And the way he, the rhetoric used to even demean and humiliate India, it just seems to have come out of nowhere. I don't understand what, what the purpose was behind this. I mean, even if one would use tariffs to restructure trade relations, it's the, the aggressive, the aggression they've gone after India is quite extraordinary. I, I was, have you seen any consequences yet in terms of how, yeah, the Japanese, Koreans, Indians, anyone are, um, responding to this very heavy hand? Because one, if there was more moderate pressure, one could assume that they would be willing to tow a line in order to preserve a predictable and stable relationship with the US. But instead, it seems that many are beginning to reach the conclusion that, uh, uh, dependence itself on the US is some vulnerability which they have to, yeah, address or reduce.
Well, let me go at it in two ways. The history of the United States. Well, let me begin this way. A truism here in the United States that is agreed to by almost everyone is that your foreign policy is mostly dictated by your situation at home and only secondarily by what, what in the hell is going on, uh, outside of your own borders. If that's a general truism, it is even more true here in the United States. And that has to do with our history. You know, we are protected on two sides by big oceans that have made it possible to think and act as though the rest of the world really didn't matter all that much. Um, if we hadn't broken away from the British Empire, uh, that might have been ameliorated, but we did, and so it wasn't. And we were left to be able to fantasize. And the first step of the fantasy was to marvel at the ability of a small, poor colony of Great Britain to defeat the British military twice, once in 1776 and again in 1812, and establish an independence on the basis of an enormously exaggerated notion of what had been achieved here. If the rest of Europe weren't in a cataclysmic turmoil, you know, the one that resulted in the French Revolution and Napoleon, it, the British might have done otherwise than they did. But here, it became in this country a notion of extraordinary power. And one of the first manifestations of it was under the president after the early ones were gone, uh, Monroe, with the so-called Monroe Doctrine. It's now 1830, so it's half a century, uh, beyond the Revolutionary War. And the United States announces to the world that the British and the French and the Germans and the Dutch, they can do what they want in Asia, Africa, but Latin America, no, no, no, no, no. They mustn't, they cannot, they shall not. As we will be the imperial power here. The rest of the 19th century was the rise of the United States to fulfill the megalomaniac notion of itself that those early experiences created. Nothing happened to refute it. You drove the boundary of the country all the way to the Pacific. You destroyed the indigenous population by a massive genocide of really enormous proportions. No one stopped you. No one even slowed you down. You even got through with the Civil War. You forced the slave South to subordinate itself to the capitalist North. And then you grew spectacularly right up to the First World War, where all of the old powers of Europe demonstrated that they were weaker than you were, thereby ratifying a level of power and dominance that was unrealistic. Had always been unrealistic, but now had a century of reinforcement. And yes, the war slowed it down a bit. That was, we lost quite a few people, nothing like the Europeans, but some. And we were slowed down again in World War II. But when World War II ended, the same craziness, which had never gone away, could be expressed again. The whole world is prostrate. Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, they're all wrecked. We are do, and the dollar is what we talked about before. And so we've had growth in the 19th and dominance in the 20th century. What, what I have to try to get across to people is that for the first time, the notion that we are on top and dominant is under attack here. Millions of people don't believe it anymore, are doubtful, are dubious. I would, you know, to be crude, half the population is beginning to realize, some more, some less, that that period may be over. But the other half, the half of Mr. Trump, is outraged by this idea, even more outraged that half of Americans are beginning to worry about this. They see all of that as a failure of nerve, a failure of courage, a failure to recognize your responsibility if you are the dominant power in the world. It isn't a recognition that you aren't. It's a demonstration that, thank God, we don't have any more of those people leading us. We now have a, a gung-ho American who's going to tell Mr. Modi what to do, and who's going to make sure, because you know what those "namby-pamby liberals" in America, that's what we call the left half of the country, they are the ones who stabbed us in the back. We don't have that language yet, but it's coming. And you Europeans, you did too. You took advantage of us. You did this. You did that. You—they'll find something that was worked out at some point, and it will be for them another great betrayal of the heritage of the United States, which is to govern. And they don't want to hear about anything else. And they certainly don't want to hear about liberal values or a rules-based order. For them, that's all the language of people unwilling and unable to use the power that the United States still has and should use for the benefit of the whole world. This mentality has to be understood. Otherwise, you will not understand how they can treat Mexico or Canada or Scandinavia or Holland or any other country the way they are. Perfect. You have all gone along with ripping off the big, powerful country, and now you don't want to pay the price of having to adjust your bad behavior. For me, the much, you know, you may be surprised to hear this, but we in America, those like me, we keep wanting to ask people like you, why is the European response so weak, so craven, so self-destructive? Is it just that you can't get together? That the French suspect that the Germans are cutting a deal with the Americans, and they both fear that the British will get there first, and, and so you're constantly maneuvering against one another, allowing the United States to simply play with you one against the other? Or is there something else going on?
>> I suspect, uh, well, Europe destroyed itself in World War II, or committed suicide. But I think many saw the rise of America after World War II as Europe getting an extension on its life. And the, the only unity we had in Europe has been under the rule of America. So it's, uh, I think, I think the political class simply lacks the imagination to imagine a world which isn't dominated by the United States. Uh, and, uh, yeah, for countries like Germany, who seemingly lost, losing its mind. Now, the whole idea of the World War II was to develop on two key pillars. That was NATO, uh, under US leadership, and the European Union, or European Community, which was supposed to balance off the excesses of America. Now, both of these two pillars are now crashing down. And the only idea they have now is military Keynesianism, going to war with Russia, backing genocide. It's, it's just, it's quite an amazing turn of events. But, uh, the, well, that actually took me nicely to my last question, cuz, whatever problem there is in the United States with the decline of the dollar, so economic, yeah, decay, it's, you see the same in Europe. But, but here the political class has a different problem. It's, well, as you suggested, it's, it's a bit spineless, as you saw with the recent, um, uh, trade talks between the United States and, and the wonderland in the European Union, that is, they gave away everything. And even, even admitted, well, this isn't really about economics, the economic deal. Uh, we see the cutting off energy. I don't understand what, what you, maybe see in the tech future of Europe. Because I see nothing here. It's, you know, we, we led the industrial revolution, but nowhere on the map. The trust in the political class is gone. The only thing our politicians talk about is war, trying to relive the World War II thinking that, you know, Mr. Putin is Hitler. The assumption they can still bully big powers like China and India, tell them what to do. I mean, I can't help but to get the feeling that Europe is done. But, uh, but they're living in this massive delusion that is still ruling. It's, it's quite extraordinary. That's why I wanted to ask you, what is happening with the European economy? Is there, as you said, there's a lot of self-harm, but do you see any pathway to recovery, or is it just downhill from here?
No, the only recovery I see, though I could imagine, I agree with everything you said, would be a recognition that they must use their size, their wealth, the, the fruit of five or six centuries of colonialism and capitalism to carve out an independent path. They've got to break their connection to the United States. It is the end for them, and more so now. I mean, Mr. Trump is able to make a joke about Canada being the 51st state. That joke will be extended to Europe in a while, and not a long while either. There is no sense here that Europe has any role to play whatsoever anywhere, except perhaps to pay for weapons that can be used in Ukraine. So, Mr. Trump looks good to his base that he isn't spending US tax dollars on the Ukraine war, which the American taxpayer does not want to do anymore, but is spending European money. And if the Europeans allow this, I noticed Mr. Merz, when he pushed his his bond program through, talked about the boost to the German economy, but is now saying that they will be buying American weapons. I mean, for me, it's beyond words. If you don't buy your own, then what are you doing? What in the world? What are you going to be? An outpost for the American military? A place to store missiles before they get shipped over to Ukraine or wherever else? You're not going to defeat the Russians. It's ridiculous. Napoleon couldn't. Hitler couldn't. Mr. Starmer, you must be kidding. Nobody. The United States can't do it. You know, the world is a very, very different place. Europe is rich. Europe is big. Europe should be playing a big role. But it's got to unify, and it's got to cut the umbilical cord with the United States, or else it has no watch. You know, and it's not just what they do, Glenn. It's watching the speech, the Von der Leyen or the NATO head, or when they talk, the different, the United States literally kicks them in the nose, and they talk sweetly about the United States. What, you know, they announce a big tariff, and they say, well, we will, we will retaliate, and then they don't. You know, that's even worse than simply caving in. This, this performance that we won't even listen to our own words in this situation, we are so determined to go with the United States against Russia, it strikes me as so, so sad. And, and, you know, I look at, at Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France, I look at Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany, and I'm wondering, are these people going to be able to come up with a way of doing that, or will it go to the, uh, Alternative for Deutschland or for Le Pen and those people? Because the rest of their political system is simply a politics of, "We're not either one of those," which the people already know, and that's not, that's not a program. It just, there is a, a last point I would stress for a number of technical reasons, the consequence of declaring economic war on the whole world, which is Mr. Trump's policy, um, with tariffs, with trade arrangements, with, um, sanctions. That's really all part of it. Um, for technical reasons, it has not yet hit the American economy the way I believe it will. You know, and I, of course, I can be wrong, but I've been doing this all my adult life, watching the US economy. What I see coming, and I mean it in the second half of this year, so we're talking in the second half of 2025, you're going to begin to see serious signs of recession coupled with serious signs of inflation. And this is going to put difficulties for Mr. Trump far greater than anything he has seen so far. And the labor movement is moving here. The political climate is not good for him. So even his own base is more and more divided. They don't like what, what they're doing with the healthcare, and Kennedy is a disaster there. They don't like the level of persecution of immigrants is overdone and has now produced a backlash. There really is widespread horror over what is going on in Gaza and Mr. Trump's enthusiasm. And there's lots of speculation that he has to support Netanyahu because the Israeli police included Mr. Epstein, and that they have material he cannot risk being, you know, and again, you never know with those things, and you never know what to believe, but that is now being spoken, including by many who were his strongest supporters, who are talking like this. This is, you're watching disintegration at this point. I would say to you, it's no longer a question, will he disintegrate? Now the question is, he is disintegrating. Will he be able to find some way to slow this, to stop it, to reverse it? Is there some issue, some program? That's what he has to find. He hasn't found it yet. Um, so the showboating about India and China, you know, so far, it has not had the domestic consequences. But we have millions of Americans who are now beginning to buy to the two biggest retail moments in America before the school year starts now, and then before Christmas. And so we're about to head in. And if the prices go up, then there'll be a lot of trouble here.