00:00 Speaker A
And to some degree, we’re already seeing evidence that things are different this time around. We have news of China blocking off investments into the United States, for example, potentially allies abroad teaming up against the US. To what extent is that a headwind that you are concerned about?
00:26 Scott Minerd
Well, you know, I I do think that there’s been national security concerns about Chinese investment in the United States for a while. So the level has not been significant. So I’m not sure that uh, when you when you kind of look through the numbers is that significant, but I think it is a signaling uh, that uh the Chinese are sending about the way that they might respond to this. And, you know, I think we all know that the Chinese are highly vulnerable uh to this policy because we are their biggest market. And uh they do depend uh on exports as the key driver of their uh economic health. And so if anyone is going to be adversely affected uh in a scaled way, it will be the Chinese. Now, there are there are lots of reasons to believe that there are going to be a lot of mistakes made as they implement this policy. We’ve probably already seen the back and forths about the righteousness of the tariffs with uh with Canada, for example, and what the policies are with Mexico. So I think that we’re going to have to wait quite a while to see whatever the longer term more stable set of policies uh from a tariff perspective. And that means continued uncertainty.
02:52 Speaker A
So how do you invest in that environment, then Scott? If uncertainty is now certainty.
03:01 Scott Minerd
Uh, very carefully. Very carefully.