Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
The tariffs strike back: Is this the end of globalization?
My political compass has been spinning lately, and not just because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted to ditching a bear corpse in Central Park before finally endorsing Donald J. Trump (that one caused a bit of political vertigo). My deeper confusion stems from the political debate about protecting our jobs.
It used to be, reliably, that the conservative right supported free trade and globalization, while the progressive left wanted protectionism for local industries.
Elections were fought on this, libraries were filled with studies on it.
For Republicans, Ronald Reagan’s 1988 Thanksgiving address was considered economic theology. “One of the key factors behind our nation’s great prosperity is the open trade policy that allows the American people to freely exchange goods and services with free people around the world,” the Gipper said.
That era ended under Trump’s first administration when he used two tools to impose tariffs on a wide-ranging series of goods: Section 301 (tariffs that combat unfair trade practices) and Section 232 (tariffs that protect national security). These tariffs hit almost $280 billion of goods and, according to the American Action Forum, increased consumer costs by over $51 billion a year. By the way, Joe Biden kept most of these in place. Recently, Biden went even further, slapping $18 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese-produced EVs, semiconductors, and critical minerals, among other things. This is all part of the industrial policy he ushered in under the Inflation Reduction Act. So both sides love a good tariff.
But in this campaign cycle — it’s as if a sequel titled “The Tariffs Strike Back” has been released — we must wonder: Is this the beginning of the end of globalization and the rise of a new age of tariffs?
Both Republicans and Democrats are making tariff-happy promises. Trump has mused on the campaign trail that he would like to impose a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the US.
“When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay automatically, let’s say, a 10% tax … I do like the 10% for everybody,” the former president explained.
And it is not just in the US. Tariffs are being used everywhere.This week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aligned with the US andannounced tariffs on Chinese-made EVs starting Oct. 1, and another 25% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum.
“Actors like China have chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace,” Trudeau said, “compromising the security of our critical industries and displacing dedicated Canadian auto and metal workers.”
He’s not wrong. China does have widespread, unfair trading practices. Using tariffs to rebalance against factors like low-wage workers or weak environmental standards is useful, as they can be to deal with trade imbalances. But it’s a slippery slope. Tariffs beget tariffs, and that starts a trade war where everyone loses.
Tariffs were critical to Trump’s first administration, especially as he renegotiated the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada. But economists at places like the CATO Institute concluded that tariffs cost taxpayers anywhere from $50 to $80 billion in higher prices. “American consumers (both firms and individuals), not foreigners, paid for — and continue to pay for — the tariffs,” the experts wrote.
So why are they back? If Trump 1.0 taught politicians across the spectrum anything, it's that there are no votes in supporting globalization. Most states and provinces have lost jobs and plants to cheap labor in places like China and Mexico, and protecting jobs wins elections today, even if it means higher prices tomorrow.
And that’s exactly what it means. According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, if Trump were to impose the across-the-board 10% tariff, it “would amount to a roughly $1,500 annual tax increase for the typical household, including a $90 tax increase on food, a $90 tax increase on prescription drugs, and a $120 tax increase on oil and petroleum products.” And there is a real debate as to whether higher tariffs, which aim to create jobs, actually do so.
A study from the US Department of Agriculture revealed that Trump’s 2018 tariffs on major trading partners like China, Canada, and Mexico cost billions due to retaliation. “From mid-2018 to the end of 2019, this study estimates that retaliatory tariffs caused a reduction of more than $27 billion (or annualized losses of $13.2 billion) in US agricultural exports,” the study said.
This is a case of Hobson’s choice: Keep some manufacturing jobs in your community, but face higher prices, lower productivity, and retaliation from other countries. After all, one tariff begets another, and the costs pile up. But the political gains are real, so protectionism is on the march again.
Trump’s VP running mate, Sen. JD Vance, recently defended tariffs and, to be fair, many countries have massive exceptions to free trade that include cutouts to protect certain industries with subsidies and quotas. In the US, national security is used extensively as a form of industrial policy — Trump, for example, imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, citing national security concerns. And in Canada, banks and milk and cheese farmers in Quebec are protected.
But Vance has gone further, arguing that tariffs in principle are a net economic gain. A tariff “causes this dynamic effect where more jobs come into the country,” Vance recently said on “Meet the Press.” “Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages, so you’re ultimately much better off. You have more take-home pay, you have better jobs,” he added.
By that logic, more tariffs would keep growing the economy, so where will they stop? That is the road to end any form of free trade and globalization.
Strangely, Vance’s argument not only flies against the conventional wisdom of his own party — the GOP has long advocated for free trade and open markets — but it also parrots what the left argued for decades as they fought free trade and globalization even as they were ridiculed by people like Reagan.
During Trump’s first term, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation published a piece called “Is the GOP Still the Party of Free Trade?” and concluded that they are not, especially after Trump took the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That was a multilateral trade agreement with Asian countries meant to keep a strong US presence in Asia as a hedge against China. While 191 Republicans originally voted for it, that Republican Party no longer exists. “The effective abandonment of its free trade credentials sets the Republican Party on a perilous path,” wrote Phil Levy of the Reagan Foundation.
Democrats must be delighted that an argument they once lost so publicly is being relitigated. Now, both sides are arguing for the same thing and trying to outdo each other. It will be interesting to hear what Kamala Harris says about this as she finally reveals some policy.
We have now gone from embracing concepts like “nearshoring” and “friendshoring” for critical supply chain products like medicine and AI chips to picking winners and losers across the economy. This is 1970s industrial policy, and the distinction between the left and the right on this has become minimal.
Is this how globalization dies, one tariff at a time, in a series of trade wars and spats, Brexits and exits, until finally, the trade walls are back up, productivity plummets, and prices rise? Or is there a happy medium, where these global fights lead to a rise in both labor and environmental standards in places like China and Mexico and the cliched expression “fair trade, not free trade” actually becomes a reality?
Either way, it won’t be quick and, in the meantime, brace yourself for higher prices as your political compass keeps spinning wildly out of control.
Ian Bremmer addresses the audience at the 2024 US-Canada Summit in Toronto.
American and Canadian voters yearn for something they might never get
Is there a deep, secret yearning from American and Canadian voters for a radically open border? Do people really want Canada and the US to be more like the EU? OR, is border politics all about isolationism, security fears, and building walls? The results of an exclusive new poll from GZERO and Data Science will surprise you – and ought to be shaping the election campaigns in both countries.
We revealed part of the poll at the US-Canada Summit that I had the pleasure of co-hosting in Toronto, put on by the teams at Eurasia Group and BMO. Led off by our own Ian Bremmer and BMO’s CEO Darryl White, it included a remarkable collection of over 500 people, including political leaders from across the spectrum in both countries who debated, speechified, conversed, and argued.
Why are so many people so keen to discuss the US-Canada relationship? As Bremmer said, this is a hinge moment in history, with three wars raging — one in Ukraine, one in the Middle East, and one in the United States — a remark that caused gasps and nods. On top of that, 60+ elections are reshaping the world this year (Modi humbled in India, Macron in a showdown with the far right in France, Sunak shambolically slinking off in the UK). Meanwhile, China is threatening Taiwan, and AI is grinding its way through our economies and imaginations.
Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council under Trump and the vice chairman of IBM, admitted that what worries him most is the collision between geopolitics and the economy. They are inextricably linked and making things worse. With the political bombs falling so close, people are desperately looking for a safe shelter, and that shelter is the US-Canada relationship. As Delaware Sen. Chris Coons said, squabbles between the two countries over tariffs or softwood lumber don’t add up to a pile of shell casing next to say China and Taiwan, which may be why the relationship is so often taken for granted or outright ignored. It is and remains one of the biggest bilateral trading relationships in the world.
Globalization is giving way to new forms of regionalism, or “friend-shoring with a vengeance.” But should the region have internal walls or not?
The mandate of the conference is to bring together people tired of partisan bickering, slogan swamping, and dizzying disinformationalizing – in other words, the bubble-blowing BS of everyday politics. They are urged to be authentic, honest, and, despite their political differences, get on with figuring out how to build something better and more secure than we have now. And they did.
Who joined in?
This is a partial list (pause for a long breath): Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minister Francois Phillippe Champagne, Treasury Board President Anita Anand, who settled a major border strike during the conference, Ontario and Saskatchewan Premiers Doug Ford and Scott Moe, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, political wizards like David Axelrod from the Obama campaign and Christopher Liddell, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff to Donald Trump.
Speaking of the Trump folks, there was Gary Cohn, mentioned above, giving Canada a shot and saying it can “tag along” on US economic progress. Former Bank of Canada and England Governor Mark Carney spoke about building together based on common values, and there was Mitch Landrieu, the Biden/Harris 2024 National Campaign Co-Chair, who was in full fight mode over Trump. They were joined by more than 150 CEOs, dozens of policy wonks, and experts on everything from AI, security, economic policy, and more.
There were tray loads of interesting insights and ideas:
- On Trade: The 2026 review of the USMCA is widely seen as the most important framework for the economic future of North America, and there are genuine fears that if Trump wins (Turns out, Ivermectin may actually be a political vaccine against felony convictions) and senses that trade imbalances with the US have not changed, he will rip it up and send the economies reeling with nasty and counterproductive tariffs.
- On the Inflation Reduction Act: Candid admissions from US politicians that protectionism and US industrial policy can sideswipe Canada, simply because Canada gets forgotten.
- On Biden vs. Trump: A quote attributed to Bill Clinton was repeated as to why Biden’s good economic record is not reflected in his polling: “Strong and wrong beats weak and right.”
- On why Democrats are losing working-class voters: I asked David Axelrod why Democrats and progressives spend so much time convincing themselves that people like Trump are not fit for office but so little time reflecting on why their own policies are failing to connect with so many people. He told me — and later told the audience — that Democrats treat working-class Americans with such condescension it’s like anthropologist Margaret Mead studying what were then called “primitive societies” and telling them, “You need to be more like us, and we can teach you.” A devastating critique.
- Here is another Axe moment: Why are some independent and conservative voters tuning out Trump?” “Having Trump as president is like living next to someone who runs a leaf blower 24/7.”
- Personnel is policy: Gary Cohn spoke about why you need to know the people in power. “Any president gets to make 2,800 appointments — they make them all — but ‘personnel is policy,’ so if you want to know what Trump will do, see who he is appointing.” By the way, expect the USMCA trade negotiator Robert Leitheiser, the very guy who insisted on the six-year trade review, to be a senior member of the Trump team,
- Christopher Liddell of Trump White House 1.0, admitted that Trump didn’t know what he was doing in the first six months of his first term, but that it’s different this time, and that the planning and policies are already well underway. We should expect the first six months of a Trump 2.o to be rapid, decisive, and consequential, as he only has one term. His first target will be China and … his political enemies.
- On defense spending: Mark Carney said Canada has no more excuses and must reach 2% spending on NATO – just weeks before the NATO summit in Washington.
But there was one issue that lurked beneath the surface of cross-border politics and wasn’t raised: Should the demand by many US politicians to close down their southern border be counterbalanced by a much quieter, almost secret demand from people to … open the Canadian border, EU style?
It is not as crazy as it sounds.
GZERO commissioned an exclusive poll from our partners at Data Sciences and asked: Would you support an EU-like arrangement between the US and Canada?
The results are fascinating.
Overall, 53% said they would support such an arrangement – 50% in Canada and 55% in the US, while 33% are neutral. And, get this, only 14% are against the idea. Not surprisingly, it breaks down on party lines: 71% of Biden supporters are far more supportive the idea, while 45% of Trump supporters want it. In Canada, it’s almost an even split: 50% LPC/NDP lime it while on the right, 54% of CPC/PPC support the idea.
The point? The longest undefended border in the world is still very defended, and millions of people would like to cross more easily, work more freely, and trade more efficiently. In 2022, US trade with Mexico was $855 billion, and with China it was $758 billion. With Canada? $908 billion.
So making US-Canada trade more efficient with an EU-style arrangement seems like a no-brainer. Last week, we all celebrated D-Day and the beginning of the fight for peace. So many people died in that bloody sacrifice, yet today, the French and the Germans, who fought two world wars that left millions on both sides slaughtered, can move, trade, and work freely across each other's borders in a way Americans and Canada can only dream about. It is baffling.
If anything is a warning about why closing borders and setting up tariffs is disastrous, look at the UK and Brexit, which has essentially tanked the UK economy. The Brexit-loving Conservatives under Rishi Sunak are now facing a potential political extinction event on par with the Canadian Conservative party of 1993, when Brian Mulroney went from winning the biggest majority in Canadian history to stepping down months before an election his party lost so badly they were left with two lonely seats.
We are heading into a US election and a possible Canadian election where low growth, high inflation, and fear of an unstable world might kill prosperity. Why aren’t the two best friends in the world campaigning on an idea that has proven to be one of Europe’s great drivers of growth? An open border.
We all get it. The politics of the southern border is driving politics at the northern border, but if voters can distinguish between the two, why can’t politicians?
They likely never will. And this may be the most 2024 political moment of all: Ignore the quiet ideas people want, and focus on the noisy fights no one can stand.
Climate change is "wreaking havoc" on supply chains
Climate change is disrupting industries around the world, and that has a major impact on global trade. On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala lays out the case for diversifying and decentralizing production around the world to build resiliency and reduce risk in global supply chains.
“Climate change is wreaking havoc in so many places,” Okonjo-Iweala says, “If you concentrate your production in any one place, you risk really disrupting things.
The WTO Chief argues that by trading some of the “just-in-time” efficiency of global supply chains for resiliency, we can reduce the risk of climate disruption as well as the geopolitical risk of labor being contracted in a single country, like China.
“You see what is happening all over the world?" Okonjo-Iweala asks. "We do need to diversify if we want to build resilience.”
Watch the full interview: World trade at risk without globalization, warns WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
- Is the global food crisis here to stay? ›
- The geopolitics of the chips that make your tech work ›
- The Graphic Truth: The great supply chain squeeze ›
- Want to fix climate change? This is what it’ll take. ›
- What Africa has to say about climate change ›
- The Graphic Truth: Has climate change hurt or helped farmers? ›
- Ian Explains: Can we save the planet without hurting the economy? - GZERO Media ›
- "Climate is a problem, not the end of the world" - Danish author Bjorn Lomborg - GZERO Media ›
- Can the world run on green energy yet? Author Bjorn Lomborg argues that's very far off - GZERO Media ›
Podcast: Calling for the "reglobalization" of trade: WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Listen: Ian Bremmer sits down with World Trade Organization Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and first person from Africa to lead the organization, for a conversation about the good, the bad, and the future of global trade on the GZERO World podcast.
In the last half century, globalization has dramatically increased economic output, created hundreds of millions of jobs, and lifted millions of people out of poverty. But development between countries has been uneven, and global inequality is on the rise. Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine disrupted exposed weaknesses in the supply chain. And rising tension between the US and China has led to a world economy that’s becoming increasingly fractured.
But is the way out of a crisis not less trade, but more? How do we make sure the future of trade is fair to countries in the Global South, who are reeling from runaway debt and bearing the brunt of climate change?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Ian Explains: What is the World Trade Organization?
You probably don’t spend a ton of time thinking about the World Trade Organization (WTO), but it has a huge role in almost every aspect of your daily life—from your morning Brazil-roasted coffee to the Chinese-made smartphone you’re probably using to watch this video.
The WTO is an international organization that deals with the complicated business of moving goods and services across borders. It’s kind of like the referee for global trade, setting the rules and providing a forum for countries to negotiate agreements and resolve disputes. It’s why you can buy avocados from Mexico, clothes from Vietnam, or cars from Korea in the United States without a second thought.
Global trade ballooned to a staggering $32 trillion in 2022 and the WTO oversees 98% of it.
The WTO has been a force for globalization. It’s opened up new markets, lowered tariffs, and lifted millions out of poverty, but it’s also received criticism for favoring wealthy nations and exacerbating global inequality. Not to mention a broken dispute settlement system that’s made resolving international trade conflict virtually impossible.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer dives into the history of the WTO, why the US is blocking appointments of WTO judges, and what all of this has to do with Japanese octopus.
Watch the full interview: World trade at risk without globalization, warns WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television this weekend (check local listing) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
- World Trade Organization - GZERO Media ›
- Women in power — the World Trade Organization's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala ›
- Hard Numbers: GDP wars, WTO rules in Beijing’s favor, Africans support Chinese engagement, China winning 5G battle ›
- The Graphic Truth: Russia vs. US trade ties in Africa ›
- Graphic Truth: Who Wins From A US-China Trade War? ›
- Crisis at the WTO: Fixing a broken dispute system - GZERO Media ›
Steven Pinker shares his "relentless optimism" about human progress
If you follow the news closely, chances are your view of the state of the world is not super optimistic. From war in Ukraine to a warming planet to global poverty and hunger, there's plenty to get upset about. But what if things are actually getting...better? That's what Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker asks in his interview with Ian Bremmer for the latest episode of GZERO World.
"If you compare the number of wars and the number of people killed in wars in the sixties and the seventies and even the eighties, we're actually much better off today" Pinker argues. "And so if you don't look at data, if you look at headlines, since as long as bad things haven't vanished from the face of the earth, which they never will, you can get the impression that things are unchanged or even are worse than ever, even when they're improving. It's only when you count the number of wars, number of deaths in war, longevity, child mortality, extreme poverty, number of leisure hours, that you see that there actually has been improvement. "
Watch the GZERO World episode: Is life better than ever for the human race?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
- Podcast: The case for global optimism with Steven Pinker ›
- Why is America punching below its weight on happiness? ›
- Is life better than ever for the human race? ›
- Why human beings are so easily fooled by AI, psychologist Steven Pinker explains ›
- Ian Explains: Will biotech breakthroughs lead to super humans? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Tracking the rapid rise of human-enhancing biotech with Siddhartha Mukherjee - GZERO Media ›
- From CRISPR to cloning: The science of new humans - GZERO Media ›
- Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity - GZERO Media ›
Insights on AI governance and global stability
Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, delve into the realm of AI governance and its vital role in shaping our rapidly evolving world. Just like the macro-prudential policies that govern global finance, society now find itself in need of techno-prudential policies to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) flourishes without compromising global stability. AI presents multi-faceted challenges, including disinformation, technology proliferation, and the urgent need to strike a balance between innovation and risk management.
The next global superpower?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take for you and my Ted Talk has just landed. So yes, that is what I want to talk about. Kind of, what happens after the GZERO? Who is the next global superpower? Do the Americans come back? Is it the Chinese century? No, it's none of the above. We don't have superpowers anymore. And that's what the talk is all about.
I think that the geopolitical landscape today unnerves people because there's so much conflict, there's so much instability. People see that the trajectory of US-China relations, of war in Europe, of the state of democracy and globalization, all is heading in ways that seem both negative and unsustainable. And part of the reason for that is because it is not geopolitics as usual. It's not the Soviets or the Americans or the Chinese that are driving outcomes in the geopolitical space. Rather it is breaking up into different global orders depending on the type of power we're talking about.
There's a security order of course, and people that think that international institutions and governance doesn't work anymore, aren't focusing on hard security cause NATO is expanding, and getting stronger, and involving not just the Nordics, but also the Japanese, and the South Koreans, and the Australians. The Americans are building out the Quad and they're building out AUKUS, in part because of growing consensus on Russia among the advanced industrial democracies, growing concerns about China. But then also you have at the same time that the US-led national security institutions are getting stronger, the global economic architecture is fragmenting and it's becoming more competitive. And the Europeans are driving some rules, and the Chinese are driving others, and the Americans are driving others. No one's really happy about that, and it's becoming less efficient, and that's because it's a multilateral economic order at the same time as it's a unilateral unipolar security order.
And those are two things that we kind of feel right now, and it's not super comfortable. It's not super stable. The pieces move and they rub up against each other. The Americans trying to have more dominance in certain areas of the economy. When you can make it about national security, like if you talk about critical minerals and transition energy economies or semiconductors, for example, you see all that investment moving away from Taiwan and towards the US, the Netherlands, Japan, other countries. And you can see other areas where the Chinese have more influence in commercial ties and are getting more diplomacy oriented towards them in the Global South, for example, in the BRICS, and now France saying they want to go to BRICS meeting and that's not about national security, that's about economic integration. So these things, they're like tectonic plates and they don't align comfortably. And when they don't and when they move, sometimes you get an earthquake, sometimes you get a tsunami.
But then you have a global digital order. And the digital order, at least today, has no global institutions, has no real domestic regulatory structure and it's dominated by a small number of individuals that run tech companies. It's Meta, and it's Google, and it's Microsoft, and it's Elon and Twitter, and you know, it's individuals and tech companies. And these companies right now are devoting almost all of their time, almost all of their money, almost all of their labor towards getting there first, wherever there is, making sure that they're not going to be made bankrupt or undermined or creatively destructed, if you will, by their competitors, whether that's in China or whether that's, you know, sort of just a few miles down the road in the Valley or someplace else. And because that's the entire focus, or virtually the entire focus, and because the governments are behind and there's no international architecture, it means that at least for the next few years, the digital order is gonna be dominated by technology companies, and the geopolitics of the digital order will be dominated by the decision making of a very small number of individuals. And understanding that I think is the most important and most uncertain outcome geopolitically.
I'll tell you that if I could wave a magic wand, the one thing that I would want to have happen is I want these AI algorithms to not be distributed to young people, to children. If there's one thing I could do right now across the world, just snap my fingers, wave a wand and that regulation would be in place. Because, you know, when I was a kid, and we were all kids, right, except for the kids that are watching this, it was, you know, how you grew up was about nature and nurture. That's who you were. Emotionally, it's who you were intellectually, it's how you thought about the world. It's how your parents raised you, how your family raised you, your community raised you, and also your genetics. But increasingly today it's about algorithms. It's about how you interact with people through your digital interface that's becoming increasingly immersive. And the fact that that is being driven by algorithms that are being tested on people real time. I mean, you don't test vaccines on people real time even in a pandemic until you've actually gotten approvals and done proper testing. You don't test GMO food on people until you've done testing. And yet you test algorithms on people and children real time. And the testing that you're doing is AB testing to see which is more addictive, you know, which actually you can more effectively productize, how you can make more money, how you can get more attention, more eyeballs, more data from people. And I think particularly with young people whose, you know, minds are going to be so affected by the way they are steered, by the way they are raised, and by the way they are raised by these algorithms, we've gotta stop that.
I think the Chinese actually understand that better than the West does. And you know, it's interesting, you go to Washington, you say, "What do you think we can learn from the Chinese?" Not a question that they get asked very often. It's a useful one since they're the second largest economy and they're growing really fast. I would say when they decided that they were going to put caps on video games for kids, that was one that I remember, everyone I knew who was a parent of a teenager said, "I wouldn't mind that happening in the United States." Something like that on new algorithms, social media and AI for young people, I would get completely behind. And I hope that's something we can do.
But there are a lot of issues here, huge opportunities that come from AI, massive amount of productivity gains in healthcare, in longevity, in agriculture, in new energy development, in every aspect of science, and we'll get there because there's huge amounts of money, and sweat equity, and talent that is oriented towards doing nothing but that. But the disruptive negative implications of testing those things on 8 billion people on the planet, or anyone I should say, who's, you know, connected to a smartphone or to a computer, so more than 50% of the planet, that is not something we're taking care of and we're gonna pay the cost of that.
So anyway, you have just heard some of my TED Talk and what I think the implications are, I hope you'll check out the whole thing and I look forward to talking to you all real soon.