Bradley Thayer

So you can see there's going to be a blow that the Indians are going to incur.

And so that has upset Modi with the US.

But I think that's just a hiccup in the relationship, Dave, and I'll explain why.

Even though there's been, secondly, a relaxation in tensions between China and India,

there are still really deep, profound problems and intense security competition between China and India.

And that's not going away anytime soon.

So India still wants to have a good security relationship with the United States.

despite the tariffs issue.

And that's because China is a major threat, the major military threat to India.

And we want to keep in mind that China also backs Pakistan.

And Pakistan and India, if you remember, Dave, in April and May of this year, had a clash, a pretty sharp clash, which President Trump de-escalated, which, had he not, it might have escalated into a conventional war or, heaven forbid, a nuclear exchange between those countries.

So China is the threat to India directly as well as through its proxy, Pakistan.

Well, Dave, when the Chinese talk about their own economy, they're communists, right?

So they're going to lie.

And you want to remember the Mary McCarthy rule when she dismissed Lillian Hellman, right?

Every word that she wrote was a lie, including and and the.

So every word that the Chinese say about their economy is a lie, including and and the.

You want to keep in mind that we're talking about these numbers.

They're going to be manufactured and that the Chinese, being ruled by a communist party, of course, are doing their utmost to inflate them and to convey to the world as well as to the Chinese people that everything is OK, when in fact everything is not OK.

And it's not OK because structurally they're ruled by a communist party.