Daron Acemoglu

guardrail against this kind of executive imperial presidency emerging.

And if it does, I think it has really sweeping implications for how business is done.

Again, you can see that from the fact that President Trump can invite people to his office and say, give us 20% of your shares.

And to be fair— That's what I'm worried about, exactly.

I mean, you know, because, look, Trump is an agent of change.

He is really reshaping norms and institutions.

But he is himself a symptom of what was—

wrong, in some sense, with the US system, there was a lot of inequality, there was a lot of discontent.

And there was also some gridlock, you see more executive orders by Bush, then by Obama, then by Biden.

So Trump is, you know, accelerating that trend, but he's continuing that trend.

And I do not trust that the next Democrat or Republican is going to be much better behaved once the floodgates are open.

I think we're going to go to a place where

you know, presidents could have much more arbitrary power, both in terms of their ideological agenda, but also in terms of corruption and kleptocracy.

We would be entering a completely unknown territory.

I mean, there are so many advantages that we enjoy because of our institutions.

Everybody wants to have investment in U.S.

assets, treasuries, corporate debt, stock market.

Why?

Because people trust U.S.

institutions.