David Solomon

That's an apprenticeship skill-based business and that's something that I think is very sustainable, but technology tools make the people that do that much, much more productive.

Well, first, thank you for having me here.

Delighted to be here.

The U.S.

economy is in pretty good shape, and there are some very, very strong tailwinds that have really had a profound effect, and there are also some things going on that are creating headwinds and are probably leading the economy to underperform its expectations at this time, but I'm optimistic that we're probably going to see an acceleration as we continue to add into 2026.

The big structural issue that's kept the US economy going so well is the US, and by the way, other developed economies around the world, are running very aggressive fiscal stimulus plays.

Governments are spending enormously into economies in the developed world, and that keeps the economy going even when you have other headwinds.

Second big macro phenomenon that's affecting the US economy is all of the AI infrastructure build, all the capital spending, all that's going into the ground to support the deployment, the development, the continued growth of AI infrastructure into the enterprise, and that's a big tailwind too.

That's balanced on the other side by the implementation of the trade policies, which are still getting absorbed.

I think we're seeing some of the effects from trade, but there's still more to go in terms of really understanding how the trade policy is fully implemented and how it balances growth.

And then obviously the world's a little bit more geopolitically fragile and that has an impact on growth and confidence.

But when you balance it all,

And you saw the third quarter reading was quite strong.

But year over year, from last December to this December, the overall growth trajectory will probably be a little bit less than 2%.

And so that's slightly below trend, but still in pretty good shape.

I think that as the trade policies are absorbed and you have the continued stimulus and the continued kind of tech spend, you've got a pretty good tailwind.

You know, I hear as I talk to CEOs that would kind of have their finger on the pulse, certainly the upper end of the economy is still spending quite strongly, a little bit more constraint on the downside, on the lower part of the economy.

But I think the things you have to watch, you have to watch labor.

There's no question labor is a little bit softer.

The Fed's watching labor carefully.