Liz Hoffman

Hey, Ed.

Yeah.

I mean, unless you live in the EU or India, which is, in fact, a lot of people, I think then the numbers will either bear out or not.

But to me, sort of directionally, what this signals is that a lot of countries around the world, particularly these middle powers that are really big economies, but not sort of hegemon adjacent, are starting to realize that they can go around Washington rather than simply being forced to kind of knuckle under Washington.

And so you're starting to see these new trade patterns emerge, new trade alliances emerge.

This deal has been years in the making.

And the thing that got it over the finish line was Donald Trump picking fights all over the world.

Yeah.

Look, the big story at Davos was Donald Trump.

But the event that really stuck with me was a speech that the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, gave.

I mean, really just like immediately a historic document, kind of a speech for the ages is what happened.

Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, called it when I talked to him at the end of the week.

And really, this was a call to arms to these middle powers to say, you know, there's been this rupture, he called it, in the world order, and we can either forge our own way or really recede under that wave.

And, you know, Carney had, I think, either just been or was on his—I think he'd just been in China, where he had signed a huge trade deal between Canada and China—

that taking a step back is actually a remarkable alliance.

It wasn't that long ago, if you remember, there were these huge geopolitical tensions between Canada and China.

Canada had arrested a Chinese Huawei executive.

I mean, this was really fraught relations between the two countries.

And now you have this big trade deal

that among other things will bring Chinese EVs, these really fantastically futuristic, the tech is great, they are cheap electric vehicles to Canada, right on America's doorstep.