Rob Armstrong

But, for example, as part of this series, one of the things I was reading was there's effectively an abandoned dishwasher factory in Spain.

This podcast loves dishwashers, as you may know.

And it closed...

And it closed and that led to the loss of hundreds of jobs.

And along comes a Chinese battery company called Hithium, which might take over this facility.

And it's pushed there in part because Trump has stepped back from a lot of the kind of green energy initiatives that were started under Joe Biden.

So all of a sudden, the US is not such a favourite place to do business anymore.

Maybe they come into Europe instead.

And look, that's a lot of jobs for people in and around this old dishwasher facility in Pamplona in Spain, I believe.

And maybe a lot of that does involve buying not just Chinese staff and goods, but Chinese know-how.

Is Europe comfortable with that?

I want to pick your brains on where China is with regards to the situation in Iran.

So, you know, on paper, China is the world's biggest oil importer.

So this should be like an unmitigated disaster, what's happened in Iran for China.

It went into this crisis with massive reserves of oil, like it's got oil coming out of its ears and only about 6% of its energy consumption is exposed to problems in the Strait of Hormuz.

So well played, China.

Is there a world in which China emerges as somehow, you know, the winner as a result of this war, not just because it's already got plenty of its own oil, thanks very much, not only because it can make the solar panels that everyone has finally woken up to the fact that we need them, but also because this gives China, I guess, a different sort of geopolitical clout across Asia, which is, as Rob and I were just talking about in the last podcast we recorded the other day, like,

Emerging Asia is really under the cosh from this energy crisis.

So where does China fit into all of that stuff?

Rob, do you think this was Donald Trump's plan that he would embark on a war of choice and the winner of it would end up being China?