Rob Armstrong

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?

Rob, like we were saying, you're just back from the FT Commodities shindig in Lausanne in Switzerland.

What are people there saying about how China has played its hand into this Iranian crisis?

Are we seeing some of that already, Joe?

Like, oh, hi, Vietnam.

Yeah, no, sure.

You can have some of our oil.

There might be some terms and conditions attached to that.