Sir Niall Ferguson

I mean, think how the trade talks went with China last time around.

Was that a great, big, beautiful deal?

No, it wasn't.

It was a really bad second rate pushback.

phase one trade deal, which the Chinese didn't even honor.

So I think we should be prepared for trade negotiations after April 2nd, after Liberation Day, i.e.

Tariff Mageddon.

And in those negotiations, I don't think the major counterparties will give that much ground.

And then at some point, the administration will have to declare victory to avoid really severely adverse economic consequences.

Well, I think the big takeaways from my trip last week were that the Chinese are feeling their strength in not only artificial intelligence.

DeepSeek was a big win, but it's just part of a success story.

And also in electric vehicles, where the only question that I heard asked was, well,

Who will the other two Chinese companies be that share total global dominance of automobiles with BYD?

And I think we can't overstate the speed with which this has happened.

I can remember being in China not long before the pandemic.

when Chinese automobile companies seemed like the Wild West of the Chinese economy and people didn't take it seriously in the West.

Well, they're taking it seriously now because unless you erect your tariff barriers double quick,

your domestic market is going to be overrun by Chinese competitively priced and pretty impressive technologically vehicles.

So that's part of the mood of this is going our way.

I really was struck by the change in mood over 12 months because 12 months ago, you know, Chinese investors, Chinese tech companies were still pretty down in the mouth.