Latest / Trumponomics / Why Oil Prices Are Decoupling From Geopolitical Threats
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. I want to just
- 0:09Speaker 1: thank you our great host Canada, but you'll probably hear
- 0:13Speaker 1: what I see and I have to be back here.
- 0:25Speaker 2: I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg.
- 0:29Speaker 2: Welcome to Trumponomics, the podcast that looks at the economic
- 0:32Speaker 2: world of Donald Trump, how he's already shaped the global economy,
- 0:36Speaker 2: and what on earth is going to happen next. We're
- 0:40Speaker 2: recording this on Tuesday, the seventeenth of June, hours before
- 0:43Speaker 2: the official end of the fifty first g seventh Summit
- 0:47Speaker 2: being hosted in Canada, but after the US President unexpectedly
- 0:51Speaker 2: departed a day early. Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.
- 0:55Speaker 2: He's made no secret of his disdain for these official
- 0:57Speaker 2: gatherings of world leaders, I mean, collective decision making. It's
- 1:01Speaker 2: not really his thing, nor is sharing the spotlight. Why
- 1:05Speaker 2: stick around arguing over a stupid communicate when you can
- 1:09Speaker 2: steal all the headlines by jumping on a plane unexpectedly
- 1:11Speaker 2: and posting on truth social But headlines aren't the same
- 1:15Speaker 2: as results, and so far, the president's one man banned
- 1:18Speaker 2: approach to ending foreign wars hasn't been going very well
- 1:21Speaker 2: at all. As I mentioned, we're recording this on the Tuesday,
- 1:26Speaker 2: the seventeenth of June. The conflict between Iran and Israel
- 1:30Speaker 2: appears to be intensifying today, and obviously we don't know
- 1:33Speaker 2: what will happen in the region before you listen to this,
- 1:36Speaker 2: but we can ask what the crisis in the Middle
- 1:38Speaker 2: East and potentially a soaring oil price would mean for
- 1:43Speaker 2: the US economy and for Donald Trump. And we've got
- 1:46Speaker 2: two brilliant voices to speak to that from our Bloomberg
- 1:49Speaker 2: Economics team in London here with me, which I'm like
- 1:52Speaker 2: to say is not always the case. Diaddou, chief emerging
- 1:55Speaker 2: markets economist, who's also a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy
- 1:59Speaker 2: School and a great friend of the show. We heard
- 2:00Speaker 2: him a few weeks ago in Qatar. It was great
- 2:03Speaker 2: to be here and in Washington. Jenny Welch, our chief
- 2:07Speaker 2: geoeconomics analyst. Jenny, who's also been on the show several times,
- 2:11Speaker 2: previously served as the director for China and Taiwan on
- 2:14Speaker 2: the US National Security Council under the Biden and old
- 2:18Speaker 2: Trump administrations.
- 2:19Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Stephanie, an honor to be here.
- 2:27Speaker 2: Jenny you're someone who's I spent a fair bit of
- 2:30Speaker 2: time preparing notes for G seven summits, and I was
- 2:34Speaker 2: remembering that Donald Trump in his first term, he left
- 2:37Speaker 2: the last G seven that was also held in Canada
- 2:40Speaker 2: in a half about Canadian milk quotas. Is there any
- 2:44Speaker 2: point having them these G seven meetings in the age
- 2:47Speaker 2: of Donald Trump.
- 2:48Speaker 1: Well, interestingly enough, I think we're going to get an
- 2:50Speaker 1: answer to that question today on what the remaining G
- 2:53Speaker 1: seven leader is another guest at the summit accomplished now
- 2:56Speaker 1: that President Trump has departed it. They were able to
- 2:59Speaker 1: put out yesterday a statement on the ongoing Israel Ron conflict,
- 3:04Speaker 1: but even then they had to do a lot of
- 3:06Speaker 1: backroom dealing to get President Trump to sign on to it. Otherwise,
- 3:09Speaker 1: the expectations for the summer were pretty low heading into it.
- 3:13Speaker 1: I think there was a lot of focus really more
- 3:15Speaker 1: on Trump's bilateral meetings that he was due to hold
- 3:18Speaker 1: on the sidelines on the summit, then on what the
- 3:20Speaker 1: leaders themselves are going to accomplish.
- 3:22Speaker 2: There is so much focus on who gets the bilateral
- 3:25Speaker 2: with Donald Trump, and I guess the ones who were
- 3:27Speaker 2: shortchanged have got an excuse. They say, oh, well, they
- 3:29Speaker 2: had to leave. But did he get anything done before
- 3:31Speaker 2: he left in any of these meetings.
- 3:33Speaker 1: Well, we got additional progress. I say progress because there's
- 3:37Speaker 1: still some unsolved elements of the US UK trade deal,
- 3:41Speaker 1: but we didn't get progress on Japan, South Korea, India,
- 3:44Speaker 1: which were kind of the other major trade deals that
- 3:48Speaker 1: were building anticipation for some sort of announcement at this meeting.
- 3:52Speaker 1: But Japan had their meeting and was surprisingly not able
- 3:56Speaker 1: to come out of it with any major announcements. All
- 3:58Speaker 1: of this, by the way, and just under a month
- 4:01Speaker 1: until the deadline for reciprocal terrorists coming back in at
- 4:04Speaker 1: those higher rates. Another leader who also wasn't able to
- 4:08Speaker 1: have a meeting with President Trump was President Zelenski, who
- 4:11Speaker 1: was a guest at this year's G seven as he
- 4:13Speaker 1: has been in years past, and was probably very interested
- 4:16Speaker 1: in having that conversation in light of negotiations with Russia
- 4:20Speaker 1: continuing to sell out, concerns about us A continuing not
- 4:23Speaker 1: to come through, and kind of the broader game plan
- 4:27Speaker 1: for Russia Ukraine under President Trump.
- 4:31Speaker 2: The reason that Donald Trump went back to White House
- 4:35Speaker 2: was apparently to think harder potentially respond to the intensifying
- 4:42Speaker 2: conflict between Iran and Israel over the last few days.
- 4:46Speaker 2: I'm sure people listening will have been following most of
- 4:48Speaker 2: the twists and turns. But just in terms of the
- 4:50Speaker 2: market and the potential economic impact, just talk us through
- 4:53Speaker 2: briefly how markets have responded to all intense purposes outbreak
- 4:57Speaker 2: of war since the end of last week.
- 4:59Speaker 3: Right the main market that we're talking about that's relevant
- 5:02Speaker 3: for the global economy is obviously the oil market. All
- 5:05Speaker 3: prices did go up or have gone up since Friday thirteenth.
- 5:09Speaker 3: Before the conflict, oil was around sixty seven dollars per barrel.
- 5:13Speaker 3: Now is around seventy five dollars per barrel. It did
- 5:15Speaker 3: go up. There are some attacks on refineries in Israel
- 5:19Speaker 3: and Iran, but nothing major, no major disruption. They're up
- 5:23Speaker 3: because of worries about potential disruption and oil supply and
- 5:27Speaker 3: our two risks here. There's one risk, which is basically
- 5:30Speaker 3: Israel hitting Iranian energy facilities oil and gas and at
- 5:35Speaker 3: risk here we're talking about Iran's oil productions about three
- 5:38Speaker 3: percent of global supply. And there is the second risk,
- 5:41Speaker 3: which is potential Iranian retaliation on all facilities in the
- 5:45Speaker 3: Gulf and the arp Golf countries. In Saudi, in the Oe,
- 5:48Speaker 3: in Kuwait and so on, and at risk. Here we're
- 5:51Speaker 3: talking about one third of global supply or a closure
- 5:54Speaker 3: of the Strait of Hormus, through which goes one fifth
- 5:57Speaker 3: of global oil supply, so large quantities, and that will
- 6:00Speaker 3: have implications for all prices. We looked at the scenarios.
- 6:03Speaker 3: If you get the first scenario in which you get
- 6:05Speaker 3: just a disruption an Iranian all supply and you lose
- 6:08Speaker 3: three percent or most of the three percent of global
- 6:11Speaker 3: all supply, we're talking about all prices in the mid seventies,
- 6:14Speaker 3: which is roughly where they are now. If we get
- 6:17Speaker 3: a major disruption and then shut down of the Strait
- 6:20Speaker 3: of Humers and the world loses one fifth of its
- 6:22Speaker 3: global all supply, which is something based by the way,
- 6:25Speaker 3: is unprecedented, never happened. We're talking about a major oil
- 6:29Speaker 3: shock that could take all prices to one hundred and
- 6:31Speaker 3: thirty dollars per barrel.
- 6:33Speaker 2: Okay, and if in the past we've had oil shops.
- 6:36Speaker 2: I know you've also looked at what history shares on
- 6:39Speaker 2: that front. What does that look like for the broader economy.
- 6:42Speaker 3: Let's just talk about recent history and then we talk
- 6:44Speaker 3: about the longer history, the recent history, past twelve to
- 6:48Speaker 3: twenty months, we've had every imaginable geopolitical us has materialized.
- 6:55Speaker 3: A war in Gaza and devastation and Gaza that has happened,
- 6:58Speaker 3: an expansion of the war, and to eleven on, a
- 6:59Speaker 3: c area that has happened. Regime change in the Middle East.
- 7:03Speaker 3: Look at whos in the presidential palace in Damascus now
- 7:06Speaker 3: a different person to a year ago. A direct war
- 7:08Speaker 3: between Iran and Israel. It's not a one day it's
- 7:11Speaker 3: a multi day war, and that is happening right now.
- 7:14Speaker 3: So everything that we thought was remote and unlikely has materialized,
- 7:19Speaker 3: and yet there's no pass through to all prices. In fact,
- 7:22Speaker 3: even after the increase in all prices over the past week,
- 7:25Speaker 3: oil today is lower than October six, when it was
- 7:28Speaker 3: eighty five dollars per barrel. So this decoupling between oil
- 7:32Speaker 3: and geopolitical risk is something that we have witness over
- 7:35Speaker 3: the past twenty months. Let's now look at the longer
- 7:38Speaker 3: time horizon. Over the past fifty years, there's been I
- 7:42Speaker 3: think seven major turmoils in the Middle East, from the
- 7:46Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three war all the way out to twenty
- 7:48Speaker 3: twenty three. October seventh attacks. Of these seven turmoils, three
- 7:55Speaker 3: of them have had little impact on all prices. Two
- 7:58Speaker 3: did have an impact on oil, but that was short lived,
- 8:01Speaker 3: only lasted for a few months, and only the remaining
- 8:04Speaker 3: two have had the lasting impact on all prices. These
- 8:07Speaker 3: were the nineteen seventy three war, Arab Israeli War and
- 8:10Speaker 3: the Iranian Revolution of nineteen seventy nine. These also happened
- 8:14Speaker 3: to be the oldest two events in our sample. So
- 8:18Speaker 3: it seems that recently oil is getting decoupling from geopolitical
- 8:24Speaker 3: events and escalation, but it's also something that has been
- 8:27Speaker 3: happening over the past few decades as well.
- 8:30Speaker 2: This is an administration that has talked more about oil
- 8:34Speaker 2: than most, I mean, has been very keen on expanding
- 8:37Speaker 2: US energy production. Donald Trump has also talked about and
- 8:40Speaker 2: his Treasury sectary has talked about wanting to get oil
- 8:43Speaker 2: prices down as one of the key parts of the
- 8:46Speaker 2: economic strategy. This sort of decoupling of what's going on
- 8:50Speaker 2: in the Middle East geopolitical conflict from the oil price.
- 8:53Speaker 2: Do you think that is changing the way the administration
- 8:56Speaker 2: will look at the risks of this situation. They will
- 8:59Speaker 2: feel sort of a sense of reassurance that none of
- 9:02Speaker 2: this is really going to come back to bite them
- 9:04Speaker 2: in terms of the price of the pump.
- 9:06Speaker 1: It does strike me that we don't see the same
- 9:09Speaker 1: sort of sense of urgency to act and diffuse tensions
- 9:14Speaker 1: this time around that we might have expected a few
- 9:17Speaker 1: years ago when the US was more concerned about its
- 9:20Speaker 1: energy dependence on the Middle East. You know, for example,
- 9:23Speaker 1: President Trump's comments over the weekend that he was contemplating
- 9:26Speaker 1: just letting Israel and Iran fight it out, I think
- 9:29Speaker 1: would have been unthinkable a decade ago, certainly, you know,
- 9:33Speaker 1: twenty years ago. That being said, you know, it's very
- 9:37Speaker 1: difficult to see inside this administration's current calculus, for lack
- 9:41Speaker 1: of a better word, on the conflict. There's been a
- 9:44Speaker 1: lot of mixed signals, including you know, President Trump's early
- 9:47Speaker 1: departure from the G seven last night was a rather
- 9:50Speaker 1: unusual step that had a lot of folks worried, in
- 9:52Speaker 1: combination with the movement of military assets out to the regions.
- 9:56Speaker 1: I'm very concerning true social posts. And yet we woke
- 10:00Speaker 1: up this morning in Washington to seeing US hasn't acted yet.
- 10:04Speaker 1: What exactly is the next step, I think is something
- 10:07Speaker 1: that We're continuing to watch Keenlee. Maybe by the time
- 10:09Speaker 1: this podcast there as we'll have an answer to that question.
- 10:11Speaker 1: But at the moment a lot of uncertainty about exactly
- 10:15Speaker 1: what the US strategy is here.
- 10:17Speaker 2: We've had the most sort of extreme examples of that
- 10:20Speaker 2: tea coupling of geopolitics from the old price in the
- 10:22Speaker 2: last two years. But the indication of what you were
- 10:25Speaker 2: saying is that this has been something that's been coming
- 10:27Speaker 2: for a long time. I mean, if we look at
- 10:28Speaker 2: the amount of instability across the world, but particularly in
- 10:32Speaker 2: the Middle Aged if there's a conflict that becomes much
- 10:35Speaker 2: more regional in scale, do you think that would be
- 10:38Speaker 2: the thing that would change the way markets were thinking
- 10:41Speaker 2: about this moment because it kind of brings into question
- 10:44Speaker 2: broader global stability, or you just think you can throw
- 10:48Speaker 2: anything at these markets.
- 10:50Speaker 3: I mean, right now market seems quite relaxed and calm,
- 10:54Speaker 3: given the level of escalation that we're seeing now. It's
- 10:57Speaker 3: not normal to see Daranga and bomb tel Aviv gain bomb.
- 11:01Speaker 3: That's absolutely not normal. So I think it's important to
- 11:04Speaker 3: think why there is a decoupling between geopolitics and oil,
- 11:08Speaker 3: and also to think about the link between oil and
- 11:11Speaker 3: the global economy. So I think the reasons why geopolitics
- 11:15Speaker 3: seems to be decoupling from oil, I think there's multiple
- 11:17Speaker 3: factors here. There's a factor in which there is probably
- 11:21Speaker 3: more oil storage now than the early nineteen seventies, so
- 11:24Speaker 3: the world is better prepared for it. There is a
- 11:27Speaker 3: factor in which we do have more supply from the
- 11:29Speaker 3: rest of the world. The Middle eas share is still important,
- 11:32Speaker 3: but it's not just a supply of oil. It's general
- 11:34Speaker 3: supply of energy. We're talking about dirty energy like coal,
- 11:37Speaker 3: but also cleaner energy like renewables. And also typically when
- 11:41Speaker 3: you have an oil price shock, what happens to the world.
- 11:43Speaker 3: He gets slower growth, you get higher inflation, and you
- 11:45Speaker 3: get higher interest rates. That's the sort of rule of
- 11:47Speaker 3: thumb that we have in our global economic models. But
- 11:50Speaker 3: I think the pass through is weaker now. My colleague
- 11:53Speaker 3: Jamie Rush brought a piece this week and he looked
- 11:56Speaker 3: at the reasons, and now there are a couple of reasons. First,
- 11:59Speaker 3: there has been inflation in the world, so one hundred
- 12:02Speaker 3: dollars oil today is not one hundred dollars oil a
- 12:05Speaker 3: decade ago. There is more supply that is actually coming
- 12:09Speaker 3: from rshield, which is more responsive to higher oil prices.
- 12:13Speaker 3: And there is also we need less oil to produce
- 12:15Speaker 3: one dollar of GDP. The energy intensity or the oil
- 12:19Speaker 3: intensity of our economies have fallen in recent decades and
- 12:25Speaker 3: thus reducing the responsiveness of the global economy to all prices.
- 12:29Speaker 3: But also we have reasons why all prices are also
- 12:31Speaker 3: less responsive to geopolitical risks.
- 12:34Speaker 2: Jenny, it seems as though, at least to some degree,
- 12:37Speaker 2: the fear of sort of economic blowback from conflict in
- 12:41Speaker 2: the Middle East failing to stop conflict in the Middle
- 12:45Speaker 2: East is less than it would have been in the past.
- 12:48Speaker 2: But we know this is an administration that has a
- 12:51Speaker 2: particular divide when it comes to the willingness of certain
- 12:55Speaker 2: members to be quite interventionist and to be imposing America's
- 12:59Speaker 2: will on the world, whether it's regard to China or
- 13:01Speaker 2: other things, and those who are really deeply isolationist, and
- 13:06Speaker 2: the America first rhetoric goes to the point of really
- 13:09Speaker 2: just wanting to pull back from US involvements. Depending on
- 13:13Speaker 2: how things go in the next few days, what kind
- 13:16Speaker 2: of conclusions do you think we should be drawing the
- 13:20Speaker 2: way that the administration approaches the situation in Iran. Do
- 13:23Speaker 2: you think that will hold some lessons about the underlying
- 13:27Speaker 2: dynamics of the administration.
- 13:29Speaker 1: I think almost certainly it will, And I think at
- 13:31Speaker 1: the end of the day, what it's going to reveal
- 13:33Speaker 1: and what was true in the first Trump administration, but
- 13:36Speaker 1: I think has come into even sharper relief in his
- 13:40Speaker 1: second term is the idea that President Trump is ultimately
- 13:44Speaker 1: the decider, the man in charge. And we saw this
- 13:46Speaker 1: dynamic in his first term, where he liked, for lack
- 13:50Speaker 1: of a better term, this team of rivals dynamic of
- 13:52Speaker 1: having multiple voices within his administration that would cultivate different
- 13:56Speaker 1: options for him and he could kind of weigh them
- 13:59Speaker 1: and tease out the complexities of each of them and
- 14:02Speaker 1: then make ultimately the decision right. And that's what we
- 14:05Speaker 1: see in this time around. Except this time around it
- 14:08Speaker 1: is complicated by this dynamic that he is also staffed
- 14:11Speaker 1: his administration with people that, regardless of their different perspectives
- 14:14Speaker 1: on issues, are ultimately very loyal to him, and I
- 14:18Speaker 1: think that that has become especially an important influence on
- 14:21Speaker 1: how he's approached Iran. In his first term, he was
- 14:23Speaker 1: surrounded by people who were largely hawks on Iran and
- 14:26Speaker 1: who urged his sort of maximum pressure campaign with the
- 14:29Speaker 1: idea that there may ultimately be the second phase of
- 14:33Speaker 1: eventually getting to negotiations, but you have to start with
- 14:35Speaker 1: the pressure that was his first term play. Now in
- 14:38Speaker 1: his second term, he's clearly still has people hawkish on
- 14:42Speaker 1: Iran around him, but he is not necessarily following their
- 14:45Speaker 1: advice on going back to that maximum pressure campaign. First
- 14:48Speaker 1: he launched in with the negotiations, which I think was
- 14:50Speaker 1: a surprise to a lot of people who had watched
- 14:52Speaker 1: his first term policy. The question is now he seems
- 14:56Speaker 1: to be seeing this latest conflict as sort of giving
- 14:59Speaker 1: him leverage at the negotiating table, even though from Tehran's perspective,
- 15:04Speaker 1: it is not going to engage at the negotiating table
- 15:07Speaker 1: while it's involved in an active conflict. And so I
- 15:10Speaker 1: think the question is how does Trump see this playing out.
- 15:13Speaker 1: Does he really think that this is going to give
- 15:15Speaker 1: him leverage? Is he still ultimately focused on a deal
- 15:18Speaker 1: or is it some part he going to walk away
- 15:20Speaker 1: from the table and say I can achieve my goals
- 15:23Speaker 1: through other, albeit military means.
- 15:26Speaker 2: This is slightly a process question, but I think it
- 15:29Speaker 2: also matters because it affects how the decisions being made.
- 15:33Speaker 3: You were in the.
- 15:33Speaker 2: National Security Council. There is almost no National Security Council
- 15:37Speaker 2: now in terms of your equivalent, the staff who are
- 15:41Speaker 2: expert in their field and are writing memos and advising
- 15:45Speaker 2: the principles. That is a skeleton operation now barely exists
- 15:50Speaker 2: at all, And as far as we can see, all
- 15:51Speaker 2: the policy planning, or at least the preparation for policy
- 15:54Speaker 2: and the option papers is all coming out of the
- 15:57Speaker 2: State Department. Is your sense that that expertise around the
- 16:00Speaker 2: Middle East is still there within the State Department, That
- 16:04Speaker 2: kind of knowledge of the region is feeding into some
- 16:07Speaker 2: of the deliberations, even if Donald Trump and the people
- 16:10Speaker 2: around him aren't themselves expert what's your sense of that.
- 16:13Speaker 1: I think there's two simultaneous truths here. There is still
- 16:17Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of expertise in the United States government
- 16:20Speaker 1: on the Middle East that exists at various centers, the
- 16:23Speaker 1: intelligence community, the State Department, Defense Department. But part of
- 16:26Speaker 1: the function of the NSC was to coordinate and bring
- 16:29Speaker 1: up into a higher level those expertise opinions and formulate
- 16:33Speaker 1: policy options for the principle for the President and his
- 16:36Speaker 1: senior advisors. The NSC not playing that function as well
- 16:41Speaker 1: today because it's been so whittled down, and because even
- 16:43Speaker 1: at senior levels it's been whittled down, I think creates
- 16:47Speaker 1: questions about whether or not that expertise is still floating
- 16:50Speaker 1: up to the top, and whether there's the same sort
- 16:52Speaker 1: of very thought through options that are being presented at
- 16:56Speaker 1: the same time. I think there has been a tendency
- 16:58Speaker 1: in the Trump administration, even before the recent gutting of
- 17:01Speaker 1: the NSC, for decisions to be made outside what we
- 17:04Speaker 1: would call the normal policy process, for the President to
- 17:08Speaker 1: be making these decisions based on his conversations with individuals,
- 17:11Speaker 1: including people who are not in government, but he is,
- 17:13Speaker 1: for example, very much influenced by people outside of government
- 17:16Speaker 1: who are major voices in the MAGA community, and for
- 17:20Speaker 1: those conversations to be happening simultaneous and not necessarily taking
- 17:24Speaker 1: into stock some of the internal government expertise and policy
- 17:28Speaker 1: options that are normally the foundation of those conversations.
- 17:33Speaker 2: The desks officers' worst nightmare is when all these unofficial
- 17:36Speaker 2: conversations happened that they can't control. Yeah, I'm just sort
- 17:39Speaker 2: of interested. I'm looking at you, because we were sitting
- 17:42Speaker 2: in Doha not long ago, just after Donald Trump had
- 17:46Speaker 2: been to the region. Donald Trump went to the region,
- 17:49Speaker 2: had all these conversations with the various leaders in different
- 17:52Speaker 2: countries seem to go down pretty well, and they played
- 17:55Speaker 2: their part with their commitments of investments in the US
- 17:58Speaker 2: and other things. The US unexpectedly actually becomes in behind
- 18:03Speaker 2: Israel on this effort quite aggressively. How will those same
- 18:08Speaker 2: leaders who saw him a few weeks ago be thinking
- 18:10Speaker 2: about that, and specifically how their own people will be
- 18:13Speaker 2: reacting to that.
- 18:15Speaker 3: I think in terms of the leader, they're already probably
- 18:17Speaker 3: disappointed now when we sat down a few weeks ago
- 18:20Speaker 3: and we said that Trump's visit was a success for them.
- 18:23Speaker 3: It was a success because Trump was perceived to have
- 18:26Speaker 3: gotten funds from the region in return for common the
- 18:28Speaker 3: region now and not escalating with Iran. And he sat
- 18:32Speaker 3: next to the Amir of Qatar saying, I'm talking to
- 18:34Speaker 3: Iran because my friend, the Emir of Qatar is getting
- 18:36Speaker 3: me to do this, and I like him, and this
- 18:38Speaker 3: is why we're doing this. How do the leaders feel.
- 18:41Speaker 3: I think they feel a bit. Obviously all is high
- 18:44Speaker 3: and that's good for their economies, but the risk of
- 18:46Speaker 3: instability is much bigger, and the risk of instability is
- 18:50Speaker 3: that they're caught between the two fires, Iran and Israel.
- 18:53Speaker 3: There is a risk of retaliation from Iran on their
- 18:56Speaker 3: energy facilities, on their land or maritime borders. And there's
- 19:01Speaker 3: also the risk of the people, the fact that people
- 19:04Speaker 3: in the region are probably not happy with that, and
- 19:06Speaker 3: they may take out their anger on the leaders. So
- 19:09Speaker 3: I think everyone in the Middle East is watching, it's
- 19:12Speaker 3: probably feeling nervous about this.
- 19:14Speaker 2: Many people who voted for Donald Trump will not particularly
- 19:17Speaker 2: care about the Middle East, but they had heard this
- 19:21Speaker 2: mantra from the president that he was either not going
- 19:25Speaker 2: to get involved in the rest of the world or
- 19:27Speaker 2: was just going to very quickly achieve piece he wasn't
- 19:29Speaker 2: going to get involved in what he would call Democrat wars.
- 19:32Speaker 2: How much will they be concerned in the administration about
- 19:35Speaker 2: the broader impact on the Mega Coalition of having this
- 19:39Speaker 2: very obvious involvement, because you can see Donald Trump wanting
- 19:42Speaker 2: to be the strong man in Middle East, wanting to
- 19:44Speaker 2: take big gambles and do things that people hadn't dared
- 19:47Speaker 2: to do before with Iran. But if the result is
- 19:50Speaker 2: kind of what it's been in the past, which is
- 19:51Speaker 2: American president's kind of stumble in and then can't get out.
- 19:54Speaker 2: How much does that hurt him? How much will you
- 19:56Speaker 2: worry about that?
- 19:57Speaker 1: It's a fair question, especially because right now we're serving
- 20:00Speaker 1: the MAGA movement does seem quite divided on this issue,
- 20:03Speaker 1: and we even sol overnight President Trump taking aim at
- 20:06Speaker 1: someone who has been an ally in the movement, so
- 20:10Speaker 1: to speak for him, Tucker Carlson on this very point
- 20:14Speaker 1: of who is ultimately the decider of what makes America
- 20:17Speaker 1: great again? And President Trump saying he is, and he
- 20:20Speaker 1: decides that making sure that around doesn't have a nuclear
- 20:22Speaker 1: weapon is very much about making America grade again. But
- 20:26Speaker 1: I think, ultimately, and this is a bit of a
- 20:27Speaker 1: bold claim as a foreign policy expert, I think it
- 20:31Speaker 1: tends to be, with rare exceptions, that foreign policy is
- 20:35Speaker 1: not necessarily the major determinant of domestic political opinion towards
- 20:39Speaker 1: a president, unless they really botch things and we get
- 20:42Speaker 1: dragged into a major and very deadly war. It's probably
- 20:47Speaker 1: going to be other things, and namely the economy and
- 20:50Speaker 1: namely what happens, for example, with the Big Beautiful Bill
- 20:53Speaker 1: and how it affects DUX policy, in the coming years
- 20:56Speaker 1: and people's sense of how much money is in their wallet.
- 20:59Speaker 1: I think is probably going to be what drives more
- 21:01Speaker 1: of how people perceive the effectiveness of the President and
- 21:05Speaker 1: his ability to come through our major promises that he's made.
- 21:08Speaker 1: I think it's a whole host of other issues that
- 21:10Speaker 1: are at play.
- 21:11Speaker 2: We'll be down not to Iran but the irs. Yeah. Maybe,
- 21:14Speaker 2: Jenny Sad, thank you very much, thanks for listening to
- 21:22Speaker 2: Trumpnomics from Bloomberg. It was hosted by me, Stephanie Flanders
- 21:25Speaker 2: and I was joined by Jennifer Welch and Ziad Daud
- 21:28Speaker 2: from Bloomberg Economics. Trumpnomics is produced by Sammasadi and Moses
- 21:33Speaker 2: and m with help from Chris Martlu and Amy Keen,
- 21:36Speaker 2: with special thanks to Rachel Lewis Krisky. Sound design is
- 21:40Speaker 2: by Blake Maples and Brendan Francis. Newnan is our executive
- 21:44Speaker 2: producer and to help others find the show, please rate
- 21:46Speaker 2: it highly and review it wherever you listen to podcasts.