Is this only for Ukraine?
Probably the conversation was made publicly intentionally as the words were for other parties as well.
Those who would count on the US to defense themselves shall be shocked to realize how much compromises they need to give to Trump.
DeepSeek provides unparalleled cost-efficiency – cheap and good.
DS is a typical “China” thing, propelled by limited resources – in this case, limited advanced chips.
This is just not the way that US companies usually pursue – US shall go for the best performance, with unlimited resources ideally.
How wonderful the world balances itself.
Back in 2016, I saw this day coming – AI is creating music that is really good.
However, I like natural “things”.
How to have more human elements?
I would argue live concerts are more “human”.
The unique performance, the friends and family who join you, the broader audience, even the historical background, could make a concert a more meaningful experience than any song.
That piece of memory is unique – it’s hard to replicate the exact same “experience”. Even if the singer may perform similarly across concerts, the audience is different. And audience is part of the whole performance.
I think tariffs is just another form of tax.
It’s shared by buyers and sellers and is a tax on consumption, especially lower-end consumption – as the outsourced/imported products should proportionally be more lower-end.
It’s actually a more onerous “tax” on low to mid income US people, assuming that high-end consumers care more about high-end products which are not produced in China etc.
And it does increase gov income. Instead of higher taxes on wealthier people, this form of “tax” is more shared across average consumers.
Separately, tariff will income US mfg jobs.
However, who will do these jobs? With the current wave of AI, you could imagine more average “white collar” workers will be replaced by AI and maybe they shall go to manufacturing.
I think we should say all jobs are created equal – however, if you look back, when those manufacturers jobs were transferred out of the US, US was in the dominating position in the world. No one could force the US to get rid of “good jobs” and keep “bad jobs” back then – I could only imagine that those outsourced jobs were considered “worse”.
So now more people in the US will pick up those “bad jobs”. That’s not a very comforting vision for many average people in the US – probably more dangerous, more exposed to health issues, more repetitive (well white collar jobs can be repetitive). However, this should do good for US overall.
If talents are born randomly, each year he or she could be anyone that is born anywhere in the world.
Even if China has 1/6 of global population, its newborn is less than that. In 2024, 132mn babies were born. In 2023, China has 9mn newborns.
That makes ~7% of global new born, less than half of the 17% population weight.
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I remember the old days when I feel a natural bond with strangers if we own the same consumer product.
A “good” brand that I like can be associated with a group of people that I am likely to feel comfortable to mingle with.
This happened to Apple products during my college time, and later translated to Apple Watch and AirPod.
This happened to Allbirds shoes during my California time, where I could chat with strangers who are wearing Allbirds in local Starbuck shops.
Over times, when that brand is too mass market, that mojo gets lost – not all people you met using iPhone meet your expectations, thus you no longer use it as an indicator of this person’s characteristics.
When using iPhone simply can’t tell you that much about this person, it becomes more of a utility. You probably need other consumer goods to show who you are.
Historically, China was a big buyer and still a big holder of US gov debt, which to some extent led to the ultra-low interest rate environment.
Nowadays, China is still helping keep the US interest rate low, indirectly. I think by not providing good return opportunities, China is forcing money to go to other places, indirectly providing more money (with low return alternative) in the global market for the US gov.
It’s not just impacting foreign capital interested in China, but Chinese money as well.
Alternatively, if China has attractive opportunities all over the place, it will compete for global money one way or another.
One thing we can avoid is that we age.
Just like assets have depreciation life cycle – e.g. computers are 5 years, we human beings are depreciating as time goes by.
If a person can only do a thing at age of 50 similar to what he or she can do at age of 30, the “depreciation” would be of significance.
However, one thing is different – we can improve on ourselves.
Buffett’s knowledge and investment skills is probably improving over the years. Thus the “carrying value” is probably increasing for a very long period of time for Buffett, even though depreciation also grows.
Other occupations like lawyers and doctors seem to be benefiting from “aging”.
Sometimes, there are external shocks that we can’t prepare on our own, especially if we continue on a repetitive daily life.
We need to actively access our carrying value from time to time, and be an honest “auditor” for ourselves. Then, we need to come up with plans as a “manager” for ourselves.
Just a random thought..
It was a bit obvious that it Musk, a big support for Trump, has a fairly big exposure to China via Tesla. Earlier this year, Elon Musk was meeting with the top leaders from China, and even his mother is doing commercial ads (brand ambassador) in China
On the other side, you are seeing more recently that China and India is reached some sort of peace agreement on the border. It’s really surprising to me, considering how sensitive China is on border issues. If you notice that Kamala Harris partially shares an Indian heritage, then it’s sort of like a support for Kamala Harris as well.
Again just random thoughts.
[Edit: Oh Usha Vance (JD Vance’s wife) also shares Indian heritage.