Scott Galloway (16:24)
You touched on a lot of important points. So with respect to Ursula, I think it was less terror than it was disgust and disbelief that the greatest nation in the world decided that this village idiot should represent us. And I mean, there's a few things here. One, your zero sum game analogy is a fundamental flaw in his approach to business. And, and it was like to try and turn this to a learning. Up until about the age of 40 or 45, I thought that business and capitalism was about I get the better end of every deal that I negotiate, everything. And if I can hire someone who's really good and pay them 150,000 and their market value is 200,000, I'm winning. And the moment I'm paying them above market, I'm losing and I need to have a conversation with them. And every time I talk to a vendor, every time I try to buy a car, everything, trying to negotiate the best deal possible, hoping that the person on the other end is almost a little bit pissed off and disappointed because I got the better of them, that it was a win lose. And what you realize is that the amazing thing about capitalism is it's a construct. And Pat Connolly, one of my mentors who was the CMO of Williams Sonoma, one of my first engagements was to do Williams Sonoma's Internet strategy back in the 90s. And we wanted to charge them, I think a quarter of a million dollars. And I called Pat and said, look, you're an amazing client, I need mastheads, I'm a 27 year old running a strategy fir, we'll do this for 100 grand. He's like, no, we're going to pay you a quarter of a million dollars because we want our partners to do well. And that struck me that this was a great company that had said, okay, our partners need to make money too. We want good partners, we want them to thrive. And that slowly but surely started changing my mindset. And the ultimate pivot in geopolitics that recognized the opportunity for win win as opposed to zero sum game is we said, we can't have Versailles again. We can't put the defeated armies in a box and bank because we're so fucking angry. And we took Germany, which had obviously unleashed horror on all of Europe. We took Japan, who quite frankly doesn't get the credit it deserves for butchering and brutalizing Asia and Southeast Asia through World War II. And we said, here's an idea, let's flip the script, let's massively invest, let's borrow from American households and let's rebuild them. And what do you know, Germany and Japan are now just such extraordinary allies. Not only because they like us, but because, let's be honest, folks, Germany and Japan have outstanding cultures. You can level their countries, and within 20 or 30 years, they are back in an economic powerhouse, whereas the majority of the countries in the world can't get out of their own fucking way. This country can literally be decimated either of these cultures, and they build back to be economic powerhouses. And now they are outstanding allies. That is the definition of capitalism, or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And Warren Buffett just said something really dramatic. He said, if you believe that, your economic policies start extracting so much value from other nations that those kids starve to believe that our kids won't at some point be a threat from other starving kids. Look at the most unstable, violent nations in the world that are thinking about terror cells and how to bring down our buildings and kill our soldiers overseas. They have a disproportionate number of people who just aren't doing very well. And this is one of his fundamental flaws as he sees it as a win lose. I mean, a couple things. One, right now, France and Germany are saying, if you look at this deal on its face, you have to give the Trump administration a win specifically on this deal, not on the philosophy of win lose. But it looks like they have the better end of this deal. According to analysts, if this framework becomes actual law, which it may not, this will reduce EU GDP by 0.5%. That is a big deal. In a place that's hoping for 2% growth, that's a pretty big reduction. The prime Minister of France came out and said, this is a dark day. And it kind of goes to game theory. And that is when you're trying to organize 27 EU member nation states to an agreement, it is very difficult to speak with one loud, stern voice. There is an advantage to being a United States. And then the other point you brought up really is, if you will, the elephant in the room. And it's the following. They're our largest trading partner. This is the largest trading relationship in the world. So getting back to business, getting on with it, trading again, letting businesses plan their business, knowing, okay, it's the devil. This deal is the devil, but it's the devil we know. We need to get back to work. That's a good thing. The elephant in the room also was that I do think that the EU or the US had this hammer, that basically, I would imagine part of this agreement is an informal or formal agreement to say the US Is going to continue to ship arms to Ukraine and defend Europe against an invader. And two, stop this nonsense bullshit talk about potentially withdrawing from NATO. And Trump fans are correct in the sense that his reputation for being a little bit fucking crazy occasionally comes in handy sometimes. These nations were not going to increase their military budgets to the extent they're planning to under the Biden administration or Harris administration, because they were never going to believe that our rich, benign uncle was going to cut us off. They just didn't believe it. And they kept not paying or not paying their fair share. So to his credit, you are seeing a massive increase in military spending among European nations, which I think is good because they are for the first time believed it's a credible threat that he just might stop sending arms to Ukraine or supporting NATO. And I think this was an attempt to ensure that continues to happen. And then just the final thing here, and I want to get your response, is there is a bit of a conspiracy theory or a Machiavellian play. And my co host on profit markets at Elson pointed this out that they have no intention of doing any of this shit. They're just delaying 18 months until the midterms when there's a Democratic Congress. None of this shit, which arguably should have congressional approval, none of it goes through. And the EU has just basically said, let them put out a press release. I mean, the most ridiculous part is they're planning to invest 600 billion, 600.