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The Trade Guys
China's Retaliatory Tariffs, Section 301 Authorities, and Tariff Refund Litigation
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- [00:01]
A
I'm Scott.
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B
I'm Bill and we're the Trade Guys.
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C
You're listening to the Trade Guys, a podcast produced by CSIS where we talk about trade in terms that everyone can understand. I'm Alex Kisling and I'm here with Scott Miller and Bill Reinsch, the CSIS Trade Guys. Thanks for listening to the Trade Guys. On today's episode, we examine the impact of China's retaliatory tariffs on take a look at the Trump administration's new use of Section 301 authorities and unpack the latest litigation around tariff refunds. All that and more on this episode of the Trade Guys. Well, Bill and Scott, it's great to be back with you after a few weeks of episodes with some great guests. And I want to dive right into our first topic today by taking a step back and talking through the effects of Chinese retaliatory tariffs on particularly on the US Agriculture sector. A new study from North Dakota State University found that China's retaliatory tariffs on US ag goods wiped out an estimated 14.9 billion in export sales over 12 months. So, Scott, let's look under the hood here. What stands out to you as you look through these numbers?
- [01:13]
A
This is basically disruption of an old relationship. The old relationship is US Soybean sales to China. This goes back to basically China's growth in the early part of this century. And one of the things that happened as people raised their living standards standards is they improved their diet. More people were demanding the addition of meat, in this case pork, in their diet. And soybeans is primarily a very efficient food for pigs. So that was an agriculture match made in heaven, at least for the moment at the time. And so the US Found a great source of sales, net sales additional for their soybeans and other products. And Chinese consumers improve their diet as it became more and more important element of trade between the two countries. And as trade tensions rose, it became one of the obvious places for trade pressure and retaliation. And that's indeed what happened with soybeans. China, basically, you look at it broadly, they changed sources. They switched their purchases from the United States to Brazil and Argentina principally. This had an immediate effect in slowing down sales and therefore exports from the US over the course of crop cycle, most of the consumption of soybeans was the same worldwide. But what happened is your sourcing changed. So China sourced Brazil and Argentina principally instead of the United States. U.S. soybeans went to Europe instead of China. Europe previously had gotten soybeans from Argentina and Brazil. So there was A change in the shipment patterns, but it showed up in net losses, as the North Dakota State University survey showed net losses for US Farmers. And it was sort of broadly across agriculture. There was a big drop in total ag sales to China from 2024 to 2025. Sales dropped from 24 billion to 8 billion. So its steepest one year decline. It certainly got the message through. And it's one of those things when you accelerate pressure on a rival's economy, they have techniques they can use back. So this happens pretty frequently. It was not unexpected. And all I can say is that the agriculture groups in the United States tend to be strong supporters of the President and they tend to be very well represented in the U.S. congress. And so over time this will work itself out. Certainly there were, there were a lot of state by state issues that these losses materialized. And it's coming now at a time when farm incomes are under a lot of pressure. If you happen to drive by a gas station that sells diesel fuel, look at the difference between diesel and gasoline. Diesel is what does work in the country. Gasoline, which gets you to work, but diesel's over $5 a gallon in most parts of the country. Big separation from regular gas. That's just indication of the pressures on the energy supply system. Those will have translated to farm country higher costs because they use diesel for basically everything from powering the tractors to running their dryers and all sorts of equipment.
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C
Yeah, of course. Bill, what's your view here?
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B
Well, we're beginning now to see data on the overall impact of the tariffs. And a lot of the analysis so far up until this is really focused on the other side, which is the increased costs to Americans of items that are coming in with higher tariffs that are therefore more expensive. And I'll come back to that. This is really the first fairly comprehensive study we've seen of retaliation. And in fairness, I think a lot of us, including me, expected more retaliation. In the beginning we thought that everybody would retaliate, or at least I did. And it turned out almost nobody did. The Chinese did and the Canadians did to a lesser extent, and that was it. Of course, the reality of the global economy these days is if the Chinese retaliate, that's a lot. And in this case it's 14.9 billion in lost ag sales. And I think the salient thing about that is this is not, I don't think, a short term phenomenon. These markets are gone. You know, the Chinese have shifted to Brazil and Argentina and I don't think they're necessarily going to shift back. I mean, they'll probably make some token shifts back. They made a commitment last October to restart some purchases because last year they purchased zero. And the Trump administration has indicated that they committed to, I think, 17 billion in ag imports for them. Not just soybeans, but all agriculture. I don't think the Chinese have confirmed that number. But, you know, if you take it as a number that's significant, it doesn't get us out of the overall ag deficit. And we've discussed that on past episodes. We are now in our fifth year, I believe, of agriculture deficits after more than 70 years of surpluses. So we've kind of turned a corner here. That's disquieting for the farmers. And you know this. If the Chinese actually follow through on a 17 billion commitment, that'll help, but it's not going to erase the projected deficit for this year. And then Scott made the other important point, which is, on top of that, the farmers are facing a boatload of increased costs. Fuel costs, diesel costs, and as mentioned, I think, in the last episode when we were talking to Nassim Fazell from brt, cost of fertilizer is going up. The cost of fertilizer ingredients is going up in part because of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. And the cost of equipment is going up because most farm equipment, no surprise, is made out of steel. And we now have, depending on what country you're coming from, 50 or 25% or maybe 15% tariffs on steel and aluminum. So if you're buying a new tractor, a new combine, a new harvester, first of all, it's expensive anyway. And what you're now having to do is pay something that's substantially more expensive because of the increased price of raw materials. That gets me to the other issue, because what's becoming obvious is that there are real costs here for Americans, and that what Trump said from the beginning is about, well, the foreigner's gonna pay. He didn't say anything about retaliation. And what we're discovering is there wasn't as much retaliation as expected, but what there was has made a difference, particularly to the farmers. And we are seeing increased costs on the import side that where the biggest cost or the most important one has been on intermediate goods. And Scott has pointed out previously that intermediate goods now are like half of our imports. I think something like that. Intermediate goods are the parts and components, the stuff that US Manufacturers use to make end products. And so what we've succeeded in doing is making US Manufactured products more expensive, because now their Inputs are more expensive. It makes it inflationary for them to sell here. It makes them harder for them to compete in the global market.
- [07:40]
A
Now, across the whole economy, this tends to flatten out. There are two groups that are tracking this. One of them is just the US Government collects very good data on import tariffs because they're collecting so we know what collections are and we know what total imports are. You can calculate your actual applied tariff rate, but also the Yale Budget Lab has done really good jobs since Liberation Day of keeping track of average effective tariff rates. When President Trump took office in January 2025, both the Customs Service and the Yale budget lab reported 2% was our typical tariff rate. So 2% of all imports was the tariff rate. So today the actual, if you do the math, which is total imports and then tariffs as a percent, it's 7.3%. The Yale Budget Labs has it at 11.8. But both those numbers are lower than year ago. In June of 2025, the Yale Budget Lab had a total tariffs 14% of all imports. If you did the tariff math, it was closer to 10%, but both those numbers are now down from 14 to 11.8 or from 10 to 7.3. So year on year, it's definitely higher than it was when the President took office by quite a bit, but it's moderated versus a year ago. We'll have to see how this works. Bill's absolutely right. In some of the specific areas where tariffs are the highest, like steel and aluminum, there'll be big differences and noticeable increases, but overall, the tariffs are moderating slightly.
- [09:06]
B
Just to sow more confusion on all this, the Bloomberg number is neither the Yale number nor your other number. The Bloomberg number is that the current effective tariff rate is 10.7%, up from 2.3% in the beginning of January 2025. In other words, before Trump came in, there was a peak, as Scott noted, last June, basically May and June, and it's since come down. They have it at 10.7.
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A
So it's what's the difference between the two?
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B
I think two out of three is above 10. The other thing they have is a little commentary here on absolute volume. And These are the 232 tariffs question, because those are the ones that are sticking around. Those are not the IPA ones.
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C
Right.
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B
That have been invalidated. So cars and car parts, $372 billion worth of affected trade.
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C
Metals.
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B
And that's not just steel, aluminum, but all metals, 299 billion. Timber, 17.7 billion, which is making our housing costs Go up trucks, meaning heavy trucks here, 27.7 billion. And essentially everything else that wasn't exempted, 1.1 trillion. So that's quite a bit. They also have just odd factoid, I've never seen this before, an interesting little chart about the status of Trump's threats. And so they counted up every tariff threat he's made and they decided there were 59 of them since November 2024. And the disposition is interesting, although it doesn't reflect the magnitude of the various ones. But the number that have imposed in full is only 8. They imposed partially, 2 under investigation.
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C
11.
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B
That's probably smaller now because it was before the announcement about the forced labor investigations, which we'll get to in a minute. Threats that have not yet been imposed is the biggest number. 23. And then threats are actions that were repealed 3 and threats that were withdrawn. 12. So it's a mixed picture. It's a much more of a mixed picture than one would think, although some of them are a lot bigger than others, let's put it that way.
- [11:01]
A
Yes. But it also is a reflection of the fact that the president uses tariffs for more than just trade protection, which was the old way to think about tariffs. He's using them basically to move negotiations forward as leverage here and there.
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C
Well, Scott, let me just go back. We'll move on here. But you made the comment that ag community, ag sector, you know, they're strong supporters of the President. Generally, they're well represented in Congress.
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B
To what effect?
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C
If the Chinese market has moved elsewhere, like, how beneficial is that to them if China's moving their soybean purchased to Brazil and elsewhere?
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A
Well, I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that their global soybean demand is declining. If you look at soybeans as a world market, they're probably about the same amount. I just don't know. I haven't looked at that data recently. But I sense no major decline in the consumption of soybeans worldwide. What it means for American farmers is after spending 25 or 30 years cultivating customers in China, they now have to go out and cultivate new customers. And that's real work. That's important work. Reliable suppliers are hard to find. Reliable customers are treated like gold by most companies who are customer facing. So there is work to be done in that area. And when you're dealing with China's retaliation, first of all, as Bill pointed out, it's large in scale. And second, it's often driven by other factors than individual enterprises making decisions. It tends to be a very sort of top down operation. So there's recovery that will have to happen and there's real work involved in satisfying a whole new set of customers.
- [12:31]
B
On the politics of it right now, it's really anecdotal. There was a lot of people asking about this in Iowa because the Iowa primary was on Tuesday. And there were some reports, you know, talking to farmers about, you know, are you less pro Trump than you used to be because of all this, because it's been a big issue. Iowa is, according to the North Dakota study, one of the biggest losers in all of this, along with California and a couple others, because Iowa is soybeans and other commodity crops. And it sounds like, you know, the farmers are unhappy, but most of them are saying we're sticking with Trump and this is one of their problems. Trump knows this. They don't have a lot of leverage because they voted for him three times. And he's pretty confident they're going to do what he tells them the next time. I mean, there'll be some erosion. It'll probably show up in people staying home in the midterms rather than voting the other way. And there's been some work done on that by people like Charlie Cook and Zogby, the professional pollsters who've pointed out that the easiest thing to do if you're unhappy is just you don't vote. And getting farmers that have voted Republican for the last 12 elections to suddenly switch and vote for a Democrat unlikely is a much bigger stretch than just deciding. Well, I'm going to pick pass this time, so we'll see if it shows up in turnout.
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C
We'll find out in five months. But Bill, you just teased our next segment here. And this is news from just this past week. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced new tariffs of 10 to 12 and a half percent on the EU and roughly 60 other nations. The administration is imposing these tariffs under section 300 following a forced labor practices investigation. So, Bill, give us a lay of the land here, what's going on and explain how the administration is doing this under 301.
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B
Yeah, well, that's an interesting question. Whether they're going to get away with it or not. I'll get to that in a minute. Our bottom line from the trade guy's perspective is we were half right. We said that everybody was going to be guilty and that's what happened. Everybody was guilty. All 60 countries are deficient on the forced labor trade front, either because they don't have laws that prohibit it, or if they've got those laws. They haven't done enough in the USTR's judgment to enforce those laws. And so what USTR has issued, you know, the 301 is a process and there's all these hoops and hurdles you have to go to. And to ambassador's credit, unlike what Trump often does, he's not ignoring the hoops and hurdles. He's following the procedures which will allow them to avoid a court loss over process. So the proposed remedy is out for commentary. They're put it out in draft so it'll show up in the Federal Register in the next day or so, request for public comment. And there's going to be public hearings later this month. It's on a fast track. So they're going through all the motions to let people talk about whether this is a good idea or what they should do instead. And then I think what they're going to do is of the 60 countries, I think there were 54 that were found not to have appropriate laws. And so they're getting the 12 and a half percent tariff. And then the remaining one, which includes the EU, which is important, were found to have relevant laws but not doing enough to enforce them. Their tariff is 10%. The interesting word in the announcement is these were referred to consistently as additional tariffs, which suggests to me that they're going to be on top of the existing tariffs. Now, what that really means, I think as a practical matter is the Section 232 tariffs, because the IPA tariffs are gone thanks to the Supreme Court. The 122 tariffs are in effect, but they go away July 24th. And given even the schedule here with the comment period and the hurrians and everything, I think these new tariffs will probably replace the 122 tariffs. So they won't be on top of the existing 10%. They'll just be a new 10%, or for some people, new 12 and a half. But for a lot of items, they'll be on top of the 232 numbers, I think, which means depending on which country you are, your 15 is going to go to 27 and a half or 25 and your 25 is going to go to 35 or 37 and a half. To be fair, there are a lot of exemptions. There's a very, very long list of exemptions that are framed around stuff we don't make, stuff that would cause a lot of increased cost increases here if we ran into supply shortages, stuff that is essential for U.S. production. And if you look through the items, there's a number of agriculture items, beginning with beef, appropriately, because beef prices are way up. So we can't accuse them of making that worse in this case. And there's a lot of metal, steel and aluminum derivative products, downstream products on the exclusion list. And you'll remember that this has been a bone of contention with manufacturers. The reason I said earlier that they're complaining the inputs that they need to make their stuff that they can't get here has gone up, way up in price. I think this is an effort to solve some of those problems. So the net impact may be less than it might seem at first. I saw, I think one story that estimated it was not a thorough study, estimated that maybe half of the items that we import are going to be covered by this and the other half are going to be exempted. So it won't be a big deal. So they say. But you know, obviously, as Scott said earlier, if you're in one of the affected companies, it is a big deal.
- [17:32]
C
Sure.
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B
Because 10% or 12 and a half is not peanuts. What's going to happen next? You know, he'll be sued. Of course he'll be sued. You know, he gets sued for everything. So expect that.
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C
But these are more durable, right? In court?
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B
Well, that's an interesting question. I had thought so. My column this week discusses that a little bit. And I referenced a piece by Alan Wolfe, our friend Alan Wolff, former Deputy Director General of the wto, who wrote a piece. We both came to the conclusion that it might not be as much of a slam dunk as the administration thinks.
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C
Oh, interesting.
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B
Although for different reasons. Allen's reason was sort of constitutional. Get my column. If you're not, it's on the website. Go to the last line, click on the link to his piece and read it. It's very thoughtful. I don't completely agree with it, but basically he's arguing that the Constitution gives revenue authority to the Congress. End of story. And this is an unconstitutional extension of executive authority that the courts ought to strike down, as they did with aipa. So maybe they will. I've taken a narrower view, and if you look at the Federal Register notice, you'll see that Ambassador Greer has too. The statute says that in order to act, you have to find that a foreign act, policy or practice is an unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory burden on United States commerce. And that falls into, like, multiple parts. Is it unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory? Number one and two, is it a burden on United States commerce because it can be unjustifiable and not make any difference, you know, or it can be a burden and not be unjustifiable, et cetera. So you have to prove all these things. The administration is asserting them, and they've got a lengthy study of all 60 countries, which I've not looked at yet to back it up. My suspicion is that if you are a smart lawyer and choose your plaintiff wisely and choose your countries wisely, you may be able to get the court to decide that in the particular case you're suing. This is not an unreasonable. That's really the only word that the master career used. This is not an unreasonable act, policy or practice that burdens or restricts U.S. commerce, for example. And this is already. Screams of outrage are already coming from the EU with good reason, because they have a law on this subject. And this has been something that the EU has actually attempted to deal with through a number of measures that they've taken over the years. They would probably say that they are more aggressive on forced labor than we are. We would probably not agree with that. But to imply that they're deficient is obviously offensive to them. The chairman of the Parliament's trade subcommittee has said this is either ridiculous or absurd. I forget which word he used for this particular thing. So they'll push back and they'll argue this is an unconstitutional extension of the statute that goes beyond the president's authority. Somebody's going to say to the court, you know, in a case like that, what you need to do is find that this is not an unreasonable practice. It does not burden or restrict U.S. commerce. And the USTR got it wrong. I don't know if that'll prevail. And I think there's certainly going to be cases where it won't prevail. The administration says everybody's guilty. Well, it's wrong to say that everybody's innocent. There's a number in there that certainly are guilty. So I think, though, if you choose your victims wisely, I mean, company that's actually suffered with forced labor imports from the country, or allegedly forced labor imports from a country that probably is doing something about that. I think some of these may be winners in court, but not all of them. Alan says they're all going to lose.
- [20:55]
A
Yeah. Point is, I think, Bill, what you're describing is something that's very fact intensive. This is not easy litigation. I tend to agree more with you than Alan. Alan is a wonderful legal scholar, but I don't think the constitutional argument will be all that strong because 301 was created by the Congress. It's been statute. It's a specific delegation to the U.S. trade Representative to deal with unfair practices. But when you get down to defining how unfair is unfair, that gets very fact specific. I think claims are going to be difficult to make. Also, keep in mind that while we have this proposed rule on forced labor up at the plate, over in the on deck circle is the 301 on structural excess capacity. So there's another bite at this apple. All of which make me believe Secretary Bessant's original force forecast, which is whatever the Supreme Court decides, we're not going to see a drop in revenue from tariffs. So I think we're on this train for a while. And once again, look, forced labor or prison labor has been prohibited for imports to the US since I think the McKinley Tariff act of 1896. It's a common feature. Sometimes it gets expanded in its coverage. Our favorite, Hufflepuff. There was an expansion of a clause in the trade act of 1930, the Smoot Hawley, that was never applied for by an individual firm about forced labor and then became this entire program. So there's a lot of ground to be plowed.
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C
All right, well, let's turn to our final topic today and take a quick look at some latest news on the tariff refund process. The DOJ is asking an appeals court to overturn rulings from the Court of International Trade. And Bill, as I understand it, this dispute is in part centered around whether or not the trade court has the authority to order refunds on a nationwide basis. Am I reading that right or where am I wrong?
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B
No, that's right. First, a short update. Refunds of unliquidated entries appears to be proceeding as planned. The CBP is providing updates to the court. I think they've. Now, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think they said something like Maybe up to 20 billion has actually been paid out. The estimate of what needs to be paid out is still 166 billion. So there's a long way to go. But wheels are turning. Mechanisms are developing. You know, one of the problems has been companies that didn't sign up for the electronic funds transfer program that CBP has. Companies, the ones that haven't done that are now doing it because they figured out they won't get their money ever for anything from CBP unless they do. That old stuff will take care of it in time. The new wrinkle involves entries that were finally liquidated.
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C
What does that mean?
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B
It means basically that customs has, I think 312 days after entry to formally liquidate the item. That means that they essentially clear it, Everything is settled, amount of duty is determined, the duty is paid, everybody's happy, and the books are closed on that particular entry because it takes a long time, I mean, more than 300 days for customs to do that. They have a schedule, and it sort of rolls out. One category of stuff is stuff that fell victim to the earliest tariffs. Trump announced the steel aluminum ones in February of 25, which were under IPO, and then the Liberation Day tariffs in April. 312 Days takes you into sometime before the Supreme Court decision. So there was a number that got finally liquidated before the court came in. The other category, which I don't know as much about, seems to be those that are informally liquidated, that are. Which tend to be small numbers from small companies that are liquidated virtually when they enter, they come in, the duties paid at the same time, and that's sort of the end of it. There's. It's an informal process. This is not Walmart. This is individual entities. Yeah.
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C
Yep.
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B
But the point is, in all these cases, liquidation is over. The administration argues that in that case, the only way that those people can get their money back is if a court orders them to get their money back, orders CBP to pay them back, which means, as a practical matter, they have to sue, they have to go to court, file a lawsuit, win, and then CBP will pay up. The judge issued a universal injunction, essentially ordering CBP to pay anyway. And the Justice Department is arguing that he doesn't have authority to do that, that the decision last year, which is Trump v. Casa C a S a removed the authority to issue this kind of universal injunction that covers everybody as opposed to just the handful of plaintiffs in the case that'll be litigated, I think, because the court. The court left the door open here, which was you can file a class action lawsuit. And so one of two things will happen. Either court of appeals will slap down the Justice Department's request and let the order stand. In the end, the Supremes are going to have to do what they should have done the first time, which is to lay out what they wanted to have happen. You know, and all they said was, the terrorists are invalid, period. They could have gone one step further and said, and here's who gets their money back. And, you know, here's the process you need to follow to do that. But they didn't do that. It's going to come back to haunt them because it's going to end up in their lap and they're going to have to answer those questions. So they could have done it the first time, but it'll probably go down that road. The alternative, if justice wins, the smart lawyers are going to rally everybody in that category, file multiple class action lawsuits. They'll win because the Supremes have already invalidated the tariffs. It's not a mystery as to how the courts are going to rule. It just forces everybody to go through an extra step, forces them to hire lawyers and therefore pay part of the revenue or the refunds to the lawyers. I think the Justice Department is banking on the thought that a lot of people won't bother, particularly the small guys, because it's too much effort.
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A
That's exactly right. The small players have moved on. They've sold the goods. They're into the next buying cycle. No one wants to go back, which
- [26:31]
B
means they don't have to give us much back.
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A
Right.
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B
I can see it, but it's cynical. You know, it's not justice, and it's kind of annoying. I think, you know, way back in the beginning of this, what Scott and I both said was, you know, the administration could make this easier. They can make it hard, and they've chosen to make it hard. And the losers in doing that are not going to be the large companies that have in house lawyers and, you know, major compliance operations where this is just one more task. The losers are going to be the small importers that, like Scott said, have moved on, can't afford to litigate, and they're just going to say, well, you know, I'll chalk that one up to bad experience, and it's too bad because they can't afford to lose.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Scott, is this the right strategy?
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A
It is consistent with the administration's behavior all along. They were obviously, they didn't agree with the outcome of the IBA case and they've not obstructed in any way, but they're just, they're not making it easy on anyone and they have a right to do that. But it is for me, the flaw here is once the Supreme Court decided they were going to take the case and decide the case, to decide the case without a remedy is kind of open the door for this activity. I think there's plenty of blame to go around. But once again, every once in a while, Alex, in my long life at work, I've overpaid taxes here and there. And at some point you just, you don't worry about it. You find a pile of items that you could have taken as a deduction, but it's just too much work to talk to your CPA and go back and redo it. That's the situation most importers are in who are in this situation where they have a liquidated transaction. So you move on. Life goes on.
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B
Those of us who are married to a CPA do not have that problem. I just want to note that there's
- [28:08]
A
less friction in your transaction, that's for sure.
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C
Bill, after hearing you, I wish I was married to a lawyer, because they sound to do pretty well here.
- [28:14]
B
Well, yeah. As I've been saying for years, they're always the winners. No matter what happens, the lawyers are the winners.
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C
All right, well, we have two other winners to talk about today. One is our dear friend Evan Brown, who has been a huge part of this program for years. As we talked about a month or two ago, Evan has been accepted into a wonderful graduate program at Princeton. Today is his final recording of Trae Guys. He occasionally has jumped in as host here and done a much better job than I could ever do. And he has been such a great part of this team and the economics team at csis. So, Evan, we all want to wish you congratulations and wish you the best of luck. We're so proud of you and thank you for all you've done for the Trey guys over the years.
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B
Thanks, Alex. It's been such a pleasure being a trade dude.
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C
Sure.
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B
I don't know if I'm a full trade guy, but wishing you all the best and hoping to keep in touch with trade guys fandom.
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C
Well, you'll always be a trade dude. And, Evan, congratulations. Yeah.
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B
In national security hierarchy, you know, there are sherpas and then there are yaks. Evan's been a yak for us and a very, very good one indeed.
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A
We'll miss you, but we're glad you're moving on to the career you want for yourself. So congratulations.
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C
Very excited for you.
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B
It's been an honor. Thanks, guys.
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C
The second winner here is trey guy Scott, who has welcomed a new addition to his family. And, Scott, we're so happy for you and your growing family with your second grandkid, I believe, and very, very thrilled for you.
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A
Well, thank you. Yes. Yes. Benjamin Charles Sunwood came into the World on June 2. He came home from the hospital with his mom today, and so they're becoming new parents, and mom and dad are happy. Baby is healthy, everything we could ask for. So we're richly blessed.
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C
That's wonderful.
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B
I haven't tried to get any sleep yet, but just wait.
- [29:56]
A
Yeah, sleep has been optional so far, but won't be forever.
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C
I'm about eight years into parenthood and I'm still not getting any sleep, so I don't know if there's light at the end of that tunnel for anyone.
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B
We also have a third winner, and that is our new producer, Olivia, who has joined the Schulcher team at CSIS and is going to be succeeding Evan as our producer. So welcome, Olivia. We look forward to more working with you and having a trade. What? Dudette? Is that the right term? I don't. I'm not sure. Trade gal, maybe?
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C
Sure. Trade gal. Trey. Gal. Olivia.
- [30:28]
B
We can do that.
- [30:29]
C
So lots of good things happening here, and it's always great to end on a. On a positive note. So, Bill and Scott, it's great to be back with you. Thanks to all of our listeners, as always. We'll be back with you next week. Take care. Until then, Csis podcast. For more audio content, visit csis.org podcast thanks for tuning in.