Global Trade This Week – Episode 139
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Doug Draper 0:10
Hello, everyone, and welcome to a another edition of global trade this week are my my normal co host, Mr. P is on assignment. Not really sure what that means, but he couldn't join us today he's out traveling. And so we get to have Keenan join in. He's usually behind the mic, and now he's in front of it. So Keenan, you always come and you always do a phenomenal job on the Philippines. So welcome. How are you doing?
Keenan Brugh 0:38
Thank you. I'm doing well today it is feeling more and more like spring. I know we were just talking a little bit about the snow, there's still a little snow and activity left up in the mountains, but starting to feel more like spring happy daylight savings to everybody. That just changed. So we'll come to the new schedule.
Doug Draper 0:57
Yes, exactly. And I haven't heard any Well, I haven't paid that close attention. But usually there's articles that says daylight savings time, you know loses X number of productivity hours because people can't adjust their body and yada yada yada. numbers
Keenan Brugh 1:12
go up and everything Yeah, hear about it as much this time either. Just happens ceremoniously.
Doug Draper 1:20
I'm like you've ever taken a flight to another timezone Come on people you can, your body will adjust my goodness.
Keenan Brugh 1:29
I thought I heard they were gonna finish it once and for all, but it seems to be different places. I'm not sure what the official ruling is. I'm just gonna keep going. And we'll see what happens what they like to ask. Yeah,
Doug Draper 1:39
you know, and you say, Well, I think everybody at this time Google's Wyatt, why do we have it but some, you know, it's the farmers and then it was during World War Two to conserve, and all this other kind of stuff. I'm sure there's benefits, the ski industry, right, there's value and having it with the ski industry to stay longer. So who knows, everybody has their own interpretation. Everybody likes it or doesn't like it. And I think it will continue for quite a while. But it's always funny to see. projections, like, X number of car accidents go up and, and people's whatever, you know, I'm just like, come on. You ever flown on a plane? It's called a time change one hour deal with it.
Keenan Brugh 2:26
Fair enough.
Doug Draper 2:27
Yes. So with that, you know, I'll get off my soapbox unless you have any other comments about Daylight Savings Time keen, and I'll let you have the final word.
Keenan Brugh 2:36
I mean, to me, it's another good sign that we're going into spring. You know, it's shifting. Okay. It's a little later, later, later now, but overall, the days are getting longer. So that's something I'm happy about. Yeah,
Doug Draper 2:48
yeah. We'll leave it there. See, I'm all down. Debbie Downer. I'm playing the Pete Mentos of the duo today. And you're you're you're happy so well in that one on a positive note. You're right, perfect. But let's jump into it. Yeah, this is called global trade this week. So we have some real, real good topics. And I like our mixture this week. So Keenan, you go first, my friend. Sounds
Keenan Brugh 3:12
good. Well, speaking of positive news, depending on the audience, Congratulations, everyone to new Bitcoin all time high prices. As of recording here, we are over 72,400 US dollars per Bitcoin. So new all time, high territory, many people are probably familiar with the ETFs. I think we've even covered it with Pete, the ETFs that have been approved. And you know, it kind of moves sideways for a while. But that's been a part of the local story here. Now that we're all time highs. I think a lot of other activity is coming from Asia where people are buying from an illiquid market, just buying the Bitcoin itself. And then in the financial industries, we're seeing more activity in London, it looks like we did the ETFs they're doing these et ends these notes, and it looks like they're starting to pave the way is taking applications trying to do the next wave of allowing institutional money to get into it. And Bitcoin, although it just recently topped silver as a market cap, it is relatively small compared to how much money exists out there, and how fast money is being created. So there's increasing demand there, though, outside of just the all time high prices, I really wanted to talk about kind of the future of it. You know, we've seen China and Asia generally be a hotspot for mining and then kind of crack down on it several different times to the point where now Texas is the the leader in mining with both cheap electricity and the regulatory kind of friendly environment for it, though. We'll see if that maintains because we've seen a lot of other mining issues in Kazakhstan and other countries that have welcomed it. All right, it's time to time
Doug Draper 4:54
out because here's the deal. You need to take a step back and explain my I mean, right? I mean, I kind of understand Bitcoin and when you sent that I looked in and I bought $250 worth of bitcoin, like, however long ago and it's now up to 325 bucks. So I am a beneficiary and baby. I never understand Bitcoin mining. And before you jump into it, because you're very well educated, dumb it down for this Kansas boy and explain what it is? Sure.
Keenan Brugh 5:21
Let's try to do the explain like I'm five or I'll do like an explained like I'm 15 or 25 That's a good level. The mining is what helps protect the scarcity of Bitcoin in the world of computers in an image, a meme, you can copy and paste, right? So there's digital abundance of just infinite of anything, Napster making a copy of a music file and all that sort of stuff. Bitcoin, solved the problem first and well, being able to have digital scarcity, where this mining, which is essentially computers doing math, the Sha 256 encryption, it's just math over and over and over what they're doing is proof of work making it financially disincentivized to do this mining unless you're, you're doing it legitly. So what makes this this is what makes Bitcoin digitally scarce, you can't spend the same Bitcoin for two different transactions, once you spend it, you no longer have it. And this is done by mining. And it does take a lot of electricity, energy. And that's why it has been criticized over the last 10 years or so about it using all this electricity, different things. However, a lot of people have countered with the fact that it's actually measuring the electricity where some of these costs might have been implicit in the financial industry sector previously, but just wasn't much measured, right? You can, you can calculate roughly how much electricity is being used by Bitcoin miners around the world. And what's the carbon footprint on that. However, if someone's moving a ton of gold, no one's really counting the carbon emissions of that ton of gold, or the paper or the servers, and all the banks or the things. So there's criticism on the energy usage, but at least is being measured. And so right now, and I guess for the last several years, there's sort of been a race to find the cheapest electricity, you can in order to be profitable, right, because if you're mining in a place with expensive electricity, and someone else's mining in a place with cheap electricity, they're gonna win, and you're gonna go out of business. So coming up, I believe this spring, I should, I should have looked up the exact date. But there's another havening coming up, which every so often, mining, Bitcoin becomes harder. And so every time that happens, quite a few of the miners go out of business, you really need the cheapest electricity in order to do this. And a lot of it has to do with kind of state sponsorship of the infrastructure and a lot of clean energy technology. And that's why this article from The Economist was interesting. You know, there's cheap energy in Texas. And that's where a lot of mining activities happening. But there's also cheap energy in Africa. And it's one of the things where some people in favor of it are arguing that Bitcoin mining can become a base load demand, that then helps the investment infrastructure of new power generation within Africa, and helps be like a user of last resort to make sure an assets not produced and isn't being used, right. So we'll see, you know, there's always challenges and opportunities with a continent like Africa, some people are seeing that that could be the next place for mining though, we could also see infrastructure or regulatory issues that keep people out of there, but a lot of it is driven by economics. So I kind of kind of started off with the explaining. Did you have any other questions? Or does that make sense about the mining? Can I try again in any other way? No,
Doug Draper 8:53
it makes it it makes enough sense, right? I feel a little bit like a homer simpson meme where he just stares into black space, right or blank space when he doesn't quite understand it. But here's the other so I want to put that aside. How do you make money mining? Who is allocating the amount of bitcoin that you get based on mining?
Keenan Brugh 9:15
Sure. So the Bitcoin protocol just the rules that no one's really in charge of allows for people to mine they do the work they spy and spend electricity on their machines, their hardware assets and contribute that to the total hash power of Bitcoin entirety as a network. And then every once in a while, kind of like a lottery ticket. You might win a block, if you solve a block, well with your machines calculating then you are rewarded a certain number of Bitcoin and that's a huge reward. Bitcoins are worth a lot of money. So what people end up doing is working with a large number of other miners because you could if I if I just plugged in a single miner here and my House, plugged it in, I can have it running for five years and never make any money with it whatsoever. So people join into a pool. So then I contribute my processing power to a pool. And then when someone solves it, then they split the Bitcoin out of between everyone contributing, if that kind of makes sense a little bit, so it's a lot of the mining does absolutely nothing. And then every once in a while people solve it and their reward is Bitcoin.
Doug Draper 10:28
So what you're describing is the lottery.
Keenan Brugh 10:36
Instead of its incentives, its incentives, that has to do with it. It's less lottery life, but in practice, it could be lottery. And they are starting to make these little projects now where you could buy like a $300 unit, just kind of for fun. And then that totally is lottery where it's just going to be kind of a novelty thing in your house until it hits and then you have several Bitcoin to your name, if that ever happens.
Doug Draper 10:59
Crazy. Yeah. Well, I appreciate I know a little bit more about things. And I'm sure I'll ask more questions to get confused. But you are the man about town that can speak intelligently and understand the Bitcoin. And I appreciate that.
Keenan Brugh 11:15
Well, thank you. We'll see I'm sure Pete will want to grill me harder on it. Next time he's on or we're talking. I think a lot of people are learning and it's one of those things that there's still a lot more to learn and questions to be asked about, you know, sustainability, energy price incentives, if countries would do well by incentivizing mining in the Bitcoin industry, to come to their countries like is being considered an Africa or if there's warnings from countries like Kazakhstan and others that had incentivized it and then had some negative repercussions that made electricity more expensive for their own citizens and different things. So there's a lots of questions to be had about it. Overall positive story today for people who are into bitcoin all time highs, and then with anything economics, there's always the dismal science aspect of it. opportunity costs.
Doug Draper 12:05
Yeah, yeah. Well, you were positive on Daylight Savings Time, and now you're positive on bringing Bitcoin so to Checkmarx. Keen, and you're Mr. Positivity today. Hey, so here's my first topic that I saw pop up over the weekend in that India, country of India has signed some more free trade agreements, this the this one specifically with Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, of all places. And so here's that. So number one, there's more free to trade agreements going on. The underlying theme is that India, is finding its place in the world. Right. There's been a lot of changes. It's one of the it's I think, is the most populous country now. Is that what it is?
Keenan Brugh 12:58
It's a good question. It's up there. Yeah, definitely.
Doug Draper 13:01
Yeah, anyway, we should know that here on global trade, but it's it's trending that way. But I think you're just seeing that India is becoming a little more of a powerhouse, and becoming more strategic on their alignment, right. And the cool thing on this one is that one of that there were two reasons that that they wanted to sign. The government had said they wanted to sign these was for economic progress. And this is unique Kenyan opportunity for our youth, which is very forward thinking and visionary to say, we're here to stay, we want to be part of the conversation, we want to be in the room where it happens for all you Hamilton fans out there. And they're making tangible steps to to make that happen. So this specifically, India's going to lift some tariffs on industrial goods, in addition for these countries to make investments into their country related to pharma machinery, and then general manufacturing. So Australia, and it was it Australia and the UAE, was also trade agreements they signed in the last two years. And it's kind of a dichotomy of the self resiliency, and of what India's had for years is like, Hey, we got it covered. We don't need free trade agreements. It's a paradigm shift. It's creating some internal conflict within the the country that I have read about these, this most recent free trade agreements. So anyway, my take is here's another example of India positioning themselves as a world economic. They're not a power per se, but they're positioning themselves in the one key word is that they're opportunities for the youth right? To me, that's very visionary, and means that there's a plan, and we'll see about how this goes, but they are going to be a formidable player in global trade as things progressed, so anyway, that's my take on that free trade agreement that was just signed. and
Keenan Brugh 15:01
it is a big sign. And I did a little bit of research here while you were just speaking to that point, you are right, it looks like India did overtake China in 2022 as the number one most populous country. And that is kind of coinciding with their economic rising as well, which then now they're getting the attention of different countries and probably at a little better negotiating position now than they may have been previously. But people still want to work with them. They want to produce and manufacture in the country, as well as have access to it to be able to sell their finished goods and services to Indians as a now a larger market economy that could have more consumers. So very interesting. Congratulations to India, I know there's a lot of work that goes into those free trade agreements. So a lot of back and forth different things. So probably a lot of people were working behind the scenes to make those happen. And hopefully, that means that India will continue to rise with more wealth, more jobs, more economic opportunities, and hopefully do so in a sustainable way. I think that's something that India, like Africa has an opportunity to do things better than the way that have been done in the past. I know, there's always conversations about developing countries, leapfrogging how development has looked in industrialized Western countries, and can they do things cleaner, better skip over some of the growth patterns? That being said, I think there's still a lot of coal burning power plants in India, right? They're still generating that way, though. I think they're also in the head for some advanced nuclear type things, thorium, they might be kind of up towards the front of the pack for some of that stuff. So I'd be hopeful and optimistic. I'd like them to solve some of those energy issues, because we need clean energy, but we also need it affordable in order to do that manufacturing or Bitcoin mining.
Doug Draper 16:55
Yeah, that's an excellent point that I thought of. And we'll see if there is some strategic initiatives around energy production, and efficiencies and carbon footprint, but But you're right, that is all part of it, because there will be a spotlight on how they generate their power in that country. Because right now, it's not very clean, and it's not very sustainable. So it'll be interesting. If they move in that direction, and they start showing the world. Look at all this cool stuff that we're doing to mitigate our carbon footprint into the world. Further shows that they're trying to find their place in the global arena. So excellent point. Keenan. I'm gonna keep an eye on that one. All right. So this comes to our halftime again, this is brought to you by CAP logistics. I have to do all the hyping on this one. Keenan, because you actually worked for the company. But again, we wouldn't be here without without cap logistics. And we just want to thank you, personally. Thank you, Keenan. So anyway, good. Halftime, we just talked about whatever we want to talk about. So you want to go first? You want me to rip it?
Keenan Brugh 18:07
Yeah, sure. Let's go ahead and start off here. What was my halftime? That's right. So we were talking about aircraft and different things going on, especially Boeing having some safety challenges. My question, I guess, is how bad things have to get until people stop flying. It's one of these issues where Boeing's had a hard time, but I've also been seeing some Airbus situations, just woke up to the more news 12 hospitalized after a Boeing problem in Latin America. Yesterday, overnight, it just seems like either it's the news and reporting that there's a lot more stories being reported. Or it seems like there's a lot more issues on airplanes than in the past, I haven't dove into the data to see if it is more of a perceptual trend or if it is a real trend with these newer class of airplanes and more software and things that could go wrong, but it seems like things are going wrong to the point where people are making jokes you know, I'm getting texts from friends saying like showing the information of their in a Boeing this or that model like Wish me luck bros. You know, like taking the flight people people didn't think about flights that way years ago. But now it's like, am I going to survive this more so because they are seeing those stories? I'm happening more in numbers. I know kayak is now offering filters. So you can try to filter flights you purchase based on what assets are there. It's not going to be 100% I think airlines still switch assets at the end. Anyway. So if you're really trying to avoid it, that'd be very tough. But I just wanted to get your thoughts and opinions on that. Are people going to change behavior at some point? I know driving is pretty dangerous, but people drive all the time anyway. Is it going to be a relative risk thing or could it get so bad that people stop flying and then if it starts slowing down, and that could be an issue for the manufacturers of said plant If they're working with less demand and less margin, they might not be able to make as good of planes or hire as many people. So just thoughts going around that as I'm seeing more and more of these stories of wheels, flying off doors blowing out software, not reading, right and dropping, or even human type things. I saw a story of two pilots both falling asleep for half hour. So recently, I got to take for people to stop flying. I guess that's my halftime question. Yeah.
Doug Draper 20:28
A whole lot more than what's going on right now. You know, there's, I saw that, that article about the two pilots that fell asleep. And I don't know, man, it's it's interesting travel, I think is greater than pre pandemic, I saw some numbers about 2019. And there's more people traveling, the experience economy is still very important to folks post COVID. And you start looking at these statistics flying safer than driving and all that kind of good stuff. So I think social media makes it a little bit, you know, easier to bring those stories out. But if you say, and I'm just using this example, 1% of all flights have some sort of problem. Well, if you're making more flights, the 1% number is going to be larger, right, even though the percentage is still the same. I think that probably has something to do with it. But the experience economy is, I think, here to stay in some degree. And so I don't think people are going to stop traveling.
Keenan Brugh 21:26
Yeah, I think you're right, people want to get from point A to point B. And I think you're right. Also, it is just more sensational. Obviously, if a depressurization of a cabin that, you know, at altitude, that's pretty wild. But people are more likely to share these sorts of incidents of stories or tic TOCs. As opposed to, you know, car accidents, people. People pay attention when they hear crash, but not many of those go as viral in the news or tick tock circuit as much. And people are okay with driving still, eventually, that might change with self driving vehicles. And then at some point, the risk ratio won't be the same. Probably driven by insurance companies saying no, you will have your robot driving you unless you want to pay this self driving human or the human driving tax, which probably will be more expensive, but we're not there yet. So yeah, interesting trends Be safe out there. But also take risks into consideration with the big picture. Yeah, well,
Doug Draper 22:23
that's behavioral economics, right, that says, Pete, that's his wheelhouse. So we'll, we'll see about that. The funny thing is that my halftime and my second topic are all related to, to flying and in cargo. And in my halftime, as I saw this, that there is now a self screening, self security screening TSA location. In Las Vegas, it's just opening up today. Where you literally self screen yourself and walk through I don't know all the mechanisms of it. It's a different type of machine. But the TSA said it's not going to be any faster, but it's going to be more of a pleasant and passenger friendly experience. And oh, yeah, they don't need as many TSA agents to do it. So I was liking us to the grocery store, how many times you've been a grocery store, Kenan where there are 15 lines that used to be manned individually, where you just raced through, and now all those are closed, and there's eight, you know, self checkouts, and there's two people management in the lines, you know, way in the back, what happens is inevitably, you'd like put your thumb on the scale, or you move something in your bag to fit your milk or whatever. And then it says, please put down your final item. And attendant, it's on its way. And then you're waiting there for a few minutes. Not a few minutes, you're waiting there. You know, 1520 seconds for somebody kills like minutes. Yeah. And we can reset the machine. So when I saw that one I'm envisioning, is this like the grocery store effect where there's going to be people that are pissed because they either don't know how to use it because it's brand new, or it's super hypersensitive that any quick mannerism is going to set that thing off. And there's only so many TSA agents that are servicing multiple people coming out. So my take is a it sounds kind of cool, but I think you're gonna see more. Speaking of social media, I think you're gonna see a lot of freak outs where people are trying to do the self self screening, they think it will be faster, just like self checkout at a grocery store, and there's going to be problems and people are going to get pissed. So anyway, keep an eye on Vegas. It's just rolling out today. And we'll have to see how that comes around.
Keenan Brugh 24:41
Yeah, we'll have to keep an eye on it. You know, I've some friends who travel a lot more than I do, and they live in swear by things like TSA PreCheck or the private you know, clear this or that and correct me if I'm wrong, but this pre screen this new technology, self service is a part of the precheck so it's it i don't know, I thought I read that I'm not an expert probably should have read more about it, I thought it was for a subclass of like people who are already kind of paying extra and doing approval ahead of time. So that may help, because it's a smaller group than just everybody. And it will be probably frequent travelers who are pretty familiar with the travel process in general, like already kind of run through the previous pre check background check. People seem excited about this outside of it just being part of the pre check. People are saying, This is how it should have been after 2001. Anyway, you know, how much time and effort has been kind of lost and wasted by people just sitting in lines. And, you know, obviously, everyone wants to be safe and prevent hijackings or terrorist activities and things, though, if you multiply all the minutes, and all the people, it's probably adds up to quite a bit of economic time and cost that if we could figure out a better way to do this, we probably should figure it out.
Doug Draper 25:54
Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. So all right, that's it. Halftime is over. We're gonna jump into this brought halftime brought to you by CAP logistics, again, Keenan. Thank you, sir. Holla, I think is what they say in Hawaii. And let's, let's rip it What's your second? Second topic?
Keenan Brugh 26:13
Yeah, so cycling back towards the beginning of our conversation with daylight savings time, it is starting to feel more like spring now. And along with spring, I'm thinking about gardening and getting plants going and all that stuff. So if any other gardeners are out there, you're probably similarly thinking about those sorts of things. But it got me thinking about the growing price of food. You know, there's been droughts. And then there's also been various issues on the consumer side of I think you and Pete, were talking recently about when the surge pricing on burgers, I was reading on Zero Hedge that that's not limited to just Wendy's other restaurants, dining experiences, lots of companies are looking at this. And just kind of reflecting on it, it reminds me a little bit of how restaurants think of a sushi place would offer a happy hour deal, you get cheaper sushi, when you go during the off hour when they just open up and no one's there, right? Because they don't need to try to incentivize you to come when they're busy, they're already busy. And so it's kind of like that, except for it seems that food prices go up everywhere. And then you get a little discount if it's not the right time. But then every other time, it's going to be uber surge pricing type thing. So from what I've been reading, people are expecting it's just another reason like food is going to become more expensive feel for the restaurants and the companies in that space. I know, they're often operating on tight margins, their labor, their input costs have gone up. So they have to try to do something. And so in some sense, that makes a lot of sense to try to get the right price for what it's worth at the time. But then it might also just push more people out of eating out in public anyway, if it's just a hassle, or you don't know what the price is going to be or you would go at the prime time. But then like now that you know you're going to have to go at the prime time, you're just not going to do it anyway. It's tough. I don't know about you and or other people out there. But I like to cook. And so if you threaten to make eating out even more expensive, I'm just going to cook more at home. I like it anyway. So yeah, what were some of the your thoughts on this initial part of the story, the surge pricing, and then I also have some a couple other topics about food and things going into food costs as well. Yeah.
Doug Draper 28:30
Well, the surge, the whole concept of surge pricing, whether it's food, or we spoke last week about surge pricing in the parcel industry. I think with artificial intelligence and machine learning, I think there's gonna be other things that you and I are not not necessarily thinking of right here. And now, where some sort of surge pricing or behavioral analysis will impact economic decisions, or companies. I mean, literally, we just saw, we talked about this go round with food last week it was was parcel and the transportation as a whole. So I think surge pricing is going to be kind of here to stay to some degree. And then foods interesting. People have to eat, right. I've worked for warehouse companies in the past, whose core and legacy business has been in the food. And all of those companies are decades, if not half a century, 75 years old people need to eat, right. And they may change what they're eating or how they're eating it meaning cooking at home. But, you know, foods food, and it should be interesting, but another topic on behavioral economics, right?
Keenan Brugh 29:39
Absolutely. Yeah. And you just reminded me again, thinking more about within the freight market, it's taking these restaurant type transactions and turning it more into a market where there's rapid bidding of you know, I want the burger No, I want the burger. Well, if two people want the burger, then I'm going to charge a little more for the burger type of logic which In essence, if it works well could price things more fairly, more accurately incentivize demand to kind of spread over those who are more price sensitive, maybe I cook at home or go to happy hour for the sushi restaurant and people who aren't price sensitive, end up paying more. And maybe that's a better way for it to go. So the surge is interesting in and of itself on the behavioral side. Also wanted to mention a couple things I saw an economist article about bear struggling really hard after finishing the acquisition of Monsanto. So they're the ones who make Roundup Ready GMO products, as well as the roundup itself, the glyphosate to spray. And that is one of those things where that's been that is kind of emblematic, it's not alone. But that's a major part of the whole green revolution of improving the amount of food that can be grown off of one acre, and done at scale with more and more large scale farming companies. And another story was talking about how farm size has been increasing, and the numbers of farmers have been going down. It's more and more of these larger farm operations. They rely on things like glyphosate, however, things like that are also now being found to cause health issues. And so there's been large settlements awarded against Monsanto against Bayer, that they're now having to pay out. And it makes me think about how investors are going to look at these sorts of things in the future, you know, if there's going to be large amounts of risk associated with the health of these things. There's that new study about karma clot in oats, I had never even heard of karma clot as some sort of pesticide or thing out there. But they're these chemicals are out there. But there's more and more health issues associated with them, which means more lawsuits, which then means more cost for the manufacturers of those using them, which is just yet another factor that might be driving the increase of food costs here. So if everyone out there is looking, I went a little bit more into the dismal science on this one. But if you're looking for the optimistic, Kenan sign off here, it's a spring so it's a great time to start planning your own garden. There
Doug Draper 32:05
you go. Your book ended it right. Ended the bad news. That's
Keenan Brugh 32:09
right, man, a little sandwich there a bit.
Doug Draper 32:13
Nice. Well, hey, here's my last topic. And I'll keep it super short, because it's more of an observation than then really forward thinking comments. But there is a new Airbus freighter that is coming to the US. And I know you're not supposed to call out specific dates on podcasts. But it's landing right now in Orlando, it's bringing over some parts for SpaceX rocket that's going to be launching soon. But if you've seen it's called the Airbus beluga, because it looks like a beluga whale where I mean, it almost looks like a cartoon. But there's four of them across the world right now, three of them in our operation, ones always on standby. And if you, you know, we'll throw some pictures up or something. But this doesn't even like a fly, right. And it's kind of an alternative to the Antonov that our industry is probably familiar with over the last, you know, 3040 years. And so it's pretty cool. So the thing I want to talk about or make make a point here is that is the niche air freight industry going to survive because the traditional air freight industry was saturated? Post COVID, during the roaring 20s, where everybody was buying stuff online, everybody wanted their stuff as soon as possible. So let's put a bunch of capacity in the market with air freight. And oh, by the way, everybody's traveling more so there's a lot more airplanes up there that have empty bellies, right that are that need to be filled. But while the traditional air freight markets, I saw something that loop and loop de loop Thunbergia, their profits are down at 6%. Year over year Coonan naugles. air freight division is down revenue wise around 40%. I got these statistics for Freightways. Just with the E commerce slowdown. So my point is you get a crazy plane that looks like a whale. And you have very niche e service that not many people can provide. And I think you're gonna be okay in the air freight market. But anyway, check it out the Airbus beluga freighter. It's a crazy design, and I don't know what have you seen it? Have you seen this airplane?
Keenan Brugh 34:28
I have, and I'll have to throw in a photo for anyone who hasn't here. It does look like a beluga and I agree with you. It looks like it shouldn't be able to fly. Like are you? Are you joking with me is this thing we're supposed to believe but it does and it is large and has a capacity. So it's interesting that it's arriving carrying large parts for SpaceX. I also thought an interesting part of the story is that it's actually being operated as a beluga transport airline company. me from Airbus. So imagine if Boeing started operating as an airline and offering extra large transportation. Whereas To my knowledge, they don't do that, that they are the manufacturer and then other companies specialize in operating. So it's an interesting sort of integration move, whether that'd be vertical or horizontal, but Airbus going in and being a company that uses their own product for that specialized niche. It's very interesting. Yeah.
Doug Draper 35:29
Yeah. Very cool. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of global trade this week. Keenan, thanks for filling in. As always, you bring great perspective on topics that I kind of barely understand, at least related to Bitcoin. So we may have to bring it up again. But I also want to thank all of our listeners for joining us today. We appreciate your engagement every week. Please. Lie like, subscribe, make some feedback on our topics. And if you have ideas that you want us to banter back and forth, please let us know. And I think with that, we'll shut it down. And thanks, buddy. Have a good week.
Keenan Brugh 36:06
Thank you, you all as well. All right.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai