Global Trade This Week – Episode 149
What’s going on in Global Trade this Week? Today Keenan Brugh of CAP Logistics & Doug Draper of Inland Star Distribution cover:
1:35 -Why are oil prices so low? https://archive.is/ufoyP
9:25 -AI Applications in Logistics
17:18 -Halftime
26:00 -Asia & Mexico Sailings
31:30 -AI & Europe's Power Grid https://archive.is/kQAZM
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0:00
You're watching global trade this week with Pete mento and Doug Draper.
0:10
Good morning and welcome to a another edition of global trade this week. I am half of your hosting cast. My name is Doug Draper coming to you out in Colorado. And we have a fill in again, Keenan, this has been multiple times in the last couple of weeks that you filled in. So it's great to see you again. So Keenan is my co host. What's going on my friend?
0:32
Well, we just came out of Memorial Day weekend, so celebrating the service of the veterans as well as summer people getting outside. And this is often the time where pools start opening and even roads start opening in Colorado, there was a little bit of delay because of snow coming in that kept like independence paths and things that would normally be open by now are not open, but there'll be opening soon enough. And for those of us that enjoy the snow, we'll take the extra little bit of it for as long as we can.
1:04
Yeah, yeah. Well, we were talking before the show started and your classic Colorado weekend, right? You skied at A Basin which for those of folks that aren't listening is a resort that always stays open really late into the spring. And then the very next day you're mountain biking in Carbondale. So if you check the box of classic Colorado this weekend, Kenan absolutely
1:26
snowboarding, mountain biking, camping, and it's a great time happy to be outdoors with some friends. Yeah, good. Good.
1:33
Good. All right. Well, let's get this party started. I will let you kind of roll with the first topic.
1:39
Absolutely. So starting off here, wanted to ask the question, Why are oil prices so low? You know, we have plenty of geopolitical tensions, including the death of the Iranian presidents on a helicopter under mysterious, foggy circumstances, that following Israel having attacked high level generals and people of Iranian military rank within an embassy, and I think it was Syria. So there's those sorts of tensions that you would think would increase the price of oil. But there's been so much news, oil is not that high. And one of the articles and pieces I was reading about this from the economist, they were saying that OPEC, you know, the cartel that produces and sets quotas for themselves, of how much to produce so that they can act coordinated ly and get a good price for their product. Apparently, some of the member states have not actually been following the quota. I had never heard of this, as in my studies of economics, or just following news, it seemed like they had a pretty good control over themselves in order to maximize the profit. But if different groups have different cash needs, or whatever the situations are, or maybe there's not able to monitor it, maybe the countries agree. But then on the front lines, the companies and the people aren't following the rules. And so it seems like they're pumping more than they had told themselves in the world. They were going to pump which supply and demand right increase supply lowers the price. Another major aspect the economist was talking about was that America is producing record amounts in America is not a part of OPEC, right. And so we're on the outside producing more that also causes prices to go down. Something else I was reading about last week, outside of the economist, I think someone within capita shared the story about something I hadn't heard on mainstream news. And maybe you had heard more about this, but Ukrainian drones flying into Russian territory to hit oil refinery capacity. Apparently, they've knocked off a significant percent, like 12 or 15%, I believe I read of the refining capacity, which then is leading Russia to sell more of the crude on the market. So lowering the price of crude and then shifting that profit of the refining process over to non Russian country. So I hadn't heard of that. Outside of just that one story that came across my desk last week. But that could also be playing a factor into it. And then also the economist is talking about, you know, interest rates are coming or inflation is not coming down fast enough for the Fed to really consider dropping interest rates and kind of encouraging economic growth that would then increase the demand for the oil. So all these factors kind of coming in, shows that we're going to be cheap oil for the near term, right. And even more near term. Another story impacting this? I don't know if this has begun yet. But I've heard that President Joe Biden was considering selling a bunch of US strategic reserve gas to kind of keep prices down low kind of counter the narrative of inflation as eating everyone's economic well being because you know, it's an election year. But those sorts of things don't last forever, right? You can you can steal from the stocks, but eventually you're gonna run out of that or eventually you have to refill it. it. So that does have a role, especially I think I saw on the East Coast of America. But that force is probably smaller compared to the larger forces of OPEC not sticking to their their quotas, which was a new one that could be interesting if there's maybe some divides or tensions or just individual economic incentives leading that cooperative pact, that cartel pact to no longer act in a coordinated fashion. So interesting updates. So it looks like we have low oil prices for now. Yeah, any thoughts on that? Any parts of those or anything else that you've heard about this? Yeah.
5:33
So I didn't hear about the drone situation. So I can't really make a lot of comments on that. But I'll talk about, we always say no political, but I'm gonna dive into it for two seconds, right. So let's forgive student loans so we can get the younger demographic vote. And let's make sure there's cheap oil so we can get their parents as they go on. family trips this summer. So interesting that those two things are happening.
6:01
But the thing Oh, yeah, exactly.
6:03
Perfect timing on coincidental I'm sure. And, yeah, so the the, the gist of your topic there. Right. So a couple of things that that. And I'm just going to keep it super simple. In the article, because I did check out that article that you sent to me, literally, they call OPEC a cartel.
6:24
And we've that's what it is. Yeah,
6:27
we've spoken about cartel is essentially the mafia, and you're in America. And it looks like Iraq, Kazakhstan and Russia have been the biggest offenders of a will control our output, and then they, and then they, you know, they blow it up and and proceed more. So here's my take on that, right. Cartel equals mafia, right? Just sent equals family war, because there is dissent going on in the cartel because not everybody's acting together. Right? And what happens when people within a mafia family aren't aligned, there are always some war, at least this is how the script goes in movies, right? And then, if there's a war, it makes for good TV. And I'm not saying there's going to be a war, I'm talking about internal strife within the organization. So I don't know if that's going to be good or bad. I mean, the good now is it's keeping the oil prices down. But you know, what, what happens when the biggest offenders are Iraq and Russia, right? If you look at good guys and bad guys list, you know what side they're on. The only thing I could think of that this would happen is that if this situation changes, and everybody falls in line, there's going to be hoarding, people are going to hoard that they can on the lower prices, and that's going to drive up prices. Right. So it's interesting, I don't know. In my adult life, I don't know if you've ever heard of OPEC having internal conflicts like this. So I should say
7:59
it could have always been happening, and we never heard about it. But this is the first time I heard about it. And we've been looking at OPEC since I studied economics and different things. And yeah, that's while the sea in OPEC doesn't stand for cartel it stands for countries. It was defined as a cartel, as you know, a small group acting in coordinated fashion for the their own mutual group benefit, right, making the pie of their profit larger by working together. But yeah, it seems that and thank you for mentioning the country's seems like some of the countries aren't playing by their own rules, which then means their their strength is diminished as an overall group, combined with the fact that there's, you know, high interest rates so economic economic growth isn't going off unchallenged, demanding more and more oil and America is producing more and more than ever before, which also kind of diminishes the OPEC clout, even if they were coordinating together. Yeah,
8:56
well, you just described every mafia movie from the 1980s Specifically the Gambino family. If you listen to the show, rewind in about 30 seconds and listen to what Keenan just said, and in your mind picture the Gambino crime family from the 1980s and they are exactly the same.
9:16
Very interesting so keep an we'll keep an eye on that. What do you have for us for the first topic here today? Yeah,
9:23
so it seems like we they're talking about electric vehicles or we talk about artificial intelligence like everybody else in the world. But the the one piece that I have seen is so this topic is about the AI applications in logistics, right? And we've talked about how the logistics industry is still disconnected because there's a lot of players involved with moving your cargo and your freight from point of origin to Final Destination destination here in the US. forwarders outsource to individual drayage companies drayage companies take it to I consolidators and do consolidators, and the whole nine yards. So there's a lot of disconnection. But I think we're not quite there. But this AI could be the piece to, you know, bridge some things together. Because before it was individuals inputting data into a common platform, sorry, it was still a human that had to do something to get it into a platform that provided that synergy. Well, now, the AI and the robots are taking care of it. All right. So Manhattan software had a conference a week or two ago called momentum. And they were just firing off some things that are applicable in our industry. So I'm gonna go through a couple of them, right. And this stuff is, is super valid, right? So they can bounce. So there's AI out there that can bounce a discussion and requests against, like, regulatory issues, right. So I want to do this. But I don't know what the regulations are, because I'm shipping it from the United States into South Africa. And AI can bridge the fact like, Hey, you can't do that, or you can't ship it that way. Or you need this documentation in order to be compliant. Right. It could also be the same as your crossing states. So the compliance factor, right, is huge, that you don't have to have that tribal knowledge. Obviously, you can clarify languages for international trade, you've probably been on emails, I certainly have in my day as a freight working for freight forwarders, where it's two in the morning, and you're trying to communicate in real time. And the language barrier is a little bit disjointed. So I think that's going to be huge. Another smaller one that cap Logistics is familiar with is best ways to route oversize loads, right? Like, what's the best route to get from point A to point B, you know, you needed to an abacus and maps and everything else to figure that out. AI can do it in two seconds, right? And then I've seen a lot of things. And this will be my last comment. Old school brokerage negotiations, right? You gotta drive or trying to negotiate a price. And I'm sure people have seen some of these things on YouTube, where literally, artificial intelligence is negotiating, clarifying, even saying, I gotta go talk to my manager in the back office to sell you this car. Right. And the fluidity of the conversation. If I didn't know better, I would think it was two humans communicating so that five or 10 minutes, so the back and the forth. I think AI is going to dramatically reduce and I think a CH Robinson has, I don't know all the details on it. But I think they're dealing with email requests on quotes. So a lot of that mundane stuff is going to go away. So AI applications, I think are going to see real world change in logistics, and it will be a significant start and defusing or fusing together a disconnected supply chain. So I don't know, it's a lot information. I just spurge out there. What do you think?
13:05
A lot of information but very relevant. I think a lot of us whether our listeners in a shipper type situation, or you're within the transportation industry, we see a lot about AI on a daily basis that, you know, we use chat GPT, or things like that as a personal life, as well as companies using it to market. We've talked about the Gartner Hype curve before where maybe people ignore something or don't know about something, then they get overexcited and get really, really excited about it. And I think maybe we saw some of that in 2023, where, yes, the big top six or seven type tech companies were doing quite well with their AI programs and investors rewarding them and building up in Vidya and Microsoft, even more Google to higher and higher heights. But outside of those, a lot of the companies that were talking the most about AI on their earnings call, actually underperformed. And so then I think that that led people maybe into a little bit of a trough of disillusionment of Oh, AI, it's wrong. And you know, right now, I'm not sure if you're seeing these memes, but my circles as Google is rolling out their genesis AI to the regular search function. People are taking screenshots of just horribly wrong information that is being presented at the top of Google, right? Maybe this is some people fishing for funny screenshots. But, you know, we're seeing one of, you know, women should smoke five to 10 cigarettes per day during pregnancy according to X, Y or Z. Right. And they might have been referencing a joke comment on Twitter, or now x or Reddit or something like that. Or there's there's some mistakes happening at the beginning. And some people might think that, oh, AI is overhyped, and it's not going to be there. But I think to your larger point, it is a very powerful tool. And in something like logistics, where there's a lot of different factors and some clear cut rules that can be done over and over and over again, AI and machine learning generally, even outside of the chat GPT style generative AI is going to be used to help. You know, I'll have my robots talk to your robots, right save, how many emails how many phone calls, how many filling out forms. That being said, other people are concerned about, you know, replacing people. And I think you're already seeing that with things like, you know, robot ran, locations of McDonald's and things like that. Cap Logistics is definitely using AI and investigating how we can use it the best, I think we're looking at more of how can we empower our humans who will ultimately have the experience and the authority to make a complex decision of how to get a big heavy piece from point A to point B. Very quickly, though, the more we can use AI to inform learn from our own internal data of recent shipping prices take into the account of latest trends in oil and gas prices, all those sorts of things, we're going to be seeing it so just a reminder for us and for anyone out there that there's often these curves of people don't know anything about it, people get really excited people start poking holes for good reasons of where it falls apart. You know, pregnant women probably shouldn't smoke 10 cigarettes per day, according to the best science out there. But Google's AI apparently was reporting that I think I tried to recreate that one. And it looks like they fixed it. So I think that's kind of where we are right is like you test it, you put it out there. And then you find out, Oh, this route didn't work or this thing is an issue. And then you address that. And at some point in the future, there won't be those issues anymore. And it will be very, very reliable, and work 24 hours a day. So something definitely to keep an eye on. I think it's a very fascinating space. And it'll even tie into my second topic after halftime. Yeah.
16:51
Well, as long as the technology can start impacting the bottom line sooner than later, right? If you get all this hype, and you talk about all this cool stuff, all right, implement it, did it save us or make us money? If that doesn't happen relatively quickly, you're gonna see some of these larger companies that embrace the tech is either going to be punished on the stock market, or they're just going to abandon the whole thing until it's a little bit more more evolved. But anyway, well, that brings us to halftime. Kenan, I'm going to introduce it. And then I'm going first because I think our halftime stuff does that better together if I go first. So as we always say, half times brought to us by CAP logistics, that is Kenyans employer, you can hold up his paycheck for this week. And you can see it says, I don't know if it actually says cap because you guys have so many holding companies over there. But anyway, we want to thank cap logistics for for the show and for providing us with halftime where we can talk about whatever we want. So can we just change our topic like one minute before the show started? So I want everybody to know that I do have a second child his name is Wil but I seem to have been focused a lot on my daughter out there. And she is now on a trip 90 day trip in Europe after after college graduation. And so this theme is basically perception isn't always reality. Right? And so she's in Paris, and she took a picture of the Eiffel Tower and that's all fine and good. And literally this morning, cuz I heard my phone beep about 3am. She took a picture. They went to see the Mona Lisa. And she she had her arm up and was taking a picture. And I don't know I'm sure I've ever seen the Mona Lisa. I've never seen a person I've
18:32
never visited that's in the Louvre right in Wragge, France. Yeah.
18:36
So she's there. It's in a it looks like it's in its own room. And it's behind glass. But But I the picture I just sent to you, right, she's probably seven or eight rows back. The place is wall to wall people. I bet there's 75 to 100 people in front of her. Everybody has their cell phones up in the air so you can't see anything because their arms are blocking it. And it's crazy. You think you go into a museum that you and I see in the movies or things that we've been to, you know, here where it's a lot of open space and you can walk around and you can pause and look at the art pieces. And there she is in a jam packed room with everybody in their arm in the air trying to take a picture of the Mona Lisa and she's probably 50 feet away from it right you can barely even see see the picture unless you zoom in. So I will be interesting to see how many perceptions and realities when she goes on her European trip with all the famous things that you and I and our listeners would normally go and see. So anyway, perception, not quite reality, at least at the start of the European vacation for my daughter. Absolutely.
19:44
At least cell phone cameras these days do you have better zoom than five or 10 years ago so if she wanted to, she could zoom in and get a decent shot but that is that is indicative of our times you know that painting particularly is so famous and so many people want to put it on their Instagram Tik Tok, or whatever people are into, if they're all doing the same thing, holding their cameras up trying to take the photo. Yeah, perceptions versus reality has often been a thing for Paris and France in general, though, definitely more so in 2024 than ever before. I think I remember hearing as a child, that Japan, the country had a phone line set up for Japanese nationals who would visit Paris, and then, so frequently be discouraged by how dirty it was, or different compared to how it was portrayed in movies and films and art that the Japanese had seen in Japan, that there was a lot of depression, so much so that the government set up a phone hotline, I'll see if I can fact check this. But I remember hearing that as a kid like, Wow, that's crazy. But like, yeah, if you expect it to be clean, and picturesque, and movie and romantic, there's romance and coffee there. But there's also, you know, people from a city or, you know, challenges ranging from homelessness or crime or whatever the situation is. And yeah, as bad as it was to warrant the the Japanese phone line A while ago, I imagine those forces are even larger today here in 2024. So perceptions versus reality is a theme that transitions over to my topic here for half time, many of you may have seen, there's been lots of news news articles going around about a new study, looking at the health effects of the paper straws. Now this is something I'm usually reading about. I like reading about health science and environmental science, and specifically endocrinology, and endocrine disrupting chemicals. So I'm excited that it's getting more more conversation. The last couple weeks, there's been more studies about this, both microplastics being found in testicles, as well as the straws where the perception is, oh, we need to switch away from plastic straws to save the environment use less plastic, and then kind of the assumption is like, Oh, well, if it's good for the environment, it's probably healthier for me too. And yes, there are problems with plastic. Don't get me wrong, I try to avoid it because there are valets and all sorts of things that mess up your endocrine system, which impacts both men and women of all ages, but especially the younger ones or not even born people. But as bad as balades are for an unborn child, an adult can clear them out with the liver. And you know, if you stopped drinking out of plastic straws, eventually your body would clear that out. However, these paper ones that have been branded as the more environmentally sustainable thing. In order for them not to become soggy instantly. They're coated in PFA s De Pere floral alcohol, forever chemicals, then also endocrine disrupt, but by their nature of being per fluoro, they don't break down your body can't remove them. So the more exposure you have through your diet, and they're finding with this latest study that's making the rounds that it does get into your food with a little like, Oh, I'm eating out of a paper tray from a fast food joint, that Greece is probably soaking up some of that stuff that will be with you for the rest of your life. And as that gets thrown away, hey, great, we don't have as many plastic straws in the ocean or in the rivers. But now that we have these paper ones, now they're a large source of those PFA s chemicals that won't be broken down and will be a challenge for people in Europe where the study was, but obviously America to for generations to come. So it's a good reminder for us to manage expectations as well as try to look at the reality. Because yeah, perceptions. You know, you can imagine I'm not picking on any particular politician or region. But you can imagine, hey, we're going to ban plastic straws, right? The best of intentions. However, the actual outcome of that good intention turns out to be you're poisoning your water system and your body's way more so than plastic, even though plastic is poison. PFA s are paper products are even more poisonous. So it's good for us to do our homework and challenge our assumptions, because things aren't always the way they seem. Yeah,
24:21
for sure. Well, two things on that. And then we can jump over and I'll jump into my topic and you can end off but for all of you out there, the word testicles came at the 2113. Mark. I'm sure all children have to toned out by the 21 mark, but just in case. And then the other thing is that in an effort to do the good thing, I don't know how many times I've gone out of a restaurant and I have my disposable items in my hand. And it has some funny same as saying on the thing about compost here, recycle here, whatever and I look at that I don't know what I have in my hand. I just throw it in one of the bins, right so it's almost too many choices. is to do the right thing inhibits people from doing the right thing. Yep,
25:05
though, absolutely choice fatigue as well as I don't know if there's really good options for either. I mean, like people assume oh is paper paper will break down. But if they're coated in these PFS chemicals, they're not going to break down. So it remains. And if they do break down, that means they're just leaching into the water or the environments or than the soil. You wouldn't want to buy city compost, like Oh, free compost soil, you wouldn't want that if it contained these paper products, because then your food would be growing in toxic chemicals that then you wouldn't be able to remove from your your body. So yeah, pretty wild out there. And thank you for recognizing we did wait long enough. I feel like we cover enough economics topics that children wouldn't be listening that that late. And even if they did, I tried to use the proper medical terminology to keep it family friendly show.
25:56
Nice. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank thanks, Keenan, for you and for calf logistics for bringing us halftime. So second half of the show. I'll just rifle through my my topic here. So there are a lot of new shipping routes that are going between Asia and Mexico. A lot of this has to do with the 301 tariffs and the fact you can import product in the US under $800. You don't have to pay duties and taxes. So why don't we just set up shop as close to America on the other side of the border and bring things over in bulk and then just you know, send them into the United States on a transactional basis. So MSC CMCA CGM don't think you can say CMA anymore, you got to add that extra three letters in there and Costco have all said sorry, and container volumes and, and everything are driving there. But the key thing here is that there's also investment into Mexico by China. Right. And so they're setting up the facilities and the ports and the infrastructure and all those kinds of things to enable these routes, which are gaining in popularity into Mexico. So the import bookings into Mexico have skyrocketed. And oh, by the way, the Chinese are investing into Mexico. So my final take on this one, Keenan is yes, that is a reality, it will continue to be a reality for. And we better look out because China is no longer across the pond. But they're across the bridge, within a golf shot of the United States of America, and they are investing, they're facilitating it. And the consumption of the American consumer is going to fuel that. And so it'll be interesting to see how this evolves. But it will continue to be a trend. A lot of money's coming from China. And I think we should be careful of what we wish for and what we're consuming, that's driving that trend.
28:01
Absolutely. I feel like recently, we talked about the trade stack between Mexico and Canada and Mexico, becoming a larger exporter to the US. So US imports more dollar value goods from Mexico than Canada were often had been Canada, they've gone back and forth. But it's now more so than China as well. And that speaks to your point to where China's among other countries, a part of that now accelerated nearshoring trend. Not only is there more stability than in the past, with the US MCA and some of those tariff regulations of under certain values, there's less barriers, and you can have smoother, smoother transactions that happens every day, the infrastructure is there. I think a lot of companies are also wary of the price spike that we saw during supply chain disruptions during COVID, where a $1,500 container from China to the West Coast suddenly cost 30 to $33,000. That breaks business models, right. And so companies are in their self interest trying to retain their access to labor to produce the goods and be geographically close enough and geopolitically allied enough that they're not going to be shut down. You know, we're not getting into it with a topic. But there were stories about military jets flying around Taiwan and those sorts of things, right. So mainland China, along with companies from Europe are manufacturing factories in Mexico, but think about companies in Taiwan, they're looking to make factories within the US or in Mexico in order to make sure that they're not going to be cut off by a literal blockade that would stop their islands from trading. So there's a lot of those forces. This trend had been going on for a while and I think like many other trends, it was accelerated during the era of of pandemic COVID and such Quit policies and then all the knock on effects from those policies into the supply chain. But we've definitely been seeing, seeing that at CAP logistics. Lots of customers are interested in Mexico, Canada as well. But there's a lot of interest in our neighbors. And we'll we'll be seeing that it's also interesting that it's China, Chinese companies as well. So who knows what's going to happen? I know we're not taking political sides necessarily, but covering what impacts logistics and economics in general. Biden had announced some pretty hefty tariffs recently, on China sounding a lot more like Donald Trump type rhetoric. Where I think it's 100% on Chinese cars. Are you telling me about that? And batteries? Yes, significant, right. That's a significant amount of tariffs. And who knows what's going to happen in the future. Either way, whoever gets elected, or as things heat up towards the election, but we could be in a world with a little bit more rising protectionism. And with that, that's even more forced to have factories located near your end consumer. So Canada or Mexico, or even the United States itself, if you're looking to sell to those three countries? Yeah.
31:12
Well, we'll see what the unintended consequences come to be. No, that's
31:16
right. Yeah, that's right. A lot of people write stuff with their best intentions, but they don't always do the homework. And they don't always check to see how it's how it's going on. So yeah, that isn't that is a common theme.
31:27
Yeah. All right, brother. Take us home. What you got for the final topic? Yeah.
31:31
So final topic is AI and Europe's power grid. I had mentioned in a recent episode where I was filling in about the heavy energy usage of these AI data centers, specifically, a single chat GPT search costs a lot more energy that does a Google search, right. And now Google is incorporating AI technology into their searches. So I know it's not an every search. But what percentage of the large number of Google searches that happen every day, are now going to be done with a little bit extra energy in order to run these AI models. Now, there are more and more efficiencies coming into these models, if you saw the chat GPT or the open AI announcement of GPT, four, oh, that does use significantly less energy. So maybe there will be some gains, like we've seen with computer hardware, you know, the classic Moore's Law of doubling the transistors every 18 months, at the same power level, right? But then, are we going to max off right now, what Goldman Sachs is reporting is that they're expecting, like we were talking about America, even more. So in Europe, where Europe's power grid is older aging. But there's also a lot of demand and or companies, startups, companies, established companies that want to be using the power of AI for their operations. You can imagine it from social media type companies and tech companies to larger industrial companies that want to be using this. There are first mover advantages, so people are trying to get these things rolled out. And that is increasing energy demand quite significantly. Maybe it'll become more efficient. But it seems like this is a pretty big spur for increased energy demands. And like we mentioned last time, they're also going to be cognizant, or often will be cognizant of how it looks to investors and regulators. And so there's a lot of pressure for it to be clean. Whether that's solar panels, or nuclear, or whatever the case may be, there's going to be more demand for that. And we'll see, you know, there's gonna be a lot of business, I think, Zero Hedge and Goldman Sachs, we're looking at it from the perspective of what stocks do I buy, they're looking at different companies that are, you know, selling the shovels, right, selling the parts and the pieces to then upgrade the the power grid within Europe. So obviously, we don't get financial advice here on this show. But it's interesting to watch and see how how investors are looking at these things, whether they're right or wrong. Who knows, maybe it'll dramatically take less energy in the future. But there may be just a hard baked limitation of No, yeah, we were pretty efficient, but it's going to take more energy. And if people start using these AI services more and more and more, that creates more demand. So for better or worse, you know, there could be positives of having organized demand, looking for cleaner sources of energy that then could create projects that couldn't have done otherwise. But we'll be looking and probably helping customers out in improving the power grid, not only here in America, but Europe as well. So like all of our topics, many different parts of that, so feel free to comment on any part that stood out to you. Yeah.
34:46
Well, the one you alerted to it just two seconds ago. And we've talked about this before the pick an axe is if you're selling, you know, the analogy is, yeah, people can go out and make money when they mined gold. But people that can make as much money are providing the pics and the axes and the things within the mine in order to, to mine the gold, right? So I think the same thing will apply is that, all right, there's a heck of a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built infrastructure that looks exactly like what's happening now and also infrastructure that can actually generate and use less power. Right. You alluded that a little bit. So I think if you are looking for investment, and again, we don't give any advice, but companies that are providing the picks and the access to power generation companies, and infrastructure is going to be a hot market in in the future. But we're eating it like you said in your last show, you know, the Hungry Hungry robots. It'll be interesting to see. So crazy times.
35:48
Absolutely. Yeah.
35:50
Speaking of crazy times. That is it. Our time is up for this week of global trade. Keenan, thank you for filling in for Pete. Really appreciate that. And we're excited. I think the next episode is our 100 and 50th. So we'll have to Oh, wow, not this one. But the next one. So we'll have to do something special clown hats or something. I don't know what something is with 150. But we appreciate whether it's 150 or episode number one. We appreciate everybody listening to us and engaging with global trade this week. It's our pleasure to come and talk about things that interest us. And I think that's it. So this episode. It's a wrap can work. We'll check you later. Okay, man. Sounds
36:31
good. Thanks, Doug. Thanks. All right.
36:32
Take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai