Look Forward | Episode 2: Navigating Uncertainty: Insights into the Global Economy

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Andy Critchlow

Hello, my name's Andy Critchlow. I'm head of news at S&P Global Commodity Insights, and welcome to the Look Forward Podcast from S&P Global. In today's rapidly shifting Markets success depends on anticipating what's next. The professionals who excel are those who can spot emerging trends before they fully materialize.

Look Forward podcast delivers exactly that insights to help you prepare for tomorrow's opportunities and challenges. We bring you expert perspectives on macroeconomic trends, capital markets, energy transition, and global trade. With a sharp focus on what these developments mean for the decisions that will shape your tomorrow.

This podcast connects you with S&P Global's. Look Forward council bringing cutting edge research on long-term trends and transformative (00:01:00) market shifts. Together we are committed to providing the forward-looking intelligence you need to navigate uncertainty with confidence. I'm joined today on today's podcast by Paul Gruenwald, um, global Chief Economist at S&P Global.

Um, someone who, uh, I first actually interviewed back in 2010 in Sydney. Paul probably doesn't remember that, um, too much. I was a reporter then at the the Wall Street Journal. Um, it's great to have Paul with us today talking about some of the big issues. Facing the global economy, um, central banks, their independence, the future of the dollar, um, the scorecard economically of the US administration and President Donald Trump, and what to look forward to for the rest of 2025.

Paul? Um, to kick (00:02:00) things off, the not so insignificant subject of Central Bank Independence has been. Thrown into the spotlight recently, certainly by some of the comments that President Trump has made with regards to the Fed and Jerome Powell. How do you see this playing out?

Paul Gruenwald

Yeah, first, Andy, it's good to, uh, good to see you again and happy to be on the, uh, on the podcast.

Well, this is obviously a very critical issue. The way we economists think about it is Central bank independence is a good thing. Uh, the central bank's not independent of the government. It's within the government. But it has kind of operational independence. So to use the Fed as an example, the Fed has a dual mandate, which is low and stable inflation of 2%, and also, uh, full or maximum employment.

And the Fed adjusts the Fed funds rate in order to achieve, uh, that objective. The issue we've seen in several countries over, you know, over the recent (00:03:00) past is that when the central bank is not independent, and it's kind of under the thumb of the government. It tends to overstimulate the economy. The government obviously wants to be popular, and that leads to inflation and that leads to macro, uh, instability.

So as a profession, uh, of economists and also the markets, and most people generally came to the view a few decades ago that central bank independence, uh, is a good thing. So most governments, again, want to kind of juice up the economy and have easy monetary policy. But having the central bank. Have that operational independence to, um, try to achieve its goals.

We think that's a good thing.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah. Because, you know, if you go back to say the, the UK in the 1970s, early eighties, um, you know that inflationary story. You know, central Bank, uh, in the form of the Bank of England, that was definitely being led by, um, its political pay masters. Um, you know, it (00:04:00) didn't lead to the outcomes that, you know, economically, certainly in terms of inflation probably that, that, that people were looking for.

What do you think is driving though this sort of this, um. Philosophical and uh, you know, and actual pressure now that's being exerted on central banks. Is this kind of just a function of politics becoming more fractious or is this something else at play? Because actually, you know, the economic conditions globally are, you know, they're pretty good at the moment.

Paul Gruenwald

Yeah, I mean, the global economy softened a bit, but we're certainly not in the bad spots. Uh, to take the us. We've got the economy slowing. We're not even in the, um, uh, recession camp for our baseline, but I think it's kind of baked in, uh, to the process. Again, governments want to look good, they want to be popular, and uh, if you've got a strong, uh, economy with lots of job creation, that's a good thing.

But the problem is kind of this. Dynamic consistency. We can juice up the economy a bit today, but that's gonna push inflation up in the future. And inflation, (00:05:00) uh, expectations could become unanchored, and then it's very difficult to kind of re-anchor them and, uh, restore stability. So, you know, political noise or temperature goes up and down.

We're, we're in a period right now where the temperature's rather high. So we're seeing a lot of pressure in the us uh, kind of against the Central bank. And, uh, you know, we've had this debate before.

Andy Critchlow

Because those inflationary fears, you know, certainly the Fed has been cautious on rates, uh, but those inflationary fears that we really did worry about back in say, 2022, Russian invasion of Ukraine, you had a big kind of spike in commodity prices as a consequence of that.

And you know, obviously a feed through into inflation rates globally, but that's sort of dissipated. I mean, where do you see inflation, you know, not just in the US going, but you know, globally. Over the next year?

Paul Gruenwald

Well, if you think back to 2022, that was a big surprise, right? We hadn't seen inflation, uh, at those rates since the 1970s.

And to be honest, (00:06:00) central banks had spent the previous two decades trying to get inflation up rather than get inflation down. And we had the combination of. Some of the shocks, uh, supply shocks from the pandemic and overly loose, uh, fiscal policy in many countries. And we had that burst of inflation that has been, um, you know, that's been kind of put under control.

We had the steep rise in policy rates, but most central banks are at, are at or near their target. That ECB in our view is. Done, for example, uh, cutting rates. But, um, that was a bit of, uh, an embarrassment for central banks and their credibility, uh, is very important to them. They wanna make sure inflation expectations are anchored, uh, over the medium term.

That's the way they measure their credibility. So I think the, the cuts have been cautious. We did see a 50 from the Fed, and I think we saw 50 from the Bank of Canada, but most central banks. Have been going by 25 basis points, cutting rates since the middle, uh, of last year. And again, we're getting inflation close to target, although (00:07:00) the tariffs are gonna complicate the picture a bit in the us.

Andy Critchlow

Um, and it, I mean, that's a great segway onto this subjective tariffs. Um, uh, you know, considering the kind of shockwaves that tariffs delivered certainly to stock markets back in, in April, and to commodity prices for that matter, um, you know, the, the situation around. You know, that, that economic feed through impact on trade, it, it has kind of settled down, right?

And we're getting, um, you know, new tariff agreements signed with major partners around the world. Um, you know, have markets absorbed this fully? Um, or are we just on pause mode until we get to the next kind of shock factor?

Paul Gruenwald

Yeah, well that's, that's a tricky one, right? My team likes to think of it the following way, the tariffs.

We make a distinction between the tariffs. And uncertainty around tariff policy. So if we say the US government for whatever reason, thinks that the rest of the world needs to pay up, uh, for the (00:08:00) services the US been, has been providing over the years, whether that's the, um, defense umbrella or the role of the dollar as the global reserve currency, or the role of the Treasury as the world's risk free asset, if the US government thinks the rest of the world's gonna pay up.

And they assign tariffs to everyone, uh, based on some hopefully reasonable formula and that's it. Kind of one and done. You know, markets will adjust to that. Prices will adjust to that. It's easier for us, relatively easy for us to kind of forecast that. We look at the trade of each country with a US and you know, we put in the elasticities of the sensitivities or whatever.

That's kind of doable. The problem since all of this started earlier this year is really around. Policy uncertainty or policy unpredictability. So I like to point to a, um, a data series that's produced by the Fed, uh, which sounds rather boring, and it has been boring for the last three or four decades.

It's called the US Policy Uncertainty Index. And if you think about the traditional (00:09:00) role of the us, that series doesn't do very much, right? It's a rather boring series. It's trundling along, uh, close to zero. It has spiked three times in its history once for the global financial crisis. Policymakers were trying to figure out what to do.

Biggest shock since the depression. That was understandable. It spiked again during COVID first pandemic in a century. Policymakers were trying to figure out what to do, lots of uncertainty, and then it spiked again early this year around tariff policy and it has remained relatively elevated. And as you noted Andy, when the tariffs were first announced, the, the markets kind of went down, uh, in a big way.

But then, you know, the administration pulled back and then we got the pause, and then the extended pause, and then the short-lived, very steep trade war, uh, with the Chinese was also kind of put on hold and stretched out. So markets are more comfortable. There's clearly an inverse relationship between new tariff policy (00:10:00) announcements and uh, uh, market valuations.

Uh, the hope is that we can get to a point where the tariffs are pretty much settled again, uh, it's relatively easy and mechanical to put them into the model, and if we get the uncertainty off the table, I think that will help. I'm not convinced we're there yet, so we'll have to see how the rest of these trade deals.

Play out. We have a handful of deals, including the one just announced with Japan recently, but there are a lot of trading partners including, uh, Europe, uh, where the, uh, you know, the final, uh, arrangement or configuration hasn't been agreed yet.

Andy Critchlow

The big trading partner China is, is that relationship, um, uh, in, in kind of on hold.

Can it be repaired or where do you see that going?

Paul Gruenwald

Well, two things. One, when the US uh, escalated tariffs against China, China had kind of the textbook tit for (00:11:00) tat response, right? China was matching the US very quickly. One for one. The tariffs on both sides got above a hundred percent. Uh, at some point they, they become almost meaningless because trade is gonna stop.

Uh, and then we had the climb down and we had the extension, and then we had the rare earth's deal on the Chinese side. I think it was airplane engines, uh, on the US side. And we're kind of kicking the can down the road, uh, for six months. I was in China a month ago at the China Davos meetings. That's the, uh, China version of the Switzerland Davos.

It takes place every June. I was surprised how relatively optimistic and calm the Chinese, uh, officials were and business leaders were about the tariff situation. So, um, China's been kind of gradually making itself less vulnerable. Uh, to the US and trade more generally, so US. Uh, exports to the US are less than 2% of China's GDP (00:12:00) China and the US as we just discussed, had this very brief trade war that's calmed down.

China's continuing to produce world beating electric vehicles and batteries. They're pushing trade into the global south, away from the US and the Europeans where a lot of tension is. So. China seems to be relatively comfortable with what's uh, going on, obviously as the two biggest economies in the world.

We want the US and China to have a, a stable relationship. But again, I look, we look at the six month, uh, pause as kind of a bandaid. We haven't fixed these fundamental problems around trade imbalances. Uh, you know, some, some of the security issues, tech issues, et cetera.

Andy Critchlow

How do you see the, the, the bricks playing into that imbalance around trade issues and, and also to a certain extent, sort of challenging the, the, the US-centric, uh, um, international rules-based system, shall we say, uh, and, and established, um, (00:13:00) um.

Institutions of, of, of governance, intergovernmental organizations. Um, uh, China's very much at the center of that with some major commodity producers like Saudi Arabia. Um, the US administration has certainly. Um, expressed, it's, it's, uh, probably disdain is too strong a word, but it, it's, uh, caution around bricks.

Um, do you see it sustaining? Is it a key part of US, uh, of Chinese, um, economic policy going forward? That's gonna be, you know, something that will last for a long time.

Paul Gruenwald

Yeah, well, I think the, um, the rise of these Chinese based, uh, or Chinese led institutions, uh, is very important. I think, as you know, Andy, I'm a former IMF guy.

I spent the first half of my, uh, career working at the International Monetary Fund and, uh, the fund along with the bank and what eventually became the world. Trade organization. These are the Bretton Woods institutions. They were created by the, um, the US and its allies after the second World (00:14:00) War. They are us, led, the US at least in the bank, and the fund is by far the biggest shareholder.

They have a controlling interest and, uh, you know, China's either the number two or number three country in terms of its weight and voting power and paid in capital, but they're well behind the us. And these are clearly US led institutions. They're based in Washington. You know, China's a rising power and if we look at the bricks, which you just mentioned, or the, you know, the Belt Road initiative or the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is, uh, based in Beijing.

These are Chinese initiatives and China led institutions, and I think this is part of the global, uh, rebalancing. We're still going to have global institutions. Obviously we would put the United Nations in there as well, but, uh, as a rising regional and global power, China clearly sees it. Um, in its interest to create some of these, uh, new institutions where China has a controlling role.

And again, we've gotta see how all this fits together. What I'd like to (00:15:00) say in my presentations is the old Washington consensus is gone. That's. The, uh, you know, free trade, free capital flow, kind of borderless world, uh, you know, where, uh, you know, government plays a, a secondary role. Security issues, were kind of secondary.

We're not in that world anymore, but I don't think we've reached the, the new state, uh, or the, the post Washington consensus kind of steady state. And these institutions and China's role are definitely, definitely part of that.

Andy Critchlow

And a key part of that, that that Washington consensus is the dollar. Right? And, and it's certainly come under a lot of scrutiny, uh, recently, obviously with the Trade Terrace policies, uh, and some weakness.

Um, uh, you know, I've interestingly been reading Ken Ros book, um, our Dollar, your Problem, and you know, it goes into a number of scenarios that could tip the dollar over the edge. Um, of course, you know the dollar. Replace the pound (00:16:00) sterling as the global trading currency after World War ii. Um, you know, that book is not sort of predicting that.

Any sort of repeat of that is any is coming anytime soon, but it's certainly there are flashpoints potentially. I mean, where do you see the dollar going in the rest of this year and do you think concern around the dollar is, is, you know, kind of, it's not really aimed at the right thing, you know, is, is maybe cryptocurrency more of a concern to the dollar than say what's happening with tariffs or.

The Fed.

Paul Gruenwald

Yeah. Well, the role of the dollar, if you think about it, it's pretty amazing, right? Because the role of the US and the global economy has been shrinking, uh, since the end of the second World War, Japan and Germany recovered. We had the rise of Asia, the rise, uh, of China. The US is global. GDP share.

20%, maybe a bit more. And then, you know, Europe and China are roughly the same. But what hasn't changed very much, uh, is the role of the US dollar. We are still in a very dollar centric world. Most of the central banks hold their (00:17:00) reserves in dollars. Most trade is denominated in dollars. Contracts are in dollars.

And I think that's gonna be very difficult to dislodge. Uh, we're gonna have Ken Rugoff, uh, on my, uh, academic seminar series later in the year. He came on with his earlier book a few years ago. This time is different, but we think of it not only as the dollar, but it's kind of a pear. It's the US dollar. As the world's reserve currency and it's the US Treasuries as the world's reserve asset and the depth and breadth and sophistication of the US Treasury market is just unmatched.

No other currency even comes close. Europe, as we know, still has fragmented debt markets. They're still waiting for their Hamilton moment. Uh, the Chinese like to control the system. They have a large market, but it's relatively undeveloped and unsophisticated. So if you wanna do something with foreign exchange and you're a trading country and you're accumulating dollars, you have a lot more things to do with your dollars than you can with your, your Euros or your, um, (00:18:00) Chinese yuan.

And then the, you know, the next kind of level of countries, whether that's, you know, pound sterling Canadian dollars, Aussie dollars, the Japanese Yen, those are just not. Big enough and deep enough. So it looks like for the time being, we're still in a, uh, dollar world. The, you know, the, the share has been going down a, a bit.

Uh, but um, you know, I don't think it's in any danger of being displaced anytime soon. You mentioned crypto. If you go into the crypto world and you go to one of the websites, and you look at the stable coins or even Bitcoin, Ethereum, some of those, they're all referenced to the US dollar. So the crypto world is even more dollar heavy than what we would call the traditional finance world.

So that doesn't mean the dollar gets to rule forever, and it doesn't mean the dollar's, the reserve currency forever, but it is very entrenched in the system and there was no obvious, uh, competitor in the, uh, in the near term. So. As far as my team is concerned for our forecasting horizon, we're still in a dollar world for the foreseeable future.(00:19:00)

Andy Critchlow

And, and the US debt doesn't have any impact on that in this, you know, constantly ballooning fiscal deficit, that doesn't really move the dial on that. In fact, kind of in that logic, it would kind of add to it, you know, you, it's, it's, um, if we lose, everyone loses.

Paul Gruenwald

Um, well, the debt, you know, the, the fiscal trajectory gets a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, discussion.

Let's remember that, uh, net debt is always zero, right? For every debtor there is a creditor, and if you look at the yields of the US 10 year, they haven't really done very much even as the debt level has climbed. So there's still a huge bid or huge demand for. Uh, US treasuries that's not enshrined in, you know, in stone.

That can, that can, uh, you know, at some future state, uh, unravel. I don't think we're anywhere close to that yet. And also to come back to crypto, we just had some legislation passed on stable coins in the us. The uh, so-called Genius Act, but remember those credible stable coins need to be backed by high quality liquid re reserves, (00:20:00) and those are gonna be US treasuries for the most part.

So as the crypto world gets built out and stable coins are kind of the bridge. The fixed exchange rate between the traditional world and the uh, defi world, that's another demand or another bid for US treasury. So there's some structural factors in the world or structural tailwinds that are still supporting the use of the US dollar.

Andy Critchlow

And you know, ultimately that's underpinning. You know what? I think you could describe as, you know, US exceptionalism in a way that Yep. That the US economy,

Paul Gruenwald

Thats part of for sure. Yeah.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah. It continues to, you know, perform incredibly well. The world's biggest companies are US companies, Nvidia. Market cap of $4 trillion.

Incredible.

Paul Gruenwald

Not too shabby, right. So, right.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah. And, and, and despite all this, uh, um, policy uncertainty despite, um, um, so much geopolitical risk in the world, despite, you know, the kind of the, the, the tugging at the, the fibers of globalization, which has (00:21:00) definitely benefited the US in, in, you know, the post 1945 world, um, the US continues to succeed.

What's, what's behind that? What's driving that?

Paul Gruenwald

Well, I think the, the policy predictability has been a big thing. The, the, there's a first mover advantage creating this wonderful infrastructure around US treasuries that's really unmatched as I mentioned earlier. Uh, that helps as well. Scale obviously is a big issue.

There are only so many countries that have the size and the depth and the, uh, complexity and diversity that are, allow them to be a global, uh, economic leader. There is a scenario by the way that if, uh, you know, Europe. Uh, embraces some of the reforms from the commission and other reports, and Europe becomes more competitive and they unify their, uh, their bond market, have their so-called Hamilton, uh, moment where they can issue debt from the center and build up the depth and complexity and breadth, uh, of that market and, you know, (00:22:00) embrace.

Tech and some of the other things that, uh, make the US successful. I realize that's a long list, but, uh, you know, if that all happens, the Euro could be a, a potential competitor to the US and the dollar. But right now, again, there's really no rivals to the US in terms of the scale and the breadth and the sophistication and the liquidity and everything else.

Andy Critchlow

Um, before we move on from the dollar, um, you know, one of the interesting, um. Points pointed out in the Rogoff book is around some of the countries that peg to the US dollar and how that could change, uh, over the coming decades. Certainly a story in my experience as a journalist working in the Middle East, you know, going back 20, 25 years was, you know, how long will Gulf States.

Peg their currencies to the US dollar. Of course, they sell their oil in US dollars and they hold vast pools of capital in US dollars through their sovereign wealth funds and various investments overseas. However, as more of these countries now (00:23:00) start to, uh, diversify and invest heavily. In, in building infrastructure and, and diversifying their economies faster like Saudi Arabia, and they have to borrow to do that.

The incentive to remain pegged to the dollar may, may wane. Do you see that as a risk?

Paul Gruenwald

Um, well, remember we had, um, if I go back to my IMF days, we had a bunch of countries in Asia that were pegged to the US dollar. Uh, that ended up being a problem because, uh, you know, they were a lot of capital inflows into dollar, the dollar.

The exchange rate couldn't adjust, uh, to reflect those. And then, you know, Thailand and then followed by Korea and Indonesia, those pegs, uh, kind of blew up. What happened after those pegs blew up is those central banks started to accumulate even more dollars. So I remember I used to run the IMF office in Korea about 20 years ago, and uh, Korea literally ran out of foreign exchange in 19 97, 98.

That's when they had to come, uh, to the IMF for a (00:24:00) program. But they spent the next 10 or 20 years accumulating an enormous. Pile of US dollars to back, not peg their currency, but to backstop, uh, their economy, kind of a self-insurance argument. So we see that across Asia Pacific, Japan has a huge pile.

China, all the Southeast Asian countries, the Koreans have it. So, um, anyone who likes to manage their exchange rate and they wanna safeguard for, um, turbulence, whether that's capital outflows or something out, they've created big piles of dollars on the peg to oil. That's a lot more complicated, right?

Because oil's denominated in dollars. It kind of makes sense for countries who are big oil. It. Sporters to peg to the US dollar, that would all have to unravel. And again, the question is, if you're not gonna denominate oil in dollars, you're gonna have to denominate it in something else. You know, that could be euros, could be, uh, Chinese, yuan.

Um, I'm not a big fan of these basket currencies. I did, uh, spend some time at a bank, Andy, I think when you interviewed me first (00:25:00) in 2010, I was working for a bank. I was working for A and z. Yeah, I think so. Yes. In Singapore. The traders don't like these bundles of currencies, whether they're called SDRs or something else, they immediately wanna pull 'em apart into their constituent elements.

So I think it would have to be, uh, a pegged to something else. But again, there's a lot of kind of first mover, uh, first mover advantage and hysteresis in there. A lot of those products are still, uh, denominated in dollars, and I think that's more than just. Pricing oil. It's the whole dollar ecosystem. So, uh, for that peg to be kinda reconsidered and reevaluated or abandoned, that's a much larger question, I think, around the global economy and the kind of dollar centricity of the global economy that we discussed earlier.

Andy Critchlow

So we're just past the midpoint of the year. What's your scorecard for the global economy at the moment? One to 10. Where are you ranking it?

Paul Gruenwald

One to 10? Uh, let me break it down into the, what I call the (00:26:00) big kids table. So we'll do Europe, the US, and China. Okay. Uh, we'll give scores on each one of those. Uh, let me start with China.

I think China has overperformed. Uh, we're always a little bit skeptical of the official growth targets. They come out at 5%, but the Chinese have been able to deliver, uh, 5%. They still have structural issues around the um. Uh, around the property market and some of the overinvestment, but at least on the, the GDP kind of the flow data, et cetera.

You know, China's doing okay, so I don't know. I don't want to give them a number. They're higher than five. I think the Euro zone is interesting in the sense that when. Interest rates were jacked up two years ago by most central banks. We were thinking economies would go into a recession and then, you know, rates would be lowered and then you'd get sort of the, the classic recovery.

And that's essentially what has happened, uh, in the Euro zone. Germany had a borderline recession. They're more, uh, interest rate sensitive. They're also (00:27:00) more sensitive to energy imports. The ECB cut rates, as I mentioned earlier, we think they're done. Uh, they're at 2% and uh, and uh, now we sort of see a gradual recovery.

So that's been sort of a textbook thing. The US is obviously the tricky one. There is a huge amount of distortion around, um, macro variables because, uh, of the tariffs, and if I stick to the mar, uh, the narrow macro, I won't, I won't talk about immigration and border and things like that. We initially had a soft landing scenario for the US last year where growth would go from three-ish where it has been for the last two years to kind of two-ish without a recession or without even an undershoot, which is a growth recession.

We've had to abandon that view because of the uncertainty around tariffs. As I mentioned, we don't have a growth. We don't have a recession outright recession, but we have a growth recession. We think the US. Is gonna slow to about 1% by the end of the (00:28:00) year. The Fed will start to cut rates and then we will, um, uh, we'll pick up a bit.

But, uh, you know, the, if we get some supply side reforms in the us, you know, you're in the world where permitting matters, ease of doing business matters. That's a big thing in the energy and commodity sector. We've got AI and some possible tailwinds around productivity. You know, that's gonna drive growth.

But the, uh, you know, the budget that was just passed boosted the deficit, so we're kind of going the wrong way and getting the debt to GDP ratio down, the numbers are getting distorted. As I said, because of trade, the first quarter, GDP in the US actually fell. A lot of that was just front running imports ahead of the, um, the tariffs.

And looks like the second quarter's gonna be about two and a half. We're gonna take those two together individually. Analyzing them doesn't make a lot of sense, but the first half of the year. US looks like it was growing a bit faster than one. Consumption is slowing. Discretionary consumption, (00:29:00) uh, is slowing.

So, you know, report card for the administration, I'm not sure. I would put them above a five, probably below a five five for the first part of the year. If we get the supply side reform and, you know, we get some, uh, you know, um, agreement on the tariffs and growth picks up. Yeah. But this is kind of a, a self-induced growth recession that wasn't in the forecast before the, uh, the change of administration.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah, of course. And I think, you know, if you look back to April when everyone was a bit fearful about what, where this was heading globally.  

Paul Gruenwald: Yeah. The recession. I mean, the recession, we were never, you know, I'll give a shout out here to my chief, uh, US economist, Satya Pande. Um, we were never in the, uh, recession as a baseline camp.

I know a lot of economic shops. Uh, put in a recession as their baseline after the, uh, initial April 2nd, so-called liberation day Tariffs, uh, were put into place. We always had a growth slowdown that looks like it's the right view, but again, that wasn't the (00:30:00) baseline when we started the year. So if we're doing a scorecard on 2025, uh, I think we have to give marks below, below average for that one.

Andy Critchlow

Final question. Uh, Paul, um, we're both, uh, fanatical cyclists. Um, um, I think it's a given that Tadej Pogačar is gonna win the tour defense.

Paul Gruenwald

Okay.

Andy Critchlow
Um, so, you know, final question is how many more tour defense can he win?

Paul Gruenwald

Uh, boy, I think there, well, there's two things. There's how many Tour de France can Tadej win?

And the other one is, can he check, can he get, um, Eddy Merckx's record, which was just broken by Mark Cavendish, I guess for the tour wins at it's 35. The guy's amazing to watch. I would encourage everyone who has even a, uh. Small interest in cycling to go to the Tour de France's website and look at just the eight minute videos that show the, uh, summary of the day.

These races are four or five hours long, but the guy's absolutely amazing. He's fearless. Uh, after four hours of climbing, he's 180 kilometers into the race. He's up out of the (00:31:00) saddle racing to the finish to grab another two or three seconds from his main rival who's right behind him. And it's just a lot of fun to watch.

The guy's always got a smile on his face. And, uh, and that's of course the scenery's gorgeous, because they're in France, they're in the Alps, they're in the Pyrenees, they're wherever. But it's great fun to watch. But, uh, I think he's got, if he stays healthy and uh, you know, avoids the, uh, the nasty pitfalls of cycling, I think he's got a number of years ahead of him.

He's just great to watch. He's great for the sport.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah, I completely agree. Well, I'm, I'm gonna go on the record and I say, I think he can do six. I think he's going, uh, take, uh, Eddy Merckx's, uh, and Bernard Hinault records of, uh, five Tour de France's.

Paul Gruenwald

Yeah, I think that's definite. If he, he's, he's on track to win.

So this would be his third this year. Right.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah, that's it. Absolutely. Three.

Paul Gruenwald

I think he's got two more on the bikeI think he's got at least two more on the bike. I agree.

Andy Critchlow

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, Paul, thank you so much. I think we covered so many bases, uh, from the US economy through to the US dollar, uh, de-pegging, central bank independence, the (00:32:00) trajectory of tariffs and their impact globally.

China, uh, and uh, we finished off on a high note with the Tour de France. Doesn't get any better than that. Perfect. Thanks very much.

Paul Gruenwald

Perfect. Thanks very much Andy.