Dr. Oz, MAHA, & David Rubenstein 5/23/25

23:50And it uses the partnership accounting, and the real estate developers often get carried interest. And again, they're in all 435 congressional districts. I mean, I've always sort of copped out on that in saying that a lot of these things were the envy of the world in what we do with private equity. If it's not broke, don't fix it. But it is sort of broke. But you always point out, in a pure fairness discussion, it doesn't. The platonic ideal of a tax system. It doesn't make sense. The carried interest issue also doesn't pick up that much revenue. In other words, if you want to go in a fight, you should go to something that picks up revenue.

24:26It doesn't pick up revenue. You pick up revenue when you go after the middle class. That's where the money is. But it's hard to win elections. It's critically difficult to do. Right. It's hard to win elections. Or entitlement reform. Entitlement reform, you know, I don't think any of us will be on the face of the earth by the time they have entitlement reform. Are you, let me ask you this, and we're going to slip in a break. In this bill, it does, you hear the Democrats really crying about what it does to Medicaid. Is it doing enough to Medicaid right now? And does something need to be done to Medicaid?

24:56Well, you can reform everything in the federal government. You can reform everything. But Medicaid is growing quicker than anything else. Medicaid is growing very, very quickly. this is money that's used for people who are really not that wealthy and they need medical assistance. Yeah, but some of them are, you know, you know, the rap that I'm not working with Medicaid, but I would say that, that if you challenge Medicaid, you want to attack, attack it and change it. You should do it in a reasonable way. Right now they haven't had any early hearings on what is the best way to fix Medicaid, but Medicaid is growing faster than anything else.

25:26You went to Duke as an undergraduate, University of Chicago law school. What's your affiliation that you've had with Harvard? I had two children went to Harvard, and I was on the Harvard Corporation board for six years and been a donor to Harvard. Bill Ackman recently made some comments about the endowment at Harvard. He was talking about how that$53 billion endowment is not what it seems. I think both Harvard and Yale have come up with secondary offerings they're taking on some of their equity holdings that they have. He thinks mark-to-market, if you took it down, you'd have to take a 40 % discount on some of those numbers and basically said, just from his reading of the bond offering, and said that those universities are so reliant on government funding right now that it will be very hard for them to meet their needs because they don't have quick access or liquidity to this capital.

26:19In the beginning of the 20th century, the best universities in the world were not in the United States. They were in Europe. And post-World War II, our universities became the best in the world. And if you take the top 25 universities in the world today, probably 20 are from the United States. That's because post-World War II, we did four things. One, we began to have big endowments, which would pay for scholarships for kids who can't afford to otherwise get these educations. Secondly, what we did is we began to have federal government put a lot of money into research and development. And that is why the research and development in the United States is the best in the world.

26:52It's funded by the federal government, has been for a long time, NIH and the National Science Foundation. And they provided money to universities. and the university become really great in science and so forth. Third thing that's gone on is that we've had foreign students come in. And foreign students have been full pay, which is to say they usually pay, and that subsidizes the U.S. students who often don't pay. And that's been a big part of the expansion and improvement of major universities in the United States. And the fourth thing is that we've basically gone to a meritocracy more or less, which is you've got to try to get the best students, you subsidize them with financial aid, and you try to get people who are not from wealthy families only, but kids who are from lesser families to come in and ultimately become productive citizens.

27:34That model has made the universities in the United States the best in the world. Now it's under challenge, and that's in part under challenge because major universities are often seen by people around the rest of the country as being too far to the left. Rightly or wrongly, that's the perception. And there's some punishment coming out of Washington now, and the universities have to deal with it, and it's going to be a systemic issue for all the major universities. It's not just that. It's a question of whether these universities are safe spaces for Jewish students, whether they've been under attack.

28:00There's no doubt there's been challenges, and all universities have to struggle with this because there are protests. There have been protests in universities from the beginning of universities. But the protests now have been very, I think, unfortunate in some areas, particularly some of the anti-Semitism there, has produced a lot of backlash in Washington, D.C., as it should. And so that's being addressed. But right now, I hope what we don't do is ruin the major universities in the United States because they are one of our greatest assets. People come from all over the world because they want to get our education here.

28:30There's something in the middle, David. Yes. I mean, I think that the universities, you saw initially those three presidents in front of Congress. It was like they were like so tone deaf to what was happening. Yes. And I think even Harvard, and that's Ackman's point. I mean, there's a way of approaching this where you just don't say, oh, my God, we're not going to do anything. Where you say, look, you're right. You're right. We do have some stuff. And then if you want to resist and do it in a way that's not quite as arrogant, it just seems like. I mean, Jewish students are not safe at Harvard right now.

29:02Well, every major university has some challenges, and that's one of the strengths of the system. We have diverse points of view. We need to cure some of those challenges actively and not just give it lip service. Can I just tell you about Apple for a second? This is actually I want to get your view on this. Yeah. Tell me of Apple. Check it out. Falling. President Trump just posted. I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhones that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India or any place else. If that is not the case, a tariff of at least 25 percent must be paid by Apple to the U.S.

29:37Thank you for your attention to this matter. And we'll take a quick look at it. I saw 195. Is it worse than that now? Well, let's let's look at Apple. Yeah. Apple is down six dollars. Let's look at Apple or I can tell you if we're not going to bring it up. Apple right now bidding 195, asking 196 to close the 201. So what do you think, David? Here's here's a situation where Tim Cook has been seen as somebody who has threaded this needle with the president for quite some time. But now the president doubling down. I mean, he did make a comment just about a week and a half ago in a similar vein. I think the hope was that he wasn't going to say it again.

30:16By the way, Tim Cook was just in the White House with the president this week, no less, I believe, talking about this very topic. The president's been very consistent on tariffs when he was president the first time and this time. And he's very clear that he wants tariffs along the way that he says. Right now, the business community is trying to figure out when the tariff agreements are going to come into effect so they know exactly what the agreements are. The business community, by and large, says, all right, we may not like all the rules. Tell us what the rules are, and we'll try to adapt to them and comply with them.

30:48Right now, the tariff negotiations are ongoing. We don't really know what all the tariffs are. Many of the companies that we have are not yet acting as if the tariffs are in place because they don't really think that's going to happen yet. But it may happen. We don't know yet. There's got to be some—they've got to talk. Trump and Apple need to talk. But they are talking. I know they need to talk more. The president, I believe, was there with Tim Cook on Wednesday. Right, I know, but this is like some type of hideous industrial policy that Republicans have eviscerated Democrats forever about trying to control private industry.

31:23And that's what this is. The supply chain that we have in this country has worked reasonably well, which is to get lower cost things in the United States. It's kept inflation down. Obviously, it's how it's denuded our manufacturing base. And some people, the president is one of them, think we should have more manufacturing in the United States. The U.S. has become largely a service economy. And there's been a lot of benefits to that. We are not yet a manufacturing hub any longer. I don't know whether the tariff policy will produce one. But the transition is going to be very difficult to get there.

31:53How do you think about both the president's words about trying to protect American business? I mean, one of the things that he's talked about is how he feels that the EU, for example, and China has taken advantage of American business. He needs to support American business, talks about governments going after Facebook, going after Apple, going after all of these companies, right? On one end, he's very critical of other countries for doing that. And now, I imagine if you're sitting inside Apple today, you're saying, what gives? Well, the president has his tweet out there or whatever it is on social media, and I'm not responding for Apple.

32:30I'm not involved with Apple. But I just look at it this way. We are roughly 5 % of the world's population, the United States, roughly 5 % of the world's population, 330 million, 340 million people. But we're roughly 18 or 19 % of the world's GDP. So, you know, if you've got 5 % of the world's population and you're, you know, about a fifth of the world's GDP. That's called winning. It's not so bad, is it? So there are obviously imperfections. But, you know, the United States is relatively a wealthy country. We're the wealthiest country in the world. It's not distributed equally all the time in the way it should be.

33:03But we actually have benefited from this, I'd say, this chain of lower-cost countries producing things in our country. And we like that. If you get a$10 ,000 iPhone, probably they won't sell as much. What do you think just of the idea of kind of ruling by True Social or Tweet or X, whatever that might be? I mean, I think the fear factor is rather high right now. Fear factor of? CEOs want to keep their head down and not get spelled out. There's articles in the paper today. CEOs are, nobody likes to be criticized in public. Nobody likes that. And no CEO really likes to be criticized in public. I don't like to be criticized in public.

33:41I assume none of you do either. And so when you're criticized by the most powerful person in the world, it has an effect on you. So what CEOs are doing, as the newspaper is reporting today, is basically keeping their heads down and not trying to get into a public battle with the President of the United States. Who wants to do that? Do you think that he can mobilize people, I mean voters, if you will, or citizens, against certain businesses? Meaning, do you think, I mean, the real worry, I think, is twofold. One is that he actually does have a rabid following that if he says, don't shop at Walmart, shop over here, that people will actually maybe do that.

34:15And two, that he can use potentially the regulatory apparatus in some way that harms their business, right? Those are the sort of two big things that I think, if you're a CEO today, you worry about. Historically, presidents haven't been able to do that. And historically, consumer boycotts haven't lasted that long and been that effective. However, this president is unique, and he might be able to get things done that no other president could do. Well, I think the regulatory apparatus is probably the bigger issue. Look at Harvard right now being told that they can't keep any of their foreign students who are enrolled right now at the university.

34:46Foreign students. Foreign students are a very large part of— I don't mean to take away from that. I'm just back to Andrew's second point, the regulatory. On the foreign student point, every major university has foreign students now, largely because they're full pay, which is to say they're paying full freight and in fact subsidizing the other students from the United States. If you get rid of all the foreign students, you know, it's going to have some impact on the universities for sure. And other universities will suffer as well. Right now at Harvard, while I can't speak for Harvard, they are grappling with what they're going to do.

35:16And what can you register students and have them never come to the campus and just do it all virtually, which is what some universities do. Harvard hasn't historically done that. I guess just back to Andrew's point, though, the regulatory apparatus is something that this president seems to control right now. The president controls the regulatory apparatus to a large extent. He's been able to put people on who really want what he wants. And so we'll see. Time will tell. It's a ticking time kind of clock because, you know, he's in power for, let's say, three and a half more years. Can you change the entire construct of the economy and the regulatory environment in three and a half years?

35:52Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. I don't know. David Rubenstein, David, we always appreciate having you on set. Thank you. The one and only. For being here. Thank you.

36:03What was that? An EU flash? Oh, another. There you go, Becky, another Truth Social post. Okay, Truth Social. Donald Trump, the president, saying the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on trade, has been very difficult to deal with. Their powerful trade barriers, VAT taxes, ridiculous corporate penalties, non-monetary trade barriers, monetary manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against American companies and more have led to a trade deficit with the U.S. of more than$250 billion a year, a number which is totally unacceptable.

36:42Our discussions with them are going nowhere. Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50 percent tariff on the European Union starting June 1st, 2025. There is no tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter. This in combination with the True Social earlier attacking Apple for making its products that are sold in the United States outside of the United States. You add that up and you can see that it's been a bad morning at the White House in terms of thinking these negotiations are getting somewhere. So, well, that's always been the big question.

37:16Everyone said we're going to have all these deals. We still haven't seen just about any of that. I thought India was supposed to be done. Japan. You can see that the FTSE in Italy is the biggest decliner of the European averages. It's down by about one point nine percent. And then here are the declines that you see in the United States. Dow futures down by four hundred and seventy points. S &P futures off by sixty seven. the Nasdaq down by close to 300. Joe, you mentioned that Treasury yields were coming down. I guess that's what would happen if you thought you were approaching a recession more rapidly.

37:44446. 446 now, the 30 years still sitting right at 5 percent. We'll continue to monitor this. And coming up, someone who hangs out at the White House, CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz on everything from trying to rein in Medicaid fix. Oh, my God. He doesn't do that to his hair anymore, fellas, ladies. Well, you'll see. We'll be on in a second. Work requirements, efforts to lower prescription drug costs and making America healthy again. Squawk Box coming right back.

38:19Welcome back to Squawk Pod. Stand by Joe. Here's Mike. Q. Joining us now to talk Medicaid, vaccines, AI, and more, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. Dr. Oz, Mehmet, good to see you. Good to have you on this morning. Good morning, Joe. We have been using a phrase a lot lately, and I'm talking about in terms of the reconciliation bill on that. Don't let the don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Everybody's talking about Ronald Reagan, who used to say, if I can get 80 percent of what I want, I'm ready to accept that negotiate. Did you get 80 percent of what you think was needed in terms of Medicaid reform in that House bill yesterday?

38:58doctor I I think we did Joe and I'll tell you that for everyone listening is really important the major goal in Medicaid is to align the federal government with the states you want the governor's doing the same thing for the same reasons as the federal government is doing those same things to help our most vulnerable and the building that I work in which is the Hubert Humphrey building it's where Bobby Kennedy myself and some of the other agencies are based as a there's a little placard on the side that Hubert Humphrey had said back in the day when the building was being built, they said the moral obligation of government is to take care of folks who are in the dawn of their life, the kids.

39:32I'll come back to them with the Maha report yesterday, taking care of those in the twilight of their life, the seniors, that's the Medicare population, and to take care of those living in the shadows. So I think we're doing that. But we have a malaligned system where governors often are wisely gaming this system to maximize revenue for their states. but it hurts the federal government, it hurts the taxpayers, and it actually creates an incentive for people not to participate in life. That's why these work requirements, which was the most important thing that the House pushed forward, are so critical.

40:03And here's the key question, because it gets argued politically all the time. It's very simple. If you're going to get free food on a staff program, you have a work requirement. It's an obligation to try to work. You might not get a job, but you've got to try. In Medicaid, we're saying try to get a job or volunteer. Take care of someone in your family. Go get an education. Do something that shows you have agency in your life, that you want to make a difference, the fact that you matter. And when you don't ask that of people, you end up with generational poverty. And I've spoken to governors who, in a quiet moment, will admit that there are people in their state who will not work because they have never worked, because their parents didn't work.

40:38They don't know what it feels like to have that sense of accomplishment. And we need to change that both for the emotional well-being of our people, but it also is a budget breaker if we don't. Did it go far enough to try to balance out? You've heard how many times, doctor, about it? It disproportionately benefits working age individuals versus disabled people. And pregnant women, they get seven, eight, nine times the reimbursement. I think that's what you're referring to with with the governors. Does the work requirements solve that? Because yesterday we had a gentleman on that said, well, we're trying to make it so Texas and Florida don't go the route of a lot of these other states in gaming.

41:24Not doing anything about the states that are already gaming the system, but just trying to prevent more states from actually gaming the system. Well, there are hundreds of billions of dollars of saving that we're estimating,$770 billion in particular for just getting some of these different changes through there. But the work requirement is a big part of that. And as I mentioned, it has a moral benefit as well as a financial benefit. But the fundamental disconnect, which you're touching on, what I want to clarify, is that an able-bodied individual with no kid actually reimburses better than a pregnant woman with a kid who is disabled.

42:01I'll say that again. The original Medicaid population, the young, the elderly who don't have money, a disabled child, they actually are less valuable to the health care system than an able-bodied individual who is hopefully going to get a job and move on. And that happened because of this bizarre path that we chose when we expanded Medicaid in 40 of the 50 states that actually reimburses higher. We pay 90 % of the bill. So the states say, well, if you're going to pay the whole bill, we're going to just throw money at this problem and try to get as much cash into the coffers of our hospitals and other social services in our state.

42:33But it takes away the responsibility to actually manage who you're taking care of. And in some states, California is an example where illegal immigrants get Medicaid coverage, they'll often be slippage, and the federal government ends up paying for that. What that really means, Joe, is someone in Mississippi is paying tax dollars so that illegal immigrants benefit in California. Now, if we as a country decide to do that, that's one thing. By now, we have every state pulling the oars in a different direction, and it creates the morass that is unhealthy for our system. Is it fixed in this bill? And when the president said, don't F with Medicaid, did that make it more difficult to do what's necessary because once again we're thinking about an election in two years for a lot of members of of the house the president was powerfully protecting medicaid which he has said over and over again he's going to love and cherish these programs he doesn't want pro exchanges to medicaid and medicare which are vitally important there are 68 million people on medicare there's almost 80 million on medicaid and chip children's health insurance he doesn't want those hurting the vulnerable populations that is a moral hazard they gotta be fixed are they fixed now with the House bill?

43:40Or does the Senate need to do more? They're talking about doing more. Well, we have fixed the short-term budget issue. The Senate very wisely is considering whether to make structural changes to address the problem we touched on earlier. How do you get governors to want to do the exact same thing that the federal government wants? And there are some changes that will be wise for this system. Our goal, as you know, is we've got a bunch of people in different roles in the cabinet that the president has wisely appointed to make a difference. My purpose in coming into government was not to serve for a couple of years, patch up a few things on the edges and move on.

44:11It's to make deep seismic shifts so the system is healthier going forward. This is true for Medicaid, Medicare, and all the social programs for health insurance in America. All right. You want to talk, Maha? And I have said many times, Doctor, that we have Roger Altman on who had a heart transplant, and not everybody knows that he wanted one surgeon to do that heart transplant, and that was you. So you're a lot more than a TV star, obviously. say anything that the secretary secretary kennedy says where you go as a doctor where you go i i'm not comfortable with with some of the uh uh conjecture or vaccine stuff any were you on board with everything that that uh robert kennedy said robert f said yesterday at uh at the white house the maha report uh that secretary kennedy drove through with together with secretary collins of course the president made it possible because you had everybody represented there's one goal It's the same thing every parent always says about what's going on in their children's lives.

45:10I want to double check to make sure everything's okay. That's what Secretary Kennedy is arguing for. We have to go back and look at what the hard science really says about many things we've taken for granted. And this is a fundamental reality of the entire Maha movement. Joe, I'm going to give you one word to define Maha. Curiosity. Are you earnestly curious? Now remember, 80 % of these questions people are asking are actually statements in disguise. So do you really want to know the answer to the tough questions that moms all across America are asking about the health of their kids and why we're managing sick kids in a sick care system that is dramatically changing their futures?

45:46And remember, unhealthy kids become unhealthy adults. So I will speak to the not just the moral hazard of allowing kids to have the chronic illnesses that the Maha report describes, but I'm going to reinforce what Secretary Kennedy is saying. We want to go back and kick the tires and ask the fundamental questions that should have been asked back when Medicare and Medicaid were created 60 years ago. Are these really the right things to do for our kids? We've made it easy for kids to be sick in America. Three quarters can't even serve in the military. This is your patriotic duty to keep your family healthy, but we need to help you.

46:17And this report is pushing every agency to ask those tough questions. But as we do that, we truly want to have equipoise. You truly want to be open-minded. And if you hear things that are uncomfortable, inconvenient, you got to be courageous to share that truth. And you got to be compassionate as you do it because people don't care what you know, so they know that you care. Administrator Oz, I'd ask how that plays out in some of the other agencies like the FDA with Peter Marks leaving a number of other long-term people who have been at that agency helping companies kind of push through new and groundbreaking cures for or therapies for diseases.

46:52I mean, with some of those people gone, I'm already hearing back from the industry that it is harder to get answers from the industry on how they set up their clinical trials, how they can kind of plan for the future and hope that they get some of these things passed. How do you make sure that you are open and curious and thinking about all of these things without throwing out some of the great progress that has been made, including under the first Trump administration, where they streamlined some of those processes? Well, Marty McRae is doing a superb job as FDA director. He was on the Hill yesterday articulating exactly why those accusations are incorrect.

47:26They're keeping up with the workflow. They've got excellent people coming in the government. This is a generational opportunity, Becky. You've got top-notch people saying, I'm going to give up what I was doing in my life and go in and try to serve because we can make a difference now. And so one thing that the FDA and CMS, my agency, are going to do is to collaborate a bit more so that when the FDA approves something, so they say, hey, this thing works, CMS is going to start paying for it earlier. There can sometimes be years that, you know, Joe, you kindly mentioned our mutual friend, Roger Altman.

47:59You know, I am a surgeon and I invent things. So one of the things that I help create is a device that repairs valves from outside the body so you don't have to stop the heart. It took us years between when the FDA approved it and when CMS, my agency, started reimbursing for using it. That creates a barrier for seniors and folks on Medicaid to access these cutting edge therapies. We want to shorten that timeline. Those are the bigger structural issues we're addressing. In the meantime, there are people who have been involved in agencies who oftentimes they've been there for decades. Sometimes they lose that desire, that passion for change that I think you should have when you come into government.

48:35I don't know. They're wrapping us. I know you've got to go. Do any NIH cuts, doge cuts, give you pause in terms of basic science, doctor? No. Jay Bhattacharya, I've talked to him. He runs NIH. Close friend. He was at Stanford. He's a top tier scientist. He wants the money going to the scientists. Remember, the cuts were for a bureaucratic overhead that pays for middle management at universities. It was not designed to actually fund the researchers. If you're getting money from the NIH, you're still getting it. You're just not paying 70 percent overhead. No one in the world pays 70 percent overhead.

49:06Dr. Oz, that part may be true. Separately related to Doge, there's the USAID piece of it. And you have people like Bill Gates out there saying that actually there's going to be millions of children that are not going to be able to live as a function of that as a doctor. I'm just hoping you'd weigh in on that. It's just not a correct statement. But the things that USAID were doing that are valuable, we can do in other agencies. We just don't want to put it in this black box that's a captured organization where you don't know where it's headed. And that's actually fairly common. We cut out$3 billion in contracts from CMS.

49:39We paid$200 million, Andrew, over the last five years,$200 million for a company that was supposed to be writing code, not one single usable line. We fired them. They don't deserve to get American taxpayer money if they're not delivering. We have business people managing engineers. I'll give you a concrete number, 13 engineers in CMS. I've got 6 ,500 folks working for me, 40 ,000 contractors. I've got 13 engineers. There's something wrong there. Let me have more engineers and less bureaucrats. And I had just one last question. It relates to Snap, which, of course, is money for folks who can't afford oftentimes to buy food.

50:15It's an interesting alliance. There's a piece, actually, that Daniel Kay wrote in Dealbook this morning about how folks like Walmart and Kroger and Albertsons, sort of an unusual alliance between grocery stores, effectively, to get actually a lot of money from Snap, and anti-hunger organizations. And I'm curious how how much you hear from both sides of those groups trying to keep that money in place and how you as a doctor think about that. Well, that's vitally important. But we want kids, especially because they're half 50 percent of kids are on Medicaid or SNAP. So it's that's that's the future of our country.

50:48Right. They are now and they always will be. But they have to get healthy food. These SNAP waivers you're reading about, our governor is saying we don't want to have a system where kids can buy junk with their SNAP, their food stamps, and then get sick, and then we've got to pick up the tab. One in six kids is obese. That increases the chance of them having significant illnesses like pre-diabetes. It's about a quarter of them now get that. A quarter of them have allergies. A quarter of kids who are teen boys have ADHD. A quarter of young women, teen women, girls, have severe depression. These are major shifts.

51:23When I was growing up, those weren't the numbers. We have to intervene, and it starts with food, because food is medicine. The Hippocratic Oath is something my son read this week as he just graduated from medical school. I was listening to it. And what they were fundamentally talking about was the most important tools are the tools you use at home. You win the battle for health in your kitchen, your living room, your bedroom. And we've forgotten that. And the SNAP program is a way of nudging people. If you're going to give them food to help them in a tough time, give them nutritious food so they're actually healthy and can go on and change the world.

51:53I can tell you, this gentleman lives this. and before your latest gig, when we had dinner, and I reached for some butter, he slapped my hand, I was going to order some carbonara, you were I mean, you were terrible. Terrible to don't ever go, if he asked you to go to dinner, do not go to dinner. You remember that, doctor? You ordered french fries, too. I blocked that. No, that's a lie, but I did order that carbonara. What was the term? Widowmaker? I was like trying to gag it down after that. I don't see that. Horrible. That's how you get gallbladder disease. There you go. There you go. Well, I don't have one anymore.

52:31Have you heard about that? Have you talked to Dr. Oz about it, about the gallbladder? We've talked. Okay. It's gone. It's gone. I got rid of that thing. It was gangrenous. Administrator Oz, pretty good on TV. Great, Dr. Oz. Thank you for coming on. Yep. Thank you. Come back. God bless you all. I'm told that Monday is Memorial Day. Monday is Memorial Day. We can't forget what it's for. Can't forget what it's for, but also take advantage of maybe sleeping in a little. Make sure you join us on Tuesday. Yes, that is Squawk Pod for today and for the week. You've made it. We've all made it to the long holiday weekend.

53:10Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. You can tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern or follow this podcast. Follow Squawk Pod wherever you like to listen to get the best of our show right into your ears whenever you want. Have a great three-day weekend, and we'll meet you right back here on Tuesday. We are clear. Thanks, guys.