In short
The episode of Wall Street Week (David Weston) connects three “comeback” stories—U.S.-China trade and AI rivalry, Syracuse’s bid to rebuild after deindustrialization via Micron, and U.S.-Canada tensions around the Gordie Howe Bridge—then turns to humanoid robots for elder care and healthcare.
Guests (and backgrounds)
Michael Froman, President of the Council on Foreign Relations; Rob Simpson, leader of Center State CEO (Syracuse economic development); Joseph Perilla, economist at the Brookings Institution; Roy McSkimming, author/biographer of Gordie Howe; Michael Belzer, Cornell visiting professor and Wayne State professor emeritus; Steve Ondeko, founder/leader of On Freight Logistics; Jennifer Haroon, COO of Andromeda (creator of Abby); Gopi Shah-Goda, Brookings Retirement Security Project director; Kimberly Powell, Nvidia VP for healthcare; Darsleeper, chief design officer at OneX (NEO humanoid robot).
Key claims
China’s export/subsidy model drives unsustainable trade imbalances; U.S. and Europe are shifting toward protectionism; Syracuse’s Micron investment can restart advanced-industry exports but risks “company town” dependence; U.S.-Canada tariffs add uncertainty and may be an “own goal”; humanoid robots can help with companionship and some tasks, not replace caregivers.
Notable examples
China’s ~$1.2T trade surplus; Syracuse’s Micron plan (9,000 direct jobs, 40,000 indirect, $100B+); Gordie Howe Bridge opening amid Trump/Carney tariff fights; Abby’s weekly dementia-group sessions (Tai Chi, song requests); Japan nursing homes seeing employment rise with tech; OneX/NEO focusing on reliable pick-and-place and household navigation.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWelcome to Wall Street Week
0:30 to 0:50
David Weston introduces the topics of the episode related to trade and the economy.
“It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version.”
Welcome to Wall Street Week
1:24 to 2:27
David Weston introduces the topics of the episode related to trade and the economy.
“I'm David Weston bringing you stories of capitalism, turning rust into silicon.”
China's Economic Strategy
2:27 to 3:20
Discussion of China's ambitious economic plans and their implications.
“to keep the discussion going between the world's two largest economies.”
Global Trade Imbalances
3:20 to 4:30
Exploring the trade surplus China has and its effects on global markets.
“On the other hand, the United States has come to the conclusion that we need to rebuild our manufacturing base.”
Challenges of Growth and Exports
4:30 to 5:40
Analyzing how China's growth may become unsustainable due to its export dependence.
“If things keep going the way they go right now, where do we end up?”
Internal Dynamics of China's Economy
5:40 to 7:08
Examining the internal political and economic factors affecting China's growth model.
“It's different now when China is the size that it is.”
AI's Role in Future Economies
7:08 to 9:59
Discussing AI's potential impact on China's economy and global trade.
“So if their export markets close, it's going to force them quite painfully to go through that kind of restructuring.”
U.S.-China Relations and Economic Challenges
9:59 to 11:21
Evaluating the dual challenges of U.S.-China relations and the internal U.S. fiscal situation.
“There is a lot and growing amount of talk about safety in AI right now.”
Syracuse's Economic Comeback
11:21 to 12:02
Introduction to the story of Syracuse's efforts to revitalize its economy with tech.
“And we have two great imbalances in the world.”
The Rise of SMEs and Startups
12:02 to 13:48
Exploring the shift from unicorns to the new generation of startups and SMEs.
“We bring you the story of Syracuse and the Micron Chip Factory.”
Show all 27 chapters
Syracuse's Economic Comeback
14:33 to 20:46
Exploration of Syracuse's economic challenges and revitalization efforts.
“About 250 miles northwest of the hustle and bustle of New York City lies Syracuse, New York.”
The Impact of Micron's Investment
20:46 to 23:14
Discussion on Micron's investment and its potential effects on Syracuse's economy.
“If you don't participate in what we call the export economy, what I just described, it's very hard to have shared prosperity because that is where quality jobs are created.”
Economic Revitalization Strategies
23:14 to 26:56
Insights on the strategies required for sustainable economic revitalization.
“and the potential for thousands of new skilled and well-paid jobs could turbocharge that comeback.”
Transition to US-Canada Relations
26:56 to 27:14
Introduction to upcoming discussions on US-Canada relations and infrastructure.
“which brings new hope even as it comes with echoes of industrial cycles of the past, making it all the more important to make sure this comeback can survive the next downturn always lurking just around the corner.”
Transition to US-Canada Relations
28:03 to 28:16
Introduction to upcoming discussions on US-Canada relations and infrastructure.
“Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects.”
Transition to US-Canada Relations
29:00 to 29:19
Introduction to upcoming discussions on US-Canada relations and infrastructure.
“Hear from influential corporate and government leaders as they discuss the strategies shaping Canada's economic future.”
The Gordie Howe Bridge: Symbol of Trade
29:31 to 31:14
Exploring the Gordie Howe Bridge and its significance in U.S.-Canada trade relations.
“The Ambassador Bridge has joined Windsor, Ontario with Detroit, Michigan since the 1920s, long representing the close ties between two great economies.”
Trade Tensions and Tariffs
31:14 to 36:20
Discussion on the impact of tariffs and trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada.
“Gordie Howe was probably the greatest hockey player of his day, and some say of all time.”
Impact of Tariffs on Economies
36:20 to 39:23
Analyzing how tariffs affect both economies and the potential harm they can cause.
“making it prohibitively expensive for foreign producers.”
Gordie Howe: A Symbol of Unity
39:23 to 40:52
Reflecting on Gordie Howe's legacy and its connection to U.S.-Canada relations.
“trade policy as a prime example of the sort of goal you don't want to score in hockey.”
Meet Abby: The Humanoid Robot
43:05 to 44:10
Discover Abby, a humanoid robot designed for emotional intelligence in elder care.
“of creature we need to figure out how to live and work with.”
The Role of Humanoids in Elder Care
44:10 to 46:05
Discuss the financial implications and use cases for humanoids in elder care.
“Did you throw in a big yeehaw for good measure?”
Technology's Impact on Care Work
46:05 to 48:06
Examine how technology is reshaping the demand and supply dynamics of care workers.
“family members available to provide care to those who need it.”
Humanoids in Healthcare: Current State
48:06 to 50:00
Explore the current capabilities and future potential of humanoids in healthcare.
“There's no way that a humanoid companion robot will be able to replace a caretaker in all aspects, and certainly they're not going to replace staff in a memory support neighbourhood like this or nurses.”
The Reality of Humanoid Robots
50:00 to 53:03
Understand the current limitations and future vision for humanoid robots in daily life.
“And it also provides a necessary component to what the next two and five years are going to look like in healthcare, which is going to be a lot of physical AI deployment.”
The Reality of Humanoid Robots
54:52 to 56:06
Understand the current limitations and future vision for humanoid robots in daily life.
“meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward.”
Introduction to Bloomberg Money
56:10 to 56:40
Discover how Bloomberg Money provides insights into financial markets and decision-making.
“Here at Bloomberg, we spend all week talking about markets and the economy.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00In a startup landscape defined by the unicorns of the world, how do ventures rapidly scale? And are government initiatives growing access to capital and agile regulation changing what it means to be a founder? Find out more later in the podcast.
0:30and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward.
1:18The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC.
1:42This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston bringing you stories of capitalism, turning rust into silicon. We go to Syracuse, New York to look at one city hoping to replace the 20th century manufacturing base it lost with the 21st century chip foundry. And building bridges between the United States and Canada, or at least one bridge. The brand new Gordie Howe Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor comes online, just as President Trump and Mark Carney square off over the trade it was meant to facilitate. Plus, as much of the world is getting older, we're going to need more people to take care of us.
2:19What if some of those people were humanoid robots? But we start with China. President Xi made his visit to Washington this week to keep the discussion going between the world's two largest economies. Economies with very different approaches and in very different places. Is there a path forward where both can prosper despite those differences? Michael Froman is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
2:48Michael Froman:China has laid out a very ambitious plan to be dominant in sector after sector. and put a lot of money behind it, both subsidies and practices, policies to protect their industries, but also, very importantly, not requiring their companies fundamentally to make a profit, which is perhaps the greatest subsidy of all. If you don't have to make a profit and you can continue to charge less and less for your product, then you're going to both be very competitive at home, but also undermine other manufacturing capacity around the world. And that's what we've seen going on. On the other hand, the United States has come to the conclusion that we need to rebuild our manufacturing base.
3:27Michael Froman:We need to reindustrialize, in part because we're dependent on China for critical inputs, even for our military, but also more broadly across the economy. So there's a real effort here to look at what are the policies necessary to rebuild manufacturing and make that a more significant part of our economy. When we talk about global trade right now, and this is the United States, but also Europe and elsewhere, I think the word I hear most of is imbalance. Talk to us about the structural imbalance right now with China's exports. Well, China has achieved, last year they had a$1.2 trillion trade surplus with the rest of the world.
4:01Michael Froman:And even though the U.S. had put tariffs on Chinese imports, Chinese imports to the U.S. may have been less, but we were importing even more from other countries to which China had been exporting. And their exports to Europe are going up quite a bit at the expense of Europe's manufacturing base. So Europe is now going through that moment that the U.S. went through early in the 2000s, sort of the China shock moment of seeing its manufacturing base potentially eroded by Chinese imports. And that's going to create a political issue in Europe, as it has in the United States over time. If things keep going the way they go right now, where do we end up?
4:39Whether it's U.S. or Europe, what happens to that imbalance? What response can the U.S. or Europe have to it?
4:45Michael Froman:Well, I think you're already seeing it from the U.S. perspective. We've become more protectionist. We put tariffs up on Chinese imports. And as I said, it has reduced those imports to a certain degree, although China itself is not finding difficulty finding other markets. Europe is now going through that process. Europe, ideologically, in part because of the whole European Union integration ideology, they are more committed, at least rhetorically, to free trade. So it's harder for them to be protectionist in the same way that the U.S. has become protectionist, but they are heading in that direction as they see their auto sector and other key parts of their manufacturing sector beginning to get hollowed out.
5:25Michael Froman:I think the real challenge is that it was one thing when China was half the size as it is now, exporting its way, exporting excess capacity to the rest of the world, and exporting at a rate two or three times the rate of global growth. It's different now when China is the size that it is. You have the laws of arithmetic. And if you keep on growing significantly higher than, you grow your exports significantly higher than global growth when you are an economy the size of China, that becomes unsustainable. At some point, as other markets close to you, you're going to run out of customers. And that's going to have a blowback factor in the Chinese economy as well.
6:05Which raises an important point that you made in your recent foreign affairs piece. There's the effect on the United States, there's the effect on Europe, on Japan. What's the effect on China as they run out of new export markets?
6:19Michael Froman:So we have long been encouraging China, literally for two decades. We've been encouraging China to go through the necessary reforms to create a more balanced domestic demand-led, consumer-led economy. And they have basically resisted that because they know how to export. They know how to ensure that their exports are highly competitive. And they go back to that playbook every time they have economic challenges. So the result is they've run up these huge trade surpluses with the rest of the world. If those markets close to them, or if they can't grow at the same rate, they've run out of the property market.
6:53Michael Froman:They tried that, and that grew and then busted. They've run out of infrastructure to build. There's only so many high-speed rails that are non-competitive, non-economic that you can build. And so it's hard to see what can take the place of exports. So if their export markets close, it's going to force them quite painfully to go through that kind of restructuring. And after years of financial oppression, of really preventing consumers from enjoying the benefits of their labor, they're going to have to see a lot of people laid off, a lot of companies that are sort of zombie companies closed down.
7:29Michael Froman:It's going to have an effect potentially on their financial system. And that's certainly not good for China, not good for the rest of the world either. And you could see that then creating a broader global economic crisis. It's been said that things that are not sustainable sooner or later will end. OK, so what you're describing is something that doesn't sound sustainable. Take us inside China as far as we can from outside, which is difficult. Is this a political matter internally or is this an economic matter? Is President Xi running this for the politics or the economics? So it's both. I mean, on the economic side, it's the playbook they know best and they know how to export excess capacity, how to build excess capacity and how to export it.
8:05Michael Froman:At some point, that road is going to run out. But it's also, as you suggest, a political agenda as well, because it gives the party and the central authorities a great deal of control over the direction of the economy. One of the fears that President Xi allegedly has of creating a consumer-led economy is that you're putting power in the hands of individuals rather than in the hands of the party and of the state. Right now, he could turn to his provincial leaders and say, you must build solar panels. You must build electric vehicles. You are going to be incentivized. You're going to be promoted on whether you expand production, regardless of whether it's economic or not.
8:43Michael Froman:When you're relying on the consumer, ultimately, to drive the economy, you have much less control than you do when you're relying over industrialization, manufacturing, and export-driven-led growth. It appears to me outside that President Xi's theory and part is, we're going to make it up on tech. We're going to do AI. We're going to rare earths, things like that. Can that bail out his economy? Can that give him another approach beyond exports? I'd separate AI and these other issues like critical minerals. I think both the U.S. and China are hoping that AI creates such a significant productivity boost that it's going to cover up a lot of other challenges that we have in both economies.
9:21Michael Froman:The U.S. continues to be ahead, we believe, in the development of models. But China is probably ahead of figuring out how to ensure that as those models are developed, They are deployed effectively through the economy, including through manufacturing and that nexus of AI and robotics, such that they've got factories that have almost no workers but are very effective at producing their manufactured products. So I think that they do hope that that's going to be part of the answer for them. But$1.2 trillion of exports is about 30 % of their economic growth. That's a hard piece to substitute for on AI alone.
9:59There is a lot and growing amount of talk about safety in AI right now. What are the prospects of our doing something with China, even as we are rivals and competitors, to actually deal with safety?
10:11Michael Froman:I mean, we did that back in the nuclear days, right, even in the 50s. The Soviet Union had all sorts of agreements and warning systems and communication capabilities. With China, we have tried to have this dialogue on AI. It actually goes back to the Biden administration. It took a lot of work to get the Chinese to come to the table. And then I think the only agreement that was actually secured was one that we should not take the human out of the loop in making decisions over the launch of nuclear weapons, which seems like a pretty base level agreement that we can all get behind. I think looking further and particularly to the issue of how do you balance the desire for accelerated innovation against the need to ensure safety around potential catastrophic developments, that is something that we're wrestling with here in the United States.
11:00Michael Froman:And I think it's going to be very difficult to get the Chinese to agree to anything, at least in the short run, while we're not sure ourselves exactly what it is we want to try to achieve. We're here at the Council on Foreign Relations, and you say globally. if you had to rank the challenge of the United States between China on the one hand, economically, the economic challenge, and our own internal house, which is more pressing? The answer is yes. Both are pressing. And we have two great imbalances in the world. One is China's huge trade surplus with the rest of the world. The other is our own unsustainable fiscal situation, our deficit, now at$40 trillion, about 130 % of GDP.
11:36Michael Froman:It too, every economist says it's unsustainable, just without respect to time and place. And so we don't know what it's going to take for that to end. And I think the challenge is, politically, there doesn't seem to be much motivation in either political party to take the issue terribly seriously and deal with the fiscal adjustment that that would require. Coming up, a Rust Belt city hopes that tech will lead it back to growth. We bring you the story of Syracuse and the Micron Chip Factory.
12:12Are unicorns old news? I'm Jacob Greaves, host of Economy of Scale, a series exploring how innovators and investors are transforming growth in key global sectors. And in this episode, we're diving into the world of SMEs and startups. Sandeep Sani, co-founder of Dubai-based Valio Health, has this to say on the evolution of unicorns. Billion dollar was a great deal, I think, up until two years ago. Now it's all about the trillion dollar startups, right? In this year alone, there are two trillion dollar IPOs that already happened and two more that probably will happen. I would say a billion today in the world post 2025 is an average.
12:49Roman Asensar, managing partner at early stage VC firm Antler, has this to say. I think this is for you as a founder, but also for the team to say, how can we shoot for the stars if we have a 50 % likelihood to happen? But I'd create that tenement of drive and intensity, which is extremely important. Listen to the full episode of Economy of Scale wherever you get your podcasts. Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work.
13:29It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward.
14:16The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. You're listening to Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. This is a story about comebacks. About 250 miles northwest of the hustle and bustle of New York City lies Syracuse, New York. It's home to a major university named for the city, and once also counted major manufacturing companies like Carrier and General Electric among its residents. But in recent times, while the university has remained, many of the manufacturers have moved on, along with their jobs. The entire upstate New York corridor is a part of the country that I think was really hit hard by deindustrialization and globalization.
15:07Starting in the late 70s all the way through the early 2000s, our communities fell on really challenging times. Jobs left, people then followed. This problem of deindustrialization is not unique to Syracuse. Across the country, from Flint, Michigan to Youngstown, Ohio, once thriving industrial cities have grappled with the same forces shaping American manufacturing. Syracuse native Rob Simpson saw that decline firsthand. Today, he leads Center State CEO, the region's main business and economic development organization. And he has spent much of the past two decades trying to change his city's trajectory.
15:49You say you've made some real progress. Give us a snapshot right now of where the economy is in terms of employment, in terms of growth. Syracuse and central New York are leading the state of New York in job growth. We have a rate of job growth that is higher even than New York City. It's the first time in 30 years that that has happened. We're seeing economic performance across the board in every industry from leisure and hospitality all the way up through advanced manufacturing and high tech. And obviously the thing that everybody is talking about here in Syracuse right now is the once-in-a-generation investment by Micron in our community, bringing 9 ,000 direct jobs, 40 ,000 indirect jobs over the next 15 to 20 years, and more than$100 billion in capital investment right here in our backyard.
16:32For those who say New York is a place that's too hard to do business, then what are we doing here? Micron could have gone anywhere in the country. With a market cap of over a trillion dollars, Micron is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies. And construction is now underway on its massive new manufacturing campus outside Syracuse, a project local leaders hope will anchor a much larger semiconductor industry in the region. What made Syracuse the right place for Micron? I think it was a combination of factors. First, we had a great piece of real estate. Our county has been working to build a business park, the White Pine Business Park, which Micron selected as their future home for their mega fab campus.
17:15We have a tremendous power asset. All of the hydropower coming from Buffalo and the nuclear power coming from Oswego and Lake Ontario to the north. All of those literally intersect right across the street from the site that Micron selected. What about a skilled workforce? One of the things that we shared with Micron early in the recruitment, and I think that was one of the big barriers, we had to get them over the hump to understand that we could generate the workforce here. We happen to have 17 colleges and universities that offer degree-bearing programs within two hours of where I'm sitting right now in downtown Syracuse.
17:45Those 17 schools collectively, they graduate 7 ,250 engineers that are directly related to the needs of not only Micron, but Micron's supply chain partners. And the benefits of landing a company like Micron can extend far beyond the company itself. Darren Price started Wright Price Companies in Syracuse more than 20 years ago. At that point in time, we sold office supplies. We sold commercial furniture. We sold promotional products and jansan. But we quickly realized after the first year that we had to specialize in something. And commercial furniture gave us the most margins. So we really dove into the commercial furniture industry.
18:25Around 14 years ago, we started the RPC technology brand where we were selling fiber optic cable, computer supplies, electrical supplies. But Micron represents a new kind of opportunity. Winning Micron business for us would mean a lot. It would mean a lot, not only for right price companies, but it would mean a lot for our community. for the Syracuse community. Micron is so large, we're looking to be a creator of jobs here. So being awarded jobs with Micron, we'd be able to hire local, we'd be able to grow local, and really impact the footprint of Syracuse. Price is optimistic, but also cautious.
19:13As someone who's watched major employers come and go before, he hopes Micron is here to stay. Well, I think when Micron first announced, there was definitely some hesitation because people experienced the Rust Belt. People experienced the major employers that we have pack up and leave. And, you know, a guy like me, you know, growing up during that, you know, my father worked at Carrier. And, you know, my friends, their parents worked at General Motors and at Chrysler. They worked at GE. They worked at Bristol. and Ally, they worked a number of different places. When we got, when our time came up, those jobs were gone.
19:54And, you know, most people, a lot of people left for employment. Now the great thing about it is we're seeing the opportunity for now our kids not to leave, for they can stay right here and have very good careers. Joseph Perilla, an economist at the Brookings Institution, studies why investments like Micron's transform some local economies and what determines how widely those benefits spread. At the end of the day, every place has to have a set of economic activities, we call these industries and companies, that create something, a product or a service within that place and export it to the rest of the country and the rest of the world.
20:41And they bring back income and that income creates jobs and growth. If you don't participate in what we call the export economy, what I just described, it's very hard to have shared prosperity because that is where quality jobs are created. And it's where the spill overs happen to what we call the locally serving part of the economy. So that's like retail, health care, things that we all spend with our income. And so you have to find some new growth engine within those industries. And in the United States, that tends to be in advanced industries, the most innovative, require sort of technical talent.
21:21And those advanced industries, you know, they're highly competitive. But if you can get a foothold in one, you reap the benefits for your workforce because jobs in those advanced industries are 50 percent more likely to be quality family sustaining wage jobs than those in the locally serving part of the economy. So you sort of have to find some new source of exports and mechanism to bring wealth back in. And, you know, you can't run away from that as much as we may want to say, oh, there's a different way to grow. So it's very hard for any individual place to grow without some connection to the global economy.
21:58We've seen quite a few cities with a new plan of some sort or the other. Several times, more than one new plan. Which ones work and which ones don't? I think there is a recipe of sorts for economic revitalization. So first, you have to have a shared strategy. You have to have an understanding of your economic starting point. And then, you know, government, the private sector, civil society have to come behind and understand what that strategy should be. Second, you need to invest in the things that determine a place's long run competitiveness and prosperity. So that's, you know, your workforce being the most important thing, infrastructure, some sort of source of innovation in an era of technological change, whether that's a university or a startup ecosystem.
22:48And then the sort of secret sauce is how can we marshal those investments, say, in a training program or, you know, an entrepreneurship strategy together in alignment across the public sector, private sector and civic and philanthropic sectors. That alignment is really often what determines whether a strategy will work or not in its delivery phase. With the help of Micron, Syracuse appears poised for a comeback, and the potential for thousands of new skilled and well-paid jobs could turbocharge that comeback. But having a major anchor can both help jumpstart a regional economy and also pose the risk of making that economy vulnerable to corporations deciding to move in a different direction down the road.
23:35That's something Rob Simpson says Center State is already planning for. You know, there's downside risk as well in having one big employer come in and make a difference in an economy. What can you do to try to diversify against that possibility down the road? I'm really glad you asked that question because this is something that we talk about and we think about every day. Every public appearance I give, I talk about how important it is that we not make the mistake of falling into a company town. My grandfather, back in the 1950s, worked at GE when they had 22 ,000 people out in Liverpool, New York, five miles from where we sit.
24:08We were a company town. We lost our ability to innovate. We stopped starting businesses. One of the metrics that we use is that we believe every single year, Syracuse and Central New York economy should be starting more businesses than we lose. We have to be building the funnel. We have to be supporting innovation. And at Center State CEO, it's one of our core pillars of our work. We're so proud to have Micron here. We know the generational impact that that investment will have. But the long-term success of our community will be determined as to whether or not we start more businesses every year than we lose.
Read the full transcript
24:39Attracting major growth, while diversifying the sources at the same time, may now be Syracuse's next challenge. But Syracuse is just one of many former industrial hubs across the country searching for a new economic future. I think what's interesting about this wave of re-industrialization that we're seeing is that for a variety of reasons, some of them economic, some of them more about policy and national security, that the United States wants to win in these strategic areas of competition. Semiconductors, AI, biopharmaceuticals, certain parts of energy, critical minerals, et cetera. And the question is, what do those industries need across the country?
25:22And they may be a revaluing of some of these legacy industrial hubs because they still have some of the same technical workforce. They're a little more affordable than the coastal tech hubs. They have land, water, electricity in many places. And so what could happen is the U.S. tries to compete for this$50 trillion opportunity, as McKinsey has estimated over the next two decades for these strategic industries. They may actually find themselves in more places like Syracuse because of the inputs that they're seeking, which I think would be a good thing for the country. That would represent a rebalancing of economic growth and helping some of these places that have fallen behind reconnect to the global economy.
26:06Now, of course, there's going to continue to be churn, and there's always risks that yesterday's losers will become today's winners, and there'll be a new round of losers. And that's where public policy has to understand this divergence and use some public resources to reinvest in all of the country, ensure that every region in the U.S. has a strategy, a coherent set of investments against that strategy, and then the capacity to align to deliver that strategy, that should be a baseline expectation for what the federal government and state governments do. Creative destruction is the price capitalism charges for innovation and growth and resilience.
26:45A price that is felt in communities like Syracuse, which are forced to look for ways to come back from the loss of the old by seeking out the new. New investment like that of Micron, which brings new hope even as it comes with echoes of industrial cycles of the past, making it all the more important to make sure this comeback can survive the next downturn always lurking just around the corner. Up next, elbows up. It was the slogan that Mark Carney used in his campaign to be Canada's prime minister. And it's what hockey legend Gordie Howe epitomized as leader of the Detroit Red Wings. How the new bridge across the Detroit River named for the hockey legend has come to epitomize the good and the challenging parts of U.S.-Canada relations.
27:40Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChachiBT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.
28:23At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are, with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters, so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. Join Bloomberg for the Canadian Finance Conference, proudly sponsored by National Bank of Canada Capital Markets on September 29th in New York. Hear from influential corporate and government leaders as they discuss the strategies shaping Canada's economic future.
29:08Connect with senior decision makers, gain actionable insights, and be part of the conversations driving business forward. Register at bloomberglive.com slash Canadian Finance. That's bloomberglive.com slash Canadian Finance. You're listening to Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. This is a story about what could have been and what could be once again. Bridges connect places and people. The Ambassador Bridge has joined Windsor, Ontario with Detroit, Michigan since the 1920s, long representing the close ties between two great economies. A new and improved version of the bridge was meant to draw those economies even closer.
29:52But instead, it has become a symbol of differences and disputes, of connections once strong that are now fraying or broken. After 25 years of planning and eight years of construction, the Gordie Howe Bridge opened to traffic in July.
30:09Michael Froman:This achievement, having one of the most fluid and secure, high-volume border crossings in the world, is a testament to the long-standing partnership between Canada, the United States, and the state of Michigan. There's just one problem. The opening ceremony for the bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, was at first delayed and ultimately attended only by Canadian officials. the result of President Trump's displeasure with the bridge and even more with the economic relations between the two countries. I mean, in all fairness to them, they need us to survive. I don't believe in escalating the conflict.
30:48That's not constructive. But our tariffs are necessary to protect our workers, protect our companies and our communities. We can't let American goods into Canada tariff-free while they charge our companies to export them. The new bridge over the Detroit River is named for Gordie Howe, known as Mr. Hockey, the man from Saskatoon, Canada, who spent much of his career on the other side of the border as the star of the Detroit Red Wings.
31:17Michael Froman:Gordie Howe was probably the greatest hockey player of his day, and some say of all time. The bridge's namesake was for Canadians and Americans, a man who symbolized both countries and cultures and the things they had in common. Roy McSkimming is the author of Gordy, a Hockey Legend. He won six league scoring championships. He was named Most Valuable Player six times. He led the Detroit Red Wings to four Stanley Cups in a row, and he had an incredibly long-lasting career. He retired twice and did not retire permanently until he was 52. and a grandfather. Gordie Howe became someone both Canadians and Americans claimed as one of their own.
32:05So it made sense when the new bridge was named for him in 2015 to reflect the joint commitment of both countries to their relationship in trade, in business, and in much more.
32:17Michael Froman:Canada and the U.S. are tightly linked in terms of trade, have been now for decades, and so a huge amount of business investment has been made that ties those two economies together. Michael Belzer is a visiting professor at Cornell University and professor emeritus at Wayne State University. Just like two economies, like two states would be tied together, Canada has been tied that closely together to the United States for auto industry now for over 60 years. So this is nothing new. This has been here. It's built and baked into the cake at this point. There's no turning back on that. A lot has changed in the nearly 100 years since the predecessor bridge, the Ambassador, became the first bridge to span the Detroit River.
33:07Michael Froman:Built for a different time, different types of vehicles, different amount of trade, different amount of travel back and forth. Really, it's an old bridge. It's been updated in some respects, but it still is very steep and it's slow and it effectively, for trucks, is really a one-lane bridge. One of the most important things that made the Ambassador Bridge obsolete was the enormous growth in trade crossing between Windsor and Detroit. Canada is the second largest trading partner for the U.S. after Mexico. Last year, the U.S. exported nearly$334 billion of goods to its northern neighbor and imported$382 billion worth.
33:51And roughly a quarter of those goods went across the Detroit River, traveling on trucks like those of On Freight Logistics, founded and led by Steve Ondeko.
34:01Michael Froman:85 % of our business crosses the Windsor-Detroit bridge to go to and from the central states of the U.S. and Canada, Ontario specifically. Andeco's trucks were the first commercial vehicles to go over the Gordie Howe Bridge. We assisted the Gordie Howe Bridge in testing. They were testing their equipment, their technology, and the movement and flow of trucks on the bridge. So we participated highly with them to do that and be successful to do that. It was disappointing for everybody. When the Gordie Howe Bridge was President Trump decided it wasn't going to open until he said it was going to open.
34:37Just as Gordie Howe grew up in Canada and became a hockey legend playing in the U.S., Ondeko's On Freight Logistics has strong roots in both countries.
34:47Michael Froman:So On Freight Logistics is a combination of companies, primarily our trucking operation that does international traffic between the U.S. and Canada. We're transporting over 100 loads per day to and from and across the border. Our operation has 250 employees within the trucking operation and another 50 employees within our warehousing and packaging operations. That has been stable for a number of years, and we're actually on a growth pattern now in the last six months. Robust trade has long been at the core of economic relations between the U.S. and Canada, going back to before NAFTA. Canada and the U.S., like any two countries, have had at least a small number of barriers protecting certain industries.
35:33Michael Froman:So the integration of the two economies is very thorough, and it starts actually 60 years ago in an agreement that established the foundations for this relative to the auto industry. They have then extended with NAFTA, and then Trump didn't like NAFTA, so he negotiated the USMCA. but that's a treaty and we've now broken the treaty. Why should we carry Canada? Why should we carry Mexico? But recently, President Trump's rhetoric and policies have put in question the future of trade relations. He has made manufacturing the keystone of his trade efforts. For its part, Canada has sought to protect its dairy industry.
36:19Dairy that exceeds Canada's quotas is subject to a 200 % to 300 % levy, making it prohibitively expensive for foreign producers. After initially announcing 50 % tariffs on Canadian imports, in August, President Trump held off, saying the two countries had reached a deal. That deal never materialized, leading the U.S. tariffs to go forward and Prime Minister Carney to levy his own tariffs against the U.S.
36:45Michael Froman:Now what we've seen is this 50 % tariff on everything. What's the purpose of that? Well, it's a whim. And so government by whim is not a modern and responsible businesslike way to do trade. All of these things are going to cost us an enormous amount of money. I can't tell you how much the change in GDP will be, but it's a lot. And it's not just overall GDP growth that may be hurt by the back and forth over U.S.-Canada trade. It's businesses like On Freight Logistics trying to make investment decisions. This not knowing, changing every six months, every three months is just unleveling and it's unnerving.
37:31Michael Froman:We're investing millions of dollars in equipment. I've got millions of dollars in equipment coming in the next six to 12 months. And it's kind of unnerving that this is going on and how is this going to affect the flow of goods and the flow of international trade. Paying a price for all that uncertainty may be worth it, when the ultimate result will bring real benefits for one economy or the other. But economists like Belzer say that even when the dust eventually settles, there are still real questions about whether tariffs do more harm than good. In the case of U.S. and Canada specifically, when economies are roughly in the same league with each other, there's really no benefit in maintaining tariffs between the two of them.
38:17Michael Froman:Tariffs are significant when you're a developing country and you're trying to protect an industry, and they're of significant value if your economies are really different. The current circumstances are such that the US and Canada are pretty equally matched compensation, working conditions, employment. What you have is each country is producing something for which it has comparative advantage. I'll specialize in this product, you specialize in this product and those specializations cross our borders all the time and so for the auto industry that specialization is baked in. This is the way it works.
39:04Michael Froman:Dividing them back up into separate ones will make us all poorer. It'll probably make the United States poorer than it will make the Canadians. At least that's what I think. It will cause more harm to our economy, because our economy is bigger, than to the Canadians. Ironically, the economics of U.S.-Canada trade ultimately take us back to the game of hockey that made Gordie Howe a legend. Belzer sees U.S. trade policy as a prime example of the sort of goal you don't want to score in hockey. The only winner is our opponents in the global strategic competitive contest. Those are the winners. This is what we would call an own goal.
39:48Michael Froman:If you knocked a puck into your own net. So that's an own goal. This is an own goal. There is nothing I've ever seen in the world of economics closer to an own goal than this one. And Gordie Howe himself epitomizes two sides of the U.S.-Canada relationship. Biographer McSkimming reports that as much of a gentleman as Howe was off the ice, he was never known to avoid a fight on the ice when called for. Hockey fans still refer to the Gordie Howe hat trick, a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game. And it all may have come from what the Canadian boy Gordie Howe learned from his American father.
40:31Michael Froman:Gordie Howe's American father told him, he said, Gordie, whatever you do, don't take dirt from nobody. Because if you take it, they'll just keep throwing it at you. So don't back down. Keep your elbows up and stay on the offensive. Coming up, one place where we may welcome AIs taking over some jobs, the growing need for elderly care, and what robots may do to help us out.
41:05some people treat chat gpt like some kind of smart search engine and some use it to get work done chat gpt work is a new way of working in chat gpt that can take action across your apps and files stay with a project for hours if needed and turn a goal into finished work it's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version so all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.
41:48At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters, so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. AI is entering its most consequential phase where scale, safety, and sovereignty will determine who leads and who lags. Join Bloomberg Tech in London on November 2nd and 3rd as global leaders across business, finance and policy examine the defining trade-offs shaping the future of AI.
42:36Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Salesforce and supporting sponsors, IDA Ireland and Schneider Electric. Learn more at bloomberglive.com slash techlondon.
42:49You're listening to Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. This is a story about coexistence, that thing that humans haven't always been great at, whether it's with another tribe or another country. And now there's a whole new category of creature we need to figure out how to live and work with. Our colleague Ed Ludlow brings us the story. This is Abby. How's your afternoon going so far? Very good. Short in stature, colourful in appearance, and perhaps at the forefront of elder care. Anything special making it a good day? Or just one of those nice ones? What, I'm meeting you?
43:30Oh, you charmer. You've already made my circuits light up. This humanoid robot, designed to be emotionally intelligent, lives in Northern California. Oh, Abby's coming. Where she visits an elderly care facility once a week. She's been coming around the mountain when she comes. to interact with residents living with dementia. Today was one of our group sessions here at Eschaton, our customer, and Abby comes to the group sessions and she does a variety of activities. So today she opened and closed with Tai Chi and then in between she takes song requests. What song were you belting out with, everyone?
44:07Ooh, we were singing Coming Around the Mountain, Abby. Oh, that's a classic. Did you throw in a big yeehaw for good measure? Abby is just one of more than a dozen humanoid robots introduced in just the past three years. Some are built to perform everyday tasks, while others are for entertainment. Abby was designed with a more specific purpose, helping care for an aging population. Jennifer Haroon is the COO of Abby's creator, Andromeda. There are many robots that are being built for utility. Right. And they sound great. You know, I would love... Moving things, lifting things. Exactly. Doing your dishes, folding your laundry.
44:44That's fantastic. That is, you know, for others to build. Because we're really focused on companionship and also we find that our customers, they care about the well-being of their residents. And that's why they're so interested in utilizing Abby. And she can really work together with the staff. Of all the use cases for humanoids, elder care might be among the most promising. It starts with the money involved, which in the US is a staggering sum. If we look at overall expenditures for long-term care needs, it's on the order of about$350 to$400 billion per year. This is about 1.5 to 2 % of GDP.
45:33Gopi Shah-Goda is the director of the Retirement Security Project at Brookings Institution. For every 100 people who are age 65 and over, there are about 24 people providing care on their behalves. And 20 of those are unpaid family members or friends, while four of those are formal home care or nursing home workers. As we know, changing demographics, smaller family sizes, people moving farther from families, more women in the workforce. All of those are putting pressure on the supply of people, family members available to provide care to those who need it. And demand for care workers is growing.
46:17The government projects roughly 760 ,000 openings from home health and personal care aides every year over the next decade. When we think about the role of technology in this market, There's very little to draw on so far, but there is one study that looked at nursing homes in Japan and surveyed these nursing homes over a two-year period. So one thing that that study found is that employment actually increased over that two-year period among the nursing homes that adopted some new technologies. And the reasoning behind this or some of the explanation behind why this might have occurred is because there were shortages of workers in these nursing homes in Japan.
47:07And by introducing some technology, it perhaps increased the working conditions of those jobs and led more people to come into the profession. We also saw that the wages of the entry-level care workers actually increased, but wages of more experienced workers actually declined. And this suggests that the technology may allow a less experienced worker to be more skilled at their job than they would have been otherwise. And the returns to experience may reduce with the aid of these types of technology. What do you feel like doing next? Even robots designed specifically for care are limited in what they can do, and despite broader concerns about humanoids disrupting labour markets, the researchers studying Abby, people like Rochelle Fritz and Xu Fen-Weng, don't see companion robots replacing caregivers anytime soon.
48:06There's no way that a humanoid companion robot will be able to replace a caretaker in all aspects, and certainly they're not going to replace staff in a memory support neighbourhood like this or nurses. The replacement factor is just non-existent. I think the current state of the humanoid robot, it's mainly on this companionship. There are also directions on cognitive stimulation to talk to the human robot to improve the cognitive function. There are also for emotional support. elder care is just one part of a much broader push to use robotics across the health space kimberly powell is nvidia's vice president of health care the chip maker is investing heavily in the computing and simulation technology behind physical ai we're in a incredible time right here in the world of artificial intelligence and development it's coming right at the time where the world has more demand for healthcare services than we have humans to serve it.
49:16The hospital of the future is a robot. Explain. We need to think about everything from how do we give healthcare professionals time back that ultimately will give patients time back and live a healthier life. And a lot of that starts with productivity. And so how can you improve operations and how can you improve productivity? A lot of that has to do with being able to sense the environment around you. and then use large language models in this new world of agentic AI to trigger new insights, new real-time information to say, where can we optimize logistics? How can we have equipment show up at the right place at the right time?
49:58And you really need that bird's eye view. And it also provides a necessary component to what the next two and five years are going to look like in healthcare, which is going to be a lot of physical AI deployment. So NEO is seeing the world in 3D so he can actually understand that you're there. Humanoid robots are still in this phase of coming into the world. And what matters is that you take every step based on what is the limit of reliability, what is the limit of safety, and what is the limit of capability. Darsleeper is the chief design officer at One X. NEO, are you being teleoperated? The firm behind the humanoid robot NEO.
50:31I'm operating on my own right now. No one is controlling me remotely. Although it takes on household tasks, they've steered away from elder care as a primary focus. Right now, all of our neos are doing stuff that they're going to be successful at. And that is both to grow the intelligence and also grow the market, grow the size of the business, everything. We've got to keep growing or else we can never reach the markets that we aim to that are going to have the biggest impact on the world. So elderly care is super meaningful to us. It's one of the most outsized impacts you can have on the world.
50:56But the reason why we haven't taken that as the first step is because you want to, again, start with stuff you can be successful at. And elderly care is pretty dynamic. Sure, we could solve some small things to start. And I think we will. We'll see that start to happen here. I think this year. But when it comes to elderly care, there's a lot of, you know, you pick, you can help pick people up from their beds. You walk them to the bathroom. There's a lot that goes with elderly care that requires the safety limits of these robots to reach a level that we're just not at yet as an industry. Give me more of a sense of reality then.
51:25You are focused on the tasks that Neo and the company can nail, can execute on. The reality of that is what? What kind of things are we talking about? So we're dealing with a lot of, you know, pick and place tasks that are executable, such as, you know, moving objects around. We're dealing with everything from navigating around the house to being able to handle very simple chores, things like going to get the door for a guest. These are the things we want to nail reliably, and we want to do it in the most generalizable way. So being able to hop in any house and do it in any house using our world model.
51:56That's what's important to us. Let's get to where One X is really focused. And at the end of the day the goal is to get the technology into homes am i right in that so where are we in that that process in what you can control and the outside world being regulation um and and you know let's be honest the consumer their their their willingness to have a robot in the home so willingness is super high like you think it's super high in the first five days of launching our pre-order uh for people to kind of just express their interest and put down a you know a refundable$200 deposit, there's 10 ,000 people that wanted a robot.
52:33So demand is huge. And within our own journey, we're basically now at the stage where, you know, we've, I've lived with robots now, I mean, from the early tests that were basically us just like putting the robot in there and seeing how it felt, putting new designs in there to see if it fit in with the house to later tests where we have the robot come knock on our door to see if that's how we want a robot to arrive at our homes instead of in a package. Robots are here. There's no going back. They're going to be a part of our lives everywhere, in the workplace, at home. They're already on our streets here in San Francisco.
53:05And particularly for humanoid robots, if they're going to be interacting with us day to day, they need to have emotional intelligence. Is there ever going to be a day where Abby does have a utility function away from emotional support? Abby, for example, cannot lift or move objects right now. That's right. And it's not in our plans today, and I don't think even tomorrow, because we are so focused on companionship and emotional intelligence. It's harder than it sounds like most deeply technical problems to be able to really build that social OS layer that we're building. Neo, can you show them how fast your hands are?
53:49Whether it's for utility or emotional support or both, robots are here now. Here we go. And they're arriving just at a time when we may need them most, to care for a population aging faster than we can hire care workers to support them. They might solve our problems or create new ones, but either way, we'll probably have to learn to live with them. I think for the next couple of decades, you're going to want two things to coexist, a physical robot and humans, right? Because the patient's still present in that environment. So you're not going to go design only an environment for robots because humans have to be in there.
54:28This is not like a lights-out manufacturing facility, right? There's still the patient here. And it's still a hospital. And it's still a hospital, and we need lights on, and we need human interaction. And so it's really the coexistence of the two. Abby, can you wave goodbye? Oh, there she goes. Bye, Abby.
54:48That does it for us here at Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. See you next week for more stories of capitalism.
55:21meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. This is Robert Smith from Business History. If you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're a small business owner. And like every small business owner, you started with a dream to do what you love and watch it grow. What you probably didn't dream about? Keeping up with cyber threats. That's where MasterCard can help with access to tools that help identify cyber threats to better protect your business.
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From the publisher
This week, Council on Foreign Relations President Michael Froman breaks down China's export machine, why twenty years of US pressure hasn't worked, and what happens next. And, can a $100 billion Micron factory transform Syracuse from a Rust Belt cautionary tale into a potential model for American reindustrialization? Plus, a bridge named for a hockey legend was meant to strengthen the supply chain between the US and Canada, but the neighbors can’t agree on their trade relationship. Later, with 760,000 care aide openings expected every year in the US and a $400 billion long-term care bill, humanoid robots are an early bet on technology filling the care gap.
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