Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Single best idea on a Friday, will do it quickly? What a week? I mean? Am I as exhausted as I was? What three weeks ago? Six weeks ago? I don't think so. But nevertheless, my head's spinning over the market reaction, over the worry about long term yields. Just the reports of Japan midnight two am Eastern Time on their GDP, of negative statistic on GDP with some huge political ramifications. I'd look for that.
I think the trade negotiation I'm guessing. I'm not predicting. I'm guessing the trade negotiations with Japan in the United States will be absolutely fascinating. Just look at the size of Toyota imports. Maybe not like the seventies of the eighties, but still huge. It was great to catch up with William Lee of the Milkin Institute. He's been incredibly busy with their wonderful conference. Thank you to Carrol Masser, Salibassek and our team Romain Bostic for the coverage out there
at Milkin. Here's Billy the chief economist of the Milkan Institute. On tariffs and services.
It's pretty hard to tariff services, isn't it, especially when when it's a license for American banks to sell financial products in China and so so, I think the whole notion that tariffs has been done away with, especially with the different rounds of tarif productions we've had over many decades. But they are real serious barriers to trade that Ricardo didn't deal with. Our non tariff barriers, and the legal requirements and health requirements and and and and quality standards
that are demanded of US exports into various countries. Those are the obstacles that are part of the negotiation practice that President Trump wanted to incentivize by putting up this huge tier parias. Look, you guys, let's get service, getting rid of the real series blocks the trade.
William Lee, We'll have them on for a longer conversation. All of us work with the International Monetary Fund and the Pacific RIM and now at Milkin Institute. Part of what we do in Survanna as we do market coverage. What's the stock market can do? Equities, bonds, currencies, commodities, But we really like to speak with authorities. I can't
say enough about our conversation today with ellen Wald. The book is Saudi inc. And she was just fabulous on the nations and the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula and from Morocco over to Persia as well. After the president's trip to the Middle East, ellen Wald.
Every oil industry in the Middle East is run differently, and I think that's a common misperception. People think it's just this monolithic, you know, national oil companies, but it's actually very different. A Rampo has a totally different break even price from say the Kuwait Oil Company or or you know the UAE or you know, even bock Rain for example. So a Ramcos is basically the lowest in
the world. Their break even is, you know, depending on what they're producing, you can be between two dollars and ten dollars. They usually like to say around six. It's kind of an average. That's the lowest in the entire world. So no matter how low oil prices go, a Ramco is still going to come out on top. Now that's different from the price that the Saudi government would like oil to be at to balance their budget, which I
think is really a totally useless figure. People like to bring this out, the IMF likes to talk about it, but that really doesn't influence the Saudi government all that much because the Saudi government isn't selling oil. A Ramco sells oil. The Saudi government gets revenue from that oil and those oil sales, but they're not actually selling it, and so their price point, their break even points are higher, and they needed a higher price for their budget.
Ellen, well, the Atlantic and to excuse me, the Atlantic Council, I should say there on the Middle East, single best idea and of course on your commute across the nation, the idea is to listen to Bloomberg Surveillance in the morning on YouTube, subscribe to Bloomberg podcasts and on YouTube podcasts. This is single best idea.