Tony Roth, Chief Investment Officer
Teddy Bunzel, Managing Director and Head of Geopolitical Advisory, Lazard
Tony Roth
Welcome back to Wilmington Trust’s Capital Considerations. I'm your host Tony Roth, and I'm excited to be joined today by Teddy Bunzel. Teddy is the managing director and head of geopolitical advisory at Lazard, where he leads the firm's efforts to provide business relevant geopolitical analysis to clients across sectors and geographies. Now, normally I wouldn't provide such a deep background for our guests, but Teddy has such an impressive background. I'm going to share some more information about what he's done in the past because he's truly qualified to help us today with this conversation really around the geoeconomic and geopolitical backdrop of the world, which is changing in ways that we haven't seen, certainly not in my lifetime or my career.
So anyway, Teddy also spent about a decade at BlackRock where he had leadership roles in corporate strategy and public affairs and developed frameworks for assessing geopolitical risk for their investment teams. And earlier in his career, he worked for a former national security advisor and held positions at the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the U.S. treasury. So he's truly been all over the place from a work standpoint metaphorically and literally, and he's also written extensively. His materials appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, American Interest, and lots of other places. So Teddy, thanks so much for joining today.
Theodore Bunzel
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Tony Roth
So we're going to jump right in, but It's such an interesting time right now to talk about the geopolitical, geoeconomic landscape, and just to set the backdrop a level set for everybody, I think the starting point has to be around the, what I would describe as, pretty clear pullback from the post-world war global world order of free trade liberalism and what I would describe as a bias towards a kind of cooperation, and mutual dependency with allies, to much more of an atomization and putting the very short-term interest of nations first. It's not just here in the U.S., you're seeing this type of a more nationalistic right wing, if you will, movement, happening in many countries around the world, including in Europe. So with that, let's talk about the probably most impactful area,Teddy, that this movement has manifested itself, which is in the trade environment. And right now we have this massive change in policy from the U.S., right along the lines that I've just described. I would describe it not necessarily as a 180 degree turn from history, but maybe it's a 90 degree turn. It's what I would describe as a geoeconomic experiment, and maybe in the long term it'll be better for the country if it stays in place.
It's probably not overly constructive for the economy in the short term, but be that as it may, we have the Supreme Court case coming up right now, which I can't remember in my career, if there's ever been a Supreme Court case that would seem to bear such significant economic consequences, and consequently big impact on the markets. Let's start with your take and your read on the Supreme Court case. Do you agree with my very high level framing of its significance? And do you think that you have any kind of read on which way you might go?
Theodore Bunzel
Yeah, so it's a great question. I think that it is certainly significant, but,it's not necessarily going to be definitive around whether or not the current trade regime that the Trump administration has set up with key bilateral trading partners and countries around the world, whether or not that goes away. Because just to take a step back essentially Trump has enacted his new trade paradigm by raising tariffs through primarily two different mechanisms. One is he's used the international emergency economic Powers Act to wield tariffs unilaterally on trading partners, and these are those country rates that we hear about, the 15% on the EU.
Tony Roth
To so called reciprocal.
Theodore Bunzel
Reciprocal tariffs, but also the fentanyl tariffs, right? That he started the administration with under this IEPA authority, which is a novel use of that statute, and that is what's being challenged in court. It's important to remember, though, that he's got a separate set of tariffs that are sectorial tariffs, steel and aluminum, autos. He's got a bunch of investigations including into semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. That's under section 232, which is a well established procedure not being challenged. So those tariffs are not in scope for this court case and they're very significant.
Tony Roth
Just to just to ask you Teddy, I don't mean to interrupt, but just to make sure we we really get to the detail here around what's the stake, Aren't the 232 tariffs still limited in the amount of the the the magnitude of the tariff that can be applied as long as the time frame? Isn't it something like, or is that not correct?
Theodore Bunzel
No meaningful cap. We have 50% section 232 tariffs for example on steel and aluminum now and those are not being challenged. It's a well established procedure. There's more process around it than the IEPA tariffs
Tony Roth
Okay
Theodore Bunzel
On the reciprocal rates. Which he’s kind of turned up and down on a dime. For section 232 you have to do an investigation and then have a public comment period. But just to be clear, in terms of all the investigations that trumps either the tariffs that he’s already enacted or that are under investigation in areas like semiconductors, electronics, and pharmaceuticals, if you take that and add them all up, that's almost 40% of total U.S. imports. So these sectorial tariffs which are not under challenge in the upcoming Supreme Court case, those are not in scope. Those stay in place, so it's important to remember that piece, right? Especially if you're invested in some of those specific sectors. But on the IEPA tariffs, those bilateral reciprocal rates, the fentanyl tariffs, it's a novel use of the international economic emergency Powers Act.
Never been used for tariffs. The statute does not mention the word tariffs. The appeals court just ruled in a 7-4 decision. It upheld the lower courts’ ruling that Trump is not able to use IEPA for tariffs.
And that's going to go to the Supreme Court. Now the ruling is stayed until 14 October, to allow for an appeal to the Supreme Court. Trump has asked for an expedited appeal and also a stay on the ruling, you know, as the Supreme Court hears the case.
There's a chance the Supreme Court may weigh in. I expect the Supreme Court to to stay the ruling as it hears the case, so keep the tariffs in place past October 14, but there's a chance the Supreme Court could rule before the end of the year. My sense is the likelihood is that they will rule by the 1st half of next year, maybe closer to June than to January. And, if they uphold the appeals court ruling and they rule that this use of IEPA is not legal, then all of those bilateral country rates, reciprocal rates that are the foundations of trade deals go away. And I think the Supreme Court has showed difference to Trump thus far, but it's not a slam dunk that they will side with Trump on this case. Personally, I think it's really 50-50.
But what I want to caution in terms of your initial framing is that if the Supreme Court rules against the use of IEPA to establish these tariffs, then there are other authorities that Trump can use to basically replicate the same rates.
Tony Roth
Well, let me…
Theodore Bunzel
So section 301 is one and he can use the section 232 sectorial tariffs that we talked about before.
Tony Roth
Well, the sectoral tariffs are not country specific. Are the 301 country-specific?
Theodore Bunzel
301 is country specific. He used 301 for the trade war during the 1st Trump administration vis-a-vis China. So that's a well established authority. Biden kept those 301 tariffs. There's also section 338 of the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act, which is still in place. And so he can use that, that's country based, probably less likely than 301. And then there's also a more blunt measure that he can use, the section 122, which would allow him to raise a 15% rate. That's a cap, for 150 days, which he and his team might use to just put up tariffs on partners like the EU, Japan, Korea, where they agreed to a 15% rate until he establishes those rates using 301 for example. So there are other means to get to basically the same trade regime where he is now.
And I don't expect that, let's say the Supreme Court rules against the tariffs that the trading partners that Trump negotiated with would renege on the agreements. I think that they would probably wait to see what their strategy is going to be as they look to use other legal authorities, some of the ones that I mentioned to basically get to the same place.
Tony Roth
So if this is the inside baseball on it, why is Bessents, for example, our treasury secretary in the news, very acutely warning that if this is struck down, there's a trillion dollars of tariffs that need to be refunded. Is it just because they don't want to, obviously who wants to lose at the Supreme court? And it's probably a lot of extra hoops they have to jump through.
Theodore Bunzel
I think that that's probably right. I think it's also posturing for the Supreme Court, saying that this will cause economic disruptions, catastrophe, uncertainty, you know, on some of the agreements that they already struck. And so some of it is posturing, some of it is the complications of the refunding mechanism. If these tariffs are ruled as illegal, which would be operationally very complicated to do. And they've raised over a hundred billion dollars thus far, and are continuing to raise more and more every month. And so that's lost revenue that obviously the administration wants.
And I do think that it overall weakens the hand of the administration and some of the ongoing trade discussions because some of the agreements that they've struck are not yet quite finalized. They're continuing to hammer out last details on the investment agreements on some of the specifics around purchases of U.S. goods. And so the Supreme Court ruling might complicate the administration's negotiating position on those issues. So they obviously want to leave the tariffs as is.
Tony Roth
So, what's your broader take leaving the tariffs now for a little bit, if not for the conversation, because there's so many other things to talk about.
Theodore Bunzel
Yeah.
Tony Roth
What kind of grade would you give the administration in terms of the novelty of their approach being very transactional, using this big weapon of tariffs and the U.S. consumer essentially, which is so dear to so many economies around the world in order to essentially achieve both economic and non economic ends around the world.
How do you think it's working? And how do you think it's going to play out in the long term for our country, given the, I think probably hostility that it may create in a lot of our both enemies and historic friends?
Theodore Bunzel
On their own terms, you have to say that the Trump administration has succeeded in many respects in what they've sought to achieve. They've meaningfully raised tariff rates on allies adversaries, you know, countries around the world. They have gained investment commitments. Now they're a little fuzzy, but clearly there's an intention on the part of the EU, Japan, Korea to invest in the United States as a result of these tariffs.
They have secured purchase agreements, again, details a little fuzzy, but there's going to be a push to buy more American goods and they've avoided retaliation. So in many cases you could say that they've been successful. I think China is an interesting case just because China retaliated in a kind of mirrored way and that caused market disruptions. They also leveraged their kind of choke hold on refined rare earths, which demonstrated U.S. vulnerability. That's TBD. Negotiations are ongoing, we'll see where that lands, we can talk about that if you'd like. But on their own terms, I would say that Trump has been successful.
Now, what are the costs associated with all of this? One is economic, you know, there's been a slowing of growth, you're seeing it show up in some corporate earnings and sectors that are tariff sensitive. There's going to be increases in prices, I mean thus far, businesses have kind of absorbed a lot of the tariff costs, but if you look at history and Trump's 1st term,for example, the vast majority, over 80% depending on estimates ended up being passed on to consumers, so more of these tariff hikes are going to be passed on to consumers, so that's inevitably going to put upward of pressure on inflation. We've already started to see that. It's having an effect on the labor markets in certain ways.
And then as you said, beyond the economic effects, there are effects in the relationships with allies. There is a fraying of trust and maybe a bit of friction induced into the system with the EU, with Canada and others, Japan.
There's the interesting case of India where the Trump administration's taken a very hard line and I would say demonstrates a big strategic shift where, you know, over the last decade or or two, both parties, Democrats and Republicans have been trying to build a stronger relationship with India, and I think the 50% tariffs on India have really created a lot of tension in that relationship, which you saw on display when Modi visited China for the 1st time in almost a decade the other week. So I think that there are costs in alliances and also economics that are going to continue to play through the system.
Tony Roth
So let's talk a little bit about India as an example of how Russia plays into the geopolitical situation because my understanding is that one of the key reasons those tariffs were elevated 50% is because of the consumption of Russian oil by India, so in the sense, it's a form of secondary sanctions even if it's not explicitly tied to that in a more holistic way level set across all countries. But what do you think about the idea of secondary sanctions? Because it seems that even the Europeans are, are still consuming some, some Russian energy.
It just seems like it's almost Draconian to say that any country that buys anything from Russia, is going to be subject to the sanctions or can't trade with the U.S. or whatnot. The world is still a little too small perhaps for that. Could that happen? Would that happen? It just seems like it would create a level of economic isolation for us, that would be too difficult, too painful.
Theodore Bunzel
It's a very uneven application of this secondary sanctions concept. I doubt that the Trump administration will impose similar secondary sanctions, 25% or so on India. I doubt that they'll do that on Europe, but if you look at the biggest consumers of Russian energy yes, India's a major one and it's kind of stepped into the breach as Europe has pulled back its consumption of Russian energy.
But China is the major consumer of Russian energy. They just signed an MOU on a new gas pipeline from Russia into China over the last week. Trump has not applied those secondary tariffs to China. So, I'm not sure that this is necessarily a model that he is going to apply broadly, and a lot of it on India I think has to do with the nature of how negotiations have gone between Modi and Trump. The fact that the Trump administration feels like India was not willing to give enough concessions on the trade agreement, and then also there was friction related to that flare up between India and Pakistan a number of months ago where the Trump administration publicly took credit for the cease fire. Modi kind of pushed back on that notion out of a nationalistic impulse that no, this is not the U.S. solving the problem. And I think that has also created diplomatic friction. All of that pushed into kind of a perfect storm that I think led to this escalation in tariffs to 50% on India.
Tony Roth
One of the things that happened recently that was pretty, I think illustrative of one of the key challenges that this new policy I think is going to increasingly face, is the ICE raid on the South Korean Hyundai car plant I think it was in South Carolina. Several hundred people that had come over in order to deliver expertise to be able to get this plant created and up and running, were essentially deported. And it shows an inherent paradox in the President's approach, which is that on the one hand, he wants to be viewed as a creator of jobs and an advocate of the common man, the main Street person that needs a job, but on the other hand, we don't have a lot of unemployed people. The unemployment rate is pretty low. The participation rate is at a good level. It's not going to go up that much. So there's not a lot of people sitting on the sidelines and he throws out these numbers in the many trillions of dollars of new investment in the U.S.
But if any of that were to happen to the degree it happens, who would go into these jobs? Because there's not a lot of frictional unemployed today, and on top of that, there aren't a lot of people that have the skill sets necessarily to go into a lot of the jobs, which is why they brought over those people from South Korea in order to build the plant.
So what's your read on that? Because it does seem like from an inflation standpoint that this approach and a policy could result in not just one time price hikes as a result of the tariffs themselves, but could also result in an ongoing structural increase in cost because of the lack of labor supply in this country.
Theodore Bunzel
Yeah, I mean I agree with all of that and I think that that's kind of an un under appreciated dynamic that's playing out in markets and and the economy and will continue to play out as the administration takes a very tough line both on an immigration enforcement at the border, which
slowed precipitously the influx of undocumented workers, but also creates and establishes caps on more skilled labor coming into the country and there doesn't seem to be effort to increase the amount of visas, for skilled labor to fill some of these facilities. Look I mean, this is a challenge for the United States and points to the need if we're serious about reindustrialization, particularly in advanced industries, in auto's renewable energy, you know, this Hyundai plant, but then also in areas like semiconductor manufacturing, you know, there currently isn't enough U.S. labor to fill the facilities that the the Trump administration and U.S. government have ambitioned to build.
I mean this was a key constraint as semiconductor companies were thinking about the, you know, the chips at and all the incentives to reshore production. Part of it there's economic concerns, but there's a labor concern as well. And that remains kind of an unsolved issue unless there is a bipartisan policy effort to reform our approach to bringing in more skilled workers. And in the meantime, as you say when it comes to either skilled or unskilled workers, the slowdown of influx of undocumented workers, but then also these continuing ICE raids and the ramp up in mass deportations, that's going to have an inflationary impact.
USDA had an estimate that something like 40% of agricultural workers are undocumented, in construction, it's in the teens. I mean these are very significant populations in critical areas of our economy, and so you're going to see, you know, construction costs, you know, food costs go up as a result of continuing deportations, and that's going to play out in the labor market, it's going to play out in economic growth and it's going to play out in prices.
Tony Roth
Yeah, and that's why I think that's really important to be mindful that the successes that you talk about administration achieving in terms of reduced tariff rates around the world, higher tariffs rates here, clearly from I think the very superficial perspective where, where trade deficits are, who's paying more money for trade, one could characterize some, some successes for the administration. We think about where they're going and the end game, it's hard to see in our view at least it's hard to see a very coherent end game that's going to be sustainable and prosperous for our economy.
Theodore Bunzel
If you told me that the objective of the administration was to secure trade agreements that allowed the United States to increase tariff rates, collect revenue, and then also extract concessions from trading partners and commitments to invest and buy U.S. goods and avoid retaliation, the administration has succeeded there. If you were to tell me that the key objective is to reshore manufacturing to the United States in critical industries or to address Chinese overcapacity, right? And concerns around China's massive trillion dollar global trade surplus in coordination with allies, I would be much more skeptical on the ability to achieve those objectives. In terms of reshoring manufacturing, there's the labor shortages that you mentioned, but there's also the input costs into the construction of all of these facilities are going up because of tariffs.
Tony Roth
Right.
Theodore Bunzel
50% steel and aluminum. And then there's the labor cost both in skilled workers, but then unskilled workers. I mean I mentioned the construction piece of the equation. You have in the teens is a percentage of total construction workers undocumented immigrants who are being deported, and then you also have upcoming sectorial tariffs on lumber and key inputs into all of that construction.
So those are cross cutting and they're going to make actual reshoring of manufacturing much more difficult, and then, you know, in addressing the biggest issue in terms of global trade imbalances is China, which has a trillion dollar trade surplus, and there could have been an approach at the beginning of the administration that I think was available to work
Tony Roth
A more bilateral approach
Theodore Bunzel
Yeah exactly a multilateral approach to put up coordinated tariff walls and help to address the Chinese imbalances, but they decided not to take that, right? And go for this bilateral approach.
Tony Roth
Okay, so let's pivot and talk about some of the national security military and economic security issues around China and Taiwan. The way I would frame this is that we're dealing with nuclear states, whether it's Russia, China, and the U.S.
There's obviously a lot of money being spent certainly in China and the U.S. on new military technologies et cetera. But I would have to believe that there'd be a standoff situation and none of those countries want to have direct military conflict.
As a result of that, that underlying nuclear capability that they all have. And so, what does that all mean in terms of the former U.S. military hegemony around the world, where now that there are not just nuclear weapons, of course they've been around for a while, but even from a regional sense, there are now these missiles that can go hypersonic missiles and so on and so forth, the obsolescence of the carrier fleet, it seems as though the U.S. has really been neutralized to a large degree as the policeman of the world and of course you have the situation in Taiwan, where during Xi’s lifetime it seems pretty evident that he wants to repatriate Taiwan. What's the time frame on that and given my framing of the relative military balance, it doesn't seem like we would be able to really do all that much cause we're not willing a risk of a nuclear situation. So they could shoot a few hypersonic missiles at our carriers and they would go down. How do you assess all of that?
Theodore Bunzel
The nuclear balance makes any sort of confrontation obviously with China incredibly dangerous in the same way that it does with Russia and in the case of Russia, Russia's done some nuclear saber rattling over the course of the conflict in the Ukraine.The nuclear dimension is in part one of the reasons why NATO has stayed off of the sidelines directly in the conflict, even though they've been funding Ukraine and keeping them in the fight. But, it goes both ways in the sense that China also doesn't want to risk a nuclear war as well. I mean no one, no one wins in a nuclear conflict. Everybody loses.
I still think that despite the kind of nuclear balance in some of those dynamics, there is the chance that there could be a conflict. I'm more optimistic, even though it's a very dangerous situation that we're not necessarily going to see a Taiwan escalation into a conflict any time in the near future.
One of the challenges for China is that it's a very difficult operation, it's hugely complex. If they were to go down the path of an actual military escalation,I don't think it's a slam dunk at all that they would be able to successfully thwart the U.S. involvement, allied involvement from Japan, Australia, you know, and others and successfully be able to subordinate Taiwan in that case. My sense is that if they are going to go down that road, that the leadership, including Xi Jinping will want to be very confident that they're able to succeed. And so given that there's been a lot of turnover in the military, you know, there's been the removal of a number of key generals, China hasn't really fought a serious war since 1979 against Vietnam. It doesn't have experience in a really complicated combined arms operation. I'm not sure that they feel confident and quite ready for an escalation that could lead into a direct conflict.
So, I'm not saying that it's not a dangerous situation, it certainly is. I would be more worried about the end of the 2020s, 29, 30, 31 if assuming Xi Jinping is still in power, and as China continues to build up its own military capabilities, but right now I'm not sure the balance is so clear that China would win decisively. It's still an open question and that's what's keeping Xi Jinping and China from taking a more assertive stance.
Tony Roth
Your insights here are just so helpful in understanding where the real pain points could be going forward. I want to bring the conversation to the portfolio. I almost am concluding that today's environment requires a little bit of forward thinking, where we consider the possibility that the U.S. as the ultimate bulwark of the safety trade where assets all floated the U.S. and a period of geopolitical or geoeconomic troubles is not necessarily what would happen with all the assets on a go forward basis. You also have, I think the rise of indebtedness, which makes the U.S. dollar inherently less appealing. Because it is associated with a country that has this incredibly high level of debt to GDP, which is not unique to the U.S. There are many countries in the Western developed world that are in that similar situation, but the rate at which we're increasing is pretty unique. We're now increasing at a very high rate running these very large deficits and we're at a moment where there are some alternatives that look somewhat interesting. What is your take on how the portfolio should be built today and what is the urgency for including some of these things like precious metals, cryptocurrencies, non U.S. developed, sovereign debt, et cetera, that quite frankly, from the perspective of a U.S. allocator, have not found significant roles in portfolios historically.
Theodore Bunzel
Traditionally over the last couple of decades investors have grown accustomed not just to viewing the dollar as the safe haven asset that in times of risk ends up strengthening. But then also just a source of exceptional returns and so you've seen this concentration of market cap in the U.S., I think the U.S. now makes up about 65% of global MSCI. Way more obviously than both population and the size of the economy. So it's that you've had this growing concentration, that you've had this experience of dollar dominance. I don't think dollar dominance is going away. The dollar is so essential as a kind of a lingua franca in in international trade transactions. It's still something like 60% of central bank reserves of this down from 70% from the 2000s.
There's a trillion dollars in U.S. treasury turnover a day, compared to a trillion dollars in Euro bonds over the course of a year. So there's a liquidity in depth of the U.S. financial markets that still will make it remain the dominant currency, but I do think that there is a move toward diversification. It's not that there's a clear alternative to the United States from the U.S. dollar, but there's kind of a growing share going to other currencies, and we saw that on display after April second when on the liberation day, when Trump announced all these tariffs, the traditional response or the traditional economic response the higher tariffs is a strengthening of the U.S. dollar, but you saw a decline in the USD has been down something like 8% this year. And that demonstrates probably increased hedging on the part of investors. Which had been declining over the past number of years. And then also a selling of U.S. assets, whether equities or bonds and buying of you know alternative assets either, you know, Europe where you saw strengthening of the Euro and also we've seen, you know, strong equity returns.
But gold is up 40% this year. So I think that as you mentioned, the right way to think about this is not necessarily a paradigm shift where the U.S. is out and there's something else in that takes its place, whether in the equity market or dollars or U.S. treasuries, but more of a diversification and I think increasingly what at least we hear from investors is that they're looking to increase allocations to develop market equities, international equities, looking at EMs where valuations are more favorable than the U.S. And then, you know, in terms of safe assets, it's hard to advocate for precious metals, as you said, but seems to have been a successful trade, at least this year in response to some of these dynamics. The central bank buying of gold is increasing. It's now higher than, I think it's 20% of overall reserves higher than the euro.
And so, you know, it seems to be the big winner in terms of diversification away from the U.S., but I look at other developed markets. It's a spreading of bets in this environment that's a bit more volatile where you have countries atomizing a bit, rewiring economic relationships pursuing nationalistic industrial policies, and in that environment, it speaks to a greater need to diversify a bit more.
Tony Roth
I like your term spreading of bets as well because I think that it's the traditional approach to diversify using our approach has been a very quantitatively driven process over market cycles that exposed information that you have, that empirical relationship between asset classes has been the main driver of diversification and I think that we really need to just in a more intuitive way just spread bets a little bit than we have in the past because otherwise we’re going to assume into the answer that the same asset classes are the ones that are going to do well, and that’s not necessarily the case going forward. So hey Teddy, we're going to have to stop because we've run out of time, but this has been an amazing conversation. There's so much happening right now. We'd love to have you on again at some point in the future.
Tony Roth
So thank you for joining today. For all of our listeners, I think you're going to hear more around these themes as we get into our capital market forecast for 2026. You're going to hear a lot of focus on the idea of doubling down on diversification and in a different way perhaps on the margins than we have in the past. And for a complete roundup of all of our thought leadership and the investing and planning space, please go to WilmingtonTrust.com where you'll find all of our content. Thank you so much everybody and a special thanks to you, Teddy.
Theodore Bunzel
Thanks and it was great to be here.
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