 What I'd like to do now is, I assume we have microphones that can travel around, I can't really see out there, but I've seen a few people who would like to get into this conversation. Are there microphones in the audience? Do we have someone with a microphone? Anyone? Well, is that Jim? Yeah, I can't see. Okay, the microphone is coming, why don't you wait. Identify yourself, please, before posing your question to them. My name is Don Johnston, and I've met both of you formally, but I'm Secretary General of the OECD. Look, I have three points I'd like to ask you about. Can you hear? That's better. Is it on? Yes. One is, Trump might learn. I mean, it's hard to believe that he might learn, but remember Arthur Vandenberg, who was the senator from Michigan, who was a staunch protectionist before the war, and finally ended up what he saw the advantage to the United States, for example, that the Marshall plan to bring by having a strong United Europe rebuilt. He voted for it. He represented at the UN. He became essentially, he made a very famous speech of contrition in 1945. That's a possibility. I'd like to hear some of the comments on that. Because the fact is that 20 years ago, we were all talking trade, not aid. We all thought that the developing world of poor countries would be brought in through the WTO process, which I think Trump would like now to dismantle. I mean, he's an American first guy, and he seems to believe that it's better to be an 800-pound gorilla in the ring with one other smaller gorilla, which is why he likes bilateral agreements. Even after, think of what he did there. He separated Canada and Mexico out of the negotiations, which was an example of his strategy. Went to Mexico first, then came back to Canada. That's one issue I have that I like your view on. Come out, Dervish, made a point about the technology. This is extremely important, but for the United States. I'm reading every day almost about a lack of skill bases in the United States in engineering and sciences. There are 350,000 students from China studying in the United States, and Trump was even considering stopping their visas because he thinks they're stealing ideas back again. But there's a dearth of skills in many of our Western countries. And finally, just one other point about the saying that you have to have the United States. I think the Europeans have a big role-play to play here. If you can get the European Customs Union to really act with one voice, it's the largest market there's ever been. And I don't think that's impossible. I think that the threat of Trumpism might actually bring that about. So you'd have another gorilla. Does anybody agree with that, or disagree? Well, I think the first question is, let's broaden it out a little bit. Can Trump learn is the way you put it, I think. But the broader question is, can American policy change under the current administration? Mark, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Anyone else with Mark in particular, since you've thought about this? Honestly, I don't think so. This is one of the few things he seems to actually believe. If I were to say that there could be possibility of change, the way I would put it is this. Donald Trump got elected president without ever holding public office and without ever running an organization with more than 300 people. So he was uniquely ill-suited to be president of the United States. We have a system which I'm not defending, I'm just saying this is the way it works, in which the president of the United States appoints about 3,000 political appointees. The Trump administration was very slow to get off to mark in terms of making those appointments and getting them confirmed. Normal American administration takes six months to a year to kind of shake out because you have people who worked on the campaign, you have people who worked in the transition, you have people who are now getting appointed, they have their own ideas, they have their own agendas, they have their own personal ambitions. So everyone's kind of scrambling and there's a kind of winnowing process where ideas get discarded, individuals get discarded and the government kind of converges on a line. This Trump administration has been very slow to do that. So you could say that there's still an unusually high level of internal disagreement and that the upshot of these internal disagreements could be shifts in policy or shifts in personnel that would then manifest in shifts in policy towards a more constructive direction, but I'm quite a person, I'm quite skeptical that that will happen. Other thoughts either on Trump's evolution or not, or on the technological or European issues? I don't think the Trump administration can change or President Trump can change. That's a different statement from U.S. changing. I think the young people in the U.S. cities, the more dynamic parts of the country are already for change. But I do believe, and it's kind of repeating third time, but I think it's really very important, that the productive sphere is changing, what is a monopoly is changing and it is not in the direction of a more equal income distribution, more equitable kind of society. And that is partly why Trump won. So I think what needs to be addressed is not just the multilateralism or relationship with China, but what needs to be addressed really is how is humanity going to manage these new technologies. And here again, in the end, I think, I'm not American born, the U.S. will take the lead. Thoughts? Go ahead. Yes. Not on Trump. Well, I think the economic consequences of Trumpism may start to affect ordinary people sooner than many people expect. And so that may affect the Trump economic policy to some extent. And after this midterm election, I don't know what would be the outcome, but Trump will have to make effort to, you know, if he's interested, run for second term. And so the economics may affect, may drive the policy changes, hopefully. But as Mark pointed out, I don't think there'll be very significant changes given socio-political dynamics existing in the U.S. and all over the world. That's why I'm more concerned about more really kind of a threat type of a situation where not enough leadership, not enough global public, was provided. And so what that means is that at each individual country level, particularly in the emerging world, will have to make extraordinary efforts in terms of educational reform and strengthening social safety net and so forth. I think the educational reform is the main thing. Again, it's very difficult, but that again has a lot to do with the income distribution for the future as well. And you mentioned that, you rightly mentioned that China, of course, is Asia as a whole benefited the most from the post-World War II, the liberal economic order. So Asian countries, including China, should be ready to share the burden of providing public goods. It's not just providing international leadership as such, but I think opening up your own market and implementing your structural adjustment is one way of sharing the burden for the global public. It's a challenge. CSIS in Washington, D.C. had a seminar, I guess, a couple of weeks ago. Invite all of the former representative USTR to share their idea. The moderator asked the first question. He said, don't criticize the current policy. I just asked you, do you think these tenancy will continue to go on, or do you think it's just temporarily? I saw two or three of them, several of them say, we don't know. We don't know. So I think the same question many times. I think it's dependent in which level. In some issues, I do think Trump administration wouldn't change. Some idea he just stick, some idea he hold 30 years ago, even very much long, he still stick that. But some issue he may change his mind, particularly maybe at the end of next year or 2020, US economy get suffering. I don't think he will continue to do everything now. He may want to do something, want to negotiate with China. Certainly, whatever the goals of the administration or Trump himself may be, facing difficulties on the domestic economic or political front or technological change or internationally could force a change in government policy. There's no question about that. I want to move to, I think what will be our last question since we need to move to the second panel, you could identify yourself and then ask your question. Philippe Chalma from Paris Dauphin University. My question will be quite easy not to answer but to present. Are we ready and can we cope with the next financial crisis? I mean, in 2008, we had a crisis coming from the US and it's a prime problem, but it was fairly easy to just have a recession and not a depression with old Keynesian policies. You lower your interest rates and you float the economy with liquidities and quantitative easing and the rest. Just right now, we have a huge problem of debt. Our public deficits in many countries are fairly high, 4% in the States. So if we had a new financial crisis coming from where I don't know if perhaps students' loans in the States are something else, could we cope with the financial crisis which would be not only perhaps a recession but eventually a depression? I think that's an extraordinarily important and good question. I disagree with the notion that it was easy to confront the crisis in 2008-2009. I think many of us were surprised at how successful the cooperation was and expected things to go much worse. But I suppose we can turn again to the panel and ask if we are in fact prepared for whatever the next crisis may look like, which we don't know. Well, I think as one says very often, the crisis never quite looked the same as they were in the past. The high level of debt per se I don't think is too worrisome. What is worrisome is the composition of debt and who owes how much to whom. But I believe that in the near future at least we won't have another addition of a 2008 crisis. We will have some other crisis which we may not foresee right now. But I think the financial sector has learned also for its own benefit, of course, it does some of the same things again. But I don't think we will get a re-addition of the 2008 crisis. And total debt, one has to remember, it's always debt from somebody to somebody. So it all depends on who owes what to whom. I think that the questioner correctly identifies the problem that we have very low interest rates and a lot of debt. So we don't have a lot of space to respond, although I would defer to others who know more about that than I do. But in terms of this session, what I think is really striking to me is that we are getting this level of political polarization and populism under relatively good macroeconomic circumstances. If we were to get a financial crisis in the United States or other big countries and there really was a significant downturn, one hates to think about how that might manifest politically. If anything the last few years have made me reassess my beliefs about human nature, views appear to be much more fluid than I would have expected. It is incredible to see polling data in the United States that now shows a large majority of a Republican affiliated voters regard Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, as a good guy. And Trump is so polarizing that the support for free trade, despite what I said at the beginning, support for free trade is now higher among Democrat affiliated voters than it is among Republicans. And I think we are in a truly dangerous situation and the interaction of that degree of political polarization and fluidity with a real financial crisis could be very, very dangerous indeed. After 2008 global financial crisis, we all know that financial institutions, banks are better capitalized and sounder now. But that doesn't mean that future crisis will not happen or occur. As I alluded to during my initial remarks, I think there is more likelihood of having a financial crisis, small or big, already happening in some countries now in next two or three years' time. Not five years, maybe next step. Well, to prevent that or to help remedy the situation, I think this international cooperation is, again, is very important. I mean, theoretically, but will it happen? It's a different issue, but we have to make an effort. For example, very simple, swab arrangement. I mean, always say the swab arrangement is least costly because the bigger the arrangement, bilaterally or polluted laterally, the lower probability of utilizing it. So it's a costless insurance. And so this kind of arrangement can be done among central banks. And so there are ways of dealing with this possible crisis. Many people point to Chinese financial conditions as one of the more worrisome components of the international scene. Where do things look like from your perspective? I guess after all the break of global financial crisis, international community have already done lots. For example, set up a G20, FSB, Global Financial Safety Net at the center. But it's still hard to identify which way or when the financial crisis will break out. But what I'm concerned is maybe it happens not due to one single fact, maybe some overlapping fact. For example, in 2020, the US economy coming down, the Chinese economy coming down, that will create a very dangerous situation, a financial crisis will be out. Also, if escalation, trade war between US and China cannot be resolved soon, it will drag on the whole global economy. That's something fact overlapping which will provide some environment for occurrence of financial crisis. Well, I saw dozens of hands up and I'm very sorry we can't take not even all any more questions because we do need to move on to our second session. I will point out that this is only the first session of the day and there are other sessions coming up. There are also side sessions, one of which I should promote because it's on finance specifically for those of you interested in these issues. We do need to move on, we'll take a very short break, not even a break from your standpoint, but really a break in order to transfer the four on the panel to the next four. So thank you all for your participation and we'll move on.