BG2 Thanksgiving Roundtable: DOGE, EV Tax Credit, Tariffs, Conspiracy Theories, Invest America

**Bill Gurley** (0:00)
I would much rather see us use a gas tax in an EV credit. An EV credit costs the government money. You just spoke about us not having a balanced budget. An increased gas tax would actually bring in income.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:14)
Bill, don't suggest that to Governor Newsom. We already have the highest gas tax in the country. Hey, Bill.

**Bill Gurley** (0:32)
How are you doing, sir?

**Brad Gerstner** (0:34)
I'm doing great. So, as you know, we were gonna do a pod with Sacha this week, but we wanted to make sure that we got a full 90 minutes with him. So we bumped it back to December 10th. And so I thought we'd kick in and do something a little bit different here today. It's a holiday week, we got Thanksgiving on Thursday. So you came up with this idea, which I love. We're gonna ping pong back and forth a few issues that are top of mind for us. Things we're thinking about as we head into Thanksgiving. It's less of a deep dive, I suppose, and more just our initial thoughts or additional thoughts about several ideas that you and I have discussed. Which also reminded me, Bill, we're almost to the end of our first year doing this together. I love it. You're always coming up with ideas. We want to keep BG2 fresh as we head into 2025 And so we're going to experiment with a few different modes. And I would welcome everybody's idea. Kick us your ideas, DM us, put them on YouTube, and we'll try to integrate them into the show in 2025 So Bill, why don't you kick us off with your first shot on goal? What's on your mind?

**Bill Gurley** (1:40)
I've been thinking a lot about China, and we've talked about it some on the podcast. There is a lot of articles out today about a big Huawei event. There's an FT one that we'll put in the notes, but there are others you could just search and see. And Huawei has released a phone they call the Mate 70, and it's bigger and faster than everyone thought it would be. It doesn't use Android, so it's their first non-Android mobile OS. And the part that everyone's really freaking out about and trying to understand is what chip technology is underneath it. The rumors and the articles suggest that they have accomplished fairly high-end semiconductor manufacturing at SMIC in China, so this chip was not built at TSMC. And they had this huge event in the stadium, and I would encourage people will post some Twitter feeds about this, where you can see some of the photos. But the thing that's just so striking to me is just how, you know, magnificently innovative they are in China. And I continue to read what I would call rhetoric from people on both sides of the island of America, and even some people in our own industry, who suggest that we can, you know, cut China off from technology, block them, that we're somehow ahead. I think American exceptionalism has gotten into our head. And my biggest fear is that pretending this isn't true, isn't helpful to our own competitiveness. You know, and there's a great quote. Steve Sue pulled up a Lex interview with Elon from about a year ago. And he says, look, the United States has been the most powerful economic engine in the world longer than anyone's been alive. And the foundation of war is economics. So we have a situation in the case of China, where their economy is likely to be two, perhaps three times larger than that of the US. So you imagine you've been the biggest kid on the block for as long as anyone can remember, and suddenly a kid comes along who's twice your size. And I just feel this so much. And Elon goes on to talk about the work ethic of the people, the investment in STEM.
While we are removing advanced STEM courses in California, the number of graduates in China's university system that are STEM is 35%.
And that number is below 10 in the US. And so a combination of work ethic and technical skills, I personally think they have all the pieces they need to run as fast as they possibly can. And I don't think blocking ASMR or blocking AI technology or blocking anything is working. It's just not working. And I think it would do everyone in the US a whole bunch of good to stand up. And there's videos all over YouTube. We'll put up some of these links and just pay attention to what's going on. We're falling behind. And tariffs and protectionism will only protect American industry for a very short window. It's actually going to deny them the competition they need to get their shit together.