Perhaps flying under the radar last week, the US faced a major test in the global AI race.
At the APEC summit, American officials made a strong pitch for US tech in front of ministers from all 21 APEC economies.
Now the US agenda received a mostly positive reception with AI exports, collaboration and open innovation getting strong support.
Now several APEC economies expressed interest in American AI infrastructure and Standards.
The summit highlighted a growing rivalry with China as both countries unveiled competing visions for AI leaderships.
But with Chinese alternatives on the rise, the competition for regional influence in AI is only intensifying.
Joining me this morning is Patrick L.
Young, chairman and founder of Exchange Invest.
Good morning, Patrick.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Well, first and foremost, what stood out to you from the APEC summit in terms of the AI competition?
In terms of the competition, I think the thing that's really obvious is look at what's discussed.
It's APEC discussing where they're going to go and who they're going to be most loyal to, with China and America being the big competitors.
Anybody remember Europe?
Do you know those people who put together all those regulations which have effectively stymied.
AI development.
So already we're down to a two horse race in terms of great powers.
The fact that the United States of America is so keen to get out there and push its message is very, very interesting and certainly endemic of the pro-business Trump administration, and that certainly suggests that America wants to be a winner.
Well, Patrick, I do want to ask you about some key US tech names here.
Apple stock led the Mach 7 last week, the stock rising on the iPhone maker's plans to spend an additional $100 billion on US companies and suppliers, but In addition to that, over the weekend, we heard about the agreement between Nvidia, AMD and the US government.
So our big tech leaders all on the same page when it comes to the Trump administration, especially with Intel's chief executive heading to DC today.
I think it's very, very interesting.
Obviously Intel's CEO, he's in a particular position which is very difficult to speculate upon quite what's going on between him and the administration and obviously that's going to be something we'll be interested to see what happens in DC.
But what's fascinating is when you get Tim Cook turning up and presenting all these wonderful silver plated golden wonder environment things that he's giving to the White House when you've got Nvidia saying yes.
We're going to be providing 15% of effectively what we get on our chips that we're exporting to the United States government.
It does feel actually remarkably like old fashioned sort of centralized socialism, doesn't it?
I mean, all of the tech leaders go to the DC headquarters.
They tell everybody how wonderful they are, and they're all in lockstep with the government.
That's entirely what's not happened in the technology revolution for the course of the past 50 years in the United States of America.
And Patrick, another thing that we're keeping a close eye on our new large language models, especially the rollouts from ChatGBT and Grock last week.
So ChatGPT also offering its services to the US government are nearly next to that.
So where are we now in terms of the AI race?
Well, one thing that's very interesting about the AI race is you look deep down into this.
Originally they created a thing called Doge all those months ago.
They said it's going to be an opportunity for the government to save money and then suddenly we managed to find this situation where we've got a wonderful deal in the air which of course might lead to data leakage that is a concern, but nonetheless, the US government managing to get AI on the desktop of every employee for $1.
Surely that must make the US government more efficient, but at the same time it's got to be something quite depressing because of course it's not Grok that's going on to those desks and therefore, who was the man who started Doge, but none other than Elon Musk himself, who must be disappointed at what's gone on so far in terms of that particular deal.
But nonetheless, this is a government that's trying to move itself at least into the digital age, a lot more firmly, which puts it ahead of a lot of the Western world, let's face it, we're They haven't even worked out what they're trying to do.
That's got to be good for investors.
It's got to be good for investors in American ingenuity.
And let's face it, Brock comes from somebody who didn't make himself the world's richest man by achieving nothing.
There's a lot to play for in this, and frankly, the only problem government has is it's not going to be able to keep up because this is innovating week by week, and as we know, government can barely manage to operate year to year.
And Patrick, speaking of government, I do want to shift gears to tariffs.
So India and Brazil both facing 50% tariffs for political reasons.
But what do you see happening here?
And also tell us about the threat coming as Apple makes manufacturing deals with the Trump administration.
Look, it's very, very interesting.
Apple have realized that they've got to do something that differentiates their overall production.
We know that Trump wants to have high value manufacturing jobs back in the USA.
Therefore, it's patently obvious that where Apple treads, we're going to see a lot of middle America going as well.
Cars that are manufactured in Mexico at the moment, for example, I think it's quite likely to be the next step going back to the USA.
What it says about this whole deal in terms of the Overall positioning of government is governments trying to move forward.
Trump is trying to slim government.
He's trying to make government more efficient, and that's going to create a very different business.
Now when we come to tariffs, what we see there is essentially Trump is trying to peel away the people who are supporting the classic unpopular nations amongst those nations that the USA deems to be in the world and therefore they don't want Iran to be dealing so much.
With the likes of Iran to be dealing so much with India, they don't want India buying their oil and gas from Russia.
They don't want to see Brazil dealing so much with China, and that's all a lot that's baked into what's going on in the tariff world at the moment because actually Trump has got most of the major tariff deals he needs.
And let's face it, we're halfway through the year and he's reshaped world trade, which is quite astounding and got a peace deal with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Well, Patrick, a lot to keep our eyes on as we head into a new trading week.
So thank you so much for joining me on this Monday and thank you for sharing all of your insights.
