Europe’s Geoeconomic Revolution, With Matthias Matthijs & Sophie Meunier

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is Europe's Geoeconomic Revolution

With me to discuss the transformation in the way the European Union approaches economics and the implications for transatlantic relations are Matthias Matthijs and Sophie Meunier. Matthias is a senior fellow for Europe at the Council, and the Dean Acheson Associate Professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He's former chair of the European Union Studies Association. Sophie is senior research scholar in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, interim director of Lichtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, and chair of the European Union Studies Association. They recently covered a piece for Foreign Affairs titled, "Europe's Geoeconomic Revolution." Matthias and Sophie, thank you for joining me.

MEUNIER:
Thank you, Jim.

MATTHIJS:
Thanks for having us.

LINDSAY:
Sophie. I would like to start with you. The term geoeconomics has become very popular in our business, but what exactly does it mean and how does it differ from ordinary economics?

MEUNIER:
Well, the simplest answer to this question is that geoeconomics is the use of economic tools for geopolitical purposes, in normal times, I should add. So we are not talking about things like sanctions, which happen during extraordinary times for extraordinary purposes, but just in regular times.

LINDSAY:
Let me ask you then give me an example of what geoeconomics would be.

MEUNIER:
So geoeconomics would be the use of particular tools, and there's an entire arsenal and weaponry that countries have at their disposal, whether they're defensive or offensive tools, that are going to try to advance that country's position in the world of geopolitics and make some relative gains compared to other countries.

LINDSAY:
So name something that the European Union has done recently that you would see as being geoeconomics.

MEUNIER:
So for instance, the best example, and actually the first tool that EU has put together in this Pandora's box of tools is foreign direct investment screening. So the United States has been screening incoming foreign investments for a long time, especially through the use of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS, and this is a very well organized process. But the EU has only done that recently, but is doing it with a vengeance, and that's one of the good examples of a tool of geoeconomics.

LINDSAY:
So Matthias, walk me through this transformation in the way the European Union is approaching geoeconomics. As I understand it, if we were to go back five years ago, ten years ago, the European Union wasn't looking at the political fallout or global geopolitical fallout of its economic policies, but that's changed. How so?

MATTHIJS:
It's changed quite dramatically. Jim, as you rightly say. Let's say we were to go back to 2015 as one particular year. This was the Greek summer, some people may remember, of the third bailout. But both when it came to the single currency and the single market, Europe held close to its founding values and for the single market, this was free trade, free movement of people and capital and goods and services.

LINDSAY:
Is that the same as neoliberalism?

MATTHIJS:
To some extent. The European Union as we knew it in 2015, was a combination of neoliberalism, which stressed competition in free markets and what Germans call ordoliberalism, which stresses stability, like a stability culture, meaning small fiscal deficits, price stability and so on. And so what's happened since 2015 standing where we are today in 2023, has been nothing short of a transformation. So this was true in the way Europe has dealt with multiple crises, I think especially the COVID pandemic recently, where it let go of its fiscal restraint and of its monetary orthodoxy, meaning the ECB bought up all manner of debt-

LINDSAY:
European Central Bank.

MATTHIJS:
European Central Bank bought up all manner of debt and committed a kitchen sink approach to this, and all kinds of guarantees of the state that went out the door, as well as a renewed effort of countries to allow state aid, which also ran against the single market. And so if you look at, and I imagine we'll go through it, of all the things that have happened on the geoeconomic front, this is not your uncle's European Union, let alone your grandmother's.

LINDSAY:
So as we look at the European Union, we're talking about the states that belong to the organization. But as I understand that this is more a story of the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, and particularly under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, has become much more focused on linking economics with politics. So Sophie, as you look at this, walk me through from your vantage point what the major changes have been in the EU's approach. And I take it that this is the EU as a whole as opposed to individual countries, say France, say Poland, say Spain, doing this. This is a European Union wide approach.

MEUNIER:
Yes, Jim. You're right, that actually the big change is not coming from the member states themselves, but from the EU Commission. But it actually predates the von der Leyen commission. The big geoeconomic revolution can be dated back to around 2017. 2017 is when the people in the commission who deal with trade and investment realized that they could no longer be naive, vis-a-vis the rest of the world and especially China and the United States. So this is the big trigger that happened, and it's no surprise that it happened in 2017 because this was the combination of China's more aggressive authoritarian capitalism combined with the beginnings of the Trump administration and the jettisoning of multilateralism, the abandoning the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the TPP, trying to wreck to some extent the WTO. So the combination of what happened in China and what happened in the United States made the people in the commission realize that they could no longer take the liberal international economic order for granted.

And they had been trying to hold that for as long as they could when they saw it unravel, but they were still trying to fight the fight with the old tools. And they realized that in order to keep the world an open economy in an open place, they had to change the approach and change the tools that they use. So it dates back to about 2017. But then in addition to China and the U.S., there are several developments that happened that made this change possible, certainly enough for the commission to realize that the change was necessary. But it had to become possible. And it became possible because of a combination of European internal transformations, one of which was Brexit. Because the UK had always been one of the most neoliberal states in the European Union and the leader of what some people in Brussels often refer to as the "free trade Talibans." But with the UK leaving, it changed the balance of power inside the European Union between those very neoliberal countries, and the more, I won't say protectionist, but the less neoliberal countries such as France.

So that's one thing that happened. Another thing that happened is that simply to use Brussels jargon, there was a transfer of competence over the issue of investment. So it basically mean that before, the EU was not in charge of policies having to do investment, but it became in charge of investment after the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, but more importantly, after a series of court cases in 2017 that very firmly said the EU is in charge of investment policy. So that made it possible. 

And the third change is a bunch of turn towards more populist parties and parties in coalition governments inside Europe, especially in those pre free trade neoliberal countries that changed again, that balance of power. So in 2017, the commission realized, "We can't be naive anymore. We need to do something to answer the new world of China and the U.S." And then all of a sudden there was this series of events that happened that actually made it possible for the commission to do that.

LINDSAY:
Matthias, I want to make sure I'm not caricaturing your argument because as you talk about where the European Union was if you go back five, ten years ago, I don't take it that you're arguing that the European Union pursued laissez-faire economics, let the market decide things. Certainly from the U.S. side of the Atlantic, the EU and individual state intervention in the economy is quite significant, much more regulation. Sophie raised the issue of Brexit, and one of the arguments whether fair or not, made by those who promoted leave was that the EU was too heavily regulated, didn't allow the animal spirits of business and capitalism to get loose. So I just want to make sure we're not arguing that the European Union once had this unregulated market, correct?

MATTHIJS:
No. Actually, if you compare the European Union with the United States, to some extent the EU is definitely more regulated, but it regulates markets more than the United States, thus meaning it creates a level playing field between the twenty-seven, back then twenty-eight when the UK was still a member, member states that didn't allow for significant levels of state eight, that didn't allow for interventions in the economy that would go against the single market. And that's different from the United States where individual states actually have quite a bit of leeway when it comes to professional licensing or procurement policies, where California can give preference to California contractors and things like that. The point is that if you go back to the period from 2004 to 2014, when Barroso, former Portuguese prime minister was commission president, it was very heavily focused on completing that single market. The idea was there's still these barriers between individual countries, whether it's in digital markets, whether it's in financial markets, where there is bias in Italy for Italian banks and German towards German banks, and we need to get rid of that.

So this was very much an economic commission. I think the trend we're documenting, Sophia and I, is a transition from an economic commission focused on free trade, focused on macroeconomic stability, towards a more political commission under Juncker, towards the geopolitical commission under von der Leyen, that when she announced this in the fall of 2019, when she was very new in the job, when Christine Lagarde was very new in the job as president of the European Central Bank, that nobody took seriously, especially not in this great city, Washington, DC or let alone in London or Beijing, because the European Union was simply not in the business of using its market, using its economic tools that it has, for foreign policy gain or political purposes. And of course, what happened with the COVID pandemic followed very quickly a few years later by the Russian invasion in Ukraine, that this created an opening for the EU to become a much more powerful actor because the critique of the commission had always been that it was a secretariat for member states, especially the most powerful member state in that case, Germany.

LINDSAY:
Well, certainly the argument was that it was essentially sitting on the sidelines of geopolitics. I want to go back to the point that you made, Sophie, that you really had two trends in motion. One was about things happening domestically within Europe in terms of the membership of the EU, that changed what was possible. And at the same time, there were changes in the EUs external environment, increased economic coercion, an intervention coming out of China, beginning in 2017, you have an American president in Donald Trump who in many ways, departs from U.S. policy on economics, including by imposing tariffs on America's friends and allies in Europe. And these things come together. So this produces this embrace of geoeconomics. But I have to ask, geoeconomics to what end? As you look at the European Union today, what are they now trying to use their economic power to either achieve or avoid when it comes to geopolitics?

MEUNIER:
So I'm going to add actually a third factor in addition to this combination of China and the U.S., and then the internal dynamics with Brexit and new parties getting into power in some of the member states. And that third factor is also an external one, a deeply structural one, and it's the technological revolution, and the fact that all of a sudden, the line that used to be very clear between what was economics and what was security, is becoming blurred. Before, except for a few products in defense industry aviation that could be used for dual use, it was very clear when something was just an economic issue and something was a security issue.

But because of technological change and mostly the internet of things and all issues relating to data privacy, every issue today seems to be potentially security issue, national security issue. So that's the big finality of this geoeconomic revolution, is to find a way of combining security and open markets. And it's much more difficult today than it used to be. Because today you could have a car, driving your connected car or having your connected toaster or your Alexa device, and all of these potentially could be sources of national security risk. The problem for the EU there in trying to combine open markets, open economy and security, is that the EU is not in charge of security for its member states. It remains a national competence. So the EU has to come up with all kinds of new tools that skirt around this issue, simply to be able to ensure the security of its citizens in the long run.

LINDSAY:
So Matthias, how would you describe the challenge that the EU faces today? Is there a consensus on what the European Union should be trying to achieve with its turn to geoeconomics or are there on that issue, as in others' deep divisions? Is it about trying to hold off China? Is it about trying to stay close to the United States or alternatively get further away from the United States?

MATTHIJS:
It's a good question. You could say that if you go back to the period 2015, '16, '17, '18 even, there was very little consensus on this. The fight within the European Union seemed to be between those like French president Emmanuel Macron, who believed in more EU solidarity, more EU, what he calls strategic autonomy, souveraineté in French, meaning more sovereignty for the EU, and those of both left and right who wanted to grab back sovereignty from Brussels. They wanted more discretion on economic policy, on fiscal policy, industrial policy, on all these things that the U.S. and China seem to be able to move.

I think what's changed is the pandemic changed these attitudes because it was clear that not only the EU buying vaccines as one, and doing so quite successfully, but also just the vulnerability of supply chains, at the same time, of course, a hostile U.S. president who showed very little solidarity with the EU at the time. And so that said, is there now consensus on the EU should use all its geoeconomic tools at its disposal? Definitely not. And so if you look at the EU today, there is consensus on Russia. There's consensus that the sanctions should stay, that the EU should use all its power to bring this conflict to an end in the favor of Ukraine.

LINDSAY:
So you're not worrying about divisions within the EU leading the EU to go wobbly on this?

MATTHIJS:
Not yet. On China, it's more complicated because there's countries that take a very hawkish line on China, much closer to the United States line, which I think Ursula von der Leyen as commission president chairs. But even within the commission, there's others that are more reluctant on this. Actually, the member states are much more reluctant on this, especially Germany and France again, who have significant business interests in China. And then there's the eternal question about 2024 and what will happen in the United States and should the EU prepare itself for a return to a Trump-like figure or Trump himself, and be able to take this to the next level. And so the consensus has moved into that direction, but there's still an enormous amount of internal difficulties on how to get there. And member states, especially the strongest ones, remain incredibly protective of their national competencies.

MEUNIER:
If I can stay on the issue of the United States since that's one of the questions you asked Jim, whether this was the finality of the EU's geoeconomic turn. Indeed, many in Brussels are trying to Trump-proof their economic relations. And interestingly enough, among the many, many tools that the U.S. created extremely rapidly in the past three years, one of them, which is probably the most famous, is the so-called anti-coercion tool, which was just adopted a few months ago. But interestingly enough, all these tools have been adopted in the shadow of China, but the anti-coercion tool was actually triggered by actions by the Trump administration.

LINDSAY:
Sophie, can we take a moment just to explain what the anti-coercion tool is? Because I think most people have never heard of it, and those who have heard of it probably haven't done a deep dive to figure out exactly what it means. It's just that the EU has some unspecified tool it can take off the shelf if it sees something it doesn't like.

MEUNIER:
Yes. So the anti coercion tool has not been used yet, it was just adopted. But indeed, will be available on the shelf in the future. To give you an example, the most famous example happened actually just a few weeks before the tool was initially proposed, and this is when China decided to retaliate and coerce Lithuania. Because economically, by cutting off all Lithuanian exports to China, but also all exports of goods that had any component that was made in Lithuania. Because Lithuania had allowed the Taiwanese representation to open an embassy in its capital, and so China came back with all its economic might and tried to make Lithuania changed its policy positions on the issue.

And this is why the EU decided to build... The tool was already actually being built, it was just unveiled a week later. But this illustrates pretty well what it will allow the EU to do. So the EU will be allowed to employ a variety of retaliatory measures if it feels that a foreign country is trying to coerce one of its own members into changing its policy positions. But interestingly enough, this tool was initially nicknamed inside the open commission as they were developing it, the anti-bullying tool. And the anti-bullying tool was actually in response to some of the perceived bullying that was happening from the Trump administration.

LINDSAY:
Well, let's talk about that. Matthias, you raised the prospect that in January 2025, Donald Trump could return to the White House, or someone pursuing policies that he's favored in the past would take office. So where do you see European geoeconomics going if the country that they depend upon for their security all of a sudden is at odds with them on economics?

MATTHIJS:
That was one of the weaknesses of the German policy shift in response to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The famous line, I believe it was Constanze Stelzenmüller in The Financial Times that Germany had outsourced its security to the U.S., its growth to China and its energy needs to Russia. And so is the right response to outsource everything to the United States then? Because clearly Germany buys a lot of liquified natural gas from the U.S. now at higher prices and is weary of its economic dependence with China. It can't get rid of it overnight, but is that the solution if someone like Trump comes back to power. 

And here, to go back to what Sophie was saying of the anti-coercion instrument, the bullying had started actually vis-a-vis France. France was thinking about, I think it was a digital tax or something on some of the multinational American companies from Microsoft, Apple, Google and so on, who had disproportionate power in these markets. And President Trump very quickly responded, well, actually, California wine is far superior to French wine. Why are we buying French wine without any tariffs? They're actually putting tariffs on it. So that's when I think the commission got very serious. Well, we need to be able to respond in kind. 

So the idea is not if Trump gets elected for the EU to go on the offensive and start an all out trade war with the United States, but it's to make it very clear. It's almost like an economic deterrent if you want, in the realm of nuclear war. We're familiar with it, right? You're not going to start it because the consequences are too high. But so if the Trump administration were to go on a full on trade war with the EU the way they did in 2018 with China, the EU could make it very clear that this would hurt the United States even more if there were to do so.

LINDSAY:
Well, there certainly have been news reports recently suggesting that Donald Trump, if he were to go back into the White House, would impose a 10 percent across the board tariff on all goods, which obviously would alarm the Europeans and many other U.S. trading partners. But I want to ask you, Sophie, as you look at this, it's easy to say that Trump created problems in U.S.-EU relations, particularly on the economic front. But I think it's fair to say that Joe Biden, who came into office in January of 2021, was seen by many people, not just here in Washington, but also in Europe, as restoring the way things used to be in the transatlantic relationship. But then President Biden so far has not really moved to take away a number of the economic irritants that President Trump imposed. Indeed, in many ways, President Biden's trade policies, economic policies, have been aimed at trying to bring jobs back home. Obviously the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act provides subsidies to markets, and those pieces of legislation have caused a lot of consternation in European capitals, particularly in Paris, but not just in Paris.

MEUNIER:
That's a great point, and that's exactly why the Europeans are moving forward with this doctrine of open strategic autonomy. So it's not only to be able to fight future Trump-like policies that are of an offensive nature, but a lot of the policies, as you mentioned, that the Biden administration has been carrying domestically, especially the IRA, have been seen in Europe as being dangerous for Europe itself. And interestingly enough, when Europeans approached Biden himself about this, the answer from the administration was, "You guys should do the same. Let's all do industrial policy, and what are you complaining about?," because that's what Europeans were complaining about, that this goes against a lot of the rules that have been just governing trade over the past fifty years or so. 

And in response to that, the Europeans themselves are now debating. The next big step, the next big fight that's going to happen inside Europe is concerning industrial policy. And there you see a big division between some of the member states, where you have one camp that's basically led by France. Then it's all back to, oh, great, let's go back to dirigisme, let's make big European projects, the new Concorde, the new mini-train, the new TGV. And then you have other countries, mostly the Nordic countries, that are saying, "Oh, wait, we have to put the brakes." But the French are saying, "Look, China's doing it, the U.S. is doing it, we should be doing the same." And interestingly enough, the current French commissioner inside the commission, Thierry Breton, is the one who is in charge of this industrial policy and who's been pushing for that industrial policy at the EU level and, who knows, might have a bigger future in European politics.

LINDSAY:
Sophie, let me ask you a quick question. If that in fact happens in Europe, will Americans be happy that the Europeans followed their lead?

MEUNIER:
Well, this is what the Biden folks and Biden himself have been telling Europeans, "Be our guests, please go and do your own industrial policy." They might be happy to some extent because there is a lot of cooperation going on. And if you're thinking of de-risking, that's the European way of talking about this decoupling. But if you're thinking of de-risking and transforming your supply chains, it might actually be good for Americans if a lot of industries coming back to Europe.

LINDSAY:
But only if we cooperated and in essence, provided benefits to each other.

MEUNIER:
There are fora cooperation, for instance, inside the trade and technology cooperation councils. So overall, I think the Americans should be happy that this is happening. If you are thinking in terms of absolute gains, not relative gains.

LINDSAY:
Well, but in politics, relative gains matter.

MEUNIER:
They do.

LINDSAY:
Anyway, Matthias, you wanted to jump in here?

MATTHIJS:
Yeah. So Sophia is absolutely right that the big fight, remember in EU, there's a lot of elections in 2024. In Russia, in India, in the U.S., but also in the European Union coming up the first long weekend of June 2024. And so the last big fight of this commission, and we'll yet have to see if von der Leyen wants a second term and ends up having a second term. But the one big fight is over what they call the Sovereignty Fund. We're in the midst of a seven year budget cycle, and so this budget has to be renewed. And it has a shortfall, mostly because of Ukraine and a lot of extra money that has gone to helping the people of Ukraine defend themselves against Russia. And at the same time, there is domestic coalition problems of the German finance minister, who is very orthodox when it comes to finance. We think he's losing that battle for fiscal austerity because the rest of Europe have moved on, and his traditional allies in the Nordics and the Baltics and even in the Netherlands have softened their rhetoric.

But think about it. It's not just that Europe needs a lot more money to do this. A EU style IRA here, there was 369 billion that was made available, dollars. But as Goldman Sachs has calculated, it's probably closer to 1.2 trillion because of the vast underestimation this time last year, of how much appetite there was for the switch to alternative energy, solar, wind, and so on. The other problem within Europe that Sophie rightly mentioned, is the tensions between the big countries that can do this. 76 percent, I think the number is correct, of all state aid since 2020, has been done by two countries, France and Germany. Germany even more than 50 percent. France is smaller. So these countries can do it. They have the fiscal maneuver. Smaller countries from Portugal to Estonia, can't do this at all. So they're like, "Okay, if you want us to do this, we need to have subsidies from Europe." And that's the hard discussion right now.

LINDSAY:
The Germans have not been big fans of doing that.

MATTHIJS:
Exactly. So they would have to commit another next generation EU 2020, which they did in response to the pandemic where they created a huge fund funded by common bonds, and that was the big shift in fiscal thinking that happened. But do they want to do a next generation 2.0 for the energy transition the way the Biden administration has done? That's right now where the big disagreement is.

LINDSAY:
So Sophie, I want you to put on your prediction glasses, look into your crystal ball. Going five years out, where do you see the European Union ending up? Do you see it as in essence, navigating its own path, trying to be equidistant from China and the United States? Do you see it choosing one side or the other for whatever reason? Or do you worry that the EU is going to fall to the wayside? I will note you mentioned earlier that the advent of technology has created real challenges for Europe. I hear a lot of Americans say that Europe is falling further and further behind on the technology front, and the result when Europe can't innovate is that it regulates, and that those regulations are going to make it even more sclerotic. So tell me, what's the future going to look like?

MEUNIER:
Well, I'll venture. We're academics, we're not supposed to be in the business of making predictions.

LINDSAY:
I will come back to you in five years, Sophie.

MEUNIER:
Once you start with these geoeconomic tools, it's a little bit like opening Pandora's box. So for a long time, Europe was like, "We are not in the business of geoeconomics." They opened the box, they started with foreign investment screening, and then they followed with anti-subsidies regulation, international procurement instrument, anti-coercion. Now they're thinking of outbound investment screening. So that's why I say once you open it, you have a sequence of new tools that need to be created. Because some of them call for subsequent tools. For instance, let's take an example. If you do industrial policy and you pour billions of euros, of European taxpayers' euros, into developing all these projects, the last thing you want is for a Chinese company to come in and simply buy the company that has developed all of this with European taxpayers' money. So it means that if you do industrial policy, you need to accompany that with investment screening, for instance. So the more tools you create, the more tools you need. 

So my prediction is that in five years, we'll have more tools and more tools, and Europe will be fighting against the U.S. and China with these tools. But in the context of more cooperation with the U.S. if it happens to be a favorable, friendly U.S. administration. But this is the whole point of what Europeans call open strategic autonomy, is to give themselves the means to be autonomous, whoever the administration is. If you want to cooperate with the U.S., great. If you can't cooperate with the U.S., then hopefully there will be enough money poured into this that the Europeans will be able to manage. We tend to underestimate the European Union.

LINDSAY:
Got it. Matthias, your prediction.

MATTHIJS:
I think the shift from rules to tools in the EU is real. It's gradual, it's accelerated in the last five years, and it's going to keep going in that direction no matter what happens. Unless there's a return or there's some sort of democratization in Russia and China and the U.S. somehow celebrates a new end of history or something. I don't think the 1990s and the 2000s are coming back, where the world was gradually moving in the direction of more free markets, more free trade and more democracy.

LINDSAY:
We seem to be closing rather than opening.

MATTHIJS:
Yes. So that direction is clear for what Sophie's described as this Pandora's box. It feeds on itself and it needs more tools. It's going to be very hard to return to that previous world. And I will venture to predict that if in 2024, someone like Donald Trump or a Trump-like figure wins, that this transition will speed up, because Europe will suddenly have to do not just more tools on the geoeconomic front, which they have developed, and they have to do this for defense, and they'd have to get much more serious about industrial policy. Right now, that's still in its infancy.

If the Biden administration gets reelected and gets a second mandate, this may slow down a bit, if they find a modus vivendi where they can have a division of labor in who does what and they both win from this cooperation, but I think the direction is clear. And then the world of Maastricht, which the Europeans refer to because of the Treaty of Maastricht that was signed in 1992 that put in place, poured these rules into treaties that were very hard to change. I don't think these times are coming back, so the direction is clear. It's an EU that I think has developed a lot more tools the way the Americans always complained about that the EU was not able to do this, and I think that's the direction that they're on and that will continue.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest have Matthias Matthijs, senior fellow for Europe here at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Sophie Meunier, senior research scholar in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Matthias and Sophie, thank you very much for joining me.

MEUNIER:
Thank you, Jim.

MATTHIJS:
Thanks for having us, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox in Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us your review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks. Go out to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.