8 trillion, do you believe that? I think there's something like 5 trillion that's somewhat known and confirmed but you know you have to add the Trump hyperbole to it. Five becomes eight. Eight becomes 20. So we'll see how that goes.

Remember I told you yesterday that I doubted that there would really be a Ukraine mineral deal with the United States because it just seemed to me like we weren't really getting there. Well, was I wrong? Because there's an announcement that there is a signed mineral deal with Ukraine and the United States. So I guess there is a mineral deal. Oh wait. Did I say there's a mineral deal? Well, it's not exactly a mineral deal if you look under the hood a little bit. It's more of a deal to maybe make a deal. Was that what you thought you were going to get? Because I was sort of thinking of it as, all right, we're going to have this specific deal and we're going to mine this specific stuff and this is what we'll do and this is what you'll do. Well, it's not that. It's not that. It's more like the agreement grants the US quote privileged access to investment projects for various things like aluminum, graphite, oil and natural gas reserves. Includes oil. Interesting. What do you think that means? Privileged access. Privileged access. It's kind of not defined, is it?

Suppose privileged access is just who they ask first. What if Ukraine has some minerals that they want to exploit whether it's oil or anything else and they say okay everybody, US has privileged access so what do you guys offer us and the US says well thanks for asking us first because we have this privileged access so we will offer you 50% of all the revenue and then some other country says, "We'll offer you 75%." Do they still have to do the deal with the United States, or do you think the agreement would say that the US has to match the best deal? What if we don't? What if we don't match the best offer? We'd still have privileged access because if we did match it, we'd get the deal. But do you think they're leaving the door open for maybe they're not doing quite the deal you think it is?

So I'm going to say that it looks like a step in the right direction. So directionally looks pretty good and it might send the right message in terms of getting a peace deal. So it's probably good. But I'll bet you the details of this deal are not exactly what you thought they were. I think it's probably a weaker deal than you imagined would come out of it.

China, according to the Wall Street Journal, is still trying to tell us that they can more easily withstand the tariff trade war and they can tolerate the pain longer than the US. But according to the Wall Street Journal, there are cracks that are beginning to show in the Chinese economy. There's plunging trade and there are factories that are being idled and there are people being laid off in China. And if there's one thing I've learned about assessing China's economy, we're never right about it. How long has it been? It's been like what, eight years since I've been telling you stories about China's economy falling off the cliff and that basically they can't last another year because there's a real estate collapse and they've got a demographic collapse and they've got this and that kind of a problem and that problem. I don't know that any of it's real. I don't think we have any real visibility into what's happening in China. So I do not believe that we really have any visibility in that at all. We'd just be guessing. So I'm not going to predict that China will fold, but I think they want a deal as much as we do. So probably something will happen. My guess is that China will be a lot of nothing happening, nothing happening, nothing happening, and then something happening quickly. So I don't think it'll be like others.

Now, I did see some suggestion that we might be seeing some kind of a trade deal announced, not with China, but with some other country. Have we heard anything about that this morning? Because it might happen today. Now, if I had to guess, since trade deals really take a long time to get the details right, whatever gets announced will be sort of like that Ukraine mineral deal. It'll be more like a deal to make a deal. You know, it would be more like something along the lines of South Korea and the US have agreed on an outline of what a trade deal would look like, but it would be six months away from actually having it signed. It might, you know, the handshake might be enough to drop all the trade barriers. So maybe a handshake is all you need while they work out the details. But I would expect maybe South Korea and/or possibly Japan will go first. That's what I think. And then I think it might be a while before the second one. But when you get to something like the fifth announced trade deal, I think Trump's poll numbers are going to look really different because then it's going to look like things are working. First one or two or three maybe people are going to say t