Robo Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🌍 China's automated manufacturing base outruns US reindustrialization E238 · 2025-08-09 ▶ 32:18

And China has both manufacturing, productivity, materials advantage over the United States on that front. So it's not about having the best model. It's about having a supply chain that can support their ambitions in warfare.

And so you just stimulate a manufacturing boom in the country. We incentivize automation across the manufacturing. We use that as a competitive weapon to go and compete with the sort of lower cost labor that happens internationally.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🌍 China's automated manufacturing base outruns US reindustrialization E225 · 2025-04-26 ▶ 1:25:36

China, ultimately, if they can make new energy systems cheaper than the United States, scale them faster, they will ultimately have much cheaper, much higher volumes of electricity, which gives them the advantage of manufacturing and production and transportation and everything. And that's where the economic advantage will ultimately accrue to them.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on 🌍 China's automated manufacturing base outruns US reindustrialization E223 · 2025-04-11 ▶ 22:27

who's going to do this work if we're going to be deporting millions of people and we have the lowest unemployment of our lifetimes and we have automation coming to these factories and Americans don't want to take these jobs historically? How is this all going to work? It seems a bit farcical to me that we're going to bring these things back.

Sacks support ×1 ▲ on 🌍 China's automated manufacturing base outruns US reindustrialization E223 · 2025-04-11 ▶ 21:41

I would say probably the biggest thing would be whether the US can re-industrialize to some extent so that we're not completely dependent for our supply chains on a potentially hostile adversary.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🌍 China's automated manufacturing base outruns US reindustrialization E222 · 2025-04-05 ▶ 1:38:56

In the last 20 years, they've built 30,000 miles of high-speed rail. In the next 15 years, they're going to add more electricity production capacity than the United States times who has today. There's nothing short of ambition coming out of China. And it's what we're lacking.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🌍 China's automated manufacturing base outruns US reindustrialization E220 · 2025-03-22 ▶ 1:20:07

as we know, the way the Chinese operate when it comes to kind of industrialization is they can move fast, they can move big, they can move heavy, they can dedicate resources, they can dedicate an entirely vertically integrated supply chain to achieving an objective. So this will end up being kind of, I think, the big race over the next couple of years.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E99 · 2022-10-07 ▶ 44:55

I think that's going to be the very interesting thing with the robots as well, is all of these decisions they're making, moving cars through roads, all of a sudden we're going to see that with VTOLs, vertical takeoff and landing, you know, aircraft, and we're going to see it with this general robot.

Jason support ×3 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E94 · 2022-09-01 ▶ 34:28

We are within, I think, five, 10 years of a lot of these jobs. We're talking tens of millions of manual labor jobs being gone. And we're going to look at this moment in time where we try to squeeze an extra 10 or 20 percent out of these employers. And then you're going to see these employers say, you know what? 24-hour-a-day robot. Yeah, it's a little bit upfront cost. I'll put it on the lease and they're just going to move to these robots. It's really very close to being game over for manual labor.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E94 · 2022-09-01 ▶ 22:32

Well, the reason is because if you raise the minimum wage too much, then these employers have a huge incentive to replace that labor with automation. And so the unintended consequence that Chamath is talking about is that these big chain restaurants are going to rely even more heavily on automation now.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E94 · 2022-09-01 ▶ 31:05

And so to think that they're not going to just invest heavily now at the corporate level, the next franchisee of McDonald's will still pay a million dollars for franchise fee but will give will be given a bevy of robots that they rent for McDonald's and they'll have to hire half or third less.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E94 · 2022-09-01 ▶ 15:04

Number two, businesses are going to automate. So new businesses will emerge that actually do the fast food work or do the car building work or do the dock loading and unloading work that are automated and they'll have an inherent advantage in the economy and they'll win.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E88 · 2022-07-22 ▶ 1:09:43

But generally speaking, technology drives productivity gains, but it's deflationary in the short term.

Flexport already made this technology. We could 10x the throughput of one of these ports overnight ... We already have this tech. So it's a matter of implementation, deployment, and how do you get around a lot of people that don't really want to see better running ports. And it's pretty sad to sit where I sit.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E58 · 2021-12-11 ▶ 44:22

So the low-cost model of consumerism in the United States, which has been a stronghold for our economy for 100 years at this point, may be coming to an end, or it will accelerate the implementation of automation across that sector of the economy.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🤖 Expensive labour pulls forward automation capex E51 · 2021-10-16 ▶ 10:57

The other free market argument that could be made is that these current trends will accelerate a trend towards more automation of low cost labor ... So there's a number of these automation industries that may significantly benefit and that ends up ultimately being deflationary and the market comes into balance.