ASEAN Summit, AMLO’s Final Year, COVID-19 Variants Emerge, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Southeast Asian leaders meet in Jakarta for the ASEAN summit, Mexico's president enters the last year of his term, and new COVID variants worry public health officials. It's August 31st, 2023 in time for The World Next Week. I am Bob McMahon.

O'NEIL:
And I'm Shannon O'Neil.

MCMAHON:
Shannon is CFR's vice president, deputy director of Studies and the Nelson and David Rockefeller senior fellow for Latin America Studies at CFR. Shannon is also a long time friend of the pod. Shannon, thanks for being here.

O'NEIL:
Always a pleasure to join you. So Bob, let's start off with you and let's start off with Southeast Asia. Next Tuesday, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, often referred to as ASEAN, they're going to meet in Jakarta, Indonesia. There's been many, many ASEAN summits along the way. The focus of this one is going to be their external partners, other nations that are associated with the organization as well as international organizations. So tell us a little bit about what we should be watching as these various leaders meet and what you see maybe coming out of the summit?

MCMAHON:
So the timing of it is something to bring up first and foremost, because this summit typically is part of a stitched together group of major Asian summits that happen later in the year, typically November. The reporting has it that the host this year, Indonesia, moved it up deliberately to September because it would be in proximity to the G20 summit in India. The hope being that leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden would be able to make it. But he informed the host that he would not be able to make it. He is going to the G20 in India, but is sending Vice President Kamala Harris instead. It's not clear also whether some other major leaders are going to be attending this as well, outside leaders I should say. That includes people like Vladimir Putin, who's not been attending much meetings at all outside of Russia. He's not going to attend the G20 either. Xi Jinping as well, not clear whether he would be attending in Jakarta, at last report I saw.

But ASEAN would like to still have this international gloss on this summit because they see a lot of value in one area that ASEAN has seemed to have been fairly successful in, which is trade integration. This is a coordinating body. It's a talking shop in a lot of ways. It makes decisions on consensus, which means it is hard to establish positions on just about anything in lots of ways, which has been one of the criticisms of ASEAN. And yet this is an important group of countries. So usually other leaders take notice when they're invited. 

So I think one of the things that is going to be discussed, especially with whoever shows up from China, is this ongoing longstanding effort to try to get what's been described as a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea sorted out. Indonesia being the host, particularly interested in getting this issue sorted out. Indonesia would like to play almost a broker role in this. They have interest in the region obviously, but also see themselves as a bit more of a neutral party than some of the other countries that have been at odds with China, some of the other ASEAN countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam. And the Code of Conduct is just sort of rules of the road for how countries should be conducting their affairs in the South China Sea, which China has pretty much declared most of it in its backyard, its territorial backyard. And what seems to be the case yet again is that they will discuss the issue and they will discuss it politely, but not much will happen on that front.

But I think that the fact of them discussing it, the fact of them discussing it where there's other officials with an outside interest is also very important, is going to be worth watching. It's going to be why, even though Biden's not going, his vice president is going. And it's also why the U.S. has tried to attend a lot of these summits in recent years. Trump did not attend the ASEAN summits three years running. Biden has tried to show his interest in the area and going to most of these summits. And he is, by the way, going to Vietnam after the G20 summit in India. So he will be visiting an ASEAN state and Vietnam and the U.S. have a lot to discuss both in their own bilateral relations and vis-a-vis China.

But back to the broader summit. The other issue to watch, Shannon, is how this group discusses Myanmar. Myanmar is going through a particularly brutal scorched earth civil war right now. And the question of whether ASEAN can develop approach to try to send a message to the Myanmar's military government to tamp down its violent actions, its repressive actions, in some ways send a message to exert some leverage over the Myanmar government. Some countries in ASEAN are split over this about whether they should take a stronger stance or not. Indonesia is one of them that has in the past been backing a stronger stance. And they're mindful of the fact that Myanmar is itself supposed to be sharing ASEAN just a few years down the road in 2026 and I think they would really like to have the issue of Myanmar's status in ASEAN sorted out well ahead of them, or there's going to be a really extremely awkward sorting out of what to do in that case.

So again, it's a meeting where it's opening the doors to outside countries, but it's also there's some internal issues to sort out. And I think one other thing I would mention is Thailand just came through a very interesting period of political turbulence in which there were some democratic gains. There seemed to be some backsliding. Thailand's presence at this summit is going to be very interesting to see and observe and the extent to which Thailand is assertive at all is going to be watched.

O'NEIL:
Well, there's a lot there on the table obviously. And as you say, lots of the economic issues are handled in other places. There's the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that almost all these countries are part of that are participating. Not the United States obviously, but the other Asian countries are there. And as you think about the Myanmar example there, lots of this has to do with what leverage these nations have over it. And here again, China's obviously a big player given the economic ties and real dominance they have there. So do you see them stepping in, either in this form, or do you think they would do it in other ways if they so chose?

MCMAHON:
So China has its countries that align themselves very closely. Countries that are in ASEAN, particularly Cambodia—which just kind of endorsed leader for life, Hun Sen, and his successor son very soon—and then Laos, which is going to take over next year's presidency of ASEAN. So they can certainly exert and they tend to have already in recent years exerted their view through those countries in terms of the way certain arguments are brought to bear. I think China wants to be present, even if Xi Jinping does not show up at this summit, they will certainly be there in force with a delegation. China has been moving throughout the region very aggressively in the trade area and would like to be taking the place of the U.S. which has been reeling in its trade agenda and sort of morphing into different ways, which could be the subject of a separate podcast actually. So bottom line though, I do think China is going to be trying to exert its influence, Shannon.

O'NEIL:
Well, it's definitely been a few weeks of multilateral diplomacy for China as it comes on the wake of the BRICS summit that just happened a week ago in South Africa where China especially was a big proponent of inviting new members to join.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, that was seen as a win for China. There was some horse-trading going on within the BRICS group, but they added six. There are no ASEAN members in that group. But it's still a way for China to show that it is posing an alternative to the Western blocs, particularly the G7. Nobody's going to mistake the BRICS, or ASEAN for that matter, as anything close to like a counterbalance to the G7 or NATO or the other major Western alliances. And by the way, if you bring up organizations like the EU or NATO, I mean they have the binding connection of being democracies, even if some of those democracies are seen as weakening of late, it's still far different than what you have in a grouping like ASEAN, which is a mixture of democracies, autocracies, Brunei and so forth.

So as I was saying, it's a very interesting time diplomatically, Shannon, because of all this diplomacy going on the BRICS, the G20, ASEAN, East Asia Summit, then we'll have an APEC summit later this fall. Certainly the U.S. wants to be present and Asia wants to be showing up in this manner. And it's just a question of whether this type of summit is meaningful or whether we should really be spending more of our time on G20 where you have some serious divisions, but also a grouping of countries that is really significant in terms of its role in global economy.

O'NEIL:
Well, lots to watch here and lots of discussions to be had and we'll see if any of them get anywhere.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and it's worth noting that with Indonesia as the host, Indonesia would like to have some sort of meaningful moving-the-needle discussion, even if they, like on the Code of Conduct front, for example whatever, set new timelines for discussions. The final thing I would note on that front is there's going to be an ASEAN naval maneuvers going on in the region, which is a new thing for the group. So that's something to watch as well, Shannon.

But I want to move us halfway across the world back into our own hemisphere, Shannon, and that is to focus on the country of Mexico. Now, tomorrow, we're taping this on Thursday, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador will give his final State of the Union message. AMLO, as he is known, is entering the last year of his six-year term. He's become known as an acronym for a reason, because he's made quite an impression locally and in the region. But he and his MORENA Party are still widely supported. How do you expect him to finish out his term?

O'NEIL:
So he will do his State of the Union tomorrow, much in his governing style, he's going to do it on social media. So he's going to control the platform, which is what he has done for the last five years, particularly with the media. He's well known for his morning, what they call mañanera, so morning press conference that he gives, sometimes it goes two, three plus hours, but really sets the agenda. So he will do that tomorrow in this final State of the Union. He's also going to do it not from the capital where it is traditionally done, but he's going to do it from the Yucatan, and in fact, at the site of one of his biggest infrastructure projects, which is a train, a tourist train in the Yucatan area. His critics call this one of his big white elephants because it's cost billions of dollars and there's lots of environmental worries and sustainability worries, but it is one of his signature projects that he has laid out and that he plans on. We'll see if this actually happens, but finishing by the end of his six-year term.

In the State of the Union, he's going to lay out what he thinks are his accomplishments. So he'll talk about poverty issues, he'll talk about healthcare, he'll talk about security issues, he'll talk about honesty, he'll talk about equality and equity in society. The fact-checkers will have their plates full because many of these issues have not actually gone as well as he will claim that they have over this last five years. Mexico is as violent as it was when he first took over the country and some of that violence has moved to new regions where it was less prevalent before.

This is a place where access to healthcare, to education, to many of these basic social services is, in many ways, more uneven than it was before, depending on the parts of the country you're at and the kinds of socioeconomic levels that you're at. It is a place where you've seen fluctuations in poverty, but you've seen particularly extreme poverty remain very strong and not being able to help those in the lower portion, the lower 20 percent of the population, and particularly children, and those, the poverty level continues and has even increased. And really where he's made strides on poverty is with older people because he's put in place a universal pension. And there's also been real challenges on the healthcare side and recent surveys show some 30 million more Mexicans than before don't feel like they have access to healthcare because of changes he's made.

So there is a lot there that is not as rosy as one may think. And lots of independent organizations like Transparency International and the like will say corruption is as bad, if not worse than it was before, even though he claims that he's cleaned out the government of all the corruption from the past. But there's going to a lot of narratives going on here. And despite many of this unevenness of the governing, of a lot of the challenges that you've seen, he remains extremely popular among his base. He has seen as this charismatic, aspirational, rhetorically gifted person who talks about making Mexico safer and wealthier and fair and more honest, which are I think all things that all Mexican voters want. The real question though is whether any of that has really happened, and I would say the record of this last five years has been somewhat poor.

MCMAHON:
So Shannon, you mentioned the fact-checkers getting their pens out as he's speaking. Is that going to include some of the candidates who've now declared? I mean there's a looming political season that seems really fascinating there. As a popular populist, does he have sway over the race that's looming there?

O'NEIL:
He does and he will be putting the full force of his personality, even though constitutionally he's not allowed to participate, he already is participating from the morning press conference and chiming in on various candidates and parts of the debate. And we have already seen, it seems, using many of the tools of government, whether the judiciary or pots of money and the like to really shape the arena here. But we will have a definitive decision on the final two candidates come next week. But right now it's hard to imagine it's going to be anyone except for Claudia Sheinbaum for MORENA, which is his candidate. She just stepped down recently as governor of Mexico City and really is loyalist to AMLO and his protege, one could say.

And then on the opposition side you see a coalition come together of opposition political parties behind a woman named Xochitl Galvez. So she is from the PAN, which is traditionally a more right conservative party, though she's very socially progressive. And she has sort of an amazing narrative as she's kind of a rags to riches story, came from an indigenous community and through a scholarship to the main university in Mexico City became a scientist and an entrepreneur and now a politician, but really an impressive story. And she is a very charismatic and quite colorful campaigner out there. Some of the things that AMLO had six years ago when he came into the presidency, or five years ago when he came into the presidency, she has some of those qualities as well as really a story that appeals to those Mexicans that are left behind and searching for a different Mexico. So it's going to be a very interesting race between two women. And this is the first time you're seeing the whole electoral field is going to be two women running against each other for the next six-year presidency in Mexico.

MCMAHON:
The race is something, obviously it's gaining a lot of attention domestically, but I would imagine it should be watched more closely just north of the border. The United States has increasingly important economic relationship with Mexico, as you have laid out in your studies of what's called nearshoring and the changing path of globalization and so forth. Can you talk a little bit about what's at stake for the U.S. in this election, and to the extent to which Mexicans might be voting with their feet and some leaving the country out of concern for the violence and so forth?

O'NEIL:
I mean, there are many things at stake here in the governance of Mexico more broadly. Mexico has become the U.S. biggest trading partner and the biggest recipient of U.S. exports in the world. Millions of U.S. jobs and companies depend on these economic ties to Mexico. It's obviously an important country in terms of security issues. The United States last year, almost 100,000 people died of fentanyl and other drug overdoses, and much of that comes through Mexico. Not all of it, some of it comes directly from other parts of the world, but Mexico really is a place, there's security aspects there that are quite important. As you alluded and mentioned, migration is a big part. There's huge Mexican and Mexican-American communities in the United States. But Mexico has been working very closely with the United States over the last few years in terms of managing migration throughout the hemisphere and the movement to the southern border. So that is also a big issue. And then there are lots of other environmental issues, labor issues and the like and ties. So there's a lot on the table here.

And there, I do think we see the U.S. business community, many of the labor unions that work and cross the border as well as other organizations, somewhat optimistic about what is to come. One of the biggest shifts of these last few years is the movement of supply chains, the movement of production and moving out of China into other parts of the world. And that has gone, we were talking about ASEAN, a lot has gone to Southeast Asia, so that's a big part, but Mexico has been a beneficiary. But not as big a beneficiary as it could have been. And partly that is in my view, the current government holding back investment in energy, in infrastructure, in industrial parks, in the roads and the rails and electricity and all the kinds of things that manufacturing needs to thrive.

And so I think as I look at the two candidates who one will become the next president of Mexico, both will be a bit more open to that commercial exchange. I think there'll be more space for some of the infrastructure to tie Mexico to the United States and to help both nations bring back more of that production, the reshoring, nearshoring, whatever you want to call it, but bring back more of that from Asia or other places around the world. So I think there's a hopefulness frankly, among many who operate in these spaces. But it'll be a year from now, just over a year from now when the next president, October one will take office in Mexico. So it's a long campaign season until we get there.

MCMAHON:
And that will be just on the eve of our own presidential campaign. So just hold on. It sounds like a wild hemispheric ride for the presidency.

O'NEIL:
Yes, every twelve years the U.S. and Mexican elections coincide and there's always some interchanges there and we've already seen the Republicans on the debate stage talk a lot about Mexico, talk about actually sending troops into Mexico to help stabilize things down there. I will say it has not yet entered the debates down in Mexico, but that is not going to be well received, I think, by either candidate. So lots to watch on both sides there, but whomever takes the office there, who takes the office here, as we look into I guess eighteen months from now, over a year from now, there's going to be a lot for the two countries to work on.

So Bob, let's turn, we'll leave Mexico behind. As we wind down the summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, one thing is not winding down and that is COVID. We're seeing an upsurge in cases and hospitalizations, especially here in the United States. And after this weekend, we're going to see lots of schools and workplaces and people coming back in person and getting back together. And so what's the state of play and what should we be thinking about as we go forward?

MCMAHON:
As you say, COVID is back on the agenda, but if you look at the response of major health organizations and infectious disease experts, there's a lot of "be careful, but..." type of language coming out. And I think some of that is because the situation is really complicated to parse right now in terms of the health threat as well as mindfulness that of how past messaging about COVID has been misunderstood or has been erroneous and not walked back or whatever. So you're just seeing extremely careful language.

But it's worth noting that there are strains emerging variants emerging that seem to be impervious to some of the vaccines and some of the immunity that previous strains had, and that's going to be worth watching. And one of the reasons they know that is that, although testing and tracing and all the things that we were familiar with in the early phases of COVID are not happening and that is giving a lot of concern, to the extent there is testing going on, it's in things like wastewater surveillance. And you have some localities and hospitals doing a lot of this now and they're showing increased hospitalizations in the U.S., for example, in twenty-six states that show an increase in COVID cases. There's a current dominant strain and that's the EG.5 variant, which is nicknamed Eris, and that's something that's being watched closely. There's another variant that's nicknamed Pirola in some places and that's highly mutated.

There are any number of anecdotal cases, I'm sure you have them, Shannon, I certainly do, a number of people have reported COVID cases, including some who had not previously contracted COVID during the previous surge. And enough of those cases have come out, and again, they are treatable cases. These are not people who are being hospitalized certainly, but still they're getting hit with something heavy, they test and it turns out it's COVID. It is back and we are entering colder weather months, which means people come inside more, which means there's the issue of the masking mandate. Will it come back?

O'NEIL:
Yeah. So tell us what the CDC or others are recommending for us?

MCMAHON:
They are trying to put out prudent guidance about where people gather indoors. If there are certain numbers of people, then masks should be used and those masks are recommended to be the high quality N95 or KN95 masks. These are typically the white ones that cover big portion of your face and are much more impenetrable than some of the more sort of vanity focused masks. They are putting out warnings for people who are at risk, people who are elderly or have other comorbidities who have immunity problems or whatever. There has not been a use of boosters lately so that they're seen as a broader swath of the population might be more vulnerable than has been up to this point this year.

Because again, to take a step back, we are nowhere near where we were during last year or previous year's levels of infection and serious infection. But we are also at a moment of waning both laxity and using masks as well as waning concern about how serious COVID could be. The CDC recommends universal masking in jurisdictions that have twenty or more people with COVID and masking for high risk individuals when ten to twenty people per 100,000 are hospitalized. But anecdotally, again, most Americans have just done with masks at this point. It's going to take a really serious outbreak for you to see larger use of masks. I see masking every day in going about business on transit or in grocery stores and so forth. There are people who are concerned who are masking up.

The other thing I think that's worth watching though, Shannon, is how quickly the health authorities are going to be able to bundle together or provide in succession the annual flu shot with a COVID booster. By most reports, they are developing a booster that is going to be effective with many but not all of the variants that have been identified this summer. So I think there will be guidance for people to still get their flu shot as well. Last year was, by the way, was a particularly nasty flu season if people don't remember. And so I think the vaccination messaging is going to come out again, and that's also a source of controversy. I mean that's a whole other area. But it's going to be really important to sort of go with the facts.

I'll conclude by saying it was important to note that I saw some data about in the overall COVID period that in the United States alone, 80 percent of people did end up getting a vaccine of some sort, even if they didn't follow it up so that there was sufficient enough concern as well as confidence in the mRNA technology that was used to thwart COVID. And I think studies have shown that it did.

O'NEIL:
Okay, so we're going back to school, we're going back to the office. Sounds like we need to get back to the doctor's office and get some shots, flu and otherwise?

MCMAHON:
That's correct. And it's also worth pointing out that a couple of things. There are the people who have had an adverse reaction to vaccines. It is a real thing. It is a much smaller percentage of the population, but the reaction has been serious enough that those people are extremely vocal about it and raise a lot of concerns, not only about COVID, but they tend to raise concerns about all vaccines. So that's going to be a messaging challenge, I think, for local health authorities, the Biden administration and so forth.

But one of the ways to counter that is just again, to raise concern about not getting COVID because different people react different ways. And one of the things we also heard about a lot this summer is ongoing cases of what's called long COVID, which is this couple of weeks, couple of months, sometimes six months to a year after getting COVID, people still are plagued by fatigue and brain fog and other conditions that are attributable to COVID and they don't know how long they're going to have that. And it's a real thing and it's afflicting a not insignificant number of people, which again, is reason why people should be trying to put up their defenses, whether it's vaccines, whether it's masking and so forth. So that's my public health announcement for the week, Shannon.

O'NEIL:
Appreciate it. I know a few of those people have long COVID and trust me, get the vaccine.

MCMAHON:
Well, Shannon, we've talked our way into the audience figure of the week portion of the podcast, and this is in which listeners can vote every Tuesday or Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. And the audience on Instagram this week, Shannon, selected, "Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo Visits China." So this is part of a recurring number of high level U.S. visits to China. What makes Raimondo's visit different?

O'NEIL:
So this is an important visit. And then she's a very important figure, particularly in the U.S.-China relationship right now, and it's important because she went to China and she's there for four days and met with a whole host of people. But it's also important because much of the tension between the United States and China today is in the commercial realm, in the economic realm, and the Commerce Department is the department leading a lot of that. So this is the department that is putting in place export controls and export bans, whether on semiconductor equipment or other kinds of high level technologies and the like. This is the department that helps oversee investment restrictions and oversight and the like.

This is also the department that is really involved in the implementation and rolling out of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the United States is spending, that the U.S. Congress passed to up the United States game in terms of economic competitiveness. So the CHIPS Act that focuses in on semiconductors, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is spending hundreds of billions of dollars for the green transition for electric vehicle cars and charging stations and solar panels and wind and all kinds of things. This is really a lot of it, much of it is under her purview. And so she really is the guiding force in the U.S. government in some of these areas where you see significant U.S.-China tensions.

What is also interesting is this is part of, as you mentioned, there's other high level officials that have been meeting with the Chinese and going to China, and this is part of a strategy, she's the latest of many trying to put guardrails, limits on some of the hostilities here. So she went with a message that many of these things are going to stay in place. We're still going to see tariffs, we're still going to see export controls and bans on many of these things. That's not changing. But there is room for cooperation, for economic exchange, for commercial interchanges and trade and all of that there. And so trying to find a space that the United States and China are both comfortable with given national security concerns and other things, this was really her mission. So not an easy one. She didn't have a lot to give to the Chinese. She's not rolling back tariffs or those sorts of things. But it was important as a piece of this larger effort by the Biden administration to put the U.S.-China relationship on a little bit more of a positive track.

MCMAHON:
The visit was occurring amid a flurry of reporting that we have hit what's been known as peak China, that China's economy is now turning downward and it has implications not just for China, but really for the world. I mean, do you see the latest economic reporting out of China, is that a reason why China was willing to meet with her for so long? What kind of messaging are you seeing from China on this?

O'NEIL:
So China has seen a downturn in the latest numbers in manufacturing and real estate and all parts of the economy are very soft. You've seen a big spike in savings by average Chinese, which shows really the underlying worry of the population that they won't have enough. So they're not spending, which also has very softening effects on the economy. If people aren't out there consuming, then you see the economy pull back. So part of it is there.

You've also seen the Chinese over this last six months as they've reopened their economy after COVID, they had a very hard lockdown for many months and a couple of years there, you are starting to see Chinese in many ways trying to attract foreign investment back in. Trying to bring money back into China, even as they're putting in place policies that have made it much harder for international businesses to operate in China. New policies and rules, new oversight and regulation, increasing the level of state-owned enterprises influencing the economy and special perks and advantages that they get.

So there's a lot of movement here. Some is opening and particularly rhetorically and others too, international money and trying to draw it in. Other steps that have made it hard where a lot of international investors, U.S., European, or just international investors have not been as receptive in moving in. And in fact, when you look at foreign direct investment numbers over the last couple of years, it's been flat or even net outflows from China from international companies because of some of these worries. And the slowdown of the Chinese economy is not going to make that any easier. Some of the advantages that are there or the opportunities have lessened as the economy has slowed.

That said, this is one of the biggest economies in the world. There's lots of consumers, over a billion consumers there. There's a growing middle class. And many companies, corporations, products, brands are going to find big advantages there. So you're not going to see an exodus from China, but this is part of the discussion that you're having between the two countries is how can you continue to have trade and commerce and back and forth here in commercial realms, but make sure that the national security and other concerns that are really top of mind for both countries are managed in productive and safe ways?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think that all makes a lot of sense. And the prevailing opinion so far from some of the investment class is that at least the two sides are still talking and not shouting at each other.

O'NEIL:
And that I think was really the goal of this visit by Secretary Raimondo. And on that, I think she succeeded. No big announcement came out of it and they've downplayed it from the get-go. There's no deliverable or big change that's going to happen here, but there are a couple of mechanisms set up that will continue conversations on both sides. There's some exchanges on tourism on other kinds of things. So beginning to have a conversation that's a bit more normal than it's been for the last few years.

So Bob, that is our look at The World Next Week. Here are a few other stories that you should keep your eyes on. Singapore will hold its presidential election. Russia is hosting the Eastern Economic Forum with Asia Pacific countries in Vladivostok. And Kenya host the UN-Africa Climate Summit.

MCMAHON:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a review while you're at it, if you could, we appreciate the feedback. A transcript of our conversation is listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons.

O'NEIL:
This is Shannon O'Neil saying so long.

MCMAHON:
Shannon, thanks again for joining us. And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.