I'm John Batsch, with Scott Harold at the Rand and Gordon Chang at Gordon G. Chang, Scott, half GDP estimate now,

thanks to the disruption in oil and energy to them, to Asia, the Asia Development Bank,

marking everybody down for 26 and 27. No more profound than Japan being hit by this markdown.

The energy sources of Japan lean heavily right now on out of the Middle East. Are they ready to diversify?

Can they diversify?

You know, it's a major, major challenge for most East Asian economies, right?

They almost all import energy resources from abroad.

Japan in particular has a big challenge in that regard.

Now, there are a few things to say here, John.

One, as your readers and listeners will remember, in 2011, Japan suffered a catastrophic tsunami following a major earthquake that led to the shuttering of a large number of their nuclear power plants.

Those are being brought back online still.

They're not all back online, but Japan does have an option to deliver some of its electricity needs from nuclear power.

It has begun, and this is probably an unintended and unwelcome development, but it has begun sourcing LNG from Russia. It has

long been seeking to import, and former U.S. presidents from Obama to Trump one to Biden to Trump two have all talked about

one to export more energy resources from the United States to Japan.

And so there is an effort to diversify, but it's difficult because building those

receiving terminals, changing from one energy type to another, or shifting from

one energy source to another, is all something that takes time. In addition, Japan has announced,

under Prime Minister, Takeji, a $10 billion program to help countries in Asia that are similarly

wrestling with rising energy prices

absorb those costs so that they don't cripple or destroy the regional economies.

So you can think Pacific Island countries or countries in Southeast Asia, it's a paradoxically,

...