Listen: The Essential Podcast Episode 82: The Geopolitics of Semiconductors with Chris Miller

View Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Kensho

Nathan Hunt: This is The Essential Podcast from S&P Global. My name is Nathan Hunt. Despite [ tough meetings ], despite UN resolutions and government commitments to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel emissions, despite wind farms and solar panels and electric vehicles, despite carbon capture and green hydrogen projects.

Despite all of these things, the news on global climate change remains bleak. Last month, February was the warmest February on record, which was the ninth consecutive warmest month. A small but growing group of academics and public figures believe that the problem is not that the energy transition isn't proceeding quickly enough.

They believe that the problem is capitalism itself. Specifically, it is degrowth imperative built into the logic of capitalism and economy and economic actors constantly seeking growth cannot reduce emissions because more economic activity always requires more energy and more inputs.

The only solution these individuals claim is to reject the imperative of growth to pursue degrowth or antigrowth a slowing down and reduction in economic activity. My guess today is Kohei Saito. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tokyo.

His approach to degrowth outlined in his book, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto is explicitly Marxist. Professor Saito believes that Karl Marx himself in some of his unpublished writings pointed the way towards a degrowth communism that can save us from the climate crisis. Well, this idea has attracted a fair amount of controversy both from traditional economists and Marxist scholars, Professor Saito suggests his fourth way through the climate crisis may be the only alternative to dictatorship or barbarism. Professor Saito, welcome to the podcast.

Kohei Saito: Thank you for the invitation. Looking forward to the interview.

Nathan Hunt: Professor, your new book starts by [ core thing ] controversy. You paraphrase Karl Marx and say, "Ecology is the opiate of the masses." And then you attacked the UN sustainable development goals. Help me to understand your position and your approach.

Kohei Saito: Yes. For example, in Japan, where I live, UN sustainable development goal had become quite popular in the last 5 years or so. You see that slogan every day in media. But what actually happened is people start to care a little bit about the environment.

But what they do? They actually buy bottles that they can be used or they recycle fast fashion. They just commune by electric vehicles. And although small behavior of individual consumption may seem ecological and sustainable, but what actually happened is just the justification of continuing business as usual. They believe that by buying some ecological green products, they are relieved or they are assured to consume as before.

And the corporation also use that. We have that conscious of consuming new product. But corporations say, oh no worries, we will recycle, we use organic cottons, or we will donate 1% of our profit to some poor people.

And then we believe, as if we are doing something good by buying new products. But actually what happens is simply by buying new products, we continue to fuel the capitalist's production and expansion by wasting more energy and resources.

So what we actually need to tackle or recognize is that we need much more radical and fundamental change in our economic system, but those SDGs are simply protecting the status quo of daily consumption and waste and production.

Nathan Hunt: In your book, you talked about the imperial mode of living does this sort of idea of the way of life of people in the developed or Western world tends to be imperial. Can you talk a little bit about what constitutes an imperial mode of living and who is living that life?

Kohei Saito: Yes. In the imperial mode of living is deeply rooted in our way of life in Global North. Marx was actually expecting that the workers are severely exploited. One day, workers will unite and stand up against capitalism.

But this story didn't happen in the 20th century in the U.S., in Japan and so on, right? What happened is actually, there was a kind of class compromise between capitalists and workers. They actually decided to exploit someone else, which is in the people and the environment in the Global South.

Instead of fighting against capitalism, even workers in the Global North started to consume more of fashion, more meat, and more cars, and that actually accelerated the capital accumulation in the Global North, but obviously, at the cost of people a cheap labor, a cheap environment in the Global South.

Today, we enjoy massive wealth of because the big cars and so on and so on. But these are always consuming a lot of energy and resources exploited or expropriated from the Global South.

Our conditions of affluent life is based on exploitation and expropriation of the wealth in the Global South. That's imperial mode of living. And what we actually recognize today is if we really want to tackle the climate crisis, the transition must take place on a planetary scale, which means not only in the Global North, but also in the Global South, too, by overcoming poverty, hunger as well as realizing the rapid decarbonization.

I would say that not only SDGs, but also U.S. Green New Deal is becoming a kind of opiate of masses. Why? Because Green New Deal in the U.S. might realize the decarbonization in the U.S. at the same time, creating more jobs with higher salary and so on and people can buy electronic vehicles and install solar panel.

But what actually happened is for the sake of affluent life, this time may be a little bit more sustainable will continue to destroy and exploit the people and wealth in the Global South because all the resources like lithium, copper and all those things coming from the Global South right? We need to tackle the imperial model of living, Otherwise, there is no just transition to a better society.

Nathan Hunt: In the United States, as you say, there is the Green New Deal, but recently, the government of the U.S. passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which establishes financial incentives to develop green energy infrastructure. This is a form of what you refer in the book, too, as Green Keynesian stimulus. What's wrong with this kind of policy? Doesn't it help to wean the society off of fossil fuels?

Kohei Saito: During the pandemic on today in the face of climate crisis, worsening climate crisis, we came to recognize gradually that neoliberal way of dealing with problems, doesn't really work anymore. Free-market fundamentally, the small government is always more efficient and so on and so on.

It's no longer really credible. In the middle of the crisis, like today, more economy, we need massive intervention by the government in the market and in our lives and so on and then financial stimulus [ back then] and so on are the ways how the neoliberalism is no longer really valid.

Today, even liberals and left wing people advocating that kind of Keynesianism. Again, the public investment in the renewable green infrastructure, creating new jobs and maybe that's the way to overcome the enlarging economic inequality as well as tackling climate crisis.

So why, what's wrong? Maybe we can create more jobs, higher salaries, stable jobs. And then we can also achieve economic growth, at the same time, reducing carbon dioxide. This is a basic vision of green capitalism.

But I argued in my book that actually, of course, if this was possible, I would free endorse, and I actually used to endorse Green New Deal, too. But people like Greta Thunberg are actually criticizing this.

Why? Because Green Keynesianism seems to simply protecting the interest of the people in the Global North at the cost of the Global South. It's about protecting the imperial mode of living without really tackling the fundamental contradiction that economic growth that the Green Keynesianism is still seeking after is always accompanied by the increase of resource and energy usage.

Even if we invest massively in electric vehicles, for example, but the production of electric vehicles still consume a lot of energy and resources, but people might actually, okay, this is an electric vehicle so why don't we buy a bigger electronic vehicles or sports car electric vehicles.

And then we open, keep buying new cars even though we can still use, and we can actually invest instead more in public transportation, for example, but as long as capitalism persist, even the Green Keynesianism will simply invest massively in the big private cars, which is not sustainable at all.

I think we really need to recognize. If we want to make the rapid transition to a sustainable society, it is necessary to abandon this absolute imperative of growth. But capitalism is about growth, so we need to change capitalism in the end.

Nathan Hunt: Let's turn to Karl Marx. The Marx that I read seems to be pretty explicitly focused on sort of the further development and expansion of industrial capitalism as a precursor to communism. But you, in your book suggests that Marx near the end of his life reconsidered his earlier positions, how so?

Kohei Saito: We often have the image of Marx as a kind of productivist, kind of naive admiral of capitalist development actually, even though he criticized capitalism, he actually loves capitalism. Why? Because the development of capitalism prepared conditions for revolution. We actually do need a certain level of productive forces or productivity in order to establish society in which everyone needs are satisfied [ especially ], right?

That's obvious. I'm not denying technologies. I do believe that we need electric vehicles, that we need renewable energies and so on. So I'm not saying that degrowth is about going back to nature without electronic vehicles or something like that, that's stupid, right?

But that doesn't really mean that we should infinitely maximize growth or we should infinitely maximize technological development. That's a fundamental transformation in Marx's thinking especially in the 1860s, what happened is actually Marx was more optimistic when he was writing Communist Manifesto in 1848. He thought that with the development, as I said, productive forces, their one day revolution.

Once we grasp the means of production, the workers can just live like a capitalist. We distribute all the fruits of most developed technologies and so on. But revolution in 1848 failed in the 50s, the economic crisis, but never revolution happened.

Why? Because capitalism develops technology in order to dominate workers. This technology, no matter how developed they are, they are not [indiscernible] (00:14:05). They are actually tools of domination of subjugation of workers.

But not only that. Those technologies are also used to exploit or extract from nature. This is also the means of growing the wealth of nature. This is really technology and capitalism are exploiting from humans, expropriating from nature by building this massive system of abstract domination.

Actually, Marx came to realize, okay, this is not going anywhere. This is simply the way of more efficient domination, more efficient exploitation and so on. This is why after writing Volume I one the capital, Marx sort of started to change his views.

And one way is he looked at precapitalist societies, and he also started to study natural sciences. The reason why he studied natural sciences, as I said, he was interested more and more in the ecological questions because capitalism is about more efficiently exploiting from nature.

But why did he study precapitalist society because he was sort of disappointed that in the western countries, there is no such kind of socialist revolution. So he started to look at different kind of society in order to find other ways of registering against domination of capitalism.

And then he started to look at Russia, he started to look at Elko in the U.S. He also started look at Indonesia, Latin America and so on. And then he came to realize that in this society, the communities are obviously people much more equal, it's kind of primitive communism.

But at the same time, they are much more sustainable because all those societies are not dominated by the imperative of growth. So he came to realize those society consciously regulated. Their metabolic interaction with nature in order to guarantee people's equality, but at the same time, sustainability.

And they produce together, they consume everything within the community and so on. And he, in the end, came to recognize that actually Western society cannot simply seek after the infinite economic growth, but rather actually Western societies must learn from those non-Western noncapitalist societies, and it's not about going back to those primitive life, but rather, it needs to reestablish that idea of social equality and sustainability without growth on a higher level.

This time is higher version because the Western society also developed the new technologies and so on, but we utilize that in order to achieve a steady-state economy for the sake of people, the quality and natural environment.

This is the vision that Marx came to sort of endorsed in his very final stage of his life, which I named degrowth communism. And there is time, communism is not about Soviet Union and the proletarian, dictatorship or something like that.

It is about sharing a democratically managing lands, knowledge, culture, tradition and this today, Internet, public transportation, education, medical system and whatsoever, these essential goods must be democratically managed instead of letting market control and dominate because then if everything is commodified like neoliberalism, people without money are denied access to those essential goods. Basically communism is about decommodifying. It's a commodification of our essential goods and demand.

Nathan Hunt: In the book, you're careful to differentiate degrowth capitalism from a kind of rustic capitalism based on some desire to sort of return to some preindustrial state, but what does degrowth communism look like in practice?

Kohei Saito: Yes, yes. Degrowth capitalism is impossible because c apitalism is about growth. Degrowth capitalism if it exists, it's actually recession, right? So it's like Japan. Japan hasn't been growing in the last 30 years, but capitalism design, its institutions are also designed with the assumption that the economy continues to grow.

So if the economy doesn't grow and the capitalism many things happened, many problems, unemployment, low-salaries and so on and so on. So this is bad. When economy is no longer growing like Japan.

But maybe we have to accept this because resources are finite, the population is actually decreasing in all the developing countries. Maybe we have to sort of start to accept that economy may not grow forever.

In a sense, they may be should start talking about modeling institutions and the economic system. That is not dependent on constant economic growth. This is my idea of degrowth. Basically, abandoning GDP as the only major of progress. We should pay more attention to environment.

In a sense, U.S. is the highest GDP, but it also pollutes environment. We should reduce some of those bad activities but we should also care about social well-being. If people are not happy or if there is a huge economic inequality, these things are actually negative for environment, for people and so on.

By paying attention to dimensions that are not reflected in GDP, degrowth actually aims after a much more comprehensive understanding of prosperity of each society. Another example is basically the U.S. is the highest GDP, but during the pandemic, 1 million people died, and in other countries with smaller GDP like Japan has managed to deal with the pandemic crisis with a much smaller number of debt.

Why? Because we have national medical insurance services. And basically, we don't have to pay for like Americans in order to get the medical treatment. The GDP in the U.S. is actually wasted because it is not efficiently used for the sake of protecting people's lives.

And U.S. medical care is so high, so expensive, but not because there is not enough resources, medical resources in hospitals and so on. There are abundance of medical resources in the U.S. But it is made [ cheaper ] cars for the sake of profit of insurance companies or medicine companies and so on.

This way of making profit is clearly in contradiction with people's security and so on. My proposal is basically degrowth, decommodify medical services, the same thing can be said about education, private education system in the U.S., it creates a huge loan and so on.

So why don't we make education free, medicine free, public transportation free? And all these things are like education, for example, even if it becomes free, people become happier, we can share a knowledge or it's good for the society, but it doesn't become scarce because education, the knowledge is something that we can democratically share without losing its value, right?

So degrowth is actually focusing on new form of abundance that we create by chain, knowledge, transportation, Internet, [indiscernible] (00:23:08) all those things are something that becomes richer, more abundant by chain. This is different from app names like private cars and all other commodities.

Commodities cannot be shared because it [ ruins ] profit. But the commonwealth of society can be shared. We can share nature, we can share a street, we can share education. And my idea of degrowth communism is about new way of realizing radical abundance. Communal luxury of the people so that everyone can be in a much more happy way and a much more sustainable way.

Nathan Hunt: Professor, one of the things that struck me when I was reading your book is that you make a great effort to suggest that degrowth communism comes out of Marx's own theory and his own thinking. And a lot of this you tie back to a single letter that he wrote to Russian revolutionary near the end of his life. And I couldn't help but think, as I read the book that I wasn't quite sure why you brought Marx into it? Why not just say, "I am Professor Saito, and here is my new conception of what communism could be"? Why did it need to be tied to Karl Marx?

Kohei Saito: Oh, yes, yes. Sometimes people say also in Japan that I am just simply worshipping Marx so much that I have to bring him back as a sort of kind of perfect profit of today's crisis and so on. It's not necessarily the case. My background is economic philosophy of economic thought. And we do read Hegel, we do read Kant, we do read Marx and all those classical I think even today, not simply in order to repeat what they had 300 years ago, 200 years ago.

But in order to develop more critical ideas, those great thinkers, those great philosophers help us to think through in a more logical manner. And actually, looking back the history, we do not find many critics of capitalism.

And today, we don't really see anyone proposing radical alternatives to capitalism. But the problem is today, we desperately need more imagination and creativity in order to overcome today's polycrisis in the Anthropocene. However, the problem is many people are recognizing the gravity of the crisis and that people are starting looking for alternative because they are satisfied with the poverty, precarity of the job, and the future of the planet and so on.

They cannot find the source of inspiration, they cannot find attractive period, attractive discourses, attractive social movement. That's why people sometimes end up supporting right wing populism because they want to destroy today the establishment, but in the wrong way.

So I think it is a very important task for the liberal or left wing people to criticize capitalism and going to provide more democratic alternative to today's situation. Otherwise, right wing populism will dominate.

But this task of providing an alternative turns out quite hard because we abandoned in the last 30 years after the collapse of Soviet Union basically, we abandoned all the postcapitalist imaginary.

What I'm trying to do is by looking back the history and learning from all those great thinkers in the socialist tradition try to revive some of our inspiration and not by simply repeating the period of Soviet Union, obviously, right?

So I start looking at the new materials that were not published in the last 150 years. I'm actually editing those notebooks made by Karl Marx and he made actually a lot of ecological notebook, but he also studied those precapitalist non-Western societies. By looking at those new materials, together with Das Kapital and other works or political economy, we can read Marx's work from a very different perspective, and this becomes a great source of inspiration because this idea of degrowth communism was never put forward in the past.

And what happened is there are many degrowth people in the environmentalism, environmental movement. But often, degrowth people ended up sort of advocating some kind of reforms within capitalism without fundamentally challenging private property, without challenging this domination of logical capital and so on.

I think it's a really good time for socialists to learn from environmentalists or degrowth people. So what I'm trying to do is to start a new dialogue between working class movement and environmentalist movement so that we can really have a much wider alliance of all the people who are longing for more demographic, equal, just unsustainable transformation.

Nathan Hunt: One of the things that your answer reminds me of is just a great framework you introduced in the book 4 possible model futures in the event of the climate crisis. And one of the things I found fascinating about these 4 models that you lay out, is it feels like you are saying the part that everyone is sort of thinking quietly out loud. And I'm wondering if you can just go through what the sort of 4 models are for what happens to the world in the event of a climate catastrophe?

Kohei Saito: Yes. So there are 4 possibilities. So that scenario people are much more unequal, and there are different ways of dealing with the crisis. It can be dealt by the strong state or it could be used as an opportunity to transform the entire system.

And the one scenario that I proposed in my book is a climate fascism. So what happened is that we continue today's emission of carbon dioxide and the situation got worse and worse. And there is, for example, many climate refugees.

And even in America or Japan, there are areas that we can no longer live because of the high level of the oceans and so on. Now what happens is then, okay, the government said or elite says, there are no way protecting everyone's lives on this planet so let people in the Global South die.

We can accept them at the climate refugees. So we build higher world, much more higher security of the border control. But even within the country, there are many people who had to evacuate, but we don't have enough resources and all the rich people continue to accumulate more wealth in the middle of this crisis.

And this is basically what happened in the middle of pandemic. We cannot have enough resources so that old people die or either rich people accumulated more wealth. In the middle of pandemic, they are working at home and essential workers exposed to the risk and so on.

So in the middle of the crisis, the one tendency, there's more inequality and the poor people or weaker people, like old people, women, people color would be sacrificed for the sake of protecting the status quo.

But this kind of selection of people's life and living for the sake of protecting status quo or protecting comfortable life over the elite is basically climate fascism. The other way of dealing with this crisis in a more equal manner, but with a strong state power is the climate Maoism.

This is the second scenario, which is obviously associated with the kind of Chinese model. In the pandemic, China tried to regulate people's behavior for the sake of dealing with the crisis of the pandemic.

But in a way that even the elites or [ group of ] people, everyone equally oppressed by the state control. This could happen in the same way in the middle of climate crisis, the strong state monitors or the emissions of carbon dioxide, and we get like a point so that some people are allowed to fly based on the daily behaviors and so on.

And this kind of surveillance and controlling for the sake of dealing with the crisis is obviously undemocratic. And it doesn't work either. In the end, even Chinese people rebelling against the government.

So the third scenario, what happens is climate fascism, climate Maoism both increases people dissatisfaction. In the end, the control doesn't work and then all the management of dealing with the crisis doesn't function anymore, and the situation becomes much more chaotic.

So this is barbarism basically the failure of all the attempt of [indiscernible] (00:34:09) in the both scenario of climate fascism and climate Maoism. So my post-scenario that try to defend democracy as well as livable environment is degrowth communism.

Degrowth communism is much more bottom-up way of managing the crisis by taxing obviously, the rich people and banning private jets. So we need a very rapid transformation of capitalist way of life, but for the sake of protecting people's lives. When the crisis deepens, we do need stronger state, and it can be very undemocratic. Otherwise, there is more uprise of right wing populism and so on. So I would say that the degrowth communism is one of the better scenario for future.

Nathan Hunt: You talk in the book about there is this perception, particularly in the West that communism leads to scarcity, right? There's this sort of idea of the Soviet Union and the stores are empty. There's barely any products on the shelf and that capitalism leads to abundance. You say that actually, we have that exactly wrong. Communism leads to abundance and capitalism leads to scarcity. I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about that.

Kohei Saito: Yes. When I say degrowth communism, people get freaked out because they associate degrowth with austerity, poverty and frugality and so on, and the communism is also about dictatorship and so on.

Of course, degrowth asks for reducing waste for production and consumption. And I advocate myself that rich of the ban private jet, and we should also reduce those big cars like SUVs that we don't have to become all vegan, but we should definitely reduce meat consumption because all these things are excessive.

Admitting excessiveness of today's living in the Global North is a precondition of degrowth. I think this is also the preconditions of really realizing a sustainable society in the near future. But the problem is people are often worried.

This is just a way of introducing some kind of poverty and that kind of criticism I get from my Marxist friends and so on. But it's interesting. Those Marxist friends are actually criticizing capitalism, but they are also endorsing the concept abundance in capitalism.

So what they think about abundance usually is more smartphones, more flights, more meat, more cars, and so on. So this is a very consumption idea of abundance. I, as a philosopher redefine the concept of abundance.

Abundance is not necessarily about possessing bigger house, bigger cars and more and more of products and commodities. This is compatible with capitalism, but the capitalism is about infinite growth.

So more than how much we have, we own, we possess, we are never satisfied because we can have more, we can have more money and more stores, right? So when I try to redefine abundance in a nonconsumptionist, noncapitalist manner, I emphasize abundance of commonwealth, abundance of education, abundance of public transportation, abundance of medical care, abundance of knowledge through Internet.

And these are the things that we can achieve by making education free, by introducing national medical health care system or by realizing free Internet and so on. Once we introduce those things or maybe more public housing and so on because we actually work too many hours today because we have to pay for bills.

But by working so many hours with today's higher productive forces, we also waste so many resources and energies because we produce too many things, and we do advertisements, we do model changes, and we are also forced to conserve more in our free time.

And this is a business circle. By reducing the pressure to work, by reducing advertisement, we can spend more time by doing sports, spending more time with family and friends, we can drink beer or wine, maybe.

There are many ways to enjoy our life without necessarily consuming constantly new things because even if we don't work so many hours, we have free education, free medical care, free Internet, and we have public housing and so on.

Then we are not so much worried about our life by decommodifying our life, the capitalism commodify everything, all the wealth of society, which delivers the process. We should decommodify many things so that we can be liberated from the constant pressure to our money so that we can finally find free time in our life.

Life is finite. We should not put too much emphasis on economic growth and profit because this process is infinite. It never ends by changing the goal of society. The capitalism is about growth and the infinite profit-making. Capitalism is about endorsing and sharing the commonwealth so that we can all enjoy our finite life in our free time.

Nathan Hunt: The book once again is called Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. Professor Saito, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast.

Kohei Saito: Thank you so much.

Nathan Hunt: The Essential Podcast is produced by Patrick Moroney. At S&P Global, we accelerate progress in the world by providing intelligence that is essential for companies, governments and individuals to make decisions with conviction. From the majestic heights of 55 Water Street in Manhattan, I, Nathan Hunt, thank you for listening.

Copyright © 2024 by S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. All rights reserved.

These materials have been prepared solely for information purposes based upon information generally available to the public and from sources believed to be reliable. No content (including index data, ratings, credit-related analyses and data, research, model, software or other application or output therefrom) or any part thereof (Content) may be modified, reverse engineered, reproduced or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of S&P Global Market Intelligence or its affiliates (collectively, S&P Global). The Content shall not be used for any unlawful or unauthorized purposes. S&P Global and any third-party providers, (collectively S&P Global Parties) do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, timeliness or availability of the Content. S&P Global Parties are not responsible for any errors or omissions, regardless of the cause, for the results obtained from the use of the Content. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED ON "AS IS" BASIS. S&P GLOBAL PARTIES DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR USE, FREEDOM FROM BUGS, SOFTWARE ERRORS OR DEFECTS, THAT THE CONTENT'S FUNCTIONING WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR THAT THE CONTENT WILL OPERATE WITH ANY SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE CONFIGURATION. In no event shall S&P Global Parties be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, incidental, exemplary, compensatory, punitive, special or consequential damages, costs, expenses, legal fees, or losses (including, without limitation, lost income or lost profits and opportunity costs or losses caused by negligence) in connection with any use of the Content even if advised of the possibility of such damages. S&P Global Market Intelligence's opinions, quotes and credit-related and other analyses are statements of opinion as of the date they are expressed and not statements of fact or recommendations to purchase, hold, or sell any securities or to make any investment decisions, and do not address the suitability of any security. S&P Global Market Intelligence may provide index data. Direct investment in an index is not possible. Exposure to an asset class represented by an index is available through investable instruments based on that index. S&P Global Market Intelligence assumes no obligation to update the Content following publication in any form or format. The Content should not be relied on and is not a substitute for the skill, judgment and experience of the user, its management, employees, advisors and/or clients when making investment and other business decisions. S&P Global Market Intelligence does not act as a fiduciary or an investment advisor except where registered as such. S&P Global keeps certain activities of its divisions separate from each other in order to preserve the independence and objectivity of their respective activities. As a result, certain divisions of S&P Global may have information that is not available to other S&P Global divisions. S&P Global has established policies and procedures to maintain the confidentiality of certain nonpublic information received in connection with each analytical process. 

S&P Global may receive compensation for its ratings and certain analyses, normally from issuers or underwriters of securities or from obligors. S&P Global reserves the right to disseminate its opinions and analyses. S&P Global's public ratings and analyses are made available on its Web sites, www.standardandpoors.com  (free of charge), and www.ratingsdirect.com  and www.globalcreditportal.com (subscription), and may be distributed through other means, including via S&P Global publications and third-party redistributors. Additional information about our ratings fees is available at www.standardandpoors.com/usratingsfees. 

© 2024 S&P Global Market Intelligence.