BlackRock CEO on if US-Iran conflict could derail economy as gas prices surge

Brad, it's great to be here.

Well, it's great to be here. Obviously, it creates uncertainty and uncertainty creates fear. But that being said, the 14.5 trillion dollars of money we manage, most of it is very long-dated. I don't pay much attention to the short-term volatility, but I focus more on these longer-term trends. Do I believe the war is going to be lasting a long time? No. Do I believe oil is going to be reverting back to where it was? Maybe even lower. I mean, if the outcome of the war is a neutralized Iran and they are allowed to be selling products into the market again, oil products into the market again, there's probably a great probability that oil is going to be below 50. But once again, that's a short-term move. But I do believe the markets find a way to balance out and the markets are a great efficient mechanism that identifies the short-term issues. We have seen many people pulling out of the market and to me that's the wrong outcome. In fact, I've been getting so many texts, 'What should I do?' And I said, 'Buy more here because this is a good long-term opportunity.'

That took almost close to nine months from the time we had Liberation Day to maybe when the Supreme Court came out with their ruling. I think the market adjusted very rapidly. We did not see the inflation that we thought we were going to see because of the tariffs. That being said, companies have absorbed some of the costs and tariffs are added cost to the importation of these products. So we probably have had some inflationary trends because of tariffs. But at the same time, we're having very large deflationary trends because of the role of AI and how that's playing into the economy.

Well, we believe that AI is a transformational technology. We believe it's no different than when we created the trains in the 19th century and transformed our economy. I think this is another transformational technology that will transform the economy. It's going to reshape how the economy is maneuvering. It's going to change in some areas. It's going to change the role of jobs in some businesses, but in many other areas, it's going to create an enormous amount of jobs.

Yes. Where we believe the huge job growth is going to be is going to be in the buildout of our infrastructure. We estimate there's going to be a need for 10 trillion dollars of investing in the United States alone over the course of the next eight years. 10 trillion. And that money is being invested into our economy. Now, what that means is going to be creating huge amount of jobs in construction and building out our grid and building out data centers, making sure that we have energy resilience. And so, it's going to create a huge amount of jobs. We don't have enough skilled workers to meet the needs of these jobs. We're not ready for it. And we have to win. If we don't win this, China's going to win. And so, to me, this is imperative. And so we came out with this belief that BlackRock is going to work with the BlackRock Foundation. And the foundation is starting this project called Future Builders. We're going to be providing 100 million over five years to help train young Americans to go into these skills, whether it's in plumbing or electricians, to build this out. And we think we could help 50,000 Americans build their careers in this. And these AI jobs are $100,000, $150,000 jobs in these fields and we don't have enough.