Over much of the past three decades, i have been an investor. The highest calling of mankind, i have often thought, is private equity. [laughter] and then, i started interviewing. I watched your interviews so i know how to do some interviews. [laughter] david i learned from doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top. I asked him how much he wanted. He said, 250. I said, fine. I didnt negotiate with him and did no due diligence. David i have something i want to sell. [laughter] and how they stay there. You dont feel inadequate now being only the second wealthiest man in the world, is that right . [laughter] david for the past several decades, they have been whether most important figures in American Business for 14 years he served as a ceo of dow, going from a manufacturing coming to one led by science and he is now chairman of lucent motors. I sat down with him to discuss his account was mens and future ambitions. I have interviewed many Business People on this show, very rarely have its than someone who is on summative incontinence. We will talk about saudi arabia, australia. The 2032 brisbane olympics, they won the bid last year. The president put in place, 2032 is 10 years, it is an exciting project. David United States you are for quite some time, more than a decade the ceo of dow chemical, and you merged with dupont before you step down. Lets go back to your beginning, you grew up in australia, how did you manage to get to dow and the states . Andrew the gene that got me to have one the last, i come from a little multicultural town in northern australia, lots of indigenous people, lots of immigrants like greeks that came from very poor areas. I had this desire to see where they are from and understand the places north of us, indonesia, china, asia as a whole. America, if you like, the knowledge that i got was listening over the radio to things like the jfk assassination, man on the moon. We did not have tv where i grew up. I was fascinated by america and what it offer the world, that combination, being recruited out of campus, the companies that came by that were american were the ones that i was intrigued by. Dow had the best recruiting line of them all for a 21yearold, join us and we will show you the world. David was your family a wealthy family . Andrew no, blue collar. We would call them, immigrants, he lost his parents, so he raised his two younger brothers when he was 12, he became an apprentice carpenter and he and his two brothers built a small building business. I was first go to university in my family. David you go to work at dow, in hong kong initially . Andrew they sent me down to a very cold part of australia called melbourne that has a lot of great people. Cold was redefined when i went to michigan, i went there for six months. There was an accident in a factory in hong kong, they sent for australian engineers. I went to work to help the locals in a complex chemical environment. David dow is a verys famous chemical company. It was for quite some time. How do you go from hong kong with this australian accent and an American Company to the states . Andrew they had this view to go internationally have to hire local while before was volk, they went around the world look of a people who are willing to go to these farflung locations. Hong kong at that time is not sophisticated city was today. Basically what they did is a localized and moved to talent locally, i was started by the dow leaders early and they move me around to test me in different places. Mostly in asia. Then eventually to the u. S. David were you trained as an engineer . What was your skill set . Andrew chemical engineering, when i look at todays world the word chemical put you into a different place, it is really problemsolving engineering. I learned to be a Problem Solver by learning chemical engineering. David you eventually move from dow headquarters in michigan. Andrew a little town called midland where the founder founded the company in the still headquartered there. David you move there how many years with you the ceo . Andrew just shy of 15, last couple it was a merged entity, then reset the demerger and we can talk about that if you like, the last two where as the executive chairman of the dow dupont, i let us to the merger and the rationale behind that was a 10 year remake. We put the strategy in 2005 and executed over 10 years, we moved us back to an innovation centric company. We had lost our way, we had to commoditize, by the time of the 90s our innovation chest was bear. David you took dow chemical, and you renamed it doubt one point, you took the chemical out of it and you merged it with dupont. Then you split the company into three different companies. Andrew to amazing american iconic companies, dupont founded on explosives and dow founded on chlorine comey think about the histories of those, but how we hit this century they were across the range of different applications and there are many things to many markets. What the premise of the case was, with the dupont side, we put together and separate them into more pure plays. Dow materials, the agricultural products, and of course the new Dupont CompanySpecialty Chemicals and plastics. David you step down as ceo of dow a number of years ago, did your wife say it is time for you to stay home . Now youre running around the world, is she disappointed . Andrew did she expect me to retire . No, she knew me better. The story on the olympics is classic, it came to month ago, i was in the living room and i got a premier of the state of queensland and he said you like to offer me the president of the olympics. I said excuse me. I said can i get back to you. They wanted to announce on monday. I said ok, anyway, my wife look said who is that and i told her and she bit me in the face and said you have to take it. I said you know how busy i am, right . She said i know how busy you are but you have to take it because youre the right person to get it done. If you have to drop some things then drop some things but you have to take it. That is the type of partner i have. David how did you wind up to be the chairman of an Automobile Company when you had not been in the industry . Andrew andrew the manufacturing thematic i had thrown my entire career, i wrote a book on it. Certainly the elusive experience was something i did not predict. It came from my association with the kingdom of saudi arabia was a major investor. I got asked to come in and help rebuild the country and create what you see here a fullfledged , ev company. First greenfield site for evs. We built a greenfield site and it is up and running right now. Manufacturing was a big piece of my expertise. It was attractive to joining lucid experience. Francine saudi aramco is the most viable country in the world. You see Energy Prices and oil prices coming down any time in the near future . Do you think there will be 100 a barrel for quite some time . Andrew the commodity markets, as you must know, it impossible to give you an answer, the most important dynamic of them all is Climate Change and co2 emissions, how can we make oil and gas, that but i think is i think is destined to be phased out, it will eventually dampen demand, evs alone lets a vocation of the transportation market will see a dampening demand. It is impossible to predict in the shortterm, how do you predict a Russia Ukraine war and the effect it had a Commodity Prices . We will go through arcos of pricing for some years to through periods of pricing for some years to come. I cannot tell you if it will be high or low. David saudi arabia has an enormous amount of oil seem to be interested in doing things that are not related to audio and electric vehicles is one of them. Andrew the vision 2030 that was put in place, by his highness the crown prince, has a big piece of it a diversify away from oil and go into other businesses and other activities that might be related. Chemicals, plastics, downstream creating a circular carbon , economy, hydrogen, renewables, wind, nuclear power. The diversification of the energy mix is a part of the plan. That is what aramco and others are driving. David you are a chairman of lucid group an electric vehicle company, tesla seems to be so far ahead of everybody else how , do you compete with their market share . Andrew this is a technology business, in your earlier question on how i got involved i said manufacturing. Manufacturing is an interesting word being used over a couple hundred years, humans have gone up the technology ladder. Humans are events of an innovative because of Technology Advantages. Lucid group offers a Technology Advantage and beats everyone right now. Firstly, the distance we can travel without needing to charge. Second, are charging time. We get a recharge up to two hundred miles in 22 minutes. Those two are all about technology. The car and its surrounds are aesthetically beautiful, drives fantastically, absolutely totally a luxury car and a clean experience. The software that supports and it is also technology. What weve been doing at lucid is honing in on the Technology Side of differentiation. Is there room for tesla . Lucid . A bunch of others . Of course, we are going to see evs as the primary mode of transportation in our lifetime. David where do you make the cars . Andrew arizona. Just outside of phoenix. David if i want to buy one, where do i go . Online, a showroom, they cost about 5,000 a piece . Andrew you are in the right place to buy one, hopefully we can sell you one before you leave. We have a retail strategy. We go directly to retail and Service Centers around the country. We are opening up Retail Centers as we speak in europe, we have them in the United States. The price point is not 5,000. We have a price point at the highend luxury end. Our competition is porsche, bmw. David you are trying to be an electric vehicle for highend cars. Andrew at this point in time, that is our strategy. We have the dream, the air, and the suv the gravity. These price points are north of 100,000. The dream at 160,000, 170,000, that is clearly the luxury end. The massmarket end with General Motors and ford is obviously a big opportunity, we will get there eventually but have no announcements. David you have one of the cars . Andrew i do. I was an early buyer at full price. I thought it was important for the team. That i demonstrate my support. I will never forget the amazing drive i had and it. I have it down in florida were my residence is. I drove it, drove into palm beach, drove around there. Every time i stopped, i had people looking at me. I knew it was not me. It was the car. I parked it, i will kid you not, it was like a mob scene around me. It was the second car in florida, had not been seen, had it valet parked at a hotel where i was having dinner. The instrument wanted to compete with the other gentlemen to valet park. I said maybe i should park it myself. It is an attractive car and drives well. David lets talk about the roads on which the cars drive. You have advised the president of United States on infrastructure, manufacturing, on infrastructure, you have been involved with legislation passed not so long ago. Why is the United States and restructure terrible compared to wealthy countries . Andrew i have been around u. S. Politics like you for a couple of decades, served a variety of president s from different parties. The attitude of the United States is obviously to keep taxes low and public spend under control. The word control is interesting, but that stops forward thinking in terms of planning. The shorttermism around fiscal policies has hurt us. In essence infrastructure is a longterm return. To get a longterm return, putting into private hands is one way of doing it, but the public side of life has to be willing to be the forward spend. The spend on roads, ev charging stations has to come from the public domain. Raising taxes to spend money on infrastructure means you have to trust people doing the spending, and i think the publicprivate is the way to go, it is create an infrastructure bank. U. S. Public Company Owned or Public Sector owned that has a private sector matching funds. That sort of breakthroughs yet to occur in the United States. Where do we go . Tax and spend. Unfortunately one side of the aisle disagrees with. David manufacturing is something that never stays thought not to be as good at 40 or 50 years ago, is that fair . Andrew there is a perception that manufactoring is yesterdays sector that is so erroneous, pretty much everything in modern life is made. Todays the day you graduate from Southern New Hampshire university. Ive been waiting for this day my whole life. The fact that i get to walk across the stage and get my degree, its honestly unreal. Dont ever stop. Keep on believing in yourself. It is never too late. If youre out there to wonder if you could be an snhu graduate today is the day to find out. Visit snhu. Edu. David your first book is about manufacturing. Manufacturing is something that is states is thought to be not as good at as we were 50 years ago. Is that fair or not yet though the perception, at least . Andrew that is fair. We think the reverse on fire will use the word, branding is everything, and today everything gets burned in a heartbeat social media. There is a perception that manufacturing is yesterdays sector. That is so erroneous. Pretty much everything in modern life is made. I used to say we only have three functions. Invent, make, sell. The rest is over hit. The make part is actually connected to the invent part. Trying that brilliant in strategy to the 30 years of xi jinping because in stock it is simply and then assisted on research and development. There are only 10 labs in 1990 and by 2010 there were 40,000 labs. They wanted to know not just how to make and assemble, they wanted to invent all the way back to the material, the actual battery, the products and to do that they needed research into filament. My factory and research and Development Live together through prototyping and scaling. The topics of innovation are in manufacturing. You digitize, you loan more. Digitizing manufacturing is a massive innovation opportunity. One of the things u. S. Is phenomenal at is we know how to and the bait and batch maneuvers but if we know how to innovate and entrepreneur. David the wisdom is United States cannot manufacturing things because attracted to market so that is what we outsource it. Do you think that is unfair . Andrew it was fair doing what i called the loss of industry, textiles and footwear and clothing which were very laborintensive. It is not the case with things that make the iphone. All the secretary and semiconductors and highend Technology Content parts. This is where the u. S. Is actually the best at. It is not labor cost driven. Offshoring and outsourcing and moving things for labor cost, that went to countries that had lower labor costs, bangladesh and vietnam. The highend quality manufacturing, todays and tomorrows innovations, we should be the epicenter of that right here in this country because the labor cost is not the relevant cost. The relevant cost is the raw materials, supply chain, and we have the market. This is one of the few countries in the world that can say i am one country that has a massive market and also i am endowed with a lot of resources that is manufacturing. David you are an immigrant to the United States and your grandparents were immigrants to australia. Immigrants are often said the capacity to work very hard, prove themselves, move up the ladder. Do you feel you have an immigrant mindset that has pushed you to do all of these things . Andrew i think my story growing up in immigrant family where english was not the first thing was at home, it was greek. David do you speak greek now . Andrew yes. David does it help with speaking to olympic committees . Andrew i never thought that, but yes. I think it drove me to work hard, but also to make a difference and very american trade what attracted me to america, this very day, you are a great example of it, is the amazing giving back that occurs in this country. Not enough of us know a lot about it, gets a few headlines. I mentioned taxandspend to be a detriment to building of a modern infrastructure. On the otherside americans are charitable and give and care about making a difference in the community. That is what dow showed me. That is how i and my wife, paula, live today. That american way to an immigrant means the next immigrants, we can make their life better. David for someone who is watching and was to be a successful Global Business leader, who are these skill sets . Hard work, learning to read well, continuous reading, being a speaker . What are the skills needed . Andrew one of the things i would add to the list, i agree with all of that, that i would do and it did to this very day is i would prepare well before i , got the job or was given the nod. I would know as much about what i was about to be offered or to do before i actually did it. I would read, i would talk well before the days of the iphone, i would go to the library. I remember my father knocking on the door with the encyclopaedia britannica salesman, i begged him to buy the 12 books, he said only if you read them all. I read them all. I was 12. I think preparing so that when you get the right to talk, when you have the podium, we have the right to Say Something you actually have the knowledge to speak to it. I think people have gotten bored with facts. You have to blend it with interest. Personalize the facts, show examples, then demonstrate it yourself. I think that cycle of Teaching Needs to be introduced in our education system, but also reallife. David what do your parents say to the neighbors . We have an unusual 12yearold who is reading encyclopaedia britannica . Andrew it was not an era where you were told to read. These days parenting is forcing the kids to get off of the tv and reading. It is nothing i really noticed. It w