October 27, 2025: US-Japan Sign Rare Earths Deal, Trump-Xi Talks Look Ahead, More

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
News when you want it with Bloomberg News. Now, I'm
Doug Prisner. President Trump is in Japan today for the
second leg of his Asia tour. In Tokyo, he met
with Prime Minister sunna A Takeiichi and hailed the US
alliance with Japan, given Takeaichi's plan to ratchet up defense spending.
Here he is take Iichi speaking through a translator.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Now, both Japan and the United States have developed the
greatest alliance in the world, and together with you, Japan
is ready to contribute to worst peace and stability.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Trump and Tukiichi also signed documents on trade and critical minerals. However,
the agreements remained ill defined, the trade document noting swift
and continued efforts, and the critical minerals packed pledging to
coordinate on permitting, financing, and mapping. Now, the next stop
in Trump's tour of Asia is South Korea for the

(00:54):
APEC Summit, and it's there he is set to meet
with Chinese President Chi Jinping. N Burns is former US
Ambassador to China.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
There might be seven or eight issues where they make
commitments to each other, and it's good to make progress
on these, but I think the tension between the United
States on trade issues is going to continue past this meeting.
That's not a criticism of President Trump. It's actually more
criticism of the Chinese government and the fact that they've
been extraordinarily difficult on these issues. Overall, I'd say that

(01:27):
this is a very competitive US China relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Nicholas Burns there. He is former US Ambassador to China.
Optimism over a trade deal between the US and China
lifted the equity market to all time highs. Over the weekend.
The two sides meant in Malaysia and said they've reached
a trade framework. Elizabeth Economy is a senior fellow at
the Hoover Institution.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
Look, this is great news, and I think it does
amount to a trade reset, but it's absolutely fair to
note that really, with the exception of the TikTok deal,
that all of this just brings us back out of
the hole that we ourselves, Doug have dug over the
past nine, you know, to ten months since the administration
came into office. So there's no real trade advance here,

(02:13):
you know, there are no new deals being struck except
for the fact that, yes, we're hoping to get soybean
purchases back to where they were in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Elizabeth Economy there from the Hoover Institution. Amazon is planning
to cut thousands of corporate jobs in several key departments.
We are told they include logistics, payments, video games, and
Amazon's cloud computing unit. Now Reuters is reporting the terminations
are expected to start as soon as Tuesday, and they

(02:43):
could affect as many as thirty thousand workers. Here as
Bloomberg Sarah Fryar.

Speaker 5 (02:48):
This is something that the companies all across the board
have been doing since the pandemic era, what they call
over hiring. A lot of these companies saw the growth
in how people were relying on tech during the pandemic
when they were home. They were obviously ordering a lot
more from Amazon because they didn't want to go to

(03:09):
the grocery store if they were at home workers and
the company hired to accommodate that, and now they don't
need as many people.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
That is Bloomberg Sarah Friar incidentally shares an Amazon finished
up one point two percent. Today, we go to Congress
next to where Democrats and Republicans continue to trade blame
over the government shutdown. We are now at day twenty seven,
making for the second longest funding lapse in US history. Now,
the Senate was back in session on Monday, and we
got reaction from Henrietta Trees, the co founder and managing

(03:42):
partner at Veda Partners.

Speaker 6 (03:44):
The temperature on the Republican side, from my perspective, is
a lot more calmed. They just are, you know, the
President doesn't care about this, or voters so care about this,
so therefore we don't care about this. And then on
the Democratic side, there's a little bit more action. Keith
Jeffries is calling the entire Democratic Conference back to DC
this week, so they.

Speaker 7 (04:00):
Will be there.

Speaker 6 (04:00):
There'll be press briefings, they'll be talking about the ACA subsidies,
and they'll be trying to generate some sort of momentum
in one direction or another. But as long as the
president is not engaged, there's not going to be any
forward progress. So the government should be shut down for
at least another probably ten days at a minimum.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Henry A Trays there from Veda Partners. Now, there are
some looming deadlines that could increase pressure on lawmakers. Hundreds
of thousands of federal workers are no longer receiving paychecks,
and this week, food stamp benefits for more than forty
million Americans will be cut off meantime. Kelly Lawfler, the
head of the Small Business Administration, says many key services

(04:38):
at her agency are halted.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Now.

Speaker 7 (04:40):
What we've seen is a total shutdown of SBA guaranteed lending,
which is delivered through local community lenders to the tune
of about three hundred and twenty loans per day, not
being able to be closed for a total funding of
one hundred and seventy million dollars. It is not being
delivered across main streets in this country. By the end
of the week, that'll be four billion dollars. That's not

(05:02):
getting to six thousand small businesses. So it's really painful
right now.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Kelly Loeffler there, the head of the Small Business Administration.
President Trump has sparked a mid decade redistricting war in
the US. Bloomberg Amy Morris has more on the latest
efforts to jerry mender.

Speaker 8 (05:19):
It started in Texas when President Trump urged Republicans to
draw new congressional maps to help insure a wider majority
of Republican seats. California quickly responded to help insure more
democratic districts, then came Ohio, Utah, Missouri, North Carolina, Kansas,
and Florida. And now the Democratic led state legislature in

(05:39):
Virginia is set to reconvene to begin a multi stage
process to amend that state's constitution and redraw house districts,
and Indiana Governor Mike Brown is also called a special
session to consider redistricting in Washington. Amy Morris, Bloomberg Radio, and.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
That is news when you want it with Bloomberg News. Now,
I'm Doug Chrisner, and this is Bloomberg six