Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - April 25th, 2025 - Bloomberg Businessweek

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is Bloomberg business Week Daily reporting from the magazine
that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business finance
and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week
Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast.
Another week where it was a given that we would
talk tariffs, the US China relationship, fed independence, job security
for Jay Powell, along with a big dose of earnings
and yes, market volatility, and.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
So that's all ahead as this hour we dig into
the quarterly updates of two companies, talking supply chains, consumer sentiment,
and the reality of manufacturing with the CEO of Whirlpool Corporation,
Mark Bitzer.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
And then it was also a big, big week for
Tesla as it reported disappointing but not entirely unexpected results
and getting Elon Musk's presence on the call with analysts
to announce his soon to come actual presence back at
or at least is paying more attention to the company
he runs we will hear from one well known investor
who owns Tesla's and has at times been a buyer

(01:20):
and seller of company shares.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
All that to come, we begin with the US China
trade war, President Trumps signaling an exit ramp may be
in sight for those sweeping tariffs he's placed on Chinese goods.
The President said Wednesday that quote everything's active when asked
if he was engaging with China, and that Beijing was
quote going to do fine once talks had settled. Meantime,
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bess and Warren negotiations could take

(01:44):
up to three years.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
This situation felt really fluid, and there was a lot
of back and forth throughout the week, which is what
really kept investors on their toes and markets volatile. Highly
recommend that you check out the Bloomberg and Bloomberg dot
com because all of this stuff, as we know, it
feels like every day there's a whole new batch of headlines,
especially when it comes to the US China relationship. And

(02:06):
to help break down the intricate balance between the US
and China, we turned to Caroline Freund. She is Dean
of Global Policy and Strategy at uc SAN Diego. She's
also a former Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics, a former Global Director of Trade, Investment and
Competitiveness at the World Bank, and she also worked at

(02:27):
the FED and IMF. Her perspective and valuable.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
I want to start with this idea of respect and
really what it means in the way that China is
using it in your view in regards to tariffs and
the tit for tat when it comes to this trade war.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Yeah, I think you have.

Speaker 5 (02:42):
To take into account that China is a country that
prides itself on having five thousand years of civilization, so
a five thousand year history, and they do things gradually.
They've had the time to learn to do things gradually,
and Trump is doing things very chaotically and that's not

(03:05):
something they're used to dealing with.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
There have been comments by.

Speaker 5 (03:08):
Jadie Vance and others talking about peasants lending money to
buy things made by peasants lending money to the US.
So this isn't the way to work with China. They
expect to have a deal worked out by the technical folks,
and then the leaders to only meet once that deal

(03:30):
is worked out. So bottom up and gradual, not the
top down and chaotic that that Trump is initiating.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
So is this just jocking. I keep wondering these two
economies still kind of need each other or do they not?
Like is there something we're missing in terms of what's
going in internally in China? And Tim and I have talked,
We've listened to some podcasts who said, you know, COVID
changed a lot of things and a lot of American
businesses pulled back or executives and eyes on the ground,

(04:02):
Maybe not so much in China. And there's a lot
more sophistication in terms of what they are producing and
how they are doing it that maybe is going unawares
by the world at large. But help us understand what
is China today. It's not just a manufacturer of sneakers
and T shirts.

Speaker 5 (04:21):
No, China is a very advanced country with some of
the frontier technologies on things like electric vehicles, autonomous driving,
and even in AI. They've made substantial progress, though they're
still behind the US. But there is a symbiotic relationship.

(04:44):
So China is worried about deflation, We're worried about inflation.
And these are exactly two sides of the same coin
they have over capacity. We don't really have the capacity
or know how to do manufacturing anymore. And while there
have been problems with the relationship, we do need each other.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
And why do we still need each other? Why do
we still need each other? Because I think there are
some who say China maybe doesn't I don't know, or
maybe the US doesn't.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
Well, there are a lot of things we get from
China that we need to keep our economy going. So
we live in a world of global supply chains where
parts and components are coming from China as well as
other countries. So trying to manufacture in isolation is just
frankly a non starter. Won't be competitive in a global market.

(05:37):
China is also sitting on seven hundred billion in US
dollar assets, so that's another area where China has a
pretty big trump card to play. I don't think they will.
It's a country that wants stability. It's a careful in
any policy move it takes. But we very much need

(05:58):
each other. We need the goods each other produces, and
we need to work together and work through this. It's
not perfect. Some decoupling is probably good, but sudden and
sharp is going to be painful. And that's why we
see it. With what's been happening with the stock market now,
I think we're not only having an own goal, we're

(06:20):
on our way to an own hat trick.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
The White House Press Secretary Caroline Levit said this week
that China needs what the US has, which is consumers
who spend money. Is that accurat in your view?

Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
That's why they're suffering deflation, That's why they have excess capacity.
They need what we have, but we need what they
have too. We have a population that's used to buying
things and buying things cheaply. The growth of the Chinese
economy has been part of what kept inflation so low

(06:53):
for so long and supported global growth. So yes, they
need but I wouldn't say that doesn't mean we don't
need them.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
This is going to hurt us both.

Speaker 5 (07:05):
It may be a question of who it hurts more.
But there could be a way to make it a
little softer for both of us.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
You know, one question that I keep asking anyone who
will speak to me about this is who has the
leverage in this negotiation between the US and China. You
said the relationship is symbiotic. These two countries need each other.
But is there one trading partner that is more powerful
than the other and why?

Speaker 5 (07:30):
Well, I think initially it looked like the US because
China's economy is already in a slowdown because of demographics,
because of their own property issues, property crisis there, so
it looked like we had more power. They really really
need our consumer. But there's one thing they have that

(07:52):
we don't have, which is a population that they can
control and that is more willing to talk pain than
the US consumer. So at this point, I think it's
kind of a toss up.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
So does that just mean President g is willing to
inflict a little bit more pain maybe on his people
and means he can kind of fight this fight a
little bit longer than maybe the US can. Yeah, And
he has.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
More authorities, so he has complete control of the media.
So my understanding from Chinese colleagues is that in the
Chinese press now a lot of people have access to VPNs,
But in the Chinese press, the average person doesn't know
that tariffs are over one hundred percent now, so the
numbers aren't out there, the information isn't out there. There's

(08:40):
a calm there, and there's an ability to control the economy,
stimulate the economy, support people that we just frankly don't have,
as well as the consumer here, who's going to be upset.
You saw what happen over price of eggs. Imagine when
that's everything you go to the you go to the

(09:00):
store for.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
That's a really good point. That is a very good point.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
One of the reasons we wanted to speak to you
is you have done so much when it comes to trade.
A reminder, you're a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute
for International Economics, Global Director of Trade, Investment and Competitiveness
at the World Bank. How does this trade war end?

Speaker 5 (09:21):
That is the million dollar question. Hopefully it ends with negotiation.
So there does seem now to be negotiation with other countries.
Trump has made it clear that if she rings him up,
he'll take the call. So I think we can get there.

(09:42):
But right now we have two big trucks driving at
each other and it looks more like a game of chicken.
So it's time will tell.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
I guess if the United States aim Caroline is to
contain the rise of China, if that is the ultimate goal,
than what I think, that's a really hard thing to do.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
China is a big country, so I think it can
slow it. I think probably it already has with some
of the restrictions on technology. That the other side of
that is it's encouraging innovation in and of itself. So
the fact that we held back on AI chips probably
made something like deep Seek more likely. So I don't

(10:28):
think there's a holding back of a country the size
of China. So what we need to work towards is
managing in a world with China and working more.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Closely with our allies.

Speaker 5 (10:45):
So this could have been handled, in my view, much
better by working with countries in Europe, countries like Japan
and Australia, and sort of isolating China that way, couraging
China to play by the rules that we want to
set as a globe. The US is less than fifteen

(11:06):
percent of global trade right now, so there's eighty five
percent of economic might out there without us. We really
can't engage in this fight alone, do our allies?

Speaker 1 (11:18):
And I use that term loosely right now, because I
think a lot of folks would say we're fighting with
allies right now, at least when it comes to trade.
Do they feel the same way about China?

Speaker 5 (11:31):
I think they're beginning too. And I think one thing
this will do is China now needs to sell all
the goods it's not selling to us somewhere else, and
other countries are very very worried about that. So in
that sense, we may pull them along with us, but
Trump's vitriol has certainly pushed them away. So I think

(11:53):
we're going to have to see. But I do think
there's room for that if we behave a little more nicely.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Ah See, the world would be better if we all
just were a little bit nicer. It's really kind of
sim pocomically that now looking at me when you said
you're super nice. No, I'm not looking at you, but
I just Carolyne, thank you so much. We were really
looking to do kind of this deep dive because we
feel like it certainly is that relationship between the US
and China so important to kind of what happens next globally.

(12:23):
She's dean at the UC San Diego School of Global
Policy and Strategy. Joining us from La Joya, California.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
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or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Chairs of Whirlpool rally as the company maintained its full
year financial outlook despite uncertainty over global tariffs, saying their
long term impact will benefit the company's position in the
US home appliance market.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Whirlpool manufactures most of its US bound products in the
US and expects the new trade restrictions will help the
company compete against foreign rivals.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
We spoke to l Pool Corporations chairman and CEO Mark
Bitzer just after the company released it's quarterly update.

Speaker 6 (13:11):
Well, you know, I mean, obviously we saw in our
earnings release where despite everything else going on, we're pretty
pleased with our Q one. I mean, we're basically I
would consider our business largely on track. We hit the
EPs pretty much in line with consensus. On organic revenues,
we're up two percent almost six percent margin, which puts
us on track to our folio guidance, and we're reconfirming guidance. So,

(13:32):
I mean, obviously it's not all euphoric, but give them
everything else going on, I think we should feel pretty
good about being on track in the current environment.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
How would you describe the US consumer right now.

Speaker 6 (13:42):
Yeah, I mean, obviously it's been a lot of all
utility also a consumer side, and I think, if you
want to say so, we're probably a little bit the
cannery and the cole min when it comes to consumer confidence.

Speaker 7 (13:52):
And the reason why I'm saying this one.

Speaker 6 (13:54):
You know, every day, you know, many companies have a
big order pipeline. Our orders are pretty much seven days.
I see it pretty fast if consumer orders something or not.
And we saw actually a very healthy consumer sentiment following
the election pretty much through January mid February, and then
we saw a clear deteriation of consumer confidence in particular

(14:16):
particular my discretionary side of demand and iving.

Speaker 7 (14:19):
That continued to also in Q two. So we see right.

Speaker 6 (14:21):
Now the consumer probably lacks confidence about the financial future
and holding back discretionary purchases.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Wellw does that compare with your where consumers have been
during your tenure at Whirlpool, Because we've spoken to you
quite a bit over the last few years, throughout through downs,
through relatively calm periods. How would you describe the consumer
right now relative to where the consumer has been during
your tenure?

Speaker 6 (14:43):
Yea, Tim, I've been twenty six years, so you don't
have enough time to go.

Speaker 7 (14:47):
You give you all the ups and.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
But is it better than the that gives us a
great view? Is it better than the financial crisis, better
than the dot com bust? Better than covid?

Speaker 6 (14:55):
You know, it's it's how should I put from an
economic perspective, it does not from a human perspective. From
an economic perspective, I think there's a lot of similarities
to what we saw in the early days of COVID
and what I'm saying based on consumers.

Speaker 7 (15:08):
It just there's a you know.

Speaker 6 (15:09):
Everyday new messages which don't necessarily help consumer confidence. So
from a pre consumer confidence perspective, we just want to
have stability in the message.

Speaker 7 (15:18):
I think consumers can deal with good or bad news.

Speaker 6 (15:21):
It's just the every day changing news and the uncertainty
which neither helps business investors or consumers.

Speaker 7 (15:26):
And I think so the drop which.

Speaker 6 (15:28):
We've seen kind of in the course of six weeks, yep,
that was probably among the biggest jobs I've seen. Now
hopefully at one point it will also come back up again,
but right now they drop was pretty fast and pretty drastic.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
So we love talking with you. We've got through so
many cycles together and I'm just thinking of those who
are watching and listening to Bloomberg Business Week on this Wednesday.
I am curious about your supply chain, like we are
all getting a great lesson right in global trade, global
supply chain, and tell us about your supply chain and

(16:03):
how the US China or just the US terror of
trade war is potentially impacting you or making.

Speaker 8 (16:10):
You change it.

Speaker 6 (16:12):
First, well, Carol, I want to give you credit, but
it took you to question free to raise the ward Tarraff.

Speaker 8 (16:18):
I'm trying.

Speaker 9 (16:19):
I'm trying to kudos to.

Speaker 6 (16:21):
You, you know, And obviously there's a lot of moving
parts of play. Ultimately comes back to we are kind
of the only and last American appliance company, and we
produce eighty percent of what we sell in the US
in US, and of what we produce in US, more
than eighty percent of aparts are sourced in the US,
So we are a domestic producer. I know a lot

(16:42):
of companies talk about reshoring or on showing. We never
left Okay, and that's a big difference. So as such,
even more, we're also faced with some headwinds in particular components,
et cetera. Ultimately we will be a net winner because
we're a domestic producer and in this case, this is
different from our industries.

Speaker 7 (17:00):
There's capacity.

Speaker 6 (17:01):
We have enough capacity, enough factories to fill them, and
I appreciate other industries. You know, it may take some time,
but I think ultimately and we all don't know what
the final final picture of for terifs is, but something
will be there and we do see us benefiting from
this one.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
How do you want to see this trade war play out?
Because I'm assuming that some of these tariffs help you domestically.

Speaker 6 (17:28):
Well, and again I think that probably needs a libit explanation.
So Carol, actually we're not asking for exemptions. We're not
asking for tech subsidies or gifts or handouts or whatever
there are right now in the pre existing so called
two thirty two and three or one teffs, there are
loopholes which hurt us and they structurally benefit Asian producers.

(17:49):
And it's put in simple terms, you know, because the
two thirty two terriffs, I pay in US for steel
two or three times more than Asia steel and any
component which I can't get them US, like an LED
panel IPAI teriffs. So if the same product is produced
in Vietnam or Korea. They don't have to pay the
tariffs and steel they don't have to pay the teriffs
of components. That difference is big. It's about seventy dollars

(18:12):
per products and put that in retail price. That basically
means one hundred and fifty dollars different retail price. So
all we ask for is just close the loophole. We're
all in support of having a strong US based steal production.
I think it's we all agree it's important. Just close
the loophole. That's all we ask for. So we don't
ask for special treatment. Just close the loophole. Take the
disadvantage away. Again, I'm not looking for an unfair advantage.

(18:35):
We're just looking for a level playing field and then
when we can compete BAREI well.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
So we're talking, of course with Mark Bitzer. He is
chief executive officer at Worldpool Corporation, joining us from Michigan.
One thing I want to ask you what you have
learned about manufacturing in the United States. Is there a
lesson or something a message you'd like to share with
other folks who are saying I can't manufacture in the
United States.

Speaker 6 (18:58):
You know, and again it's Carol, as you can probably
tell for my accent, dual citizen of American and German.
So to say sit here and say I'm staying here
for patriotic reason, it's probably not credible. US production can
be working well well, and I really and I'm proud
of our ten strong factors in the US. And if
you go to a factory like in clyde O, Hi,
where you have three generational factor workers, these are proud

(19:21):
people that have worked very hard. So I know there's
now a lot of jokes about US manufacturing. You can
produce in US, and there's a very good skilled workforce
which you can have as long as we don't harm
ourselves with kind of you know, issues which make production
more difficult in US, like steep price and component costs.
So I really, I know some people are hesitating about

(19:43):
moving back to US. We have been producing in the
US for one hundred and fourteen years, this success.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
So you know, I'm curious about since you already produced
here in the US, and you have eighty percent of
the production that goes to the US actually being made here,
plus you source a lot of the parts here, you're
relatively unaffected by tariffs. Would you say that the tariffs
that the Trump administration has proposed or is even putting
on have been a net benefit for your business.

Speaker 6 (20:10):
You know, it's again so far, there's more announcements than
already action in place. So far what is in places
for two thirty two and the ten percent tariffs? But
you know, I go back to and I know there's
a lot of talk about what the previous Trump administration did,
but two A one tariffs in twenty eighteen, because I
know there's.

Speaker 7 (20:28):
A lot of talk about did they raise price or not?

Speaker 6 (20:30):
If you now today look back, these terrfs were put
in place in twenty eighteen, and where we are today.

Speaker 7 (20:37):
Washer prices today are lower than wevern two or fourteen.

Speaker 6 (20:40):
So tell me one product category which has lower prices
been two or fourteen and compared to twenty eighteen, there's
two more factories producing washes in US.

Speaker 7 (20:48):
So from that perspective, what the.

Speaker 6 (20:50):
Prior Trump administration did actually in our industry worked. It
brought new production and the prices did not raise. Now
there's always some moving parts as you go through this one,
but it worked. Now that may be different in other industries,
But I think I know ironersty pretty well you add
production capacity to ultimately build benefit for consumer.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Does the risk though, of declining US consumer sentiment as
a result of rising prices in other categories and concerns
about uncertainty moving forward? Does that way to a greater
extent than the benefit that you get from tariffs as
a US producer of products.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a fair question. Of course,
in the short term there will be call it wobbliness
along the way. But I think, as I mentioned earlier,
consumer confidence can drop fast, but it can also increase
pretty fast.

Speaker 7 (21:39):
We've seen that in Q four.

Speaker 6 (21:40):
So I would say, you know, what I describe on
a structural capacity is are long term effects. I mean,
you don't build factories on wheels, but you build them
for thirty or fifty years. Consumer confidence moves within a quarter.
So I think even though there may be some volatility
in consumer confidence, I think the long term benefits will
clearly output the negatives or term consumer sentiment mark.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
You definitely have a global perspective. I think there's some
concerns though that the longer this trade back and forth,
especially between the United States and China, but really between
the US and the world, that there will be long
term damage. How do you see it?

Speaker 6 (22:15):
Well, you know it's again I can speak more for
my industry. I think ultimately what the current administration is
trying to do in our industry I support, of course,
because we're a US producer. I think the most important
thing in matter is not only for our innestry. People
just want to have predictability. Okay, if you have pretty
much every day changing problem definition, that just makes it
hard because you don't plan industrial production. You don't make

(22:38):
industrial decisions if you don't know if that assumption is
true tomorrow.

Speaker 7 (22:42):
So I think everybody will deal with whatever.

Speaker 6 (22:45):
It is if I know this is now, that's a
picture and it's going to be stable and people can
count on this one. So I think it's more stability
and predictability more than anything else, which I would be
hoping for.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
You mentioned that much of the sourcing you do for
the US based production is actually domestic sourcing. Still, I
imagine there are components that are made outside of the US.
Do you anticipate any supply chain issues as a result
of what we've seen happening.

Speaker 7 (23:13):
Yeah, And it's a little bit.

Speaker 6 (23:15):
And part of that is today our disadvantage because there
are as you point out, some components I can't buy
in US, like an LED panelful washer, that kind of stuff.
So today we have to pay tariffs, while anybody producing
Thailand Vietnam doesn't have to pay tariffs. I think over time,
I would expect that for the vast majority of these
components over time where will be supply based iborn Us

(23:38):
or Mexico. And we see already some early indications it
will take its time in particular, and electronics site more
than anything else, but more of a mechanic parts like motors, etc.

Speaker 7 (23:48):
I think it will be quickly resolved.

Speaker 9 (23:50):
All right.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
I just want to know, have you created a dishwasher
that my husband I don't have to like argue over
who's going to load it and unload it. I just
want to know, how do you have one like that,
a robotic one that actually unloads and unloads. Have we
gotten there?

Speaker 6 (24:02):
Yeah, well, if you have a patent, let me know
and we can hire you as an engineer. You know,
first of all, I pride ourselves we have the best
dish washer with the biggest capacity in the industry. Unfortunately,
it doesn't load itself. I feel the same pain every
day at home, not every days.

Speaker 7 (24:20):
I'm accused of that every day.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Hey, listen, one last question. Do we have to be
worried about a global recession? Is that anything that's on
your radar? Just real quickly?

Speaker 6 (24:30):
I mean again, That's why I said, Carol Earl. It
feels a little bit economically to step back to earlier
days of COVID and whatever else. It's just an uncertain outcome.
I think right now the odds of a recession have increased.
I'm not quite sure we're all the way there.

Speaker 7 (24:46):
It depends a lot what.

Speaker 6 (24:47):
Happens the next two three weeks weeks in terms of
business predictability. But I think we're living with an uncertain outcome,
and that's what our job is to manage to words that.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
All right, Well, when I get that design for that
dishwasher that loads and unloads itself, I'll let you know,
Mark Bits or be Well CEO or Pool Corporation. This
is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
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Speaker 10 (25:25):
Thirty starting next month, yet allocating far more of my
time to Tesla and now that the major work of
establishing the Department of Governm Efficiency is done.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Bettelon Musk on this week's Tesla earnings call with investors
and analysts, assuring them that he will significantly pull back
from his work with the US government and pay more
mind to Tesla. After the carmaker reported its worst quarter.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Years, investors and analysts have increasingly called for Musk to
refocus on the company, which is struggling under the weight
of slumping sales and rising costs from President Trump's trade war.
Protests too, have sprung up in recent months, and a
consumer backlash against Musk's government work.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
One especially vocal Tesla shareholder and cyber truck owner is
Ross Gerber, the co founder, president, and CEO at Gerbert
Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. The firm owns about sixty
five million dollars worth of Tesla shares.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
I think this.

Speaker 11 (26:20):
Perception that somehow Elon's going to come back to Tesla
and be working at Tesla more is a false perception
because I'm also involved with Xai and I'm an investor
in Xai, so I know exactly what's going on there.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
And they just merged with Twitter and now they're.

Speaker 11 (26:34):
Raising even more capital to even get bigger to compete
with Chat and all the other llms. And that's his
main focus, and that's what he really cares about. So
I think, you know, it's nice what he says, but
it's what he does that will ultimately matter.

Speaker 9 (26:49):
Well.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
And you know, we love talking to you, and we
have for a few years now, and you know, we
always remind and I always go here that you know,
you're not only just an investor in the company or
various elon property, but you have owned Tesla.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
He's got a cyber truck.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
Multiply a cyber truck.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
You got a cyber truck.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
But I drive a cyber truck.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
But he still drives a cyber truck.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
It's not so easy to drive a cyber truck, is
it anymore?

Speaker 11 (27:13):
I drive it right down the middle of Woke Avenue,
you know what I mean, which is where I live.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
And you know, fortunately.

Speaker 11 (27:21):
Everybody else has a Tesla, so it's kind of hard
to yell at a guy and a cyber truck from
your Tesla, right, yeah, And this is probably the biggest
issue that I have is I feel like Tesla is
not Elon's company. It's a public company that's owned eighty
seven percent by the public, not Elon. And now the
perception going from being this climate friendly, changing the world

(27:45):
for a better place company to being associated with Elon
Musk and Donald Trump is really one of the saddest
things that I can imagine for Tesla's brand. So I
kind of am like fighting back from that because I'm like, no,
I drive an environmentally friendly truck and you're yelling at
me from a Ford F one point fifty. And Henry
Ford was an actual Nazi, So I'm like, this is

(28:05):
really odd that an oil loving Nazi driving car guy
is flicking me off.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
You know, do you like the cyber truck. There's a
lot of reports online about parts falling off, though I
have read a lot about how people love it. Hannah
Elliott loved driving it around last year.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Do you like it?

Speaker 11 (28:23):
Tesla should be paying me to do ads for the
cyber truck because I actually love the cyber truck.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
The cyber truck saved my life during the Palisades fire.

Speaker 11 (28:31):
I can give you five reasons why you should have
a cyber truck. And I can also tell you five
things that are disappointing about the cyber truck that could
have been better or could be better in new versions
of it to make the car sell that.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
You know, so I know the truck in and out,
and part of.

Speaker 11 (28:47):
The performance on the manufacturing side is very disappointing. I
have not had those problems personally. My truck has been solid.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
You know. I let some kid drive it. He crashed it.
They fixed it quickly. You know. The car's been great.
The car's been great.

Speaker 11 (29:02):
But I can't tell you how important it was to
my survival actually during one of the hardest periods of
time of my life.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Is it because of the air filtration? Like what, yes,
how did you use it?

Speaker 12 (29:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (29:14):
They all filtrations.

Speaker 11 (29:15):
What saved my life because I was in the middle
of the fire and I couldn't breathe, and so I
was trying to fight the fire like an idiot. And
but this was before the fireman came and saved me.
And it was so smoky that my and I had
an N ninety five mass that I was like dying,
and so I would like jump into the truck, and
I had the Hepa filter thing running and it works,
you know, and so I could breathe, and then I

(29:37):
would jump out of the truck and then like try
to deal with fire, and then I could only deal
with that for so long before I have to get
back in the Other thing about the truck, you know,
was the tonu.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
You know, it's a hard tone new So when.

Speaker 11 (29:49):
I when I put all my stuff, I was living
out of my truck for two months and it locks.
And this is a really nice thing where most pickup
trucks don't have a way to cover and lock every
thing in your bed, and so I was able to
basically keep all my.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Important belongings safe in this truck.

Speaker 11 (30:06):
And one of the things that happened after the fire
was people looters were attacking people's cars knowing that they
had all their stuff in it, and a lot of
people got stuff stolen out of their cars even after
they dealt with the fire, which has sucked, you know,
And that was.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
Not a problem I had.

Speaker 11 (30:21):
So, you know, there are many things about this truck
that are great, and the story just isn't being told.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Are you okay, your family, your loved ones okay?

Speaker 9 (30:30):
Now?

Speaker 11 (30:31):
Yeah, my family's great. I'm not okay, I guess it's
the best way to put it. I've moved back into
my house. I'm one of the few people that survived
this fire. The fire ended two blocks from my house
where I fought it and the fireman ultimately stopped it.
And so my neighborhood's you know, normal, except nobody lives

(30:52):
there yet except for me.

Speaker 9 (30:53):
You know.

Speaker 11 (30:54):
I was able to fix my house pretty quickly, and
I felt it was best for me and my family
to move back as quickly as possible. And that's been true,
you know, But I live a very surreal life, you know,
right next to the edge of hell, and I see
it every day.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
And it sucks.

Speaker 11 (31:09):
And you know, for me, I'm mostly suffering from you know,
some level of depression and you know PTSD from the
event itself, which was really traumatic.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Like I don't recommend fighting fighters.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
We can only imagine, and we from AFAR watching, you know,
certainly felt it, but I cann't even imagine seeing it firsthand. Well,
speaking of challenges, and forgive me for this segue, but
one of the things that struck me, you know, we've
been lucky to talk with you. This is you know,
our second time in the last twenty four hours, and
one of the things that continue to kind of tim

(31:42):
and I want to know more and more. And you
really shed some great color and I want to share
it with our audience who are watching and listening right
now who may have missed it yesterday, of what you
had to say about what's going on in terms of
EVS in China. I think we don't have any concept
of how sophisticated, how good they are getting on stuff
like evs and other things.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
Well, you know, once again, I haven't been to China.

Speaker 11 (32:06):
I only know because I follow all the car companies
in China, and I you know, there's a big mister
perception about China. I think, and you saw it a
little bit with the trade negotiations, like they're somehow behind
us in technology, and like we're holding back our technology
from them and that will slow them down.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
That is a wildly incorrect way to look at China.

Speaker 11 (32:30):
If we hold our technology back from China, what happens
is they develop even better technology because we force them
to in a way, you know, And they're extremely determined,
intelligent people who will work extremely hard to achieve.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Whatever goal they need to achieve.

Speaker 11 (32:46):
And so when Tesla came to China, China was Tesla
was the first company China said, you can have one
hundred percent ownership of the factory. Come here with open arms,
and we had never really seen that before with companies
we're trying to always made them do a JV where.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
They would own half the company kind of thing.

Speaker 11 (33:03):
And so the part of that strategy was to send
a whole new generation of Chinese workers to work for
Tesla to learn how to do stuff.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
And they have and they have, and so.

Speaker 11 (33:14):
You have Chinese entrepreneurialism, which is pretty good for a
communist country, and then you add in know how and
government support and you get a pretty potent way to
develop pretty good vehicles.

Speaker 4 (33:26):
And that's what they've done.

Speaker 11 (33:28):
And so China's built a whole new infrastructure around electric vehicles,
which was actually my dream for the United States.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
So that raises the question raws, since China's evs are
so good, should and those are not available here in
the US, should investors really think about the US being
the only market for Tesla because it can't compete outside
of the US.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
No, No, Tesla can compete and.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Want to compete on Can it compete on price? Can
it compete on quality?

Speaker 4 (33:54):
It can't. You know.

Speaker 11 (33:55):
Once again, if Tesla had a focused CEO who wanted
to be the Chinese composition, they could have released that
cyber cab as a model too, with a steering wheel
on it, and made that thing for twenty five thousand dollars.
Like people would buy it. It would be really successful.
The problem with Tesla is they don't want to sell
cars anymore. It's fairly obvious. In fact, they work really

(34:15):
hard to convince people not to buy their cars. I
mean it's like the CEO every day talks people out
of the products. So the real issue to me is,
you know, if you don't really want to sell cars
and you want to sell cab rides instead or robots, boy,
that's going to be a long time till it makes
one hundred billion in revenue.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 11 (34:33):
Yeah, So the Chinese are like, okay, we're fine with this,
and Tesla's falling behind and they're attacking everywhere they can.
The Europeans and the United States have a lot of
trade barriers against these Chinese vehicles because they're inexpensive and
they sell very well.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
And I was in Mexico City, all you see are BYD's.

Speaker 11 (34:51):
They can't afford a Tepsla, you know, And so I
think quality, you know, Europe and the United States more.

Speaker 4 (34:59):
Europe has always won on quality of.

Speaker 11 (35:01):
Vehicles like design and interior style and things like that,
where China seems to be behind on that. But when
it comes to technology, China seems to be well ahead.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
All right, Elon gets into your cyber truck. Not exactly,
not exactly cark karaoke, but you guys have a conversation.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
They know each other. Elon has responded to Ross. I've
seen the tweets. He knows is an investor in Xai.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
I know he knows you. So what's the thirty second
question you ask him?

Speaker 11 (35:30):
Why do you think he said he's coming back to
Tesla because he knows I've been saying it every.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
Day for like months.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
So that's what you ask him.

Speaker 4 (35:38):
Would I say to Elon?

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, thirty seconds, I.

Speaker 11 (35:41):
Said to Elon when I when I first met Elon
long ago, when he was tweeting a bunch of garbage
and Tassla was struggling, I think was the end of
twenty eighteen, and like I was, like, dude, you got
to stop tweeting this garbage.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
This was like seven years ago, you know what I mean? Yeah,
And I was like, how is this the mission? And
we got to raise money and we got to save Tesla,
and like this is just not helping.

Speaker 11 (36:05):
And I remember him looking at me sort of like, yeah, right, sure,
like you think I care what you'd say about my Twitter?
And I was like please, just like I'm just saying
this is nicely. And I remember, because I was standing
with somebody from our investments and people were pretty surprised
at it. Confronted him about Twitter, and I was a
little bit nervous because he's a big guy, and.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
You know, I like Elon at the time, and so
I was trying to be nice, you know.

Speaker 11 (36:29):
And of course he didn't stop tweeting, and he raised
money the next day, which we invested in Tesla at
that time, and it was extremely profitable. And I would
say the same thing to him today, and it's like,
I don't have to agree with your opinions and your
viewpoint in life, but do you have to share that
with everybody all the time. It's not necessary and it's
not helping you be successful, So why share opinions? That

(36:50):
are so unpalatable to so many people when it's completely
hurting you from achieving your goals.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
That's what I would say.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
All right, good stuff. Elon, if you're listening, we'd love
to hear what you would respond to to Ross. Ross,
thank you so much for all of it and for
being so honest and real. Ros Gerber, He's president and CEO.
Stay safe, be well, of course, of Gerberg Kawasaki Wealth
and Investment Management. Out there in Santa Monica.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
of Bloomberg Business Week, including threats to the independence of
the FED, the most powerful person in Washington, d C.
That's not named Trump, and the guy who connected President
Trump to the Manisphere.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Plus speaking of the President, how his global tariffs may
affect agriculture, farming, and sustainability. The director of the film
Common Ground joins us later this hour.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
First up, President Trump raised eyebrows this past week over
whether he will seek to limit the federal reserves independence
and try to remove that chair J.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Powell, which raises the question can the president even do it?
To better understand it all in the possible long legal fight,
we reached out to Columbia Law School associate professor levman
And and Bloomberg Economics editor Molly Smith.

Speaker 12 (38:16):
I mean, it's definitely a serious consideration right now, and
the way that Trump just keeps going after Powell day
after day in all of these different tweets, whether people
are taking seriously this idea of preemptive cuts quote being
discussed by many that is definitely refutable and not at
all being priced in.

Speaker 8 (38:32):
I mean, there's a roughly like, I don't know.

Speaker 12 (38:35):
Sixteen percent chance right now looking at the Bloomberg warp
screen of a rate cut in May, which is coming
in a week or two.

Speaker 8 (38:43):
So no one's really thinking about that happening right now.

Speaker 12 (38:46):
And if raatecuts are to happen, people are saying that's
because the economy is going to slow because of Trump's policies,
not because inflation is slowing, like Key claims exactly.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Professor man Enn, come on in on all of this.
The Supreme Court considering a petition from I'm the President
that could allow him to override some legislation establishing independent
agencies such as the FED and remove their leaders without
cause or notice. What exactly is this case about, Why
are we talking about it, especially since this case does
not involve any FED officials, and why is it, though

(39:18):
potentially so significant for the FED, for FED governors and
perhaps other heads of different organizations in the government.

Speaker 9 (39:26):
So if FED is one of many independent agencies in
the government and its seven member board enjoy the same
sort of protection from at will removal by the president
as other agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the National
Labor Relations Board, and President Trump, in his few months
in office so far, has already challenged the laws protecting

(39:49):
these officials from removal at pleasure by the president, and
those challenges he removed several officials illegally. Those challenges are
making their way through the courts right now, and the
Supreme Court of the United States is currently considering a
petition from the government from Trump to allow him to

(40:10):
push these officials out of office until their cases make
their way through the whole court, which could be months
and months, and that petition could be decided this week,
and if Trump were to prevail, then he could go
ahead potentially and fire the whole FED Board, not just
Chair Pale, and those officials if they wanted to challenge

(40:33):
those removals, would be out of a job during the
tendency of the litigation.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Professor Manand given what you know about the case, what
you know about the arguments and the history, and of
course the justices as well, do you have a prediction
what is likely to happen if the Supreme Court Court
rules one way or the other.

Speaker 9 (40:49):
It's really hard to say. But already we have an
administrative stay issued by Chief Justice Roberts in this case
Trumphy Wilcox, which meant that Wilcox, who had been put
back in her job at the NLRB by the lower court,
was taken out of her job while the Supreme Court
considers President Trump's emergency application. That suggests to me that

(41:11):
there are many members of the Court who might consider
granting this stay pending appeal on an ongoing basis. I
think that there are members of the Court who have
expressed in prior cases real reservations about allowing the expansion
of presidential power to touch the FED. There's a desire

(41:34):
to carve out a FED exception. But the more uncertainty
there is in this space, the more likely we would
see President Trump potentially testing the boundaries. And so that
might not mean a removal of Chairpalell, but it could
mean a removal of Governor Barr, Governor Cook in the
coming weeks.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Whatever happened to checks and balances? Professor man Anne, I'm
just curious. We always just thought this government, how incredible, right,
three separate branches, checks and balances? Are you, as someone
who teaches, who studies and the power of the Supreme Court, like,
are we losing that? Have we lost it?

Speaker 9 (42:13):
We are very much losing checks and balances. This is
not a new thing. This is the culmination of forty
plus years of efforts to reconceptualize the presidency under the
Constitution in such a way that Congress's laws attempting to
constrain presidential power can be violated by the president. And

(42:33):
Ronald Reagan was the first really to push this in
nineteen eighty one when he took office and there was
a Democratic House, and there have been a Democratic House
as long as anybody could remember. Reagan administration officials sought
to assert presidential authority under the Constitution to do certain
things that they didn't have the votes for in Congress.

(42:57):
Those moves were ultimately embraced by the Clinton White House,
and we've had a sort of ever expanding conception that
the Supreme Court has validated at several points, starting in
twenty ten with the Roberts Court decision in a case
called Free Enterprise, which restricted the ability of Congress to

(43:17):
protect the independence of the PCAOB, the board within the
sec that regulates accountants. We had a series of cases
that validated more and more this once fring sort of
constitutional theory of the presidency. And now we have President
Trump in his second term trying to do a full

(43:39):
bear hog of this sort of of this presidentialist theory.
It's called unitary executive theory, and that is very inconsistent
with traditional checks and balances.

Speaker 12 (43:50):
Just to expand on this idea of checks and balances,
it's not so much one that's afforded by the law
and the different branches of government, but just within the Fed.
Something that I don't think we speak about enough with
respect to who makes decisions on interest rates is that
the Chair of the Fed does not act similarly to
the President of the United States.

Speaker 8 (44:09):
They don't have executive.

Speaker 12 (44:11):
Power to just unilaterally make a decision for the entire
Federal Open Market Committee, which is comprised of twelve members,
which includes the six governors on the board, which Powell
is one of those people. And to what the professor
was just saying that if Trump were to remove Powell,
then that would also then set a president. Is he

(44:31):
going to go after all these other governors? But again,
this is a decision that on interest rates.

Speaker 8 (44:38):
It's set by this whole committee.

Speaker 12 (44:39):
It is not just by one person, And there would
be some real credibility concerns if if new people were
to come in that all of these other people who
are on the board or on the committee rather, who
have been advocating for keeping interest rates steady, are they
really just going to go along with this new person
just because Powell was fired.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Look, I understand why the president wants interest rates to
be lower. He has background in real estate. He likes
low rates. You know, we talked about this in the past,
But Carol, I would think that a leader of a
country would want a strong, independent federal reserve because of
the confidence it gives markets and because of the way
that historically the US has been looked at as as
Eric just told us, the central Bank for the entire world.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Gold standard like in terms of the US Central Bank.
And I do think about this, Molly, that if essentially,
if it's not just the FED share but goes after
the other FED governors, that's a whole new ballgame just quickly.

Speaker 12 (45:29):
Yeah, of course, I mean this is we're talking about
half of the Federal Open Market Committee right there.

Speaker 8 (45:34):
If he goes after all those other people.

Speaker 12 (45:36):
So right, and again all of them are. The thing though,
that I guess maybe gives me some confidence is that
no one is calling for these preemptive rate cuts. I
don't know what economist Trump is going to find who
is calling for that right now.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
But it also plays into the game of instability if
we see this kind of movement, both of you, thank
you so much. Professor Levmanan, thank you, Thank you, Columbia
Law School Associate Professor of Law, joining us along with
our Bloomberg News Economics editor Molly Smith right here in studio.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay
and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You
can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Now, as President Trump continues to challenge the long standing
order of many things inside and outside the United States,
we were reminded this past week of some of the
forces that brought him back to the White House. That
included the predominantly male digital creators that emerged as a
key force behind Trump's presidential victory.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
And indeed, if you go back to March of twenty
twenty two, the Nelk Boys, which I hadn't heard about until,
I mean.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
I learned so much in this story.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
They hosted President Trump on his first podcast. He then
appeared on several conservative friendly shows, including the ones hosted
by Joe Naden Ross, Andrew Schultz and THEO Vos.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
I didn't even know there's a Nilk boy. Keep going,
keep going, all right.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Out Let's including The Wall Street Journal credited Baron Trump
for his father's entree into this world, and Baron indeed
advises on his demographics interests. But it's John Shahiti who
actually is making the calls to arrange the appearances or
finding out who can.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
And if you're saying who, well, then maybe you should be.
And this is why you want to listen, stop what
you're doing and check out what our Sarah Fryar has
to say. She writes in Bloomberg BusinessWeek about Shahiti, who's
now looking pretty critical to President Trump's twenty twenty four win.
Sarah is Big Tech team leader for Bloomberg News. She's
also the author of No Filter, the inside story of Instagram,
and she's out there in our San Francisco. You're all right, Sarah,

(47:45):
lay it out. Who is John Shahiti.

Speaker 13 (47:48):
Well, he was a manager in the music industry of
folks who had pop contracts, a big songs in like
Anita Blila Pond's. He works with several DJs and then
he realized.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
All right, Tim and I are it feels like you're
speaking a foreign language. I'm just gonna say, but go ahead,
go ahead.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
The people keep going.

Speaker 13 (48:14):
So so this is this is a guy who's who's
running with the music business, doing great, but starting to
really warm up to Trump. This is during the first
Trump term, and he's he's not getting good response when
he's talking about it. People are kind of shutting him out.
He doesn't get invited to the parties he used he's

(48:35):
used to getting invited to. People decided not to include
him in meetings, and he realizes, instead of shutting up
about about how much I like Trump, I'm just going
to leave this industry and go for a new opportunity.
And he saw podcasting become it is really emerging as
a way that people were wanting to spend time online.

(48:57):
The pandemic occurred, it was becoming even more and more
like a regular consumer behavior. And he's a YouTube guy.
He's works a lot with digital creators on he was
you know, the reason I knew him back in the
day was because of his work on Vine with a
lot of influencers, Instagram influencers, and so he thinks podcasts

(49:18):
are going to go big on YouTube, and he starts
partnering with a lot of those businesses. Now, meanwhile, he
gets back in touch with his old friend Dana White,
who's also a very close friend to Trump, who's running
the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and he decides White decides that
Shahida needs to know Trump because Trump should be on

(49:39):
these podcasts reaching young people. And so that's what happens.
He really works with through White to get to Trump
and convinces Trump to go on with the k Nelk Boys,
with THEO Vaughn, with a bunch of these other names
you listed in a way that he can appeal to

(50:00):
a voter where they're where they're listening casually. I mean,
this is maybe somebody who might not be showing up
at his rallies or might not be watching Fox News.
Fox News demographic is very much aging at this point,
and it's somewhere where Trump can cannot be edited. You
can talk about whatever he wants, and there's not going
to be a time limit. These podcasts Rogans shows sometimes

(50:22):
three plus hours long, so it becomes a perfect venue
for Trump. He kind of has no idea what a
podcast is. Once he starts doing it, he starts loving
the response he gets, and he sees he sees the numbers,
and he's really been embracing this group of podcasters and
Shahiti and the whole UFC world as part of this

(50:44):
new era in his presidency.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
We'll talk a little bit about how Shahiti sort of
went from somebody who wasn't necessarily invited to dinner or
parties to somebody who's now at UFC fights with members
of the administration, including the President. What's happened there. And
also he's been kind of accepted into the tech side
of things, Sarah, which you cover. You know, he's got
a direct line too. It sounds like the folks at YouTube,

(51:09):
at Google's YouTube.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Well.

Speaker 13 (51:11):
He became a kind of honored guest by the standards
of Spotify, YouTube and Meta at the inauguration. They realized
what he'd done here, had this investment in podcasts. Google
actually spoke to the power of podcasts on his last
earnings call, and they said that people really tuned in
to get their news from podcasts ahead of the twenty

(51:32):
twenty four election, and they credit that as a really
strong growth area of their YouTube business. So Shihidi was
pretty early to that market, and he's he's also realizing
that this is this is where all of the platforms
are going to go. He knows Elon Musk. He's known

(51:53):
Elon Musk for years. He brought Elon Musk to fights
back in the day when he was Representingoy Mayweather worked
with Justin Bieber Elon Musk. I have a picture of
them going to fight together in twenty thirteen. So he's
known Musk for a long time. He invested in x
in the new rendition of Twitter. So this is the

(52:15):
crowd that he hangs with, and he's really not so
much a manager of these podcasters but a business partner,
and that to him is more more fool proof and
more unlikely that he will be fired with a change
in the wins politically. If he's a business partner with
these guys, they're selling a product together, he's merchandising for them,

(52:38):
and they have some sort of goal that's not related
to what advertisers think about content policies, which is another
big factor in this. In another area where he's very
aligned with Musk.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Great strategy until you have a tariff war, trade war
and those goods and merchandise maybe are produced in China
and then there's no there's no podcasts.

Speaker 13 (53:00):
That it's rough, but it's rough on everyone at one. Yeah,
you know, I think that's that's a good point too,
is that podcasts are are a good that just requires
some guys in a room talking. In this case, it
is mostly guys. I mean, this is this is the manisphere.
This is like ninety eight percent male viewership, podcasts where
they they're very much you know, the fraternity demographic, and

(53:24):
these are the people who are who were really encouraged
by a lot of Shahidi's partners and podcast friends to
go out and vote for Trump.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
I mean, that's what's kind of cool just thirty seconds.
I mean, it sounds like the Trump administration realized the
access that Shahiti has right to.

Speaker 13 (53:42):
And we've written in prior pieces about how the Harris
campaign realized towards the end that they were they were
going to need to make a last stitch appeal to men,
and they tried to make it work out with Rogan,
they tried to make it work out with THEO Vaughn.
They had a lot of rules that Trump didn't have
around what they wanted to say, and they couldn't get
the scheduling right, and it was hard to convince people

(54:04):
to act right to say we got to do this,
We've got to prioritize this, because it didn't seem like
that was going to be a big deal. But you know,
in the twenty twenty four lest it really was like
are women going to show up or are men going
to show up? And the men did show.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Up, Yeah, and you got to find them where they
are at. Sarah Fryar, thank you so much, Big Tech
team leader Bloomberg News. Check out her book No Filter,
and check out her story from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. You can
find it on the Bloomberg and of course at Bloomberg
dot com. Also in the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg
Business Week magazine Cool Stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast. Catch us
on Applecarplay and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business
Act or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Russell Vote is a Trump loyalist. He's now the Director
of the Office of Management and Budget. He's also Acting
director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
A self described boring budget guy, he's best known for
co authoring the nine hundred at page policy playbook of
the Heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five, which has become
something of a bible for Trump's second term.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
It's Votes think tank that has produced numerous policy papers
that advocate for such Trump fixations like the annexation of
Greenland and enacting broad tariffs, among many others.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
And according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek columnist Max Chafkin. It's also
really Russell Vote, not Elon Musk, who's steering the Trump
administration's dog crusade. So who is he Russell Vote?

Speaker 14 (55:32):
Well, he is the director of the Office of Management
and Budget. But more than that, Tim, as you said,
he is one of the core idealogues behind this presidency.
So russ Vote, he served as the head of OMB
at the end of the last Trump presidency. And his
big idea really goes around executive power. And it's this

(55:56):
idea that the executive that's the president, Donald try Trump
should be able to have much much wider discretion to
run the government and really to run the country. Then
I think most even either Democrats or Republicans have generally
allowed in the past. He's also a big time deficit hawk.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
You know, he started his.

Speaker 14 (56:19):
Career working for Phil Graham, uh the he was a
senator starting in the in the eighties, was one of
the key people behind the effort to like balance the
budget in the in the eighties and the nineties. And
so so Vote has these two threads, one deficit hawkery
and the other being executive power, and those two things

(56:39):
work really nicely with what Elon Musk is trying to do,
because of course DOGE is about both of those things.
It's about like cutting the deficit, but also sort of
doing things more aggressively, uh, you know, with the power
of the presidency, and so so Vote and Elon Musk
had this kind of interesting alliance, and it especially interesting

(57:00):
because they're so different. They're like, they couldn't be more
different from one another.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
All right, So, having said that, we focus so much
on Elon Musk, he's been the face out there in
public in the Oval Office when Donald Trump is holding
the president Donald Trump of course is holding press conference
about what DOGE is doing, and so on and so forth.
So I guess there's an assumption that once maybe you know,
there's been some speculation that maybe Elon Musk his days

(57:25):
at DOGE are numbered, that that's it. And yet that's
not the case, is it. If that's all plays out.

Speaker 14 (57:32):
You know, people within the Trump administration definitely don't see
it that way. I mean, as you say, Carol, at
some point, Elon Musk is going to have to give
up his full time role in the Trump administration because
he is a temporary government employee that is going to
sunset after one hundred and thirty days. We don't know
exactly what that'll be, how exactly they're counting the days,

(57:54):
and it would not surprise me if it stretches on.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
But at some point Musk is going to take a
step back.

Speaker 14 (58:00):
And and certainly within Trump world, this is seen as
being part of russ Vote's domain, and and that he
and and and people around him are ready to pick
up where Elon Musk left off. And and and it's
not as if Elon. I don't think Elon Musk is
going to go away from from from the world of Trump.

(58:20):
I think he'll still be very vocal on social media,
but when you're talking about that day to day role,
it will go away. And if you're thinking that Musk
going away is going to change the trajectory of of
what Trump is trying to do, I think you would
be mistaken because russ Vote has been working on these
issues for years, long before Elon Musk proposed the idea

(58:42):
of doje Vote was proposing sort of very similar things
from his perch as the head of this you know
MAGA Think Tank as being one of the kind of
leading lights intellectually in Trump world.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
All Right, and as we've you talked about. I mean,
he's very different that Elon Musk. And so I do wonder, like,
what's the speculation about how these cuts and things might
play out if Elon Musk leaves and vote Vote is
he's in charge?

Speaker 8 (59:12):
Yeah, I mean the difference is it's almost comical.

Speaker 14 (59:15):
So Musk, of course, he's he loves to be front
and center, vote, very low profile, barely talks about himself,
you know, you know, rarely gives interviews, you know, rarely
gives up any any personal information. You know, we know
everything there is to know about Elon Musk's personal life. Musk,
of course, ideologically scattered Vote is very very disciplined, and

(59:36):
and you know that you could see that in two
different ways.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
On one hand, I.

Speaker 14 (59:40):
Think there's some people who see Musk kind of working
against Vote and some of the ideological components of Trump's space.
On the other hand, Vote and people close to him
see Musk as this kind of force multiplier, as this
face of this otherwise maybe political like difficult to sell operation.
You have the very popular, you know, out there guy

(01:00:03):
and Elon Musk representing these changes in the public. Meanwhile,
behind the scenes, you have russ Vote and his allies
doing actual work.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Well, so what have they been able to accomplish thus far?
Because Project twenty twenty five was brought up during the
campaign quite a bit in fact by Democrats in the
president at that time. Distance since himself from Project twenty
twenty five, what have they been able to accomplish?

Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
Yeah, there's a lot there.

Speaker 14 (01:00:29):
I mean, Project twenty twenty five has a large number
of co authors. In terms of and and there they
are different positions. Like if you look at the tariff
section of Project twenty twenty five, there was a pro
tariff section and an anti tariff section. They're actually like
two dueling proposals. Vote is pretty much aligned with Trump
on everything, so he he was for the tariff. He

(01:00:50):
was publishing, you know, these very hawkish pieces about tariffs
in the years running up to the election. And in
terms of sort of executive of power of this idea
that Trump should be able to run the government. I mean,
that is a place where they they're making a lot
of changes. I mean we're seeing you know, some of
this has been is caught up in court right now,

(01:01:11):
and it's unclear how many of these attempts to you know,
drastically close or reduce the size of federal agencies.

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
How much of that will stick.

Speaker 14 (01:01:22):
But but you know, in the story we talk about
the CFPB, that's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Vote is
also running the cfpv PB and and right now this
is locked up in court. It's it's not clear what's
going to happen. But but when you talk to people
who work there, I mean, nothing is happening right now.
You know, the agency has not been shuttered, but it

(01:01:43):
also is clear that its ability to do stuff has
been drastically reduced. And so in that sense, he's done
a lot that said, there is this, there is there
are the questions around, you know, how much of this
is gonna is gonna stand in court? How much of
it will you know, be stand up to congressional scrutin
a change of power and so on.

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
So the jury's still out there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Well before the jury was even out there, our team
spoke to Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation.
That was back just after President Trump won the election.
This was on November eleventh. He was on balance of power.
Check out what he had to say about the opportunity
that he saw.

Speaker 15 (01:02:19):
Then we think that this is the beginning of a
golden era of conservative reform. I will say that because
the work of Project twenty twenty five represents the conservative movement,
it would be very difficult for anybody to implement policies
on education, on the border, on taxation without at least

(01:02:40):
consulting those ideas in people. That's not some arrogant or
hubristic comment on our part. That's just the nature of
how policy making works.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
That was Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation,
back on November eleventh, twenty twenty four, joining us on
a balance of power, Max. When you think about this
term versus Trump's first term, are there ideological differences because
of the influence of the Heritage Foundation of Project twenty

(01:03:09):
twenty five. Do you see differences in the way that
he's well making rules or the way that he's putting
policy into effect? Do you see it for sure?

Speaker 9 (01:03:21):
Now?

Speaker 14 (01:03:21):
I think the difference is that during the last Trump presidency,
Trump came in without this kind of broad base of support.
You know, it had been a closely contested nomination. You know,
there were a lot of competing factions within Trump World,
and in particular, you had this kind of business faction,

(01:03:42):
right that was pushing against some of these policies that
we've been talking about a lot, you know, whether we're
talking about tariffs or you know, various erratic behavior on
the economy. And what's happened instead is you have this
kind of base of committed ideologues who have spent years
preparing for this moment. That's what Project twenty twenty five

(01:04:04):
was all about. It was like, let's well, you know,
the last time we had this, you know, as they
see at this like deep state that was thwarting them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Now let's now we're going.

Speaker 14 (01:04:13):
To figure out how to actually do stuff. So what
they're trying to do is avoid the kind of checks
of these more moderate factions within Trump world. And Vote
is a really interesting person here because Vote was kind
of dead center of some of the biggest controversies of
the last term. So Vote was involved in holding the

(01:04:35):
money up, the aid to Ukraine up that happened through
the Office of Management and Budget. Now that led to
obviously an impeachment hearing and everything. As Vote saw it,
that was the deep state, you know, trying to stop
Donald Trump. So there's a lot of ways in which
these the guys involved with Project twenty twenty five, including
Russ Vote, have been sort of preparing for this moment

(01:04:56):
for years, and I think that's one of the reasons
this presidency has been so much more hardline ideologically than
the previous one.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Well, that's what I find interesting. And you go into
some great history about his time working for Senator Phil Graham,
I mean, pull out your political history books, but Texas
Republican fiscal hawk, and you say he certainly had quite
an impact on vote in terms of where he got
that from. But I think what's really interesting is, you know,
this idea of these views on executive power. I mean,

(01:05:25):
I think we thought. I mean that, I think is
what's so fascinating right about this second Trump term, consolidating
executive power like we've never seen before, and he certainly
is helping the president do this.

Speaker 14 (01:05:38):
Yeah, and that's certainly where these kind of libertarian you know,
Phil Graham has had long an interesting career, but I'd
say he's more of the sort of libertarian bent than
somebody like Russ Vote that and that's where the difference.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
Is, right.

Speaker 14 (01:05:51):
Whereas a lot of these deficit hawks, the old old
line deficit hawks were really interested in Congress as the
forcing function for russ vote. It's the executive It's it's
kind of clearing the field and letting Donald Trump have
as much leeway as possible.

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
You know.

Speaker 14 (01:06:06):
Of course critics are going to say too much leeway,
We're you know, bordering on an imperial presidency. And so
that's the kind of like ideological conflict that's playing out
behind the scenes, you know, as as Trump does his thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
Yeah, it's just you know, fascinating a story like yours.
You know, the people that are so instrumental in shaping
what this Trump term looks like. Just really amazing stuff. Max,
Thank you so much, really appreciate Max Chack and comments
at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, co host of the Elon Inc. Podcast.
Check out his story This is on the Bloomberg coming
also in the new issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine. Can

(01:06:41):
find at Bloomberg dot com too.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
Earth Day was this past Tuesday, and once again we
find farmers among those at the center of President Trump's
trade war with China.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
With lower crop prices and higher costs for farm necessities,
the threat of retaliatory tariffs can further hurt US farmers.
That's not all in the US farmers have a deep
sense of just how dependent they are on China for
a steady clip of demand, a trade flow that's allowed
the US to rank among the world's top crop exporters.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
If that trade dramatically shrinks, it would likely spell disastrous
consequences for the agricultural economy that helps power America's heartland.
Rebecca Takeuel knows about farming in the United States. She
is also filmmaker and director, along with her husband Josh,
of the film Common Ground, which looks into how food
production and agriculture can be done better with less environmental impact.

(01:07:55):
We've talked with them before. She has a great understanding
of the industry. Rebecca, it's great to have you back
here on Bloomberg Business Week. Got to start though, with
what kind of dominates our world. We're all focused on
DC policies, tariffs, trade, wars, supply chains, the current political environment,
the current talk about tariffs, how does that impact the

(01:08:18):
agricultural world and also really more specifically the regenerative farming world.

Speaker 16 (01:08:23):
Specifically, how it affects agriculture today is farmers are going bankrupt.
They have become death surfs to feeding us. And the
reason is because there's so many agricultural inputs that not
only are creating runoff, degrading the land, creating food that
doesn't have nutrition, but as the costs rise, what's happening

(01:08:45):
is these farmers are getting less and less profit and
it's created an industry where farmers have a five times
higher suicide rate than any other industry. And we're talking
about the US, which is a huge agricultural exporter, and
an industry that's harming the very people that are growing
the food that we're extorting. It's a system that's not
currently working. Regenerative agriculture is based on local supply chains,

(01:09:08):
local economies. It's more based on circular economies versus this
idea of extraction and this sort of global food supply
chain that is not a system that actually is realistic
or could ever work. That's not how living in a
regenerative way could ever function. Because you have to eat
the food that you grow in your local environment, with

(01:09:29):
inputs that come from your local environment. It has the
benefit of not only creating a huge surplus of economic
growth for the farmers and the economy, but it creates
this wealth of resiliency, of biodiversity, of a variety of
different types of crops versus a monocrop that's then going
to give that farmer a much higher revenue stream. And

(01:09:51):
farmers that are switching from industrialized agriculture to regenerative agriculture
see a ninety percent increase in their profits with in
here one.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Yeah, I just want to jump in because we don't
have a ton of time here, and I want to
stick on one point that you mentioned, which is the
idea of eating what is produced close to us, the
way that we experience food in the United States right now,
And I'll just use my own kitchen as an example
and my own fridge as an example. I've got bananas
from outside of the US. I've got strawberries from very

(01:10:22):
far away, maybe California, maybe Mexico, maybe somewhere else. I've
got apples from New York. We've got greens from California.
We've got almonds from California, and you know that's twenty
five hundred miles away. So everything that I'm eating right
now in April is from outside of the state except

(01:10:43):
for apples right now. That's just because of where we
are seasonally. Are you saying that we should only be
eating what's produced close to us.

Speaker 16 (01:10:50):
I'm saying that if you want the most nutrient dense food,
if you want to support a healthy agricultural system, then
we're going to start looking at the regions that we
live in to feed us. And so we don't need
to be sending our food out of the country. We
don't need to be importing synthetic, toxic inputs to spray
on our fields and farms and that we then get
exposed to. There is a natural, simple way to farm

(01:11:13):
in nature's image, the way it was done for millennia
before we started farming in this crazy way with all
these synthetic inputs that we call it the quote unquote
green revolution.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
I think one challenge to that. I think one challenge
to that could be the fact that you have different
regions in the United States that are set up specifically
for growing certain things like Let's think about Iowa, for example,
and the so many acres that are filled with soybeans
in Iowa corn as well. Over half the soybeans that
are produced in the US actually are exported, or over

(01:11:43):
half the soybeans that are exported or exported to China.
We can't really change the environment to use those soybeans
that are actually going somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (01:11:53):
Right.

Speaker 16 (01:11:54):
The idea that soybeans being shipped to China is somehow
feeding the world is totally a backwards like, we don't
need soy to be healthy. That's soy then is fed
to something else, that then is fed to something else.
That is an insane model that we're going to ship
soy to China, then they're going to feed that to
an animal, and then we're going to ship that animal
back here and eat that. That is not a system
that is regenerative. It's not a system that is healthy.

(01:12:15):
That's not a system that makes any sense economically. The
way to be healthy, the way to have a thriving economy,
the way to support the people who grow our food
is to support the people that we can find in
our regions. It drastically reduces the transportation costs of the
supply chains of reducing the dependency on the fossil fuel

(01:12:36):
based inputs.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
Well, you know one thing I want to challenge you with,
And I think some people who are listening who are like, yeah,
this sounds so good. And I think when we've talked before,
I remember maybe bringing up working with Chipotle, who really
thought about their producers. And we're trying to to kind
of go back the way things used to be produced,
this clean cycle that doesn't hurt the environment, that actually
helps the environment and keeps it going. But I'm wondering, is,

(01:13:01):
you know, Rebecca, can we really transform industrial farming to
regenerative ag and ramp it up so that the process
of regenerative farming can feed everyone in the United States
and you know, potentially feed the world. Is it even
possible to.

Speaker 16 (01:13:19):
Do that one hundred percent? It's already happening. The USDA
is already find funding climate smart agriculture, major institutional investors
and banks are exploring soil health linked financial instruments.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
We are literally at.

Speaker 16 (01:13:34):
The tipping point right now, and it's the early movers
and the regenerative AAG movement that will be the leaders
of this huge next green economic wave.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
What's holding really back, what's still holding it back, and
what percentage? What percentage of the food we eat is
actually regenerative farmed.

Speaker 16 (01:13:50):
Currently is a small percentage. It's less than five percent.
In the United States, you'll find regenerative organic agriculture. What's
holding us back has been the policies that keep us
locked in to this crazy industrialized cycle of growing food.
That's I believe beginning to change. We're starting to see
people get really excited about the economic benefit of regenerative

(01:14:10):
agriculture and the surplus of food that comes from that,
and the health benefits that I mean, it's a win
win win, the environmental benefits that come from that, the
climate resiliency that then impacts the farmer's pocketbook because they
don't want to talk about climate change, but they do
want to talk about the weather, and all of that
is impacted by how we grow our food. And farmers
are beginning to realize that and they want to get

(01:14:32):
out of this model. They want to make a profit,
they want to take care of their land, they want
to grow healthy food. This is something that's important to them.
I come from a legacy farming family, and I know
and my family has suffered from exposure to these inputs
that have been imported, and so there's a real opportunity
for us as a country to lead the way, to
show what it looks like to create real revitalation of

(01:14:55):
our economy, of our environment, to create stability. And all
of that is through making some very simple shifts in
how we grow our food. And the big part that's
holding us back is the way we think about it
and the way that government has put these policies into
place that keep us locked into that extractive model.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
It sounds like perhaps maybe you see this trade war
as an opportunity to completely reshape the US agricultural industrial complex.

Speaker 16 (01:15:21):
Now I think that's the only way to look at it.
This is a huge opportunity. We have a very short
window of time to course correct here, because if we
think it's bad now, we should look at what it's
going to be like in thirty years. If we continue
down this path, it's going to be we're going to
reshape our parent And so if we are able right
now to start to look at how we can really
build that resiliency, that economic resiliency that create resilience, then

(01:15:46):
we're going to see a totally different world, and this
is the moment to do it. The farmers know it,
the government is starting to catch on, and you know
who else is starting to catch on, Big business. I mean,
Monsanto Bear is already developing a quote unquote organic roundup.
So people are starting to think about what they're starting
to act.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
So I might say, finally, one thing, one thing I
want to ask you, do we have to get used
to when I grew up And it's not that long ago.
It's like things were in season. We had apples in
the fall, we went apple picking, like we had peaches
at certain times. We had berries at certain times, we
had watermelon in the summer. Like we just like that

(01:16:25):
was our world because it was the cycles of the
seasons and what we could get because it wasn't such
a global food supply. I mean, I can get strawberries
every time of the year, like I can get It's
like kind of amazing. Do we have to maybe redefine
our expectations when it comes to our access to food
if we really want to maybe be more respectful of

(01:16:46):
our environment and how we grow things, we do.

Speaker 16 (01:16:49):
Need to reset our expectations about what we eat. If
we think that what we're eating now is going to
create longevity and health that is totally backwards. If you
look at what we eat one hundred years ago, it
was locally sourced. People were healthy. They weren't nearly fat,
sick and dead like we are all right now. Essentially,
a regenerative model is one that is a healthy model,
and it tastes good. Nutrient dense food tastes good. So

(01:17:13):
when people start to make this switch, at first of like,
oh it's too expensive and oh it's too restrictive, But
that's not the case at all. When you go to
your local farmers market, you suddenly get sess to a
world of flavor and it's local and it's one that
you are symbiotic with because it's from your local environment.
So absolutely we need to reset our expectations when it
comes to eating food. But it's one that we should

(01:17:33):
celebrate and be excited about because it's going to make
everyone's lives better.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Hey, Rebecca, before we let you go, we only have
about forty five seconds left. But can this be done
in your view independent of government support or do you
think the government needs to push farmers to do this.

Speaker 16 (01:17:49):
Farmers do not need to be pushed to do this.
Farmers feel locked in the current cycle. They're stuck there,
often by the bank loans that they have that make
them forced to spray, which they do I don't really
want to do. When they get access to regenerative agricultural information,
everybody wants to make that transition when they realize they.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
Can, so.

Speaker 16 (01:18:08):
I thinks farmers are ready to make the switch. I
think the government is starting to catch up. I think
we're going to shift the policies that are keeping us
locked in this broken model, and welcome to the new movement.
This is the age of regeneration.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
This is the.

Speaker 16 (01:18:23):
Tipping points that and the whole world is about to
shift into this new model, and this is the next
trillion dollar industry.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Rebecca Tikel, filmmaker and director of the documentary Common Ground.
You can find streaming now on Amazon Prime.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
Rebecca, thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday
afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App.
You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube

(01:19:00):
and always on the Bloomberg terminal

Speaker 5 (01:19:09):
Mhm

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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - April 25th, 2025

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