Latest / Balance of Power / Weekly Washington Policy Pulse: Xi-Trump Meeting, AI, Bank Capital (September 21, 2026)
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Podcasts.
- 0:05Speaker 3: Radio. News.
- 0:09Speaker 1: This is your weekly Washington Policy Pulse on the Balance
- 0:13Speaker 1: of Power podcast. I'm Joe Matthew. Every Monday, Bloomberg Intelligence
- 0:17Speaker 1: Senior Policy Analyst and friend of the show Nathan Dean
- 0:20Speaker 1: shares his weekly call on upcoming catalysts in the nation's capitals.
- 0:24Speaker 1: Listen for the most recent and relevant policy research from
- 0:27Speaker 1: our team at Bloomberg Intelligence. Now with today's installment, here's
- 0:30Speaker 1: Nathan Dean.
- 0:31Speaker 2: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Nathan Dean.
- 0:33Speaker 3: I'm a senior policy analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence here in
- 0:36Speaker 3: the Washington, D.C.
- 0:37Speaker 2: Bureau.
- 0:37Speaker 3: I want to say thank you for joining us on
- 0:39Speaker 3: the Washington Policy Pulse. Also, for those of you who
- 0:41Speaker 3: are viewing us via the Balance of Power podcast, we
- 0:43Speaker 3: always appreciate you listening. Today is September 21st, 10.02 a.m.
- 0:48Speaker 3: We're actually getting very close to the elections. The House
- 0:51Speaker 3: is gone. The Senate is still here this week. But
- 0:54Speaker 3: before the House left, they passed the Russia sanctions bill
- 0:58Speaker 3: that we've talked about in this call before.
- 1:00Speaker 2: President Trump signed it. It's now into law.
- 1:02Speaker 3: This bill essentially gives President Trump another tool to conduct tariffs,
- 1:06Speaker 3: specifically against those countries that are purchasing Russia oil. So
- 1:10Speaker 3: think China, think Turkey, think India. And this really just
- 1:14Speaker 3: isn't something that we should be concerned about right now.
- 1:16Speaker 3: But as the Russia-Ukraine relationship, the conflict becomes even more interesting,
- 1:22Speaker 3: I'm struggling to come up with the right words, but
- 1:24Speaker 3: as it becomes more and more of an issue, just
- 1:27Speaker 3: this morning, President Trump said, tweeted about how he lamented
- 1:32Speaker 3: that the diesel oil operations in Russia had been destroyed.
- 1:36Speaker 3: But as President Trump focuses more on the UK and
- 1:39Speaker 3: Russia relationship and conflict, this is more of an issue.
- 1:43Speaker 3: But as a reminder, this is just a tool in
- 1:45Speaker 3: the toolbox. And so I wouldn't worry about this until
- 1:48Speaker 3: after the election and into 2027. Over on the Senate side,
- 1:52Speaker 3: the Senate is still here. They're doing some nomination works
- 1:54Speaker 3: this week. For example, the Senate Banking Committee confirmed Brian Johnson,
- 1:58Speaker 3: or not confirmed, sorry, the Senate Banking Committee advanced Brian
- 2:02Speaker 3: Johnson to be the next director of the CFPB. But
- 2:05Speaker 3: let's talk about the failure of clarity for a second,
- 2:08Speaker 3: because the SEC and the CFTC have come out quite
- 2:10Speaker 3: a bit doing some rulemakings on the crypto space that
- 2:13Speaker 3: are worth talking about.
- 2:14Speaker 2: So the Clarity Act failed.
- 2:17Speaker 3: I think a lot of you knew that I actually
- 2:21Speaker 3: thought it was going to pass back in the August
- 2:23Speaker 3: recess time.
- 2:24Speaker 2: It didn't.
- 2:25Speaker 3: So what is the SEC and the CFTC doing right now? Well,
- 2:27Speaker 3: the SEC has already relaunched its regulation crypto assets. That
- 2:32Speaker 3: is a proposal that deals with issuer exemptions. So if
- 2:35Speaker 3: you're launching a new token, you can avoid certain disclosure requirements,
- 2:38Speaker 3: some of the IPO-like requirements.
- 2:40Speaker 2: Not all that big of a deal.
- 2:41Speaker 3: But certainly interesting if you're in the space. Just last week,
- 2:44Speaker 3: they released guidance on innovation exemptions. This is on the
- 2:48Speaker 3: tokenization side, not so much on the crypto side, but
- 2:51Speaker 3: on the tokenization side, the digital trading of securities. This
- 2:55Speaker 3: actually was a five-year exemption that essentially will allow additional trading,
- 3:00Speaker 3: additional tokenization of digital securities. But please note that this
- 3:05Speaker 3: is guidance. So one stroke of the pen by a
- 3:08Speaker 3: future SEC chairman or chairwoman can essentially undo this. And
- 3:12Speaker 3: this is also going to bring the wrath of certain
- 3:14Speaker 3: aspects of the traditional finance side. I'm specifically probably thinking
- 3:19Speaker 3: Citadel here, because if you have the digitalization of securities
- 3:23Speaker 3: trading and they have different rules of the road than
- 3:25Speaker 3: you do in the traditional securities trading, There are going
- 3:28Speaker 3: to be some disagreements there. So I wouldn't be surprised
- 3:31Speaker 3: if you see a little bit more in this space
- 3:33Speaker 3: about specifically what the outcome of this is and the
- 3:36Speaker 3: legality of it and what the SEC is doing. No
- 3:40Speaker 3: indication that there's a lawsuit yet. But again, this is
- 3:43Speaker 3: something that the traditional side of the coin isn't going
- 3:45Speaker 3: to like all that much. And then just last week,
- 3:48Speaker 3: Bloomberg News reported that the CFTC had sent a proposal
- 3:51Speaker 3: over to the Office of Interregulatory Affairs, also known as OIRA.
- 3:54Speaker 2: This is the shop over at the White House.
- 3:57Speaker 3: And that the CFTC is going to produce a proposal
- 3:59Speaker 3: on markets and assets. Now, really, nobody knows what this
- 4:05Speaker 3: proposal is going to have the details of, but just
- 4:08Speaker 3: keep in mind here is that the CFTC can only
- 4:11Speaker 3: issue these rulemakings within the already existing CFTC authority. This
- 4:16Speaker 3: is why getting the Clarity Act was such an important thing,
- 4:18Speaker 3: because it was going to expand the role of the
- 4:20Speaker 3: CFTC And now the CFTC can only do what's within
- 4:23Speaker 3: its authority. And for commodities, which things like Bitcoin, they
- 4:28Speaker 3: only have authority over fraud and anti-market manipulation here. It's
- 4:33Speaker 3: one of those things where I'm not exactly sure what
- 4:36Speaker 3: this rule states, but if it is what I think
- 4:38Speaker 3: it is, it's going to be more so of here's
- 4:41Speaker 3: what our authority is. We're going to put another stamp
- 4:44Speaker 3: on our authority by declaring via rulemaking that this is
- 4:46Speaker 3: what our authority is. And we're essentially going to allow
- 4:49Speaker 3: additional exemptions here. But then that's probably going to get
- 4:52Speaker 3: tested in court. And if the CFTC were to overstep
- 4:55Speaker 3: its boundaries here, then you may run into an issue
- 4:58Speaker 3: where there's the courts. So the long story short is,
- 5:00Speaker 3: or maybe the short story long is, when it comes
- 5:02Speaker 3: to crypto, you essentially have five years worth of clarity
- 5:05Speaker 3: because you have the rest of the Trump administration where
- 5:08Speaker 3: it's going to be less of an enforcement risk. And
- 5:10Speaker 3: then if a Democrat wins in 2028, and that's an if,
- 5:13Speaker 3: If the Democrat wins in 2028, and then if the
- 5:16Speaker 3: Democrat decides to nominate somebody who is the future SEC,
- 5:19Speaker 3: CFTC chair that takes an opposing view, and then if
- 5:22Speaker 3: they decide they want to unwind these rulemakings, and then
- 5:25Speaker 3: if they want to be able to defend those in courts,
- 5:27Speaker 3: all those ifs add up to about five years' worth
- 5:30Speaker 3: of clarity. It'll probably be up to about 2021. And
- 5:34Speaker 3: so now it's up to the crypto sector to really
- 5:36Speaker 3: define and cement what its status is and make it
- 5:40Speaker 3: so difficult for a future SEC or CFTC to unwind it.
- 5:43Speaker 3: Because if the Democrats take the House like it's looking
- 5:47Speaker 3: like they're going to. It's not like clarity is coming back. Clarity,
- 5:52Speaker 3: for example, for what it's worth, I don't think the
- 5:56Speaker 3: Senate Democrats were talking about potentially trying to pass this
- 5:58Speaker 3: in the lame duck. I don't think that's going to happen.
- 6:01Speaker 3: And I just don't think clarity is going to come
- 6:03Speaker 3: back at all for the next two years. So that's
- 6:07Speaker 3: what's going on over on the crypto side. Real quick,
- 6:09Speaker 3: also on the Senate side, the Senate Ag Committee moved
- 6:12Speaker 3: forward with its version of the Farm Bill. This still
- 6:15Speaker 3: has some disagreements with Democrats over the size of snap cuts.
- 6:18Speaker 3: This is the program formerly known as food stamps. There's
- 6:22Speaker 3: lots of talk about trying to get this in the
- 6:23Speaker 3: lame duck session, but I would just note is the
- 6:26Speaker 3: Republican chairman of the House Ag Committee, Glenn Thompson, has
- 6:29Speaker 3: asked for a waiver to serve another term. On the
- 6:31Speaker 3: Republican side, they have term limits for chairs. They don't
- 6:34Speaker 3: on the Democratic side. And he asked for another extension
- 6:38Speaker 3: or a waiver so that he could serve as another term,
- 6:40Speaker 3: I think, to get the farm bill over the line
- 6:42Speaker 3: because he knows it's not going to happen in this
- 6:44Speaker 3: congressional session.
- 6:45Speaker 2: Now, whether he gets a waiver or not, I don't know.
- 6:47Speaker 2: Probably not.
- 6:48Speaker 3: But I'm just saying here is that I don't have
- 6:50Speaker 3: high hopes that the farm bill is going to pass.
- 6:52Speaker 3: So look for another kick of the can. And just
- 6:53Speaker 3: as a reminder, no government shutdown comes September 30th. They've
- 6:57Speaker 3: already kicked the can on that. That's the new government
- 7:00Speaker 3: shutdown date is December 11th. So one thing that you
- 7:03Speaker 3: haven't heard us talk about quite a bit on these
- 7:05Speaker 3: calls is artificial intelligence. And there's a reason for that,
- 7:09Speaker 3: is that artificial intelligence is one of those things where
- 7:11Speaker 3: obviously it's driving the entire news cycle. It's driving all
- 7:14Speaker 3: the CapEx spending right now. It's driving a lot of
- 7:16Speaker 3: the markets at the moment. But when it comes to Washington,
- 7:18Speaker 3: there just isn't really much of an idea of what
- 7:21Speaker 3: it is they want to do. And this is why
- 7:24Speaker 3: research from Matt Schettenhelm that came out this morning is
- 7:26Speaker 3: pointing to the states trying to fill up the void
- 7:29Speaker 3: in 2027. So if you ask President Trump, you know,
- 7:32Speaker 3: President Trump's view is you just need a strong president
- 7:34Speaker 3: to serve as the guardrails for artificial intelligence. He also
- 7:37Speaker 3: said over the weekend that he's going to name AI
- 7:40Speaker 3: force very similar to Space Force AI. According to Bloomberg News,
- 7:44Speaker 3: this came as somewhat of a surprise to the rest
- 7:46Speaker 3: of the people of the White House. He's also going
- 7:48Speaker 3: to name an AI czar. Now, right now, there already
- 7:52Speaker 3: is a czar that deals with artificial intelligence and crypto,
- 7:54Speaker 3: but I'm not exactly sure what the new AI czar
- 7:57Speaker 3: is going to be. But long story short, man, I
- 8:00Speaker 3: can't believe I used long story short twice in a call.
- 8:02Speaker 2: That's not great.
- 8:03Speaker 3: Anyway, where the White House is most likely going is
- 8:06Speaker 3: to bring the industry together and say, right, here's what
- 8:10Speaker 3: the task force will look like, and this is what
- 8:12Speaker 3: the industry is going to do. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson
- 8:17Speaker 3: even just said this morning in prep for the President
- 8:20Speaker 3: Xi Jinping, President Trump meetings that there's going to be
- 8:24Speaker 3: additional industry collaboration when it comes to artificial intelligence. If
- 8:27Speaker 3: you ask the Senate Democrats and if you ask the
- 8:29Speaker 3: House Democrats and if you ask the Senate Republicans, legislation
- 8:33Speaker 3: is needed. This legislation can have very different views. Last week,
- 8:36Speaker 3: there was debates over a kill switch. Not that the
- 8:39Speaker 3: government controls the kill switch, but that companies would control
- 8:41Speaker 3: the kill switch. There wasn't an agreement to get that
- 8:44Speaker 3: through on the fast track process. So that's going to
- 8:46Speaker 3: have to wait for another day. But there really are
- 8:49Speaker 3: like so many different ideas about legislation. Really, nobody really
- 8:52Speaker 3: knows what they want to do.
- 8:53Speaker 2: And then on the House.
- 8:54Speaker 3: Republican side, the thought is that you're going to have
- 8:56Speaker 3: a self-regulatory organization, very similar to FINRA, where the industry
- 9:01Speaker 3: itself polices itself.
- 9:04Speaker 2: Nobody really has any views here.
- 9:05Speaker 3: So what's going to happen is in 2027, you're going
- 9:07Speaker 3: to see states like California, where Governor Newsom has already
- 9:10Speaker 3: done this, where they're going to start putting in state-level protections,
- 9:13Speaker 3: state-level regulations. And you're going to have this argument of
- 9:17Speaker 3: Washington versus the states versus the AI companies versus President Trump.
- 9:22Speaker 3: You can see where I'm going is it's quite a mess.
- 9:26Speaker 3: And lastly, on the AI, before we get to the
- 9:28Speaker 3: Xi Jinping Trump meeting, there's discussions about going on in
- 9:32Speaker 3: Washington about whether or not the United States and China
- 9:34Speaker 3: would agree to some type of AI truce.
- 9:37Speaker 2: Quote unquote.
- 9:39Speaker 3: But again, we'll talk about that in a second. So,
- 9:42Speaker 3: just a couple other things to keep in mind on
- 9:44Speaker 3: the regulatory front. Actually, before we go to the regulatory front,
- 9:47Speaker 3: let's talk about the $ 5, 000 checks that President Trump promised
- 9:51Speaker 3: back in Dallas. Now, I know we're a couple weeks
- 9:53Speaker 3: old on this, but I do want to bring this
- 9:54Speaker 3: up because you may see a headline fairly soon on this. So,
- 9:57Speaker 3: if you go back to Dallas, President Trump, this was
- 9:59Speaker 3: the Republican. midterm convention. President Trump announces that he's going
- 10:03Speaker 3: to give every adult American $ 5, 000 if the Republicans take
- 10:08Speaker 3: the House and the Senate. uh so essentially if they
- 10:11Speaker 3: keep congress now this would cost about 1.3 trillion dollars
- 10:14Speaker 3: it would have to come via reconciliation uh the house
- 10:17Speaker 3: republicans have already said look it would require an act
- 10:20Speaker 3: of congress president trump doesn't think so but i think
- 10:22Speaker 3: pretty much everybody else in washington thinks that it would
- 10:25Speaker 3: have to come via reconciliation so if republicans win both
- 10:28Speaker 3: the house and the senate they would have the ability
- 10:30Speaker 3: to do reconciliation again The problem is, is that pretty
- 10:33Speaker 3: much enough senators have already come out and said they
- 10:35Speaker 3: do not support the idea due to inflationary impact, due
- 10:38Speaker 3: to the economic impact. And so if this proposal were
- 10:42Speaker 3: to move forward, and Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, sorry, Pennsylvania,
- 10:46Speaker 3: has already said that he would actually put this proposal
- 10:49Speaker 3: into legislation if they win. It's mostly going to be
- 10:53Speaker 3: income limited. So only certain people up to a certain
- 10:56Speaker 3: amount of income. I don't even think it's going to happen.
- 10:58Speaker 3: I actually had a 20% chance of odds. And just
- 11:01Speaker 3: as a reminder, under our methodology of how we do odds,
- 11:05Speaker 3: our 20% is actually more likely a 5%.
- 11:07Speaker 2: So. just keep that in mind. But the reason why
- 11:11Speaker 2: I bring it.
- 11:11Speaker 3: Up is there is discussions about potentially offering a $ 500
- 11:15Speaker 3: check to ACA enrollees who don't have to pay certain
- 11:19Speaker 3: premium levels. There's about $ 2 billion worth left of the
- 11:22Speaker 3: Affordable Care Act money. The Republicans are trying to rescind
- 11:27Speaker 3: at the moment. President Trump has floated the idea of
- 11:29Speaker 3: using that $ 2 billion and sending it out to about
- 11:32Speaker 3: approximately 1 million Americans. via $ 500 checks. So if you
- 11:36Speaker 3: see that in the news headline coming up, that's what's
- 11:38Speaker 3: referring to, not the $ 5, 000 check.
- 11:41Speaker 2: That's why I bring it up.
- 11:42Speaker 3: So moving over to the regulatory side, let's talk a
- 11:44Speaker 3: little bit about the SEC and the Fed. The SEC
- 11:47Speaker 3: has actually put out a proposal that would essentially scrap
- 11:50Speaker 3: all proxy advisor at the federal level, push it back
- 11:54Speaker 3: to the states. I'm going to be writing this up
- 11:58Speaker 3: a little bit later this week. So if you want
- 11:59Speaker 3: to have a chat with that, please let us know. And,
- 12:03Speaker 3: you know, actually, just as you know, it's... Really interesting
- 12:07Speaker 3: because you know this gets into the idea of Dexit
- 12:09Speaker 3: where companies are leaving Delaware going to Texas going to
- 12:11Speaker 3: New Jersey going to Nevada. And so this is certainly
- 12:14Speaker 3: something that's going to be something to pay attention to.
- 12:17Speaker 3: And then over on the bank capital side let's talk
- 12:18Speaker 3: about the Federal Reserve for example for a second. The
- 12:22Speaker 3: Fed vice chair for supervision Michelle Bowman was in London
- 12:24Speaker 3: last week she gave a speech on Friday. And she
- 12:27Speaker 3: essentially said that the stress testing proposals, one dealing with
- 12:31Speaker 3: transparency and one dealing with volatility, would be finalized, quote,
- 12:35Speaker 3: in the next couple, in the coming weeks, unquote, in
- 12:38Speaker 3: the coming weeks. So the stress testing proposals are most
- 12:41Speaker 3: likely going to be out in October. And then she
- 12:44Speaker 3: also insinuated that the Basel III endgame and the G-SIB
- 12:47Speaker 3: search proposals would be out by December.
- 12:51Speaker 2: Now, this would actually take care of all.
- 12:53Speaker 3: Phase one of what I'm coining to be phase one
- 12:55Speaker 3: of bank deregulation. And then phase two, there are two
- 12:59Speaker 3: proposals that we're hearing out there. I mean, there's a
- 13:01Speaker 3: lot of proposals, but the two that are most important
- 13:03Speaker 3: to us. One is this regulatory bank proposal on asset thresholds,
- 13:07Speaker 3: and the other one is dealing with the liquidity coverage ratio.
- 13:10Speaker 3: So I'll have a little bit more in-depth thoughts on
- 13:13Speaker 3: the LCR in the next week or so.
- 13:14Speaker 2: I do have a note already out on the regulatory
- 13:17Speaker 2: bank relief.
- 13:18Speaker 3: If you want to get a copy of that, please
- 13:19Speaker 3: ping me, and I'll get that over to you. So finally,
- 13:22Speaker 3: let's talk about the President Trump's Xi Jinping meeting. Now,
- 13:26Speaker 3: my friends at Bloomberg Economics who sit back here have
- 13:28Speaker 3: actually put a lot more in-depth research into what to
- 13:30Speaker 3: expect out of New York. I'm sorry, out of the
- 13:33Speaker 3: meetings actually here in D.C., but Trump's right now up
- 13:35Speaker 3: in New York because of UNGA, the United Nations General Assembly.
- 13:39Speaker 3: There are four things that we really wanted to highlight.
- 13:42Speaker 3: First was, is there going to be an AI truce?
- 13:45Speaker 3: Is there going to be any type of an agreement
- 13:47Speaker 3: on AI? Probably not, but certainly interesting to see. Is
- 13:51Speaker 3: there going to be any agreement on tariffs, specifically in
- 13:54Speaker 3: this case liquid natural gas? Are you going to see
- 13:56Speaker 3: any type of China-U.S. agreement on tariffs? As a reminder,
- 13:59Speaker 3: the United States has floated additional tariffs on China. They've
- 14:02Speaker 3: actually not helped put those tariffs in place. due to
- 14:06Speaker 3: the fact that this meeting was taking place. So again,
- 14:08Speaker 3: are you going to see any agreement on there? Are
- 14:10Speaker 3: you going to see any help with the Iranian conflict
- 14:12Speaker 3: coming from the China side? President Trump very much wants
- 14:16Speaker 3: to get out of Iran. Are you going to see
- 14:18Speaker 3: any thought there? And then there's also this thought of,
- 14:21Speaker 3: are you going to see any movement from Chinese automobiles
- 14:23Speaker 3: to being built in the United States? Because there was
- 14:25Speaker 3: a comment from President Trump last week where he essentially said,
- 14:28Speaker 3: And I'm paraphrasing here. If these Chinese automobiles were being
- 14:32Speaker 3: made by American workers, then maybe that would be considering.
- 14:35Speaker 3: So we're going to be watching to see if BYD
- 14:37Speaker 3: in particular is joining this trip coming to Washington with
- 14:40Speaker 3: the president. But considering most of the AI folks, AI
- 14:44Speaker 3: CEOs are here in town for that meeting, I think
- 14:48Speaker 3: a lot of this is going to be driven out
- 14:49Speaker 3: of AI. So Again, just real quickly, I want to
- 14:53Speaker 3: say thank you very much for attending. We really appreciate it.
- 14:55Speaker 3: I know this call ran a little bit alongside, but
- 14:57Speaker 3: it's been a while since we've chatted. If there's anything
- 15:00Speaker 3: we can do to assist, please don't hesitate to reach out.
- 15:03Speaker 3: And if other than that, have a wonderful week and
- 15:05Speaker 3: we will talk soon.
- 15:06Speaker 2: Thank you.
- 15:06Speaker 1: Our thanks to Nathan Dean, Bloomberg Intelligence senior policy analyst,
- 15:10Speaker 1: bringing you the latest installment of his weekly Washington Policy Pulse.
- 15:14Speaker 1: For more from BI or to join this call live
- 15:17Speaker 1: each week, you can email Nathan at ndean at bloomberg.net.
- 15:22Speaker 1: That's N-D-E-A-N at bloomberg.net. Come back to the podcast later
- 15:27Speaker 1: today for the latest edition of Balance of Power.