Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Trump Tax Bill Narrowly Passes House, Overcoming Infighting
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:23Speaker 2: The other news of the day, of course, is that
- 0:25Speaker 2: the House passes the big beautiful bill. Now it heads
- 0:29Speaker 2: to the Senate. Joining us now for more details on
- 0:32Speaker 2: that is Michael Shepherd, Bloomberg Senior editor in Washington. All Right,
- 0:36Speaker 2: what are the sticking points for the Republicans in the
- 0:39Speaker 2: Senate now?
- 0:41Speaker 3: Well, what they're looking at are really the same sticking
- 0:43Speaker 3: points that had really caused such a fight in the House.
- 0:48Speaker 3: And the first is reservations about the overall long term
- 0:51Speaker 3: fiscal impact of the bill. There is a concern that
- 0:55Speaker 3: this will add significantly to deficits the Congressional Budget Office
- 0:59Speaker 3: founder would add as much as two point three trillion
- 1:02Speaker 3: dollars to deficits over the next ten years, and that
- 1:05Speaker 3: of course risks exacerbating what we've been seeing in the
- 1:09Speaker 3: bomb market, and that namely is concerned about ballooning US debt.
- 1:12Speaker 3: And that was all highlighted by Moody's decision last week
- 1:16Speaker 3: to downgrade the US government's credit rating. And the other
- 1:19Speaker 3: big concern, of course is Medicaid, and we've heard this
- 1:22Speaker 3: come up from some House members, and there was a
- 1:26Speaker 3: bit of a split. There were a handful of Conservatives
- 1:28Speaker 3: who really wanted significant cuts to the program that helps
- 1:32Speaker 3: the poor receive access to medical care with government support.
- 1:36Speaker 3: But there are others who were concerned about the impact
- 1:38Speaker 3: in their districts and their states, and the political fallout
- 1:41Speaker 3: in the Senate, concerns about the impact politically and on
- 1:45Speaker 3: healthcare in their states has been more vocal. We saw
- 1:48Speaker 3: Josh Wally, a key Republican who represents a more populous
- 1:52Speaker 3: wing of the party, expressing grave worries about what would
- 1:57Speaker 3: happen to Medicaid, especially in his state of Missouri. We're
- 2:00Speaker 3: going to be watching those two themes, both on the
- 2:02Speaker 3: fiscal side, but then also on what happens to that
- 2:05Speaker 3: key title program of Medicaid outs.
- 2:08Speaker 4: Michael, what's the timing here for the Senate?
- 2:10Speaker 5: We know the Speaker of the House said, hey, we're
- 2:12Speaker 5: going to get something done by Memorial Day.
- 2:14Speaker 4: He did that. How about the Senate, what's their timetable?
- 2:17Speaker 3: Well, Mike Johnson delivered with a big assist from Donald Trump,
- 2:21Speaker 3: who really drove lawmakers hard. He met with the Republican
- 2:27Speaker 3: Conference earlier in the week to say basically that anyone
- 2:31Speaker 3: who voted against the bill or failed to support it
- 2:34Speaker 3: and stood in its way, it would be guilty of
- 2:37Speaker 3: the ultimate betrayal and would pay the price in the
- 2:40Speaker 3: next congressional elections. In the Senate, it's a little bit
- 2:44Speaker 3: of a different ballgame. It's unclear that the leadership there
- 2:49Speaker 3: is as enthusiastic about the bill with that same sense
- 2:53Speaker 3: of timing. The Treasury Sectory, Scott Besson and the President
- 2:57Speaker 3: really would like this done by July fourth. That may
- 3:00Speaker 3: be a big ask. We're really a little bit more
- 3:02Speaker 3: than a month away. Wlawmakers are going out on Memorial
- 3:05Speaker 3: Day recess, and the Senate does want to make some changes.
- 3:08Speaker 3: They do face the deadline, though, Paul and Alex and
- 3:11Speaker 3: that is on the debt limit. The bill does contain
- 3:14Speaker 3: a measure that would raise the US borrowing limit and
- 3:17Speaker 3: help us avert that thing that we fear of a
- 3:21Speaker 3: US default. We're seeing an X state somewhere in August,
- 3:25Speaker 3: at least according to the Treasury Secretary so that gives
- 3:28Speaker 3: them a target to work for before their August recess.
- 3:31Speaker 3: But they do have a lot to get through, and
- 3:33Speaker 3: the President may have to do some arm twisting in
- 3:36Speaker 3: the Senate as well, just as he did in the House.
- 3:38Speaker 2: So talking my book here, I was really interested that
- 3:41Speaker 2: they push forward the rollback for some of the clean
- 3:44Speaker 2: energy tax credits. So the Renewable Investment Tax Credit and
- 3:47Speaker 2: production tax credit is now going to be done in
- 3:50Speaker 2: twenty twenty eight rather than twenty twenty nine and twenty
- 3:53Speaker 2: thirty Yeah, twenty thirty one. And there are other parts
- 3:56Speaker 2: of that as well that have really put pressure on
- 3:58Speaker 2: the clean energy guys. A lot of the clean energy
- 4:01Speaker 2: projects are in red states, So how are Republican senators
- 4:04Speaker 2: going to manage that?
- 4:06Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question, Alex, and it is something
- 4:08Speaker 3: that really divided the caucus in way because they do
- 4:11Speaker 3: like getting that money, and it's sort of the same
- 4:13Speaker 3: tension that we've seen in Republican and opposition from the
- 4:17Speaker 3: President himself to the Chips Act and some of that
- 4:20Speaker 3: funding and some of those subsidies. They like having the
- 4:23Speaker 3: projects in their state. Yet when they look at ways
- 4:25Speaker 3: to find savings for this pretty expensive tax bill. They
- 4:29Speaker 3: start looking for everything, and it's not only medicaid, but
- 4:33Speaker 3: as you mentioned, it is those clean energy projects and programs.
- 4:38Speaker 3: They're trying to say that, look, we're going to accelerate
- 4:41Speaker 3: the timeline, but not eliminate them entirely.
- 4:45Speaker 4: There, Michael, thank you so much for joining us.
- 4:47Speaker 5: Michael Shepherd, Senior editor, Bloomberg News, joining us from Washington, DC,
- 4:50Speaker 5: talking about some tax legislation, big big move forward today,
- 4:53Speaker 5: our President Trump in the House.
- 4:57Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Pod. Catch us live
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- 5:11Speaker 5: Alextel Paul Swiney live here in on our Bloomberg Interactive
- 5:14Speaker 5: Studio streaming live on YouTube as well, and also on
- 5:17Speaker 5: that connected TV stuff think Roku and Samsung TV. If
- 5:20Speaker 5: you got that kind of stuff, you can get us.
- 5:21Speaker 5: Bloomberg Originals is kind of where you go find us there. Again,
- 5:26Speaker 5: the Justice Department is probing whether Alphabet's Google violated antitrust
- 5:30Speaker 5: law with an agreement to use the artificial intelligence technology
- 5:33Speaker 5: of a popular chat maker. According to people familiar with
- 5:36Speaker 5: than knowledge of the matter. It's not that they're probing
- 5:39Speaker 5: an acquisition.
- 5:40Speaker 4: That they want to make. It's using somebody's technology. I
- 5:43Speaker 4: don't know.
- 5:44Speaker 5: Stocks up three percent on news, It doesn't seem like
- 5:46Speaker 5: the market's that word. Man Deep seeing Hill, tell us
- 5:48Speaker 5: what's going on here? He covers all the technology stuff
- 5:50Speaker 5: for Bloomberg Intelligence mandeep.
- 5:52Speaker 4: I mean usually the DJ comes in when you make
- 5:56Speaker 4: an acquisition and says who whoaahah.
- 5:58Speaker 5: But this is just looking at a deal or a
- 6:01Speaker 5: contract they made with some AI provider.
- 6:04Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, in fact, all three of them, Google,
- 6:07Speaker 6: Microsoft and Amazon did this AQUI hires of these startups
- 6:12Speaker 6: back in twenty twenty four, So these were three different companies.
- 6:15Speaker 6: Google did that for Character AI. Microsoft had the same
- 6:21Speaker 6: sort of setup for Inflection, and then Amazon did it
- 6:25Speaker 6: for Adept, which is another small AI company. And if
- 6:29Speaker 6: you remember back at that time, Lena Khan was the force,
- 6:34Speaker 6: and you know, everyone was reluctant when it comes to
- 6:38Speaker 6: making these acquisitions. So this was their way of licensing
- 6:43Speaker 6: the technology. They were effectively paying a license fee and
- 6:47Speaker 6: in most cases it was non exclusive, but it ended
- 6:51Speaker 6: up basically bringing those employees to work for you know,
- 6:56Speaker 6: Google in a way where it wasn't an outright acquisition.
- 7:00Speaker 6: It was an independent company still, but they paid the
- 7:04Speaker 6: current shareholders of those companies a licensing fee which pretty
- 7:08Speaker 6: much was like sixty.
- 7:11Speaker 4: Transaction lawyers working up at that.
- 7:14Speaker 2: But how different is this from what say, Microsoft is
- 7:17Speaker 2: doing with open ai.
- 7:19Speaker 6: Well, that's a forty nine percent stake one. And in
- 7:24Speaker 6: that case, in the case of Microsoft, you're right, I mean,
- 7:27Speaker 6: the comparison is app in the sense that OpenAI still
- 7:30Speaker 6: remains independent and they're launching their products. In this case,
- 7:35Speaker 6: a lot of the folks who were working at character
- 7:37Speaker 6: ai did end up working on Google's projects, and so
- 7:44Speaker 6: same thing with Microsoft. The folks at Inflection Ai did
- 7:47Speaker 6: end up working on Microsoft's projects. That didn't happen in
- 7:51Speaker 6: the case of open ai. Open ai still is kind
- 7:55Speaker 6: of doing its own thing when it comes to model
- 7:57Speaker 6: training and everything. Microsoft is licensing the technology. That's not
- 8:02Speaker 6: the case here in terms of character Ai, because character
- 8:06Speaker 6: ai was a company with less than two hundred employees
- 8:09Speaker 6: and Google end up licensing that for almost two point
- 8:13Speaker 6: five billion. So think of, you know, a license fee
- 8:17Speaker 6: of two point five billion.
- 8:18Speaker 7: It feels yeah, yeah, And so.
- 8:23Speaker 6: I think there was that aspect which was kind of
- 8:28Speaker 6: in between in terms of how do you make an
- 8:31Speaker 6: acqua hire without an outright acquisition, and you know, the
- 8:35Speaker 6: amount was pretty big and everyone was surprised, but all
- 8:40Speaker 6: these three companies did that one after the other, so
- 8:43Speaker 6: they somehow got away and now we are seeing the
- 8:46Speaker 6: DJA is looking into it.
- 8:47Speaker 4: All right, if I'm.
- 8:48Speaker 5: On sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley where all the
- 8:51Speaker 5: smart money is, how do I view this administration here?
- 8:54Speaker 4: Are they pro tech or non pro tech?
- 8:57Speaker 6: I think so far they are looking to bring down
- 9:02Speaker 6: the regulations. For sure. We have seen some pretty big
- 9:06Speaker 6: deals getting announced. I mean the Google's acquisition of wiz
- 9:09Speaker 6: that is a M and A thirty two billion dollars. Yes,
- 9:13Speaker 6: and so there has been a flurry of M and
- 9:15Speaker 6: A activities, so I would say they are pro deal making.
- 9:20Speaker 6: At the same time, I think with big tech, every
- 9:23Speaker 6: company is different in terms of you know, how the
- 9:26Speaker 6: administration views them, and you know, the DOJ and FTC
- 9:30Speaker 6: have been doing these investigations, so it doesn't surprise me
- 9:35Speaker 6: that they are looking into it. I doubt you know,
- 9:38Speaker 6: there will be a big fine, but probably you should
- 9:41Speaker 6: talk to genery or legal expert if yeah, what she
- 9:44Speaker 6: thinks about this.
- 9:45Speaker 2: But you know, Paul pointing out that the stock is
- 9:46Speaker 2: up over three percent, how much of that is like
- 9:49Speaker 2: ignoring the headlines versus still going back to the AI
- 9:52Speaker 2: Developer Day for Google where they unveiled the whole suite
- 9:56Speaker 2: of products.
- 9:56Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that was a great event, and overall,
- 9:59Speaker 6: I think the sentiment this week is still Google's models
- 10:03Speaker 6: are getting better, their execution is getting better, They're shipping
- 10:07Speaker 6: a lot more products, So this seems to be something
- 10:11Speaker 6: that yes they are involved with. At the worst cases,
- 10:15Speaker 6: they may have to pay a fine, but really nothing
- 10:18Speaker 6: changes as far as their AI development efforts.
- 10:21Speaker 5: When I started my career on the street in mid eighties,
- 10:23Speaker 5: it was all about Microsoft and their regulatory challenges they
- 10:27Speaker 5: were just starting to go through, primarily with European regulars,
- 10:30Speaker 5: and we were freaking out like every day, like oh
- 10:32Speaker 5: my god, it's gonna be And then we look back
- 10:34Speaker 5: on it ten years later, we're like, Eh, nothing happened.
- 10:37Speaker 5: And I think a whole generation of us have kind
- 10:39Speaker 5: of become conditioned to viewing big tech and regulation is
- 10:43Speaker 5: not that big a deal. Don't worry about it. At
- 10:45Speaker 5: the end, I wonder if we're getting too complacent, though,
- 10:48Speaker 5: will they ever say Amazon breakup, Google breakupper, you know,
- 10:51Speaker 5: one of those things.
- 10:53Speaker 6: I mean, there's always a probability of that happening. I
- 10:57Speaker 6: still think it's a low probability event, given everyone wants
- 11:00Speaker 6: these companies to do better than the equivalent Chinese companies,
- 11:05Speaker 6: and so that aspect still remains. And look, the worst
- 11:09Speaker 6: case with these sort of investigations is these companies may
- 11:13Speaker 6: end up paying a fine. That's what we have seen
- 11:15Speaker 6: in the EU. Google has paid over you know, ten
- 11:17Speaker 6: billion dollars in fines and the stock will still be
- 11:20Speaker 6: okay because this is just one time. They make the
- 11:23Speaker 6: remedies and you move on. So I think that's the
- 11:26Speaker 6: worst case here in terms of a slap on the wrist,
- 11:29Speaker 6: and you know, you change the behavior. You're not gonna
- 11:32Speaker 6: do more aqua hires like that, you know, billion dollar aquahires.
- 11:36Speaker 6: But beyond that, it's hard to fathom.
- 11:39Speaker 5: All right, Bendep, thank you so much for appreciate a
- 11:40Speaker 5: man deep seeing senior tech analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 11:45Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 11:48Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto
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- 11:55Speaker 1: get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 11:59Speaker 2: All Right, Walter as President, chief investment officer and managing
- 12:02Speaker 2: director at Greenwood Capital. I got to say, the markets
- 12:05Speaker 2: are a little surprising to me. But just take a
- 12:07Speaker 2: look at the bond market for a second. Is the
- 12:09Speaker 2: long end getting yippie?
- 12:13Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a good that's a nice technical term for it.
- 12:17Speaker 4: Get a little.
- 12:18Speaker 8: Skintish maybe another way to describe it. You know, the
- 12:21Speaker 8: twenty year auction yesterday. You know, you definitely look at
- 12:24Speaker 8: the intry day chart and saw the equities key off
- 12:27Speaker 8: of that twenty years, a little bit of an unusual maturity.
- 12:29Speaker 8: The FED owns a ton of that sleeve. So not
- 12:32Speaker 8: that surprising perhaps, but I know everybody's focused on that
- 12:35Speaker 8: thirty year behind rate, but it was really the ten year.
- 12:38Speaker 8: It's really the ten year that's key. I mean, that's
- 12:40Speaker 8: what a lot of assets are priced off of. So
- 12:42Speaker 8: that's a touch lower today, and you see equities kind
- 12:44Speaker 8: of key and off of that.
- 12:46Speaker 5: So those rates are pretty attractive here, Todd, are you
- 12:48Speaker 5: getting increased discussions with your clients about, hey, should I
- 12:53Speaker 5: be up in my allocation.
- 12:54Speaker 4: To fixed income.
- 12:55Speaker 5: If I can get a two year treasury at four percent,
- 12:58Speaker 5: I would take maybe a little bit more duration risk
- 13:00Speaker 5: and get you know, more than five percent on a
- 13:02Speaker 5: thirty year.
- 13:05Speaker 8: Not we're not going out of that far, but a
- 13:07Speaker 8: lot of our accounts are balanced accounts, so we do
- 13:09Speaker 8: have fixed income exposure within that. You know, our kind
- 13:12Speaker 8: of target maturity or duration is in that call it
- 13:15Speaker 8: three to four year range, but that's a bar bell.
- 13:18Speaker 8: So some you know, one and two year paper as
- 13:20Speaker 8: well as some you know, maybe five out to seven,
- 13:22Speaker 8: but nothing really longer than that. So you you know,
- 13:25Speaker 8: these are attractive vials, as you say, if you put
- 13:27Speaker 8: a corporate spread on top of that, which have come
- 13:29Speaker 8: in lately but still decent, you can lock in some
- 13:32Speaker 8: good rates for a multi year period, which we we
- 13:34Speaker 8: find attractive. Now, interestingly, you've got several corporate issuers that
- 13:38Speaker 8: are rated above the US government debt at this point,
- 13:41Speaker 8: JP Morgan being one of them, J and J another,
- 13:45Speaker 8: And the credit default swaps for the US government are
- 13:48Speaker 8: actually higher than they are for JP Morgan at the moment,
- 13:50Speaker 8: so there's a balancing act there between the two.
- 13:54Speaker 2: What do you if you kind of ignored the last
- 13:57Speaker 2: two months, you'd be kind of no worse off unless're
- 14:00Speaker 2: taling about the bond market or to the dollar than
- 14:02Speaker 2: you would have been before. So how do you then
- 14:04Speaker 2: understand equity market volatility going forward?
- 14:10Speaker 8: Yeah, Alex is a great question, and the equity market
- 14:13Speaker 8: volatility has been extreme over that. You know, if you've
- 14:16Speaker 8: gone under a rock, like you say, two months ago
- 14:18Speaker 8: and come out now, you're basically break even. I think
- 14:21Speaker 8: we're going to continue to see volatility, and I think
- 14:23Speaker 8: it's going to be keyed off some of these macro headlines,
- 14:26Speaker 8: whether that's you know, something affecting interest rates, whether it's
- 14:28Speaker 8: this bill that has now moved out of the House
- 14:30Speaker 8: into the Senate, which by the way, this is the
- 14:33Speaker 8: end of the beginning, now of the beginning of the
- 14:35Speaker 8: end in my opinion, in this process. And then also
- 14:38Speaker 8: finally earnings, I mean we kind of forget about fundamentals
- 14:41Speaker 8: of individual companies. They actually came in a bit better
- 14:44Speaker 8: than expected in the first quarter, but revisions did come
- 14:47Speaker 8: down quite significantly for the second quarter. So I think
- 14:50Speaker 8: depending on the time of the year, the month we're in,
- 14:52Speaker 8: and where we're going to key off of macro headlines,
- 14:54Speaker 8: or fundamental headlines, and then we had the trade component
- 14:58Speaker 8: as well, So all of those things mixed together to
- 15:01Speaker 8: we think, continue some volatility, but you know, take advantage
- 15:04Speaker 8: of that where you have companies that you you know,
- 15:07Speaker 8: know and understand and feel like are going to weather
- 15:09Speaker 8: the storm.
- 15:10Speaker 4: Walter, what do you make of this the stock market?
- 15:12Speaker 5: It seemingly we've round tripped almost here off of the
- 15:15Speaker 5: twenty percent declines we had our earlier New Year when
- 15:17Speaker 5: people were really trying to get their handle around what
- 15:20Speaker 5: a world of tariffs means. Are we appropriately priced here?
- 15:23Speaker 5: Do you think the market's ahead of itself or is
- 15:26Speaker 5: there still upside here?
- 15:27Speaker 4: Do you think?
- 15:28Speaker 8: Yeah? I think I think in the near term the markets,
- 15:32Speaker 8: you know, come a long way in a very short
- 15:33Speaker 8: period of time and is probably as Jamie Dimond I
- 15:35Speaker 8: think use the term complacent to describe investors. We would
- 15:39Speaker 8: tend to agree with that. Where we are today, I
- 15:42Speaker 8: don't think we're pricing in a lot of risks. We're
- 15:44Speaker 8: pricing in a lot of deals that have been talked
- 15:46Speaker 8: about happening but haven't happened on the trade front yet.
- 15:49Speaker 8: So what we've been doing is just trying to stay
- 15:52Speaker 8: disciplined on our sizing within positions, so names that have
- 15:55Speaker 8: run significantly in the past five to six weeks. If
- 15:57Speaker 8: we have a target of two and a half percent
- 15:59Speaker 8: and that weights now well over three percent, we're running
- 16:02Speaker 8: that back to model as we call it for example.
- 16:04Speaker 8: So just trying to stay disciplined within the process and
- 16:07Speaker 8: you know, take advantage of the move that we've had
- 16:09Speaker 8: and look kind of reload for some more opportunities to
- 16:13Speaker 8: come if.
- 16:14Speaker 2: We do get this big, beautiful bill of passed, I mean,
- 16:16Speaker 2: get tax cuts or tax cuts extension if we wind
- 16:21Speaker 2: up getting deregulation and the Fed, as William said earlier today,
- 16:25Speaker 2: could cut in July. If tariffs come down to ten percent.
- 16:28Speaker 2: Is this like a complete then bull market? Like, can
- 16:32Speaker 2: we finally look towards discounting all that good news?
- 16:36Speaker 7: Yeah? This is last to me.
- 16:38Speaker 8: Yeah no, but I mean there's a long way from
- 16:41Speaker 8: here to there. I guess I would say, you know,
- 16:44Speaker 8: so as it relates to the FED, I think it's
- 16:46Speaker 8: a stretch to say that we go in July, because
- 16:49Speaker 8: you got to think about all this this bill includes,
- 16:52Speaker 8: you know, is kind of pro growth post stimulus that's
- 16:55Speaker 8: going to create upward pressure on prices. You would think
- 16:57Speaker 8: if if growth improves, so I think the Fed's going
- 17:00Speaker 8: to be on hold, so I don't think they're going
- 17:01Speaker 8: to come into the picture, probably till the fall. But yeah, no, listen,
- 17:05Speaker 8: if you incrementally get this bill passed, the debt ceiling increased,
- 17:08Speaker 8: if you get some trade deals, you know, we're gonna
- 17:11Speaker 8: run up on that ninety day first wind ninety day
- 17:13Speaker 8: window in early July. So we've got to see some
- 17:16Speaker 8: progress there. But yeah, it could create the catalyst to
- 17:18Speaker 8: for us to move up through those highs that we
- 17:20Speaker 8: hit in February and beyond. I just think between now
- 17:23Speaker 8: and then we could see some you know, some downside.
- 17:27Speaker 4: Walter, thanks so much for joining us.
- 17:28Speaker 5: Always appreciate getting a few minutes of your time.
- 17:29Speaker 4: Walter Todd.
- 17:30Speaker 5: He's a president, chief estiment officer, and managing director at
- 17:33Speaker 5: Greenwood Capital, located in Greenwood, South Carolina, which I googled.
- 17:38Speaker 5: A little bit west of Columbia, South Carolina, a little
- 17:41Speaker 5: bit north of Augusta, Georgia, a little bit south of Greenwood,
- 17:44Speaker 5: a Greek Greenville, South Carolina's right back in.
- 17:46Speaker 4: The middle of the great.
- 17:47Speaker 5: State of South Carolina. Some good stuff down there.
- 17:51Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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- 18:05Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Intelligence Radio. We bring you all the
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- 18:10Speaker 2: of our Bloomberg Intelligence folks. We also cover all the
- 18:13Speaker 2: great news that comes out of Bloomberg and every day
- 18:16Speaker 2: we try and hit the big take story. It's a
- 18:18Speaker 2: deep dive into some of the pressing issues of our time,
- 18:21Speaker 2: and today is no different. We're joined now in the
- 18:24Speaker 2: studio by Max Abelson and Anni Massa from Bloomberg News.
- 18:27Speaker 2: They had an in depth piece about Trump's President Trump's
- 18:30Speaker 2: families money making machine. What is the money making machine?
- 18:37Speaker 7: Max?
- 18:37Speaker 9: You know, if it were able, if we were able
- 18:39Speaker 9: to put it into one word or one line, we
- 18:42Speaker 9: really would have. Unfortunately, it does take like four thousand
- 18:45Speaker 9: words to describe.
- 18:46Speaker 7: Because the machine is really, really big.
- 18:49Speaker 9: I think the way what we ended up deciding is
- 18:51Speaker 9: that no modern American president has ever positioned his family
- 18:56Speaker 9: to make this much money while in the White House.
- 19:00Speaker 9: You can't you can't oversimplify it either as a supporter
- 19:04Speaker 9: or is a critic. You can't say, oh, what he's
- 19:06Speaker 9: doing is crypto, or oh, what he's doing is licensing
- 19:08Speaker 9: his name, or oh what he's doing is going overseas,
- 19:10Speaker 9: or what what the family is doing is making corporate connections.
- 19:15Speaker 7: That it really is.
- 19:16Speaker 9: We ended up thinking about this as basically an atlas,
- 19:18Speaker 9: an outlass to what the Trump family is doing.
- 19:22Speaker 7: You know, it's to take it seriously and to really
- 19:26Speaker 7: focus on.
- 19:27Speaker 9: The facts and on the numbers and on the places.
- 19:31Speaker 9: It was real work, and I was and I was actually,
- 19:34Speaker 9: dare I say.
- 19:34Speaker 7: Even fun to work with Anyon. I'm trying to figure
- 19:36Speaker 7: it out.
- 19:36Speaker 5: Hey there, So Annie, I mean, is this I guess
- 19:40Speaker 5: part of the question is depending on Hey, you look
- 19:42Speaker 5: at it.
- 19:42Speaker 4: Is this legal? Is it ethical? What are the folks
- 19:46Speaker 4: in Washington saying?
- 19:48Speaker 10: Well, when when you look at the scale of what's happening.
- 19:52Speaker 10: Even just today, President Trump has announced that he's going
- 19:56Speaker 10: to allow the largest holders of his meme coin to
- 20:00Speaker 10: come to a special VIP event. So one of the
- 20:03Speaker 10: challenges of working on the story was that almost week
- 20:07Speaker 10: by week there would be new details to add. And
- 20:11Speaker 10: I think what Max and I found was that to
- 20:14Speaker 10: go through each of these different categories. We covered real estate,
- 20:19Speaker 10: we covered crypto, we covered this kind of grab bag
- 20:22Speaker 10: of other ventures that the Trump family has become involved in,
- 20:27Speaker 10: you have to go really deep into each one, and
- 20:31Speaker 10: there's a high velocity of new deals coming now. From
- 20:36Speaker 10: the ethical standpoint, what the Trump family has decided to
- 20:41Speaker 10: do is they've issued an ethics plan for Trump's second term,
- 20:45Speaker 10: as they did in his first term. The way that
- 20:47Speaker 10: they've handled it is by putting President Trump's assets in
- 20:50Speaker 10: a trust which is overseen by his son, Donald Trump Junior.
- 20:55Speaker 10: But there are some differences in the ethics plan of
- 20:58Speaker 10: Trump's first term and his second term this time around.
- 21:01Speaker 4: As we note in.
- 21:02Speaker 10: The story, the ban on new foreign deals that existed
- 21:08Speaker 10: last time is no longer in place, and you can
- 21:11Speaker 10: see the new deals popping up all the time.
- 21:14Speaker 9: I found it very liberating, actually, to in our work,
- 21:17Speaker 9: rather than putting ourselves in a position where we wanted
- 21:20Speaker 9: to say Trump is the most amazing president and everything
- 21:23Speaker 9: he does is amazing, or being in a position where
- 21:25Speaker 9: we have to say Trump is the worst president and
- 21:27Speaker 9: everything he does is illegal. What we tried to do
- 21:29Speaker 9: is just to understand peace by piece the way the
- 21:31Speaker 9: family is making money, and it was helpful to just
- 21:35Speaker 9: use Trump's own words and own plan. Last time around,
- 21:38Speaker 9: in the first administration, he was unwilling for the family to.
- 21:42Speaker 7: Do new deals around the world.
- 21:45Speaker 9: This time the family is embracing deals around the world,
- 21:49Speaker 9: and by their own account, what they're not allowing is
- 21:52Speaker 9: deals with foreign governments. And when Andy and I look closely,
- 21:55Speaker 9: what we found is that there are some deals, especially
- 22:00Speaker 9: in Oman especially and Cutter, that really test the.
- 22:04Speaker 7: Edge of that agreement. They are with arms of governments.
- 22:07Speaker 9: Now it may not necessarily be the Trump organization doing
- 22:09Speaker 9: these deals. Sometimes their entities kind of in between. There's
- 22:12Speaker 9: this one developer called dar Global. So what we're hoping
- 22:16Speaker 9: listeners out there will do is read our story because
- 22:18Speaker 9: we really tried to vary carefully and without kind of
- 22:23Speaker 9: without doing anything but the facts. Just really tried to
- 22:25Speaker 9: understand everything about this money making machine.
- 22:29Speaker 2: So how much of this money making machine are real
- 22:33Speaker 2: deals based on like properties and hotels, and how much
- 22:36Speaker 2: of it are like NFTs and capitalizing more on this
- 22:40Speaker 2: on the celebrity that is President Trump.
- 22:42Speaker 9: It would be so bad to pick one or the other.
- 22:44Speaker 9: And he pointed out that is the mean coin dinner
- 22:46Speaker 9: literally tonight Chinese. Second, that's literally tonight.
- 22:49Speaker 2: That's why your story came out see the newspag there.
- 22:51Speaker 9: But there's so many other things too. Annie was really
- 22:54Speaker 9: good in particular at finding like these new corporate connections.
- 22:57Speaker 7: Yeah. One thing.
- 22:59Speaker 10: So it's kind of a everyone kind of knows that
- 23:03Speaker 10: Trump real Estate Empire has in many ways moved for
- 23:07Speaker 10: a long time, been moving toward licensing the Trump brand
- 23:11Speaker 10: for hotels and developments. That's a big that's a big
- 23:14Speaker 10: part of what they do now. But what's new or
- 23:17Speaker 10: in the second term, is you see his sons, Eric
- 23:20Speaker 10: Trump and Donald Trump Junior joining the boards of companies
- 23:25Speaker 10: both private and public, and lending the name in a
- 23:30Speaker 10: way to those companies. And what tends to happen when
- 23:33Speaker 10: they join, either in an executive role or as advisors is,
- 23:38Speaker 10: at least in the case of public companies, sometimes the
- 23:41Speaker 10: share price of those companies will go flying. So it
- 23:45Speaker 10: shows the celebrity to your point and name that they
- 23:49Speaker 10: that they bring into the business world into all these
- 23:52Speaker 10: different ventures, including in crypto, but in other realms too,
- 23:56Speaker 10: like prediction markets.
- 23:57Speaker 9: And to be fair, what Donald Trump Junior will say.
- 24:00Speaker 9: And what he said to us is, I'm a private citizen.
- 24:02Speaker 9: I've been a businessman all my life. It's ridiculous to
- 24:05Speaker 9: expect me to stop doing what I do just because
- 24:07Speaker 9: my dad is president.
- 24:08Speaker 7: And then what Donald.
- 24:09Speaker 9: Trump will say, a White House Pokesverson said to us
- 24:12Speaker 9: is I'm transparent and I handed over this multi billion
- 24:16Speaker 9: dollar empire to serve our country. The White House described
- 24:19Speaker 9: at President Trump as making a great sacrifice. I think
- 24:23Speaker 9: it's really helpful, though, to just look at the numbers,
- 24:25Speaker 9: and I just want to quickly mention what we found
- 24:27Speaker 9: is that the Trump name is powering more than ten
- 24:30Speaker 9: billion dollars of real estate projects since the re election
- 24:33Speaker 9: campaign began. A multi billion dollar valuation for the social
- 24:37Speaker 9: media company, a money losing social media company that just
- 24:40Speaker 9: went public. I mean, you forget it went public last year,
- 24:43Speaker 9: plus the money from crypto, plus the money from corporate connections.
- 24:46Speaker 9: I think it's worth taking the time to kind of
- 24:48Speaker 9: wrap your arms around it, because it really is sort
- 24:50Speaker 9: of I guess, unlike anything I've ever reported on.
- 24:52Speaker 5: Again, what I noticed is in this reporting that the
- 24:55Speaker 5: first overseas strict President Trump made in his second term
- 24:58Speaker 5: as to the Middle East and I'm just looking at
- 24:59Speaker 5: your reporting here, and when you talk about the real estate,
- 25:02Speaker 5: it's Riad, it's Jetta, it's Oman, it's.
- 25:07Speaker 4: You know, simi Isma, which I don't know where that is.
- 25:09Speaker 4: I think it's cutter cutter. So there I see the
- 25:12Speaker 4: you know, the connection.
- 25:13Speaker 5: You know, does it make sense that he this first
- 25:15Speaker 5: overseas trip would be to the Middle East?
- 25:17Speaker 4: So interesting? Any masset Max Abelson reporters Bloomberg News.
- 25:21Speaker 5: This is the big take story here today, the Trump's
- 25:24Speaker 5: family money making machine again as Max and and he
- 25:27Speaker 5: reported more than ten billion dollars of deals announced since
- 25:31Speaker 5: his re election got started. Here.
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