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It's always a good day when I hear Josh Green is coming on the show, of course, reporting and columnizing for Bloomberg Business Week. On this day that we find Donald Trump on Long Island. James Mahoney, our producer, is still with us today despite the fact that Donald Trump is going into the coliseum, He's going to be talking about salt. He's going to be talking about the border. That is the big event here today, promoting his promise to get salt back, remembering that he's the reason why
this was an issue to begin with. JD Vance in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we're coming off Kamala Harris's.
Big day at the NABJ.
But with the Fed meeting in mind, the economy is something that kind of directs our focus today and that's where we start our conversation with Josh. It's great to see welcome back Grates to be back a balance of power. You've got a couple of columns I want to ask you about. One of them is awfully important as we
consider this economic conversation. Democrats aren't sure which Kamala Harris they're going to get, and you bring us to the sidelines of the convention where we of course brought our audience here and the debate around specifically when it comes to the economy, what version of Kamala Harris we're going to see. She had an opportunity to speak to the Business Roundtable this week. Tim Wallas is apparently going instead. When do we find out, Well, we'll find out.
The day after election day. Ok So, so you know, one of the stories.
That I wrote for Business Week was about a conversation that was happening on the sidelines of the Democratic Convention among Democrats that really has not gotten any airtime at all because it's one Democrats don't want to have public and it's the anxiety especially among progressive Democrats, people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC about what Kamala Harris really stands for. She doesn't have a kind of clear
set of policy priorities. She's made very friendly noises towards the business community, whether it's Business Roundtable or the people she surrounded herselves with.
And yet these progressives.
Don't want to come out and publicly challenge her the way you would in a normal presidential election cycle because it's so late in the game and they don't want to give Donald Trump anything to attack her with.
Which kind of leaves her to her own devices here. But what does Wall Street think? Because this conventional wisdom that Donald Trump is friendlier inherently to the markets brings us to an interesting standoff here because Kamala Harris hasn't, for instance, said that she wants to tax unrealized gains or some of the other things associated with Joe Biden. So does Wall Street know what it's getting?
I don't think it does.
But the since I've had in talking to people and talking to Wall Street lobbyists and talking to kind of pro business democrats, is that they're really feeling good about Harris.
And I think the reason.
For that is because she hasn't had her feet held to the flames by progressives like Elizabeth Warren, and so she's in a sense been able to present herself as being all things to all people, and that's a wonderful superpower if you're a politician, because one of the reasons
why she's been able to unify the Democratic Party. But on the other hand, if you look at some of the things she's talked about in her economic speeches, attacking price gouging, that sort of things, these are noises that you would hear from a Sanders or a Warren and not something I think Wall Street would be super excited about. So I think she's really a big question mark for all Democrats.
That's a great point. She did a pretty long interview yesterday. I know she's getting knocked for not doing many of them. The nabj as I mentioned is she really leaned on housing as the issue to appeal to not only the people in the room, but the crowd she's trying to reach on the campaign trail. That's not Wall Street, right, She's talking to consumers, people who don't feel like they have a foot in the door.
Literally. Yeah.
I mean, the way I think about it is that what Harris has done is present herself as a kind of middle of the road populist. And what I mean by that is she's sought to address the economic concerns that a lot of people have in light of all the inflation we've seen under the Harris Biden administration, housing prices of skyrocket.
It's hard to buy a house.
We know from polls, I know from talking to voters people are angry about that.
They're concerned.
So what she's doing is trying to allay their fears. So I don't think that that was a message necessarily about Wall Street. I think it was her trying to convey that I am a different politician. I'll be a different kind of president than Joe Biden. I'm gonna help bring down house prices. I'm gonna help you buy a house.
Well, whatever economic message Donald Trump is trying to get forth and I will, you can tweet me, start sending them now, it's being clouded by what in the world is going on in Springfield, Ohio, which is something else that you're writing about as well. There's been some really great journalism the last twenty four to forty eight hours getting to the bottom of where these rumors came from. A Haitian immigrants eating pets and as Donald Trump suggests, geese.
Apparently at one point this is a woman who had lost her cat and thought. She found the cat later in the basement and apologized to the Haitian immigrants in her community. The campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal, reached out to the city manager in Springfield on September ninth to find out if there's any truth to these rumors. The answer was no. It was the next day Donald Trump put them on television. And the way you're getting
to this is it's kind of scary. A rational minded debate viewer might have assumed Trump's charge would hurt him. As you say, experts on misinformation say, that's not generally how it works. Tell us why and how scary are you know?
I've done a lot of reporting and misinformation over the years, and this was just a wonderful distillation of how it works and how it doesn't necessarily work like people would think it would. You know, most rational minded people, as I wrote, would think that sounds absolutely crazy. It's going to have to boomerang and hurt Donald Trump. Why would he say something like that? Speaking the disinformation experts, I say,
you know, that's not really how it works. What Trump is doing there is trying to reprogram the news conversation what people are talking about and I'll admit to somebody who's watching the debate in real time and writing my instant analysis on Bloomberg, I thought the big takeaway was the weakness of Trump's answer on abortion, his kind of meandering inability to say whether or not he would support
a federal abortion van. I thought Harris was a big winner on that issue, and that was going to dominate the conversation.
Yet here we are more than a week later. What are we talking about abortion?
No, we're talking about misinformation about pettitting. And what that's done, according to these disentration experts, is it's really shifted the topic of political debate onto a subject immigration that Trump and Republicans are much more comfortable talking about, and it's denied a kind of media oxygen to talk about things it might have been more advantageous to Kamala Harris, whether it was Trump's in a to sort of explain how he'd replaced Obamacare, or whether it was you know, his
his various attacks on her race and her qualifications. Nope, here we are talking about what Trump wants to talk about, which is kind of where we've been in the news for.
The last ten years.
Yeah, I guess that's also, dree, it was trending on Twitter before we went home that night of the debate, and it was everywhere. Of course, that next morning you did reach out to the campaign, which has essentially been blaming the media on this. But of course, to your point on Sunday morning, this was the topic.
JD.
Fance said, I created stories like these, made a lot of us wonder what his motivations were.
Yeah, and Trump has subsequently praised Vance his vice presidential nominie, for creating stories about this.
And does he mean that literally?
Uh?
With Trump, you can never quite be sure, but he usually says what's on his mind. So I think I think you probably can. Yeah.
But what Advance explained and what the Trump campaign said to me was, look what we were trying to do. Shed a light on the problems that the influx of Haitian immigrants have had on Springfield, Ohio. The campaign spokes did not mention pet eating, but said, you know, public safety problem, stresses on public services, that sort of thing. Again, trying to redirect the news conversation to a subject that they feel is stronger for them than the various other
things that Trump said in the campaign. As wild as that sounds to somebody who saw the debate in real time and ask themselves, what on earth is Trump talking about?
We're out of time. Do you think he actually goes there? Donald Trump says he would visit Springfield.
You know, it's hard for me to imagine how he could resist. It would be a scene, and Donald Trump will be right in the middle of it. And that's where he always.
Wanted to magical logistics behind a visit like that, with state police already trying to keep people safe in Springfield, I'm really glad you could come see us. Let's do more of this between now and November.
Sounds great if.
You'd indulge me. Bloomberg Business Week, of course a couple of great columns for you to look out for from Josh Green. I'm Joe Matthew in Washington. We've got a lot more ahead on the fastest show in politics. Thanks for being with us on Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Can just live weekdays at noon Eastern on Applecarplay and then rounoo with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven.
Thirty new polling out as we prepare to bring in our panel from the swing states, and this is a pretty big deal. With again the economy in mind. We've been asking, of course, voters in our own swing state poll who do you trust? Who do you trust more to handle the economy, interest rates, the price of goods, and nowhere more does that matter in the seven swing
states that are going to decide this election. And we can drill down even more with the help of Quinnipiac University out with new polling today from three key swing
states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. You know I were talking about them if you're familiar with this program before I even read you the numbers here, because this does bring good news to Kamala Harris Cridipiac polster Tim molloy writes the GOP's most go to attack strategies against Democrats on immigration and the economy, maybe losing momentum, likely voters now see a little daylight, he writes, in most cases between Harris and Trump on who can best handle those key issues.
So here we go.
Headline numbers Pennsylvania Harris fifty one, Trump forty five Michigan Harris fifty Trump forty five, Wisconsin Harris forty eight, Trump forty seven. She's leading, if not within the margin, in all three. But how about the economy. This is important. Likely voters were asked who they think would do a better job handling five issues, including this one the economy. Pennsylvania, they're basically time now fifty percent go Trump, forty eight Harris, Michigan,
fifty percent Trump forty eight Harris Wisconsin. A little bit more of a gap fifty one percent Trump forty seven Harris. She was underwater on these numbers, of course, until now. And that's where we start with our signature panel. Rick Davis and Jeanie Shanzino are back with us today. Genie, of course, political science professor at Iona University and senior democracy fellow with the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Congress. Rick Davis partner Stone Court Capital. They
are both Bloomberg Politics contributors. It's great to have you here as these polling numbers hit the tape. We've got a couple others today worth looking at. But Genie, when you drill down on the economy, specifically in these swing states, this looks like real progress for Kamala Harris. How do you read it?
It does, and you know, I think I read it in two ways. Number one is it's a reflection of the fact that many voters were frustrated. They didn't feel like Joe Biden and his age and several other factors could fight for them. So he was having a difficult time on those issues. So we've got a new candidate. And the other factor is the numbers have improved in both of these areas. You look at immigration, the number
of people coming across the border is way down. We're not hearing as much bad news from the border at this point. That's why Donald Trump has decided to go up to Springfield, Ohio. You look at the economic numbers, reports that for the first time since the pandemic, people's people are seeing an increase of about four percent in an increase in their income, and so these things are reflecting today we're looking at maybe the first interest rate
cut in a long time. So the real numbers are helping out with a new candidate and we're seeing them close the gap. Donald Trump still owns these issues, but now it's almost in all cases within the margin of air.
Rick, I'd love your take on this. We should mention the methodology here for a moment, thirteen hundred likely voters in Pennsylvania with a margin of error two point seven percent, slightly smaller samples in Michigan and Wisconsin with slightly larger three percentage point plus margins of error. Again for Michigan and Wisconsin. What is Kamala Harris doing right here? Or is it Donald Trump not talking enough about the economy?
And before I get to that, Joe, I.
Do want to add to your sort of description of the polls. And it is multi candidate field, so it isn't head to head. It includes Jill Stein in Michigan.
I had a lot of people storried about and so I think these are probably the best pictures we've seen in a long time, after the debates, after all the things that have been going on, to properly reflect the stay of the race in the Blue Wall states again, was like Genie said, the base of the Biden campaign was the Blue Wall and it appears that may be the same for Kamala Harris. The reality is, when you're running campaigns, you don't want to see your opponent at
that fifty that's a bad number. Forty eight, forty nine, forty seven. You still got like, Okay, there's a window I can get there. But the reality is you don't see Trump busting that forty six percent number very often. And the fact that the Harris campaign has gotten up over fifty percent in two of the key battleground states in the Blue Wall has got to be a very big concern for the Trump campaign. The fact that she's writing that popularity on improvements with the economy and immigration
is equally disturbing. They have to have those issues on their side. It has to be a wedge in order to motivate their own candidate, their own voters. And so, you know, I think it's a perilous place to be. We've seen other polls in other you know, Sun Belt states that reflect a little bit better activity by Trump. But the reality is there's not much you need. If you win the Blue Wall and one electoral vote in Nebraska,
you're president of the United States. That's two seventy And so this is this has got to shake up the tribe down in mar A Lago. They've got to be looking at this hard. And and then today you see Donald Trump futsing around in New York when he ought to be in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan.
Well, and these are the three states again we're talking about here, the actual swing states and Genie. It's not just the economy that we're looking at here. Donald Trump does lead Kamala Harris, but it's in fact within the margin. In Michigan, for instance, when it comes to immigration, that one really jumped off the page to me here it's much more pronounced. To Wisconsin fifty two percent go Trump, forty five percent Harris. Michigan there was forty nine to
forty eight, Pennsylvania fifty to forty six. For what is one of the most powerful issues that Donald Trump has, and I'm going to point you to another one, an ipsos scripts pull today finding broad support for this idea of a mass deportation. A majority of Republicans maybe not a surprise, eighty six percent support the idea. But guess what, so to a quarter of Democrats twenty five percent to
Rix points GINI. If Donald Trump just talked about these two things, the economy and the border, in the three swing states for the rest of this campaign, would that not be a strategy?
It's a strategy. It's a better strategy than we've seen. You know, I think when we talked to Republicans after the debate, many scratched their head as to why Donald Trump it makes sense to keep pivoting to immigration, which he did consistently. He did not do the same when it came to the economy, and many Republicans wanted him to do that because that has been a week point for Democrats, and now these polls we see her closing
this gap. So that would be a strategy to talk about these two issues consistently in the Blue Wall States. You know, I understand why Donald Trump is in New York. I'm in New York. Love New York. But to Rick's point, probably not the best use of your time when you're at your you know, you're about fifty days. But I would say this ipso's poll is utterly fascinating.
You know.
One thing I would caution against these kind of polls is sometimes they are reflection of people's real frustration with government's lack of addressing an issue, and in this case, it's immigration. It's been a crisis for decades, it has not been addressed in the way it should. We know that but I am not sure that people would hold this opinion if they saw in real time what a mass deportation looks like. So I have some concerns about
this poll. You can look at the mass deportation if it happened from a lot of perspectives, including the cost, but just from the humanitarian perspective alone, I think you'd see a decrease in that number if it came to fruition. So I think this is more a reflection of people's concerns, which to your point, means Donald Trump should be talking
about this issue. But he's also got a hit on the economy in these swing states because when she closes this gap this way, that is a problem for him because how does he surround that.
I don't know what your thought is on this mass deportation pull, Rick, GENI. You might have a point when people start seeing the police knocking on doors at their neighbor's house twenty five percent. Though a quarter of Democrats think this is a good idea, at least on paper, Rick, how would you exploit that as a campaign operative?
You know, Look, I mean I think that the president, the President Trump has not done enough to articulate plans on how to mine gate immigration. It's almost been, you know, sort of his go to place. He likes to talk about Springfield, Ohio these days, which actually isn't a policy.
And the reality is if he did talk more about articulating his plans for things like a deportation or strengthening the border, or what's he going to do with Mexico, I mean, the reality is he did more of that in twenty sixteen, and he's doing today, and he's not doing himself any favors because, as you see from these polls and as Genie articulated, people universally are frustrated with the southern border and they want to have it fixed.
And the fact that Donald Trump actually can point to, you know, numbers on the southern border that are better than the Biden Harris administration, it's stunning to me that he doesn't talk about it more. The reality is he's so into sensationalizing these issues, talking about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats, which he has to make up in order to do it. He would be much better off talking about the facts on the ground and real solutions.
And I think he would really cut into democratic margins on this, as you see in this current blue Wall state pole. I mean, Gris is now caught up to him on immigration in those places.
That is remarkable, and I know that he's going to talk about it a lot tonight, Genie at the Coliseum, Donald Trump on Long Island. He's going to be in representative of d'esposito's district talking about this, and you know how that plays in that district. Can Donald Trump do himself a favor, even though he's in New York with considering the audience, the reception he's going to get tonight, and the social media coverage that will follow, you know.
He absolutely could. The reality is is that Long Island is a conservative place. People are very frustrated all across the country, but in New York in particular, about the issue of the economy and about immigration. But he has to do, to Rick's point, lay out a plan. And the problem with what he's been doing with this issue in Springfield, Ohio is that he is talking about something that if you just take a glance at social media, people are laughing at They have dogs and cats running
away from Springfield, Ohio. Memes all over the place that Democrats could never buy. But the reality is this is a serious issue for people in New York. Just as an example, the immigrants that have come up here, that have been sent up here in many cases by southern governors, have flooded the school districts. This is a problem for
people in New York. So talk about the pain they are feeling and how you're going to address that, rather than talking about unsubstantiated rumors which have now been totally debunked about people eating cats and dogs, and that would do him a favor. But I would also caution it wasn't long ago on Long Island, as you know, Joe, we saw a Democrat take on the issue of immigrant very successfully and win. So Donald Trump has his work
cut out for him. He's got to be disciplined and that's not his strong suit in these rallies.
Well, we'll be listening closely to the message tonight inside the coliseum.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch Just Live weekdays at noon Eastern on Eppo CarPlay and then Roud Otto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
I'm Kaylee Lines alongside Joe Matthew here in Washington, where we do know roughly thirty six minutes from now, we'll have answers to a few questions. We will know what the move was twenty five or fifty basis points. We will know whether or not this was a unanimous decision or maybe unusually, we might have dissents. We'll also know what the dot plot looks like, not just about this cut today, but what they expect to do over the
coming meetings into next year. But the other answers will be left to one individual, Chairman Powell, when he takes the podium in that new conference thirty minutes later. And that's always where it gets a little tricky, that's.
Right, taking questions from the likes of Michael McKee, who'll be reporting a bit later on for Bloomberg of course. And yeah, we're knocking to dust off of plot from June, I believe, with a major update today. And this is where we start our conversation with Catherine Edwards's economic policy consultant writer for Bloomberg Opinion. Catherine, welcome back.
It's great to see you.
I think you're in the fifty camp. You can let us know if it's if that is the case. Though getting to Kayley's reference, does J. Powell need to have a unanimous decision?
I do wonder about what unanimity gives you when he has made very clear that the risk right now is to the labor market and not the fight against inflation. I mean, he signaled that pretty clearly at Jackson Hole.
And so to have someone you know not in concert, you know, signifies to me either that they don't think the labor market as important, which would be upsetting, I think to a lot of people, or they're signifying that he has hasn't gone far enough, and they tend to I think, kind of close ranks and come together around the big decisions to let everyone know that this economy is being steered, you know, in concert.
So if we consider what the what he would have to personally message if the move is fifty because there is a narrative out there that a move of that size could signal panic that they are seeing something that the rest of us might not be yet, that there is more reason for concern in the economy right now. So how important would his messaging be, frankly, in either instance to explain why they felt the need to frontload or not to frontload.
Yeah, and I worry that if the message around fifty is or the message around twenty five would be, well, we just didn't want to play into market expectations or we didn't want to think that people were panicking of how much is the message around what other people will be messaging versus what the economy needs. And I think what I've seen in Powell over the years is that he tends to be very plain spoken about this was what the economy needed right now, and if we messed up,
we messed up. If we went too low in the past, we went to low in the past. But it's about meeting the needs of the transitory. If we said transitory and we were wrong, then we were wrong. And I think a lot of people were expecting to cut last time they met. They didn't. They didn't do that, So I it is very possible for him to say, this is just what the economy needs. It's not panic, it's it's prescriptive, and.
This is good.
It's not panic prescriptive. How about politics, this is the politics program. We'll hand things off to the market experts in about five minutes. Does he need to be deliberate about this issue?
I mean, I think the narrative is kind of forcing his hand there to say that this. You know, they can't take an election into into accounts. You know, I kind of think of this as making a little bit of the James Comy mistake, you know, working so hard to look like you're not in support of one person that you actively start supporting the other. You know, you overcorrect. I mean, that's that's not a word that the FED really likes, over correcting, but that it's definitely a possibility
when you're trying to take into account politics. And you know, what I would say is politics. I mean, economics is hard, and there's no need to bring politics into this decision.
So if politics don't factor into the actual outcomes from the Federal Reserve, that's not to say that what the Federal Reserve decides to do doesn't affect outcomes in politics. This is a decision that they're going to be making
weeks ahead of a presidential election. So I guess the question is to what extent do you expect that the actual beginning of the easing cycle will influence consumer sentiment If it is coming simultaneously with a slowdown in the labor market, that might be felt first knowing that even eas policy might have a lad defect kicking in.
I mean, most people's impression of the economy is what they experience in their day to day lives, and whatever they read in the newspaper or see on the news, it's still just how secure they feel. Can they afford a home, can they find a job? So I think yes, the narrative that you can spend some type of narrative of like, oh, and here's DC conspiring to help come. I mean people are going to say that, and then they're going to say like, oh, he didn't go far
enough because they want to help Trump. I mean that all of that is possible. I think think the real question is will people see an improvement in their lives? And if they don't, if they don't start acting in the labor market's best interest soon, the answer to that is almost certainly going to be known.
If you're Kamala Harris, though you're hoping for a psychological impact today, this is a good headline. I don't know to what extent shal message. That was one of the conversations we were having earlier. But how about in terms of material improvement for consumers? This is a short period of time.
It's a short period of time. Yet maybe there's a mood boost to this, but it's there's one hundred and sixty five million workers in a pretty large economy. You don't get to take really dramatic right or left turns. And frankly, we don't want the economy to do that. I mean, we want to be on a steady path. And that can be really frustrating for people who want relief immediately. Just to say it's going to get better soon,
it's cold comfort. So maybe people start cheering about how well the economy is doing, and that makes people more mad because they still haven't found their jobs. It's so hard to predict how an individual will internalize this great, big economy that they participate in.
Or one of the most immediate transmissions might be in mortgage rates in the housing market. This is selfish coming for me as I'm in the process of trying to buy my first home and I'm like, rates go as low as possible, please, right, get down. But that's where the dot plot will come into play, because those will start moving even before the cuts come. If the expectation is there that rates are going to go materially lower.
Yeah, I think that if we can get built in reductions to the mortgage rates, to get the housing market unlocked, to get people to be willing to sell their homes so that you can buy one. Hopefully it's a great place. Can you just lift off the specs that you're looking for here and we'll telegraph that right to now. I you know, yeah, I mean there's lots of relief coming. But I think sometimes we get a little bit upside down thinking in elections about what does one person want
versus the other? And it's always helpful to remember that the housing market has been brutal for so many Americans for these past few years, and any type of movement, however it affects the election, is good for our economy. For people to feel confident that they can do something that they see is so fundamental as buying a home.
Should Kamala Harris today credit for winning the war on inflation? I think the first cut we finally made it.
That would be so foolhardy. But I would never put it past the politician not to take credit for something good. Yeah, well that's different, right.
Well, I guess so finally, before we let you go, we just have a minute left. There's also the consideration of fiscal policy, always that the FED doesn't have influence on, but they do have to react to if we actually see the policy proposals. Frankly from both of these candidates coming to fruition, there's an argument that they would be inflationary and maybe cut this cutting cycle short.
Do you agree, yes, I mean we haven't seen, you know, a lot of fiscal responsibility telegraphed from either candidate. We've got record deficits right now. We're We're not, you know, at an active war, We're not in an active recession.
Deficits should not be this high.
We have sabotaged our ability to collect sufficient revenue from the federal governments. And at some point we are going to need an adult in the room say we are not raising enough money. They're not going to say that six weeks before an election, but someone needs to say it.
Maybe Palable today, who.
Knows be a moment that that would be a moment.
A great to have you on FED day. Thank you so much for joining us. Catherine, of course, Bloomberg opinion columnist and an economic policy consultant.
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