Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 3rd, 2025

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Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Wee Weekend Podcast. Happy New Year. It's our first week of twenty twenty five, and as we enter the new year, we wanted to take a look into some of the key developments that could shape the next half decade, from US policy under a second Trump term, aised insatiable demand for electricity harming the climate, to the decades long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource, semiconductors.

So ahead on the program, we'll examine the year ahead, touching on Bloomberg Business Week's annual fifty Companies to watch, the next stage of aiuse and adoption, and he taught Feuds That'll define twenty twenty five.

Accept everybody, because they're going to come at you. Plus, our Bloomberg Pursuits team has the ultimate travel guide for the next twelve months with help from the folks over at Kayak who gathered billions, yes billions, of data points to give you personalized, month by month estimates for the destinations of your choice.

All that to come, we begin, though, with the Bloomberg Business Week Year Ahead issue for twenty twenty five. Each year, the Bloomberg Business Week team provides a comprehensive outlook on the most important economic, business, technological, and geopolitical trends expected to shape the coming year.

According to Mariam Webster you know the Dictionary, twenty twenty four was the year of polarization. Political divisions affected not only the state of affairs within the United States, but safe to say, also around the world. However, it's optimism that Bloomberg Business Week editor Bradstone wanted to focus on.

In the opening remarks of the Year Ahead issue, Brad gives us the optimist guide to a chaotic world. We ask Brad why he chose to be hopeful for twenty twenty five.

It was a little.

Tricky because, you know, we had just subjected our readers to months and months of our political coverage, including our December issue, which was we produced the week after the result in the US election, with a full complement the stories about what the Trump victory meant. And so as we looked ahead in our annual year head package, really I wanted to stretch our arms a little bit to get beyond the politics story.

You know.

So we've got this collection of stories about, for example, an interview with the Property Brothers, these great the influencer real estate influencers, this massive infrastructure project to keep Karp out of the Great Lakes, you know, just all these stories. There's another good one from Tom Orleck, our chief economists, on you know what the Trump agenda means for the global economy and how it might not necessarily mean lower growth.

So anyways, you know, taking a little bit of a different approach than we had in the past.

And then you know which, and this informed my opening remarks trying to maybe be a little bit more optimistic. I mean, if the new year isn't a time for optimism, than what is?

I love that.

Well, okay, so once you thought all this through for the year ahead issue, you do give us this optimist guide to a chaotic world. And you spoke to Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker, who kind of says, like this is all our fault. As journalists and writers of headlines.

Well, no, I mean, am I.

Am I projecting here? Am I projecting here?

He acknowledges that, you know, the job of the news is to cover things that are happening, and things that are happening that deviate from the norm, you know, can be negative things.

But the point was that the norm is pretty good, you.

Know, and that there's no greater time to be alive. And you look at numbers like vaccines reducing mortality by forty percent over the past half century, or Africa infectious disease deaths decreasing forty two percent since twenty fifteen, you know, even good news in terms of carbon emissions lowering.

That these are things that we should pay attention to.

And so that you know, that was sort of the framework that you know, however one feels about political changes in the US or in Western Europe, that you know, there's a backdrop that is actually pretty pretty rosy.

Yeah, you know what's kind of interesting. I have to say, reading through your column, I thought about sometimes I get into a cab, typically in New York City, and it often is somebody from that wasn't born here, and we started having a conversation, they're like, you have no idea how great this country is. And like we'll talk about division or something and they're like, you have no idea how great it is.

Why you're uberrating is one star? No, I'm just kidding.

I'm just saying, but I do think that's what you get to And you know, when you when we cut, it's so easy for us to be in it day to day. And sometimes Tim and I go through a show Man and we're like, wow, that was dark. But if you broadened out right the lens, like you right, we have made some really great advancements on a lot of different front spread.

And by the way, you know, I didn't want to be completely a political I mean it is a time to be optimistic about a new presidential administration. I think we should get give every incoming president the benefit of the doubt.

And so you know, when it comes to you know.

Regulating nuclear energy, you know, a technology that has historically made a lot of people squeamish.

You know, that's that's perhaps something to look forward to.

You know.

Robert I. F.

Kennedy Junior gets a lot of attention for his unorthodox show. We say view on vaccines or fluoride in the drinking water. But you know, rethinking public health guidelines, looking again at ultra processed foods in the in the food chain. You know, I was in the mood to see the silver lining, let's say, and I think it's a good time to do that.

We'll talk a little bit about this sort of the Silicon Valley angle here with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency and what that could actually do well.

I mean, look, let's you know, at this point, take them at their word that they're trying to get make government more efficient, boost business activity, roll back the regulations that have made it difficult to build infrastructure, say, roll out high speed trains. You know, there there isn't any reason to be complacent about the status quo in the United States when we look at how quickly other countries are able to do big things, and so you know we should be you know, give give Elon the benefit

To develop new technologies.

And so look there there, their candidate was elected, and you know, we're going to see if if they can make a difference.

I just want to know, though, did you originally when you started thinking about it, and you're like, I'm going to ride a column that you know, there's a lot of questions and it feels a little dark, And then do you're like, well, wait a minute, glasses half full, glasses half empty. I'm just curious if you did two versions of this, Brad.

I gave myself.

I gave myself the challenge of writing a story with the headline, you know, the search for optimism or a guide to optimism. I just felt and I don't know where the notion came from. You know, you guys know I'm here in the Bay Area, so excuse me. So you know, there there is the there was a lot of hiding under the dining room table in my community, and so I wanted to look at things from a little bit of a different perspective.

Yeah, I love it.

I want to hear a little bit about your thoughts on the tech firms kind of making the pilgrimage tomorrow lago, just in recent weeks. We had Jeff Bezos down there earlier this week. There's probably nobody who knows more about Jeff Bezos than you. How would you describe a meeting like that with President Trump? And sort of the context around that President like Trump opportunistic.

I mean, look, there's no mystery around how to work with the federal government when Donald Trump is president.

Then you know, you go and you kiss.

The ring, so to speak, and he responds to that, and so we're seeing one CEO after the other go do that now. In Jeffs case, it was interesting because Elon Musk shows up at his table, maybe to his no doubt considerable surprise. But you know, Jeff has a

All these leaders know that the path to getting what they want is.

A little bit of sycofancye, and so that is why they are in Margot bar Lago.

Well, great stuff as always, Happy New Year, Happy holidays, Brad. Always good to check in with you, looking forward to the new issue. Bradstone, Editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, author of many books, including Amazon Unbound. You are listening to Bloomberg Radio.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us Live on YouTube.

When we think about the year ahead, one storyline worth paying attention to the escalating trade war between the United States and China over the future of advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

Virtually everything from missiles to microwaves runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. In twenty twenty four, the Biden administration limited further advancements of China's semiconductor industry by blocking several companies from receiving exports of certain chip technology from China. Beijing responded by banning exports of critical minerals to the US.

Feels a bit frosty, to say the least. This tit for tap between the two global superpowers is set to grow even further in twenty twenty five, at least that's the expectations this as President elect Donald Trump has promised tariffs on Chinese goods. All of this while companies around the world try to adjust their supply chains. Needless to say, the stakes are high.

Someone who knows the semiconductor space well as Chris Miller. He's Associate Professor of International history at Tufts University, and he's the author of the book on chips, the New York Times bestseller Chip War, The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. He ties it to today's US China rivalry.

There are two big shifts happening simultaneously right now. One is the served of spending on AI infrastructure, which means lots of very expensive AI accelerators in high powered data sens And two is the ratcheting up of tension around the US and China, with the new administration in the US planning to increase tariffs and controls on China's semiconductor industry. So those two trends are intersecting in ways that impact pretty much every company in the sector.

Where are we going to see that kind of line in the sand when it comes to selling technology to China? And then the big tech company is saying, but wait a minute, this starts to impact our business because China is a massive market.

I think we talked to any CEO or executive off the record, and they'll say that my biggest problem is that China is both my largest customer and my number one competitor in most cases, and that, I think structures how the industry deals with this issue and tries to lobby the US government. They all sort of understand the logic of the US government, understand that chips are key for AI, understand that AI is key to national security as well as economic prosperity. But they all also realize

Chris, with your understanding and knowledge of this world, are we right, us, the United States, right to be concerned about exporting technology to China. We've certainly seen this play out where things get exported the technology and China becomes really good at doing things. We're seeing it kind of play out in the EV market as we speak. So I'm curious how concerned should we that we will export our expertise, our knowledge and lose control of another industry.

You know.

I think it's worth noting that China only imports a couple of types of manufactured goods semiconductors semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Those are the two largest categories of China's manufactured good imports, because China can produce everything else that needs domestically when it comes to manufactured goods, and I think that speaks to China's capabilities in this sphere, which means that the more capabilities you give to China, the more you're be

Just remind everybody sort of in the chip ecosystem and the world of chip ecosystems, where broadcomplays.

Broad comes one of the biggest designers of semiconductors. They don't manufacture, but they do the design process, and they've been focusing in particular on designing AI chips for other companies, some of the big hyperscalers that are investing in their own ship designs. Those are often done in partnership today with Broadcom.

So looking across the ecosystem, who does Broadcom have to be most worried about? Because we got that report from the information about Apple working with Broadcom. These two companies have sort of done this dance of scorpions where they sting each other. But also then well he was saying, it was like, what mating scorpions? Is that right?

Yes? Or two scorpions mating?

Yeah, we're there.

You know, it's not easy. I wants a little complicated.

I won't describe it, but let's just use the term frenemies instead.

Perfect.

You know, I think that's that's a great analo. Broad companies is a really wide range of products, and so they simultaneously cooperate and compete with a bunch of different companies in the technology space. I think if you focus on the AI portion of their portfolio, in some ways they're competing with in Nvidia because a lot of the in house design processors that the Hyperscalers are designing right now are intended to be replacements for invidious products, at

Hey, Chris, can I have to leave it there? I always love it when you take the time to join us. Do appreciate that very much. Chris Miller Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University. He's the author of the New York Times best selling book Chip War, The Fight for the World's most Critical Technology.

This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, live each weekday starting a two pm Eastern on Applecarplay 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.

Well.

The US, in case you hadn't noticed, is experiencing a surge and power demand, with electricity consumption expected to climb almost sixteen percent over the next five years.

Why you may.

Ask a few factors. Is it because we're all getting EV's I don't think so. I could have seen to do with it. A few factors and drivers of that demand, including data centers, evs AI. Welcome everybody to the New economy with more on what maybe the next supply demanded balance. Are two killer members of our Bloomberg News team who

It's all of it, and it's all happening all of a sudden. So we've seen cloud computing. You know, everyone wants to put all your photos and your files up in the cloud. That's driving data centers, a lot of data centers, and then all of a sudden, the same big tech companies are starting to do AI, and that's an enormous use of power. So we've got data centers, and then AI data centers, and then we've got the

So it's just.

Coming from every direction. But the crazy thing is we didn't really see this coming until about year ago. So the utilities that build power plants, which takes years, weren't really planning for it that effectively. So now there's a potential looming shortage of electricity.

Which makes me wonder should we just stop talking about the promise of AI and basically because we're not going to have enough power to meet the demand, Like, should we just stop it already because the expectations, the euphoria will is not going to be able to be met so easily or quickly, you know what the power demands.

I'm not so worried about running out of power, like you turn on the light switch and there's no electricity for the lights. What I'm worried about is people not working for clean energy. So We're going to see electricity from anywhere.

They can get it.

We got people building more gas plants than we've seen in a long time. We got people that promise to shut down coal plants. Now they're going, let's keep those open a little longer. Yeah, Joshua, about the gas plants a lot, we'll tell.

Us about that, right. So, there's a concept I wanted to bring up because I want to get I want to get listeners from with it.

And it's baseload power.

So the deal with wind and solar power is that it's intermittent, right, It's when when the wind is blowing, when the sun is up. And it's very complicated to arrange a grid with a lot of clean energy sources because you have to balance the grid at all times. And when people wake up in the morning, they need the electricity running so they can run their appliances and get ready for their day. And sometimes if the sun

Is there a way that we can offload and by we, I mean the United States can offload some of this electricity usage, Josh outside of the country where electricity is more abundant in the sense, build some of these server farms in other places where there isn't an issue on the grid.

It's it's complicated and it's hard to do. I mean with with data centers. It's hard because some things that are operating on the data center is certainly any anything related to national security, and even lots of companies they want their they want their data in the US, even in you know, you imagine the.

Near shoring on shoring is like certainly something that you see with the data centers, they want it nearby.

Yeah, I mean imagine a healthcare company. They don't want all their data stored in some country that they don't necessarily trust, so you run into issues with that. And as far as moving other users of power, can't really move homes overseas without moving the family there. Obviously, that's complicated. And then a big factor. You know, we want the big factory here because we want the jobs and we want the stuff produced here, so those power demands are also on shore.

There's so many things that are coming to mind. Remind us guys about the rules and regulations that are in place in terms of carbon emissions, that the kind of commitments that companies and individuals or institutions have to abide by under the current administration or under the current rules, and how a new administration might change some of that.

Okay, Well, when Biden came into office, he said he wanted to have a clean power grid by twenty thirty five, and they set a twenty fifty net zero target. But these aren't really binding.

These were goals, and.

I'm seeing increasing pessimism about reaching those goals, and.

They don't even seem very close in the sense of years like those are pretty far.

Up anyway, right, Yeah, but yeah, And we had so many companies, especially in like maybe the last five five years, come out with their own internal net zero goals, and a lot of them are like really impressive and really ambitious. We're going to you know, utilities that promise to stop burning coal, big tech companies that said all of our operations are going to be carbon free.

Yeah that was before chat GPT.

That's the problem. So these things were not binding, and now we're seeing a lot of companies kind of going radio silence on their goals, or some of them are just straight out saying, yeah, we're not going to make that.

Doesn't matter if it's a global company in other words, because it's got a deal by global rules and global regulations or no, not necessarily in terms of hitting carbon emissions, you know, reductions.

The utilities, so the power companies actually producing their power, they're here, so their goals are here. We're already seeing those get kind of a little eroded around the edges, you know, companies saying well, we said we're going to be done with coal by twenty thirty, we're actually going to be running these coal plants a little longer, but we're still sticking to our twenty fifty net zero goal.

Hey will what about nuclear? Where does nuclear come into this?

Which is something like I feel like in the last two years, we all of a sudden here everybody talking about nuclear.

Yeah, but I mean you've spent a lot of times short career facilities not so easy to just put a whole put a shovel in the ground and build one.

No, nuclear is great.

I mean, Josh was talking about baseload power. You know, it's even better for baseload nuclear it runs like ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety nine percent of the time over the course of a year. You know, it's not great about

It's kind of ironic, right, The move to clean energy is kind of complicating this process, right in terms of wanting, as you said, the electrification of so much that it's making it difficult to kind of hit these targets. And I'm looking at, you know, a headline from today California reeling from extreme weathers, the wildfire risks return, and they also talk about another atmospheric river up in northern California.

Yeah, that's the right question, and the answer is, we don't know. We are seeing climate disasters in real time. In the summer, it's too hot now in the fall, in the winter, we're getting too much rain.

Wildfires are like you're ering city, which are like unheard of, Like yeah, make for great sunsets, but it smells bad and it Yeah, we're seeing the climate really has been affected.

And that's the right question to ask, because yeah, all these factories are trying to decarbonize, but then where do you get the electricity? You know, the people to point out, Oh, you think you're so green because you've got an EV, but you're powering it with coal power. So there's a lot that has to happen. It's not an easy switch.

Well, Josh, this is your beat, I mean, your energy and climate disasters reporter. So what is the fundamental connection between these two things?

I see it.

I see it that of course, the factories that produce the things we need for clean energy require power, but anything that we produce requires power. So I think overall that transition is still good for decarbonization, is still good for putting less carbon into the atmosphere, and hopefully at least not accelerating those kinds of wildfires and those other things we're talking about, and I think that's more important.

Okay, so we'll come on in here because you mentioned the grid, and this is something that we haven't spent a lot of time talking about the health of the grid, and it's sort of this patchwork at least here in the United States, where you know you have Texas always comes to mind, for example, given the freeze that they saw a few years ago in the failure of the grid. Where does the stability of the grid come into the conversation?

That's another huge issue. A lot of the grid is not so stable. You know, a lot of the wires have been in standing there for years and when a hurricane comes through, they get knocked down. The utilities say they want to underground the wires because it's more reliable, which is a great idea, but expensive. You use the word patchwork. I think that's a pretty good word, especially because it's multiple systems operated by so many different companies

Well, we know it's like that, Josh. I also do wonder is there something else within the all the energy space or new energy space that we're not talking about. My husband constantly is like, what about hydrogen fuel cells? Like that makes sense to me. Like, I'm just curious, is there something that I don't know, whether it's in the next year, next six months, or next two years, that we start talking about that might help the situation.

I think a lot of a lot of those things, fusion, hydrogen, a lot of those things are pretty far off. I think right now it kind of is just back to the basics that wind and solar takes a lot of takes some pressure off of the grid, and but yeah, right now, it just looks like the next year looks like just more gas.

That was Bloomberg News Power and Renewable Energy editor Will Wade, along with Bloomberg News Energy and Climate Disasters reporter Josh Saw.

You know, Tim, I think about right after two years of doing nothing about AI investing and focusing on Nvidia and everybody spending and so on and so forth and doing kind of their build out, all of a sudden, it's like breaks on because people are saying, wait a minute, we got to have the power to fuel all the AI computations that are necessary.

I thought a lot about this when I was out for the holiday break, because I was on the central coast of California and Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is right on the central coast where I was, and we actually went to the beach right where the nuclear power plan is. I thought to myself, incredible to see the attention on this facility as a result of power demand.

Get ready, folks, for a lot more on this front to come. Twenty twenty five. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. Our Bloomberg Intelligence team has done the research, the work, and they have the fifty companies to keep your eye on this year.

Hey, they did the work, but we get to share the findings. That's next. This is Bloomberg.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or live on YouTube.

Artificial intelligence was, yeah, no doubt about it. A big factor to watch for in the twenty twenty four year ahead issue of the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Fifty Companies to Watch that was one year ago. We know how the AI revolution played out this past year continued to play out. For the companies and trends to keep an eye on. For twenty twenty five, we turned to the annual list we love to highlight.

The list comes courtesy of Bloomberg Intelligence and its analysts, who track some two thousand companies and sectors ranging from finance to food, who have once again come out with its annual list of companies that weren't a closer look, which you can read now on the Bloomberg terminal and at Bloomberg dot com Slash BusinessWeek, as well as the January issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.

To help break down some of the top names to watch, we spoke with Bloomberg Intelligence Senior European strategist and Director of Research Content, Tim Craighead.

The fifty Companies to Watch are based largely off of a group of companies that we have as focus ideas, and our focus ideas are where our analysts around the globe on a bottom up basis, sector by sector, are looking for fundamental situations where they have a really strong view, a high conviction view that they think is out of consensus,

And there are some buckets tam that they fall into, whether it's cyclical recovery AI related, which tends to hit a lot of companies nowadays. But give give us a little bit of context on that.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing because if I actually juxtaposed this year versus last AI was a big deal a year ago, but it was a lot of the big AI companies, the software companies, the LLM guys and whatnot. This year it's more geared towards the semiconductors and enabling technologies behind it. We can get into some of those. China was a big deal last year, but it was

All right, we want to get into some of the names. I know it's alphabetical, but we got to get into first of all, Broadcom. Why are you guys highlighting it?

Well? Broadcom is interesting because you think of this as a semiconductor company, but it's much more than a simic inductor company because it's gotten into infrastructure software and it's one of the few companies that combines semiconductors and software. And importantly, it's part of the AI theme because a lot of what it's doing feeds into the whole AI story, whether it's with Google or Meta or what have you.

Why is Tesla on the list this year?

So Tesla is there, and I'm going to bring in one other company at the same time. This falls into that category of new products, innovation and whatnot. Obviously, Tesla is all about electric vehicles, but importantly, as we look into next year, there's new vehicles that are coming through an important refresh of their their core cars, and we think that that's an opportunity for a lift. Similarly, Porsche, Uh, you know, we all like Porsches. I think we all

Well, I'm going to tell you you can like it. It's just right about ownership, right, yeah.

Well it's funny because back in the day, you know, these were relatively well, relatively affordable. The way that Porsche has driven its business pun intended is to go higher and higher end to where you know, the the average selling price of their cars are quite significant. And essentially what they're trying to do is attain a Ferrari like

Tim, I want to stick with the transportation theme here and talk Airbus because a lot has happened with this duopoly over the last year, including at the beginning of this year that a door panel blowing out on that seven thirty seven Max that Alaska Airlines jet and that sort of sent Boeing into its most recent struggles and new executive there and the like why air Bus on the list.

Yeah, So there's a couple of elements that play in. Part of it is just pure cyclical recovery. You know, there is continued recovery and air traffic. There's continued recovery and order flow for airlines. And at the same time there's been a real constraint on supply on the supply channel going into the airline or airframe business. We think both of these elements are in play for twenty twenty five.

And to the degree that Airbus, we.

Think continues to gain relative market share versus Boeing. You know, there's an host of factors that play into a pretty positive view here.

All Right, I like planes too, but I also like makeup. I'm just going to put trains that.

There is a train company on the list, a railroad on the list, right, Steve Tas.

All right, all right, we're going to get back to that in a moment.

St.

Latter I want to bring that one. It's been under pressure. It's a well known company, I kind of company in the cosmetic business. If you go back to STI Latter who created it. It has gone through some changes. It's down I think more than forty percent this year, but it's been on quite a rally since kind of mid November,

Yeah? Well so stay Lotder is an interesting one because you have to love the brands that make up Stay Lotder, you know, whether it's Stay Lotder itself or.

Mac or.

Clinique what have you. But it really does seem like they've lost a bit of an edge in some of their brands. They're also particularly skewed towards airline I should say airport travel related retail, which continues to be under pressure. Notwithstanding air travel coming back spending all duty free has continued to remain a pressure point. We think Stay Laughter continues to have some potential for disappointment in the first half of the year before maybe things then come around.

All right, I'm getting back to transit and get to say, planes makeup and trains. Yeah, Planes make up and Trains doesn't have the same ring to it with the John Candy film Norfolk Southern. What's going on with Norfolk Southern?

So it's an interesting story. I have a long long standing association with Norfolk Southern previously Norfolk and Western. My dad worked there for over forty years to rest his soul.

And.

They've had issues over the last couple of years. Unlike Union, which actually was on our list last year, that had really gotten moving with precision rail to be very precise in the logistics and it's really good for customers and it's great for the margins and efficiency. Norfolk Southern had been lagging. They have a new CEO who's in, They're bringing management in who's much more geared towards this precision transportation.

You said twenty percent negative eighty percent positive stories. Is it always that mix or does it tell you anything about kind of sentiment or what's going on in the market.

No, you know, we try to have a balance of you know, this standard view is looking at glass half full, but we tried to keep an eye out towards where do we see expectations that have run too far too fast? And you know, our ideas range from a couple of banks, to some consumer product companies, to tech companies.

So yes, that's Tim Craighead, Senior European strategist and director of Research content for Bloomberg Intelligence. Check out the full list online at Bloomberg dot com, slash BusinessWeek, and on the Bloomberg terminal.

And we should point out, you know, one other company we talked about with Tim Craighead that was in that interview was Broadcom. You know the earnings. Broadcom's last earnings report, which came out after the publishing of Business Weeks fifty Companies to Watch, really supported why this company made the

Look, this is why you should pay attention to what Bloomberg Intelligence and Tim Craighead and the team. Right, here's what they wrote about ahead of those numbers. They right that it provides a unique combination of advanced semiconductors and infrastructure software, and it's positioned this year for accelerated growth.

I love that, so spot on right, And again that was ahead of Broadcom's earnings, which showed that momentum. Hey, another company that Tim mentioned you just heard about it though, was Tesla. But Tesla also came out with some news after we talked with Tim. Tesla's annual vehicle sales dropping for the first time in more than a decade, despite a year and push that sent deliveries to a record in the fourth quarter. And we did see Tesla's shares

Plus Blue Sky versus Okay, Elon versus Altman, Sure, and Paddington Bear versus dog Man.

What.

I don't know what's going on here, but we're gonna break down the feuds that are going to define twenty twenty five something.

It sounds like that Max Chofkin would talk about, So he's coming up in the next hour. Totally, totally. Plus, travel was back in a big way in twenty twenty four.

You know that.

So have we all hit the hotspots? Nope, says our Bloomberg Pursuits team. We have the best cities, resorts, restaurants, and museums to visit in the year ahead, courtesy of our Pursuits team. And even better, we've compiled the costs of each and every trip. All you need to do is pack your bags.

This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto 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 Play ahead in our second hour of our first weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week of twenty twenty five, we continue our look ahead, including the feuds that will define the new year. Some beefs we knew, others we probably don't see coming.

Plus our Bloomberg Pursuits team, in collaboration with Kayak, out with a list of the best places worth checking out this year. This time, they've got an interactive breakdown of the costs at your fingertips. You are not going to believe so cool. This tool tells you when to go, how much it's going to cost you. And even though it's in Pursuits, Carol, there are some affordable destinations.

Yeah, and some of them don't require a passport. That's all. I'm going to put it out there, some of them, some of them first up this hour. It's something we talk a lot about here on Business Week, and that is the gap between how much executives make versus those on the front lines. Check this out. According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation rose by one eighty five percent between nineteen seventy eight and twenty twenty three, while

This may be a surprise to you, but not to our next guest too, says we need to quote pay the People. John Driscoll is the former CEO of care Centrix. It was bought by Walgreens Boots Alliance more than two years ago. He currently chairs Magnet Global, and international staffing company that manages over seven hundred thousand employees.

John is also author of the book Pay the People. Why fair pay is good for business and great for America.

I'm really focusing on making the case that it's good for business and it's good for America if we can get to a living wage. We lost the string a while ago. Between the nineteen thirties and nineteen eighty, median productivity United States went up by about ninety seven percent and the median wages went up by about ninety percent. Since nineteen eighty two, today, product he's gone up another ninety percent, but wages median wages have only gone up

So many of us.

But you know, there's forty million people in America who aren't earning a living wage.

Do you think the incentives are misaligned? Because if we think about and you've been part of publicly traded companies before, what do investors care about? They care about the top line, and they care about the bottom we.

Never talk about. Okay, so they'll you know how much?

Yeah, how much?

Did you know the people on the front lines make you.

Know what they care? They care about automation and increasing margins.

Yeah.

But I think though that you're starting to see things change you at my own.

Companies is twenty eighteen with the economic roundtable. Well, it's only gotten work.

I think that the Well, first of all, the trend's been horrible for the last thirty years, as I.

Just pointed out.

But at my own company, when we froze executive salary and double minimum wage twelve years ago, retention went up, engagement went up, but productivity also went up by about thirty percent.

And you're starting to.

See some of the most successful companies in America, Bank of America JP Morgan also raised their wages to a living wage. They did it as part of that business Roundtable commitment. But what they found is that it lowered the number of people who were leaving their jobs. Because people who are working in minimum wage jobs are often working two jobs, they're not as engaged. They found that productivity went up. What they invested in kind of a if you want a fair or social contract, they found

You win, So why don't we do it? Then you lay out a really good an argument, why isn't it that more companies don't do that?

Well, That's what I am focused right now, Carol, on selling that story and telling that story, because even for the executives that have done it, they're surprised at how it increases how long folks stay at jobs. It increases their productivity. But that's not a story that many people have told, and they certainly haven't told it with very specific examples. You know, our ability to pay claims grew

I think the reason why we have so.

Much rancor anger and discontentment in working class voters of all races and backgrounds is they're not really feeling like they're part of business, of an America that works, where business is clearly working and being successful.

Chaus Johnny.

One of the things Tim and I have talked about it a lot, and you write about the restaurant in Association and the restaurant industry that I feel like, first of all, we feel like there's a tip jar everywhere, and to me, it just says we're not paying workers enough. And I like, why aren't companies paying workers? Why do I have like I would rather pay more for an item and just ensure that these workers are getting paid.

Well, I think we have to actually tell the story, sell the story, and then organize. But there are plenty of examples. Danny Meyers has been a leader and a supporter of the movement that we're working on, which is to eliminate kind of the tipped minimum wage, which is still at three dollars and twenty five cents. It's unbelievable, and you start think if you're we're not talking about Danielle,

Wage to twenty an hour.

I thought it was an odd thing to do, but there was a lot of complaints that that would harm the industry. There's thousands more fast food jobs.

Now, why did you think it was an odd thing to do?

Well, I think it was odd to just bring it up for one category. For me, the most important thing is to eliminate minimum wage across the board and get to a living wage.

Get to I mean again, you've got.

Forty million people where they're working full time jobs, and one job doesn't afford them enough to live independently and pay their bills.

What do you think of the most wealthy people in the world right now, someone like Elon Musk, for example, whose fortune has increased by roughly two hundred million dollars just since the election. What do you make of the concentration of wealth at the very top.

Well, I think one of the things that we actually got me excited about patriotic millionaires is that we I was deeply offended by the notion of the elimination the reduction of taxes on the most wealthy and the reduction of the estate tax, because I think the the threat of intergenerational oligarchic wealth of massive scale, intentionally or unintentionally disdistorting the politics of the moment is a real challenge. And that was twenty years ago when I started, when

It's the fact that we.

Cut off the bottom third of workers in America, and that's not going to be good for the economy. If more and more people feel like they're not part of the American dream.

We're the only.

Country that dream is associated with the country. Our country is held together by this notion that we're in it together. If that, if the bottom third of America does, from a wages and wealth perspective, doesn't feel like they're part of it, I worry about democracy.

I think there are plenty of things you could do in tax.

Policy to increase to certainly make sure that, as Warren Buffett says, he isn't paying a lower percentage of taxes than his assistant. I think we should have a fair inheritance SAX so we don't have these massive concentrations of wealth. But the urgent problem of today is to pay people who are working hard, leaning in people who are at at the bottom third of the wage scale, who are really, you know, running up a down escalator of costs, particularly a time of inflation.

So how do we get executives to start thinking about it. We have many conversations with CEOs. We often do hear about having to pay up for talent, but I'm assuming they mean executives and folks kind of higher up in their company and not necessarily everyone how do we get them to think about that all across all of the workers that they pay for.

Well, I don't know how we convince them, but the voters are already there. Raising the minimum wage to a higher level has won in almost I think it's I think it's nineteen out of twenty states it's been put on the ballot in the last election cycle. Raising the minimum wage won by six points in Missouri, it went easily in Alaska. Those are both Trump plus ten or twenty states.

And the and the the.

Republican attempt to reduce the raise raising the tip minimum wage actually was defeated at the ballot box in Arizona. So the voters are already there. I think the only way we're going to get there today is politically, because the if you have to convince one executive at a time, will be here forever through voters. We have to we have to put it on the ballot, we have to get it through Congress.

And I think, what's what's what?

What what's remarkable to me is the Republican voters are already there.

Is it a zero sum game? Like? Is it if to pay workers more, do executives have to earn less?

Not not at all.

I mean there is.

I mean the most recent example of raising fast food minimum wage and creating more fast food jobs is the example of the last couple of years. But when the restaurant associations we talk about in the book actually pulled its members, not its lobbyists in d C, they found that many of them actually wanted to increase those wages. There's a Nobel Prize winning economist who studied what happened when New York raised its wages in hospitality and Pennsylvania didn't.

Well, do you think raising the minimum wage in one sector like restaurants does raise minimum wage across other sectories too? You don't think so. So you don't think like, if you're getting paid twenty dollars an hour to work at McDonald's, then the warehouse owner has to raise their wages to that or else their employees are going to go work at McDonald's.

When is the burger going.

To go up?

I'm going to go up?

I Well, the reality is the percentage of labor that goes into the Big Mac is actually pretty trivial. Probably to pay a living wage at McDonald's it would probably go by four to five cents per burger. So I think it's not it's deminimous.

I'm playing a little bit Devil's advocate here.

No, absolutely, But where I was going with is we're moving too slowly. It's time to actually change the laws, change the rules, and make sure that everybody at the bottom end of the pay scale is paid a living wage. And that's true for folks. We've got to eliminate the tip, minimum wage. I would eliminate the discount for disabled workers. We have to get to the point where all executives who believe in the dignity of work start paying wages that are equivalent to dignified pay.

We have this terminal function on the Bloomberg terminal where we can look up executive compensation. So forgive me for being fresh, but you are part of a group that does argue that many people should be getting paid more and executives sometimes should be getting paid less than twenty twenty three, your total compensation was over eleven million dollars. Was that too much? Were you paid too much?

I have been the beneficiary of a capitalist system that overpays the top and isn't paying enough at the bottom. But I am absolutely certain and I'm that we could, we could raise get to a living wage level and it would have it would make no big dent on the comp at the top.

But let me also say that, as a.

Patriotic millionaire, I am on the record as saying I think we should increase taxes on people like me and increase the state tax for.

All of us.

How high should they be? Because if you go back in history, I mean, the top marginal tax rate used to would shock you know, fifty sixty years ago, would shock people today. Yeah, I mean it was.

It was insanely high.

It was insanely high.

Let's start by not approving, not extending the tax cuts that Trump put in place when he was in office. Let's start by getting to a level that we were paying during the Clinton administration, which was one of the greatest periods of prosperity, and we were actually paying down the debt. We have a one point seven trillion dollar

Yeah, but we've been hearing this for a couple of years. I mean I remember being out at Milkin a few years ago and people saying, Yep, it's time for us to pay more taxes, really wealthy individuals, and yet here we are. One thing I want to ask you, because we're running out of time, is that if we believe in a free market, I'm looking at your book about some of the myths that are out there that if

Well, I think if you look at where wages are right now, even during the pandemic, while there was a slight bump in wages at the bottom costs went up at twice the rate that wages went up, and so no, the free market has failed.

And by the way, it worked when we.

Actually had a minimum wage that was closer to reflecting a living wage, which drove the greatest period of economic success the world has ever seen between the forties and the eighties. We unhooked that the bottom third of the workforce at that point, and I think we've got a pretty angry, unhappy electorate and a lot of people living.

In near poverty and that's just not fair.

We just had a conversation with was it the CEO of Feeding in America, Yeah, and just talked about, you know, the people who just don't have enough food on their table.

Food and security in this country.

Insecurity just incredible, the percentages and.

One out of three or four kids, one out of five households.

That is unacceptable.

And by the way, paying a living wage is not going to cost capitalism, it's actually going to improve our markets and business.

In thirty seconds, Is a living wage the same in every state, in every city, It's got to be depending on the locale.

No, I think that the FEDS should set a living wage at the national median okay, and then you can vary it up or down based on I mean vary it up rather based on what the true costs. The costs in LA and New York are very different than the cost in Jackson, Mississippi, or you know, or West Texas.

You have to vary it.

But the old minimum is so low right now as to be insulting to workers. I yeah, I.

Feel like you're preaching to the choir. John Driscoll, come back soon. This was an important conversations. Of course, former CEF care centric his new book, Pay the People, Why fair pay is good for business and great for America.

This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live 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.

In one corner, we.

Have the world richest man, electric car and rocket Titan and self proclaimed first buddy of Don Trump. In the other corner, Open AI's chief executive officer, whom Elon Musk has accused in a lawsuit of hijacking the venture in pursuit of profit. This feud, as you now know, is between Elon and Sam Altman.

That's just one of the many feuds that Bloomberg BusinessWeek columnist Max Chafkin writes about in the yearhead issue of Bloomberg Business Week. Max is also co host of the Elon Inc. Podcast and the author of the book The Contrarian Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. Max breaks down the characters for the top feuds in twenty twenty five with Carrol and Bloomberg's Emily GRIFFEO.

Well, you know, business Week is forecasting all the trends we anticipate in twenty twenty five, you know, markets and so on that'll be up and what'll be down. But of course feuds, you know, who's going to be fighting with who is always a fun question. And I think you know, during a during the soon to be Trump presidency, we'll probably be seeing more of those, right. This is a president elect who who loves a good you know,

And it sounds like Elon pops into a couple of these feuds, which is no surprise since he kind of is popping up everywhere.

Yeah, he's he feuds with a lot of folks. The one we picked on to focus on is Sam Altman, the CEO of open ai, which is, you know, the basically the market leading artificial intelligence chat pop platform. Elon Musk has been beefing with Sam Altman for years, dating all the way back to the founding this company. To give you the sort of quick version of it, basically, it was started as a nonprofit and has kind of morphed into something else. Elon Musk is not.

Happy about that.

Partly, he says, you know, just because of the principle, but also, oh, by the way, he happens to own a significant competitor to open ai. So there's a there's sort of a business dispute and an ethical dispute, and of course a potential regulatory dispute because the Trump administration, the next Trump administration will be seeking to change the AI regulatory framework and Elon Musk could have a voice there.

You didn't you let that the good part what Elon has called Sam.

Right, Yes, Elon has adopted the Trump thing of giving everyone nickname, so he called Sam Altman Swindley Sam. So, you know, given how much Elon Musk tweets, and also the kind of merging between Elon Musk and Trump, I think that would be another thing to look out for other nicknames, other people who might earn an epithet.

Okay, So I want to get to the other feuds. But weren't they weren't Sam Altman and Elon Musk didn't they initially work together like they were first going to be business partners, and now this has fallen into such a feud.

They were co founders of Open AI, right, and you know that is the that's kind of the source of this because Elon Musk gave a bunch of money to start this thing up. I think at the time he saw it as a philanthropic donation. And over the years it's become clear that Open AI, whatever it's philanthropic mission, you know, which has to do with, you know, keeping the world safe from AI apocalypse, is going to be a potential threat to some of Elon Musk's companies. Tesla,

Maybe maybe he's just cranky because we're going to start, you know, not talking about tweets anymore, but talking about skeets. And this gets to another few that you guys write about that you include in your list.

You know, this is interesting.

Blue Sky, which is one of the competitors to Twitter. Over the last couple of years, we've seen a bunch of these come and go. Remember there's a Facebook the Facebook version Threads, there was something called Mastodon. They're also the conservative or alternatives Parlor, and of course the president of lex own company Truth Social. Blue Sky is really the first one to take off in a big way.

Folks, it's it's really it feels real.

I mean, it's much smaller than the other social networks at the moment, but it does feel like, you know, it is a potential thread. And of course on Twitter you've got tweets. Even though it's called X, we still call them tweets for some reason, and on Blue Sky they are called whether you like.

It or not skeets.

I want to do kind of a Twitter or X poll because just in our informal control room, I'm getting all these things in our ib chat skeets. Skeets really kind of sounds a little whiskey.

I don't make the I don't make terms. I just I just report on them.

But so does X. I mean I have to say, I still type in Twitter dot com, I do it into my browser and then it like populates to X. But I'm not typing in X dot com.

But I'm slowly using X more than I'm using Twitter, Like I find myself Scott.

More than Twitter.

No, I mean saying xy yes, No, but I feel like I'm getting solicited a lot about Blue Scott.

Even even Elon Musk sometimes still calls it Twitter. We've joked on the Eline podcast that we should call tweets exes instead of tweets, but it has.

Yet to take off.

Okay, So, staying with kind of the tech realm, you also write about a fight against the DOJ and its anti trust head or new head, Gail Slater, versus Google and Google Chrome.

Yeah, so this is in certain ways a continuation of a feud that was kind of heating up during the Biden administration. You've You've had the Department of Justice, you know, take on a bunch of big tech companies, including Google and Apple, uh trying right now or asking a court

I feel like we're covering the really important ones, and that has to do with dog Man and Paddington Bear, and also Kendrick Lamar and Drake.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the dog Man Paddington dispute is the one that all everyone on Wall Street will be watching come January and February.

Get the live blog ready, Get the live blog ready.

When the movies come out.

I mean, you know again, these are two children's movies, you know, one a continuation of the Paddington franchise. One the beginning the first dog Man film, and you couldn't have two more different superheroes. One is very well spoken and well dressed. The other is nonverbal and have a toilet. So my children are excited about it. And of course you know there is a potential business story here. Both of these could be pretty big movies. And so not a direct feud, but a feud for mind.

Share, okay, and then kenchall Lamar and Drake. I thought that feud was a twenty twenty four what's happening next year?

So the feud in twenty twenty four was sort of playing out on Spotify and on YouTube, and it was kind of an artistic feud, a rap battle or a series of rap battles.

What we have now is a.

Potential for a courtroom feud, which is maybe not as fun as the as a rap version, but Drake filing in a court basically announcing his intention to go after both Spotify and UMG, the record label. And the idea here is that UMG was improperly promoting Hendrick's side of

It is the FED meeting this week, we get our last FED decision of twenty twenty four, so we kind of saved the very timely few that could happen in twenty twenty five. And that of course is between the President elect and j Powell. Fed share that's on your list.

Yeah, just kind of a long simmering feud that we saw play out during the last Trump presidency. You know, Trump campaigned on having really low interest rates. You wouldn't believe how low these interest rates are going to be. And Powell meanwhile has basically been signaling that whatever interest rate cuts are going to happen, you know, the FED still thinks there's inflation, you know, and it seems almost inevitable that there's going to be at least continued tension if not something hotter.

Can I just ask you, did you leave a lot on the cutting table? Like were there feuds where people like.

You're watching many other feuds And I'll just throw a few others out. You've got Zin the tobacco pouch versus ALP Tucker Carlson's anti wol pouches.

You've got of.

Course, sports betting against sports washing, watching crocs against Birkenstocks, Love Is Blind cast members against Love's blond producers. I could keep going, but as I said, it's going to be a feud filled twenty five.

Hey listen before you go. Yeah, I can feel it already in the air. Having said that, before we go, The current Elon Inc. Podcast is out, and we mentioned it in the introduction. Mister Musco's to Washington and to Paris and to mar A Lago. It's so funny. Was it a football game over the weekend and there was a picture of Elon and his pick for Defense Secretary and then there was I think Elon and it almost looked like his head was pasted in. It almost didn't look real, But I believe he was there.

Yeah, Yeah, he was there.

And he has been basically going most of the places that Trump goes.

And you know, for a month or two we've.

Been sort of speculating on and you know, Kenny's two guys with these huge egos, Uh, you hang out with each other, can they stand being not the not the biggest fish in the room? And and it seems like

All right, interesting stuff, great lit list, made for a fun read and a fun discussion. Max, so appreciate it. Max Chafkin, columnist at Bloomberg Business, Beeak co host and the Elon Inc.

Podcast.

Catch it wherever you find your podcast. You can also find it uh at Bloomberg dot com, and as we mentioned, Max is the author of the contrarian Peter Teel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power.

This is the Bloomberg Bus Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay 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.

We wrap up our year ahead look with something that garnered a lot of attention last year, Travel and tourism interested. Globe trotting is at an all time high, but so is over tourism. There have been local protests in Barcelona, Venice and Majorca, Spain, while Sicily is facing a tourism induced water crisis. It's not only where one can go, but really where one should go.

We'll get into where you should go in just a bit, but first, before booking any trip, the first thing worth looking at, I think for a lot of people is how much is it going to cost? Kayak is one company that has all that data at its fingertips. For more, we were joined by the CEO of Kayak, Steve Hafner.

For twenty twenty five. Search interest on Kayak is about equal to twenty two twenty four, which is a relieving thing for everyone in the history because twenty twenty four was a really great year in the travel business, and going into the back half of this year, a lot of people were nervous about what twenty twenty five would look like.

But so far, our.

Travel demand is held firm. Airfares are down a little bit, so price is a little bit down and that's helping to prop up demand. But the overall headline is it's good news. Two other friends underneath that. The first is just business class or premium seats are up nineteen percent year every year, which tells you that consumers are willing to pay up. And then in terms of where people are going, Asia is on sale and it's on fire.

Where specifically is Japan still pretty hot?

It's Japan, So Carol, you got it. Japan is on sale.

So if you look at exchange rates, I'm kind of an exchange rate junkie. There's one hundred and fifty four y in too the US dollar right now two years ago one hundred and five, So basically everything's thirty five percent off, including air. So you know, if you look at travel and ted Soporo is up thirty one percent on Kayak. In terms of query volume, Osaka twelve percent. And it's not just the exchange rate, it's social media.

Hey, I am curious how deep you dig steve into your demographic data because you mentioned that really strong in terms of travel trends, and you say business class tickets, premium class tickets that people are paying up for. Is it because they're getting a deal or because they're paying up for it? So I'm just trying to get an idea, is that they're really wealthy that are traveling and it's not across the board.

No, I think people are just splurging more on experiences. We do see a little bit of a difference between millennials and Gen Z versus older generations in terms of

What about the older generations and it's just how they use technology to plan their vacations. What are the biggest changes that you're seeing in that, Well.

I think the older technology, So the older generations buy and large if they're affluent, are still using travel agents. You know, there's still over twenty thousand travel agents who

Was a period I feel like where sustainability and thinking about trips and their impact on the environment was appealing eco tourism. Are you continue to see people book those kinds of trips.

You know, there's a lot more people who say they're impacted by that than what we actually observe on the on the website and on the app, you know. So we do show people what's an eco friendly flight for example, that you know, it's point of a newer airplane, but people don't seem to be willing to pay more.

For those flights.

So they're still mainly driven by the price point of the air airfare or the experience. But I think there is a demographic that that's very important to them, pically on hotels. So we do have sustainability badges on hotels do we think do a good job right limiting their footprint and people do seem, you know, where they're going to stay, someplace to change their booking behavior to one that's more sustainable.

Hey, Steve, before we go, Emily kind of nailed it. You're in a boat, aren't you.

Well, I'm on my floating office here in Miami yet.

Okay, we're just having some fun with you. That would be my ideal office from a boating and that view. Yeah, exactly, Steve. V. Well, Happy New Year and happy holiday. CEO of Kayak, Steve Hafner joining us there from Miami. Yeah, I think it's interesting you hear and still continue to see a lot of people traveling post pandemic.

That Japan is incredible. I have multiple friends that are going or have gone in the last year.

And you're like, yeah, I know about that exchange rate stuff.

Yeah, it's just a little bit.

This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay 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.

Okay, so we just learned that Kayaks applied our pursuits team some two and a half billion custom polled data points to help create an immersive feature to calculate the costs for flights and hotels on the twenty five best places to check out this year. It's all in the Year Ahead issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, which you can check out on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com.

It's a record setting nineteen pages in the magazine with a beautiful immersive feature on Algeria. Two new hotspots to prioritize in Spain, an unlikely story about a billionaire creating a new system for conservation, and some decadent hotels on the island of Principe. Ideas for your next great coolcasion and the next great museums to travel for cat.

Me and let's go now, all right. Nikki Eckstein is the travels are for Bloomberg Pursuits, and she first breaks down the partnership with Kayak.

This is a multi year effort. I kid you not.

I've been trying to make this happen for forever, and finally this year I convinced Kayak to give us their greatest minds in their data science department, who turned no fewer than two point five billion data points.

That's amazing.

All of them are pricing insights on both hotels and flights that allow you to go to our digital interactive, choose your nearest airport and figure out what it will cost you to visit all twenty five of these places every month of the year from your hometown.

Okay, my flight prices are set for New York City.

So you should be able to see both accurate month by month estimates on what it will take to fly to any one of our twenty five destinations, including suggested layovers in places where that's required, as well as month by month hotel pricing estimates for luxury hotels, because we know that's how we roll.

Oh my god, this is so cool.

Thank you guys.

All right, so we can play around with this, we can figure out what it's going to cost us. Tell us about the list this year. Because you are looking at all the time. You usually come up with like kind of an annual review right like you do this.

We are cracking hotel openings, restaurant openings, museum openings, cultural events, infrastructure investments, I mean, you name it. We're tracking it year round. And whatever is most inspiring, whatever is most significant, most game changing, is what rises to the top this year's twenty five places, and it's almost every.

Continent, not Onntarctica.

But we are really well spread geographically around the world with lots of inspiration no matter where you're from.

Where is a place that you can go on a budget. We're talking Bloomberg pursuits here, so we're not always watching.

The wall at How adventurous are you dad?

As well?

I've got two ideas for you, right hear.

The Colombian Amazon is a place where your money can go very.

Far because there's not a lot out there.

But there is a small company called Nomad that's starting to create these community owned, revenue shared model lodges.

The first of ten.

Is just opening now, and it's these beautiful treehouse style bungalows, really modern construction, super lux but at the same time bare bones and immersed in nature. If all of those things can possibly be true at the same time, I promise you they are.

And you go, you know, kayaking.

Down tributaries of the Amazon to look for pink dolphins and you can hang in a hammock to sleep it all off when you're too tired, and it just seems so dreamy.

But the prices are very reasonable. It's like less than three hundred dollars a night.

Yeah, I'm looking the best time to go May in June, November, and December. December is of course going to be pricey, but yeah, three hundred bucks for a hotel per night, and the flight price is cheap two three hundred ninety dollars to get there.

I mean, there you have it.

That's your budget, your budget idea, right then, and there, and then if you want to go a little bit farther away, may I propose the island of Princypay, which we mentioned up top. Where it's people talk about it like Africa's Galapagos, okay, but.

Most people don't even know where it is. Right.

It's off the western coast of Africa, equatorial so you know, a little bit farther north than your average safari, warm weather, temperate year round, a lot of marine activity.

So like tropical fish apparently, fish that.

Walk on land, what like relics of the dinosaur era. It's this place is absolutely wild to the landscapes.

You would not believe.

She called Charles Darwin fish that walk on land. January February.

You know the fish is yeah.

Sorry, yeah, it's all of those things.

Very cool. January February. At the Times to go a medium price to hotel two hundred and eight dollars average flight price. That's the hard part. It's going to be pricey eighteen.

Hundred books depending on where you're coming from. Depending where you're coming from, excuse me, that's from New York. Yeah, I mean if you're flying from like Madrid or something, it's going to be.

A lot cheaper good points.

It's in New York Center.

Love the south of France. You've got something on there.

Yeah, I don't know.

Can we go there cheaply? I'm like looking around, I guess there are times we can go.

Well, I'll tell you it's going to be a lot more affordable than Sand Trapez. And the place that we're talking about is Cap Ferrey and it is a beautiful kind of imagine what Montak would have been like decades ago.

I used to go to Montalk like, so you can tell me exactly what I love. I said, it was really sleepy and lovely and it was so sweet.

So that's exactly what you're going to get in this In this little we're talking about the Bay of Arachnan. I may be pronouncing that completely wrong, and I'm so sorry to the French people who are listening, if so, but it's a small community on inlet with fishermen huts and colorful houses and places where you can eat seafood that's just been plucked out of the sea. Little boutique hotels that are terribly spelled you'll see in the package.

And a new company called Iconic.

House that does really really cool villa rentals for way less than.

You would spend in classic rivi or a destination.

It kind of looked like they were named by Grimes and Elon Musk.

You know, when they name their it's like the parentheses and accent marks all over the place, which is why I won't try to say.

What they are called.

Love Love, Love where else? What's your What was a surprise to you as you were putting this list together that you think my was.

A lot of funk a place that might surprise a lot of folks. Well, you know, we've got places on this list that are kind of humble in my mind, like Lexington, Kentucky, which we're calling as kind of the next Nashville. And then we have places that just really kind of elude the common radar, like the Seychelles, which are actually, if you're in the know, a very classic luxury destination where hotels command really high for figure prices.

Yeah, books out of.

This world, Carol. If you don't want to fly anywhere, you can step out of this building. You can turn right to walk a few blocks in the north and you can go to the upper east side, which yes, is on the list.

Here, Nikki, call me crazy?

Help?

Are you crazy?

Help?

I know? Well, here's the thing, you guys.

The Frick Museum is reopening. The hotel scene is getting a major glow up. The Surrey has just been brought back to life by Corinthia, which is top, top notch with an import from Miami called Casatua. It's a restaurant that is like the hottest place.

On earth right now. So dare to correct me, but I'm pretty sure it's right.

And the era the flights are really cheap.

Zero Dodgar.

There for one hundred bucks, right, But don't dare at the price of dinner right there is that.

No hotels are not cheap.

No, not around here. But I promise you'll have a great night out.

Where do you want to go in twenty twenty five real quickly.

Ooh, you know what, strange but true. I really want to go to Rotterdam. New museums that are opening there looks just like Amsterdam, but way under the radar.

It looks fabulous.

You are fabulous. Nicki Xtein Travels are here at Bloomberg Pursuits. I highly recommend you head to Bloomberg dot com and check this out. Nikki, thank you so much.

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