Expect Kavanaugh To Deflect With 'Settled Law' Jargon

Even before the first words of Brett Kavanaugh, the President's nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, Democrats we're pressing the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to adjourn the hearing, citing the late release of documents related to Brett Kavanaugh. Now Here to tell us more about this is our legal analyst and the co host of Bloomberg Politics Policy Power, and none other than my colleague June grossoe June, was this expected on the part of the Democrats. Yes, they

were going to try to bring up the fact. It's not just that they got by the way. Forty two tho documents were released last night by the attorney who's reviewing the documents of when Kavanaugh was in the Bush White House as its secretary to President George W. Bush.

So they didn't They knew that they hadn't gotten hundreds of thousands of documents that they've requested from those years, and that could contain um different kinds of issues related to, for example, the torture problems that they were that they encountered in the Bush White House. So there's a lot or comments that Brett Kavanaugh had written while he was

a counselor in the White House. We don't know exactly what it be, but would be all the emails and all those those things that go back and forth between him and his position of power as far as that's concerned, and other people as to the positions the George W. Bush White House took. So it wasn't so much opinions as in legal opinions, but other kinds of things. What what side was he on it? And some of those issues he bypassed. He got around during his confirmation hearings

for the d. C. Circuit Court of Appeals. So they wanted all those documents, and as you know, this has been a rush to push this through. The Republicans said they wanted to do it right after Labor Day. They want him on the court in time for the session in October, so it has been a big rush, and so they complained about it, and they tried to get the hearings put off, but it was we know it's to no avail. Chuck Grassley basically said, I'm gonna listen to you, and then he ruled he's the chairman of

the of the Judiciary Committee. But in addition to the release of the documents, they're also classified as committee confidential exactly. So so that's a good question, and I don't know the real answer to that, because if they want, you think that you want they want to ask questions about it, they're going to have to somehow make reference to it

without revealing what was in it. It sounds like an impossible situation if they're classified as committee confident reality, because that means that the committee only, it's with the committee eyes only, so the public doesn't have access to that. So query whether they can really ask him any questions on that. So there doesn't seem to be at least

anything procedurally that the Democrats on the Committee can do. No, there's nothing they can do really, because it's it's a question of the Republicans are in control of the committee, and Chuck grass Lee is in control of the committee, and what he says and the way they vote will always be Republican heavy, unless some Republican decides all of a sudden to vote with the Democrats, which is unlikely.

And we should also mention that the fifty one forty nine GOP control of the Senate looks to be confirmed because Arizona's governor will appoint a Senator to replace the late John McCain right. And it doesn't look like either of the female Republican senators that Democrats have targeted as perhaps saying, for example, Susan Collins of Maine, that they would vote with the Democrats because they are pro choice.

It doesn't seem like that's going to happen. Susan Collins of Maine at least said that she asked Brett Kavanaugh about row View weight and he said it was settled law. Now that's a phrase that lawyers and especially people trying to become judges like to use to say, but it means really not much. It means that as of now it's settled, and that's a precedent. But they can also

overturn any precedent. In this last Supreme Court term, we saw Judge Gorzich, who had talked about settled law and respecting precedent, be in the majority to overturn a forty year old precedent about union fees. So that really means nothing. So it's just a way to kind of get rid of the question. It's it's a he will have many, many ways to get rid of the question. He's been in intensive they call them really murder boards, and it's sort of like every you're sitting there and they just

throw every question that you can possibly imagine. And CNN is reported that they all had protesters and shouted things at him and did different things to make him at ease for when he's in front of this committee, and there were even protesters this morning that had to be carried out. So he is prepared and he's going to have answers. For example, I can't talk about a case that's going to come before me. Well, I respect settled precedent, but how can I you know, I can't talk about

something that's going to happen in the future. And you'll hear those the same things you heard from Judge Chief Judge now Chief Justice John Roberts. He's going to have some baseball analogies, talking about calling only calling balls and strikes and being like an umpire. Those are in some of the prepared remarks that we had to look at. Now.

The Trump administration has also cited executive privilege in order to prevent about a hundred thousand pages of records from his time as the White House Counsel in the George W. Bush administration. Yes, and that's unusual because I don't know of another time where executive privilege was injected as part of Supreme Court hearings. I mean, usually all those documents by that time are revealed, and I don't remember another hearing where there was this late, late, you know, display

of documents, documents overnight. Now not even their staff can get through documents overnight. And as we've mentioned, they're they're still marked by executive privilege, so they're supposed to be just for the committee only. But um that that is a very unusual kind of declaration, you might say, And it's going to keep all those documents, which are the kind of documents that Democrats would like to get their

hands on. Um. Senaer to Einstein said today some she said something, well, we would like to prove, you know, have the documents we'd like to prove. We know that you're at this position, but we don't have any proof of it yet. Thank you very much. June Grasso are legal analyst, co host of Politics Policy Our and lot the shares of Nike. They are down nearly three percent today. Here to tell us more about the company and it's new ad campaign that will feature a Colin Kaepernick, Let's

turn to Bert Flickinger. He is the managing director for a strategic resource group. You can follow Birt on Twitter at Bert Underscore Flickinger. Bert Flickinger, why do you think Nike has turned to Colin Kaepernick for a new ad campaign?

Him Nike's law, some of it's cool and cache and it's trying to recover it on the thirtie anniversary to just Do It campaign that started Ignaminous Lee after Gary Gilmore, the murderer of you Utag gas station attendant and um Utah motel clerk told the prison firing squad just to pull the trigger and just do it and kill him.

And and then that became the genesis of the Nike just do It do It ads in in which which continued and this will certainly sell more sneakers, but as you reference on the Bloomberg terminal, Nikes down almost three percent double what ADDI does is down. And while Nike has the big box to pay the most famous athletes, UH, teams, universities, et cetera. UH, students who we're seeing from around the world are wearing New Balance, wearing Puma, wearing the Adida

three stripe. UH, and Nike's going the wrong way and and him. A big part of this is Nike was a really socially responsible company in the in the eighties and nineties. UH with with it just let Me Play campaign that lives Stolan and Joe McCarthy and Dan Widen of Wide and Kennedy did UH to help help oppressed women and girls and get resources through sports, et cetera.

And UH. Now NI Nike seems to be following controversy, which is okay to certainly take a stand commercially, but but Nike needs to go back to its roots and really get behind women and girls, which which is over half the market that UH Nikes ignored to its peril UH and also pressure on its stock prices. You referenced, well,

what do you mean by Nike strategy? Do they have a strategy to combat Audidas or Adidas however you want to describe it, or Puma that may be held in higher esteem when it comes to things like social media and controversy. This the strategy PIM in my view, financially is has been stripped my in America of UH being the one major shoe manufacturer that that does virtually that does all its manufacturing offshore and a lot of controversy in terms of factory casualties UH and and other really

bad problems. And UH Nike originally with with the just

do it UH with a Michael Jordan's campaign. Ultimately UH later Derek Jeter UH really world renowned and respected athletes eclipsed what Converse had been doing, UH in the great Magic Johnson and Larry Bird commercials produced by Spike Lee and now UH, it's it's more to your point, social and digital and connective media for Nike to get attention getting attention cells shoes, but isn't necessarily covering all of the key cornerstones of social responsibility, especially with women and girls.

Is Nike become a large UH corporate corporation similar to what Warren Beatty did, is Mrs Leo Farnsworth and heaven can wait. Why can't we do everything right? And Nike doesn't seem to be doing everything right. Nike just seems to be just doing it, or maybe don't just doing it in terms of all the right things. Well, Bert, what would you suggest that they do that they're not doing?

The big thing is UH for for example, was with it Drri's UH who coached more Olympic women's ice hockey stars and UH contending for a national championship on thirty eight thousand a year. Whether whether it's Cornell or IVY League or n c a A or women's NBA or or or women's soccer pro leagues. UH, Neither neither the NHL, nor the END nor the NBA, UH nor any of the other U leagues are sponsoring women's and girls sports.

None of them were giving them the resources. That's where you think Nike ought to be putting its money and its strategy behind women's sports. Yeah, and they him they get the return because women make over half of the purchase decisions. And in terms of participation in sports, whether it's field hockey, ice hockey, UH football worldwide are called soccer in the US. That's the key to Nike's future.

Audi DA and others see it on Nike apparently is obtusely missing it when Nike really got it years ago to be a worldwide leader. Now it's a laggern Well in that context, Bert Flickinger, how did Adidas or Audi does succeed in fashion with the stand smith sneaker which is a retro Look, how did they succeed at this?

And Nike miss it? This stand Stan Smith and UH you us open and uh the retro Addi DA's regard, regardless of the sport, is really connecting, particularly with students junior high school, high school, UH, community college, college, young adults who look at look at the history. It's one of the reasons night Nike after in my view, UH anti competitive and UH pricing and potentially predatory practices in

my professional view, knocked Converse out. Converse was a leader and doing what you're saying with with retro shoes, and Converse was really the innovator. Nike bought them out of bankruptcy, but didn't continue the great legacy that was built by the Converse company. And so Audi Dai Radidas has seized that mental and capitalized on it and and Adi. Is it too late, though, Bird, Is it too late for Nike to use converse as a wedge to drive those

kinds of sales? Give you about twenty seconds in news conversus a wedge. What we're seeing in Japan, throughout Asia and in Europe is converse is still extremely popular, especially with young women, and that's the key catalyst for for Nike's growth beyond the Nike brand. All right, well we've got to leave it there, but thanks very much to Bert Flickings. You're talking about Nike the pain when it comes to emerging markets. Here to help us understand the

pain and perhaps mitigate some of our concerns. As Damian sass Our, chief Emerging market strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, Damian, you are the most popular person at Bloomberg because you are the expert for emerging markets, and boy, they have been grabbing the headlines, whether it is Turkey, Argentina and South Africa. Maybe we should start with South Africa since I think you kind of I have done Argentina to death.

We'll get to that. I'm sure what is going on in South Africa and then we'll even go to Asia. But what's happening in South Africa. So South Africa reported GDP that came in well below expectations today they were down point seven quarter of a quarter. That's the second consecutive quarter of declining GDP growth, which effectively puts the economy in recession. Um, look, I mean this is this

is this is long in the coming. I mean, agricultural production in South Africa has been teetering on the brink of disaster for some time. It's slow considerably. Um. We did see a bounce back in the mining in mining output this this quarter, which is a good thing, but consumption just remains at historical lows and so you know,

it's just not hitting households where it matters most. And so you're seeing, um, you're seeing slowering growth, you're seeing inflation chick up, and you're just seeing the fundamentals weekend, So is this because of domestic issues or is this anything larger that's happening? Where is there just a trigger? Right the dollar gets stronger and then that triggers heightened

focus on the domestic problems. Well, I mean it's had porks journals for some time in South Africa at this stage is all about confidence in credibility, right, Ramaphois has taken over now for Zoom that he's been in power for you know, more than a year, but his ability to enact these structural reforms that are designed to reduce leverage and improve growth just aren't. We're just we're just

not seeing that. And it's not it's not gaining the credence with offshore creditors and so what you're seeing our portfolio outflows and it's much the same as Turkey and Argentina and much of emerging markets. You're just seeing you know, I don't want to call it hot money, but foreign investors who had invested in some of the local equity and bond markets heading for the hills. And so we've

seen three point two I believe three. Are they heading for the hills because they're losing money or are they heading for the hills because they just fed up? Well, no, I think I think it depends on where they where

they got in. I know that a lot of people have look emerging market practitioners who have been you know, involved in the space for are the better part of the last few decades know that now is the time when you want to be looking at emerging markets because e M always overshoots to the upside on the downside,

and so it had overshot to the upside um. And so people who are getting in in those kind of you know, the nine things, so to speak, probably are feeling quite a bit of the pain and they're not unlikely to return anytime soon. But someone's got to take those trades off their hands. And there are veteran emerging market investors who were just thrilled to take someone else's money. Well,

I think it's the distress in the macro community. It's it's the the the incremental tolerance for risk from a long only emerging market investor is going to be very small at this stage. But if you're an event driven, bottom up fundamental UH investor with a long term horizon, now might be a time to take a look. The same.

The same goes for global macro guys. There's plenty of relative value opportunities when e M volatility takes up like this and you overshoot to the one side or the other, and so you want to just focus on South Africa, You want to go somewhere else. You want to go Indonesia, you want to go or Key, Argentina, is. So let's talk about Turkey, right, because on a relative basis, and we have touched on this last week, you know, you've got um, you've got you know, uh, five year CDs

in Turkey trading at six hundred basis points. That's five year default protection against you know, effectively you know, Turkey defaulting on its dollar obligations, whereas in a place like Argentina you see that same risk trading at eight hundred basis points, meaning it's more expensive to heade your to to protect against default. Now, I would argue that despite all of the shortcomings of both nations, from a fundamental perspective,

Argentina is doing a lot of the right things. It's appealing to the i m F, it's trying to enact structural reform, whereas in Turkey they're just rejecting a lot of you know, a lot of the and the good advice of people who have been there before, the I m F included, and and they're kind of shutting away their offshore creditors and and and leaving them with a bit of a bad taste in their mouth. And so I don't think you're gonna see investors return to Turkey.

You know for quite some time, whereas in Argentina, I think there's there's there's more of a reason to to to look there. And and like I just said, Argentine is trading way cheaper than Turkey is right now. So from a relative perspective, you might see the global macro communities start to look at these opportunities and and so yeah, you know, on a duration neutral basis, if you're a risk tolerant type of investor, that might be one way

to approach the market. So based on your experience, there are event driven or distressed investors that are probably looking to book air tickets from wherever their headquarters are, seriously to Buenos Aires to get on the ground and start talking to people and going and meeting people that need cap Well, that's been going on, I mean, I mean, if you just look at some of the bigger private

equity shops. I mean just today we you know, um we saw um oak Tree, you know, and they basically decided to take two point four billion of non performing loans off the hands of China Huarrong Asset Management, which by the way, is one of the largest issuers of emerging market dollar debt. I mean, they're one of the biggest constituents in the broad Bloomberg Berkley's you know e

m aggri get index. And so you know the fact that you know, you've got a guy like j Wan Trap who you know is on the record as having said, you know, there is a bunch of you know, the stress market is going to be coming back pretty soon. You know, for him to start putting money to work in China in local currency non performing loans, I think that's relevant in today's day and age. So there is an appetite for risk. It just depends on the type

of investor. And and that's what we're saying. We need to see sort of a stronghand weekend exchange go on here. Well done, Thanks very much. Always a pleasure, Damian sassaur Our, chief Emerging market strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence. Always a value your participation in your thoughts, much appreciated. Trade talks between the United States and Canada are scheduled to reopen tomorrow, this coming after the President threatened Ottawa with expulsion from

the North American Free Trade Agreement. And to tell us more about what's going on with these negotiations is our own Sean donnan Our, senior reporter for Trade and Globalization for Bloomberg Sean, thank you very much for being with us today. What exactly is different this week than last week when it comes to trade and negotiations with Canada, Well, you're right, it's Vu all over again in terms of

racing towards to save NAFTA, if you will. The big story last week was was the Trump administration striking a deal with with Mexico that it rolled out on Monday, and then trying hurriedly to get Canada to join that. I think the big story this week is how Canada can can fit into Donald Trump's expectations but also react to what has been some pretty heated rhetoric over the

last couple of days. Trump clearly is trying to raise the pressure on Canada UH to get to the able but also to kind of exceed to this deal on on his terms, and it's hard to see how Canada can do that for its own domestic political reasons. He's also involved Richard Trumka, the president of the a f l C I O Union. That's right, absolutely so. I mean, the one of the problems that Donald Trump faces is that no one wants a NAFTA without Canada, and that

of course gives some leverage to UH to Canada. And one of those people over the weekend became Richard TRUMPKA, who had given the sort of lukewarm welcome UH last week to to to the NAFTA deal, and then over the weekend said he couldn't see a role for a NAFTA deal without Canada, which was in direct opposition to the President who just the day before had tweeted that he UH didn't see any legal reason why Canada had to be involved. Again, this is this question of leverage.

Who's got the leverage in these negotiations. Trump clearly thinks he can he can plow ahead, but Congress, the US business community, the anto US labor movement all would like to see Canada in this deal, and that obviously changes the equation. Is the President and negotiators for the administration using previous trade agreements in order to try to get this leverage. And I'm referencing, for example, the publication of

the recently renegotiated free trade deal with South Korea. Yeah, so I think one of the themes that I am so over the weekend UH yesterday on Monday on Labor Day, UH, the U S Trade representatives off. It's finally published essentially the the text of renegotiated deal with South Korea. This was one of Donald Trump's targets to kind of rip up and and rework these these what he calls these

terrible trade agreements. And the answer is, what we've learned from this is that it's a pretty mild rewrite of of that trade agreement. There's no one in the business community who is up in arms about this. It doesn't liberalize trade between the US and South Korea, but it certainly doesn't uh throw out this trade agreement that was first negotiated by the Bush administration, the administration to George W.

Bush Um. What we've learned from that and also from the deal with Mexico is that actually, on trade, Donald Trump often talks tough talks and in extreme examples, and his negotiators do as well, but the end result tends to be a more benign rewrite and and the Canadians will have that in mind. And it's one of the reasons that the Canadians are probably at some point going to be ready to sign on to the deal negotiated

with Mexico. Do the Canadians also have a copy of the U s Constitution as part of their negotiating tools. Because the senator for the Democratic senator from Oregon, Senator Ron Widen, he's the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee that oversees trade policy, He's basically said that the president doesn't even have the power to follow through on any of his threats having to do with Canada and NAFTA. Yeah,

and I think President Trump would dispute that. But the point is that Congress under the US Constitution has the power to regulate international commerce. For decades, it has kind of deputized the executive or presidents to negotiate trade deals and then they come back UH under the terms of the rules that that are set by Congress, they come back and present trade agreements to Congress to ratify UM.

And with NAFTA, there's a big legal legal debate going on in Washington over just how much power President Trump has to exit that deal. The treaty itself gives a president the power to give six months notice that a country is leaving UH the agreement, but Congress argues that they really should have the vote on that as well. Again, this is all about leverage and who's got leverage in

this negotiation with Canada. But there's no doubt that the President Trump is being reined in by a lot of people in UH and we're talking about both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Do you believe that the Canadian negotiating position is taking into consideration the midterm elections that are set for November. Absolutely, And I think they're also taking into consideration their own elections, justin Trudeau's on elections next year. Uh,

he cannot look weak at home in these negotiations. And likewise, there's a lot of U. S States and there's a lot of people who report the work up on Capitol Hill each week who have in mind the intense level of trade that they do or that their companies do with with Canada. Canada is the US is number one export market. It's a bigger export market for the US than China. It is all it. It accounts for fifteen percent a little over that of all the trade that

the US does, which is akin to China. We forget sometimes just how big an economic relationship it is that the US has with its nor the neighbor. Well, that's why we've got you to help us understand this and keep us honest about it all. Sean Donnan is our senior reporter for Trade and Globalization for Bloomberg and joins us from Washington, d C. Where negotiations are set to resume between the United States and Canada. That is scheduled for tomorrow. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening to the

Bloomberg P and L podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abramo. It's one before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide on Bloomberg Radio.