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That was President Trump speaking virtually to the crowd at Davos in the World Economic for Borger Brende, He's a president of the World Economic Form. Kind of moderating that. Brian Mornihan, Bank of America, Blackstone, Stephen Schwartzman, Vaco Santander's on a boutein and total Energies. Patrick Puyan po any, thank you very much asking questions. So we kind of spirited back and forth there. Let's get a little bit of a breakdown kind of what we just heard over
the last forty five fifty minutes. We can do that with Nick Wadams. He is a US national security reporter for Bloomberg News based down in Washington, DC. Nick, anything new for you in President Trump's.
Remarks, Well, to me, what you just saw there was a president who was in almost complete control, I mean a just an extraordinary moment. The amount of deference from these titans of industry from around the globe, essentially giving the President everything he wants. I mean, Brian and Brian moynihan, they're dodging. The President criticizes Bank of America for allegedly not banking conservatives, and Brian moynihan just kind of takes it and says, thank you, and hey, we're getting ready
to sponsor the Olympics. Trump demands OPEC lower prices, increased output. He tells everybody, listen, if you want to build in the US, that's great. Otherwise we're going to tear a few. And the response is essentially applause. So an extraordinary, extraordinary dynamic where you just sort of see the degree to which global the real power players who are all collected in Davos there are giving him an extraordinary amount of deference.
We were talking to Nathan dena Bloomberg Intelligence before about last two hours and said that he was looking for the confrontational or negotiator President Trump if we parse him in those ways, which Trump did you just see?
I mean, sounded pretty confrontational to me, essentially saying listen, if you don't build here, we're going to Jack Tariff's up on all of you. He criticized the EU. He takes a quick shot at Bank of America. He goes after Opek. He also tells a story which is not one hundred percent true on the issue of denuclearization that part at the end, talks with Russia and especially China were essentially at a standstill at the end of his
first administration on the idea of denuclearization. So very much in keeping with the president where he is obviously in his MILU feels very comfortable but has no qualms about being extremely confrontational, presumably in part because he knows the response he's going to get, which is essentially applause and in some cases a little bit of awkward laughter. But there at the end a hope that he'll come in person next year.
Nick. A lot of questions on Ukraine and the ability of the US to play a role in ending that conflict.
Here, what's the.
Feeling within your realm national security about the role the US can play, and maybe the timing associated with him.
Well, the timing is obviously quite unclear. The President had said before he came into office that this was something he was going to be able to do to solve before inauguration day or within twenty four hours. That obviously hasn't happened. What we've understood is that officials within the administration are recognizing the enormity of the task and that
it may take some time. And that was one element I thought was quite interesting from President Trump where he essentially said, there, listen, this is something that is the ball is in President Putin's court, you know, saying Ukraine is ready to come to the table, so he can act very much as a point of leverage and a
pressure point. But whereas before the inauguration there was a lot of focus on Ukraine and his transition team saying really that Ukraine needed to come to the table, they're now really trying to put the pressure on Vladimir Putin. So though he's essentially saying he wants to talk to Putin, he respects him. I did see some more pressure there that this is really in Russia's court to kickstart the negotiations, but in terms of timing, they're really not willing to say at this point.
I was really struck by how much energy took center stage. I mean, clearly total CEO is there. So that was definitely part of it. But there were some clear statements made. He will make sure that Europe gets US L and G. He talked about coal. He did say clean coal, but that that was going to be a backup for generation Peabody Energy, which is a coal producer, spiking on that news. Europeans hate coal, So that was like something that was
a pretty interesting moment in your world. Nick, how much of an energy analyst do you have to become if you're national security and now you have President Trump in office.
I would say that's going to be a huge priority for all of us going forward. I mean, you know, in some ways, it's really no surprise the president is essentially repeating elements, sometimes word for word, of his campaign speech. I don't think he mentioned his dislike for windmills there, but he has taken a bunch of actions already to essentially try to steer US energy production away from renewables.
You know, this really is at the center of his campaign and his ethos, that he believes the US needs to increase energy production, and it really speaks to his sense of what the US role is in the world as a provider of energy to other countries. He really sees it as as a point of leverage for the United States, and that's something he's going to double down on, you can be certain in the years to come.
And Nick Nac. Surprisingly, President Trump also brought up the issue of immigration, illegal immigration in the United States and perhaps deportations. What do we know at this early stage about the plans of this administration to implement maybe some deportation measures to what except will National Guard or even active duty troops be involved, if at all.
Well, the US is in the process of deploying about fifteen hundred troops to the border, though it's unclear what exactly their role will be. The President has also sought to give more authority to various government agents around the country, and we do have reports coming in that some of those arrests and have basically already started, So I mean,
he is absolutely determined to do this. We've heard today that Secretary of State Mark Rubio is in fact going to be going to several Central American countries in his first trip. And the point there really is to have conversations and say, listen, okay, we want to kick these people out. They have to go someplace, they have to
have a place to go. The planes need to fly somewhere, So where is that going to be a lot of focus right now on El Salvador, Guatemala, obviously, but this is one of the top two or three priorities for this administration, proceeding with those deportations and finding places that will receive those people. So negotiations are fully underway on that score.
All right, Nick, thank you so much. We appreciate that. Nick Wadams, US National Security team leader for Bloomberg News, just give us a little recap of the comments we heard from President Trump, who spoke virtually to the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davost.
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Now, speaking of we had initial jobless claims, the continuing claims rising to I think it was like a three month high, but that's going to be distorted quite a lot by those LA wildfires. So Michael McKee is joining us Boomberg International Economics and Policy correspondent, How did the do we know how the LA fires have now affected the readings for jabas claims?
Well, we have a rough idea. The number for California jobas claims last week was up by seven thousand, which doesn't seem like a lot. But the week before which the fires were in that week as well were up by thirteen thousand, So you've got a number of people who have contributed to this slight rise we've seen in initial jobs claims slide. It's two twenty three, up from two seventeen, and most states saw declines. Now we're in the holiday distortion period as well, so it's hard to
get a clear read on what all this means. You reference the continuing claims up to one million, eight hundred ninety nine thousand. That's getting a little bit of a boost from the California fires because the people who that thirteen thousand who filed two weeks ago are still on the rolls. But what that's kind of telling us is something also that we already knew that companies they may not be letting people go, but they're not hiring either.
We're going to hear from President Trump's speech virtual speech in Davos and just about a half an hour as per schedule, expecting economic topics to be discussed from the President.
Well, you know, it is the World Economics, it is the World Economic Forum, but it is Donald Trump.
So it's really hard to know exactly what he's going to say. But you can bet that the audience of CEOs is going to be sitting there anxiously awaiting to see if he might say something about tariffs. That's from what I can glean of the Davos coverage, that seems to be the number one concern of people in Davos.
They're also looking for more talk about deregulation because they feel that's an important thing for them, and so those two would be the subjects I think would get the most attention from the audience.
What are you working on right now at your desk? So here's the thing with Mike. He'll sit at his desk and he'll tinker. He'll read the most random reports. Then he'll make all these tie ins and link the nice theses together and I'll send it to me and be like, look at this, and then we'll talk about it on an email. What are you going to send me in like an hour.
Well, I've been putting together a couple of things today. I'm looking at the overall change in auto imports from Canada and Mexico since the USMCA, the replacement for NAFTA came in to be, which was July first in twenty twenty, and you can see it's it's quite interesting the trade
balance between the countries. Our trade deficit widened with Mexico and Canada Mexico somewhat significantly, but at the same time, over that period, the trade balance with China shrink So you know, it's still too big for Donald Trump's liking, obviously from what he says. But what we're seeing in terms of the cross border Canada Mexico stuff is that you know, we're importing more things from them.
Is that the friend shoring impact? Do you think a little bit?
A lot of that's the friend shoring impact and the fact that wages and costs so much lower in Mexico. So with a free trade agreement, it's been easy for companies, particularly auto companies, to move production to Mexico and then just import those cars because it doesn't cost them anything.
So oil, our biggest importer of oil is Canada. They import our oil either way around, we import there. We still import a bunch of oil, and our biggest trading partner for that is Canada, so that's also a big one there.
That's gonna be interesting.
Oh, I know question.
We'll talk about that.
Later the Canadians actually do.
Something about that, all right, Mike, Thanks lot. Mike McKee, Bloomberg International Economics and Policy correspondent on the nerdy things that he is looking at.
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Alex Stel, Paul Swenyer live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. We are streaming live on YouTube as well. So head over YouTube dot com search Bloomberg Podcast Live and that's the easy way to find this. Donald Trump self proclaimed greatest friend to the crypto space, Elon Musk in his inner circle. That's got to help. What does that mean for the crypto space over the next several years. Aisha Kiani joints the chief Operating officer for m n
n C Group. She joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Your community, the crypto community, are you enthused about having President Donald Trump back in the White House? Is it positive for the crypto world or not so much? Or is it too early to tell?
Too early to tell? So it's been both mixed signals. We obviously he's made the right moves with you know, a task force at SEC, with you know, the right CEA of TC chairman. Yes, all of those are uh, you know, the right moves and the moves we you know, we've been anticipating. But what happened over the weekend was that Trump launched his own meme coin and wait.
You famouses Okay, yeah, you missed it. Missed you missed it.
Everyone missed it other than us, the industry folks and we, you know, we were basically like, what is happening? And then Milania launched a trump coin on Sunday night?
Nice?
What does that mean? To launch a coin?
You just go on So in this case, you go on Solana's blockchain and you launch a coin.
I'm gonna launch a steal coin.
Steal yeah, yeah, yes, does it trade yes, it does it It tads and trades in crypto markets at a crazy centralize value today. I mean combined both of the coins had of a combined value of forty billion at a pointy billion with the Bee big forty billion with the Bee.
Yes.
Yeah, So help us understand football this weekend?
It wasn't you were not.
Focused on that? Yeah, help us understand like the meme coin situation and all the frath versus the reality of crypto changing under Trump administration.
I would call meme coins the froth right, and that is not that's a very bad look on us, and that's a very bad institutional look of the entire industry. That's something you know, we do not support. What you know we're here to support is Bitcoin eat Solana as like the real assets, so the real tech. But but if you're just going to go launch a coin raise So I wanted to bring like mention the stats here today because Shane Analysis just ran the research report yesterday.
So fifty percent of Trump and Millennia had never bought a Solana alts coin before. Forty seven percent of buyers created their wallets the same day they purchased the tokens and then eighty three percent of the holder's own sub one thousand dollars of Solana assets. So he onboarded this many people on Solana's blockchain for the ecosystem.
So is that I mean, and the suggestion is they these for lack of a better word, investors don't really we'd have no idea to know who they are or maybe help educated they are.
Exactly right, Like, what's what's the value? What's the intrinsic value? Right, if you're going to invest in bitcoin or either Solon or Avalanche, there is an intrinsic value to it. It's a trusted chain. But what's an intrinsic value to a meme coin? Okay, I mean I don't know.
I don't think that's probably the point, right, So what are you guys talking about in class? Also? You uh, do you teach it? What are you guys talking about when it relates to crypto and regulation? What's like the zeitgeist there?
So, I mean, obviously all positive news for us, you know, going forward starting this administration, that what we're looking forward to, Like, you know, is it a commodity? Are all of them are commodities? Are all of them are utilities? Or Are we just going to give this a new class, you know, shared class or a new asset class. That's one thing. The other thing is that obviously on how the tech works.
So something that this meme coin craze over the weekend did was it kind of pointed out faults in our own space. Right like coin based, the largest retail institutional exchange had issues. Solana, the blockchain itself had issues. Right, are we ready? Are we ready to onboard this many users? So I would be opening up my semester with that. Normally I do it with bitcoin, but this time I would say, guys, this is the perfect use case. Right, does it work, does it not work? Which case worked,
which case didn't work? And we can analyze it chain by chain? What broke? At what point?
What is the expectation of the industry about regulation under a Trump administration? Is this something that you expect the SEC to take the lead? The CFTC something new, So he.
Has set up a special task for at SEC. And Caroline fam the acting chair at CFTC, is also very pro crypto. I've known her for a while, you know, phenomenal person. It's just that they have a better understanding of the asset. So when you know, when we'd go you know, for guidelines or when we'd go to help or when we'd ask for more clarity, they know what we're talking about other than you know, just be being an onshore acid or an offshore asset.
So it's less like open season for crypto and it's more just like the people in the positions have the right kind of language to sort of move things along in a helpful way that's correct or someone understands like the words you're saying if you're talking about crypto. Right, So based on that, what's realistic in this administration and what is the stuff that we should be ignoring, like the strategic reserve kind of thing, like what's real what's not?
I think anything that touches Bitcoin and anything touches ethereum or anything that touches any of the original legacy coins is real. Right, Bitcoin reserve, Yes, that should be you know real because Bitcoin does have a limited supply, but like launches off meme coins to generate like you know, additional wealth and the word liberty financial that is considered frauth.
Okay, so the strategic reserve alex is for with this oil you think it has some value. It should be considered for bitcoin.
Yeah, I think it does because again limited value, limited number, limited quantity, only twenty one million in value, twenty one million in quantity, nineteen million and change have already been mined. So and oil you can still keep on drilling right, like you'd find oil at like you know, unknown places still, but Bitcoin, we cannot go back and change the code to make it from twenty one million to twenty.
Five I mean fair enough, Thanks very much. It's so good to get your perspective. We love having you on. Ayisha Kiani, chief operating officer at MNNC Group and professor at m YU.
What's your class called Introduction to Blockchain and DLT.
Don't you feel like we should take that class?
Yeah?
Audit, I mean kinda right.
I'll send you my lectures. And the more he keeps on making these announcements, I feel like the more I'll be coming here, So I'll start just sending you my lectures.
Okay, we'll take it.
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