Trump Tells GOP Senators to Stand Firm | Balance of Power 10/21/2025
Summary
Market Outlook: The Dow is nearing an all-time high, but the broader market is pulling back slightly as investors digest a wave of earnings reports. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both down, while oil prices have spiked following the U.S. decision to buy 1 million barrels for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Commodity Movements: Gold and silver have experienced significant losses, with gold seeing its largest one-day drop since 2013, driven by a rising dollar.
Company Performance: Coca-Cola shares are up over 3% after surpassing quarterly earnings and revenue estimates, while Netflix remains flat ahead of its earnings report, with expectations of growth from advertising revenue and new content.
Strategic Developments: Amazon shares have rallied despite a recent 15-hour AWS outage, which may impact its ability to attract new customers, prompting discussions on diversifying cloud infrastructure.
Geopolitical Impact: The ongoing ceasefire in Gaza is under scrutiny, with U.S. involvement in monitoring and supporting the agreement, highlighting the geopolitical tensions affecting market sentiment.
Energy Sector: The U.S. administration is involved in talks to access a major tungsten deposit in Kazakhstan, underscoring efforts to secure critical minerals and reduce dependency on China.
Political Climate: The U.S. government shutdown continues, with discussions on potential resolutions, including a year-long continuing resolution, as political negotiations remain at an impasse.
Transcript
From Washington, DC. This is balance of power with Joe Matthew and Kaylee Lyons. The vice president arrives in Israel with a cease fire in the balance. Welcome to the Tuesday edition. As J.D. Vance meets with officials at a monitoring base near Gaza. Delivering remarks a short time ago amid very challenging conditions on the ground. I'm Jill Matthew alongside Tyler Kendall in Washington. Thanks for being with us here. Indeed, the Tuesday early edition of Balance of Power here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. Tyler, it's hard to believe, but it's been just over a week since President Trump rolled out this cease fire agreement. Right. And today, marking the first day of a three day tour for the vice president, J.D. Vance in Israel, speaking alongside the key negotiators earlier today Joe. Jared Kushner, of course, the president's son in law, and also special envoy Steve Wyckoff and J.D. Vance saying that there is still a lot of hard work ahead. Well, that's true, As he made very clear, hard work and a difficult time framing this, he was not terribly pleased with the way some of this has been playing in the media, knowing that stakes are very high right now. Tempers are pretty high on both sides as well, with just days, of course, in place now on this cease fire agreement. We're going to get the latest from Nick Wadhams, who runs our national security team here in Washington. And looking forward, Tyler, to spending some time with Natasha Hall, who's with us from Seaside, is a reliable voice since this all began some two years ago. Right. Of course. And perhaps we can get some clearer clarity on some of our biggest questions, including the future of rebuilding Gaza. But also, of course, Joe, whether or not Hamas is ultimately going to disarm. We got this post from Trump, President Trump earlier today talking about that will get in to all of those details. And of course, the markets are watching this very closely. Worth mentioning in the last hour, we got this red head on the terminal. The U.S. will buy 1 million barrels for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Oil spiking on that news. So for the latest, we're going to go now to Alexis Christopher, US world headquarters in New York for a look at the Tuesday trade. Alexis, thanks very much. And we have got the Dow hovering near an all time high, but the broader market pulling back a little bit as investors sift through a flurry of earnings reports. The Dow is up 260 points off its best level of the day. Now, the S&P 500 down about a point and a half and the Nasdaq composite is off 60 points. We've got gold and silver seeing some steep losses today as the dollar rises. Gold is down more than five and a half percent right now, its biggest one day drop since 2013. And you mentioned oil. We've got West Texas Intermediate up now about 2/10 of 1% at 5767 the barrel. Coca-Cola is rallying more than 3%, helping to lead the Dow higher after quarterly earnings and revenue topped estimates. Coke is also going to start selling smaller pack sizes, targeting low income consumers. We are watching Netflix. That stock basically flat ahead of its earnings report due out after the closing bell. The results expected to get a boost from advertising revenue and the K-Pop movie K-Pop Demon Hunters. Netflix also reportedly among the companies interested in buying some or all of Warner Brothers studios. And shares of Amazon rallying two and a half percent one day after a massive 15 hour outage at its Amazon, Web, Services disrupted operations for hundreds of companies, including Apple, Facebook, McDonald's Epic Games. Analysts say the outage could make it harder for Amazon to attract new customers and may force them to spread their infrastructure between multiple clouds. For on demand news 24 hours a day. Subscribe to Bloomberg News wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Alexis Forstall for us. That's your Bloomberg Business flash. All right, Alexis, thanks so much, reporting for us live from world headquarters in New York. But here in Washington, I'm Tyler Kendall alongside Joe Matthew. And as Joe laid out earlier, we have our full attention today on Israel as vice president. JD Vance begins a three day tour of the country. He spoke earlier today to reporters. He was at this US led military civilian command center, which is hoping to help implement this cease fire for the long term. He told reporters, though, that there's a lot of hard work ahead. There's this inclination to say, oh, this is the end of the cease fire, this is the end of the peace plan. It's not the end. It is, in fact, exactly how this is going to have to happen when you have people who hate each other, who have been fighting against each other for a very long time, we are doing very well. We are in a very good place. We're going to have to keep working on it. But I think we have the team to do exactly that. Vice president in Tel Aviv earlier standing alongside. If you're with us on Bloomberg TV, Jared Kushner, Steve Wyckoff, they're on the trip together here. As Tyler mentioned, he'll have a couple of days ahead. But he went on to chide the media for celebrating, as he mentioned, the idea of failure. And it was a tough weekend. We have to be honest about what's been happening on the ground. Heavy fighting in Gaza over the weekend with both a deadly Hamas ambush and Israeli airstrikes are causing many to ask the very obvious question if this cease fire can hold. Before we're joined by Natasha. All at CSIS. We spent some time with Nick Wadhams, who runs our national security coverage here from Washington. He's with us in our D.C. bureau. Nick, I don't know if it's possible to answer this question right now. What are you watching to try to find out? Well, I think the big question is going to be what happens next and whether Hamas is able to is willing to disarm. I mean, so you have the you had the initial element of the cease fire, which was the release of hostages and and the release of Palestinian prisoners. And now we move to the much more difficult phase is what happens to Hamas, because Israel has made very clear all along that it will not accept a solution in Gaza where Hamas remains in power or with any sort of control or leverage. They basically want it wiped off the map. And then obviously Hamas counters and says, well, we don't really have any interest in that, though they did say recently, you know, we are willing to undergo this this power transition. But I mean, when I look at that, what you what I really see is, you know, the Trump administration has billed this cease fire as a signature achievement by the president. Obviously, they want it to stick. If it doesn't stick, it will also be seen as a major failure, not only for the region, but it will say a lot about his dealmaking prowess. I mean, they have hailed this as something that essentially should give him the Nobel Peace Prize. And if, you know, ten days into it, it's already showing signs of failure. I mean, it should be pointed out that, yes, the vice president is right. These things do not proceed smoothly a lot of the time. And the challenge is really holding the thing together. Well, let's talk about some of the ways that the administration is trying to make this stick. Can you walk us through what this coordination center entails? We know that about 200 American troops are staffed there. But what are what does this effort actually look like in practice? What is happening on the ground? As we know that the vice president is visiting with the center today? I mean, he's there really sort of as a symbolic show of support and trying to, I think, send a message to both sides. Listen, Vice president is here. President Donald Trump and the administration has a great deal invested in this deal. And so that's in a way, putting pressure on Israel not to go too far against Hamas and also trying to exert pressure on Hamas. So keeping this thing from sort of spinning out of control, you know, in the end, the joint coordination center really is a similar move by the U.S. They're monitoring the cease fire. He's been very explicit. They're not going to be U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza. But it's really a way of of sort of the U.S. putting its assets where its mouth is, saying we have a stake in this as well, to try to keep the two sides in this thing and and committed to a ceasefire where efforts at ceasefire in the past have failed So many times those American troops will not cross into Gaza, Is what we have heard. Correct. Are they directing IDF in Gaza? I we have not gotten that level of detail. I think what you're seeing really is the U.S. offering intelligence, satellite imagery, other assets to help identify where ceasefire violations are occurring and then bringing U.S. invites and involvement. I mean, you know, the U.S. Central Command has been involved a great deal. For example, when Israel exchanged fire with Iran, Israeli armed forces were consulting with the U.S. military over what to do and how to respond. So there is a deep partnership between the U.S. military and the Israeli military and has been very explicitly in the last couple of years. So I think what you're seeing is a continuation of that. In the final minute, we have you, I want to turn to another foreign policy issue, which is that we have this red head on the terminal. People familiar telling Bloomberg News that European allies are working with Ukraine to prepare a 12 point peace proposal. Now, it was interesting to me because it mirrors a little of what we've heard in Gaza, including that President Trump could potentially lead a peace commission that would oversee the cease fire. Just top lines here. What do we know about what this plan would entail if it goes through? Well, I think what you're really seeing is a European effort to essentially set the terms of a potential Ukraine deal along the lines of what President Trump had done in Gaza to try to mimic that. It would it would offer some form of security guarantees for Ukraine. But really, what this is, is an effort by the Europeans to get involved and say essentially, okay, here, that here's here, here's a potential proposal that we could get both sides to agree to. Obviously, U.S. involvement would need to be a crucial to this as well. There's some indication that the Trump administration has not quite given its imprimatur to this. So this is really a push by the Europeans to essentially halt the fighting where it is now and then push the two sides toward a conversation. They're not talking. They want to at least give them something to talk about as we head into the possibility of a Trump Putin summit at some point in the future. All right. Bloomberg's Nick Wadhams, he runs our national security coverage here in Washington. Thank. Q so much. And to expand the conversation, we're joined now by Natasha Hall, nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Natasha, thanks so much for joining Bloomberg today. And as we've been talking about, Vice President J.D. Vance is there in Israel. He said that there is still work to be done and a long road ahead. Just from your view, what are some of those biggest hurdles that we could actually see progress on in the coming days and weeks? Yeah, thanks for having me again. I mean, I think that JD Vance's visit is really meant to throw more weight behind this peace proposal because one should note that this was a peace plan, not just the cease fire agreement. And we're already seeing the cease fire agreement fall apart within the first week. So there's a lot of hurdles ahead. In answer to your question, in terms of aid trucks going in, Israel has already said that it's slashing that in half due to the delayed return of deceased hostages from Hamas. We've seen 100 killed in recent days due to Israeli airstrikes. We're seeing a lot of lawlessness in Gaza right now because there's really no security mechanisms in place. So so there's a lot that can potentially go wrong. So it's good to hear the vice president saying they understand that the signing of this first phase of the agreement is not the end of it, and that there's a lot of hard work ahead, because I think myself and many other analysts watching this very closely upset exactly that that the end of U.S. pressure to move this through is is simply not over. Hard work is a given, Natasha, but what's the threshold for violence? Sunday, I wondered if we would still have a ceasefire by the time the workweek opened here, when Israel launched strikes against Hamas in Gaza, suspended all aid shipments. How many more headlines like that can a cease fire survive? Thank you so much for that question. I think it's a really vital question for all of us to be asking, because the reality, I think, is that the U.S. and the international community might accept a very low boil, essentially of violence in Gaza, as long as it wasn't making the headlines quite in the same way that the famine and the constant bombardment was just, you know, days earlier. But the reality is that Israel can really put the pressure on Gaza simply through these eight obstructions, as we've seen in the past week, and these sort of more irregular airstrikes, in addition to the fact that Israeli forces still occupy more than half of Gaza territory. So, you know, there's there's the direct violence of the actual war and the conflict, but then there's also the indirect violence on a place that has been experiencing widespread famine and, you know, really requires somewhat of a marshall Plan, not just sort of the a seeping in of of hundreds of trucks per day. It really needs to be a pronounced scaled up response to reverse. I think some of that that indirect violence. But I think the issue here is whether or not there's going to be put in place a monitoring mechanism that really looks at not just the number of trucks going through, but actually the effects on the ground. Are we seeing a reversal of of a lot of the various issues that I just mentioned, starvation, the lack of medical personnel and equipment? Are we seeing a reversal and a rebuilding of the Gaza Strip because we haven't even gotten to the phase two where we're talking about an international stabilization force, the actual rebuilding of Gaza? 80% of the structures have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip. So there's there's a long road ahead. Well, speaking about these big questions, including what the reconstruction of Gaza is going to look like, another big question is surrounding the future of whether or not Hamas is going to disarm. And we heard from President Trump earlier today on a truth social posting that if Hamas does not disarm, quote, an end to Hamas will be fast, furious and brutal, unquote. Can you just give us a little bit of context here? What do the discussions look like for Hamas to disarm and what are we looking at if the group ultimately doesn't? Right. So let's just zoom out a little bit and acknowledge the fact that Hamas, regardless of what anyone thinks of them, has been the government in Gaza for over two decades and and has also been essentially the police force there. And right now, you have essentially vacuums throughout the Gaza Strip. There is no international stabilization force. There is no other entity. And so you've seen rising in clan and triggering violence in Hamas, which in Gaza, which Hamas has, you know, essentially tried to to eradicate through these very public executions that we've seen in recent days. But but I think the real question is, if you disarm Hamas, which is clearly the goal of many regional partners in Israel and the United States and others, what will take its place, because there needs to be some kind of governance structure in Gaza and there needs to be some kind of police force as well, because what we've seen is, is Israel has also been supporting some of these other gangs and militias within Gaza that have been looting aid in recent months. So there needs to be something there. So I think the big question is, you know, if the international stabilization force, by some accounts might take months to actually put in place what's going to be there in the meantime to restore order, to allow, you know, humanitarian workers to go through and safety, etc.? And that's a that's a really big question. And so I think for that reason, you've seen President Trump essentially go back and forth on this. At one point, he said he's not so unhappy about seeing these public executions of gang members by Hamas and at the same time saying that they need to eradicate Hamas if it fails to disarm. So, I mean, I think that this is the this is a larger question, who is going to provide security in Gaza in the in the weeks and months ahead? It's actually the president said a lot in that post at 9:00 this morning, including numerous of our now great allies, as he called them, in the Middle East, in areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly with great enthusiasm. And for me, they would welcome the opportunity at my request to go into Gaza with a heavy force and straighten out Hamas. If Hamas continues to act badly in violation of their agreement with us, I'm just wondering your thoughts on the neighbors as. The president likes to call them in light of the headlines, a day that the Saudi crown prince will be visiting the White House next month. What will that meeting bring? Yeah, well, I think the Saudi crown prince and the US will be focused very much on a defense pact with the United States rather than simply offering a peace force, as he put it, to the Gaza Strip. Listen, I don't think that this is attractive to any Arab or Muslim country. We're still seeing airstrikes. We're still seeing infighting. This is not an area that I think any Arab or Muslim country would want to inject their own forces into, because it's not really peacekeeping. It's peace enforcing which one could also say it is fighting. And so I think that that's that's the big issue today. It's probably not going to be a majority force from oil rich nations, but it's probably going to be from Egypt and other countries that actually stand up a pretty major military elements or have a have a, you know, a larger military to offer to to the Gaza Strip. But I think that that remains to be seen. Again, what those forces will will entail. We haven't even really talked very much about how much money these oil rich countries are willing to inject into Gaza, which is going to take about 50 billion or more to reconstruct. So, you know, again, I think we're we're a long ways off from from seeing Saudi forces in the. TAUSCHER Thank you. It's always a pleasure to spend some time. Natasha Hall at CCS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. We've got our eyes on the Rose Garden Club. We're going to assemble our panel next right here on the fastest show in politics. This is Bloomberg here alongside Joe Matthew in Washington. And we have one eye on Pennsylvania Avenue where today President Trump welcomed Senate Republicans. They spoke about a range of issues earlier, including what's been an expedited process for confirmation of some of President Trump's nominees. But, of course, top of mind has been the government shutdown, which is now officially in day 21, with little sign that there is any progress towards a deal to reopen. Now, President Trump addressed this earlier, saying that it is all about partisan politics, unfortunately, and a craven and pointless act of partisan spite. Chuck Schumer, who I've known for a long time and the radical left Democrats are holding the entire federal government hostage to appease the extremists in their party. President Trump, reading prepared remarks in the Rose Garden or the Rose Garden Club, as he likes to put it a short time ago, where Republican senators have gathered in the sun today to celebrate unity. The president inviting them to talk about holding the line on the government shutdown and helping to pass his nominations in the Senate, which have been moving on a bit more. And we've got a new wrinkle on that that will mention to you the president's nominee to run the special counsel's office could be in trouble. His hearing is set for Thursday. And we've got another potential text scandal, it looks like. But on day 21, we are still talking about a shutdown with no end in sight. And in fact, even floating the idea, you know, that things could be a little bit troubled when we're floating the idea of a yearlong continuing resolution just kick the can for a year so we don't have to fight anymore. That's the narrative today in the Capitol as we assemble our political panel, Bloomberg Politics contributor and Democratic analyst Ginny Sian Zaino is with us, democracy visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center. Maura Gillespie is with us as well, Republican strategist and founder of Blue Stack Strategies. Maura, you worked for a former speaker of the House in John Boehner. And the idea of a yearlong C.R. is something that a lot of Republicans have an allergy to. Is that, in fact, how this all ends? And so you have my years in Boehner's office. It's hard for me to maybe stomach that. But I do think that things are just so divisive right now that I I worry that without something more long term, we'll be having this fight on repeat and unfortunately have another shutdown in the future. And I'd rather not see that happen. And so I do think that maybe looking at getting past the stage, which at this point and I know we'll get into it, but it does feel as though Democrats have to come and just end a shutdown, because I do think Thune is being fair in the sense that he's willing to have conversations, he's willing to bring legislation to the floor to extend subsidies in a way that also doesn't, you know, isolate every Republican vote in both chambers. But the shutdown is serving the greater good. And I think that no American benefits when we have a government shutdown. And unfortunately, Congress has for a long time struggled to get this their funding appropriations done in a timely fashion. Well, Jeannie, what is the first? Score award calculus here for Democrats, because as more points out, we've heard from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who says that Democrats can have a up and down vote on a one year extension of those premium Affordable Care Act tax subsidies. How are Democrats looking at their options on the table right now? Or is this just going to keep going on until they actually get some tangible policy changes? Yeah, you know, my view, Tyler, is that shutdowns never result in policy changes or wins, I should say. And so it's usually and always about the politics of this thing. And at this point, both sides feel like they're winning on the politics. And that's the problem. Until one or both start to feel pain, we're not going to see this change. And so Democrats, I suspect, will hold out at least until that November 1st date, because, of course, what we're going to see then and Bloomberg has been reporting this is the skyrocketing of health care subsidies. I think, Joe, you said at the beginning at the top of the show, quadrupling in Georgia, about a quarter in Maine, almost 20% in Michigan. The list goes on and on. And oddly, this is going to be impacting Trump states, red states more viciously than it's going to impact blue states. So it's his own voters. And the president knows that because he's spoken about it in the past. So I think we will see the Democrats hold out for that. And the reality of this and I don't know anybody in Washington who doesn't think that this thing also is not going to end until one person comes to the table and forces it. And that one person, I'm sorry to say, is a Democrat is not Chuck Schumer. It is Donald Trump. Until Donald Trump pulls the plug on this thing, it is not going to move forward. And Donald Trump just a short time ago invited John Thune to the podium in the Rose Garden to talk to his members who were lunching in the sun, knowing that he said we may have no choice but to pursue a one year C.R. And by the way, Donald Trump may not have a problem with that. It was the White House that suggested that a couple of months ago when everyone's had exploded on Capitol Hill of the idea that could, in fact, become a reality. But I want to ask you about the nominations that are also being celebrated in the Rose Garden Club today. It's not just holding the line on the shutdown, Maura, as you well know, the president wanted to thank Republican senators for moving on. BLOCK In some cases, a huge number of nominees. Of course, that's the job of the Senate, and it's one that doesn't get a lot of coverage, but there's one that may just not make it. According to John Thune himself, quote, He's not going to pass the line from the majority leader. We're talking about Paul Ingrassia, the president's nominee to run the Office of the Special Counsel. This is another Texas scandal that has been made public by Politico, allegedly, of course, that has now prompted at least three other Republicans to oppose his nomination. In this text chain, which was repeatedly bumping into themes of Nazi ism, he said that Martin Luther King Jr holiday should be tossed into the seventh circle of hell and that when asked about his viewpoints, he said he has a bit of a Nazi streak. Is Mr. Ingrassia, is nomination as good as dead, Mara? It certainly should be. I mean, that's a disgusting way to speak, just even if it's in private text messages. The fact that he has that on his heart and he believes that enough to say it, whether he's in his mind, joking or not, there's something that spurred him to say it and actually just call it disqualifying in itself. And so Thune is right to say that, you know, there's not going to pass on Thursday. I'm sure, as a conversation is being had in that lunch right now as they're celebrating. You know, I think there are probably seven Republican senators who have a bit of a queasiness about some of the ones that they've gotten through in that first, you know, few months there that, you know, I think of Pam Bondi, I think of RFK Jr. I and there are a couple of senators who are wondering if they made the right choices. But with this, they seem the fact that so many you said three at least, maybe four or five I've seen, they're going to say that this isn't a yes vote for them. That's encouraging to me. Right. And the Republican senators expressing opposition to let's keeps building. We also heard from Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, earlier today, saying that he thinks Ingrassia should withdraw. Jeannie, is just is this just mounting pressure on the White House one? Can we expect to hear from them, if at all, on this nomination? Yeah, I mean, it is telling and I agree wholeheartedly with what Maureen just said. It is telling to me that the White House has not yet come out and said we are going to withdraw his name. Considering how disgusting these texts are. This is, though, not surprising from the White House. Right. We have had a president who has flirted with neo-Nazis in the past. He is being accused. By the way, at the Quantico speech, a dog whistling to neo Nazis. The list of things goes on and on. And of course, this comes at a time when people in this country who have long fought for civil rights are feeling under threat from a variety of of specters, including the the attack on DEA, but also the Voting Rights Act case that the Supreme Court is arguing and may strike down Section two any day now or at least in the spring. So it is shocking. And his name should be withdrawn immediately from this White House. But they haven't, at least as far as I know, had any statement on this, which is not surprising. But it is it is upsetting. It's an oddity here because I don't think anyone really even knows who leads the Office of the Special Counsel. It's not like we're talking about attorney general here more or secretary of state. This could this could have been handled pretty quietly, right, if you're a nominee. It's not unusual to have a withdrawal letter handy in case something happens. Does. And Grassley had just handled this on his own. I mean, I don't know. I think when you look at some of the Trump White House, either whether they are candidates or acting positions, they have all mostly decided to go with the Trump method of doubling down, tripling down and holding firm and more or less hoping that the president will back them. And then the public scrutiny and our distaste for it will subside because something else will come and distract us from their issue. And unfortunately, I do think that probably what he is holding out for, he's waiting for direction from the White House. He's not going to back down on his own accord, which speaks more about him and his own personal moral compass than anything else. But I do think there are some people in the White House who should have acted and have not done so yet. And maybe today's meetings with Republican senators giving the president a real picture of what's going to happen on Thursday may help spur that action to take place today. Jeanie, final 30 seconds here. I do want to ask you about some policy we could see hit the Senate floor this week, this bill to pay federal workers and our troops. Are we expecting this to actually pass amid the shutdown? Because it looks like Democrats are the ones opposing this? Yeah, you know, my view is that it should pass. But I can see the Democrats point, which is that it still doesn't address the underlying issue, which is the Obamacare subsidy. So I think it's still an open question whether it passed. And of course, you've got some Democrats like Fetterman out there calling for real changes to Senate rules to avoid these kinds of things in the future in this filibuster and the necessity of the filibuster proof majority, that's going to obviously rankle people on both sides of the aisle. All right. Our political panel today, Jaenisch and Zeno and Moore, a Galaxy. We thank you both so much for joining, as always. And, Joe, we did get a red head on the Bloomberg terminal moments ago. President Trump's administration is involved in talks for a US company to access one of the world's largest untapped deposits of tungsten in Kazakhstan. That's right. News coming from Kazakhstan potentially by way of the White House will keep tabs on this for you. As Tyler mentioned, he just went red on the terminal. So we'll have much more straight ahead. Also, our conversation with Congressman Brian style. We've been talking shutdown. Let's hear from a stakeholder in the House. The Republican from Wisconsin is in the nation's capital and will join us live straight ahead here as we talk politics in Washington on balance of power. This is Bloomberg with our eyes on Capitol Hill. And a government shutdown that is now 21 days old. Maybe you've stopped keeping count at this point because nobody seems to see light at the end of the tunnel. We do see some important dates, though, including the next paycheck fulfillment for our military or active duty military. Remembering that $8 billion that the president managed to find to pay the troops only covers a single pay period. You've also got federal law enforcement, and there's a piece of legislation that's going up in the United States Senate that would address some of this. It's just not expected necessarily to pass. As we told you yesterday, Democrats are not on board, just like they are not on board with a continuing resolution. And I'll tell you what, Tyler, as we consider the idea here of a C.R. expiring on the 21st of November, that's the plan on the table. It's a month away from today. You've also got November 1st open enrollment beginning and the expiration of SNAP benefits. So maybe it's no wonder John Thune suggests a full year C.R. might be coming, not just suggesting a full year C.R. might be in the pipeline, but also that maybe it's time for the House to come back into session so that they can re pass a clean C.R. that has that end date in place, because, as you mentioned, November 21st is what they're currently voting on. But we are just ticking closer and closer to that now. We're lucky to be joined now by one of those. Members of Congress who is currently out of a session, but joins us now from Capitol Hill. That's Congressman Brian Style, Republican representing Wisconsin's first district. Congressman, it's good to see you and thanks so much for joining. I love your your opinion on this. The Senate majority leader suggesting it's time for the House to come back into session. Do you think that's a good idea? Well, it's time for the Senate to pass the clean C.R. We're in this situation because the Senate Democratic leadership under Chuck Schumer refuses to vote for a clean C.R. This used to be a non-controversial vote here on Capitol Hill. In fact, Democrats have voted time and again in favor of clean C.R., as most recently in the spring. What changed is the politics for Democrats in the United States Senate. So the House has done our job. We're all waiting for the Senate to do their job. Chuck Schumer is beholden to his radical base. A lot of us are frustrated. It's time for us to move on because there's really important negotiations in front of us, including fiscal year 26 appropriations, as well as other prior policy priorities that you mentioned. Congressman, it's good to see you. Kevin Hassett had suggested yesterday maybe there's capitulation this week in this whole thing comes to an end. But every time the Senate votes on this, it's the same two Democrats and independents who break ranks here. So, I mean, at some point, we could be bumping up against November 21st. What do we do then? Do you wait forever for Senate Democrats to just stay shut down and until Chuck Schumer changes his tune? Well, the consequences of the Schumer shutdown continue to build. President Trump is doing a great job taking some extraordinary actions to make sure that the consequences aren't felt by our troops, for example. But many of these are one time actions, and so the consequences will just continue to build. The pressure will build. And I do believe at some point the Senate will come to the table and recognize that their action to close the federal government and put at risk, for example, payments to our troops. The men and women wearing the United States military uniform was the wrong bet. The sooner we come out of the shutdown and begin the substantive negotiations and fiscal year 26 approach, as well as other policy priorities, the better off we are. Well, the White House has come to the table on some of these really critical issues, like military pay, pay for the Coast Guard, also finding that supplementary funding for that key federal nutrition assistance program that helps women and children. But, Congressman, we hear from Democrats that they want President Trump to come to the negotiating table when it comes to the policy stance is at stake here, particularly related to health care. We know he had this luncheon today with Senate Republicans, but do you think President Trump should be getting more involved as this shutdown drags on? Well, I think, again, the challenge here is we put forward a clean C.R. now, as you noted weeks ago, passed in the House. We're three weeks into a shutdown. We should be three weeks into this C.R., utilizing the time that we're burning right now to negotiate those policy priorities. Many of these have year end deadlines, appropriate conversations for us to be having. But we should be doing that in the context of an open and operational government. Again, the House did our job. The Senate is running into filibuster challenges. Senator Fetterman is even calling now and saying maybe we have to overcome that because a minority of United States senators are standing in the way under the leadership of Chuck Schumer from reopening the federal government. You've seen what's going on with the premiums here, Congressman. And I know that you're careful not to conflate this debate with that of government funding. But we saw a couple of states this morning in Georgia where I know Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor GREENE has been making some noise here. Obamacare premiums could rise as much as four times. They could quadruple. In Maine, plans will see premiums up an average of 24% and Michigan could surpass 18%. And that's before factoring in the expiration. What would it mean for people looking at their subsidies rise in Wisconsin? Well, I think what we see as the data continues to come in that the Affordable Care Act was anything but affordable for the American people. The program the Democrats put in place and again, the Democrats set the sunset date themselves. This was a Democrat decision to sunsetted at the end of the year. But what we continue to see is challenges inside the structure of the program. There is plenty of evidence of the waste, fraud and abuse inside this Democrat created program. There's a Treasury report that came out under President Biden that identifies as significant flaws inside these premium credits that go back to insurance companies as to why it's structurally unsound. So at an absolute minimum, we would need to make meaningful and substantive reform in the program. But again, these are the conversations and the debates that we should be having right now on Capitol Hill. Instead, we're shut down, all because Chuck Schumer and Democrats in the Senate refuse. To open the government with a clean C.R. to allow these negotiations and debates to take place. Well, Congressman Joe just outlined one of the potential impacts for constituents. Another has to do with economic assistance for farmers. A senior administration official tells me that's currently been delayed because of this ongoing shutdown. I looked at the stats. The USDA estimates Wisconsin farmers produce $1.3 billion worth of soybeans each year. This is, of course, at the center of this issue, as China has an imported any U.S. soybeans so far this harvest season. I'm wondering if you're in any discussions with the administration on what this aid package might look like. Are they talking with Congress on this and any update on when it could be rolled out? I had a long conversation with two soybean farmers from Wisconsin yesterday talking about this exact challenge. The short term fix may be that type of a subsidy, but the long term fix is getting trade agreements in place and having China once again purchasing U.S. soy. The U.S. soy exports are heavily dependent on the Chinese markets. The broader trade negotiations that we're having is causing concern. I'm of the view that we have a huge opportunity here to work with our allies, hold China accountable, and then strike the trade deal. I think President Trump's in a position to do that. The short term fix may be providing some level of assistance. The long term fix is striking these trade agreements to the benefit of American workers and farmers. Congressman, we appreciate the insights as always. That's Brian Style, Republican congressman from Wisconsin who chairs the House admin Committee. And always a pleasure to have the chairman with us as part of our conversation here on bloomberg. Tyler there's more breaking news. You mentioned it very quickly. We're learning more about tungsten than some of us have ever known. When we start talking about rare earths and rare minerals that are used in this case in the manufacturing of defense equipment and other critical technologies. This is a big one, a chemical element. If I bring you back to chemistry class, it has the symbol W its atomic number is 74 and it has the highest melting point of all known elements, which is why, Tyler, this is one of the most sought after ingredients for weapons manufacturing, especially when it comes to building rockets. Right, exactly. And this headline appears to be underscoring the administration's push to try to bolster its own supply and position in the critical and rare earths market to really compete with China ahead of this really important meeting next week between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Yeah, that's right. Joe Doe is writing about this right now on The Breaker. And I hope that Joe doesn't mind us interrupting his coverage here in the clutch. Bloomberg news economic statecraft reporter Joe, it's great to have you. This is a big one, of course, as we remind ourselves that all roads lead to China. Yeah, exactly. It in a lot of ways is just another thing that really kind of emphasizes this this ongoing trade war between the United States and China, which we have seen escalated now in recent weeks. Tungsten is just another one of those critical minerals that the Defense Department needs more of and that the U.S. has said, listen, we need to wean our needs off of China specific. Joe, let's connect the dots here and look at the broader picture. Yesterday, the U.S. and Australia inking this $8.5 billion cooperation agreement when it comes to critical minerals. Does this mark perhaps a new era for the administration as it is looking at supply chains? Because up to this point, we've really seen them focus on domestic projects, right? I'm thinking A.P. materials, trilogy, trilogy, metals, things like that. But now it looks like we're kind of pointing outward. Yeah, I think, you know, this is one of the things we had been talking about recently, which is we had reported at the end of September that there were a group of mining companies from Australia in the U.S., in DC in the middle of September, and they were talking to senior Trump administration officials who had been saying, look, we're looking for warrants in companies, we're looking for offtake agreements. And when you can bringing your processing or production here to the United States. And one of the things that we noted when we had that scoop was this is a very serious indication that the administration is looking at foreign companies. And the scoop that we have out now with tungsten says that Howard Lutnick himself has been facilitating talks with the US private company and the sovereign wealth fund of Kazakhstan. Again, that's another non U.S. based deposit. And it's showing that maybe the Trump administration, when it comes to these critical minerals supply chain, permanent magnets, everything else are saying, you know what, near shoring might be an important aspect of this whole thing. We can't just do it all here. We've been seeing a pretty interesting turn in some of the companies that Tyler mentioned, whether its MP or some of the others that have been on an absolute tear. Most recently, in fact, MP materials was up over 400% year to date. Shares of other rare earth companies USA Rare Earth Ramaco. Some of these are these the new meme stocks? Joe That's a concern. That's a real concern. We there was there was a note out earlier this week from I believe it was one of the big banks saying, you know, there is a concern that some of this becomes a bit of a meme stock situation. You have you have the quote unquote, good companies, right. The ones with serious with with substantial balance sheets that have serious operations or deposits that are more than deposits. Right. Like actual mining activity. And then you've got a lot of others who are exploration companies and junior miners. I mean, that's a space that I covered for ten years at Bloomberg. And typically, if you're exploration or junior miner, that's not like you were sitting down writing a big story about them. Right? It was these guys would go to conferences and show you something called core samples, which were just long cylindrical things, sitting on a table of literal earth that they had shot down into the ground, grabbed up and showed, Hey, look at all the veins that are in here. I mean, these are the kind of companies that we could be talking about. And that is a concern in all of this, despite the fact that we need these minerals in despite the fact that the administration is putting effort into bringing onshore supply chain of it. You do have to wonder which of these will actually materialize. All right. And Joe, I'm going to pull one line from your reporting. The Trump administration is not currently seeking an equity stake in this venture, according to U.S. officials. Joe Doe, Bloomberg News as economic statecraft reporter. Thank you so much. And quite the incredible scoop, Joe, especially on this news that we are gearing up for this big high stakes meeting between President trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Right. Tungsten letter W I've learned that you learn a lot today about chemistry. Yeah, well, I'm learning as I go here. Many thanks to Joe. And meet us back for the Late Edition. The balance of power will have a lot more to talk about starting at 5 p.m. Eastern alongside Tyler Kendal. I'm Joe Matthew. This is Bloomberg.
Trump Tells GOP Senators to Stand Firm | Balance of Power 10/21/2025
Summary
Transcript
From Washington, DC. This is balance of power with Joe Matthew and Kaylee Lyons. The vice president arrives in Israel with a cease fire in the balance. Welcome to the Tuesday edition. As J.D. Vance meets with officials at a monitoring base near Gaza. Delivering remarks a short time ago amid very challenging conditions on the ground. I'm Jill Matthew alongside Tyler Kendall in Washington. Thanks for being with us here. Indeed, the Tuesday early edition of Balance of Power here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. Tyler, it's hard to believe, but it's been just over a week since President Trump rolled out this cease fire agreement. Right. And today, marking the first day of a three day tour for the vice president, J.D. Vance in Israel, speaking alongside the key negotiators earlier today Joe. Jared Kushner, of course, the president's son in law, and also special envoy Steve Wyckoff and J.D. Vance saying that there is still a lot of hard work ahead. Well, that's true, As he made very clear, hard work and a difficult time framing this, he was not terribly pleased with the way some of this has been playing in the media, knowing that stakes are very high right now. Tempers are pretty high on both sides as well, with just days, of course, in place now on this cease fire agreement. We're going to get the latest from Nick Wadhams, who runs our national security team here in Washington. And looking forward, Tyler, to spending some time with Natasha Hall, who's with us from Seaside, is a reliable voice since this all began some two years ago. Right. Of course. And perhaps we can get some clearer clarity on some of our biggest questions, including the future of rebuilding Gaza. But also, of course, Joe, whether or not Hamas is ultimately going to disarm. We got this post from Trump, President Trump earlier today talking about that will get in to all of those details. And of course, the markets are watching this very closely. Worth mentioning in the last hour, we got this red head on the terminal. The U.S. will buy 1 million barrels for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Oil spiking on that news. So for the latest, we're going to go now to Alexis Christopher, US world headquarters in New York for a look at the Tuesday trade. Alexis, thanks very much. And we have got the Dow hovering near an all time high, but the broader market pulling back a little bit as investors sift through a flurry of earnings reports. The Dow is up 260 points off its best level of the day. Now, the S&P 500 down about a point and a half and the Nasdaq composite is off 60 points. We've got gold and silver seeing some steep losses today as the dollar rises. Gold is down more than five and a half percent right now, its biggest one day drop since 2013. And you mentioned oil. We've got West Texas Intermediate up now about 2/10 of 1% at 5767 the barrel. Coca-Cola is rallying more than 3%, helping to lead the Dow higher after quarterly earnings and revenue topped estimates. Coke is also going to start selling smaller pack sizes, targeting low income consumers. We are watching Netflix. That stock basically flat ahead of its earnings report due out after the closing bell. The results expected to get a boost from advertising revenue and the K-Pop movie K-Pop Demon Hunters. Netflix also reportedly among the companies interested in buying some or all of Warner Brothers studios. And shares of Amazon rallying two and a half percent one day after a massive 15 hour outage at its Amazon, Web, Services disrupted operations for hundreds of companies, including Apple, Facebook, McDonald's Epic Games. Analysts say the outage could make it harder for Amazon to attract new customers and may force them to spread their infrastructure between multiple clouds. For on demand news 24 hours a day. Subscribe to Bloomberg News wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Alexis Forstall for us. That's your Bloomberg Business flash. All right, Alexis, thanks so much, reporting for us live from world headquarters in New York. But here in Washington, I'm Tyler Kendall alongside Joe Matthew. And as Joe laid out earlier, we have our full attention today on Israel as vice president. JD Vance begins a three day tour of the country. He spoke earlier today to reporters. He was at this US led military civilian command center, which is hoping to help implement this cease fire for the long term. He told reporters, though, that there's a lot of hard work ahead. There's this inclination to say, oh, this is the end of the cease fire, this is the end of the peace plan. It's not the end. It is, in fact, exactly how this is going to have to happen when you have people who hate each other, who have been fighting against each other for a very long time, we are doing very well. We are in a very good place. We're going to have to keep working on it. But I think we have the team to do exactly that. Vice president in Tel Aviv earlier standing alongside. If you're with us on Bloomberg TV, Jared Kushner, Steve Wyckoff, they're on the trip together here. As Tyler mentioned, he'll have a couple of days ahead. But he went on to chide the media for celebrating, as he mentioned, the idea of failure. And it was a tough weekend. We have to be honest about what's been happening on the ground. Heavy fighting in Gaza over the weekend with both a deadly Hamas ambush and Israeli airstrikes are causing many to ask the very obvious question if this cease fire can hold. Before we're joined by Natasha. All at CSIS. We spent some time with Nick Wadhams, who runs our national security coverage here from Washington. He's with us in our D.C. bureau. Nick, I don't know if it's possible to answer this question right now. What are you watching to try to find out? Well, I think the big question is going to be what happens next and whether Hamas is able to is willing to disarm. I mean, so you have the you had the initial element of the cease fire, which was the release of hostages and and the release of Palestinian prisoners. And now we move to the much more difficult phase is what happens to Hamas, because Israel has made very clear all along that it will not accept a solution in Gaza where Hamas remains in power or with any sort of control or leverage. They basically want it wiped off the map. And then obviously Hamas counters and says, well, we don't really have any interest in that, though they did say recently, you know, we are willing to undergo this this power transition. But I mean, when I look at that, what you what I really see is, you know, the Trump administration has billed this cease fire as a signature achievement by the president. Obviously, they want it to stick. If it doesn't stick, it will also be seen as a major failure, not only for the region, but it will say a lot about his dealmaking prowess. I mean, they have hailed this as something that essentially should give him the Nobel Peace Prize. And if, you know, ten days into it, it's already showing signs of failure. I mean, it should be pointed out that, yes, the vice president is right. These things do not proceed smoothly a lot of the time. And the challenge is really holding the thing together. Well, let's talk about some of the ways that the administration is trying to make this stick. Can you walk us through what this coordination center entails? We know that about 200 American troops are staffed there. But what are what does this effort actually look like in practice? What is happening on the ground? As we know that the vice president is visiting with the center today? I mean, he's there really sort of as a symbolic show of support and trying to, I think, send a message to both sides. Listen, Vice president is here. President Donald Trump and the administration has a great deal invested in this deal. And so that's in a way, putting pressure on Israel not to go too far against Hamas and also trying to exert pressure on Hamas. So keeping this thing from sort of spinning out of control, you know, in the end, the joint coordination center really is a similar move by the U.S. They're monitoring the cease fire. He's been very explicit. They're not going to be U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza. But it's really a way of of sort of the U.S. putting its assets where its mouth is, saying we have a stake in this as well, to try to keep the two sides in this thing and and committed to a ceasefire where efforts at ceasefire in the past have failed So many times those American troops will not cross into Gaza, Is what we have heard. Correct. Are they directing IDF in Gaza? I we have not gotten that level of detail. I think what you're seeing really is the U.S. offering intelligence, satellite imagery, other assets to help identify where ceasefire violations are occurring and then bringing U.S. invites and involvement. I mean, you know, the U.S. Central Command has been involved a great deal. For example, when Israel exchanged fire with Iran, Israeli armed forces were consulting with the U.S. military over what to do and how to respond. So there is a deep partnership between the U.S. military and the Israeli military and has been very explicitly in the last couple of years. So I think what you're seeing is a continuation of that. In the final minute, we have you, I want to turn to another foreign policy issue, which is that we have this red head on the terminal. People familiar telling Bloomberg News that European allies are working with Ukraine to prepare a 12 point peace proposal. Now, it was interesting to me because it mirrors a little of what we've heard in Gaza, including that President Trump could potentially lead a peace commission that would oversee the cease fire. Just top lines here. What do we know about what this plan would entail if it goes through? Well, I think what you're really seeing is a European effort to essentially set the terms of a potential Ukraine deal along the lines of what President Trump had done in Gaza to try to mimic that. It would it would offer some form of security guarantees for Ukraine. But really, what this is, is an effort by the Europeans to get involved and say essentially, okay, here, that here's here, here's a potential proposal that we could get both sides to agree to. Obviously, U.S. involvement would need to be a crucial to this as well. There's some indication that the Trump administration has not quite given its imprimatur to this. So this is really a push by the Europeans to essentially halt the fighting where it is now and then push the two sides toward a conversation. They're not talking. They want to at least give them something to talk about as we head into the possibility of a Trump Putin summit at some point in the future. All right. Bloomberg's Nick Wadhams, he runs our national security coverage here in Washington. Thank. Q so much. And to expand the conversation, we're joined now by Natasha Hall, nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Natasha, thanks so much for joining Bloomberg today. And as we've been talking about, Vice President J.D. Vance is there in Israel. He said that there is still work to be done and a long road ahead. Just from your view, what are some of those biggest hurdles that we could actually see progress on in the coming days and weeks? Yeah, thanks for having me again. I mean, I think that JD Vance's visit is really meant to throw more weight behind this peace proposal because one should note that this was a peace plan, not just the cease fire agreement. And we're already seeing the cease fire agreement fall apart within the first week. So there's a lot of hurdles ahead. In answer to your question, in terms of aid trucks going in, Israel has already said that it's slashing that in half due to the delayed return of deceased hostages from Hamas. We've seen 100 killed in recent days due to Israeli airstrikes. We're seeing a lot of lawlessness in Gaza right now because there's really no security mechanisms in place. So so there's a lot that can potentially go wrong. So it's good to hear the vice president saying they understand that the signing of this first phase of the agreement is not the end of it, and that there's a lot of hard work ahead, because I think myself and many other analysts watching this very closely upset exactly that that the end of U.S. pressure to move this through is is simply not over. Hard work is a given, Natasha, but what's the threshold for violence? Sunday, I wondered if we would still have a ceasefire by the time the workweek opened here, when Israel launched strikes against Hamas in Gaza, suspended all aid shipments. How many more headlines like that can a cease fire survive? Thank you so much for that question. I think it's a really vital question for all of us to be asking, because the reality, I think, is that the U.S. and the international community might accept a very low boil, essentially of violence in Gaza, as long as it wasn't making the headlines quite in the same way that the famine and the constant bombardment was just, you know, days earlier. But the reality is that Israel can really put the pressure on Gaza simply through these eight obstructions, as we've seen in the past week, and these sort of more irregular airstrikes, in addition to the fact that Israeli forces still occupy more than half of Gaza territory. So, you know, there's there's the direct violence of the actual war and the conflict, but then there's also the indirect violence on a place that has been experiencing widespread famine and, you know, really requires somewhat of a marshall Plan, not just sort of the a seeping in of of hundreds of trucks per day. It really needs to be a pronounced scaled up response to reverse. I think some of that that indirect violence. But I think the issue here is whether or not there's going to be put in place a monitoring mechanism that really looks at not just the number of trucks going through, but actually the effects on the ground. Are we seeing a reversal of of a lot of the various issues that I just mentioned, starvation, the lack of medical personnel and equipment? Are we seeing a reversal and a rebuilding of the Gaza Strip because we haven't even gotten to the phase two where we're talking about an international stabilization force, the actual rebuilding of Gaza? 80% of the structures have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip. So there's there's a long road ahead. Well, speaking about these big questions, including what the reconstruction of Gaza is going to look like, another big question is surrounding the future of whether or not Hamas is going to disarm. And we heard from President Trump earlier today on a truth social posting that if Hamas does not disarm, quote, an end to Hamas will be fast, furious and brutal, unquote. Can you just give us a little bit of context here? What do the discussions look like for Hamas to disarm and what are we looking at if the group ultimately doesn't? Right. So let's just zoom out a little bit and acknowledge the fact that Hamas, regardless of what anyone thinks of them, has been the government in Gaza for over two decades and and has also been essentially the police force there. And right now, you have essentially vacuums throughout the Gaza Strip. There is no international stabilization force. There is no other entity. And so you've seen rising in clan and triggering violence in Hamas, which in Gaza, which Hamas has, you know, essentially tried to to eradicate through these very public executions that we've seen in recent days. But but I think the real question is, if you disarm Hamas, which is clearly the goal of many regional partners in Israel and the United States and others, what will take its place, because there needs to be some kind of governance structure in Gaza and there needs to be some kind of police force as well, because what we've seen is, is Israel has also been supporting some of these other gangs and militias within Gaza that have been looting aid in recent months. So there needs to be something there. So I think the big question is, you know, if the international stabilization force, by some accounts might take months to actually put in place what's going to be there in the meantime to restore order, to allow, you know, humanitarian workers to go through and safety, etc.? And that's a that's a really big question. And so I think for that reason, you've seen President Trump essentially go back and forth on this. At one point, he said he's not so unhappy about seeing these public executions of gang members by Hamas and at the same time saying that they need to eradicate Hamas if it fails to disarm. So, I mean, I think that this is the this is a larger question, who is going to provide security in Gaza in the in the weeks and months ahead? It's actually the president said a lot in that post at 9:00 this morning, including numerous of our now great allies, as he called them, in the Middle East, in areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly with great enthusiasm. And for me, they would welcome the opportunity at my request to go into Gaza with a heavy force and straighten out Hamas. If Hamas continues to act badly in violation of their agreement with us, I'm just wondering your thoughts on the neighbors as. The president likes to call them in light of the headlines, a day that the Saudi crown prince will be visiting the White House next month. What will that meeting bring? Yeah, well, I think the Saudi crown prince and the US will be focused very much on a defense pact with the United States rather than simply offering a peace force, as he put it, to the Gaza Strip. Listen, I don't think that this is attractive to any Arab or Muslim country. We're still seeing airstrikes. We're still seeing infighting. This is not an area that I think any Arab or Muslim country would want to inject their own forces into, because it's not really peacekeeping. It's peace enforcing which one could also say it is fighting. And so I think that that's that's the big issue today. It's probably not going to be a majority force from oil rich nations, but it's probably going to be from Egypt and other countries that actually stand up a pretty major military elements or have a have a, you know, a larger military to offer to to the Gaza Strip. But I think that that remains to be seen. Again, what those forces will will entail. We haven't even really talked very much about how much money these oil rich countries are willing to inject into Gaza, which is going to take about 50 billion or more to reconstruct. So, you know, again, I think we're we're a long ways off from from seeing Saudi forces in the. TAUSCHER Thank you. It's always a pleasure to spend some time. Natasha Hall at CCS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. We've got our eyes on the Rose Garden Club. We're going to assemble our panel next right here on the fastest show in politics. This is Bloomberg here alongside Joe Matthew in Washington. And we have one eye on Pennsylvania Avenue where today President Trump welcomed Senate Republicans. They spoke about a range of issues earlier, including what's been an expedited process for confirmation of some of President Trump's nominees. But, of course, top of mind has been the government shutdown, which is now officially in day 21, with little sign that there is any progress towards a deal to reopen. Now, President Trump addressed this earlier, saying that it is all about partisan politics, unfortunately, and a craven and pointless act of partisan spite. Chuck Schumer, who I've known for a long time and the radical left Democrats are holding the entire federal government hostage to appease the extremists in their party. President Trump, reading prepared remarks in the Rose Garden or the Rose Garden Club, as he likes to put it a short time ago, where Republican senators have gathered in the sun today to celebrate unity. The president inviting them to talk about holding the line on the government shutdown and helping to pass his nominations in the Senate, which have been moving on a bit more. And we've got a new wrinkle on that that will mention to you the president's nominee to run the special counsel's office could be in trouble. His hearing is set for Thursday. And we've got another potential text scandal, it looks like. But on day 21, we are still talking about a shutdown with no end in sight. And in fact, even floating the idea, you know, that things could be a little bit troubled when we're floating the idea of a yearlong continuing resolution just kick the can for a year so we don't have to fight anymore. That's the narrative today in the Capitol as we assemble our political panel, Bloomberg Politics contributor and Democratic analyst Ginny Sian Zaino is with us, democracy visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center. Maura Gillespie is with us as well, Republican strategist and founder of Blue Stack Strategies. Maura, you worked for a former speaker of the House in John Boehner. And the idea of a yearlong C.R. is something that a lot of Republicans have an allergy to. Is that, in fact, how this all ends? And so you have my years in Boehner's office. It's hard for me to maybe stomach that. But I do think that things are just so divisive right now that I I worry that without something more long term, we'll be having this fight on repeat and unfortunately have another shutdown in the future. And I'd rather not see that happen. And so I do think that maybe looking at getting past the stage, which at this point and I know we'll get into it, but it does feel as though Democrats have to come and just end a shutdown, because I do think Thune is being fair in the sense that he's willing to have conversations, he's willing to bring legislation to the floor to extend subsidies in a way that also doesn't, you know, isolate every Republican vote in both chambers. But the shutdown is serving the greater good. And I think that no American benefits when we have a government shutdown. And unfortunately, Congress has for a long time struggled to get this their funding appropriations done in a timely fashion. Well, Jeannie, what is the first? Score award calculus here for Democrats, because as more points out, we've heard from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who says that Democrats can have a up and down vote on a one year extension of those premium Affordable Care Act tax subsidies. How are Democrats looking at their options on the table right now? Or is this just going to keep going on until they actually get some tangible policy changes? Yeah, you know, my view, Tyler, is that shutdowns never result in policy changes or wins, I should say. And so it's usually and always about the politics of this thing. And at this point, both sides feel like they're winning on the politics. And that's the problem. Until one or both start to feel pain, we're not going to see this change. And so Democrats, I suspect, will hold out at least until that November 1st date, because, of course, what we're going to see then and Bloomberg has been reporting this is the skyrocketing of health care subsidies. I think, Joe, you said at the beginning at the top of the show, quadrupling in Georgia, about a quarter in Maine, almost 20% in Michigan. The list goes on and on. And oddly, this is going to be impacting Trump states, red states more viciously than it's going to impact blue states. So it's his own voters. And the president knows that because he's spoken about it in the past. So I think we will see the Democrats hold out for that. And the reality of this and I don't know anybody in Washington who doesn't think that this thing also is not going to end until one person comes to the table and forces it. And that one person, I'm sorry to say, is a Democrat is not Chuck Schumer. It is Donald Trump. Until Donald Trump pulls the plug on this thing, it is not going to move forward. And Donald Trump just a short time ago invited John Thune to the podium in the Rose Garden to talk to his members who were lunching in the sun, knowing that he said we may have no choice but to pursue a one year C.R. And by the way, Donald Trump may not have a problem with that. It was the White House that suggested that a couple of months ago when everyone's had exploded on Capitol Hill of the idea that could, in fact, become a reality. But I want to ask you about the nominations that are also being celebrated in the Rose Garden Club today. It's not just holding the line on the shutdown, Maura, as you well know, the president wanted to thank Republican senators for moving on. BLOCK In some cases, a huge number of nominees. Of course, that's the job of the Senate, and it's one that doesn't get a lot of coverage, but there's one that may just not make it. According to John Thune himself, quote, He's not going to pass the line from the majority leader. We're talking about Paul Ingrassia, the president's nominee to run the Office of the Special Counsel. This is another Texas scandal that has been made public by Politico, allegedly, of course, that has now prompted at least three other Republicans to oppose his nomination. In this text chain, which was repeatedly bumping into themes of Nazi ism, he said that Martin Luther King Jr holiday should be tossed into the seventh circle of hell and that when asked about his viewpoints, he said he has a bit of a Nazi streak. Is Mr. Ingrassia, is nomination as good as dead, Mara? It certainly should be. I mean, that's a disgusting way to speak, just even if it's in private text messages. The fact that he has that on his heart and he believes that enough to say it, whether he's in his mind, joking or not, there's something that spurred him to say it and actually just call it disqualifying in itself. And so Thune is right to say that, you know, there's not going to pass on Thursday. I'm sure, as a conversation is being had in that lunch right now as they're celebrating. You know, I think there are probably seven Republican senators who have a bit of a queasiness about some of the ones that they've gotten through in that first, you know, few months there that, you know, I think of Pam Bondi, I think of RFK Jr. I and there are a couple of senators who are wondering if they made the right choices. But with this, they seem the fact that so many you said three at least, maybe four or five I've seen, they're going to say that this isn't a yes vote for them. That's encouraging to me. Right. And the Republican senators expressing opposition to let's keeps building. We also heard from Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, earlier today, saying that he thinks Ingrassia should withdraw. Jeannie, is just is this just mounting pressure on the White House one? Can we expect to hear from them, if at all, on this nomination? Yeah, I mean, it is telling and I agree wholeheartedly with what Maureen just said. It is telling to me that the White House has not yet come out and said we are going to withdraw his name. Considering how disgusting these texts are. This is, though, not surprising from the White House. Right. We have had a president who has flirted with neo-Nazis in the past. He is being accused. By the way, at the Quantico speech, a dog whistling to neo Nazis. The list of things goes on and on. And of course, this comes at a time when people in this country who have long fought for civil rights are feeling under threat from a variety of of specters, including the the attack on DEA, but also the Voting Rights Act case that the Supreme Court is arguing and may strike down Section two any day now or at least in the spring. So it is shocking. And his name should be withdrawn immediately from this White House. But they haven't, at least as far as I know, had any statement on this, which is not surprising. But it is it is upsetting. It's an oddity here because I don't think anyone really even knows who leads the Office of the Special Counsel. It's not like we're talking about attorney general here more or secretary of state. This could this could have been handled pretty quietly, right, if you're a nominee. It's not unusual to have a withdrawal letter handy in case something happens. Does. And Grassley had just handled this on his own. I mean, I don't know. I think when you look at some of the Trump White House, either whether they are candidates or acting positions, they have all mostly decided to go with the Trump method of doubling down, tripling down and holding firm and more or less hoping that the president will back them. And then the public scrutiny and our distaste for it will subside because something else will come and distract us from their issue. And unfortunately, I do think that probably what he is holding out for, he's waiting for direction from the White House. He's not going to back down on his own accord, which speaks more about him and his own personal moral compass than anything else. But I do think there are some people in the White House who should have acted and have not done so yet. And maybe today's meetings with Republican senators giving the president a real picture of what's going to happen on Thursday may help spur that action to take place today. Jeanie, final 30 seconds here. I do want to ask you about some policy we could see hit the Senate floor this week, this bill to pay federal workers and our troops. Are we expecting this to actually pass amid the shutdown? Because it looks like Democrats are the ones opposing this? Yeah, you know, my view is that it should pass. But I can see the Democrats point, which is that it still doesn't address the underlying issue, which is the Obamacare subsidy. So I think it's still an open question whether it passed. And of course, you've got some Democrats like Fetterman out there calling for real changes to Senate rules to avoid these kinds of things in the future in this filibuster and the necessity of the filibuster proof majority, that's going to obviously rankle people on both sides of the aisle. All right. Our political panel today, Jaenisch and Zeno and Moore, a Galaxy. We thank you both so much for joining, as always. And, Joe, we did get a red head on the Bloomberg terminal moments ago. President Trump's administration is involved in talks for a US company to access one of the world's largest untapped deposits of tungsten in Kazakhstan. That's right. News coming from Kazakhstan potentially by way of the White House will keep tabs on this for you. As Tyler mentioned, he just went red on the terminal. So we'll have much more straight ahead. Also, our conversation with Congressman Brian style. We've been talking shutdown. Let's hear from a stakeholder in the House. The Republican from Wisconsin is in the nation's capital and will join us live straight ahead here as we talk politics in Washington on balance of power. This is Bloomberg with our eyes on Capitol Hill. And a government shutdown that is now 21 days old. Maybe you've stopped keeping count at this point because nobody seems to see light at the end of the tunnel. We do see some important dates, though, including the next paycheck fulfillment for our military or active duty military. Remembering that $8 billion that the president managed to find to pay the troops only covers a single pay period. You've also got federal law enforcement, and there's a piece of legislation that's going up in the United States Senate that would address some of this. It's just not expected necessarily to pass. As we told you yesterday, Democrats are not on board, just like they are not on board with a continuing resolution. And I'll tell you what, Tyler, as we consider the idea here of a C.R. expiring on the 21st of November, that's the plan on the table. It's a month away from today. You've also got November 1st open enrollment beginning and the expiration of SNAP benefits. So maybe it's no wonder John Thune suggests a full year C.R. might be coming, not just suggesting a full year C.R. might be in the pipeline, but also that maybe it's time for the House to come back into session so that they can re pass a clean C.R. that has that end date in place, because, as you mentioned, November 21st is what they're currently voting on. But we are just ticking closer and closer to that now. We're lucky to be joined now by one of those. Members of Congress who is currently out of a session, but joins us now from Capitol Hill. That's Congressman Brian Style, Republican representing Wisconsin's first district. Congressman, it's good to see you and thanks so much for joining. I love your your opinion on this. The Senate majority leader suggesting it's time for the House to come back into session. Do you think that's a good idea? Well, it's time for the Senate to pass the clean C.R. We're in this situation because the Senate Democratic leadership under Chuck Schumer refuses to vote for a clean C.R. This used to be a non-controversial vote here on Capitol Hill. In fact, Democrats have voted time and again in favor of clean C.R., as most recently in the spring. What changed is the politics for Democrats in the United States Senate. So the House has done our job. We're all waiting for the Senate to do their job. Chuck Schumer is beholden to his radical base. A lot of us are frustrated. It's time for us to move on because there's really important negotiations in front of us, including fiscal year 26 appropriations, as well as other prior policy priorities that you mentioned. Congressman, it's good to see you. Kevin Hassett had suggested yesterday maybe there's capitulation this week in this whole thing comes to an end. But every time the Senate votes on this, it's the same two Democrats and independents who break ranks here. So, I mean, at some point, we could be bumping up against November 21st. What do we do then? Do you wait forever for Senate Democrats to just stay shut down and until Chuck Schumer changes his tune? Well, the consequences of the Schumer shutdown continue to build. President Trump is doing a great job taking some extraordinary actions to make sure that the consequences aren't felt by our troops, for example. But many of these are one time actions, and so the consequences will just continue to build. The pressure will build. And I do believe at some point the Senate will come to the table and recognize that their action to close the federal government and put at risk, for example, payments to our troops. The men and women wearing the United States military uniform was the wrong bet. The sooner we come out of the shutdown and begin the substantive negotiations and fiscal year 26 approach, as well as other policy priorities, the better off we are. Well, the White House has come to the table on some of these really critical issues, like military pay, pay for the Coast Guard, also finding that supplementary funding for that key federal nutrition assistance program that helps women and children. But, Congressman, we hear from Democrats that they want President Trump to come to the negotiating table when it comes to the policy stance is at stake here, particularly related to health care. We know he had this luncheon today with Senate Republicans, but do you think President Trump should be getting more involved as this shutdown drags on? Well, I think, again, the challenge here is we put forward a clean C.R. now, as you noted weeks ago, passed in the House. We're three weeks into a shutdown. We should be three weeks into this C.R., utilizing the time that we're burning right now to negotiate those policy priorities. Many of these have year end deadlines, appropriate conversations for us to be having. But we should be doing that in the context of an open and operational government. Again, the House did our job. The Senate is running into filibuster challenges. Senator Fetterman is even calling now and saying maybe we have to overcome that because a minority of United States senators are standing in the way under the leadership of Chuck Schumer from reopening the federal government. You've seen what's going on with the premiums here, Congressman. And I know that you're careful not to conflate this debate with that of government funding. But we saw a couple of states this morning in Georgia where I know Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor GREENE has been making some noise here. Obamacare premiums could rise as much as four times. They could quadruple. In Maine, plans will see premiums up an average of 24% and Michigan could surpass 18%. And that's before factoring in the expiration. What would it mean for people looking at their subsidies rise in Wisconsin? Well, I think what we see as the data continues to come in that the Affordable Care Act was anything but affordable for the American people. The program the Democrats put in place and again, the Democrats set the sunset date themselves. This was a Democrat decision to sunsetted at the end of the year. But what we continue to see is challenges inside the structure of the program. There is plenty of evidence of the waste, fraud and abuse inside this Democrat created program. There's a Treasury report that came out under President Biden that identifies as significant flaws inside these premium credits that go back to insurance companies as to why it's structurally unsound. So at an absolute minimum, we would need to make meaningful and substantive reform in the program. But again, these are the conversations and the debates that we should be having right now on Capitol Hill. Instead, we're shut down, all because Chuck Schumer and Democrats in the Senate refuse. To open the government with a clean C.R. to allow these negotiations and debates to take place. Well, Congressman Joe just outlined one of the potential impacts for constituents. Another has to do with economic assistance for farmers. A senior administration official tells me that's currently been delayed because of this ongoing shutdown. I looked at the stats. The USDA estimates Wisconsin farmers produce $1.3 billion worth of soybeans each year. This is, of course, at the center of this issue, as China has an imported any U.S. soybeans so far this harvest season. I'm wondering if you're in any discussions with the administration on what this aid package might look like. Are they talking with Congress on this and any update on when it could be rolled out? I had a long conversation with two soybean farmers from Wisconsin yesterday talking about this exact challenge. The short term fix may be that type of a subsidy, but the long term fix is getting trade agreements in place and having China once again purchasing U.S. soy. The U.S. soy exports are heavily dependent on the Chinese markets. The broader trade negotiations that we're having is causing concern. I'm of the view that we have a huge opportunity here to work with our allies, hold China accountable, and then strike the trade deal. I think President Trump's in a position to do that. The short term fix may be providing some level of assistance. The long term fix is striking these trade agreements to the benefit of American workers and farmers. Congressman, we appreciate the insights as always. That's Brian Style, Republican congressman from Wisconsin who chairs the House admin Committee. And always a pleasure to have the chairman with us as part of our conversation here on bloomberg. Tyler there's more breaking news. You mentioned it very quickly. We're learning more about tungsten than some of us have ever known. When we start talking about rare earths and rare minerals that are used in this case in the manufacturing of defense equipment and other critical technologies. This is a big one, a chemical element. If I bring you back to chemistry class, it has the symbol W its atomic number is 74 and it has the highest melting point of all known elements, which is why, Tyler, this is one of the most sought after ingredients for weapons manufacturing, especially when it comes to building rockets. Right, exactly. And this headline appears to be underscoring the administration's push to try to bolster its own supply and position in the critical and rare earths market to really compete with China ahead of this really important meeting next week between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Yeah, that's right. Joe Doe is writing about this right now on The Breaker. And I hope that Joe doesn't mind us interrupting his coverage here in the clutch. Bloomberg news economic statecraft reporter Joe, it's great to have you. This is a big one, of course, as we remind ourselves that all roads lead to China. Yeah, exactly. It in a lot of ways is just another thing that really kind of emphasizes this this ongoing trade war between the United States and China, which we have seen escalated now in recent weeks. Tungsten is just another one of those critical minerals that the Defense Department needs more of and that the U.S. has said, listen, we need to wean our needs off of China specific. Joe, let's connect the dots here and look at the broader picture. Yesterday, the U.S. and Australia inking this $8.5 billion cooperation agreement when it comes to critical minerals. Does this mark perhaps a new era for the administration as it is looking at supply chains? Because up to this point, we've really seen them focus on domestic projects, right? I'm thinking A.P. materials, trilogy, trilogy, metals, things like that. But now it looks like we're kind of pointing outward. Yeah, I think, you know, this is one of the things we had been talking about recently, which is we had reported at the end of September that there were a group of mining companies from Australia in the U.S., in DC in the middle of September, and they were talking to senior Trump administration officials who had been saying, look, we're looking for warrants in companies, we're looking for offtake agreements. And when you can bringing your processing or production here to the United States. And one of the things that we noted when we had that scoop was this is a very serious indication that the administration is looking at foreign companies. And the scoop that we have out now with tungsten says that Howard Lutnick himself has been facilitating talks with the US private company and the sovereign wealth fund of Kazakhstan. Again, that's another non U.S. based deposit. And it's showing that maybe the Trump administration, when it comes to these critical minerals supply chain, permanent magnets, everything else are saying, you know what, near shoring might be an important aspect of this whole thing. We can't just do it all here. We've been seeing a pretty interesting turn in some of the companies that Tyler mentioned, whether its MP or some of the others that have been on an absolute tear. Most recently, in fact, MP materials was up over 400% year to date. Shares of other rare earth companies USA Rare Earth Ramaco. Some of these are these the new meme stocks? Joe That's a concern. That's a real concern. We there was there was a note out earlier this week from I believe it was one of the big banks saying, you know, there is a concern that some of this becomes a bit of a meme stock situation. You have you have the quote unquote, good companies, right. The ones with serious with with substantial balance sheets that have serious operations or deposits that are more than deposits. Right. Like actual mining activity. And then you've got a lot of others who are exploration companies and junior miners. I mean, that's a space that I covered for ten years at Bloomberg. And typically, if you're exploration or junior miner, that's not like you were sitting down writing a big story about them. Right? It was these guys would go to conferences and show you something called core samples, which were just long cylindrical things, sitting on a table of literal earth that they had shot down into the ground, grabbed up and showed, Hey, look at all the veins that are in here. I mean, these are the kind of companies that we could be talking about. And that is a concern in all of this, despite the fact that we need these minerals in despite the fact that the administration is putting effort into bringing onshore supply chain of it. You do have to wonder which of these will actually materialize. All right. And Joe, I'm going to pull one line from your reporting. The Trump administration is not currently seeking an equity stake in this venture, according to U.S. officials. Joe Doe, Bloomberg News as economic statecraft reporter. Thank you so much. And quite the incredible scoop, Joe, especially on this news that we are gearing up for this big high stakes meeting between President trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Right. Tungsten letter W I've learned that you learn a lot today about chemistry. Yeah, well, I'm learning as I go here. Many thanks to Joe. And meet us back for the Late Edition. The balance of power will have a lot more to talk about starting at 5 p.m. Eastern alongside Tyler Kendal. I'm Joe Matthew. This is Bloomberg.