In this Thanksgiving Day special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak with Nathan Hager:
Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. US markets are closed for this holiday. I'm Nathan Hager. Coming up this hour. We will take a look at the oil market at the end of a volatile year dominated by conflict in Ukraine in the Middle East. Where could prices go under the incoming Trump administration. We'll ask Stephen Shork, the founder and president of the Short Group. Plus what about all the anti trust litigation against big tech? Will that be headed in a different direction? After January twentieth, Jennifer Ree will join us for insights. She is a senior analyst of antitrust litigation at Bloomberg Intelligence. First, we focus on the economy. Next week we get the jobs report for the month of November. That's ahead of the Federal Reserve's final rate decision to close out twenty twenty four. For more and what to expect there, we are pleased to open up a special Thanksgiving roundtable today. City US economist Veronica Clark is with us along with Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. It's great to have both of you with us here on the holiday. While we tuck into the Turkey. I guess we've had a chance now to digest the feast of data we got just before this holiday. So veronic all open things up with you. What is all the data we've seen so far tell you about where things could be headed for this economy?
Yeah? Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Yeah, we got a lot of data before the Thanksgiving holiday. I don't think necessarily anything that changed the backdrop too much. We had GDP revisions which did not show any real revision to two Q three GDP. You know'm still rising at a healthy two point eight percent. Some software manufacturing data durable goods orders, but we know that manufacturing is in modest contraction. Initial jobless claims which remained very low, but continuing job with claims which are rising, and I do think that is telling a pretty consistent story of a labor market that is weakening. We do see that layoffs are very low, but hiring is also very low, and so if you are losing your job, you're not quickly getting rehired. We do think that that results in more labor market weakness in the data next week. Of course, that's going to be the most important for the FED.
Jen how about you. I mean, it does seem like this economy continues to show signs of resilience, even if we are starting to see those little bits of pockets a weakness in the labor market.
Yes, Ron, I could put it all perfectly. Just want to point out, especially on the US consumer, which is obviously the most important component of the overall US economy. US consumer is still going I'm want to say strong, even though we saw softer real spending of just up point it was just up point one percent, But the fact that they still have gas in the tank or still have you know, juice in the battery, whatever you want to put it, they're still you know, we're still seeing a steady increase in wages and salaries, which is the most important part of personal income. It's like half of overall personal income. So that was at like point five percent, which has been just in line with the average that we've seen over the past year. So they are still making a decent salary, which is what I think is the most important to the saving rate. A little bit from that two year low in the prior month. So even though they're taking a little bit of a break in October, there's still the means to spend. They're just not going to spend it all in one place and not every single month. And that's still okay.
I want to get into that spending in just a little bit, particularly since we're heading into Black Friday, getting ready for the start of the holiday shopping season. But let's focus first on what these signs of resiliency could mean for the Fed. Veronica, where do you see the FED going?
Yeah, I mean, I do think can we do see the resiliency in consumption and certainly GDP data, But I think it's important to keep in mind, you know, the SEED does not target GDP. They have a dual mandate, which is inflation and the labor market maximum employment. Of course, we also got PC inflation data this week and it was about as expected in that is a bit stronger I think than is comfortable for the FED. But we already there were no surprises in that data, and we do think that the high level drivers of inflation are slowing. You know, we see softer home prices, the labor market that has loosened. Wage growth, it I think is slowing. So I don't think anything's particularly concerning on the inflation front yet. For for FED officials, and then it really does come down to the labor market and then the data that we're going to get next week, and we do think that this is a loosening labor market that is on the brink of some outright weakening. You know, I think the issue is that, you know, is this a normalization in the labor market or is it a weakening? Those two are kind of indistinguishable right now, And once you do get to that more extreme weakening step, it's almost too late for FED policy. So I do think they'll want to get ahead of that, and we do think that this is a FED that is still cutting rates at least to something that looks like three percent.
Well, what do you think we're going to need to see or the FED is going to need to see in terms of the labor picture when those jobs numbers come out next week, Jen, What will the FED need to see in order to get some conviction around the idea of a rate cut in December?
Well, I think they're going to have to start or to see ongoing softness in the broader picture of the jobs report, but also some of the you know, some of those key components. Of course, the job was rate which at four point one percent, you know, Fed Shair Powell has said that is still historically is still a low and a pretty healthy rate overall, and we can't disagree with that. So I think it's looking at that, looking at you know, the different age components as well, for the job you know about about who's losing their jobs or where we're seeing job rates increase or decrease, and of course just the overall games in the in the labor force, in the household survey in particular, because we know that the establishment survey, like the headline payroll report number is always quite choppy. So I think they're just gonna be looking at all the figures almost, which sounds like a weak answer, but that's basically what they have to do, you know, it's not just focusing on one particular component. By the way. For the December rate decision, I think it's not as clear as it used to be. We, by the way being, we still look for another rate cut coming in December, but you know, but we look for the FED to sort of hold back and see how what the economic landscape looks like, you know, with the new administration coming on board, and so we look for maybe about four rate cuts to come in twenty twenty five, bringing us down to just over three percent.
Interesting to see if that'll hold up, depending on what we get in the policy front from the incoming president. But let's get some of your calls on what we could get from the job's data next week. Veronica, what do you think we're going to see in the November payrolls?
Right right, So we're penciling in one hundred and fifty thousand for right now in the total payroll number. Now that payroll number, of course was very weak in October, just twelve thousand jobs added, but we do know that strikes and hurricanes. Wait on that October number, we should get the payback that bounce back from that in November. I do think the most important element of next Fridays data is going to be the unemployment rate. That data should not have been impacted by strikes and hurricanes, and we saw it, you know, unchanged on a rounded basis in October, but it did increase. You know, it's very close surrounding the four point two percent. The only reason that it didn't rise actually even more to something like four point three percent was we had this big decline and labor force participate in October essentially looks to me, like, you know, I do think the weakening trend that we saw in employment data over the summer is still holding. Last week, we actually even got some data on official payroll numbers for Q two which were much weaker, you know, data that revisions are based on. So this does look like a weakening trend of employment, and I think that will get more obvious in November data. We are expecting the unemployment rate rises back to four point three percent, I think, which would be more concerning for FED officials.
How about your November payrolls, called jen, We're a.
Little bit higher than that. We've got about one hundred one hundred and eighty ish th which is I think roughly inline with consensus. And we've got the job is rate ticking up to four point two percent, which you know is still again overall, still very low. But of course it's the trend that counts, right, and we've had the jobs rate stuck at four point one percent for the last couple of months. I will say that, you know, it's just so I always look at the Big Conference Sports survey and you know what people are saying, you know, our job is plentiful, are their hard to get? And it doesn't go hand in hand one hundred percent of the time with the job was right, But just the fact that it sort of has been improving over the last a month or two but it didn't show up in the job was raight. So I'm just kind of curious to see whether or not we could potentially see a drop. Like I said this last time, and I was completely wrong, but who knows, we might actually see a dip in the jobless rate again. I'm saying that only because I'm just looking at what the respondents were saying, and it shows that the net labor market differential was improving improved again for the second month in a row.
Jennifer Lee's with us here, senior economist to Demo Capital Markets along with Veronica Clark, us economist at City Group. Veronica with the resiliency that we're seeing in the US economy that we have seen over the last few months, is FED policy really restrictive? I mean, the FED says it is, but the economy keeps holding up.
Yeah, I do think it is restrictive, and I think we're we're seeing that certainly in the right sense. Of sectors. You know, we've seen for for some time now that you know, housing activity obviously that's a very rate sensitive sector, is very soft. We still see construction, you know, coming down WUD would expect that at some point that translates to to even weaker construction sector employment. We see manufacturing, which is is pretty soft. You know, there's there's pockets of resilience, but overall demand and manufacturing seems to be modestly contractionary. And I think you're also seeing it just in the fact that the labor market has loosened, and I think as long as that trend continues, but officials will probably conclude that this is still a restrictive level of rates. I also would you know, expect and maybe be worried that, you know, more of this labor market weakening really is coming from the more rate sensitive small businesses. It's it's probably less in the large corporates. And you know, obviously financial conditions are very easy, but small businesses, you know, whose interest expense has gone up, I do think they're the ones that are cutting more of their their labor costs and that is a sign that that rates are restrictive.
And since we are heading into the holiday shopping season. Here we got Black Friday coming up and all the other discounts. Jen want to ask you what kind of economic pop we could see from holiday shopping, particularly when we hear from so many consumers that you know, the lingering effects of inflation have them feeling a little bit cautious. Perhaps this year, you.
Know, I don't know if we're going to see too much of a pop in the in the Black Friday sales, only because you know, over the past I don't know whatever number of years, it seems like we're seeing it all spread out, like we're no longer waiting for sales to come, you know, the day after Thanksgiving. I remember with the first time that you know, one large, very large retailer decided to open up their doors on Thanksgiving Day, and it was like, what are they doing? What are they doing? They're changing things up? And that sort of started a trend, and people started opening up their doors on Thanksgiving like you know, you know, the morning of or even the day before. So the sales have been spread out, we're starting to see you know, more of a push. So I don't know how much of a strong pop we're going to see you know that's specifically related to Black Friday sales. But just again going back to the US consumer, just the fact that they continue to see steady games and wages which will support future spending. I think that's the key part as opposed to just looking at you know, one particular months of sales.
And Veronica, I want to ask you, does it get more difficult to map out the trajectory for the economy when we do have a new administration coming in after January twentieth?
Yeah, it absolutely is. Is pretty difficult. You know, it is very hard and very uncertain right now what exactly to put in our forecast for next year. Still a lot of moving parts and we'll be you know, adapting our forecasts as we learn more. You know, I think in the immediate term, you know, we were maybe watching for, you know, was the election you know, creating any uncertainty where people holding back on investment or hiring plans you know, before the election, and it did getting past the election alleviate some of that uncertainty, So so watching for any signs of that and maybe some of the sentiment data. And there's been maybe some modestly stronger you know readings on your regional manufacturing indicators or survey data for services even in November. But it doesn't necessarily look like that will be sustained. But I think that's the main, most immediate post election dynamic that we're watching.
Thanks for this really great conversation to get the holiday season started.
Here.
That's City US economist Veronica Clark and Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BEMO Capital Markets. And coming up next, we're going to take a closer look at where oil and gas prices could be headed with Donald Trump headed back to the White House. We're going to speak with Stephen Shork, the founder and president of the Shortbrip. As this special Thanksgiving edition of Bloomberg Daybreak continues, It's twenty minutes past the hour. I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg. Thanks so much for joining us on this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US markets are closed for the Thanksgiving Day holiday. I'm Nathan Hager. Well, it's certainly been a volatile year in the oil market, with conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine. Crude traded near eighty seven dollars a barrel back in April, but that price dropped throughout the year, and now there's speculation crude prices could fall even further under the incoming Trump administration.
We have so much oil under our feet. We have more liquid gold under.
Our feet than any country in the world, included Saudi Arabia and Russia, and we don't use it.
And that was president like Donald Trump earlier this year on the campaign trail for more on the outlook for energy markets. In twenty twenty five, we were pleased to welcome Stephen Shork, the founder and president of the Short Group. Great to have you on with us on this Thanksgiving Day, Stephen. And it wasn't just the commentary from the now president elect that's fueling speculation here. I mean, we've had some pretty bold goals that we're hearing now from incoming Treasury Secretary designates Scott Bessen. For one, he's been talking about boosting US production by three million barrels a day. I mean, how do you see domestic production shifting under this new White House.
Well, I'd certainly hope that that production would follow the rules of markets as opposed to political hyperbolate. Clearly, the United States is sitting on a significant amount of oil, but we're only going to bring that oil out to the market if the market is calling for it right now. So there is the potential. I'm a little skeptical if we can get up by fe million battles in the current thirteen point seven million battles for producing today by far leading the world in production. So at this point there are some grandiose goals. There's a lot of political hyperbole out there. I think the thing that investors and traders want to take away from this is that we clearly have made a one hundred and eighty degree shift when it comes to energy policy with this White House. The message that the industry had received over the previous four years is you're done. It's over. There's no longer going to be be a fossil fuel industry if you are our corporate treasurer. Very hard to invest in downstream capacity when you're getting this type of rhetoric as opposed to what we're seeing now. So I think what we're looking at now is more confidence on the industry to invest and to build out. But certainly, the oil industry, as any industry, is not a tool of any political party, and it will respond accordingly as the market dictates.
Well, given current market conditions, what do you see as a more realistic production output goal.
I think what we'll see right now is that a lot of talk of increased sanctions on Russia, sanctions that are actually been forced on Iran, is I Ran in both Russia, the current sanctions on them are flouted in the open. So there will be some production from these two entities that will be I mean, not eliminated, but it will be difficult to get the oil to the market. Thirteen point seven, which is where all time highs right now given current market conditions, where this has been a demand driven markets, regardless of the potential supply disruptions from wars in Ukraine, wars in the Mole East, that has been overshadowed by a lack of demand. So even though supply is thought to be under constrain, demand isn't there to put any sort of upward pressure. So production at current levels I think is a realistic target going into and three twenty twenty five.
What do you see in terms of investment into further domestic production? Can companies the way things are structured now meet the kind of goals that at least at this point we're hearing from the incoming administration.
Well, it's going to depend on how we lift any sort of moratoriums or whether they're codified or it's sent through different back channels about investing. Clearly that was the message that has been received over the past four years. So those back channels are being lifted. We had a activist judge that put a moratorium on for the US LNG expansion. The current administration put a moratorium on permitting for new LNG expansion. That will disappear a minute one on January twentieth. It certainly will free up the market to respond, and there's a tremendous amount of response, both on the oil side and mostly on the natural gas side, and really helping the industry to mature to a level where it should have been five years ago. It has been retarded up until this point. What we've seen here in my home state of Pennsylvania. We're going to restart thee Mayle Island. We're restarting a nuclear station in southwestern Michigan to meet the growing power demand being driven by AI and data centers.
We're speaking with STEVENS. Short, the founder and president of the Short Group energy analysis firm. You mentioned the sanctions that are still in place on Iranian oil, how that could shift. I wonder your view as well on some of the other sanctions regimes and how they could change under the next administration, particularly when it comes to Venezuela and some other countries that are seeing some constraints in their oil exportabilities given what the current policy is under the Biden administration.
I in Venezuela is very interesting because of course we're talking about a country that's sitting on the largest reserves of oil in the world. The problem with Venezuelan oil it is the dirtiest oil in the world. It is literally sludge that you have to seed up to reduce the discosity so you can actually get distinct to flow through a pipeline. Now, Venezuela was a pariah prior to four years ago with the Banduro, and let's be blunt about this dictatorship. You really don't have to sanction Venezuela. Socialism is doing all of the sanctioning that that US could ever do. So there are a lack of investment, the deterioration in their infrastructure makes it very difficult for Venezuela to get oil onto the market. Venezuela is such a minor player on the global scale, any sort of sanctions there will easily absorbed is already easily absorbed by US production alone.
You also mentioned the potential boost to nuclear power that could be coming, particularly with the needs of AI data centers, and I wondered your view as well on how the energy transition to more clean energy could be affected now that we have an incoming administration that's seen as more friendly to fossil fuels but also has a big advisor in Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The push towards the green economy will be retarded, but it is a good thing because now we're seeking a more balanced energy portfolio. We've insisted on going down a root of the binary routes that we are going to eliminate every fossil fuel and everything we're going to burn is going to be clean. That is an admirable goal, as it is an impossible goal, but it is part of the mix. And what we've learned over the past two years that the transition. We've codified the amount of natural gas and coal that has to be taken out of the power stack, the stack that generates electricity, but the entities that be the interconnections, the regional transmission organizations, people like art PGM, which are tasked with aggregating power and generating and distributing that power. They've been telling the government for the past two years that it cannot happen. We are taking too much natural gas, too much coal quote unquote dispatchable BTUs. This is the generation that you can turn on a dime and create more electricity. We're taking too much of that out of the market too fast because we can't replace it with all the green initiatives. So at this point we'll see a transition back to a friendlier environment. I think for an entire portfolio, portfolio that isn't inclusive, and people listening to this, I encourage you to go back to the DNC platform. In twenty twelve, when President Obama was running for his reelection and he had the policy that is now going to be embraced by the second Trump administration, his policy was pushing green forward, renewables forward, yes, but also taking advantage of the tremendous amount of natural resources that this country has a comparative advantage for Obama was for that, and with the second Trump administration, we're going back more towards that Obama energy policy.
Stephen, do you think we're still going to see an impact on geopolitical risk on the crude market with the next administration? And what's your price target for crude heading into two.
We've seen so many headlines over the past two years, first of course with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and then the atrocities on October seventh, and then the ongoing war in the Middle East and what that has done through disruption to the flow of oil on tankers coming out of the Middle East had to be diverted, but it has not had any impact. So with the new administration, I'm not a political scientist, but I certainly know some reputable mainstream media reported because there's actually a discussion in this administration of supplying Ukraine now with nuclear weapons. That's insane. So I think we can step back perhaps on the rhetoric there and hopefully get some sort of resolution going on. Is the tragedy that is now partaking in the Middle East, Let's see on that. But I do not have certainly crystal ball. But what we do have, Nathan, is we have mathematics and we have probabilities and we can calculate volatility and we can come up with market direction to drift of the market. So to go back to your question about pricing, Well, we came into this quarter and I have advice clients with our fall forecast. This is all based on our probabilistic modeling that we began this quarter in WTI at just under seventy two dollars a barrow on the Brent crude all market. We opened up the market right around seventy two dollars and we had a fifty percent probability that between the end of September and the end of this year that the market would hold in between seventy three dollars and fifty nine cents in WTI, and that would be seventy eight thousand and sixty six cents in Brent, with a median output in WTI sixty four sixty two and in Brent seventy twenty five. And that's exactly Nathan, where we've been. We've yo yoed. We had some strength in the first week of October. WTI got up to over seventy seven dollars a barrow, Brent Crudell got up to almost eighty one dollars a barrew, but we both markets quickly. You trace back below our fifty percent line, and we've been yo yoing in between that line. Our numbers were between and I'm just going to round it now, say seventy three fifty and sixty four to fifty. The earlier this week WTI traded just around seventy one dollars a barrel, so we're right there. The same goes with Brent between i'll call it seventy nine dollars and seventy dollars, and earlier this week we traded just over seventy five dollars, so we're halfway in between that. In between these ranges, regardless of all the headlines, the politics, the election, everything that has gone into this oil has been a very stable market. And your takeaway here is that, regardless of all of the headlines we've seen with regard to supply risk, it's all about demand, and the demand simply isn't there. So going into twenty twenty five, I suspect we're going to I'll have to run the numbers at the end of December, but I think a oil bound in between eighty dollars and sixty five dollars. I know it's a wide range, but those are your extreme prices at the point. But certainly I think oil currently where it's been trading at seventy seventy five dollars range, that is the sweet spot for oil going into twenty twenty five.
Really appreciate this. Stephen, thanks again for being with us. That's Stephen Shork, founder and president of the Short Group. And coming up next, what will happen to antitrust litigation against big tech once the new administration takes over? We'll speak with Jenniferree, senior litigation analysts for Anti trust with Bloomberg Intelligence. That's as this special Thanksgiving edition of Bloomberg Daybreak continues. I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg. Thanks again for being with us on this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US markets are closed for the Thanksgiving Day holiday. I'm Nathan Hager. Big tech has certainly been in the crosshairs of US anti trust agencies under the Biden administration. So what's going to happen to the slew of cases that the industry is facing once Donald Trump takes over the White House in January? For answers, we are pleased to welcome Jenniferree, senior litigation analysts for antitrust at Bloomberg Intelligence. Great to have you with us, Jen of course, I know you've been following these cases very closely, literally for years. So what does happen under a new Trump administration?
Well, thanks for having me, Nathan, and happy Thanksgiving. I would say not very much in the near term. Maybe way down the road. For a few of these cases, there could be an easier process to get to a settlement, but I think that depends on what happens in the litigation. So let me start with what's going on right now. We have Department of Justice lawsuits for monopolization against Google in the search area and against Google in the ad tech space. We also have Department of Justice lawsuits against Apple and one against Live Nation, and then Federal Trade Commission suits against Meta and Amazon. Now I should say that these aren't the only monopolization lawsuits the agencies have ongoing now, but these are the ones that are focused on big tech. And I think you know big tech is an issue because we do know that President elect Donald Trump's vice president Jade Vance is no big fan of any of these companies. He's actually been aligned with the position that has been taken by the DOJ and by the FTC to really aggressively go after them. So at least he has Donald Trump's ear and we'll have some influence on the trajectory of what happens here. So the cases that are very far along, for instance, the two Department of Justice lawsuits against Google, both in the ad tech space and the search space, are very far along in the litigation process. We have a liability decision against Google in search. So in the Department of Justice versus Google ad Tech case, they've recently had their closing arguments and we do expect a decision sometime before the end of this year, and we also believe it will be a liability decision against Google, so that'll move into the remedies phase, just as the Google Department of Justice versus Google Search case has moved into the remedy phase. And the only thing I see happening there that could be different given Trump's enforcers will be taking charge next year versus Biden's enforcers, is that if the judge in the Search case does agree with the Department of Justice and orders a remedy, which is a breakup of the company, in other words, forces Google to sell Chrome. I could see some sort of settlement that pulls back on that, because we do know that President elect Trump has mentioned that he thinks Schoogle needs to be punished, but he doesn't necessarily think of breakup is the way to go. He talked about that in an interview with Bloomberg's John Mickelthwaite just a few weeks ago. So that's one thing that could happen. I should say, I don't expect the judge to order that. We know the Department of Justice has asked for that remedy. I think this is a cautious judge. I think he's going to it will be a tough remedy, but I don't think it's going to be structural. In other words, I don't think he'll order the company to have to sell off any piece of itself, whether it's Chrome or Android.
Okay, So a lot of these cases that the Biden administrations should have put in place a pretty late in the argument and decision phase. But when it comes to how the focus could potentially change under a Trump administration when it comes to big tech, do you expect any changes in terms of whether they could be focusing more on the competition piece or the content piece for some of these companies.
You know, it's a really good question because there's bipartisan anger at big tech at the moment, but it comes from two different places, with most of the Democrats being concerned about monopolistic conduct and being gatekeepers, whereas on the Republican side, most of the concern is about the content and the feeling that there's some censorship of conservative viewpoints. But the thing is, the antitrust laws can be used as a punishment even if they shouldn't be. They can be used as a punishment, even if the concern is on the content side. Now, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Justice, there are other things that can be done on the content side, But these lawsuits could be continued because of the anger about the perceived censorship, even if that's not really a competition violation.
Now, more broadly, there's a lot of talk on Wall Street as well that once this new administration comes in, the M and A environment, the deal making environment is going to shift dramatically. How do you see it.
I do think it'll shift. I don't think it'll shift dramatically. The big difference between this FTC and Department of Justice from forty years before is the unwillingness to settle problematic deals. I mean, it used to be if a deal raised anti trust concerns, those concerns would get resolved by a sale of a piece of the assets of one of the companies or by promises behavioral promises to conduct the business in a certain way post merger. But this particular Biden's FTC and DJ said no, that didn't work. We don't think any of these remedies have worked. We think it's led to industries and the economy that's just too consolidated and has caused a lot of problems. So we're just going to challenge deals that are problematic rather than settling them. I think what we're going to see as a step back toward more agreements to settle cases, so fewer challenges in court, and more deals that ultimately are able to close because they're able to get to a settlement with the agencies. I think we'll move in that direction, but I don't necessarily think it's going to be this complete and total retrenchment where all of these deals easily skate by anti trust enforcement in the merger area started to pick up the first time Trump was president, and under his Department of Justice and his Federal Trade Commission, we saw an uptick. So I don't necessarily think we're going to go back to the way things were ten or fifteen years ago.
We're speaking with Jenniferree, she's a senior analyst for antitrust litigation for Bloomberg Intelligence. A lot of question about what the Federal Trade Commission is going to even look like under the next administration. What happens once Lena Khan is off the scene.
Well, I think that there will be a tough period for just a short time for the FTC because I suspect Lena Khan will leave on her own in January. That's the convention, it's what's normally done. I think she'll probably do that, And what that means it will leave two Democrats and two Republicans until Donald Trump can put a new chair in place. Now, he'll appoint one of the Republicans as the acting chair right away, but you're still going to be left with a two to two commission, which means if they have a tied vote on an enforcement action or pulling back on an FTC policy. They won't be able to do it because it requires a majority vote to do anything, So for a few months they may be a bit stuck. I do think Donald Trump will be able to push through people a little faster than usual because he does have a Republican Senate in a Republican House. So it just depends on what his priorities are and getting his people in place and how fast he can do that. But it could be up to six months where they're stuck in that two to two situation at the FTC.
And what about anti trust leadership at the Justice Department. I mean, we have a new Attorney General designate in Pam BONDI what are your thoughts on her when it comes to anti trust enforcement?
You know, I think that she she seems to be very conservative obviously and kind of a typical Republican in that respect. I think, really at the end of the day, it's going to be more about who is named as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of anti trust. That's really the main decision maker on the anti trust side, and we don't know who that will be yet. But the changeover at the DOJ will occur a little bit faster because the political appointees, the Attorney General, the assistant Attorney generals, they will step down in January and then somebody else, likely a Republican, will be named as the acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of anti trust and will start making the decisions. So we'll see some changeover I think in anti trust there more quickly than we will at the FTC. And I'm thinking in terms of merger enforcement and those deals that are pending and where decisions need to be made.
And are you expecting any major changes in antitrust legislation, any movement on that under a Republican controlled Congress, you know, I think.
That there's some difficulty. They have had difficulty in the pass with most of the anti trust bills that have been introduced, because even within political parties, there's dissension about exactly what those bills should say and what they should do, and the devil's really in the details. But one thing I've seen talked about quite a bit that I do think maybe has a shot is this concept that's been floating around for many years with a core group of Republicans, which is to take the anti trust enforcement from the FTC and put it all into the DOJ's hands. This has never really gone very far, but it's possible something like that could gain some traction. The FTC, of course, would still have the consumer protection work, which is a big part of what that agency does, So I'm sort of watching for that to see if something like that gets pushed forward in the new Congress.
Of course, one of the biggest advisors for President elect Trump, not just when it comes to tech but for all sorts of issues is Elon Musk. Do you see an Elon Musk factor at play when it comes to big tech regulation?
Well, I think possibly yes, going easier on techs, particularly in new and innovative areas, for instance, enforcement of AI, the activity in AI this particular, FTC and DJ are really watching what happens there because in this next wave of technology, they don't want once again really big gatekeepers controlling it. They want any AI technology to be open, and so they've been really cracking down investigating investments in AI by the big tech companies, looking at AI and how it operates, and I think probably with the Elon Musk factor, there might be some pullback on that just to open things up and allow for innovation and in the.
Time we have left, they'd be curious to get your take as well on some of the other pending cases outside of tech. We've got a capital one discovered deal for one. Where do you see that going?
I think that's one deal that really could benefit from the Trump administration. I think he's said a lot of things about wanting to go easier on the financial markets. That respect, I do think that deal has a better shot at getting through. I had some concerns about if the decision needed to be made this year. I had some concerns about Biden's DOJ suing to block it. Concerned about credit card lending to subprime borrowers. It's a very narrow market, but it is kind of a market that this administration has focused on. And I do think under the Trump administration, because I believe that administration wants to go easier on the financial markets, that deal has a better shot.
And just generally, Jen, do you see the Republican Party under President Elect Trump as business friendly as the gop of Old.
No, I don't think so. I mean, this is not the gop of Old and anything. We all know that because we have an example of what happened the first time Donald Trump was the president, and to me, you know a lot there's a lot of unknown coming up, and this is an erratic president. We've seen that. But I think the best you can do is say the past is the best predictor of future. So I look back at those four years, and it wasn't a particularly business friendly four years.
You know.
It was the Trump's DOJ that started investigations of all of those big tech platforms and started two lawsuits, one against Meta and one against Google. All of those then flourished under Biden's enforcers and turned into lawsuits. It was the Trump's Department of Justice and FTC that began to look at vertical deals, which Republicans of old always thought were fine, that they were pro competitive, let's push them through. It was Trump's for DOJ and FTC that said, wait, not so fast. Maybe vertical deals can be harmful and maybe we need to rethink this. So I don't really see this as going back to the days of the very business friendly Republican administrations that we've known.
Really appreciate this, jen thanks for coming on with us on Thanksgiving Day. It's Jennifer Ree, Senior litigation analyst for antitrust at Bloomberg Intelligence. Thanks as well to Stephen Shork, president of the Short Group, as well as City US economist Veronica Clark and Jennifer Lee, senior economist at Demo Capital Markets. Thanks to you as well for listening on this Thanksgiving holiday. I'm Nathan Hager. I hope you'll stay with us because we've got top stories and global business headlines coming up right now.