Election Day Analysis

Published Nov 5, 2024, 3:31 PM

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Bloomberg Surveillance hosted by Tom Keene and Paul SweeneyNovember 5th, 2024
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Featuring:

  • Tina Fordham, founder at Fordham Global Insights, on the election and national security concerns surrounding it
  • Gautam Mukunda, professor at Yale School of Management, on the election, polling, the campaign turnout operations, and the global implications of a Trump or Harris win
  • Dan Tobon, Head of G10 FX Strategy at Citi, on Trump or Harris trading on election night and what could come after
  • Benedikt Kammel, Aviation Team Lead with Bloomberg News, on the Boeing strike and its crippling impact

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Listen an important discussion and Bob Woodward yesterday and our piercing conversation. Thanks for the many comments there, particularly from Trump supporters that felt mister Woodward was supporting the other team. And to have Tina Fordham with us right now. Fordham Global Insights is important. Off what Bob Woodward said yesterday that the Secretary Defense of the Biden administration has an affinity for the Vice President of the United States, Tinas. I know you know in Foreign Affairs magazine the Secretary of Defense writing and of course is extreme concern about Ukraine and quote Putin's aggression unquote. The Secretary of Defense goes the frauds and falsehoods of the Kremlin apologists. What does the Department of Defense and our foreign policy projection look like, whether Trump or Harris Victory.

Well, I think we should admit to start with it. As we've gotten closer to polling day. In the US, the sounding the alarm about the risks of Trump and the White House have increased, and the Defense Secretary is talking about the fact that Trump has said that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one. He hasn't said how he would do that. But what is likely the biggest foreign policy implication in the short term of Trump and the White House has got to be his promised end to military aid to Ukraine. Even though you're has done a lot and done it quickly in European Union terms, and the UK has been very involved in this, it won't be possible to replace that aid in time. And you know, Putin's been playing a waiting game when it comes to Ukraine, and he's been much more active when it comes to US elections.

Tina, you're based in London. I'd love to get a sense of kind of what the folks in the UK are thinking about this election, how closely they're paying attention to it, how do they view potential outcomes.

Well, I mean, I guess I have a bit of a you know, self selected crowd around me. My phone is lighting up constantly today and in the UK people feel very close to the United States and so there's you know, affinity and concern on that front, and of course in the markets, our investor clients and corporate clients are really on the edge of their seats about this. It's impossible to position for an election as close as this, as Tom was saying at the start, but there is enormous anxiety and it's pretty much across the board about what it would mean for the UK and Europe to have Trump back in the White House. And I think there's been less consideration really about what a Harris presidency would mean, apart from the expectation of continuity on NATO, Alcus, you know, the security umbrella in Asia.

What have you heard, if anything, from some of the European leaders about a potential second Trump presidency in terms of just geopolitics in general. Again, as as you mentioned, there's so many hotspots around the world, from the Middle East to Ukraine. What would that mean.

Potentially, Well, European elected officials will be at great pains not to say anything because you know, they don't want to be seen to be interfering in the elections. But there has been no secret about the fact that Brussels, for example, has been trying to trunk proof Europe, and that's the term that's been used, and that relates particularly to security and defense, as mentioned, But I think the other angle here, I mean, the obvious one is security and defense, and it matters enormously. But the other angle about why these US elections are being watched so closely and with so much anxiety is simply around the question about whether the US can have a peaceful transition. And I was very interested to see some polling data from the AP that talked about four and ten Americans are concerned about violent interference with elections. That's alarming. So I think the biggest litmus test is the functioning of our institutions and the acquiescence of whoever loses.

One of the great changes here at Tina from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, way beneath the fold in America, nobody's paying attention is ninety six miles from the Russian border in Finland Lapland, the United States is leading NATO artillery exercises. That's something I would not have said four years ago or eight years ago. What is the significance of NATO artillery exercises? A Cuba away from Putin's border.

Well, that speaks to the fact that we have two new NATO member states since Russia decided to invade Ukraine, and those are Finland and Sweden. It wasn't expected. I suppose even five years ago. I actually had a bet with a Swedish banker friend of mine about this, that they would both join. But you take an interesting place, Tom, which is that one of the sort of open debates that's underway is whether those Nordic states would kind of form their own and mini NATO if US withdraws its support in one form or another. They have strong militaries and have had the mandatory draft, and I think a lot of Americans don't appreciate how prepared those countries are. Finland was at war with Russia, remember, and has a memory of being at war to defend their territory. But they do rely on US participation.

This came up last night at the dining room table, Tina Fordham. If President Trump wins a second term, where does he travel to first? Does he reducts his Pacific travels? Does he go to Europe? Will he try to redo twenty sixteen?

So I actually have thought about that before. I love a thought experiment, Tom, but I don't think that Trump will feel compelled if he's reelected to do the traditional calling upon allies. Trump's also not really an ally guy, and if we look at his you know, campaign statements, they're really focused on the domestic. I mean, my sense is that Trump would likely subcontract his foreign policy, trade policy to experts who he trusts. Of course, the trouble for us is when we try to speculate what that looks like that most of the people who worked for him before have made it abundantly clear that they would never consider doing so again.

Tina, we got to leave it there. Never enough time, Tina Fordham Fordham Global Inside.

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There are moments in the blur of all this, folks. There's moments where any of our wonderful esting guests they say one single thing and like it doesn't go away. You remember, one hour, one day, one month later, got to mccunda said something a while back. I think it was I miscot him last time around because I was in Europe. But with Yale School of Management said something Paul that had carried for weeks and weeks and weeks, which is the undecided shrink. They shrink much more, and everybody caught up with Professor mccundy. He joins us down in studio on this election day. Where are the undecideds? Now? They got to decide.

They have to decide at this point, pulling to everything here is guesses and stabs in the dark. But all the data I'm seeing suggests that in the last twenty four to forty eight hours, even even though I wanted to weeks, they've broken pretty strongly towards Harris the really decisive moment, and it's strikingly. It's striking So was the Madison Square Garden event. There's a lot of polling data coming out for Latinos, particularly Latinos in Pennsylvania that they all heard about it. It mattered to all of them, and it swung a substance. It swung some votes. Now I can't tell you that's enough to swing the election because there aren't many of those people like that. The undecided was last time I was here, it was three percent. It's probably less than that now, and a lot of people had already voted by the time those events happened. But the Harris campaign is not a lot quietly anymore, feeling very confident because of what they've seen in the last few.

Days we had.

Yesterday, the piece of music came out as the Seltzer poll coming out of Iowa that surprisingly showed Vice President Kamala Harris three points ahead. What do you make of that?

Earthquake does not understate the impact that they had. And Seltzer's record in Iowa was so good that I occasionally I occasionally make jokes that she doesn't She's lived in Iowa a whole life. She only does Iowa. She doesn't pull the state. She just knows every Iowa voter and asks them what they'll do. She I mean, it's not that she's never been wrong. She missed a gubernatorial e race a couple of years a few years ago, but in general, her record is as close to perfect as Upholster can get. For her to say not just that it's close, but that Trump is three points down stunning, I'll add to that. Okay, let's say she had a statistical fluke. It can happen to anyone, even Seltzer, I don't really think Harris is gonna win Iowa. The Trump campaign's response was to leak internals saying that they that they had numbers saying he was five points up. That's really bad for Trump. If he's five points up, and he should be ten to fifteen points up in Iowa. If he's five points up in Iowa, that's really bad news for him across the country. Now, the one thing I'd say is it might be Iowa specific. Iowa's abortion band went into what went active in July, and basically Iowa local elections have been nothing but sat gration bombing on abortion, and so that might mean that a swing by white women that's what Seltz picked up based on Dobbs, is more intense in Iowa than it is anywhere else in the country.

Turnout, I'm told that it's particularly important this election, given how close the election appears to be. Does one camp one party have an advantage there in terms of turnout.

So everyone agrees that the Harris turnout machine is much better, Like that's just that's not even that the Trump people will tell you that it's just much more effective, partly because they the Trump people outsource their entire turnout operation of Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk, and you can't build these things on the fly like you actually have to spend years doing it. That being said, Trump had essentially no turnout in operation at twenty sixteen, none, and he got people who never who you know, a democratic turnout machine would have just written off is not worth approaching. He got them to show up and vote for him. There's nothing that helps your turnout more than a clear, consistent message by a care ors met a candidate. You know, whether you like Donald Trump or not, that is a pretty good description of his campaign.

What do you think I mean? Is Pennsylvania the state we should be focusing on or are there some other places we should be looking.

I would start with Pennsylvania. So let's say it's harder to get early info from states than it is from particular areas, So it varies from election to election. But I'll tell you in twenty sixteen, I was looking at some areas in Virginia, and I was I was in China, of all things. I was doing an election commentary in Beijing. Among the strangest experiences of my life. And so about nine pm local time, which would have been nine and sorry, nine am local time, which had been nine pm time here, I got those results and turned to some people next to me and said, I think one's gonna lose this time. There's actually Pennsylvania guests also Delaware. They're oddly I mean, obviously they're gonna win Delaware, but if it's closer than you expect, that would be a pretty bad sign for Harris.

Picking presidents, I mean, mister Trump is unique, even as supporters will agree, it's a unique process. What have we learned your wonderful book picking presidents? What have we learned about picking presidents? It prepares us for twenty twenty eight?

I think counterintuitively, the thing maybe we should learn is that campaigns. Campaigns are just too long. I think Harris got a real benefit from being I mean, maybe this was too short for her, but the two year long election cycle that we've been doing for presidential campaigns, it drives everyone in saying it forces people to take positions that end up being completely in defensive.

So to be clear, here, for Vice President Harris, she had an advantage because of the delay.

I won't say I think she would rather have had a normal cycle, And I have to give her credit for being able to perform this balancing act in the shortest kind of time. But if I were a normal candidate, I would rather do six months than two years.

Charlie Cook led his before election essay with we grew up with landslides. I was explaining at home what they did to mcgovernor in seventy two. That's beyond the realm of how we think. Now. Do you desire, professor, that we get back to landslides, back to where we vote for somebody with an image, or we just wedded to this polarity forever.

So I don't think we are. We saw landslide in two thousand and eight and twenty twelve was not that close. This polarity is deeply operational, and I'll says, speaking as a political scientist for a second, we don't really understand why we don't have good theories as to what is going on, as to why the elections. The elections are so perfectly balanced right now. I think the American political system basically does not work when it is in deadlock. Other political systems do.

But to the laureate to mit. Is it, you know, in the Power and Progress? Is it just a separation of the nation year between the haves and they have nots? Is that really all this comes down to.

I don't think so. I think that is a driving issue. But although the Trump campaign sort of said images, it's image of itself that it portrays is of the working sort of the working class tribunal. Trump voters are significantly wealthier than Harris voters. They were significantly wealthier than Biden voters in twenty twenty. They will be significantly well Maharris was twenty twenty four. And so you have a real conflict between the image of the campaigns and their voter base. And that is going to be resolved eventually, but it might take a while.

Love can't wait to talk to you after this election. Got a Macunda with this, of course, of Yale his book Picking Presidents, How to Make the Most consequential Decision in the World.

This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Dan Tobin joins the City Group and courses London watch for them, and he's of course with FX there a G ten effects strategy. It's City Group. So if you bracket Euro Trump Harris Euro right now is I'm looking at damn. My eyes are failing me here one oh nine? With Trump? Where's Euro? With a Harris? Where's Euro? Yeah?

Well, I mean very simply, if Trump wins Euro, dollar goes down potentially all the way towards around one oh five. That'd probably be a bit of a stretch, but it could get down that far. If Harris wins, Euro higher at least back to one ten, but there might be some difficulty getting higher than that, simply because data in the US has been outperforming the Euro.

So with Harris, the euro strength is it's asymmetric. Is it about euro stronger? Is it sell the dollar with Harris?

No, this is absolutely about the dollar. And actually there's dollar yen would be a trade we'd be looking.

At more because wrack at that.

Please, it's a proxy one, it's a proxy for rates, and so rates should go down, You'll should go down if we see a Harris win, and so dollar yen should go down as well.

Since the beginning of time, when I think about trading currencies, I think about City, Bank and City. Now you guys are New York, London, Asia, you trade everything. How are you guys staffing up for the next twelve to twenty four hours globally currency desk at City.

Oh, it's it's gonna be busy, and it's gonna be all hands on deck at least tonight until we have you know, probably until midnight. We have to see how the results are coming out, but certainly twenty four to seven we will have staff and we will be there.

For what currency pair, What indicator of FX is what Dan Tobin's gonna watch off the Bloomberg at City.

I'm gonna be watching dollar Yen and dollar max. Those will be the two key ones to keep an eye on.

Talk to us about dollar Mexican hit pay, So what's the relationship there, what's driving that trade?

These days?

Dollar max has a lot of domestic stories, but it's also sensitive to the US dynamic if Trump wins, both because the USMCA will come under review and so there's some potential uncertainty around there, and also because there's been a lot of border disputes, so Mexus comes into focus and remains.

So Max's twenty point one three. If Trump is going to win or appear to win, it weakens to twenty one twenty two in that area.

It's hard to say overnight, but certainly potentially.

Yeah, I don't, you know, it's completely unfair, but the directions.

Absolutely that story.

When you talk to your clients, do you feel like they're hedged today? Are they making bets today? Are they just saying I'm on the sidelines today because there will be movements in your market?

Yeah?

Absolutely. For the most part, the big accounts have really reduced positioning and are trying to go in as lightly positioned as possible. The more active clients they're long dollar, they've reduced some of that. They were a lot more long dollar last week when Trump odds were a bit higher. Still leaning towards long dollar though.

So all right, let's go seventy two hours, three, four or five days from now?

What long term?

Long term? Let's get back to more fundamentals. What's your view here at the currency markets? Where do you see value here?

Yeah?

Probably outside of the dollar we'd be looking at things like the Australian dollar. Actually there's a lot of value there just because the domestic story is strong, and there's potential for some hedge changes next year. At the end of the day, though, the data in the US is still holding up, and so it's hard to see a real big sell off coming for the dollar. Even if Harris wins and the dollar selves off, it probably will be momentary and the dollar probably rally.

Do you have a I mean, G ten, it's not but China, How do you affect a China trade given the Congress coming out, presume fiscal support, more help, et cetera. How does city group affect a China belief?

Yeah, I mean, the key question is going to be what kind of tariffs do we get if we do, in fact get a Trump presidency, and to offset that, what kind of stimulus where we get from the Chinese side? And we do have the Standing Committee meeting on November eight, so there it will potentially be a lot of volatility around the currency. But very simply, if Trump wins, we expect dollars CNH to move higher. Harris wins, we can actually see dollars CNH more stable.

The pound sterling, what's the call there? How do you how do you feel about sterling right here?

Structurally we like it.

We think there's opportunity for investors which have been very underweight the UK since Breadxit, to start moving assets back into the UK. Guilt yields look somewhat attractive here. So we see potential for a stronger sterling, especially against the Euro, into next year. But in the short term it's not trading to its domestic fundamentals. It's trading too concerns around the budget, around and across the US.

I'm trying of question you do technicals, which we do a lot here instrumants, technicals and radio really work. And the answer here is when someone says the vector and the dollar is strong dollar, is there an established trend I call it soup? Or is it technically just soup? Where the dollar is right now?

If we pull out far enough, there is a very clear trend since the Great Financial Crisis for a stronger dollar, and in fact, the US has been the outperforming economy in the global development.

So does it gets you on YenS through one sixty? I mean Gartman's frame in it for gold, But that's Gartman making gold chat. Can you, as a major bank frame out a fan distribution it gets a yen back out over one sixty.

That would require a much higher US tenure yield. And given that the FED is already in a cutting cycle, and then in general we're seeing a bit of a slowan on in the US, it's hard to see that absence some kind of fiscal shock. Now that's not impossible, given you know, we have a potential red wave coming, but it's hard for us to see that we actually think the yen can strengthen into next year.

Paul said, you're everywhere? Where are you based for City Group? Are you in like Dubai or.

I'm in New York, but I've I've worked all over for City They're everywhere.

I'm actually if you want to go trade some obscure currency already.

Dan Tobin's Razumi and it's like it's like the romance of you know, FX in Big Bank. I mean, you know, he came out of Villanova and he's sipping tea in Mayfair. What's that about?

I know City is the FX bank and London is a place.

What was your first day like in City Group? It was it like the TV show industry.

Oh no, no, no, it was.

Actually great.

I've loved working there. I've been there for over a decade. I did leave and I came back because I loved it so much.

Great, Dan Tobe, don't be a stranger. Thank you so much. Thanks very much, City Group, you said g ten FX at City Group.

This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal.

Joining us right now. The last time he's on, he was a hugely knowledgeable pause blown away. Beneticae Cammel joins us, why don't you bring him in? You nailed it. I mean you told me the strike's not going to get settled last time, and this time was different.

Yeah, it's they Finally we got the rank and file Tom over at Boeing, the machinist of in a Pacific Northwest agreeing to a contract with Boeing.

A piece of good news.

For them and for the company and for the stock. Stocks up about one point three percent pre market trading. Benedic Cammel Joins is Global Aviation editorial leader for Bloomberg News. He's based in Berlin, Germany, Benedict. What's different for this contract versus the last contract? Is it simply dollars and cents.

There's a bit of that. I think your numbers are slightly better. You know, we had now a thirty eight percent wage increase last timers thirty five, so up a smidge. But I think the bigger difference is that there was a general weariness, and you could see it in the faces of the workers of the union leadership. I think everyone was ready to get this done with and they probably felt this is as good as it's going to get. Any any more holdouts and any more negative votes, we might actually start hurting ourselves more than we start benefiting from this. So there was this sense this is a pretty good deal. It's a thirty eight percent wage increase over a couple of years. There's a big bonuses, a couple of other sweetness thrown in, and and you know, we're moving towards Thanksgiving. People's savings are depleted. People, you know, started to get cold over there. The Joys are standing by the roadside with a sign in your hand probably rapidly diminishing. So there was that sense, let's get it done with. This is good, and that's where we got fifty nine percent approval. Okay, you know, mathematically all they needed, but not great if you want to repair relations.

So what's the company saying about their ability to kind of restart the assembly line and get those planes coming out of the assembly line, getting them to customers and bring them cash flow into the company. What's the company saying about timing.

Well, there's no absolute perfect sense of timing here, but they have said, is it going to take a while? Kelly or Bog the CEO, said a couple of weeks ago. It's much easier to turn things off than it is to turn them back on again. You know, as we all know, fixing something's harder than breaking it. So it will take months. You know, it'll take into next year to give you a sense. They have said this year will be a cash negative year, they'll have cash outflow, and the next year, the first half will also be cash negative. And that was to many people are surprise. People thought that come early next year things would be back in repair mode and sort of the company would be would be on a road to recovery. But clearly we're looking into this the latter part of next year when that'll happen. So this year they will have burnt about fourteen billion dollars of cash. You know, that gives you a sense of just how high the stakes were. And even the company the size of Boeing can't do this forever, so the stakes are really high for both sides to get this deal over.

The line man in the guard advantage with you is you're in Berlin's so you get the to loose France Airbus axes his. Airbus had any advantage from the strike.

Only in so much that people aren't looking at their problems as much as they are at Boeing's. And you know, Airbus is not without its own faults. Their production is not where it should be. You know, it's not as bad as Boeing's. They are actually producing planes, whereas Boeing right now as close to zero. But they have huge supply chain issues. They have had to cut back their output targets for the year. But people are obviously far more fixated on what's going on at Boeing than they are at Airbus. But it's also it's a complicated market where you can't simply switch from one supply to the other. So even if you were a Ryanair, which is a Boeing custom, and we had the Ryan CEO in the studio yesterday and he was saying, look, I'm getting I'm not getting the planes I need. I need them for the peak summer period and they're not coming in. You can't just pick up the phone to ge and free the CEO of Rabbus and say hey, can you sell me a couple of planes. So everyone is kind of locked in, you know, the situation they're in, and everyone is really hoping for this to resolve itself. And this strike, the end of the strike, is one big step towards that.

Benedict, are you back any countless elections back to sixty eight and seventy two in the Vietnam War? Is the defense component of aviation, whether it's Lackey Martin or McDonald, Douglas, et cetera, et cetera. And the answer, Benedict is it's a big distraction. Is Boeing distracted or hindered because of their defense institutional place in America?

Well, I mean defense is still a big component of Boeing and it's all also part of the reason why you know, a lot of people have said, is this a company too big to fail? And yes it is because they have that big foot in the door on all things defense. And it's if you again, if you compare it to Abbus, it's a much more sizable part of their operation and a more important part. So whatever Boeing looks like in three, five, ten years, the defense component will still be there and it will be an important part of what they do. It's a different question when you start thinking about space, for instance. You know, yes, they have this long history of you know, helping put a man on the moon and all that, but the space business is really where they're bleeding and where they're hurting. So if you look at what they have to do, and Kelly Orkberg, the CEO, has been quite open about this. He says, we can't be everything to everyone. We have to really think hard about what we're good at, what where we make our money, and where we might have to make some painful cuts. And if I had to guess, it's probably going to be in the in the space area more than in the defense market.

Bened what are the Boeing's customers saying are they still standing by the company. Again, it's it's just a diopoly out there. I guess they don't have much of a choice there for your Southwest airlines and some other airlines that depend upon Boeing. But what are the customers been saying?

They are and they're standing with them, and they're saying, we want Bowing to succeed. And oddly, you'd think Abbus is actually saying the same thing. They're saying, we take no joy. I mean maybe secretly they might take a little bit, but openly they will say we take no joy in Boeing's misfortunes. Here is because we are sort of tied at the hip with these with these guys and them to succeed, we need a healthy market out there. And as I said, if you're United, if you're an American, if you're a Southwest, you can't just sort of switch back and forth. You have these longtime contracts. You have your crew training, you have your maintenance. All those things are tied into these decades long contracts that you have with these suppliers, and therefore they need bonies to succeed. And as you say, there isn't really much of a choice out there. The Chinese there are making some noises. There was a Comac nine to one nine, but that plane is not certified in the Western hemisphere, so it'll be years. You know, who knows whether we on this call we'll ever see that plane flying in our time zone, but it'll come at some point, but that's far out.

Be absolutely spectacular. Thank you so much, Ben, Ben came a worldwide driving our airline coverage.

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