Bloomberg Daybreak: US Edition

On today's podcast:
1) French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu resigned Monday just a day after President Emmanuel Macron named a new cabinet, deepening the country’s political crisis. The premier quit less than 24 hours after Macron announced a government that retained most senior members from previous cabinets. That irked opposition parties looking for change, but in a surprising twist, the reappointed interior minister, Bruno Retailleau — who leads the center-right Republicans — also slammed the choice of ministers as failing to “break” with the past.
2) President Trump is pressing Israel and Hamas to seal a settlement to the two-year conflict that’s devastated Gaza and destabilized the Middle East, with the warring sides set to begin mediated talks on Monday. A key sign of progress in the negotiations, taking place in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, will be whether Hamas frees all the roughly 20 of its live hostages — plus the remains of those who are dead — in return for Israel releasing about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
3) Unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers asked a US judge to immediately block any mass firings by the Trump administration during the government shutdown while they press a legal challenge.The emergency request Saturday night to US District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco follows what the unions contend are a series of statements from President Donald Trump and other senior officials signaling that agencies could take action on layoff plans as early as Monday. Kevin Hassett, Trump’s top economic adviser in the White House, said the administration is holding off on layoffs at least until Monday, when a divided Senate is due to vote for the fifth time on a stopgap bill to keep government open through November 21st.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hamas agreed to release the last of the hostages from its 2023 attack on Israel but said the rest of a US peace plan would be subject to negotiation, a stance that offered uncertain hopes for an end to the conflict in Gaza.

President Donald Trump responded favorably to the Hamas statement even though the group failed to address other key elements of his 20-point proposal that Israel has also demanded, including that it disarm. He called on Israel to stop its bombing campaign and said discussions were underway on “details to be worked out,” suggesting that he was willing to give Hamas some leeway.

“I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” Trump said of Hamas in a social media post. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly!”

In a subsequent video post, Trump thanked the Muslim-majority nations he credited with assisting in the negotiations and pledged that “everybody will be treated fairly” in ongoing talks.

“This is a big day,” Trump said. “We’ll see how it all turns out — we have to get the final word down in concrete.”

For instant reaction and analysis, Bloomberg Balance of Power host Joe Mathieu speaks with:

- Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York
- Bloomberg News State Department and Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin
- Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend with Host Tom Busby take a look at some of the stories we'll be tracking in the coming week.

• In the US – a look ahead to the impact of lumber and timber tariffs on housing, and President Donald Trump’s Pfizer deal on drugmakers.
• In the UK – a look ahead to the Nobel Prize decisions.
• In Asia – a look ahead to the impact of the Golden Week holiday.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's podcast:
1) The Senate is expected to hold another vote today on a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government into mid-November. It comes as President Trump threatens to slash jobs. The US government shutdown adds uncertainty for investors seeking signals on the Federal Reserve's monetary-easing path. It will delay Friday's government payroll report, making investors reliant on private data for clues about the economic outlook.
2) Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted a “pretty big breakthrough” in the next round of trade talks with China. China has stopped buying US soybeans, with Beijing using the import ban as a bargaining chip in trade talks with the US. The US and China are set to hold talks before the scheduled November 10 expiration of a truce on the highest tariff levels from earlier this year.
3) Boeing's 777X is slated to fly commercially for the first time in early 2027, a fresh setback to the US planemaker. The delay could result in potentially billions of dollars in accounting charges, with analysts estimating the non-cash accounting charge could run from $2.5 billion to as much as $4 billion. Boeing executives are set to discuss the extent and cost of the latest schedule slip for the jet when Boeing reports earnings on Oct. 29.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's podcast:
1) White House Budget Director Russell Vought is planning to swiftly dismiss federal workers, a sign that Republicans will lean into hardball tactics to pressure Democrats to cave to end a government shutdown. Vought told House lawmakers Wednesday that some federal agencies will move to terminate workers within one to two days, according to people familiar with the remarks, who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that layoffs would happen within “two days, imminent, very soon” but declined to give any details about what agencies or positions would be targeted. Meantime, the Trump administration is planning to cancel billions of dollars earmarked for hydrogen projects in California and the Pacific Northwest, as well as $18 billion in infrastructure funding for the New York metro region.
2) Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said a lack of official data while the US government is shut down will make it harder for central bankers to interpret the economy. Goolsbee reiterated concerns about a recent pickup in services inflation, which he said could mean price pressures are persistent in parts of the economy least impacted by tariffs.
3) OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation, propelling the ChatGPT owner past Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the world’s largest startup. Current and former OpenAI employees sold about $6.6 billion of stock to investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank Group Corp., Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and T. Rowe Price, a person familiar with the transaction said. That boosted the US company’s price tag well past its previous $300 billion level during a SoftBank-led financing round earlier this year.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's podcast:
1) Congress blew past a midnight funding deadline, triggering the US government’s first shutdown in nearly seven years — and the third under President Trump. The White House’s budget office ordered agencies to begin executing their plans for a funding lapse, shuttering the government aside from essential duties, disrupting the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Americans and upending many public services.
2) The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 750,000 employees will be furloughed at a cost per day of $400 million in lost compensation. President Trump has also threatened to use the shutdown to fire federal workers, but agency plans for the lapse in funding didn’t specify any measures for terminations. With key economic reports on hold, traders fear the loss of visibility will leave markets in the dark on the outlook for monetary policy. The immediate reports at risk are Thursday’s weekly jobless claims and the October 3rd release of September’s nonfarm payrolls.
3) The White House pulled the nomination of EJ Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, throwing the leadership of the critical data agency into further disarray after President Trump fired the former commissioner. A White House official said that the administration looked forward to nominating a new candidate soon. Antoni was slated to appear before a Senate committee for a confirmation hearing for the BLS commissioner role, which is the only political appointee in an agency of roughly 2,000 people.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's podcast:
1) Vice President JD Vance said he believes the US government is on track to shut down, seeking to pin the blame on Democrats one day before federal funding is set to lapse. President Trump met with top Democratic and Republican congressional leaders less than 36 hours before an October 1st shutdown deadline. The two sides left no closer to resolving Democrats’ demands to extend health-care subsidies and reverse Medicaid funding cuts included in Trump’s signature tax legislation passed earlier this year.
2) Federal agencies are preparing for a possible government shutdown with detailed plans that call for temporary furloughs but not permanent mass firings — even after the White House pressed departments to consider reductions in force as part of their contingency planning. At least eight cabinet departments comprising more than two-thirds of the federal workforce had detailed their shutdown plans as of Monday afternoon. Together they call for more than 400,000 employees to be sent home as nonessential.
3) President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have agreed to a 20-point plan designed to end the war in Gaza, though the prospects for peace remain unclear without the direct involvement of Hamas. Trump said he had the support of other leaders from the Middle East and Muslim-majority nations. Still, the proposal — which mandates Hamas have no role in the future of Gaza — must be accepted by the militant group.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's podcast:

1) The top four congressional leaders will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, a day before federal funding would expire if the two parties can’t agree on a short-term spending bill. The discussions will be the first between Trump and congressional leaders ahead of the deadline to avoid a shutdown. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, were expected to meet with the president last week but it was canceled by the White House at the last minute.

2) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to hold a crucial White House meeting with US President Donald Trump on Monday amid assertions from Washington that an ambitious plan to end the war in Gaza is nearly complete. The meeting — the fourth between the two allies since Trump took office in January — comes after the US leader shared a 21-point proposal aimed at concluding the Israel-Hamas conflict with other regional heads in New York last week.

3) New York City Mayor Eric Adams bowed out of his struggling reelection campaign Sunday, but the decision may be too late to fundamentally alter the outcome of the November election to replace him. Adams’ decision to withdraw, amid faltering poll numbers and a struggle to raise money, was a long-speculated outcome by donors and sought by others who hoped to boost former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s chances to defeat frontrunner Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist. But political analysts questioned Sunday whether the decision can make a difference with just 37 days until Election Day.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend with Host Tom Busby take a look at some of the stories we'll be tracking in the coming week.

• In the US – a look ahead to the U.S jobs report and the Electric vehicle sector.
• In the UK – a look ahead to the Bloomberg Women, Money, Power conference in London.
• In Asia – a look ahead to the China PMI data.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's podcast:
1) Former FBI Director James Comey has been charged with lying to Congress and obstruction related to testimony he gave in 2020, accelerating President Donald Trump’s push for legal action against his perceived political enemies. The filing of charges capped days of speculation over whether the Justice Department would bring the high-profile case against Comey, who has clashed with the president for years.
2) President Trump announces a fresh round of tariffs on pharmaceuticals, heavy trucks and furniture, including a 100% duty on patented drugs unless the producer is building a manufacturing plant in the US. The pharmaceuticals plan, as described by the president, may allow for wide exemptions for companies with presences within the United States.
3) The $14 billion price tag proposed for TikTok’s US business values it more like a stuffy old energy or food company than a leading global social media company. The rough estimate, cited by Vice President JD Vance on Thursday, is well below previous projections that scaled closer to $40 billion. Vance’s comments came as President Donald Trump pushed forward a plan for American investors to buy the US operation from Chinese internet firm ByteDance Ltd.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.