Bloomberg Opinion

The tragedy of the Mekong: The world’s largest inland fishery is facing threats from all sides, writes Daniel Moss. Beijing’s formidable influence has traction because no country or authority officially controls the historic waterway. Read the column: https://lnkd.in/eFGbpUFK

Apple kicked off its annual developer conference not with an update about the iPhone maker’s progress on artificial intelligence — the thing everyone in the tech world is worried about — but with an announcement about “Liquid Glass," which (I hate to say it!!!) looks *eerily* similar to the Windows desktop I was using in 6th grade computer lab class. Are you into the new design? Let me know in the comments 👇 and read my Bloomberg Opinion newsletter for more commentary: https://lnkd.in/eaK3E_Se

The Trump administration’s attack on the NIH is strangling the biotech industry’s innovation engine — and it could get much worse given the proposed 40% cut to the agency's budget. The brutal cuts to academic grants are an existential problem in the long-term, as fewer dollars mean fewer discoveries to be pulled from academia and into biotech and pharmaceutical companies. But industry could face a more immediate problem: a huge cut to the an NIH program that currently provides ~$1.3 billion in seed funding to biotech startups. SBIR/STTR grants are vital support for early-stage technology development and clinical trials--particularly for companies bubbling up outside of the typical biotech hubs or working in therapeutic areas outside the VC fads. Read more in my latest for Bloomberg Opinion (gift link): https://lnkd.in/dKHXYUMj

There's a really good chance that Trump's tariffs will outlast his time in office, and that bodes ill for a bunch of reasons, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Clive Crook can explain: Perhaps the most important force cementing tariffs in place will be their fiscal consequences. This came into sharper focus last week when the Congressional Budget Office did an official score of the revenues the new taxes will raise. According to the CBO’s numbers, if the new tariffs imposed between Jan. 6 and May 13 stick (30% on imports from China and Hong Kong, 25% on cars and auto parts, the 10% baseline tariff, the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, and partial 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico), they would reduce budget deficits by $2.8 trillion over the next 10 years. This takes account of lower debt-interest payments, slightly slower economic growth, and inflation 0.4 percentage points higher this year and next. Nearly $3 trillion is an enormous sum, even by US budget standards — and as public debt continues to grow, the government will need that money. In discussions over the budget bill before Congress, projected tariff revenues aren’t directly involved. Official and unofficial scorers focus on the effects of the bill on projected deficits and debt while leaving tariffs to one side — they aren’t in the measure, they’re the result of executive action not legislation, and in the past the revenues have been both modest and stable, hence barely worth discussing. #tariffs #trade #deficit

It was, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly Sunday of violence and vandalism in downtown Los Angeles. Thousands of people angrily took to the streets after President Trump took the extraordinary step of summoning the National Guard, ostensibly to quell protests over ICE raids. It didn’t take long for these images to start ricocheting around the internet, with the sense of being on the brink amplified by the Trump administration and buttressed by an assessment from LA’s own police chief that “this thing has gotten out of control.” But California Democrats have a story about what happened and they are sticking to it. Too bad it’s a story that’s going up in flames, writes Erika D. Smith. Read why LA is losing the war for public opinion: https://lnkd.in/eMYMaqqv

Citi's hybrid approach is working, so CEO Jane Fraser is doubling down. The bank will now offer hybrid employees two weeks of remote work in August, according to Business Insider. It's a decision that puts Citi at odds with the rest of the finance world, which is increasingly demanding employees return to the office full time. Fraser, the first woman to run one of Wall Street's major banks, benefited firsthand from flexibility in an industry notorious for its grueling hours and rigidity. Back in February I wrote for Bloomberg Opinion about how that shaped Fraser's move to offer a new way of working — one that will help the bank attract and retain talent.

Warner Bros. is splitting itself in half, unshackling its fast-growing streaming business from the struggling legacy media channels and setting up two independent companies that could pursue deals on their own. The long-awaited plan to separate cable TV and streaming raises a tricky question, writes Chris Hughes: Who gets stuck with all the debt? Read the column: https://lnkd.in/ebTg7xTM

The titans of corporate America have had enough of their critics. ◾ At Goldman CEO David Solomon has reportedly pushed out troublemakers who criticized his leadership and leaked to the press about problems in the bank’s consumer lending business. ◾At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is now channeling Elon Musk energy and is less willing to take advice or listen to employee concerns over policy changes around issues such as DEI and content moderation. ◾JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told workers who started a petition asking him to reconsider his RTO demands, “Don't waste time on it. I don't care how many people sign that f**king petition.” Employees who don’t like it can get a job elsewhere, he’s said. Quashing dissent appears to be the next step in the CEO playbook for re-exerting authority after a pandemic that shifted power into the hands of workers. As CEOs return to command-and-control mode, they have only become more emboldened — perhaps even inspired — by a White House with zero tolerance for anyone unwilling to toe the party line. We can all understand the impulse to silence critics. They can slow decision making, create conflict and decimate morale. Admit it: We think they’re idiots and annoying troublemakers. But there are good reasons that everyone — and especially CEOs — should not just tolerate dissenters but encourage them. I dig into the research that explains why for my latest Bloomberg Opinion column. https://lnkd.in/epDRUNcp

The actor Sean Penn has summed up the problem with Pete Hegseth, and by extension the administration of President Donald Trump. “I’ve never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer,” Penn said upon hearing that the Pentagon boss has ordered the Navy to rename an oiler called the USNS Harvey Milk. The naming of a ship (or a gulf, or anything) is often a bureaucratic gesture of forgettable symbolism. Not in this case and a slew of others that Hegseth is currently reviewing. The effort instead points to a worrisome obsession that causes division, distraction and the diversion of scarce energy from real foreign conflicts toward domestic culture wars. Milk, whom Penn played in a screen biopic, was the first openly gay man to hold elected office in California (he was later assassinated) and had earlier been a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean War. Homosexuality was then a crime in the military, so Milk was eventually given a Hobson’s choice: He could face a court-martial or resign with a discharge that was “other than honorable.” In 1955, Milk chose the latter option. To show that America’s armed forces no longer waste such human talent and exclude so many patriotic Americans, the navy in 2016 named a ship after Milk. But to Trump, who won his first presidency that year, that gesture was part of a pathology which Hegseth later called the “DEI/woke shit,” referring to norms favoring diversity, equity and inclusion. Fresh into office, Hegseth fired senior officers including the first woman to command the Coast Guard, the first woman to run the Navy and the second Black person to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Had that chairman been hired “because of his skin color? Or his skill?,” Hegseth had wondered in The War on Warriors, published in 2024; “we’ll never know, but always doubt.” Backed by Trump, Hegseth then kept purging the Pentagon ... (Read the whole column. This a a gift link)   Bloomberg Opinion https://bloom.bg/4mRMI7t

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney just had what you might call an ‘infrastructure week’. He convened provincial premiers to agree on a way to build big projects in a country famous for its internal trade barriers and disputes. One such project is a pipeline to bring oil from land-locked Alberta to the British Columbia coast. Earlier efforts have failed, stymied by opposition from Liberal politicians in BC and Ottawa as well as First Nations, whose land any pipeline would need to cross. Getting it done would require changing laws, especially the one banning oil tankers off much of BC’s coast, and likely twinning the pipeline with a massive carbon capture project. First Nations tribes would need extensive consultation and likely a stake in any resulting pipeline. In short, it’s a Canadian moonshot that would likely be going nowhere, were it not for threats and bluster from a certain erratic ally to the south. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/efyJ_n8M