WSJ What’s News - Authorities Were Warned About Suspected Trump Gunman

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

A.M. Edition for Sept. 17. New details emerge about Ryan Routh’s erratic behavior that set off alarm bells during his years as a pro-Ukraine activist. Plus, senior U.S. officials head to Beijing for high-level meetings. The WSJ’s Jason Douglas says they plan to highlight concerns over a wave of Chinese goods flooding world markets. And, Amazon wants its employees back in the office, full-time. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee, up to five percent off orders and five percent uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. New details on the prior warnings made to U.S. authorities about suspected Trump gunman Ryan Ruth, plus Metta bans Russian TV channel RT citing foreign interference, and U.S. officials head to Beijing to raise concern about a wave of cheap exports flooding global

markets. China is producing absolutely everything, right? It still does a hell of a lot of labor-intensive manufacturing and it is also now producing all the kind of high-end things that advanced economies tend to specialize in. It's Tuesday, September 17th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We can exclusively report that U.S. authorities had been warned about the behavior of Ryan Ruth, the gunman who was suspected of trying to kill former President Donald Trump last weekend.

Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who met Ruth several times in Ukraine in 2022, told the journal that she told a Customs and Border Protection officer about Ruth's threats of violence after she returned to the US. And she says she also filed an online report with the FBI and Interpol in 2023 when she heard that Ruth was attempting to recruit Syrian refugees to fight in Ukraine. Walsh says neither Customs nor the FBI followed up with her. Customs didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the FBI. Former CIA officer Sarah Adams, who helped to run an aid group network in Ukraine, says Ruth claimed to be working with the Ukrainian government to recruit foreign fighters but

wasn't and that some aid groups reported his activities to the State Department which didn't immediately respond to our requests for comment. While the FBI is investigating Sunday's incident as an apparent assassination attempt, authorities haven't yet determined a motive. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is returning to the Middle East today for his 10th visit to the region since October 7th last year, hoping to revive Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks. Not on the itinerary, however, is a stop in Israel.

Instead, Blinken is going to Egypt to discuss one of the most contentious issues in negotiations, who would control a narrow strip of land in Gaza along its border with Egypt. Another big sticking point is how many Palestinian prisoners should be released for Israeli captives held in Gaza, especially following the recent killing of six hostages. Speaking after a meeting with Blinken in Washington yesterday, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid invoked the plight of remaining hostages. I believe we must have a hostage deal as soon as possible. We cannot afford to wait because they are dying down there.

A senior Biden administration official said they didn't believe a ceasefire deal was imminent, a sentiment echoed by an Israeli official who said they were optimistic that a deal would happen, but quote, not anytime soon. Well, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas War, what do you want to know about the conflict, where it may be headed, and what is or isn't being done to resolve it? To weigh in, send a voice memo to wnpod at wsj.com or leave a voicemail with your name and location at 212-416-4328 and we just might use it on the show.

We are exclusively reporting that a delegation of senior US officials is heading to Beijing this week to voice American concerns about the flood of cheap Chinese exports, an issue that they say risks causing significant harm to workers and firms in the US and around the world. And joining me now to discuss the significance of this trip and what response those officials are likely to be met with in China is Wall Street Journal Asia economics reporter Jason Douglas who's in our busy Singapore newsroom today. Jason, this story is kind of a slow build. We reported last year that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had kind of tiptoed around the

issue of trade disagreements when she met with China's vice premier. Then in April, she got more vocal criticizing China exporting too many cheap, clean energy products and directly calling on China to scale back industrial production. And now several months on that issue is very much at the center of this visit. Yeah, that's right. So Jay Shambhal, who is the Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, is leading this delegation. And yes, we understand that on the agenda is what people are calling over capacity in China. The US has been raising this issue as one of concern for the global

economy for quite some time. If we think of like direct effect in the US sector, such as solar energy, for instance, have been feeling the pinch from Chinese exports for quite some time and there's no real sign of that abating. So China makes an awful lot of solar energy cells and modules and so on and ships them all over the world and that has the effect of pushing on prices for everyone else. Electric vehicles is another big flashpoint as you know.

So in Europe, they're mulling tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles after they determined that they were dumping them in Europe. Canada has done something similar. But it's not just advanced economy. So if you look around the world, Chinese steel is causing issues in places like Brazil and Chile, ceramics and chemicals in places like India. So it really is a pretty significant phenomenon for sure back when Janet Yellen warned her counterparts in China about These export practices she was basically met with the response that those warnings about overproduction are just a pretext to suppress China's rise Jason. Are we expecting to hear that again? I think that's right Chinese officials do understand that they perhaps have a problem

They have for instance recently been trying to rein in overproduction in sectors such as steel and solar. The overproduction issue is causing internal problems. It's sapping corporate profits. It's wasting money. And it's contributing to weakness and productivity growth in China. So it's certainly true that China thinks it has a problem internally with overcapacity, but just doesn't see it as a problem for the rest of the world and particularly not for

the United States. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence then that much is likely to come out of this concrete deliverables, if you will. Relations between the US and China are pretty brittle, pretty icy. There has been an attempt to put a floor to the relationship, if you like. And there have been attempts to find areas of cooperation that aren't so controversial. So things like debt and financing challenges facing developing countries is on the agenda for J.Chan Bo's visit this time around. There'll be some efforts to move things along on issues such as climate, for instance, but in a whole host of other issues like not just trade, but national security on technology. The US and China really are very far apart.

On top of all that, of course, there's an election coming up in the US this year, and Beijing is unlikely to do anything significant until they find out what the outcome of that is and how that might change US-China relations. Jason Douglas, thank you as always for the update. My pleasure. Coming up, why investors and patients are eyeing the performance of recent biotech IPOs and the rest of the day's corporate and market headlines after the break. Pharma startups have their eyes this week on the performance of a trio of drug developers

that went public last Friday, seeing them as a barometer of investor interest in biotechnology IPOs. Those listings, from cancer drug maker Bicara Thpeutics, MBX Biosciences, which develops treatments for endocrine and metabolic disorders, and immunology-focused Xenus Biopharma, follow a multi-year downturn for IPO activity that's created a backlog of companies waiting to go public. Journal reporter Brian Gormley has more. The financing environment has been pretty difficult

for biotechnology over the past two years and it's forced companies to make some difficult decisions about which drugs are going to put forward into clinical trials and which ones to put on hold. These companies need significant capital to advance their drug pipelines and that's not going to happen entirely from venture capital loan. There needs to be a functioning public market for these companies. And the more the IPO market opens, the better the financing market becomes for biotechnology, the more drugs will make their way into clinical trials and eventually to patients who need them. Some biotechs are aiming to squeeze in IPOs before the presidential election or between

Thanksgiving and Christmas, preferring to avoid volatility that could flare around the presidential election or between Thanksgiving and Christmas, preferring to avoid volatility that could flare around the presidential vote. Facebook owner Meta Platforms is kicking Russian state-backed TV channel RT off of its apps, stripping it of one of its biggest remaining distribution platforms in the West. The ban comes just days after the US government announced sanctions against RT, accusing it of carrying out covert influence operations aimed at interfering in foreign elections. RT didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. And in other business news, Intel plans to further separate its chip manufacturing and design

operations and pause factory projects in Germany, Poland, and Malaysia in a bid to cut costs. In an interview with the journal, CEO Pat Gelsinger also said that the company would slash its number of office locations by two-thirds. Intel's manufacturing operations will now become an independent subsidiary, though the plan stops short of splitting off and selling them, something many analysts and investors have encouraged the company to consider. Amazon wants its employees back in the office full-time.

In a message posted to the company's website, CEO Andy Jassy said the mandate will take effect in early January and cited the value of in-office culture. Amazon, which currently has a three-day in-office requirement, has in recent years invested in office spaces and pushed employees to be close to their teams. And Microsoft has boosted its dividend and greenlit a $60 billion share buyback. Its new dividend is 11% higher and that compares with a roughly 10% increase last year. And turning to markets now, the Fed is starting its long anticipated two-day policy meeting though investors will have to wait until tomorrow to find out its decision on interest rates.

But in the meantime, retail sales data are due at 8.30am Eastern, with economists polled by the journal expecting a 0.2% monthly drop. And a report on industrial production will follow at 9.15am Eastern, with economists forecasting a 0.2% monthly increase after a contraction in July. And that's it for What's News for Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.