WSJ What’s News - Harris Privately Courts Business Leaders

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

A.M. Edition for Sept. 25. With many top executives undecided on which candidate to support, the WSJ’s Tarini Parti says Kamala Harris is making a quiet play for Corporate America’s backing. Plus, Israel intercepts a Hezbollah missile headed for Tel Aviv. And, WSJ Heard on the Street columnist Carol Ryan explains how widely diverging OPEC and IEA forecasts about how much oil the world needs are roiling the sector. Luke Vargas hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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for info on kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Israel's air defenses intercept a missile aimed at Tel Aviv. Plus, Kamala Harris courts corporate America. What we've seen this election cycle is that a lot of these leaders are choosing to sit on the sidelines. They aren't quite sure of Harris, but they also are unsure of Trump's approach to the economy, specifically to trade. And a fight over how much oil the world really needs muddies the waters for the sector. It's Wednesday, September 25th.

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. Israel has intercepted a missile fired at Tel Aviv by Hezbollah as fighting between the parties continues to escalate. Alerts sent residents scrambling into shelters early this morning as the missile approached. Hezbollah's attempted attack on Israel's commercial capital comes after days of Israeli strikes in Lebanon which Israel says targeted the group. The attacks have killed and injured hundreds of Lebanese and displaced thousands. Yesterday, Israel delivered another blow to Hezbollah, saying that an airstrike killed

its top missile commander in a suburb of Beirut. Meanwhile, China says it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile today, a rare public acknowledgment that's likely to increase tensions with its neighbors. The missile, which carried a dummy warhead, landed in the Pacific Ocean, with Chinese state media adding that Beijing notified relevant countries ahead of the launch, though it didn't say which. According to a former Pentagon official, today's launch marked China's first public ICBM test since 1982.

Separately, Taiwan's Defense Ministry said today it detected 23 Chinese military aircraft around the island, all but one of which crossed into its air defense identification zone. A US Senate report into Donald Trump's near-assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania in July has detailed widespread security failings among the Secret Service. Investigators found the agency was hobbled by an unclear chain of command, with agents unable to identify who was the final decision-maker at the event, along with technological issues that delayed deployment of a system that might have detected a drone flown by the shooter

ahead of the rally. The report's release comes a day ahead of the first public hearing by a separate House task force looking into what happened in Butler, with both congressional inquiries gaining urgency after a second apparent assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month. And speaking of that second incident, a grand jury yesterday charged 58-year-old Ryan Ruth with attempted assassination, as well as two other new offenses. Ruth, who's scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, could face life in prison if convicted.

China's Shanghai Composite Index is up more than 5 percent so far this week, after another interest rate cut announced by the Bank of China overnight added to momentum following a raft of measures that we discussed yesterday meant to support the country's weakening economy. If successful, those steps could also boost global oil demand, a welcome prospect after four straight months of shrinking demand from China. But as Journal heard on the street, columnist Carol Ryan told us, the OPEC oil cartel and the International Energy Agency are increasingly at odds over just how much oil the world really needs. A disagreement with China at its center. One of the big sticking points is how things are going to play out in China for the rest

of the year. OPEC thinks China is going to need around 650,000 barrels of oil a day more than it did last year, but the IEA's estimate is much lower. It's around 200,000 barrels. And based on what China used in the first half of the year, it would take a pretty strong economic boom between now and the end of the year for China to hit the OPEC target. Differences in forecasts are to be expected, but Carroll said the size of this one, in which OPEC predicts global oil demand won't peak for more than two decades while the IEA sees a peak within the next five to six years, is sowing confusion.

Most of the big national and independent energy companies, they do their own forecasts, but they will use the IEA and OPEC estimates to sanity check their own views. So if you have this really big gap between these two very influential bodies, it shows it's becoming riskier to invest in new oil and gas production. It's becoming harder for companies to know which way to jump. And the big oil producing countries really don't like the message that's coming out of the IEA at the moment. It's really existential for some governments because they haven't diversified their economies much and they're really reliant on revenue from oil and gas sales.

Oil prices today are slipping in early trading as broader demand concerns have kept a lid on the boost from China's stimulus package. And investors today will also be watching new home sales data for August due at 10 a.m. Eastern. Later in the day we'll get earnings from chip maker Micron and Facebook parent Meta is hosting its annual Developer in Hardware Conference where it's expected to preview its latest pair of smart glasses in collaboration with eyewear brand Ray-Ban. Coming up, White House reporter Tarini Party takes us inside Kamala Harris' off-screen push to make inroads with the business community and we'll look at how Argentina's libertarian leader

is shaking up the rental market. Those stories after the break. Looking for a path to accelerate your career? Clear direction for next-level success? In a place that is innovative and practical? A path to stay current and connected to industry. A place where you can be yourself. You will find it at York University

School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris has made a point of saying that she'll hold big business accountable. But offstage, Journal White House reporter Trini Pardi told our Azhar Sukri that the vice president has been making an undercover push to win over corporate America. So Harris has spent a lot of time behind the scenes cultivating relationships with business leaders

from Mark Cuban to Jamie Dimon. We've seen her host a White House lunch with Jamie Dimon, for example, earlier this year. This is someone who she had clashed with while she was Attorney General of California over mortgage settlement negotiations during the foreclosure crisis. So she tried to build a relationship with someone she'd even previously clashed with.

She has since kept in touch with them and we know they spoke as of just a few days ago. She has also hosted dinners of about eight to 10 chief executives at the vice president's residence in the last few years. And the CEOs haven't all been Democrats. So she's tried to reach across the aisle here and try to build relationships with chief executives. So what's her strategy here? Why is Harris trying to court business leaders?

It's a way to sort of push back on this idea that she is too far to the left, that she's too progressive, as Trump has tried to label her a Marxist, that she has these business leaders who potentially view her as a centrist. And if they can come out and say that, as we've seen recently with about a hundred business leaders signing a letter endorsing Harris. And it's also a way for Harris to show that she can manage the economy. This is a priority issue for voters, and we've seen in poll after poll

that voters continue to give Trump an edge on this issue. So it's a way for the campaign to show that she can be better at managing the economy with these business leaders vouching for her as voters try to consider which of these two candidates would be better on the economy. There's always a quid pro quo. So what are these leaders getting out of the relationship?

So some of these leaders already saw a win when Harris released her proposal for the capital gains tax rate. She proposed a less drastic increase than Biden had in his budget proposal. We're also hearing that these business executives are pushing Harris on a couple of other issues, including replacing FTC chairwoman Lena Kahn. Harris, we know, has so far told people that she's more interested in talking to them about anti-trust policy rather than personnel.

They've also pushed her on other tax issues, including taxing unrealized gains. So they're trying to give her feedback on the issues they care about that would be beneficial to them. And it remains to be seen where Harris will fall on some of these issues. What we've heard from leaders, though, is that they feel like she would, in terms of taxation, be fair to the wealthy and corporations, even though in her pitch to voters she has said she will tax the wealthy and the corporations. They feel like she perhaps wouldn't go as far as some of the progressives have. So for comparison's sake, what is Donald Trump's relationship with the business world like? So Trump still has a lot of major business leaders, billionaires who are supporting him, world-like. to Trump as a result of what some leaders there have said has been Democrats approach

to regulation. But for the most part, a lot of these business leaders are sort of viewing themselves as political orphans this election and trying to figure out which candidates they might support. That was Wall Street Journal National Politics reporter Tarini Party. Tarini, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for having me. And finally, a few months ago, we discussed extreme inflation around the world in a once news special series.

And one of the countries that we visited was Argentina, whose president Javier Malé won election last year on a promise to take drastic measures to tackle the country's triple-digit inflation rate. As part of the fiscal experiment that he's conducting, Millet has scrapped most government price controls, including strict caps on housing rents. The result is a booming rental market in the capital Buenos Aires, though as journal Latin America reporter Ryan Dubay told us, the changes are a mixed bag for renters. The good news is that there's a lot more rental properties, apartments available for rent.

The bad news is that a lot of the contracts now stipulate that rents should be increased every three or four months rather than every 12 months during the previous law. For landlords, this provides them with more flexibility on their contracts, so they're more willing to rent out their apartments rather than leaving them empty. And by being able to increase rents every three or four months, they're also able to kind of take into account inflation, which was just really

eating away their rents on their previous contracts. President Malay says his policies are delivering results and expects inflation to be at 18% next year, down from an astronomical 237% currently. And that's it for What's News for Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullifant with supervising producer Christina Rocca and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show and until then, thanks for listening.