WSJ What’s News - Nikki Haley Throws Support Behind Trump

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

A.M. Edition for July 17. Donald Trump’s fiercest rival in the primaries endorses him, and WSJ’s Ben Pershing says Haley’s appeal among suburban women could give Trump a boost in the race for the White House. Plus, we’ll look at Republicans’ efforts to make inroads with various groups, and President Biden’s plans to court progressives. And, Elon Musk says he is moving the headquarters of X and SpaceX to Texas from California. Kate Bullivant 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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That's BetterHelp.com. Nikki Haley throws her weight behind Donald Trump. I'm here tonight because we have a country to save. And a unified Republican Party is essential for saving her. We have a lot of updates from the Republican National Convention. Plus, Biden courts progressives with plans to back changes to the Supreme Court. And Elon Musk says he'll move X and SpaceX from California to Texas. It's Wednesday, July 17th.

I'm Kate Bullivant for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where, in the party's latest appeal for unity after Donald Trump's near assassination, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley endorsed him last night, putting to bed what had been an intense fight for the GOP presidential nomination earlier this year. R. Luke Vargas is at the convention, part of the team of WSJ reporters and editors covering the event there,

and he filed this report. Nikki Haley was the opponent who fought most strongly against Trump in the primary, and she was the most prominent Republican to have withheld her endorsement for him until last night. I'll start by making one thing perfectly clear. Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period. Strong endorsement, period. As you heard there, the crowd rallied around Nikki Haley, even if she was initially met with some boos from parts of the arena. But our politics editor, Ben Pershing, points out ultimately is more important how Haley's millions of primary voters respond than it is Trump's. She took an interesting tack because she was very supportive of Donald Trump, but she also made a point how it's important to embrace within the Republican Party, even people who don't agree with you on every issue. And I think she was really referring to herself, noting that she doesn't agree with Donald Trump on every issue. And yet here she was standing here endorsing him.

The endorsement by Nikki Haley of Trump is especially notable because she has real appeal to suburban women, which is a demographic that Trump has been lacking strength with. And I think his campaign hopes that getting her on board might help get those voters on board, too. With suburban women, particularly in the battleground states, every little bit helps. Not front and center last night, but very much in line with that every little bit helps approach. We wanted to bring up some notable financial policy firsts here as Republicans try to expand their appeal to various groups like the crypto community, hourly workers who are reliant on tips, and union members. First, on crypto, Republicans are now the first major U.S. political party to have specifically mentioned cryptocurrency in their platform.

And they did this, among other things, by pledging to defend the right to mine Bitcoin and to own digital assets. And in a sign that Trump's embrace of cryptos in recent months could be paying off, his campaign said this week that it had raised $3 million in crypto donations last quarter. But what exactly those crypto-related pledges in the platform amount to? Well, I called journal reporter Caitlin Ostroff to get an answer. We've seen Trump do a reversal over the last few years of his crypto position. In the past, he had cast doubt on Bitcoin as a scam, as posing a threat to the U.S. dollar. And now we've had Trump very much come out in support of crypto, the right to put computers online that seek to unlock fresh Bitcoin. And that's been a controversial practice in the past

because of how much energy it can wind up using. You also heard his platform talk about self-custody of digital assets. That's just the idea that banks can't control, that individuals have access to always, no matter what. And so it's kind of reinforcing the idea that the potential Trump administration would not seek to impose limits on people's ability to hold their own tokens. Kristen Smith is the CEO of the Blockchain Association, the crypto industry's trade group in Washington, representing companies like Coinbase, Grayscale, and Kraken. She's hopeful that Democrats will follow suit and add crypto to their platform next month.

But until then, she sees these steps by Republicans as a win. Just simply the idea that we want the U.S. to be competitive and we want the government to help foster crypto and blockchain technology as opposed to conducting litigation or engaging in regulation that might stop it is a really welcome change of tone. We've had a pretty rough go at it for the past couple of years, particularly with the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In another financial policy shift, Republicans are also pledging to eliminate taxes on tips. This was first floated by Trump just over a month ago, but the policy is now

coming up in speech after speech here at the RNC, and it was even touted in this primetime convention video that was focused on service workers. President Trump doesn't want these Americans to just survive. He wants them to thrive. This idea could prove tricky for tax authorities to enforce, though, and it would likely reduce federal revenue by billions of dollars. But in the swing state of Nevada, which Trump narrowly lost in 2016 and 2020, it could also prove popular among workers in hotels and restaurants. We got a hold of Ted Papa George. He is the secretary-treasurer of Las Vegas Culinary Workers Union Local 226. And he told us that Democrats had backed union issues for a long time,

but that the new support from the GOP was welcome. We've been at this for 30 years, and it's actually serious business, so we don't take a bunch of wild promises too seriously. Is there going to be a possibility of just wiping out taxes on tips completely? That's never going to happen, in our opinion. But workers are being heard on this issue right now because the Republicans are trying to reach out to working class voters. We think that's great. And in the third first this week, the head of the

International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Sean O'Brien, became the first leader in the union's history to address a Republican convention. Trump won over a lot of working class voters in 2016, and the Republicans' new platform commits the GOP to returning to its quote, roots as the party of industry, manufacturing, infrastructure, and workers. Though we should say the specifics are not very specific. They include broad goals, really, like reshoring jobs and supply chains and rebalancing trade. As for whether the GOP's promises will be enough to win the Teamsters' support, we'll have to wait and see. This is a union that backed Joe Biden in 2020,

but they haven't backed a candidate this year. And O'Brien hinted in his speech at the RNC that both his support and that of the union's more than 1.3 million members are up for grabs. At the end of the day, the teamsters are not interested if you have a D, R, or an I next to your name. We want to know one thing. What are you doing to help American workers? We'll have more from our team in Milwaukee on tonight's episode.

Until then, you can follow the journal's full coverage of the RNC at wsj.com. With so much attention focused on the RNC in Wisconsin, President Joe Biden is aiming to make some news of his own back in Washington by throwing his support behind sweeping changes to the Supreme Court. According to our reporting, the president is soon expected to call for legislation that would set term limits and impose enforceable ethic rules on Supreme Court justices. He's also considering backing a constitutional amendment that would limit or overturn the sweeping immunity granted to presidents. Biden's plans are part of an effort to appeal to progressives less than four months before

Election Day. Without Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, though, such legislation would face significant hurdles. The Washington Post reported earlier that Biden was preparing to endorse the changes. The White House declined to comment. We've touched on several topics today that have come up in electoral campaigning this year, but one that we're not hearing about as much is the trillions of dollars America has in federal debt and what that means for the country. We want to hear your questions, so send a voice memo to WNPOD at WSJ.com or leave a voicemail with your name and location at 212-416-4328.

We might use it on the show. Coming up, we'll hear from a top Fed official on his outlook for interest rates, and Elon Musk is fed up with California. Those stories and more after the break. right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade.

Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Economic forecasters remain firmly optimistic in their outlook for the economy. That's according to the Wall Street Journal's latest quarterly survey that charts how the economy and economic forecasts have evolved in recent months and years. Also seeing things moving in the right direction is New York Fed President John Williams.

In an interview with Journal chief economics correspondent Nick Timmeros yesterday, Williams suggested that the Federal Reserve is closer to cutting rates, though not quite there yet. I feel like the past three months, and I would include June based on what we've seen, seems to be getting us closer to a disinflationary trend that we're looking for. In terms of the confidence, I think these are positive signs. I would like to see more data to gain further confidence. The comments from Williams, who is the vice chair of the Fed's rate-setting committee and a top policy advisor to Chair Jerome Powell, suggest the Fed is unlikely

to cut rates at this month's monetary policy meeting. Williams also said he thinks the Fed's current policy stance is appropriate. So I think that one thing to keep in mind is the economy is actually growing quite nicely. Last year, the economy grew over 3%. GDP grew over 3%. We added something like 3 million jobs last year. Job growth has continued to be pretty strong over the first half of this year. Although the unemployment rate has edged up, as you said, by roughly half a percentage point over the last year or year and a half, it's still relatively low. So we're still in a strong labor market. So what we've seen is even with this restrictive stance of policy that we have in place, we haven't seen the economy weaken significantly. We haven't seen the labor market become weak. What we've seen is a process

of getting it a better balance. Let's take a look at what's news in the business world today. Elon Musk is moving headquarters of X and SpaceX from California to Texas. His decision follows Monday's move by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, to sign a new law that aims to prevent schools from informing families if their children identify as gay or transgender, a law that Musk criticized yesterday on X. It's the latest move by Musk to align himself with conservative positions on social issues. After the move, Neuralink and the ex-AI startup will be the billionaire's only two companies to still have their headquarters in California.

And what we're watching in markets today, stock futures are pointing to a pullback after the Dow and S&P 500 set new records yesterday. Earnings season continues with results due out today from Johnson & Johnson, United Airlines and Discover to name a few. And we'll also get fresh data on industrial production and housing starts later today. And that's what's news for Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Anthony Banzi. Our supervising producer was Christina Rocker. And I'm Kate Bullivant for The Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening.