WSJ What’s News - What’s Next for TikTok After Court Upholds U.S. Ban

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

P.M. Edition for Dec. 6. WSJ reporter Jacob Gershman explains why TikTok has few options after a U.S. federal appeals court paved the way for a ban. And the U.S. added more than 227,000 jobs in November. Journal economics reporter Justin Lahart explains what that could mean for the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate-cut decision. Plus, the three major indexes have been riding high this year. Senior markets columnist James Mackintosh tells us what markets might look like in 2025. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS because business can be slow, like wading through mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work, so tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you at aws.com slash learn more. The U.S. labor market bounced back last month, adding more than 220,000 jobs to the economy. And a federal appeals court says the U.S. government can move forward with its ban on TikTok.

Plus, the three main indexes hit record highs this year. But what does that mean for the market next year? And 10 years from now? Historically, there's just been no link between valuations and the next year's returns. Because if things turn into a bubble, or if it turns out with hindsight that we are in a bubble, bubbles keep inflating until they pop. It's Friday, December 6th. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal.

This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The U.S. labor market bounced back last month as workers sidelined by storms got back on the job and thousands of striking Boeing employees returned to work. The Labor Department reported today that the U.S. added a seasonally adjusted 227,000 jobs in November. Solid jobs growth that was roughly in line with expectations. Justin Layhart is an economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Justin, the Fed is meeting later this month.

How will this new information figure into their decision about another interest rate cut? At this point, the betting is that the Fed will be cutting rates again. This bounce back in jobs was really fully expected. Everybody knew that there were hurricanes. Everybody knew that there was the big Boeing strike and that those distortionary effects that we saw in October had ended. So unless there is a bad inflation report next week,

it looks as if the Fed will be cutting rates. Economists expect job growth to slow down next year, but still grow at a decent rate. But how could president-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House affect those numbers? There's a big question mark about immigration. So one of the things that we've seen the past few years is there was just a surge of immigration. What that did was it

added a lot to labor supply. There were more people to hire as a result of the immigration surge, right? And that's part of why we saw such strong job growth over the last few years. Now we know already that immigration surge is down a lot since the summer in particular. So regardless of who won the election, it really did seem like we're not going to see that supply of labor next year like we did this past year. When it comes to deportations in particular, if there are lots of deportations, if net immigration, the number of people coming in versus the number of people leaving, right, if that fall to something like zero, then you just can't support as much job growth.

That's sort of the way economists think about it. That was our reporter, Justin Layhart. Thank you so much, Justin. All right, thanks. In U.S. markets, stocks finished the day mixed. The Dow fell just over a quarter of a percent, while the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ rallied to set new records following a solid jobs report.

The S&P 500 rose a quarter of a percent, in the Nasdaq rallied to set new records following a solid jobs report. The S&P 500 rose 0.25% and the Nasdaq rose 0.8%. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch today said that the person of interest in the killing of a United Health Group executive is likely no longer in New York City. Police officials told CNN that they traced his movements from Midtown to an upper Manhattan bus station. Tish said officers were in Central Park today looking for the backpack they believe the suspect abandoned after fatally shooting Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel early Wednesday. The attack sparked an intense response from law enforcement, with officers arriving on the scene in minutes,

but the suspect had already disappeared in Central Park. For more on this story as it develops, go to wsj.com. Coming up, what's next for TikTok after a federal court ruled the US can move forward with a ban on the app. That's after the break. the app. That's after the break. Sure, I could tell you winter's coming or that it brings cold, dry air, but you already knew that. What you might not know is that Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash is made with

millions of moisturizing micro-moisture droplets to keep your skin silky soft for 24 hours. Plus it's paraben and sulfate free. No matter how dry your skin feels, Dove has you covered. Buy Dove Body Wash today at your local retailer or visit dove.ca to learn more and order online. A federal appeals court today ruled that TikTok can be banned in the U.S., saying Congress can take action in order to protect U.S. interests.

The ruling upholds a federal law requiring the popular social media app to shut its Chinese ownership to keep operating. The court rejected a First Amendment challenge brought by the app and several of its star users. Jacob Gershman covers law for The Wall Street Journal, and he says the app's owner has few options left. This is a decisive, unanimous ruling against TikTok that really narrows its legal pathway. It's still possible for the Supreme Court to at least temporarily suspend

enforcement of the ban. But Friday's ruling means that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, probably have two options to keep operating in the US. Either sell off TikTok or count on some intervention by incoming President Donald Trump, though it's not clear what Trump can do to block the ban if he wanted to. Short of any such developments, existing TikTok users will stop being able to update the app on January 19th. And at that point, the app won't be available to new users in the US looking to download it.

And in international news, Romania has cancelled its presidential election after allegations of Russian influence. In an unprecedented move, the Romanian government declassified a raft of intelligence reports that alleged that pro-Russian frontrunner Colin Gergescu was helped by an elaborate internet scheme directed from Moscow. Romania's top court then annulled the election's first round, blocking the second round of voting planned for Sunday. The Kremlin didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The cancellation of the Romanian vote comes amid wider worries in the West about Russia's unconventional tactics.

The U.S. State Department said this week that it was concerned by the Romanian government's report. Finally, I want to introduce my colleague, Alex Osola, who will be our new host starting Monday. Alex, welcome. I'm so excited for you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hi, Tracy. Thank you so much.

Yes. Well, you might have heard me before if you're an avid listener of Wall Street Journal podcasts on tech news briefing or on the future of everything. And I'm really excited to be joining the team here on What's News. And you have an interview for us now looking at the markets in 2025. And since you're going to be the host taking us into 2025, I'll turn it over to you. Perfect. Thanks.

So right now, stocks are expensive. This week, the three main indexes hit record highs, and today the S&P 500 and NASDAQ edged even higher in light of the November jobs report. And while it's good news for investors right now, historically it's meant lower returns in the long run. Banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are making pretty dire forecasts for the next 10 years, predicting that the market will sour. But what about the next year? What will that look like? I'm joined now by senior markets columnist James McIntosh. James, given how expensive stocks are right now, what does

that tell us about where they might go in 2025? Well, historically, there's just been no link between valuations and the next year's returns. Because if things turn into a bubble, or if it turns out with hindsight that we are in a bubble, bubbles keep inflating until they pop, and no one can really tell when it's gonna happen. And if it turns into a bubble and inflates all next year, it may pop the next year, or maybe even the year after.

Things don't go on forever, hence these bad 10-year forecasts where people tend to think that valuations do return to something akin to normal in the long run. So what are some of the factors that could push these stocks to even greater heights? So pushing things up at the moment, people are very excited about AI. If they get even more excited about AI, of course that could make things go up even more. People are very excited about the prospect of deregulation under a Trump administration. They think that could help profits and it could help the economy. They're very positive actually about tax cuts. Investors tend to like tax cuts, that's good for stock prices. And the US economy has been going great

guns and so investors in the rest of the world have been piling into America. guns and so investors in the rest of the world have been piling into America. You mentioned the word bubble, feels like a little verboten. Is the market overvalued right now? Like, are we headed into bubble territory? Bubbles are very, very hard to define, let alone to say if you're in one or not until afterwards. Stocks are very, very expensive. One way of thinking about that is people are expecting an awful lot of growth in profits in the future. So if it turns out that in particular the AI boom but also the other things I just talked about all do deliver much higher profit growth rate in the future and that goes on for multiple years then actually stocks aren't

expensive they're correctly priced for very fast growth ahead. Now history suggests when things are priced for very fast growth ahead. Now, history suggests when things are priced for very fast growth ahead on the basis of hope, and remember this is on the basis of hope, if all those things happen, then we'll say this wasn't a bubble, this was the market correctly priced for a bunch of good news in future. It was rightly anticipating it. The problem is, of course, there are always a whole bunch of bad things as well, and any one of those could provide at the very minimum a hiccup. And at the moment, the market's not ready for hiccups. That was WSJ Senior Markets columnist James McIntosh speaking with our new host, Alex

Osola. And that's What's New for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for a weekly markets wrap-up, What's New in Markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be looking at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again platform, what changes he might make to food and healthcare policy, and what hurdles he might face. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienneme and Anthony Bansi with supervising producers Catherine Millsop and Michael Cosmitis. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music, Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer, Scott Salloway and Chris Dinsley are our deputy editors, and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Tracy Hunt. And I'm Alex Osala. See you on

Monday. Thanks for listening. Music.