WSJ What's NewsNovember 10, 202513m

The Government Shutdown Just Got One Step Closer to Ending

Showing mention at 1:33 — highlighted below

Transcript

39 segments

0:00

1:19

The Senate took the first step last night toward ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history after eight members of the Democratic Caucus joined Republicans in voting to advance a spending measure aimed at reopening the government. The vote was 60-40 with Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania among those that voted with the GOP. The Senate's next big step is to amend the measure and send it back to the Republican-led House of Representatives before being signed by President Trump, a process that could take several days. The timing of the next steps in the Senate was unclear, but what is clear is that this bill has the support to eventually sail through the Senate. That's journal congressional reporter Chavon Hughes, who was following the vote late last night. As part of the deal, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised to give a vote to Democrats on extending certain expiring ACA subsidies by the end of the second week in December. The fate of those subsidies had been the main sticking point to reopening the government. As Chavon explains, Affordable Care Act subsidies have been a point of contention during the shutdown, with Democrats pressuring Republicans to extend the subsidies in exchange for their votes. But a key development to ease the stalemate came when Senate Republicans proposed that some health care funding be provided directly to households instead. The GOP proposal involves sending money into flexible spending accounts, which could be used to cover deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. But there are still questions about how it would work and when it would be rolled out. Some Democrats were quick to dismiss the idea as insufficient, with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut calling it nonsensical. But those Democrats who voted for the measure, including New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, said the bill would get key government operations back on track after days of painful air travel and ongoing confusion over when some 42 million Americans would receive food assistance benefits. This agreement funds SNAP and food assistance programs ensures that law enforcement, air traffic controllers, and other federal workers get paid. reverses the president's recent reckless layoffs and prevents them from happening in the future and crucially gives Congress a clear path forward to protecting people's health care. The bill would also ensure back pay for federal workers after the White House last month questioned whether the money was guaranteed. Last night's measure would fund most federal agencies through January.

4:11

A federal appeals court has denied the Trump administration's bid to avoid fully funding federal food assistance benefits for this month. The ruling came in just before midnight last night and means the government will have to make the payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP within 48 hours unless the Supreme Court intervenes. Court proceedings may not factor in if the shutdown ends and funding for SNAP comes back. The program typically costs the government $8 billion a month. But while there may be an end in sight for the government shutdown, don't expect air travel chaos to ease straight away. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke to Fox News Sunday ahead of the Senate vote and said capacity will remain reduced until air traffic controllers can come safely back to work. That trend line is getting worse, right? More controllers aren't coming to work day by day. The further they go without a paycheck because Democrats refuse to pay them. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered traffic to be reduced at 40 major airports. Yesterday, aviation data provider, Sirium said almost 8% of scheduled flights across the country were canceled Sunday, up from 6.5% of flights on Saturday. That's likely to be exacerbated today with the FAA overnight restricting private flights at 12 major airports, including Atlanta. Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, and Chicago's O'Hare. Turning to Trade Now, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has suggested that President Trump's idea of a $2,000, so-called tariff dividend for most Americans, could come through the administration's existing tax cuts. Scott Bessent was asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week about a Trump social media post that promised the payout while criticizing opponents of tariffs. I haven't spoken to the president about this yet, but it could. The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways, George. It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the President's agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions that are being financed in the tax bill. Trump didn't offer further details in his post about the payouts or who would qualify for them. The White House said Sunday that the tariffs were safeguarding the country's security and raising billions in revenue for the government.

6:50

In arguments before the Supreme Court last week, justices expressed out that the president has unilateral authority to impose tariffs under a 1970s emergency powers law, which Trump is used to levy many of the global tariffs without Congress's approval. But those questions around the legality of Trump's tariffs are not stopping the administration's push to tax certain imports, including your favorite pasta. New anti-dumping measures combined with tariffs on European imports mean leading Italian pasta makers are facing a 107% tariff on everything from spaghetti to lasagna sheets. Our reporter in Rome, Margarita Stancatti, says that means your favorite type of pasta may no longer be available. Of course. It doesn't mean that pasta will completely disappear from US supermarkets. There's a lot of pasta that is produced in the United States, including by, for example, Barilla, which has factories in the US. But it does mean that the selection of the pastas available will become much smaller and that many of the grants affected include La Molisana, Rummo, Pastificio Liguori. Pasta made by these companies may no longer be available. And as Margarita explains, it's also a significant blow for Italy, with pasta exports totaling around $770 million annually. Italian pasta companies have filed briefs to the Department of Commerce to ask them to change their decision, as has the Italian government. The Italian government is also getting involved. The earliest that we could see these tariffs come into force is January, although it's possible it will be delayed by a few months. But the hope of Italian pasta companies and indeed of the Italian government is that the Department of Commerce will amend its findings. Coming up, Nike has a lot working against it. Its stock price is down, its tariff costs are up, and it's lost considerable ground to upstart rivals. That isn't stopping its CEO from mounting a comeback for the ages. That story after the break.

9:00

Fusion powers the sun and stars. General Fusion is working to bring the zero-carbon abundant energy source to Earth. As global electricity demands surges, fusion has the potential to deliver clean, scalable power for a growing world. Proudly NASDAQ listed, General Fusion is the first publicly traded PurePlay Fusion Energy Company in the world. With its magnetized target fusion technology and operational demonstration machine, General Fusion is advancing toward commercialization, targeting a first-of-a-kind fusion plant around 2035. Learn more at generalfusion.com. On his first day as CEO of Nike last October, Elliot Hill told a room full of employees that the company was in a tough spot. The sneaker giant had fallen behind on innovation while competitors like New Balance and Hoka were catching up. Elliot wanted the sportswear giant to move faster. In the year since, the company has unveiled new innovations. And as the journal's Inti Pacheco writes, some of its recent results suggest that its string of quarterly sales declines has stopped. Inti, walk us through what has happened at Nike since Elliott Hill took over as CEO. Well, you know, in 2024, there was a big round of layoffs at Nike. There was also this perception of, you know, the company all of a sudden became a fashion company and not a sportswork, athlete focus, sport focus company. And what Elliot Hill has been saying is that he wants to put the athlete at the center of everything. And... That has brought some direction and clarity as to what the mission for Nike is. But yeah, the main thing is that he wants Nike to move faster because it takes too long to produce a shoe. It usually takes like 18 months. Because once you have the final product, you can just scale it and get it ready. And by traveling to Asia to work with factory partners, Nike realized that, you know, they could reduce that timeline. Inti, can you walk us through what some of the new innovations have been? Yeah, so they just put out four platforms, as they call them, because it's more than just one product. They are releasing an inflatable jacket that basically modulates temperature when it's inflated. They released a new kind of sweat-wicking fabric that they say is better than anything that has been done before. There is just like... robotic apparatus that you connect to a shoe and boosts your walking or running. They're calling it an e-bike for your shoes. And the last thing they unveiled recently is this, you know, like a shoe base, because it's not just a mid-soul, it's the mid-soul, the strobel, and the soul altogether. And it's this like foam slab with a bunch of holes that... Each one has a node in it that moves independently. And supposedly, that allows you to focus more, up to 10% more, because of the sensory signals that you get from your feet. So why has there been this push to innovate in all of these interesting ways? Obviously, Nike is most famous for or at least very well known for its classics. Yeah, I think there was a perception that the company.

12:26

lean too heavily on their fashion side. They were making a lot of money by selling Air Jim Jordan once and Air Force once and the Nike dunk. And there is this feeling that because they focused too much on that they stopped innovating in the running space. And that's why you saw like companies like Hoka or on that rose like so fast in the running space. And so Nike is basically trying to recapture that. And these innovations are their way to say, like, no, we're still here. And how much have those companies like Hoka or on? How much have they overtaken Nike or how much market share do they have? Those two companies make about $3 to $4 billion a year. In comparison to Nike, that's not a lot. Then you think about other brands like Adidas, which makes like $25 billion or so. And then there's new balance making $10 billion or so. So when you put them all together, it's close to how big Nike is, which wasn't the case five years ago. Nike had been reporting declining sales for five consecutive quarters. Some investors think it's like. too late to try to get that market share back. So it's a bit divided, but it appears that the CEO has a lot of support from Wall Street. That's the journal's Inti Pacheco. Inti, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. And that's it for What's News for this Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Caitlin McCabe for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with the new show. Until then, thanks for listening.

14:13

Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web and mobile. For faster trades, anywhere you go. Try the all-new Fidelity Trader Plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet at Fidelity.com slash Trader Plus. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss, Fidelity Brokards Services, LLC, member NYSE, SIPC. Fusion powers the sun and stars. General Fusion is working to bring the zero-carbon abundant energy source to Earth. As global electricity demands surges, fusion has the potential to deliver clean, scalable power for a growing world. Proudly NASDAQ listed, General Fusion is the first publicly traded PurePlay Fusion Energy Company in the world. With its magnetized target fusion technology and operational demonstration machine, General Fusion is advancing toward commercialization, targeting a first-of-a-kind fusion plant around 2035. Learn more at generalfusion.com.