Crypto News: Trump's plans meet inflation report

Inflation data from October, released this morning, shows there's still work to be done to bring price pressures under control. Enda Curran writes in today's newsletter how President-elect Donald Trump might affect that effort. Plus: how the world's richest man got influence in the White House, the US's new age of irony and the challenges ahead for Europe. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Just when it seemed the US economy was returning to a more predictable path after years of upheaval, the reelection of Donald Trump promises another round of shock therapy.

A global trade war, mass deportation and an Elon Musk-led swing at finding trillions of dollars in government spending cuts are just some of the big-ticket policies now facing the world's largest economy. Voters made clear that policymaking needs a new direction and gave the Trump administration the legislative backing to make those changes.

Less clear, however, is how those changes will play out. Take the plan for Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a "Department of Government Efficiency," a new entity aimed at drastically overhauling the government. Skeptics say if making major spending cuts were so easy, it would've been done a long time ago. Instead, lawmakers are routinely deadlocked in talks on where to find savings.

Ramaswamy will join Musk in a government cost-cutting effort. Photographer: Alex Brandon/AP

Then there's the promise to carry out the biggest deportation of immigrants lacking permanent legal status on record. Economists say such a move would inevitably hit the labor supply for construction, restaurants and retail sectors, compounding complaints of worker shortages.

But perhaps the biggest question is, how far can Trump push up tariffs on imported goods without triggering another round of inflation? The Republican has called for minimum tariffs from 10% to 20% on all imported goods, rising to 60% or higher on those from China.

October's inflation numbers, released this morning, show why that may be risky. The core consumer price index—which excludes food and energy costs—increased 0.3% for a third month. Over that span it rose at a 3.6% annualized rate, marking the fastest pace since April, according to Bloomberg calculations. The headline measure in October rose 0.2% for a fourth month and 2.6% from a year earlier, marking the first acceleration on an annual basis since March.

The details of the report highlighted the risk that disinflation will continue to be a slog.

Goods prices excluding food and energy, meanwhile, rose for a second month (they'd fallen over much of the past year). Prices of used cars rose 2.7%, the most in over a year, and hotel rates climbed 0.4%. Airfares continued to rise, and health insurance costs jumped 0.5%. Apparel prices fell by the most since the onset of the pandemic — raising the question of what would happen to those prices if tariffs were jacked up.

Trump says his trade policies will support manufacturing jobs and drive economic growth, a policy that clearly resonated with voters. But the ultimate impact of this policy mix will take years to become clear, long after the final votes of the 2024 election have been counted.

The jockeying to be Treasury secretary is spilling into public view, as Scott Bessent racks up endorsements and Howard Lutnick makes a play for the job.
A surge in Bitcoin that paused earlier Wednesday is regaining steam, sending the original cryptocurrency above $90,000 for the first time.
How Amazon.com's in-office policy is a challenge for disabled employees.

Illustration: Trevor Davis for Bloomberg Businessweek; photos: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg (1), Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images (1)

On the afternoon of Election Day, Elon Musk stopped by his polling place in South Texas, then headed to one of his private planes, bound for what he hoped would be a victory party for Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. On the way, Musk held an impromptu political rally. He posted the link to a livestream on his social network, X. "There's only a few hours left," Musk said, as the engine hummed and 100,000 or so people listened in. "So just make sure everyone is hounding friends and family to vote, vote, vote."

Prior to this year, Musk ran six companies: Tesla (electric cars), SpaceX (rockets), Neuralink (brain implants), Boring Co. (tunnels), xAI (artificial intelligence chatbots) and X (Twitter). But in May, he added a seventh operation—America PAC, a political action committee that somehow managed to spend more than $170 million between then and the election.

Even more surprising was the way Musk threw himself personally into the effort. He temporarily relocated to Pennsylvania, where he traveled the state, held marathon Q&A sessions in suburban auditoriums and transformed his personal X presence into a right-wing rapid-response operation. Lots of the jokes he circulated were sexist or racist—or sexist and racist. A huge number of his posts in the final days of the campaign expressed outrage over the euthanization of a porn performer's pet squirrel.

Musk's signature blend of transgressive humor and brazen behavior paid off, perhaps because, in Trump, he'd found a candidate who matched those traits perfectly. On Election Day the twice-impeached, 34-times-convicted felon ex-president turned out his usual base of older, White voters—and added a new cohort that was younger, more diverse and largely male. The type of guy who likes Elon Musk, in other words. "What he did is lower the barrier to being a Trump supporter," says Josiah Gaiter, a vice president at political marketing agency Harris Media. Among younger men, "now it's OK to like Trump."

On Tuesday, Trump announced that Musk will have a role in the administration in a new "Department of Government Efficiency." Max Chafkin and Dana Hull write about how he got the job: Elon Musk Has a New Project to Run: Trump's Government

LISTEN: Citizen Elon, a miniseries within the Elon, Inc. podcast, explores how Musk and Trump's union represents an unprecedented nexus of wealth and power. Episode 1 and episode 2 are out now. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal.

Trump. Photographer: Peter Zay/AFP/Getty Images

There was a sense after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the wars and recession that followed, that irony was dead—that the use of cynicism and sardonic distance from current events in literature and commentary was no longer suitable for such sobering times. That consensus (ironically!) collapsed quickly. Now, two decades later, surveying the seismic triumph of Donald Trump and the GOP in the US presidential election, we can finally conclude the opposite was true all along: We are living in an age of irony.

Irony, in the classical sense, is a state of affairs that's deliberately contrary to expectations. For a lot of Americans and other fans of liberal democracy around the world, that no doubt nicely describes the surprise outcome of Nov. 5. But it turns out, once you start looking for them, ironies can be found everywhere in the outcome of the recent election, and appreciating them just might give us a useful guidepost for the next four years. "What meanings we make of the various ironies that color this past election and will color Trump's new term will shape the ongoing reconfiguration of American politics for the foreseeable future," says Raymond Malewitz, an associate professor of English at Oregon State University.

Consider Trump himself. A widely acknowledged irony is that the standard-bearer for Christian evangelicals has been divorced twice and fathered five children from three wives. He was convicted in New York state of 34 felonies for falsifying business records related to covering up an affair with an adult film star and has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and found liable for sexual abuse.

But Trump isn't just a manifestation of irony, he's also a master of creating it, writes Bloomberg Businessweek editor Brad Stone. Read his Remarks here: Oh, the Irony. Trump's Triumph and the Next Four Years

Photo illustration: Trevor Davis for Bloomberg Businessweek; Photos: Alamy, AP Images, Bloomberg, Reuters, Getty Images

If the European Union had a mascot, it would be the ostrich. Putting your head in the sand and hoping your problems will disappear is the EU's chosen style—so much so that the trade bloc responded to Brexit and the loss of its second-biggest economy in 2016 by … muddling through with business as usual.

The continent that gave the world some of its most evocative political slogans ("Liberty, equality, fraternity," "We will never surrender") now follows the supposed mantra of the most recent person with any reasonable claim to the title of Europe's ruler, Angela Merkel: "Wait and see."

Europe has occasionally been capable of action—sometimes out of optimism (as with the creation of the single market under Jacques Delors in the 1990s), though more often out of fear. The union's very creation in the 1950s was a (delayed) response to populism and war: The establishment wanted a way to more closely bind Germany and France. The EU's most recent microdose of radicalism—a smidgen more defense spending—came about only because Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded one of its neighbors.

The reelection of Trump in the US, though, spells an existential threat to life as normal in Brussels, writes John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and Adrian Wooldridge, global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Keep reading: For Europe, the Next US President Is a Shock—and a Catalyst for Change

$250 billion

That's how much Tesla's value has surged since the presidential election, influenced by Musk's full-throated support for Trump. Shares in the electric-vehicle maker have soared 31% since Trump's decisive win.

"I'm not out here saying we're saving the planet. I want to sustain the fossil fuel industry, and, to me, this is a way we're going to do it."

Jason Erickson

Landman on the ranches and farms of western North Dakota

A $9 billion plan to entomb CO2 emissions has a distinctly non-environmental attraction for the people of the Great Plains: It could allow the region to keep pumping oil and burning coal.

Like Businessweek Daily? Check out these newsletters:

Business of Space for inside stories of investments beyond Earth
CFO Briefing for what finance leaders need to know
CityLab Daily for today's top stories, ideas and solutions from cities around the world
Tech Daily for exclusive reporting and analysis on tech and AI
Green Daily for the latest in climate news, zero-emission tech and green finance

Explore all newsletters at Bloomberg.com.