Trump Says US Won’t Attack Iran Before Midterm Elections

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0:09Speaker 2:This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. With Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck.

0:32Speaker 3:All right, President Trump said, you mentioned this, would not attack Iran ahead of November's midterm election, citing, quote, unquote, productive discussions with the Islamic Republic. They also said they would suspend an immigration program for multiple tech firms, including Microsoft, which is kind of interesting.

0:48Speaker 5:That's a big one.

0:48Speaker 3:And we said, awkward, because there's Microsoft execs with.

0:51Speaker 5:As they're getting medals, their worker visa programs are potentially getting suspended.

0:56Speaker 3:Satya Nadella, right? Yeah. With the president. So that's a little funny, or not so funny. There's a lot going on. So let's get to it. Over the river and through the woods, we go to Washington and the White House, and we head to our Washington, D.C. bureau. Wendy Benjaminson is on it. She's senior editor of Bloomberg News. I don't know how you guys keep track of it. I feel like it's, between Washington and AI, it's just like crazy, crazy, Wendy. It always is.

1:22Speaker 6:Right? Right?

1:23Speaker 3:What do we need to know? I feel like First of all, the Iran, it was a redhead highlight here at Bloomberg, President Trump saying that they would not attack Iran ahead of the November elections. That makes sense, right? I mean, the midterms, or does it?

1:41Speaker 6:Sure, I guess it makes sense, but it depends on from what perspective you're looking at it. Is it politically wise not to put the war that is extremely unpopular right back in voters' faces? Yes. Is it strategically wise from a military standpoint to advertise that? That would be for experts to question. Also, presidents don't normally outwardly say, indicate that there's a political decision behind their military actions. There is, I'm sure every president since George Washington has thought about the political implications, but saying it out loud and projecting it to the enemy is sort of an unusual step.

2:27Speaker 3:So you missed my sarcasm. That makes sense. No, I'm only kidding. I'm only kidding. Go ahead, Stacey.

2:34Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm wondering what you think of politicizing something like this. What is your take on it? You said it's something that you haven't really seen before.

2:44Speaker 3:Right.

2:44Speaker 6:I mean, it's an unusual thing to do. But Trump is— the war is incredibly unpopular right now. I think the latest polling I saw today is that 26 percent of American adults are in favor of this war, meaning 70—don't make me do math— 74 percent are not in favor of the war. But it's not like they're not feeling the effects of it before the midterms anyway, because it's gas prices that are— that are driving this antipathy toward the war and to Trump and the Republican Party right now.

3:19Speaker 6:So as long as gas prices and diesel prices remain extremely high, as they are, voters aren't going to forget that we're at war with Iran, even if Trump says they're not going to bomb them. The other thing is that Iran is still striking tankers in the Gulf, and we still have a naval blockade. So the possibility of harm coming to commercial ship crew and to American military personnel is still there, whether or not we're launching the U S is launching strikes or not.

3:50Speaker 3:Right. That's a good point. Um, it's kind of just been, I feel like though, Wendy, a little bit of a mixed bag. We have the U S suspending the visa program for tech firms, including Microsoft. Stacy and I were talking about it at the same time. He's been meeting with tech executives, including the Microsoft CEO, these awards and giving the medals, giving the medals. Like I, Why is this happening?

4:14Speaker 6:Well, it's sort of, it's a little hard to get into the crystal ball, but I do think that, you know, Trump right now really needs the, well, he needs the tech firms to be on his side as he goes through this, you know, this idea that AI will be self-regulated by the tech firms. That's his policy position. And despite the AI firms coming out and saying, you know, it might kill us all. He still wants them to regulate themselves. He had a social media post earlier saying that anyone that doesn't use his term for AI, which he has dubbed superior intelligence, is considered the enemy. I'm not really sure what that means, but it certainly suggests that he wants a unified voice, his voice, on AI regulation.

5:06Speaker 6:Yet at the same time, his base still wants him to be very tough on immigration. And so canceling this H-1B visa program or limiting it, as he did today, will sort of scratch that itch while he's trying to keep the tech companies close for other reasons.

5:26Speaker 5:I mean, it is interesting. He's also cracking down on Harvard over their student visas. That seems to make more sense because he's gone after Harvard quite a few times, and I imagine that's quite a popular move with his base. But why go after these tech visas, H-1B visas and others for highly skilled workers so hard? I mean, these workers are really crucial for the growth of AI and for these companies. This can't be a popular move.

5:51Speaker 6:It probably isn't a popular move, and I'm sure that the students who are at Harvard whose visas he's canceling are not also English majors. They're probably in tech or highly skilled medicine or science fields as well. But he's really cracking down, and he seems to believe that Americans will fill these jobs and we'll just have to see. if there are enough qualified Americans to fill these jobs without the foreign students coming over and then staying, as many of them do.

6:30Speaker 1:Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

6:42Speaker 3:Well, it's a little less than four weeks until the midterms. Mail-in voting already underway in some states. The outcome, and in this case, a blue wave in particular, wins by the Democrats, risk upending President Trump's last two years in the White House. We know the business and financial communities are watching very closely. So delighted about having our next guest here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. He's Aaron Cutler. He's partner of government relations and public affairs practice at Hogan, Lovell's, and Cadwalder. He is former senior House leadership staffer, served as senior advisor for policy and outreach for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. I could go on and on, but you have covered so many different policies. I want to get right to it in that when we were at Milken, we met, it was early May, there with Joe Matthew and myself live on air. You know, we talked about what's on the minds of companies and we were talking about kind of the lay of the land politically. But I'm just curious, how have things evolved in terms of corporate requests for you guys of like, tell me what's

7:42Speaker 3:going to happen? What should I be worried about most? What industries are most picking up the phone? Like, is your phone also ringing off the hook? Yes.

7:52Speaker 7:We are very busy. And everybody's focused now on November 3rd, the 26 days away midterm election.

8:00Speaker 3:Everybody in the corporate community?

8:01Speaker 7:Everybody in the corporate community.

8:02Speaker 3:Even if they say no?

8:04Speaker 7:Don't say no. They're very focused on it.

8:06Speaker 4:Okay.

8:07Speaker 7:And a lot of the attention is what's going to happen the day after. So congressional investigations are a major focus. Will I be a target? Will my company be a target? How do we prepare for that?

8:21Speaker 5:Are there specific companies or industries that are particularly concerned? Or where is this coming from?

8:29Speaker 7:Well, the Democrats have telegraphed it. Incoming chairs have said we plan to be very aggressive. The incoming next speaker.

8:40Speaker 5:With companies.

8:41Speaker 7:With companies has said they plan to be very aggressive with congressional oversights and letters, subpoenas, etc. I'd say the companies that are most likely to be targeted are the ones that have done significant business with the Trump administration, government contracts... Crypto firms, if they've gotten regulatory relief from this administration, that's really benefited the company. That's something that will be looked into.

9:11Speaker 3:So how specific can I get? Probably not very specific. But crypto, critical minerals, semiconductors, defense. He's smiling. All of this. Members of the administration directly in the White House, senior cabinet members. We've done a lot of reporting at Bloomberg about folks who have benefited by different things and just watching their investments. Yes, yes?

9:42Speaker 7:Yes, everything will be looked into. So especially when there is divided Congress, divided administrations, when there's a Republican administration, Democrat Congress.

9:53Speaker 3:Do you anticipate it's going to be a fully Democrat Congress, Democratic Congress?

9:57Speaker 7:I think so. I'm not fully 100%. there yet, but I'm pretty... I think it's looking like the Senate could be 51 Democrat seats with Fetterman being the swing vote. The way the polling's looking. But members need to show their constituents they're doing something. So as much legislation as Democrats... would pass in the House and Senate, it's going to run into a brick wall. President Trump is not going to be signing their legislation into public law. So what are they going to do to show their constituents they're doing something in Congress? They're going to send letters like crazy.

10:34Speaker 7:They're going to have congressional investigations. So that's why there's going to be so much activity in this space.

10:40Speaker 5:So you mentioned regulation. You said some of the changing regulations. What industries have seen these regulations?

10:47Speaker 7:We've seen the tobacco industry benefit from some rollbacks. There's some press about that. We've seen companies that benefit from environmental regulations being rolled back. We've seen announcements in that space recently. Financial services, a whole host of industries have benefited from this administration. They pride themselves in streamlining regulations as opposed to prior administrations that have added on on Earth's regulations.

11:20Speaker 3:You know, it's kind of interesting, Aaron, because I'm listening to you, especially when it comes to environmental, I think of EVs and how that has just changed dramatically. The rest of the world is doing other things. Just look at China. Environment, climate change has been pushed to the side as well. Do we all go do a 180? Is it that dramatic? And go back to pre- President Trump's second term?

11:47Speaker 7:Not, no. No, not a complete 180. I think you will see unity. Well, maybe not pure unity, complete unity, but you will see bipartisanship on the China issue. So you mentioned EVs, right? A lot of the parts were made in China. Democrats and Republicans actually agree on China's supply chain issues. And you will see them doing congressional investigations on companies that are bringing in parts from China. making sure those supply chains are clean.

12:18Speaker 5:I mean, tariffs is a really interesting one. How much of a change might we see in tariffs? I mean, certainly there's been so much change over the past couple of years. Would we potentially see more? But most of that has come from the president.

12:31Speaker 7:So the president has the power there. So you'll see Congress try to exert some oversight leverage on the president there and push back. But He can conduct that how he wants.

12:45Speaker 8:Right.

12:45Speaker 3:There's an anticipation that he's still going to be able to do a lot, especially geopolitically. Are companies, institutions, leaders worried about, though, that then if he can't do things domestically, that we are going to see a lot of things geopolitically? Which, as we know, with this US-Iran war, can upend markets and business environments and economic consequences, of course, as well.

13:06Speaker 7:Yes, I think folks should not expect a traditional lean duck president. This president's going to be very active. I think there's actually been a little bit of a lull in the lead up to the midterms because folks have maybe advised to just not do anything too aggressive because it may influence voting before the midterms. But I think it's really going to be very active in the next year.

13:37Speaker 1:Say that again.

13:37Speaker 3:So quiet because he doesn't want to appear that he's influencing. Did I hear that correctly?

13:42Speaker 7:Not influencing, but if certain actions are taken, certain policies, certain, you know, look, you know, there's a warship going to Iran, towards Iran now, meetings are taking place.

13:53Speaker 3:Right.

13:54Speaker 7:Maybe we'll see action after the midterm there.

13:58Speaker 3:So does that also say to you, though, you finally maybe have a White House that's a Legal actions. And I want to roll into this. I don't know who else you're hearing from, but I think about the Supreme Court. Are there members of the Supreme Court that are a little nervous? Are you hearing anything in that world, or it's much more corporate environment, institutional environment?

14:19Speaker 7:I don't think it's legal actions. I think it's policy actions being taken that could influence voters because they want to ensure that every vote is in favor of candidates that they're supporting to try to get as large a Republican, as many Republicans back in Congress as they can.

14:39Speaker 5:If there is the blue wave that you're anticipating, what are some of the industries that would be the winners in that case? And what are some of the industries that would be maybe the biggest, would stand the most to lose the most?

14:50Speaker 7:That's a great question. I think the industries that would benefit the most are the ones that are getting the most heat right now from Congress on the oversight side of things. So Industries that have been scrutinized for DEI, ESG policies. Because obviously they will, the scrutiny on them will be lifted. Because Democrats will not be focusing on them. In fact, they'll be, the reverse will happen. I think what other areas, I think that's mainly it.

15:25Speaker 5:Like universities is the one coming into my mind.

15:28Speaker 7:I think they're still going to get scrutinized on both sides. because they may get hit for how far they've come the other direction. And that's a, I think what other ones, because the issue still is no matter what legislative priorities Democrats have, they run into the brick wall. When I was there in Congress working for the majority leader in 2013, 2014, House Republicans wanted to pass all sorts of legislation and fund the government they thought they had leverage over President Obama.

16:04Speaker 7:And leadership, Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor said to the conference, hey guys, we can't force the president to sign your great ideas, so what are we going to do? The conference said, shut the government down. They said, that's not a great idea.

16:19Speaker 8:Too bad.

16:19Speaker 7:Shut it down anyway. So future Speaker Jeffrey is going to listen to his conference and shut it down over the fact that they can't get their policies through and President Trump's not going to sign them, that's going to be the interesting thing.

16:33Speaker 3:How quickly do we then just start thinking about the presidential election? I mean, we really are already, but how quickly does that really become the focus?

16:42Speaker 7:Probably by January, right when we get rolling into the new Congress. After the holidays, people are going to start, especially on the Democrat side, really gearing up for that.

16:56Speaker 3:You know, for better or worse, we've had folks on, just got about 30 seconds, who say the reason, you know, I don't want to get political, but the reason President Trump came to the White House is that folks felt like both Republicans and Democrats weren't really listening to a lot of citizens. Just got about 30 seconds left, and so he was something different. Is there some message out of that that corporations are picking up on? Just quickly, if you could, Erin.

17:23Speaker 7:I think President Trump, I remember Speaker Ryan told House Republicans that President Trump heard a voice that others didn't hear. People were angry and upset. I think President Trump still hears that voice better than others. And I don't know if there's going to be a candidate in 2028 that channels that. I haven't seen one yet. Hopefully one emerges.

17:48Speaker 1:Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

17:59Speaker 3:I don't know if you know this. Did you have braces when you were growing up?

18:02Speaker 5:I did not have braces.

18:03Speaker 3:I did not either.

18:05Speaker 5:My mom had braces.

18:07Speaker 3:Oh, thank you.

18:08Speaker 5:My mom had braces, and she was a very formative experience.

18:12Speaker 3:What do you mean?

18:13Speaker 5:She just remembered it being in so much pain all the time.

18:16Speaker 3:My daughter had braces, and she was a gem with it and was really meticulous, but I think we were terrified. We were like, take care of the braces.

18:23Speaker 5:Did she have the clear ones?

18:24Speaker 3:No.

18:24Speaker 5:Oh, okay.

18:25Speaker 3:Invisalign, right?

18:27Speaker 4:Yes, Invisalign.

18:27Speaker 3:Or at least that's one of the big names. No, she had the metal and the rubber bands.

18:31Speaker 5:The metal and the tightening.

18:32Speaker 3:It was painful. I remember the first time she came home. I will say it's a massive market. I just came across one stat recently. This was from Grandview Research and Fortune Business Insights. Global dental services market valued at approximately $ 471. 5 billion. Looking to grow or to $ 548. 9. That's for this year. So I'm guessing our next guest knows a lot about it.

18:57Speaker 5:I think so.

18:58Speaker 3:She's Allie Hyatt. She's Chief Commercial Officer at Henry Schein One. She joins us from just outside Boston. It's an S & P 500 company, if you're not familiar. Market cap of about $ 9. 5 billion. And it does make product and services and tech platforms for dental customers. Good to have you here with us. It's something we just take for granted. Get our kids, you know, braces and all that good stuff. Tell us, though, about your world as Chief Commercial Officer.

19:23Speaker 3:But tell us about your business and what are some of the biggest products where you're seeing growth at this point?

19:30Speaker 8:Yep.

19:32Speaker 4:Thank you, Carol and Stacey, for having me today. So I'm the Chief Commercial Officer for Henry Schein I. which is a joint venture between Henry Schein Inc., which is a public medical and dental supply company, and Internet Brands, which owns WebMD and Cars Direct and a lot of other companies like that. So Henry Schein 1 makes Dentrix Ascend and Dentrix, which are the largest practice management softwares for dentists in the U.S., and then we're also global.

20:00Speaker 4:And so we have a number of practice management softwares like Dentally and others across the globe. And to your point, it is a very big business today that oftentimes people don't talk about. So interesting place to be in, and it's definitely a place where AI is really taking the industry by storm. You hear about it a lot on the medical side, and dental is a different part of medical when you're talking about the mouth.

20:25Speaker 6:Yes.

20:25Speaker 5:Well, I know that, I mean, this is a business that's been growing a lot, the business of teeth. And I think all of us have gone to the dentist and experienced some surprise sometimes at how much things cost, or maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience. But this is a hugely growing industry. So how does AI work in this industry? What role is it playing?

20:48Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a great lead in there. So in a lot of different ways. And I loved how you started it off by talking about braces because that's certainly an area where it's impacting. But I think a couple of the key ways we see AI really impacting it is one in the clinical diagnostics. So today, a lot of dentists use AI in their x-rays and imaging. So the dentists have a lot of training and experience and they know what's going on in the mouth and they see the beginnings of those cavities in the mouth. But what they do is they can use that AI technology to actually show the patient where, say, a cavity or lesion is starting to form. And that actually really helps them in driving the credibility behind what they're doing. I think we all know going to the dentist is not everyone's favorite thing to do. And so it gives the dentist that extra element of trust. And then I think the other key way that we really see it impacting dentistry is in insurance in that area. So Oftentimes, people, quite honestly, have no idea how much they're going to owe when they leave the dentist. The insurance industry can be kind of.

21:53Speaker 3:Complex on the dental side.

21:55Speaker 4:And so AI does a lot to actually help the dental practice and that front office staff understand what the patient is eligible for, given their insurance, helps them understand reimbursement. and then actually helps them show the patient how much they may owe for a certain service and what would actually be covered by their insurance, which is really helpful and important.

22:14Speaker 3:I never walk away when there's something major or something unusual. I'm like, okay, so how much is covered?

22:19Speaker 2:I know, I know.

22:20Speaker 3:Because it's rough and it's expensive. Hey, I feel like you folks are a great read too on a smaller business community or mid-sized business community since so many practices are individually owned. I know mine is that I go, it's always busy. It's an incredible practice. But what would you say about the business environment? I know if you run, especially as these are smaller businesses, they've got to make a choice on where to spend money. They've got to have the right dental equipment to serve their customers. But I'm just curious, the technology component, how it rolls in.

22:52Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a great point. It is a great read on small businesses in general. So about 75% of the industry is those small businesses, those small practices or a few locations. And then about 25% of the industry is DSOs, so consolidators of those practices. And I would say on the small business side, I mean, it can be a tough business to be in. I'm glad to hear that your practice is always busy and seeing a lot of patients. But essentially, dentists go to dental school to learn how to treat patients. And they don't necessarily go to dental school to learn all about business and how that works.

23:25Speaker 4:But they find themselves operating a small business. And so software really helps them to understand business. everything that goes into booking a patient, getting them in the door, that insurance reimbursement we talked about, charting within essentially the practice management software, which is like in EHR. So all of that comes into their day-to-day. I mean, they have to staff and hire people. They're sort of running an HR operation. So there's a lot that's going on in their minds.

23:53Speaker 4:And for both the small practices and the DSOs, they are constantly looking at software to help them run that practice. They want it to be more efficient. It's essentially like a teammate to help them run that more efficiently so that they can focus on the patient, which is why they went to dental school in the first place.

24:10Speaker 6:Okay.

24:10Speaker 3:What is DSO?

24:13Speaker 4:DSO means dental service organization. So most people know the organizations like the Aspen Group. So you see Aspen and there's some other larger ones like Heartland and Smile Brands. And so they're basically roll-ups of many different practices and that many people are probably familiar with in their areas. And they provide the same dental services. And oftentimes today, actually, a lot of young dentists go into those organizations first to learn, get training, and then perhaps later go on to open their own practices.

24:50Speaker 1:Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

25:01Speaker 3:All right, we're going to switch gears. We want to get to the Groundwork Collaborative. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. If you're a consumer and you haven't, maybe you should have. It's a left-leaning nonprofit. It focuses on the kinds of economic policies that sit squarely on voters' kitchen tables. And sometimes that means convincing people that Walmart might be ripping them off. We're going to get into what Walmart says. Bring them in. Yes.

25:25Speaker 5:Well, joining us is Max Chafkin, senior writer at Business Week and my co-host.

25:30Speaker 2:On the podcast.

25:31Speaker 1:I haven't seen you in literal minutes.

25:34Speaker 6:I know.

25:35Speaker 2:It's been minutes.

25:37Speaker 5:But yeah, this is such a great article and I feel like it's very emotional for everyone. This is about how the price, if you go online and want to buy something and I go online, we might see different prices. Can you talk a little bit about like what dynamic pricing is and what, what drew you to this story?

25:54Speaker 8:So dynamic pricing is basically the way Uber prices. So the idea that if you're buying something during a busier time, you're going to be asked to pay more money. Uh, Airlines, hotels, taxi, ride hailing, those types of business have used dynamic pricing for a long time. I think a lot of consumers are not crazy about it. I think many people have felt the frustration of thinking an airline ticket's going to be one price, then it changes. And the thing that these left-leaning groups have been warning about, essentially been ringing alarm bells about, and I think doing so partly for political reasons, as well as partly because they genuinely are concerned about this stuff, is the potential for these technologies to sort of spread into other areas. So the idea that maybe your DoorDash could be dynamically priced, maybe your groceries could be dynamically priced, or even, and then the sort of next buzzword is surveillance pricing, which is sort of like dynamic pricing but specific to an individual. Now I should say that most companies say they don't do this. Walmart, which had been accused of this practice, has said it

27:05Speaker 8:doesn't do this. Instacart, which was accused of this practice, It said it didn't do this, although it did make some changes in response to criticism.

27:13Speaker 1:But this is sort of a.

27:15Speaker 8:Symptom of the huge data sets that are being used right now by companies of all kinds to make all sorts of business decisions. The fact that AI algorithms are being employed in this decision making and the fact, as I'm sure you're talking about all the time, that we don't always know exactly what these AI algorithms are doing when they make those decisions.

27:37Speaker 3:Listen, I think about it all the time when I go and search, and I'm feeling like, well, if you're tracking how many times I've searched for this particular item, at some point you know, this Chiquita's going to buy it, right? And so am I getting targeted? I even think about... Something like an Amazon. Like, you know, am I getting the best price? And, like, one thing will pop up, and am I doing my due diligence of saying, like, wait, is this the best deal? Like, I just do wonder.

27:59Speaker 8:Well, yeah, and there have been very, very aggressive efforts around this stuff on the Internet. You know, online marketing especially.

28:06Speaker 5:You talked about.

28:08Speaker 8:what is normally called behavioral targeting. This is like the pair of shoes that follows you around the internet. There are other forms of this, right? There is the promotion that can follow you around the internet, a certain percentage off or a special price. And there's a point at which that promotion starts to feel pretty close to something like dynamic pricing or surveillance pricing, where it's like why is this one person getting this promotion instead of another person?

28:33Speaker 8:what algorithms are involved in that decision, and what transparency do we have. It really reminds me, I've covered privacy in tech for a long time, it really reminds me of the conversation around Instagram and social media and is your phone listening to you? We've all had the kind of uncanny experience of talking about a topic, opening the app and seeing an ad for the thing we're talking about. And the response has always been from the companies and from people who follow this stuff closely. No, they're not listening to you, but there's so much data and it's being used in such a complex ways that it's kind of like they're listening to you they're able to predict things about you they don't have to listen to you talk because they have so much data about you already All right.

29:16Speaker 5:Well, you've mentioned that Walmart and Instacart have said this is not something we do. But there are some great examples in your article that maybe point in the other direction. Would you mind talking about.

29:26Speaker 2:Those a little bit?

29:27Speaker 3:Yeah.

29:27Speaker 8:So this is something I think all CEOs are going to have to start to deal with, which is that one of the tactics that Groundwork has kind of pioneered is the use of opposition research tactics. things that we normally associate being used with political candidates on CEOs. So one of the things they like to do is look at a company, a company like Walmart, which has a very specific promise, their slogan is, is everyday low prices, and they went looking for patents. And what they found is all of these patents, so this doesn't mean technology that Walmart is explicitly using, but it means that some Walmart employee went to the patent office and filed for this, and you see some stuff that is very, very different from the messaging from Walmart. So just to give you an example, there is a Walmart patent for a technology involving you know, smart shopping carts and electronic labels and scanners that essentially promises, again, according to the patent, not what is in Walmart stores right now, that it would change the price of an item. So if you have tuna fish in your cart, maybe the price of mayo

30:33Speaker 8:would be a little different because you're going to make tuna salad. Now, I don't know if that means it would be more expensive or less expensive. You could sort of imagine it going either way. I should say what Walmart has said to this is is that these are patents. This is essentially an activist project looking to criticize us. We are not actually doing this, to which the activists say, yes, that is what we're doing, and we're doing it because we are worried about this stuff. I'll give you another example, which is Instacart. So the same group, what they did is they got like 400 mystery shoppers, had them all buy the same stuff at the same time on Instacart, and they saw different prices. As much as 23% more, some customers were paying for the same items, even though they're buying at the same time. Instacart, in response to this, initially said, you know, this is misinformation. And then they said they're ending this form of experimentation. So they were letting retailers shift the prices. They're saying they're not doing that anymore.

31:31Speaker 3:I do.

31:32Speaker 8:I do think it's very hard for, the lines here are very blurry, and this is going to be a thing that's going to continue because there's real potential for companies to make a lot of money doing this.

31:42Speaker 3:I am just amazed, like kind of our world at large, Max, that I just don't know the price of anything. Like, you know what I mean? It used to be when I grew up, you know, supermarket, everything was there. Everything was just so transparent and in your face. And it's just so weird nowadays.

31:56Speaker 8:I've said this to Stacey before, but I do, we've talked on our podcast about how there's this kind of gap between the vibes and the economy itself and how many people, Stacey, you're always saying this, people feel worse about the economy in some ways than the numbers suggest. And I think this is one of the explanations, this feeling that you as a consumer are being asked to do a lot, to essentially go toe-to-toe with a supercomputer. That's what you're doing when you're buying something. instead of just having a clear and transparent price. And that's these groundwork folks. I think many Democrats see this as an opportunity, a way to kind of have a political point of view that allows them to deliver on some of these concerns.

32:40Speaker 8:And unfortunately for companies, that's going to put them in direct conflict with with Wall Street and a lot of big businesses.

32:47Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. I think we'd be remiss if we don't talk about Lindsay Owens, right? This is the person behind it all.

32:52Speaker 8:Yeah, yeah, Lindsay Owens. And I wrote a profile of her in the magazine. She is the CEO of Groundwork. She also wrote a book called Gouge that's all about this. And so if people are interested in the topic, it is essentially like.

33:03Speaker 3:Wait, she sounds like she'd be good to have on.

33:06Speaker 1:Have you guys talked to her? Not yet. But I'm sure I can help you arrange that.

33:10Speaker 2:We would love that.

33:12Speaker 3:But no, tell me who she is, like why she's on this mission or what got her to be on this mission.

33:17Speaker 8:Lindsay Owens was an aide to Elizabeth Warren. That's where she learned the tactics of opposition research. She, as she told me when I was reporting the story, deployed them during the first Trump term when they were trying to essentially discredit some of Trump's nominees, and in this case, Andrew Puzder, who was the Labor Secretary nominee. He's now ambassador to the European Union. And this idea of taking the statements of executives and CEOs, the kinds of things often that they say on earnings calls, where you're talking to a very different audience. On an earnings call, If prices go up, that's good news. That's something you brag about.

34:00Speaker 8:And that became this very politically charged thing during COVID. And that's where Lindsay Owens sort of started this thing. She and a few of her sort of like-minded activists were trying to help the left essentially make the case that companies were causing inflation, that it wasn't Biden's stimulus. It was actually companies jacking up prices, essentially. And it took them a lot of time to kind of get traction with that. I think initially, a lot of people within the Biden administration were skeptical, but you have seen this argument and these concerns over prices get louder and louder.

34:36Speaker 8:And obviously, I think a big part of that is now we're going on years of people reasonably elevated inflation, higher prices, and this sense, again, that companies are doing very well. And it's particularly powerful when you put an executive saying, you know, we had a record quarter, we're going to have share buybacks, along with a big price increase. And that, in the current political climate, that has become a more powerful force.

35:04Speaker 3:How many times do you have a question to a CEO? Pricing power. Do you have pricing power? And that's considered a good thing or something?

35:09Speaker 6:Oh, yeah.

35:11Speaker 5:You're amazing.

35:11Speaker 1:Max Chafkin.

35:12Speaker 3:I know you know that already because you work with him all the time. Senior reporter at.

35:15Speaker 5:Bloomberg Business Week.

35:15Speaker 3:He's co-host of Everybody's Business Podcast with Stacey Vanek-Smith. Check out their podcast. You can find it at Bloomberg.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

35:26Speaker 2:This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.