The hushed support behind Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris has won endorsements from a wide array of business leaders. But some of her highest-profile backers — who include Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Bill Gates — aren’t loudly proclaiming their support, in another sign of how polarizing politics have become.
What to know:
Dimon has privately told associates that he backs Harris, despite publicly praising Donald Trump and leaving the door open to endorsing the former president, according to The Times.
Gates gave $50 million to the main outside fund-raising group supporting Harris, The Times reports, breaking from a longstanding strategy of not making large political donations.
Warren Buffett, a longtime Democrat, wrote on Berkshire Hathaway’s website that he wouldn’t “endorse and support political candidates.”
Even outspoken business leaders are staying mum. Dimon is known for speaking his mind on a variety of topics, including Ukraine and banking regulations, and he previously donated publicly to Democrats. Buffett — who endorsed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — has publicly criticized Trump in previous election cycles.
And Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire who owns The Los Angeles Times, has blocked the newspaper’s editorial board from endorsing a presidential candidate, according to Semafor.
Titans of corporate America are seemingly worried about blowback from the Trump camp. Dimon has told associates that he’s worried about the former president retaliating against perceived enemies if Trump wins in November, The Times reports, making his silence on Harris a matter of protecting shareholders. (A JPMorgan spokesman noted that Dimon had never publicly endorsed a presidential candidate.)
In a statement to The Times, Gates sought to underline his history of bipartisan work even as he said that “this election is different.”
And Buffett has told Berkshire shareholders in recent years that he’s worried about the rise of political “tribalism” in the United States and how that “just doesn’t work as well.”
To be sure, there’s cause for concern. Trump has increasingly spoken of retribution, and he has suggested that he would punish companies for taking actions he doesn’t like. (The most recent example: He threatened tariffs on Deere, the big farm equipment maker, if it went ahead with plans to move some jobs to Mexico.)
That said, some observers still criticized the staying-silent approach: Dimon would be doing his shareholders “a better service by doing everything possible to prevent Trump’s election,” writes David Firestone, the deputy editor of The Times editorial board.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Frontier and Spirit are said to be discussing a potential deal again. Frontier is considering making a new bid, according to The Wall Street Journal, after the two budget airlines discussed a combination in 2022. Then, JetBlue swooped in with an offer for Spirit that was later blocked by antitrust regulators. But this time, Spirit is in a far weaker position: It’s weighing a potential bankruptcy filing.
Shares in McDonald’s fall after a potential link to an E. coli outbreak. The fast-food giant’s stock is down more than 6 percent in premarket trading, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that onions used in Quarter Pounders were a possible cause for infections that killed one person and made 49 others ill. It’s the latest tough news for McDonald’s, which is still dealing with the political fallout from Donald Trump’s campaign appearance at a location in Pennsylvania.
The former C.E.O. of Abercrombie & Fitch is charged with running a sex-trafficking ring. Michael Jeffries was accused by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn of using force, fraud and coercion to lure dozens of men to events around the world, where he and his romantic partner sexually exploited them. If convicted, Jeffries, who ran the company for 22 years before resigning in 2014, could face life imprisonment.
Trump wins the race for Rogan
Donald Trump has been criticized for canceling a series of campaign events so close to the election. But he’s making time for a potentially buzzy appearance: an interview with Joe Rogan, the podcasting star.
It’s the latest sign that both he and Vice President Kamala Harris are adapting to the changing media landscape, where a new generation of podcasters attract the kind of voters the candidates need to reach.
Both Trump and Harris have reportedly sought out Rogan. It’s not hard to see why: “The Joe Rogan Experience” has 14.5 million followers on Spotify alone, and at least as many on Instagram and YouTube. About 80 percent of listeners are believed to be male, and roughly half are under 35. That’s a highly coveted demographic.
Harris’s campaign is said to have been in talks to appear on Rogan’s show as well, though it’s unclear whether she has secured a spot.
Rogan himself has criticized both the Democratic and Republican candidates. He said two years ago that he wouldn’t have Trump on his show, and has criticized Harris. (That said, last month Rogan marveled at “the amazing job” her campaign had done after President Biden dropped out.)
It’s the latest sign of the power of podcasts. Harris has already appeared on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy,” another blockbuster show — and one whose audience is largely young and female. (The vice president used her appearance to talk about women’s rights.)
Trump has done interviews with male-skewing shows that appeal to independent voters, including those hosted by the M.I.T. academic Lex Fridman and the comedian Theo Von.
The ascent of podcasters has been lucrative. Rogan is said to have earned nearly $500 million via his contracts with Spotify alone, and the audio giant has stood by him despite controversy over his show. Cooper is said to have gotten up to $125 million from SiriusXM and more than $60 million from Spotify before that.
The big question: Will these appearances translate into increased turnout at the polls?
In other political news: A report by The Lever suggests that Elon Musk could collect a huge tax break if he is appointed to a role in a second Trump administration. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, warned that his former boss met the definition of a fascist and would rule like a dictator. And Trump accused Britain’s governing Labour Party of seeking to interfere in the U.S. election.
A warning on global growth
The global markets are a blur of red on Wednesday. Stocks and oil are trading lower, while the yield on Treasury notes has rebounded as growth and geopolitics concerns weigh on investors.
Wall Street is also trying to come to grips with what a potential Donald Trump presidency might look like, and why some investors are piling into assets like the dollar and gold.
The good news: Global economic output should grow at a solid, but not spectacular, 3.2 percent pace this year and next, and the inflation threat has largely receded, the I.M.F. said on Tuesday.
The bad news: The monetary fund lowered its global growth forecast and sees a number of risks. They include: a wider conflict in the Middle East; tit-for-tat tariffs prompting a full-blown trade war; and the fear that many countries could fall into a high-debt, low-growth spiral.
“While the global decline in inflation is a major milestone, downside risks are rising and now dominate the outlook,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, wrote in the fund’s latest report.
That may explain why investors are putting their money in classic safe-haven assets, including gold, which hit a record high this week.
The U.S. economy remains an exception. It’s outperforming many of its peers, and that appears to be lifting the dollar, another safe haven for investors.
Some investors see the odds of a Trump presidency rising, and believe that his tariff-heavy agenda would disrupt global trade and fuel inflation. (A reminder: Trump is no fan of a strong dollar, but his policies could actually strengthen the greenback.)
Wall Street analysts are trying to game out what Trump’s protectionist policies might mean for growth and corporate profits, noting that sectors that are heavily exposed to global supply chains could be most at risk.
Can earnings season lift the mood? Strong results, especially by the tech sector, in recent quarters have helped fuel the bull-market rally. Business leaders this quarter have told analysts that they see the economy in decent shape, even as they have warned of risks, especially for the consumer, on the horizon.
Starbucks bids for investor patience
Just over a month since Brian Niccol started as C.E.O. of Starbucks, the scale of his challenge is becoming clearer. The coffee company on Tuesday reported its worst quarterly sales drop in four years and pulled its guidance for 2025.
Starbucks hopes that getting the bad news out a week earlier than scheduled could temper investors’ expectations and give Niccol more time to get a grip on what needs to be fixed.
The preliminary numbers were brutal. Store sales are expected to be down 7 percent for the fiscal fourth quarter, the third consecutive quarterly decline. That was driven by a sharp slowdown in North America and China
Niccol is still figuring out how deep the problems run. Starbucks poached him in August and gave him one of the biggest corporate pay packages in history, hoping that he could repeat the turnaround flair he showed at Chipotle. The share price is down in premarket trading on Wednesday, but the stock is up almost 30 percent since his appointment, suggesting that investors think he’s the man for the job.
Niccol has made some changes. A shake-up of the top ranks gives some clues to the priorities. A former Chipotle executive is coming in as the first chief global brand officer, and streamlining operations in China by appointing a single boss to run operations in the crucial market.
But he warned that more needs to be done. “We need to fundamentally change our strategy so we can get back to growth,” he said in a video posted on the company’s website. Big challenges include a broader consumer slowdown, growing competition in China and rising coffee commodity prices.
“There’s going to be some tough, tough quarters moving forward,” Brian Yarbrough, an analyst at Edward Jones, told Bloomberg.
What’s next: Starbucks is expected to release its full earnings on Oct. 30.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
Jeff Smith, the C.E.O. of the activist investor Starboard Value, publicly urged Pfizers’s board to hold management accountable for underperformance, as his hedge fund seeks to shake up the drug maker. (Reuters)
Shares in Tokyo Metro jumped 45 percent in their trading debut in Tokyo, in Japan’s biggest initial public offering since SoftBank’s cellular business in 2018. (Bloomberg)
Elections, politics and policy
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will reportedly fine Goldman Sachs tens of millions of dollars for the bank’s management of its credit card business. (WSJ)
A court decision legalizing election betting in the United States is stretching the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s ability to manage its workload, the agency’s chief said. (Bloomberg)
Best of the rest
A research paper delves into the Fed’s response to the failure of Penn Central, a struggling lender — and how that made the central bank one of the linchpins of global financial stability. (SSRN)
Daniel Doctoroff, a deputy mayor of New York for economic development under Michael Bloomberg, has some ideas on how to bring people back to the city. (Times Opinion)
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