President Trump Financial Disclosures and Conflicts

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This is the PM edition of What's News, The top headlines and business stories that move the world today Federal Reserve Chairman Kein War said today that the risks of higher inflation have receded in his first weeks on the job He sees that as evidence that markets have already grasped his hard line on prices Wch was speaking at a conference of central bankers in Portugal He's long argued that the Fed should say less about its outlook for the economy. And today, he sidestepped questions about future rate decisions and brushed aside complaints that investors need a clearer sense of how the Fed would adjust as the outlook changes. There has been a tendency, and I take plenty of blame from this theA crisis where we were trying to suppress volatility, where we thought we needed to spoon feed markets to get out of that That was the right policy for a crisis. It is not the right policy for the time that we have now. Markets are anticipating a rate increase later this year, though interest rate futures are still expecting a hold at the next meeting later this month. It's july first, the start of a new month and a new quarter There are several government programs that kick off today, plus at least one with a future that's in doubt First, we've got education grants. A growing number of students are enrolling in trade schools instead of a four year college degree. Now the financial aid system is catching up with them Starting today, Pell grants, the federal financial aid used for college, are available for short term vocational programs These workforce Pell grants are an effort to get more people training for jobs that have been hard to fill for years, like paramedics and H vAac specialists For more, I'm joined now by journal repeporter, Lauren Weber Lauren, this expansion was part of President Trump's big, beautiful bill that Congress passed last year What was the thought or the goal behind this? The goals were two pronged. On the one hand, it's to make this kind of training more accessible. It's also designed to help employers because for many of these roles, they've had shortages. It's been hard to hire people. So the idea is that students are on the path to a well paid in demand career and also that employers can fill the open jobs that they have The idea of expanding federal scholarships for vocational programs has been discussed in Congress for a long time. Why did it take so long to get to this place where they're actually doing it? A huge roadblock was the issue of how do we make sure that This money is only going to high quality programs You have colleges, universities, they have to go through a whole accreditation process. You do have accreditation for trade schools and for community colleges, but it's a little bit more of a wild west in terms of making sure that There are high quality standards. So there was a lot of negotiation among legislators about making sure that there are guardrails around the quality of the programs that are going to be eligible for this money. How much can someone who applies for one of these grants expect to get That's another place where this differs from the typical PEL grants. So for a four year college degree, students are eligible for up to around seven thousand four hundred dollars a year. For the workforce Pell grants, the Congressional budget O offffice did some projections, and they're expecting that grants will be around two thousand two hundred dollars. this is for an eight to fifteen week program, so it makes sense that they're less That was Jnal reporter Lauren Webber. Thanks Luren. Thank you for having me Also starting today, a major expansion of Medicare coverage A pilot program will offer weight loss drugs for a fifty dollarars a month cay, much cheaper than the four hundred and fifty dollars a month many seniors had to pay before to twenty million people in Medicare will likely be eligible. The new covever drugs are Novo Nordis' Weigovi and Eli Lillily Zetbound injection and Foundeoill The coverage is expected to cost billions of dollars, and the government says it'll run through the end of next year. Beyond that, Medicare has to convince insurers to keep participating somethingomething that's not being extended today, it was the deadline to renew the USMCA. That's the trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada that underpins nearly two trillion dollars in annual trade Canada and Mexico were eager to extend the deal for sixteen years. But the US. declined to do so. That wasn't exactly a surprise President Trump's tariffs effectively ripped up parts of the deal The US. refusal means that American trade representatives will meet every year for a decade with Mexican and Canadian officials to continually review the deal And the US has some demands, including that it wants a more level playing field to reduce trade deficits with its neighbors While you shouldn't expect to feel the impact of this change on prices, it does have an economic effect. compompanies are holding back on long term investment plans, and that's hurting the economy in Mexico and Canada comoming up, investors catch a sneak peek of a SpaceX AI prototype, and deals from the Middle East made up a notable portion of President Trump's income last year. That's after to the break Isn't home where we all wanna be? Reba here for realtor dot coma the pro's number one most trusted app. Finding a home is like dating. You're searching for the one. With over five hundred thousand new listings every month, you could find the one today! Download the realtor dot com app ca you're nearly home. Make it real With realaltor d. com Ps, number one most trusted app based on august twenty five proprietary Survey. overver five hundred thousand new listings every month based on average new forsale and rentalistings, july twenty fourth to june twenty five President Trump flew to North Dakota for the opening of Theodore Roosevelt's presidential library. It's worth noting how he got there. It was the first flight of his new Air Force O, a Boeing seven hundred forty seven eight luxury jet donated to the U.S by the Qatari government last year Trump had complained that the presidential planes he flew on were too old and small The new plane is two stories tall, and it's so big that the US Air Force built a three hundred million dollars custom hangar complex to accommodate it at Joint Base Andrews. Journal National Security repeporter Marcus Weiserber joins me now from Washington Marcus, the plane's paint job, red, white, navy, and gold, resembles the look of Trump's personal jed What is it like on board? and how does it compare to the previous presidential plane previous plane is very utilitarian is the way the general who's overseeing the whole project described it to me. The Qatari plane, the current Air Force one is a lot more luxurious. The Air Force did not do a lot to change the interior of this plane with the exception of a few pictures, presidential seals and such instead of, you know, contemporary artwork and exit signs that were in Arabic previously. swapped them out with some English language exit signs. and the number one priority was to make sure the plane was safe and to make sure The president has the ability to communicate. They put in a communication system The president needs to be able to conduct business as if he was at the White House and be able to do secure video invoice calls and also be able to say, transmit the nuclear codes if there's a nuclear war on hands This refurbishment, which four hundred million dollars addressed a number of things as you've mentioned, but one concern going into it was the cybersecurity risks from this plane. Did the refurbishment address that at all So much of what is involved in Air Force O are classified. You ask them how they did it and they will not give you specific answers. They will just say stuff like with capabilities of the U. S. government Brings to bear have been used to actually like check this thing. And as a program manager from L three Harris teechnologies who did the modification told me a few weeks ago,'s like, I hate to say just like trust me, but you know, trust me Taking a step back for a second, both Republicans and Democrats have criticized Trump for even accepting this plane in the first place. There were concerns about the ethics and the perceived conflicts of interest. Trump has largely dismissed this criticism Is it still kind of swirling around or is it really a non issue at this point No, it definitely is. you know, you're still seeing this debate over what happens to the plane when the president leaves office. He's expressed his desire to have and Air Force O in his presidential library in Miami. This plane though as the military has told me, it'll be around for as long as it's needed. We've seen a lawmaker, Joe Courtney from Connecticut introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to try to actually block Trump from using it as a private jet after he leaves office One key thing to keep in mind is that that Ownership of the plane is by the Air Force. and after it goes out of service, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio takes over that you know, decides essentially where it goes and Museums can apply to get an Air Force O Now museum is under the jurisdiction of the seecretary of the Air Force, who is a political appointee who reports up through the defefense seecretary to the president of the United States. So politics could indeed also play a role into who gets water That was WSJ National Security repeporter, Marcus Weisgerber. Thanks, Marcus Thank you This morning's show, we talked about President Trump's unprecedented income, as seen through his most recent round of financial disclosures. The biggest identifiable foreign region in the disclosures was the Middle East Entities from the Gulf paid around three hundred million dollars to the president's businesses last year Those include two hundred sixty three million dollars from the sale of half his stake in the cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial, to an entity backed by a top royal in the United Arab Emirates. The remainder of the gulf money came from two Middle East developers who have launched Trump bnded towers and golf courses in the region in the past three years Journal finance reporter Ellot Brown says that' raising some concerns about conflicts of interest. The president has a total foreign policy priority in the Gulf. and at the same time, you have the very countries that he's talking with on the foreign policy side giving him enormous amounts of money. I mean it's unprecedented to have a president sort of stillill atop a business where you can tell what all the assets are. ussually they just put it in a blind trust where they don't know what's going on And with Trump, his business is being run by his sons, but he gets the wealth from it The White House has been quite explicit that the president has never engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest. but the challenge from an ethics perspective is he knows where the money is coming from. The worry is that that clouds his policy judgment. It's very difficult to separate these things In market trading today, the dao was flat and the S andP and NSDAq slipped. The NasDAQ led the losses and closed down zero point seven percent. And Bending Spoons, an Italian company that seeks to revamp tech brands, popped in its stock market debut today Bending Spoons owns Internet pioneer AOL, as well as the video platform Vimeo and the event's website Event Bright Its shares closed up about forty percent. The journal is exclusively reporting that Elon Musk's SpaceX has recently shown investors a prototype for an AI device that looks like a phone It has a sleek design that's slimmer than an iPhone with a proprietary operating system. It would use a quQualcom Snapdragon chip set S SpaceX told investors that the project's at an early stage. It's not clear if the device will actually be made. spokespeople for the company and for Qualcom didn't immediately respond to requests for comment And that's what's newews for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Anthony Banscy and Alexis Moore with supervising producer Tolly Ar Bell. I'm Alex Ozaleeft for the Wall Street Journal. 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