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This is your weekly Washington Policy Pulse on the Balance of Power podcast. I'm Joe Matthew. Every Monday, Bloomberg Intelligence, senior policy analyst and friend of the show, Nathan Dean shares his weekly call on upcoming catalysts in the nation's capital. Listen for the most recent and relevant policy research from our team at Bloomberg Intelligence. Now with today's installment, here's Nathan Dean.

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Good morning and good afternoon everybody. Welcome again to the Washington Policy Post. My name is Nathan Dean. I'm a senior policy analyst here in Washington, D.C. want to say thank you to those of us or sorry to those of you who are listening to this via the Balance of Power podcast. We always welcome your support as well. Today is December 8th. I'm recording this at 10:02am and the reason why I'm timestamping this is because we're going to have a little bit of a busy week. I actually didn't think it was going to be all that busy. Just a lot of headlines. But I think there's going to be some stuff here. First thing, thing I want to talk about is farm aid. Now we've talked about this in the past, about $12 billion in aid and what it means for farmers. You know, the idea here is trade, not aid. But you know, this package that we've been waiting for a couple of weeks now is set to be released later today. Now this is going to be $12 billion. It's going to be implemented by the USDA. Last time this happened back in 2018 and 2019, there were 644,000 farms that took the aid package. They got around $22,000 worth each. Each. And in our analysis, like I've said before on previous calls, the analysis here suggests, look, it's a band aid on something that is actually a much more bigger structural issue and that is due to the purchase of Chinese of Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans. So what we've been telling our clients is that, you know, yes, this is going to give a little bit of breathing room. Fortunately, it comes A little bit late. I mean, the spring planting season started in terms of negotiations started a couple weeks ago. So it'll come a little bit late. We think it's going to be mostly used for capital expenditures in the fourth quarter. But we are going to see, and I think I'm fairly confident in this, we are going to see more aid packages coming later in 2026. House Agricultural Committee, for example, some of the Republicans over there said that they could get up to $50 billion in aid. And we are still awaiting a light farm bill. For those of you who are in the agricultural sector, you probably know what I'm talking about is that the farm bill usually is a bipartisan affair. It hasn't passed in a long time. The farm bill usually deals with SNAP benefits. That was dealt with in the one big beautiful bill. But, but the House and Senate Committee still want to move forward with this quote, unquote light version of a farm bill. Hasn't really been all that movement all that much. I have a note on it that I can talk to you further about it. Just give me an instant Bloomberg message and we can chat. But you know, we are anticipating a farm bill next year. Maybe that's a little bit additional as a vehicle for getting more aid. I also want to talk about what's going to happen this week with the Obamacare subsidies. So again, we had my colleague Dwayne Wright on a couple weeks ago to talk about this, but you are going to see a vote, vote on Wednesday from the Senate perspective, voting on the Democratic plan for a three year extension of these Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of the month. Now that vote's gonna fail. The Republicans have already said it's not just gonna, it's not gonna happen. And so that vote is gonna fail. Now there is another plan that's being brought out by Senator Moreno of Ohio and a little bit of the Democratic senators that would give a two year extension. But the question here is, are the Republicans even going to try and move forward on that? I don't think the GOP strategy has been decided. Most likely could be decided later this evening or tomorrow maybe. If you're listening to this on the Balance of Power podcast, it's been announced, but as of right now when we're recording this, there really is no strategy here on how to deal with this on the Republican side. And I think a lot of Republicans are just waiting for the White House to come in here and say this is what I want to do. Because I think if you ask most of the Republicans on Capitol Hill, they're not in favor of additional subsidies. And we're just going to get into a situation where this expires. So again, it's going to be a little bit busy week on the headline perspective. But Dwayne point of view that he's put out on the terminal several times is that he doesn't think that there's going to be he uses words like long odds and skeptical and we'll see if a deal can come together before the end of the year. Now, Bloomberg News is also reporting this morning that President Trump is going to sign this week an executive order on artificial intelligence. The one rule is President Trump said in his True Social post this morning, one rule to ring them all or to rule them all. Sort of sounds like Lord of the Rings, you know, one ring to rule them all. That's where I was getting of this. Now, I should back up here. Now, Bloomberg Government a couple weeks ago got a copy of a draft executive order. And in that executive order, and I'm not saying this is the one that President Trump's going to sign this week, but in that executive order that Bloomberg Government got a copy of, it essentially allowed the DOJ to sue states that pursued their own AI regulations and their own AI laws. Now, my colleague Matt Shettenholm looked at it on the terminal, and Matt essentially said that if the executive order were to be like that, the courts most likely would find an issue with that and find the executive branches overstepping its bounds. Now, if this executive order comes out, and it's very similar to that, Matt's point that he put on the terminal was that you need Congress to come in and actually develop a regulation or a standard for the National Framework for Artificial Intelligence. So even if President Trump comes out later this week and signs this executive order, look at it, have a call with Matt, and just think in the back of your mind, are the courts going to be the ones to approve this? Because Matt's looking at it right now and Matt's sort of skeptical. Now, the one thing that though this executive order could do is that if the rule comes out and it's actually detailed, saying that I want the framework to look like this, this, this, this and this. Well, maybe that's a standard that we can actually have more debate on, because if you have 50 patchworks, 50 states, different AI rules and so forth like that, it could get a little bit messy. But if there is this idea of what a national framework could potentially look like, then the debate going into 2026 actually looks a little bit more favorable in terms of getting regulation across the line. So again, we'll have to see what happens here. But right now, the courts most likely would take an issue with this, depending on how it looks. But again, stay close and Matt will always be available for conversations if you want to have a conversation with him. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the Netflix Warner Brothers deal because it's actually been fairly moving. There's, I think, the big question that most clients on their hands saying, is this going to pass from an antitrust perspective? Netflix and Warner Brothers announced a deal that they would merge. Paramount announced just about an hour ago a hostile takeover bid. And so I wanted to point you to Jennifer Reeves analysis on the terminal. And we can get a copy of that. Just ping me and I can send a copy of this to you where she lays out all the issues that antitrust regulators are going to be looking at in terms of the Netflix Warner Brothers deal. And it looks fairly challenging from the Netflix perspective. And her point, and this is what she just put out, is that even if President Trump doesn't get involved, and President Trump even just said on Truth Social just this morning that he's going to be taking a look at this, you're looking at a lengthy analysis here in a lengthy period. And her point is the antitrust process will likely take over a year, and that's if the DOJ challenges the deal in court. The suit will most likely be filed about a year from now, and then it would take another eight to nine months for the ruling. And so even though the company said that they're going to close in 12 to 18 months, their purchase agreement also had some language in here that suggested that it could be pushed back. So again, there's going to be a lot of moving parts here.