Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - October 24th, 2025

Summary

Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend – October 24, 2025

Overview

This episode of Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend explores pivotal events shaping the global economy, business, and technology landscape over the past week. Hosted by Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec, the show delivers in-depth reporting and analysis on:

• The U.S.-Argentina $20 billion currency swap
• The U.S.-Australia rare earths pact to counter China
• A profile of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic strategy
• Emerging trends in robotics with Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist
• The practical impact of quantum computing in Chattanooga, Tennessee
• Cheat codes and industry shifts in wellness and sustainability

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The U.S.-Argentina $20 Billion Currency Swap

Guest: Eric Schatzker, Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director
Segment: [03:37–13:59]

• What’s Happened:

  • The U.S. Treasury and Argentina’s Central Bank signed a $20B swap line, called by Treasury Secretary Scott Besant “an economic stabilization deal, a bridge to a better economic future for Argentina, not a bailout.”

• Key Discussion Areas:

  • Why Now & U.S. Strategy:
    • U.S. intent to “lock in dollar supremacy” not just through the Fed but via the Treasury by strategically using swap lines for geopolitical influence.
    • The deal is unusual given minimal direct trade with Argentina, hinting at broader global strategy.
    • “It's using the dollar as an economic tool and a tool of geo-strategy, if you will.” – Eric Schatzker [05:23]
  • Deal Mechanics & Unknowns:
    • Lack of transparency: Neither the public nor intermediating banks know what, if any, collateral Argentina has pledged.
    • “Nobody knows what Argentina is pledging as collateral. In fact, nobody has seen the agreement to our knowledge.” – Eric Schatzker [08:15]
    • Comparison to historic swaps, including the Mexico peso crisis and the Bank of England trade.
  • Risks & Endgame:
    • Is this a bailout? “A bailout is in the eye of the beholder… It’s unquestionably a gift to President Milei ahead of these midterm elections.” – Eric Schatzker [10:04]
    • Impact questionable: Peso continues to weaken; bonds losing gains since the deal.
    • Potential U.S. exposure if Argentina fails to reform, and the possibility that $20B “may not end up being enough.”

• Geopolitical Context:

  • Argentina’s swap with China ($18B) could be wound down as a condition of this deal.
  • IMF sidelined due to inability to act quickly before Argentina’s pivotal midterm elections.

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2. U.S.-Australia Rare Earths Deal to Counter China

Guest: Dr. Gracelyn Baskin, Critical Minerals Security Program Director (CSIS)
Segment: [17:09–27:49]

• What’s Happened:

  • U.S. and Australia signed a landmark pact worth $1B each, to rapidly invest in rare earths and critical mineral supply chains, jointly blocking Chinese acquisition and fostering strategic projects, including Alcoa’s gallium refinery.

• Key Discussion Areas:

  • Motivation & Timing:
    • “This is minerals cooperation that's going not just from conversation... to actually putting the resources in to develop really strategic projects.” – Dr. Gracelyn Baskin [17:45]
    • Urgency triggered by China’s export restrictions and global vulnerability to Chinese supply.
    • “If we work together we can actually start to counter China in a meaningful way.” – Dr. Baskin [19:09]
  • Market Shifts & Industry Winners:
    • U.S. and Australia will identify joint projects; Alcoa and Lynas highlighted.
    • “Rare earths, obviously... but broadly speaking for some of these minor metals, which antimony is one of them, we've seen tungsten emerge... these minor metals are going to be the ones where we're highly vulnerable.” – Dr. Baskin [21:14]
  • Supply Chain Re-architecture:
    • Australia breaking historic ties with China, shifting minerals supply towards U.S. and allies.
    • U.S.-Australia model may expand to include Japan, South Korea, UK, EU, Brazil, and others.
    • “We're really seeing rubber hit the road with a country that has enormous geological potential.” – Dr. Baskin [18:47]
  • Investment Fad vs. Durable Shift:
    • Not all individual mineral deals will succeed, but the macro trend toward supply chain diversification is robust.

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3. Profile: California Governor Gavin Newsom & Democratic Strategy

Guest: Josh Green, Bloomberg National Correspondent
Segment: [28:44–39:38]

• Backdrop:

  • Democrats face declining morale and search for leadership in the Trump era.
  • Newsom, rebounding from a politically difficult year, is pushing a ballot initiative that could create up to five new Democratic House districts.

• Key Insights:

  • Strategic Importance:
    • “Newsom... has suddenly become important, important in preserving Democrats’ chance to win back some shred of power...” – Josh Green [29:24]
    • The ballot measure’s success could make Newsom a leading contender for 2028.
  • Public & Party Reception:
    • The initiative has ~50% support; prominent Republicans (e.g., Schwarzenegger) are opposed but experts expect it to pass.
  • Newsom’s National Ambitions and Persona:
    • Blends political fixer lineage and relatability: “He's always been drawn to the camera as a politician.”
    • Acknowledges mistakes (“his most boneheaded move” – French Laundry incident [34:02]) but leverages media skills, including social platforms and AI-generated mockery of Trump.
  • Demographic and Political Context:
    • “California is this engine of dynamism... the polar opposite of the way Donald Trump runs the US economy with a focus on industrial nostalgia.” – Josh Green [34:50]
  • Social Media Strategy:
    • Newsom uses attention tactics to energize the base: “...race for eyeballs and attention. And there’s no question that Newsom is doing that more aggressively than any other Democrat.” – Josh Green [37:03]
  • Risks:
    • Mocking Trump online may pose risks if future disaster aid from the White House is needed.

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4. Amazon Robotics: Automation & The Future of Work

Guest: Ty Brady, Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics
Segment: [43:35–52:54]

• Current Innovations:

  • Introduction of Blue Jay, a new AI-powered manipulation robot, able to handle over 70% of inventory types (productized much faster than predecessors thanks to AI).
  • Growth beyond Kiva robots to manipulation, mobility, perception, and packing systems—enabling “people and machines working together.”

• Key Quotes & Insights:

  • “When you do collaborative robotics... it allows you to be more productive. And when you're more productive, that allows you to invest more in people... we've upskilled more than 700,000 of our employees.” – Ty Brady [46:45]
  • NYT report: Amazon may replace up to 500,000 human jobs with robots within a decade. Brady pushes back, emphasizing new jobs created and shifting the nature of tasks rather than simple elimination.
    • “Very bullish on eliminating every menial, mundane, and repetitive job out there. Nobody wants to do that. So we are going to change those tasks 100%.” – Ty Brady [49:52]
  • Seasonal Labor:
    • Despite automation, Amazon expects to hire 250,000 seasonal workers this holiday.
  • Global Perspective:
    • Observes advances in robotics in Japan and China, but maintains a focus on practical application over spectacle.

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5. Quantum Computing in Practice: Chattanooga, Tennessee

Guests: Tim Kelly (Mayor), Janet Reberg (EPB President/CEO Elect)
Segment: [53:34–64:29]

• Chattanooga’s Quantum Leap:

  • First city in the U.S. with a commercially available quantum network (since 2022), built atop its municipal fiber optic network.
  • Collaboration with IonQ, Nvidia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory for grid optimization.

• Practical Applications & Forward Look:

  • Energy grid optimization as initial use case—using quantum’s potential to solve complex power distribution challenges more efficiently than classical computing, reducing energy use as AI demand rises.
    • “A quantum computer... can solve things at a much faster rate, which uses less energy than a classical computer because it can do things in parallel...” – Janet Reberg [58:15]
  • Power Mix and Sustainability:
    • Chattanooga’s electricity comes from Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)—nuclear, hydro, renewables, gas. Anticipate more nuclear and biogas due to rising demand.
    • Mayor Kelly: “Regardless of your political affiliation... there's no way around nuclear.” [59:28]
  • Attracting Talent:
    • Influx of remote workers during COVID. Efforts to build sustainable tech jobs and prevent a K-shaped economic divide.
  • AI vs. Quantum in the Tech Dialogue:
    • Emphasize future synergy of quantum and AI for blazingly efficient algorithms.

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6. Wellness & Lifestyle “Cheat Codes”

Guest: Chris Rouser, Bloomberg Pursuits Editor at Large
Segment: [67:26–78:57]

• Main Feature:

  • A lighthearted yet informative look at “wellness hacks” or “cheat codes” gaining popularity—from tech-driven fitness to old-school lifestyle hacks.

• Cheat Highlights:

  • Catalyst Stim Suit: Full-body muscle-stimulating suit (with an “intense buzz”) to accelerate strength gains; “I know it works.” – Gracelyn Baskin [69:51]
  • Walking Uphill: “Celebrity trainers tell people to do [this] because it burns calories… but also doesn’t wear you out.” – Gracelyn Baskin [70:18]
  • Rolling Your Foot on a Ball: Simple de-stressing trick to calm body and mind.
  • Peptides and Biotech: Growing use for performance and anti-aging (e.g., SARMs, NAD+, Wegovy/Ozempic as peptides)—emphasis on consulting real doctors due to regulatory gray zones.
  • Facial Sculpting: “Fascia facials” and in-mouth massage techniques for short-term face ‘tightening’.
  • Sustainability and Style:
    • Barbour’s rewax & “re-loved” jacket programs: Upcycling as a fashion and environmental trend embraced by Gen Z (“What’s better than a beat up pair of Levi’s?” – Gracelyn Baskin [77:23]).
    • “People want it… not polished… want it exactly as it was.” (on vintage watches) – Gracelyn Baskin [78:09]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It's using the dollar as an economic tool and a tool of geo-strategy, if you will.”
  — Eric Schatzker on the U.S.-Argentina swap [05:23]

• “Nobody knows what Argentina is pledging as collateral. In fact, nobody has seen the agreement to our knowledge.”
  — Eric Schatzker [08:15]

• “This is minerals cooperation that's going not just from conversation... to actually putting the resources in to develop really strategic projects.”
  — Dr. Gracelyn Baskin [17:45]

• “California is this engine of dynamism... the polar opposite of the way Donald Trump runs the US economy with a focus on industrial nostalgia.”
  — Josh Green [34:50]

• “When you do collaborative robotics... it allows you to be more productive. And when you're more productive, that allows you to invest more in people...”
  — Ty Brady, Amazon Robotics [46:45]

• “A quantum computer... can solve things at a much faster rate, which uses less energy than a classical computer because it can do things in parallel...”
  — Janet Reberg, EPB [58:15]

• “Celebrity trainers tell people to [walk uphill] because it burns calories… but also doesn’t wear you out.”
  — Gracelyn Baskin [70:18]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• U.S.-Argentina Currency Swap Analysis: 03:37–13:59
• U.S.-Australia Rare Earths Pact & Critical Minerals: 17:09–27:49
• Gavin Newsom, Democratic Strategy & National Profile: 28:44–39:38
• Amazon Robotics & Automation Trends: 43:35–52:54
• Quantum Computing in Chattanooga: 53:34–64:29
• Wellness “Cheat Codes” Feature: 67:26–78:57

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Conclusion

This week’s Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend delivers an engaging, in-depth snapshot of economic diplomacy, industrial realignments, political strategy, technological innovation, and lifestyle trends—armed with expert voices, insightful reporting, and actionable context for business leaders and the informed public.

Transcript

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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 Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenn Nevaeh on Bloomberg Radio.

[Tim Stenovec]

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg businessweek Week Weekend Podcast. After another nonstop week full of earnings from the likes of Netflix, Tesla, Intel, GM and many, many others, we also had a $20 billion currency swap deal between the United States and Argentina. We had U.S. sanctions on Russian oil giants.

[Ty Brady]

And then.

[Tim Stenovec]

Gosh, I forgot this was early in the week. A big media company, Warner Brothers Discovery in play. Big time.

[Chris Rouser]

I think it's fair to call this a mega busy week and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

[Tim Stenovec]

Capitals capital letters on all of that.

[Chris Rouser]

But we should get used to it because next week is going to be really busy too.

[Tim Stenovec]

I know, right?

[Chris Rouser]

Okay, we're going to keep it here. We're going to keep it on. What happened over the past week. Our highlights for the weekend explaining that deal between the United States and Argentina, the why, the why now, and why that country. We're going to get to all of that and more in just a moment.

[Tim Stenovec]

Also, President Trump's move backing off of an isolated United States. It does feel like this is kind of going on. It's all in a rare Earths deal with Australia to fight China. This was kind of one of the first big moves that someone pointed out that maybe the US Isn't gonna go it alone here.

[Chris Rouser]

And speaking of the president, we've got his top antagonist. It is the COVID story of the latest issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.

[Tim Stenovec]

Plus, in our second hour, Amazon Robotics, chief technologist on robots and the workforce of Tomorrow cheat coats on how to improve your overall. Well, totally into that. And Tim, yes, we know we're all about generative and agentic AI LLMs, but a lot is happening when it comes to quantum computing. Just ask the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We did. That's all happening in our second hour.

[Chris Rouser]

We begin with an agreement signed this past week by the U.S. treasury with the Central bank of Argentina. U.S. secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant characterized the Treasury's $20 billion swap line with the crisis prone nation's central bank as a, quote, economic stabilization deal, an agreement that is, quote, a bridge to a better economic future for Argentina, not a bailout. We had so many questions about this and there was really one voice we wanted to turn to, Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Eric Schatzker. He's covered numerous global financial and market cycles. He's interviewed various Latin American leaders, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and former Argentinian President Mauricio Macri. Eric also had the September cover story on Secretary Scott besant for Bloomberg Businessweek.

[Eric Schatzker]

I think we can unpack this in three ways. One is why is the U.S. doing this? The second is what exactly have we got here? And the third would be how might it all end? Perhaps in tears. I'll, I'll take on the why. And this actually goes back to that story you mentioned that I did about Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary for Bloomberg Business Week in September. I spoke to the Treasury Secretary back in late July and at the time he told me that one of his overarching goals in office as the Secretary of the treasury was to, quote, unquote, lock in dollar supremacy. And I asked him, well, how do you do that? And he said, and I didn't appreciate the significance of it at the time was by facilitating swaps through the Treasury Department as opposed to the way that swaps have traditionally been facilitated, which is by the Fed, from central bank to central bank. Now, there is precedent for this. The Treasury Department did that from Mexico back in the mid-90s during the peso crisis, and it helped, and maybe it'll help Argentina. But it appears that under the Trump administration, the government's focus is on, again, cuts to the why. It's not just about locking in dollar supremacy. It's using the dol, an economic tool, to support countries with which the United States feel it has some kind of ideological kinship or some kind of trading relationship. It's not like Argentina has been one of America's major trading partners. It has not. The amount of bilateral trade that goes on between those two countries is a fraction of what it is with the United States and Mexico or the United States and Canada, or even the United States and Europe. So in that respect, it's unusual. I think if you think about it, though, in terms of locking in dollar supremacy and using the dollar as an economic tool and a tool of geo strategy, if you will, it begins to make a little more sense.

[Chris Rouser]

You said that there are three different elements that we could, we could talk about with this one is how. Another one is how this could end. And I want to.

[Eric Schatzker]

Let's talk about the. What is it that we're actually talking about here? You mentioned that the treasury secretary today talked about it as a bridge to a better economic future.

[Chris Rouser]

And, and not a bailout.

[Eric Schatzker]

And not a bailout. But the operative word there is bridge, because bridge means something from here to there. In other words, what's the there? This is a bridge until when, right? Is it a bridge until after Argentina's midterm elections on the 26th of this month, Sunday? Is it. Trump seemed to suggest as much the other day when he said, well, you know, if Malay doesn't win, we'll get rid of the swap line. So that's one possibility. Is it a bridge until Argentina decides to abandon the peso peg, which Stern Egger, the Minister for Deregulation and State Transformation, said was in the cards? Is it a. Is it a bridge until the $20 billion runs out, which might happen because Argentina was burning through a billion and a half dollars worth of foreign currency reserves a week, a billion and a half a week before the swap line was put in place? Is it until Argentina's economy can eventually support an exchange rate at this level? It certainly can't right now. Or maybe is it a bridge until, I don't know, President Trump just loses patience or President Milei does something to annoy him? It could be any of those.

[Tim Stenovec]

It's a lot of questions. It's a lot of possible scenarios. You know Bloomberg reporter that Jamie Dimon is visiting Argentina, kind of an unprecedented show of support for the government. At the same time, we've had, I think it's the Wall Street Journal reporting that banks are having a hard kind of getting around this without some kind of guarantees.

[Eric Schatzker]

Nobody knows. Nobody knows what Argentina is pledging as collateral. In fact, nobody has seen the agreement to our knowledge.

[Tim Stenovec]

Right.

[Eric Schatzker]

The banks themselves, which are playing intermediary roles here, don't know what Argentina has agreed to pledge, you know, so that the United States isn't just on the unlimited losing end of a bad trade. And that is possible here. Right. The big difference between what's going on here and the comparison that everybody wants to make with the trade that broke the bank of England that the Treasury Secretary was involved in when he worked for George Soros and Stan Druckenmiller back in the early 1990s, the big difference here is that then the UK had nobody backstopping them. Now Argentina has the United States back backstopping it. But as I say, nobody knows until when. Nobody knows if there are any mechanisms that have been put in place to make the U.S. taxpayer, if you will, whole. Should the Treasury Department sustain losses on this trade? I've heard that Argentina's uranium reserves may be involved, that some kind of preferential access to Argentine markets might be involved. Who knows? It's just, it's so. It's like. It's like a ready, aim, fire, you know, or a fire, you know, ready, aim in the sense that the swap line was put in place and then it appears, since no document has surfaced yet, that all of the mechanics behind it are being taken care of after the fact. I don't know. But my point is that if anybody knows, he or she hasn't put up his hand to say, hey, I know.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah.

[Chris Rouser]

The Treasury Secretary, as you mentioned, described this as a bridge to a better economic future for Argentina. Not a bailout. Is the not a bailout part a fair way to describe it, in your view? Is this not a bailout?

[Eric Schatzker]

I think a bailout is in the eye of the beholder in some respects. It's unquestionably a gift to President Milei ahead of these midterm elections. It isn't working for the time being. Right. The peso weakened today to a fresh low, and Argentine bonds, which had gained earlier on the formal announcement of this agreement, have since given up those gains and I think are posting losses. So it would appear to be a gift in the sense that the peso exchange rate or the peg to the dollar is unsustainable. Milei doesn't want to allow the peso to float freely. He wants to maintain this peg so that Argentine inflation is under control. A critical, critical economic consideration going into the midterms. So even if Argentina if inflate like, there's no question if the peso peg were to be abandoned today, it's not like inflation would. Inflation would show up immediately, but it wouldn't show up in official statistics. Excuse me for some time to come, but Argentines are so conditioned to this.

[Tim Stenovec]

Right?

[Eric Schatzker]

They know what would happen.

[Tim Stenovec]

Again, I want to go back to. And I know we've got a couple more minutes here, but Eric, the US involvement, and again, it may be a relationship President Trump wants to have with the president of Argentina. But I mean, Bloomberg editors wrote an opinion piece. Why isn't the IMF coming in here? And the other question we as a group have been trying to figure out, is it also to kind of keep China at bay? Is there that aspect as well?

[Eric Schatzker]

Argentina also has an existing $18 billion currency swap with China that goes back well before Schwarzenegger was the central bank governor. I think it may go back to 2015 and perhaps even before that. There has been some talk that one of the conditions behind, or at least one of the underlying conditions to this swap with the treasury would be that Argentina somehow winds up that previous swap agreement with the Chinese. Who knows as far as why the IMF isn't involved, I think the easy answer to that question is how many months would it take the IMF to get its act together? This was something that this was a perceived need on the part of the Argentine government, the Malay government, heading into these critical midterm elections, that there's no way, there's no conceivable way that the imf, in my mind, given everything that we've observed in our careers and everything we know that precedes that, there's no way that it could have possibly acted without much haste.

[Chris Rouser]

So before we let you go, how could this end? What could it mean for the US if it's a bad trade?

[Eric Schatzker]

Well, if it's a bad trade, it could. I find it hard to believe that the United States would put itself in a position to ultimately lose money. But it may lose money on paper and have to recover that money. Just like somebody who has left, been left holding the bag on a bad debt by liquidating some kind of Argentine assets or somehow, you know, turning preferential access into Argentine assets or Argentine markets into value over time. That wouldn't look good. And again, it all depends on how long this bridge is. We have seen in the credit markets that you can paper things over for an awfully long time before either things reflate and you're able to cash out at par, or you have to ultimately take some losses. So it's not like that's necessarily going to happen next week. It's not like it's necessarily going to happen next month, next quarter, even next year. But if Milei doesn't succeed, and if the Argentine economy doesn't continue to revive and inflation doesn't remain under control, it's hard to see how the speculative pressure against the peso won't continue. And we may even see, I don't know. We can only speculate here that $20 billion may not end up being enough.

[Tim Stenovec]

We just got schooled by Eric Schatzker In a good way. In a good way. Thank you so much Eric. A pleasure. So appreciate it. It's what we needed to know. Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Eric Schatzker okay, Canva can take your presentations to another level. It's super easy to use, but do you really know everything Canva can do? Let me walk you through some of the highl Take Canva Video Whether you're a content pro or just starting, you can make standout videos right away. There are thousands of templates, a super simple editor and AI powered tools that let you generate cinematic quality videos with sound from just one prompt. It seriously couldn't be easier. Then there's Canva docs Create, collaborate and share visual documents that actually make an impact. Reports, plans, whatever you need. And with magic, write Canva's built in AI, you can brainstorm, draft and even create copy in your own voice. And Canva sheets. It's like spreadsheets if they were fun, which is maybe an over promise because spreadsheets, but they're more visual and insightful plus easy to generate. So whether it's a doc, a sheet or a show stopping video Canva lets you bring your big ideas to life as fast as you can think of them. Put imagination to [e-mail] every business starts with an idea. How can you go from daydreamer to industry leader? Amazon Business accelerates your journey with smart business buying. Get everything you need to grow in one familiar place. From office supplies to IT essentials and maintenance tools. Amazon Business takes the buying experience you know and love from Amazon plus tools that help you save costs and make insights based decisions ready to bring your visions to life. Learn [e-mail] so have you heard the.

[Chris Rouser]

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[Eric Schatzker]

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the blue Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.

[Chris Rouser]

President Trump's administration is involved in talks for a U.S. company to access one of the world's largest untapped deposits of tungsten. This is a metal used by the Pentagon to make ammunition projectiles and other weaponry.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, it's really interesting, right? We continue to see that rare earths share space move as a result of these headlines coming out from the White House. Keep in mind, as Tim mentioned, President Trump signing that landmark pact with visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to boost America's access to rare earths and other critical minerals. It's an effort to counter China's tight grip on the supply chains of key metals. Now, the two governments will jointly invest in a swath of mines and processing projects in Australia to boost production of commodities used in advanced technologies, everything from electric vehicles to semiconductors and fighter plants. It goes into a lot of stuff.

[Chris Rouser]

Tim, in a story on the Bloomberg our next guest says, quote, this is the most significant bilateral minerals minerals cooperation we have seen between two major Western countries. Here to explain why is Graceland Baskin. She's director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the center for Strategic and International Studies. She joins us from the Washington, D.C. bureau of Bloomberg News. Gracelyn, welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. It's always great to have you on the program. I do want to start with the bilateral mineral minerals cooperation that we are seeing between the United States and Australia. Why is all of this happening right now?

[Carol Massar]

It's so great to be back. You know, this is a really big deal. And it's a big deal because this is minerals cooperation that's going not just from conversation. And we've been doing years of talking about minerals to actually putting the resources in to develop really strategic projects. I mean, we're, we've agreed to commit $1 billion each to be deployed within six months on strategic projects. And this could be Alcoa's landmark gallium refinery. Keep in mind China has cut us off of gallium and a really crucial Material for semiconductors. And this gallium refinery is going to produce 100 tons a year in Western Australia. That may not sound like a lot, but remember the US only uses about 20 tons of gallium a year. So it's actually really significant to Australia announcing equity in a rare earth project there. But what we've also seen is that the first time that these countries are making a concerted effort to counter China. So you may have seen that both countries have committed to preventing Chinese acquisitions of new projects both within their own countries, but also using diplomatic instruments in other countries. We've seen a commitment to using price support. Price support. So really when you take the summation of all of these different efforts, we're really seeing rubber hit the road with a country that has enormous geological potential. We're talking about 40 minerals that the US identified as critical. Incredible financial markets and deep technical expertise.

[Tim Stenovec]

Is this all bottom line about putting kind of a hold on China?

[Carol Massar]

This is about countering China from, from a supply and a demand perspective. You know, let's be totally honest, this year was a wake up call for the whole world until now. A lot of the export restrictions on critical minerals were really targeted at us here in the United States. But the multiple rounds of restrictions this year actually hit companies around the world. Like these recent rare earth export restrictions. Australia is still on the other end of them. So what we're really doing is we're uniting with our allies. And again, Australia being the one country that has fought beside us in every war since 1918, right. To say, okay, if we work together we can actually start to counter China in a meaningful way.

[Tim Stenovec]

Very then significant again because it feels like we have gone through a bunch of months where the US is like, we don't need you. We're going to do it alone. We're going to build up stuff, supply chain, so on and so forth. At least this is coming from the administration to do stuff here in the United States. This feels like it's very significant, the US saying wait, we actually need to have global partners on this. And this is kind of a big message. Again I'm going to point out to China and really the world at large.

[Carol Massar]

And this is a really important message because I want you to understand the historical relationship of Australian mining. Historically, Australian minerals have flow have gone to China for processing. So it's a highly vertically integrated industry between these two countries, supplies. So this was a pretty big disruption. You know, if we roll out restrictions on China, no one really bats an eye. But for Australia, where those minerals go to China, this is a really important realignment with us in breaking from what has been their historical trade relationship as it relates to the mining industry.

[Chris Rouser]

So I guess the question that we have is about the US companies that are a part of this. And we've spoken to quite a few of these. We spoke to, to US Antimony, Gary Evans over there of critical mineral, not, not a rare earth per se, but in the same space and with the idea that, you know, they're getting a government contract, not investment from the government, but a government contract to actually buy antimony for Defense Department purposes. But I'm curious about US Companies role and if there is such an opportunity for many different US companies right now to take advantage of this. And look, we have an investing audience. They want to know which are the companies that are best positioned right now to be in a place where they can be the ones that benefit from this increased need for critical minerals.

[Carol Massar]

So one of the big parts of this, a new framework agreement is that they will, we will strategically together identify priority projects and companies. One of the early leaders here is Alcoa. Again, Alcoa is a Philadelphia based company who is now building this gallium refinery through support from the Department of War and it was announced by the US and Australian governments yesterday. Again, I want to take you back to the fact that gallium is a no brainer of a priority for both sides because it was a commodity that China cut us off from earlier this year. So really when we start to look at what are, what are the winners going to be? I mean, rare earths, obviously we're going to see lynas being really important. But broadly speaking for some of these minor metals, which antimony is one of them, we've seen tungsten emerge in the news quite recently. These minor metals are going to be the ones where we're highly vulnerable and where we do not always have the geology to make it work and where Australia often does.

[Chris Rouser]

We both have questions. But Carol, you go, you go first.

[Tim Stenovec]

Well, I want to go back, forgive me if we're bouncing around because it's just sometimes, you know, the brain is a little slow and things settle in. But Grace, Grace, what I want to ask you is going back to, as you said, a big deal for Australia to do this because they have been so intertwined with China when it comes to Australia exporting large quantities of raw minerals and then China processing. I mean this has been a very important trading relationship. And so we know US and China has been antagonistic for a while, but to have them do that that's really significant.

[Carol Massar]

It's extremely significant. But you've been seeing that growing tension for probably the last seven years. Remember that Australia was the first country to ban how? Way back in about 2018, they also passed legislation to prevent foreign interference in their higher education sector. More recently there was a $1.25 billion Australian loan that was given to build the Iluka refinery for rare earths. One of the T's and C's of that was that offtake had to go to allied countries. But now what this really does now, I mean, is it starts to potentially re architecture supply chains in a meaningful way.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah.

[Carol Massar]

Australia, for example, is the biggest lithium producer in the world. They produce about close to 60% of the world's lithium. Over 90% of that actually goes to China for refining. If that didn't happen, China would lose its grip on lithium ion batteries. So what this deal really stands to do is re architecture supply chains, not just from mines, but down to the manufactured good.

[Chris Rouser]

So if we think about this in the context of the leverage that China could still have, even after the US makes deals such as this and deals with allies, where is that leverage?

[Carol Massar]

The leverage is still there in the short term with rare earths for sure. No doubt. Right. Although Australian, like Australia's Linus, was the first company to separate heavy rare earths earlier this year outside of China. But it's going to go beyond that. There was a line in this framework agreement that actually said that the US and Australia will work with other international partners on price support mechanisms. So this conversation is likely to extend beyond these two countries to the G7 later this year to think about how do we scale these partnerships up even more. So really what we're starting to see is an economy of scale that we're creating for the minerals and the product processing capabilities. I mentioned that Al Capcoid deal earlier. That Alcoa deal is also getting Japanese financing. It's actually a tripartite effort. So an example of how this, this bilateral is going to set the stage for what's probably going to be a much bigger play of countries to counter China.

[Tim Stenovec]

How do we figure out, you know, especially as we see investors, you know, pushing up shares on all of these stories about the relationships, the investments by the US government in various critical mineral companies. How do we figure out, which is investor speculation, you know, kind of chasing a trade, do you think it's misplaced or is it a bit irrationally exuberant? Or you think these investments, these relationships, this is the build out, it's Happening and with good reason because the demand is going to be there.

[Carol Massar]

The broader build out of the sector when it comes to mining being much more strategic is absolutely, absolutely here to stay. And it's here to stay for a couple of reasons. One of them is we are diversifying away from China. Right. But the second thing we have to remember is that certain of these commodities, I need a lot more in objective terms, I need a lot more copper to electrify, to build data centers, to build defense technologies. So it's also the growing demand. So I'd say the larger macro trend in prioritization is here to stay. And again, remember that the US Australia relationship, it's a continuation. It was being built under the Biden administration as well. But what, you know, the other thing though is, you know, there are going to be fads that come and go when it comes to specific minerals. There's no doubt. Right. Some things are going to hit media attention, certain deals are going to hit media attention and they're going to fall away. Not everything that this government is looking at is going to succeed. But what we are hoping is that the right number of them succeeded seed to create a more resilient supply chain. But there are a lot of coming and going.

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah, certainly the relationship with Australia is on our radar right now given the, the visit of the Prime Minister. But I'm wondering what other countries the US could ally with that would be able to offer some sort of countermeasure to China and its capabilities.

[Carol Massar]

So countries that I'm looking at with interest, Japan and South Korea, particularly because of their midstream and downstream capabilities. I'm looking at the uk There have been, you know, there's been some interesting acquisitions there. Lease, lease common metals by USA Rare earths. That's an interesting one. The EU again, it's an interesting jurisdiction. There's some, there are some minerals, I mean things like Solvay for their permanent magnets in France. An interesting one again with some conversations happening with the US as well. So there's certain pockets of interesting transactions happening from a global north, obviously from the global South. Brazil is still a very interesting jurisdiction to us because they have the heavy rare earths that can come back and be separated here in the United States.

[Tim Stenovec]

Everything we need to know. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Gracelyn Bascor and director of the Critical Mineral Security Program at the center for Strategic and International Studies.

[Ty Brady]

This is the Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast.

[Eric Schatzker]

Listen live each weekday starting at 2pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

[Chris Rouser]

With the play Bloomberg business app. You can also listen live on Amazon.

[Eric Schatzker]

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[Chris Rouser]

Bloomberg 11:30 Polls show Democrats are more disillusioned than they've been in decades, fed up with aging, feckless leaders, frustrated by a party adrift and unsure who their next standard bearer should be, but yearning for someone to take on Trump. So write Josh Green and Eliu Kamisher for Bloomberg businessweek. California Governor Gavin Newsom has leaped into the breach. He's armed with a podcast, a ballot measure, and tweets, Governor Newsom is spoiling for a fight with the president.

[Tim Stenovec]

He is indeed. It is the COVID of the new issue of Bloomberg Business Week out on newsstands, now online and on the Bloomberg Terminal. Bloomberg businessweek national correspondent Josh Green is the lead author of the Profile of the Governor. Josh is also the author of several books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency. He joins us, Josh, from Washington, D.C. josh, great to have you here with us. I mean, Gavin Newsom, he went from one of his lowest political points earlier this year as deadly fires burned in Southern California to now being a potential leader of the Democratic Party. That seems quite a turn. How did this happen and how dark was it for him?

[Josh Green]

Well, yeah, as you guys said in that nice intro, he was our cover story, our cover profile this week, went out to Sacramento, spent some time with him, talked to him. For a lot of people nationally, I think outside California, the last time they really keyed in and focused on Governor Newsom was back in January during the wildfires. Things were out of control. Trump was the new president was sort of insulting him, tweeting negative things about him. And so, you know, he told us that was really the low point, I think, of his governorship. But what's interesting is that over the last couple of months, partly due to some things that Trump has done, Newsom has reemerged on the national stage as perhaps the most important Democrat right now because he is in the middle of leading a ballot initiative that would create as many as five new Democratic House districts. And Democrats nationally are pretty much without power. They don't control the White House, they don't control either House of Congress, but they're very much hoping to win back the House next November. And so Newsom, by dint of his ability to kind of run the table in California, get this initiative on the ballot, has suddenly become important, important in preserving Democrats chance to win back some shred of power to confront Donald Trump with next November. And, of course, that would vault Newsom himself into even more prominent role as Democrats. Look for somebody to lead the party in 2028 and out of the Trump era.

[Chris Rouser]

Does that proposition have widespread support in California right now? I mean, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has spoken out recently against it. What did you find in your reporting?

[Josh Green]

Yeah, it's not clear that it does. I mean, what's going on, just to kind of clue in viewers, is that Trump and Republicans have been very aggressive about deciding to redraw or try and redraw congressional districts in red states across the country as a way of kind of putting their thumb on the scale in midterm elections in a way that would help Republicans withstand what I think most people expect to be an electoral backlash. So the fear for Democrats is that that Republicans essentially rewrite the rules and, you know, take control or keep control of a House of Representatives that they think they ought to be able to win. And so Newsom's value to the party is that he's been able to kind of come in and I think offset if this, if this ballot referendum wins. But it's not clear that it's winning by a lot. The latest poll I've seen has it at about 50% in favor, about 35, 36% opposed, and the rest undecided. So it really could still swing either way. And as you said, there have been prominent Republicans like former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who've come out and said, no, we don't want to do this. We don't want to create these Democratic districts. And so we'll see. But I think the expectation among the experts that I've spoken to is that this probably will prevail. And if it does, Democrats nationally, I think, are going to breathe a big sigh of relief.

[Tim Stenovec]

Josh, we want to dig more into this profile piece of Gavin Newsom, but I just want to, on this referendum, this ballot referendum, how important is it to Newsom specifically, how important is it to really Democrats more broadly, as we all are kind of looking at the upcoming midterms and what it means and what it says about President Trump's administration?

[Josh Green]

Yeah, it's a great question. The answer is it's really important to both of them. I just explained on kind of the national Democratic side why it's important. But for Newsom himself, I think it's especially important because, you know, he is somebody who is long been thought to have presidential ambitions. Democrats are obviously looking for a new leader in 2028. But talking to people around Washington, around the country, in Democratic circles, there could be literally dozens of people running. And so if this ballot referendum does pass, it will be a real validating credential for Newsom. He's one of the rare Democrats right now who is in a position of power. And if he's able to lead his party to victory on this ballot initiative and help Democrats win back the House of representatives in 2026, he can go out and say, look, I'm out here. I'm fighting Trump. I'm doing things. I'm helping the Democratic Party. And that's just not something that a lot of other elected Democrats can say right now. And I do think it's going to lead to a lot of excitement and a lot of national attention. And Newsom himself, as I mentioned, as we mentioned at some length in the profile, has spent a lot of time trying to raise his profile online, doing everything from YouTube to Twitch to Twitter to X to try and raise visibility. So I think a win on this ballot initiative would really help him in that regard.

[Tim Stenovec]

I always think about COVID and, like, how much he became so prominent. And we covered certainly everything he did during COVID and what was going on in the state, but he really became a national figure, it felt like, especially.

[Chris Rouser]

During that visit to the French Laundry, as Josh points out in his piece, which, what did he call that in his podcast, Josh? He quoted in the piece, I think.

[Josh Green]

He said it was like his most boneheaded move he made as governor. And not, not a lot of people would disagree with that. But, you know, he is prone to the occasional scandal. So that's, that's, that's part of the excitement of following. Governor Gavin Newsom does a lot of exciting things, both for good and for bad.

[Chris Rouser]

So let's talk about that a little bit. As a Californian, I followed Gavin Newsom for decades at this point. One thing that just always surprises me, though, is, is where he was and who he was with early on in his political life. I mean, there's the famous photo shoot. Was it any Leibowitz? With Kimberly Guilfoyle, his former wife, who is now, you know, she was linked to one of the Trump sons romantically. She's now the ambassador to Greece. What is his political history? You dive in here, there's connections to the Getty family. You really go really far back. Generations, actually.

[Josh Green]

Yeah. I mean, he's had this fascinating life. You know, his father and grandfather were kind of big time political fixers in San Francisco, which gave him entree into the kind of wealthy world of San Francisco politics and business, while at the same time, you know, his mom, after his parents divorce was a single mom who worked three jobs. So he kind of really grew up with a foot in both worlds. I think he's always been drawn to the camera as a politician. As you said, there's a famous Vanity Fair cover shoot back when he was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. You know, he managed to be a very high profile mayor of San Francisco conducting or allowing gay marriages, but back before the Supreme Court had allowed that first got him on the national stage. But he's also a good looking telegenic guy who really wants to have his profile out there and has a lot of political talent. I think that the challenge for Newsom as governor of California, and we get into this in the piece a little bit, is that there's a lot not to like about California right now at a time when Americans are more and more concerned with inflation and the high cost of living. California has sky high home prices. It sort of struggles with a lot of things that Americans struggle with generally, whether it's high gas prices, high unemployment, homelessness. So all of these things are subjects that Newsom and Businessweek spoke about, talked about and try to kind of war game out on the piece whether this is something that he can overcome. And as Newsom himself said too, you know, he's got a real pitch, I think, for Democrats nationally, which is that California is this engine of dynamism, whether it's tech or AI or business, and really conducts itself in a way that I think Newsom would describe as the polar opposite of the way Donald Trump runs the US Economy with a focus on kind of industrial nostalgia. And looking back, Newsom is very much a California guy, almost seems like a venture capitalist at times, kind of pitching his state. And I think it's going to be interesting to see whether Democratic voters connect with that discussion, decide this is the guy that they want leading them forward.

[Tim Stenovec]

Josh, do Democratic voters also connect with the way he's begun using social media, kind of playing President Trump at his own game with AI generated content and caps and so on and so forth. You single this out certainly in the story. Does that resonate? Is that what Democrats want?

[Josh Green]

To me, this is the most interesting part of the profile is, you know, a couple months ago, Newsom turned the governor's Twitter feed into this kind of mockery of Donald Trump and the way he comports himself on social media with these all caps tweets, kind of mocking and insulting him. And you know, AI generated images of Trump eating McDonald's burgers, kind of stuffing his face, and it was basically kind of meant to get down in the mud with Trump. And it's something that's caused a ton of attention, a ton of engagement. A lot of Democratic voters are seeing this and engaging with this online. I know in my own life, people relatives of mine are not particularly political, would have no reason to be interested in Gavin Newsom suddenly asking me about him because of his wild social media Persona. So in an attention getting sense, I think it's helped him. Whether or not this helps him, like, win votes in purple swing states three years from now, I'm still a little bit skeptical about that. But, you know, partly the race right now, if you're a Democrat, is the race for eyeballs and attention. And there's no question that Newsom is doing that kind of more aggressively and in a more interesting way than any other Democrat on the scene right now.

[Chris Rouser]

Is it a risk politically for the constituents in California? Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, spoke at Bloomberg Screen Time earlier this month and she talked about collaborating with President Trump in the wake of the disastrous wildfires. If there is another big natural disaster in California before Gavin Newsom's turn is term is up, does he have to go begging to President Trump? And President Trump says, no, you've. You've made a mockery of me.

[Josh Green]

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I mean, one of the things we talked about with Newsom in this piece is that he essentially, you know, Trump had kind of written him off back in January before he'd even taken office. He kind of turned on Newsom, and Newsom had said, you know, in the past they'd had a good working relationship. Back in the 2018 paradise fires in California, he thought, he thought Trump had been pretty helpful, but this time around, he wasn't. And Newsom had to kind of force his way into Trump's sphere in orbit in order to get some of the help that California needed. I think it does run a risk when you kind of intentionally mock and insult someone, especially as a Democratic governor. If you need to then turn around and ask that president for help, it could be problematic. On the other hand, Trump as president has pursued a scorched earth policy against just about every Democrat, every blue state, and every blue city that I can think of, regardless of whether or not the mayors and governors of those states have insulted him personally and gratuitously the way Governor Newsom has. I'm not sure in the end will make much of a difference, but it'll certainly be something to watch if there is another big national disaster in California that requires federal help.

[Tim Stenovec]

Fascinating stuff. I wish we had another 15, 20 minutes. Josh with you, that's always the case. Josh Green, National Correspondent, Bloomberg Business this is the COVID story of the issue new issue at Bloomberg Business Week. Find it on newsstands. It is on the Bloomberg [e-mail] his profile. So much detail. Love it.

[Carol Massar]

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[Tim Stenovec]

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[Chris Rouser]

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[Eric Schatzker]

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.

[Tim Stenovec]

Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a computing breakthrough from Google. When it comes to quantum computing, we check in with the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who is looking to make his mark in that space.

[Chris Rouser]

Plus Xanax in your ears, an all in one face fixer. Maybe some ketamine therapy. Those are just some cheat codes on maybe how to improve your overall wellness. It's courtesy of our Bloomberg Pursuits team.

[Tim Stenovec]

I'm just gonna stick to getting lots of sleep and drinking lots of water.

[Chris Rouser]

I think there's. Okay just to throw it out there. There's also, like the walking uphill treadmill.

[Tim Stenovec]

One that I love. No, but makes sense.

[Chris Rouser]

Love it.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, exactly. Love it. Exactly.

[Chris Rouser]

Just a little. Just a little preview of what's to come.

[Tim Stenovec]

All right. Love it. Love it. All right, first up this hour, addressing the future of work and how robots play into that. The New York Times reported this past week that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of big workplace shift, and that is replacing more than half a million jobs with robots. So the question will the future of work include robots or is it all hype? I mean, it already kind of includes robots, right?

[Chris Rouser]

How do you know I'm not one?

[Tim Stenovec]

I don't know. I did see you plug yourself in the other day.

[Chris Rouser]

Sometimes I feel. Sometimes I feel like it's neither here nor there. Well, here with more on what Amazon is up to is Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. Ty joined us from Amazon's delivering the future 2025 event out in California.

[Ty Brady]

We are our fourth delivering the future event here and there's a bunch of press that we have here. And we made a couple of big announcements in robotics. The first is in our manipulation robot that we call Blue Jay. And what Blue Jay. The way that you can think of that is you can take three assembly lines and put it in the same footprint of one. What it does is help eliminate the menial, the mundane, and the repetitive. And it could pick more than 70 of the inventory that we actually sell in our sortable network, which is a really big deal. I'm really proud of that. And I'll also say there's just something interesting about Bluejay as well, is as compared to our other bird manipulation systems, Cardinal, Sparrow, and Robin, that took us about three years to kind of design, deploy and get out to our frontline employees. We have actually done Bluejay with the power of AI in just over a year. So it's really have accelerated the pace of innovation.

[Chris Rouser]

I think what a lot of people think about Amazon and robots, I just want to jump in because we don't have a ton of time, but. And I want we'll get to some of the other announcements. They think about the Kiva systems robots. The big acquisition at the time, you know, 2012, that was a big acquisition for Amazon and they've seen pictures of the way that those can move large loads of things across warehouses. But if you were to go into a state of the art Amazon warehouse today, what would you see? That's. That's in addition to those Kiva robots.

[Ty Brady]

Yeah. In addition to the world's first goods to person fulfillment strategy, which was a really good idea where we have more than a million robots that we manufacture actually in Massachusetts doing that job every day you're going to see more of the unstructured fields, right. So you're going to see green robot that we call Proteus that can move big cargoes of packages to the right dock at the right time. You're going to see many more manipulation systems that they have in there, eliminating kind of the repetitive motions that we have. No one wants to lift a 50 pound box all day. Robin does that, Cardinal does that. Moving it into some of these Proteus bound carts that we have. You're going to see much more collaborative robotics. Right. So that's where we build our robotic systems to enable people to augment what people are capable of. And we really believe in the philosophy of, of people and machines working together. How can we build the tool set that enables our employees to do their job not only more efficiently but also with, with better safety in mind?

[Tim Stenovec]

All right, so there's this robot arm called Blue Jay. You just talked about it. You know, you guys are using this AI agent called Iluna. And then you're also working with augmented reality glasses to be worn by drivers in delivery trucks in the field. There's like so much going on. Step back for a moment because you guys have a lot of data. You look at what you're doing. I'm just curious. Investors who are thinking about Amazon and what you are doing, how do they think about the long term, like roi, return on investment. When it comes to the investment you guys make in robots, is the goal about labor efficiency, throughput speed or is it margin expansion kind of tie across your fulfillment operations? What is it?

[Ty Brady]

Yeah, well, definitely efficiency. We think about efficiencies and how can we gain efficiency through all the chain of our fulfillment processes? For sure. And you mentioned data. And data is the fuel for AI systems. Data has allowed us to bring, think of the body of being our robotics, but bring the mind to Robotics allowing it to be more adaptable, more fluid. You can almost think of this as the ability to pour our robotic systems into any size building, any scale of building to amplify what our employees are already doing. We want to give them an amazing tool set. And we see that when we do that, we're more productive. Right. When you do robotics. Right when you do collaborative robotics where you need both people and machines doing what they do best and they do different things better, that it allows you to be more productive. And when you're more productive, that allows you to invest more in people. We've upskilled more than 700,000 of our employees. Employees, which is a great stat. And also in our robotics, we've expanded from the KIVA days. We've expanded from just a movement solution to now movement and mobility and sortation and storage and perception systems, packing systems that have really changed the game for our customers. That's a big deal to us.

[Tim Stenovec]

But Ty, you know, will, you need less workers And I gotta bring it up, you know, the Times had a story out. They talked about interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents that they saw. That it reveals that your execs think that the company's on the cusp of its next big workplace shift. I'm reading from the dimes and replacing more than half a million jobs with robots. So, you know, we know, things change. I'm not in a horse and buggy anymore. I don't make things piecemeal. I get it. I don't get tons of faxes and I don't get tons of pieces of physical mail. Thank God things change. Having said that is Amazon. Do you guys believe that you're on the cusp of a workplace shift and that you won't need as many workers because the advancements in robotics, well, there's.

[Ty Brady]

No doubt that things change. I mean, we're actually really proud of that. And Amazon is that we avoid stasis at all cost. We change and we adapt and the nature of tasks definitely changes. And there's no doubt about that. We are laser focused on efficiencies inside of our buildings. But when it comes to that article, that article was speculating 10 years out, right? That's a 10 year speculation. And it's hard to say what's going to happen in the next 10 years. But I can tell you what happened in the last 10 years. The last 10 years, which is when we seriously invested in robotics, that we created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and new job types. And there's been no employer in the United States that has employed more people than Amazon in 10 years. I mean, and that's the power of efficiencies. And building your robots in a way that's applied and real, that actually augments the human potential.

[Tim Stenovec]

All right, My brothers say I'm like a dog with a bone. So wait, so does that mean 10 years out it could be less jobs or we just don't know or you don't think that's the case?

[Ty Brady]

Well, you have to think about, I mean there's jobs and there's tasks, right? So of course we're changing the nature of tasks. Like I mentioned, very bullish on eliminating every menial, mundane and repetitive job out there. Nobody wants to do that. So we are going to Change those tasks 100%. But we can. Again, as history has shown, we continue to create jobs, right, with the goal of two things. Can you have it all? Can you be more productive, which means more efficiency, and can you also create a safer environment for our employees? And we're actually doing both. That's what history has shown in the last 10 years. We have better than 30% reduction in our overall recordable injury rate over the last five years because of our robotics. And also much more efficient. For example, our latest generation fulfillment center in Shreveport is 25% more efficient. You can have it all, but you have to build your robotics in the right way that empowers people.

[Chris Rouser]

We're speaking with Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. When we think about hiring for these one off or seasonal events like the holiday season or Amazon Prime Day, I'm wondering how you're putting pencil to paper right now and thinking about those numbers and to what extent automation has reduced Amazon's, Amazon's dependency on seasonal or hourly labor for holidays, for Prime Day. What does that look like? Or what will that look like this year, next year?

[Ty Brady]

Well, it's the same philosophy of empowering employees, whether they're, they're temporary or the full time employees with the, the world's best machines that help them do their job. It's the same philosophy. I'm really proud of the fact that this year we're going to offer more than 250,000 temporary jobs for our employees to come in during the holiday season. Those are good paying jobs. Really happy about that, really pleased with that. And I'm really pleased with the work that our women and men have done in the robotics field, designing and pioneering these new physical AI systems that help them do their jobs better.

[Tim Stenovec]

I got to say one thing that I'VE been thinking a lot about is what's going on overseas, whether it's China, whether it's Japan. Bloomberg has done some reporting about service industries in Japan because they have a labor shortage, that they are leaning increasingly on robotics. Have you been over there and looking at what they're doing? And I'm just curious if you're seeing some things that are pretty impressive and that the US As a creator of things or its role in the robotics industry, has to keep a watch on what's going on in other countries.

[Ty Brady]

Yeah, I think it's easy, especially in robotics, to get distracted about what other people are doing. I think anybody can make a YouTube video. I think anybody can pop in and overflight something. But if you come into our world, our world is all about application. Final thoughts is that robotics, when done the right way, when you reframe your relationship with machines, you can enable more productivity, create greater efficiencies, and create a more safer environment for employees. And this collaborative mindset that we've had, that we've done for the last 10 years really does make the day.

[Tim Stenovec]

Ty Brady over at Amazon, so appreciate it.

[Eric Schatzker]

This is the Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

[Chris Rouser]

With the Bloomberg Business app. You can also meet Listen live on.

[Eric Schatzker]

Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa.

[Ty Brady]

Play Bloomberg 11:30.

[Tim Stenovec]

Some news this past week in the world of quantum computing, Google ran an algorithm on its Willow quantum computing chip that can be repeated on similar platforms and outperform classical supercomputers. A breakthrough, it said, clears a path for useful applications of quantum technology within five years.

[Chris Rouser]

The folks in Chattanooga, Tennessee have been thinking about quantum computing for years. The first commercially available quantum network in the US was established there. That was back in 2022. We should also note that last year Bloomberg Philanthropies named Chattanooga one of 25 cities selected for its American Sustainable Cities program. Bloomberg Philanthropies is founded and supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg lp.

[Tim Stenovec]

Now Chattanooga Sustainable Cities program still ongoing. And so we wanted an update on their quantum network. Back with us was Tim Kelly, mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Also Janet Rayberg, president and CEO elect of epb, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga. That company, it provides energy, Internet, phone and more in and around Chattanooga. The environment today, how is it in terms of running your city? Being a mayor in a political environment, that's a tough one. An economic environment, that may be tough.

[Tim Kelly]

Yeah, it's tough but, you know, running cities is an eminently practical exercise. And I will say, you know, our, our mayor's races are nonpartisan. They always have been. And I stayed in that lane. Again, I mean, I'm not here to catalog my political beliefs. They're, they're pretty confusing to most people anyway. I'd say if, you know, Republicans think I'm a Democrat and Democrats think I'm a Republican, I'm probably doing a pretty good job. So I, you know, I look, that has served me well in this environment because again, I believe, as does a lot of folks at Bloomberg, as do rather, but that cities are really the foundation of our economy. That's where 90% of the GDP is generated, where all innovations generated. So I'm focused on whatever is best for Chattanooga so I can work and have managed to work with people on both sides of the aisle and, you know, in the best interest of my city.

[Chris Rouser]

Do you, do you find yourself getting pulled into the social issues that seem to define our era right now, the stuff that does dominate cable news, whether you're talking about the right or the left?

[Tim Kelly]

Yeah, I mean, the, I found myself, you know, I find people attempting to pull me into those, but I think I've gotten pretty good at wrestling my way out of them and trying to just translate back into simple terms. You know, is this what's best for the city? You know, does it work or does it not work? I mean, sometimes you can't avoid those political issues. It's not as though, you know, I don't have my own beliefs. But again, I think you just as a mayor, have to take a thoroughly practical approach to what's going to work best for the city.

[Tim Stenovec]

All right, so when you think about what's best for the city, let's talk about that. Because you are on the ground talking to people what they need, what you need to make sure you have a good economy, strong economy, not just today, but in the future, that quantum computing. Bet you made it back in 2022. Tell us about, kind of give us an update or for someone who didn't hear the conversation when you were last on with this, kind of where you guys are with us.

[Tim Kelly]

So I'll give you the Cliff Notes version, which is that, you know, we took advantage of a large federal low interest loan way back when, during Clinton and Gore, to put in a giant municipal fiber network. And that gave us the first and fastest municipal fiber network in the country. We had a lot of folks move in during COVID because, you know, you can get one gig of symmetrical speed for 67 bucks a month. Pretty great. You can get 25 gigs of speed at your house in Chattanooga. But it turns out that you can also do quantum computing on large loops of dark fiber. One particular type that uses photons and trapped ions, which is where IonQ began to become interested in Chattanooga. So we opened, and Janet can talk more about it, the first commercially available quantum network. And it is starting to attract a lot of information, investment and attention.

[Chris Rouser]

So Janet, come on in here because one thing that we're trying to understand is what the practical applications of quantum technology are. We spoke with Ed Ludlow, the coast of our Bloomberg Tech program a little earlier and Carol agreed. I mean, you thought health care first. He said health care also this is one area of application, but it's still kind of the world where we're thinking about what this tech can do, not necessarily seeing what it can do. Have we seen any material things be developed as a result of this technology and what you're doing in Chattanooga?

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, so IonQ has been working on a lot of different type of application with different industry. And so we were interested because we're an electric company and so we have all the data for them to help us optimize our grid. So we're doing a partnership actually with IonQ, Nvidia and Oak Ridge National Lab as a four way partnership to help use hybrid computing until quantum computing can get to where it needs to be to help us with some grid optimization problem that we can't solve today in terms of energy demands. Tell us about that. That is like what you are seeing frontline and center. We, you know, the AI conversation narrative has moved from the spend and chips and so on and so forth like to basically, all right, do we have enough power to do all of this? And there is certainly a power scramble among the big hyperscalers. What are you seeing on that front? Yeah, and I think that's a nationwide issue with the energy problem. And as I get an energy problem, right?

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah.

[Tim Stenovec]

I mean as AI gets better and better, the more energy that it's going to need. And so that's where quantum comes in. Very important to the, to the part of that solution is that quantum computer, once it gets to the phase that it needs to be, is it can solve things at a much faster rate, which uses less energy than a classical computer because it can do things in parallel versus sequential. As a classical computer today, where do.

[Chris Rouser]

You get the energy that you sell to people in and around Chattanooga?

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, so we buy it from tva Tennessee Valley Authority. And so they generate the power and we distribute it to our customers.

[Chris Rouser]

How do they generate it?

[Tim Stenovec]

They have a diverse mix of portfolio from hydro, different types of renewables to natural gas. And so, you know, they're continuing to look at other options.

[Chris Rouser]

Do you see that mixed up? Go ahead.

[Tim Kelly]

No, I was just going to say they're also very much on the front foot in terms of advanced nuclear.

[Chris Rouser]

Do you, do you see that mix? This is to either of you, do you see that mix changing and focusing less on renewables, more on nuclear. Nuclear as a result of the changes out of Washington?

[Tim Kelly]

I think you're going to see that. You know, and again, regardless of your political affiliation, if you just kind of look at the math, there's. There's no way around nuclear.

[Josh Green]

Right.

[Tim Kelly]

I do think they are giving us or EPB more latitude to generate some of our own power because of the anticipated demands. And I think we still have a lot of headway on solar. So I mean, I think we'll look at. And we've got a lot of things we can do with hydro. We're going to actually start using biogas at our wastewater treatment plant to generate electricity. So we're looking at any and all ways that we can generate.

[Tim Stenovec]

Because my understanding, when we talk about SMRs, the small modular reactors, it's 1015.

[Chris Rouser]

Will Wade us. Will Wade reminds us who covers this here at Bloomberg News, that we are not there right now.

[Tim Stenovec]

It's a while we are not.

[Tim Kelly]

But we have a pretty significant nuclear footprint with TVA already in the Tennessee.

[Tim Stenovec]

What would you tell people who are still kind of nervous when it comes to the nuclear footprint that you guys have? You know, but, you know, I do know fine people do it, okay, do it across the country or do it in another country. But you know, the feeling here in the United States.

[Chris Rouser]

I mean, I grew up next to a nuclear power plant. I'm fine, right? I'm a little weird.

[Josh Green]

I'm a little weird.

[Tim Stenovec]

What would you say about that?

[Tim Kelly]

Well, I mean, the technology has come a long, long way. Yeah, that's what I would say. I mean, I'd say go do your research, do your homework.

[Josh Green]

They're not.

[Tim Kelly]

I mean, that's why we have these discussions. That's why we have the fears. But, but there's just not. Absent fusion, I will say the state and the University of Tennessee is also working very, very hard on fusion technology. Absent that breakthrough, there's really not a way.

[Tim Stenovec]

That's what I'm waiting for.

[Chris Rouser]

When we talk, we're talking about quantum today and we're talking about Google, we're talking about Silicon Valley. How do you get people to think about Chattanooga, Tennessee and not Silicon Valley, not New York City, not Austin, Texas when they're thinking about where they want to live to have a job in technology coming on.

[Tim Kelly]

Bloomberg is a great first step. Now we, I mean look, we talk about this all the time. It's a, it's a mid sized southern city with kind of a funny name and there's a bit of cognitive dissonance there. So you know, look, we are out telling the story. I mean I was just in Detroit last week at a sustainable mobility conference. We were at the Quantum World Congress. I mean at some point it's, you know, the evidence is mounting. We are, it's not just smoke. We are doing the work and it's working.

[Chris Rouser]

Is it, is it? If you build it, they will come mentality?

[Tim Kelly]

I think so.

[Chris Rouser]

Have they come?

[Tim Kelly]

Yes, they have come. I mean again, we had, you know, we now have independent verification that, you know, 10, 12,000 people moved to Chattanooga during the pandemic. Very, you know, degreed, talented people that could work remotely. And I think again our job, my job as mayor is to help break that glass ceiling so that we have the level of business investment and again can build up our academic horsepower to be able to sustain those knowledge economy jobs.

[Tim Stenovec]

Janet, you know, when we think about quantum computing, we spend so much time just talking about, you know, large language models and generative AI and kind of where that's going. Gentic AI. You just talked about the power aspect or the use of less power when it comes to quantum computing. But I mean, should our conversation be shifting in terms of what we are having for an investing audience when we talk just so much about AI generally versus quantum? Well, I think that with quantum computer, when it gets to, you know, the level it needs to be, you can team it up with AI and get even more powerful algorithm that comes out of it to be able to solve more complex problems. So I don't think it's one or the other. I think it's going to be a combined of, you know, how do you combine that and use less energy and be able to build algorithm more efficiently? So help me because when we talk about the data center build out, so does that go hand in hand with the build out of quantum computing?

[Carol Massar]

Is that part of it?

[Tim Stenovec]

So right now it's, you know, the, we're building a quantum computer to kind of learn more and be able to help accelerate and advance that technology with companies like IonQ. And I think once it gets to where it needs to be, then it will. We can team it up with AI. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Kelly]

And many of the implications with Quantum.

[Tim Stenovec]

I'm asking basic questions because I feel like we spend so much time talking about the AI, but this is something that increasingly is coming into the dialogue.

[Ty Brady]

Yeah.

[Tim Kelly]

Now I'm just going to say the logistics is a huge vertical in Chattanooga as well. And I think the implications for Quantum, for logistics have huge implications for lower power demand and a lower carbon footprint.

[Chris Rouser]

Right.

[Tim Kelly]

Because you're going to waste a lot less time getting stuff from A to B.

[Tim Stenovec]

Right.

[Tim Kelly]

With. With route optimization we're going to have.

[Tim Stenovec]

To do because we talk about like the power drag or the power demand and the cost. Mayor Kelly, I'd be remiss not to ask you. You are trying to build a city where everyone has an opportunity to thrive and prosper. We talk so much about the K shaped economy. There's a lot of people who aren't thriving and prospering in this environment. 35 seconds. What's a message to send to everybody?

[Tim Kelly]

Well, we are working very hard to reform our workforce development system so that we, so we don't leave folks behind. And I think we have some significant opportunities to do that. And we are in the midst of doing that. Again, it's tough out there, and I think it's going to fall more to the state government and to philanthropy, frankly, to kind of take up the slack in the meantime. But I mean, we have to play the long game. And the long game is we need some significant change to the way that we do education and workforce development in this country so that we don't leave people behind.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, it does feel like in terms of education, we're starting to think about that. Come back soon. I'd love to kind of continue this conversation if we, if we may, Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Janet Reberg, she's the president, CEO elective epb, joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.

[Carol Massar]

Okay. Creativity and organizing ideas don't always go together, but Canva brings them together seamlessly and it adds so much. It's like this. You've got a vision, great idea for, let's say, a presentation. The presentation in your head is a 12 out of 10 standing ovations for you and your boss. Raises all around. But turning the presentation in your mind into an actual presentation, something else entirely. There are like two dozen complicated apps involved. Not enough time. And to be honest, you don't really know what you're doing with Canva, you can bring all your ideas together in one place with one app. Use AI to speed things up and bring other people in to help because teamwork makes the team work. I might have gotten that wrong. Point is, your presentation will look great. You'll look great. Everybody will look great. And isn't that what you're after? There's a reason 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Canva. Canva lets you bring your ideas to life as fast as you can think of them. Put imagination to [e-mail] how can you.

[Tim Stenovec]

Grow your business from idea to industry leader? Bring your vision to life with smart business buying tools and technology from Amazon Business. From fast free shipping to in depth buying insights and automated purchase approvals, they deliver everything you need to achieve your goals. It's not easy to stand out from the crowd. Simplify how you stock up to get ahead. Go to amazonbusiness.com for support.

[Chris Rouser]

So have you heard the story about the prescription plan? With savings automatically built in, it's where a family of any size can feel confident the cost of their medication won't hold them back. Go to CMK Co Stories to learn how CBS Caremark helps members save just by being members. That's CMK Co Staries.

[Eric Schatzker]

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the blue Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.

[Tim Stenovec]

Ever felt like being well has turned into another job? From health trackers reporting our every step and snore to pricey longevity clubs and celebrity endorsed supplements, I gotta say, Tim, sometimes it feels like protecting your overall wellness can be a lot of work and really hard.

[Chris Rouser]

And also a little expensive.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah. Ka ching. Ka ching.

[Chris Rouser]

Okay. Thankfully we can cheat. Or maybe boosting if that makes us feel better. Yeah, it's boosting the word cheat. I don't know.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, so harsh.

[Chris Rouser]

I don't know.

[Tim Stenovec]

Be kind to yourself.

[Chris Rouser]

It's okay to cheat. They're cheat Days. With us with a list of wellness hacks to try is the Bloomberg Pursuits Editor at large, Chris Rouser. It is the Pursuits cover story of the October issue of BusinessWeek magazine. It's available now online on the terminal and on newsstands. Before we get into some of the individual cheats, I already have my favorite.

[Tim Stenovec]

Wait, can we just say, first of all, Chris, you look marvelous.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Oh my gosh. Thank you.

[Tim Stenovec]

You're very welcome.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

I've been cheating.

[Tim Stenovec]

Now go ahead. What's your favorite.

[Chris Rouser]

I just want to talk about the overall tone of this and how it all came together, because I think, is it because there's a moment happening with wellness, or is it because we're all getting older?

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Oh, I think both. Okay. Both of those things. The reason we. The reason I wanted to look at it and have us do a package on it was I had a couple injuries earlier this year where I had a foot surgery, you guys remember? And I fractured my elbow and I couldn't work out. And the three of us I know are fitness people. And when you cannot work out, you become mentally unwell.

[Tim Stenovec]

Very true.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

And so I just. And when I finally was able to work out again, you know, I'm in my mid-40s. It's, like, hard to get back in shape, put muscle on, lose weight, whatever. And I was like, you know what? I really wish I had a little cheat. Something where I could, like, really get back in shape faster. And it turns out there is one. There is a stim suit called the Catalyst suit, which is basically like one of those as seen on TV ABS app from the 90s where you put it on your whole body and it electrocutes you while you're working out and it activates more of your muscles.

[Tim Stenovec]

Wait, electrocutes you? Did it hurt?

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Hurting is not the right word. It feels. It's like a buzz. It's a very intense buzz. And it can be quite uncomfortable. Not in a painful way, like I.

[Chris Rouser]

Said, but no pain, no gain.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yeah, you really gotta get used to it. So there's this suit that activates your muscles, like supercharged your workouts, and actually can get you back in shape faster. And so once I started doing that, I was like, well, what other cheats are there? And I got everyone on the team looking for different cheats for wellness, fitness, eating, sleeping, all that.

[Chris Rouser]

Well, I do want to say, if you want to know more about the stim suit, the Catalyst. Catalyst is the company that owns it. Brendan Kennedy is the CEO of the company that owns the stim suit that Chris is talking about. We had an extended conversation with him and Chris a few weeks ago. You can check it out on our podcast feed to learn more. Little spoiler. Chris says it actually works.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

I know it works.

[Tim Stenovec]

I know.

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah. Okay, let's talk about some of these other tricks. Some of them involve needles.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

That's true.

[Chris Rouser]

Some of them involve treadmills. I want to start with my favorite. It's old school. It's walking uphill.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Rouser]

Because, you know, we think about cheats this one doesn't even seem like a cheat to me because this is like, keeps you in shape, this is what you do. But apparently you can do this three or four days a week and you're not going to feel the effects of like having gone on a run or something.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yeah. So a lot of these cheats are things where you still have to put in work. So like with the stim suit, the catalyst suit, you have to exercise, but just as you exercise while you're getting electrocuted, so it works better. And walking uphill is an old school thing that like celebrity trainers tell people to do because it burns calories a lot, but it also doesn't wear you out. So if you're doing. If you need to save your energy for big lifts because you're trying to become like a marvel superhero, you don't want to be running a lot. And that also gets in the way of building muscle. Whereas walking uphill is great, it's not too strenuous, but that's like really the best way to burn fat.

[Tim Stenovec]

I love that. I also like the soul renewal. I feel like, you know, when I think about massages, I'm like, you're going to do my feet. Right. So it's. But this is so easy. Like if you do pt, they often say, roll your foot on a ball.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yeah, this is just rolling your foot on a ball. Not only only does it make your feet feel better, which actually makes your whole. Your whole walking around feel better, but it actually can calm you down. It can. It's actually something that can sort of soothe your mind.

[Tim Stenovec]

Tim, I think we should get a collection of balls for our team.

[Chris Rouser]

Okay. Yeah. Do you think that'll work to calm you down? You think it'll do anything?

[Tim Stenovec]

If not, we could just throw it in mind.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

That's true. The idea of this package was there's so much information being thrown at us, like you guys said earlier, where there's like a million Manosphere podcasts talking about, about sleep, about eating, about when you eat about just every little supplement you should take. And there's so many supplements. And, you know, BusinessWeek has covered Brian Johnson, the never die guy who wants to have the sort of metabolism of an 18 year old and has like used his son's platelets injected into him. Like, it gets really crazy and it gets really expensive. And so we were looking for things that are just easy that you can do that actually make a difference.

[Tim Stenovec]

That alone, to me, just men getting so involved, like women, we kind of have always been obsessive about this stuff, but men really getting into it and thinking about it.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yes, because it's very quantified. It's very. It becomes a hobby. Yeah, it's competitive.

[Ty Brady]

Yeah.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

It just has really, like been attractive to men for a while. This, for past few years.

[Tim Stenovec]

Got another one that you like.

[Chris Rouser]

Well, I want, I tease that we were talking a little bit about needles and the peptides thing kind of got my attention because in. In endurance athletics, this is getting attention right now too, along with like boosting testosterone, stuff that in the past has been sort of dubious in terms of like competitive rules and what has been allowed in terms of anti doping. What's up with peptides?

[Gracelyn Baskin]

So peptides are basically long strings of amino acids that tell your molecule, tell your cells what to do and how to behave. And so for like testosterone, for example, you know, you used to get testosterone injected, just like straight up testosterone. Now people are injecting things like Salmorelin, which tells your body to make testosterone, which actually is, which is better. Because if you, if your body gets used to getting testosterone injected, it won't make it on its own. So, you know, there's, there's peptides that will do everything for make your skin more tan, you know, make you sleep better, all this stuff. And then Wegovy and Ozempic, those are peptides, which I did not realize.

[Tim Stenovec]

Yeah, that was kind of eye opening for me.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

So. Yeah, so there's a lot of kind of off label, on label things that are going around. And the big most popular one is NAD or NAD plus. And doctors caution that when you're getting this from like an Internet company that, you know, has doctors, you still really don't necessarily know what you're getting if you're ordering this stuff online, especially if you're ordering it in a more. Even more sketchy way. So if you want to get into this stuff, definitely talk to a doctor who knows you and that you work with.

[Tim Stenovec]

What does the FDA say about all this? I mean, obviously with WeGovy and those, the GLP1s, they're regulated. But I'm just curious.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yeah. Because of changes in rules that happened during, during COVID basically where people can deliver this kind of stuff online, the regulation is a lot less. It's just like a lot less tight.

[Tim Stenovec]

I always think about peptides. I think because it's a lot of like cosmetic stuff has peptides, Right?

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tim Stenovec]

So this is maybe like just injecting. What.

[Chris Rouser]

Speaking of tight, how do we tighten up that face? I didn't know you could do these massages or these sculpts that actually make your face look different.

[Josh Green]

Different.

[Chris Rouser]

I thought this was like, I thought we all had to go. The what's. Who's the. Who's the Kardashian who got the amazing deep plain facial. Yeah, that's what Chris. Yeah.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Kris Jenner. Okay, that is not a big cheat. That's not a little cheat.

[Chris Rouser]

Okay. Because that's expensive.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

That's like face off from John Travolta, Nicolas Cage level. What we're talking about is a fascia facial, which is when you go in and somebody basically massages the face. Your face. And the fascia is, is the lining of your muscles and they can kind of rearrange how your face is. And you know, if you have a big event or like your wedding or something, you can go in and for a couple days you'll look snatched.

[Tim Stenovec]

Come on. Now. I'm gonna watch. I'm gonna be looking over at Tim and he's gonna be like doing these weird things to his face.

[Chris Rouser]

Apparently they also like can put on gloves and massage your inside your mouth.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yeah, that's part of it.

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

And that can also help with like if you have pain with TMJ and stuff, stuff like that.

[Tim Stenovec]

Okay, all right, well, listen, sometimes an old thing is actually good. Maybe not. You don't feel that way about your body and your face, but when it comes to worn barber jackets.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Oh yeah. So this is, it's fall. Fall was late to arrive in New York City, but it finally came and it's cool. And that means it's barber coat season, which is all the finance bros and gals and my mom throw on their Chris, guilty as charged their barber coats. And you know, I always remind my friends every fall that you can get your barber coat rewaxed. So barber coat is like a, is a wax cotton, mostly waterproof jacket that people used to wear for hunting in like the uk. Prince Charles is always wearing one or King Charles rather. And so you can get it re waxed so that it will last longer. And people keep own these coats for decades because they, you can sort of, you can keep re upping the waxing and they last. And then the longer that you've had it, the better it looks because it's like worn in. It's got this great patina. So I started looking at other companies that sort of offer those services so that your clothes can age and look cool and old.

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah, well, speaking of that, you talk about how increasingly Gen Z is looking for stuff that is Aged and well worn. This idea that it's been loved in the past and barber's actually getting in on that by buying back old coats and fixing them up and reselling them.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Yeah. So if your coat has gotten too worn and you, and you don't want to, you don't want it anymore. I really want to start over. They'll buy it back for you and give you a store credit and they'll deconstruct the coat and they'll reuse it for other coats. And so now they sell, they have a whole re loved program where they'll sell coats that are kind of patched up, mixed and matched coats. Sometimes they have the tartan pattern on the outside. They can look really funky and they sell them at a lower price because they're sort of recycled items, upcycled items, and Gen Z really likes that and they find that they get a lot of younger shoppers of kind coming in to get that.

[Tim Stenovec]

But I was surprised that you say the prices start at like 325. So they're not like, they're not cheap. They're not cheap. Like even the, the recycled I have to say.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

But that's what like a Patagonia cost. I mean that's what a jacket.

[Tim Stenovec]

No, exactly, exactly. But I see that in a younger generation. I see with my daughter, like she likes to go whether it's consignment or like stuff that's been already a little bit around the block and a little bit of wear and tear and some things are sometimes really nice.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

Well, you think about resale sites which are huge and for a long time it was like, I gotta find things that are in mint condition on the real real. Like I want this bag that looks like no one uses it. And it's changing a bit. And now it's, now it's like, oh, I want to find something that looks like it's been loved and it's been worn because we always want, you know, our jeans to look kind of beat up. But if you get jeans from a store that are like pre beat up, it looks really fake. It looks like a factory. Someone went and scratched like the lines in the lap. But if you go to Levi's, they buy back jeans and then they resell old jeans and like what's better than a beat up pair of Levi's? Like, and you know, Gen Z's and younger people are really into that and.

[Tim Stenovec]

Really good for the environment as well.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

And that's part of it. They're very into sustainability.

[Tim Stenovec]

Didn't you just buy a recycled, not recycled, an old watch and you actually, I love this. As we wrap up here, one of.

[Gracelyn Baskin]

My favorite watches is this old Gerard Perregaux triple calendar, which is a very old fashioned kind of watch. And like the day and the date are so tiny it's hard to read. But it looks great. And I, and I got it fixed up because it was parts of it weren't working and they were like, okay, do you want us to polish it and make it, you know, make it new and replace the gold here? And I was like, no, do not polish it. I want it exactly as it was. I just want it to work. And that's a thing in watches now. People want it. They don't want things polished, they don't want things updated. They want it to be exactly as it was.

[Chris Rouser]

Let the record show Chris is wearing not one but two watches right now. He's got the, the analog on his left wrist and the Apple watch digital on his right.

[Tim Stenovec]

He just wants to be balanced. That's what it's all about. Love these cheats. Love you Chris. Thank you so much. Really appreciate, really appreciate it. Bloomberg Pursuits Editor at Large Chris Rouser.

[Chris Rouser]

And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg businessweek from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us.

[Tim Stenovec]

Be sure to tune in to Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Monday through Friday starting at 2pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio and on Sirius XM Channel 121. You can listen to us on Apple CarPlay and Android. It is free in the Apple App Store or on Google Play.

[Chris Rouser]

You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts and we're simulcast on Bloomberg originals, available at bloomberg.com originals and streaming platforms like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV plus and more.

[Tim Stenovec]

Find our Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast at bloomberg.com, apple or wherever you get your podcasts. The latest edition of the magazine available on newsstands [e-mail] and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Carol Massar.

[Chris Rouser]

And I'm Tim Stanweck. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone.

[Eric Schatzker]

This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily.

[Chris Rouser]

Podcast available on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get.

[Eric Schatzker]

Your podcasts listen live weekday afternoons from.

[Ty Brady]

2 to 5pm Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the.

[Chris Rouser]

Iheartradio app, TuneIn and the Bloomberg Business App.

[Eric Schatzker]

You can also watch us live every.

[Chris Rouser]

Week, weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

[Tim Stenovec]

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