‘The dollar loves you’

Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser says clients who have been waiting on the sidelines to do deals are getting ready to move on mergers and acquisitions. Those who were awaiting an “unlocking” before embarking on M&A are now starting to ramp up plans in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, Fraser said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand,” she said. “It is game on and the clients are on the front foot.” The banking sector for one has been boosted by the prospect of a bonfire of regulations under the incoming Trump administration. Fraser said last week that Citigroup expects tighter capital regulations to be significantly eased—if they’re enacted at all. —David E. Rovella

Some of Trump’s key advisers are said to be pushing Scott Bessent, who runs macro hedge fund Key Square Group, as their pick to serve as Treasury secretary. Bessent’s contributions during the campaign, from fundraising to helping write economic speeches and draft policy proposals, and his very public praise of his would-be boss, are said to have earned him the favor of the Republican president-elect. “The dollar loves you,” Bessent said he told Trump in a recent visit.

The text to Elon Musk: a picture of giant scissors. Musk’s text back: a picture of a sword. The person on the other end: Howard Lutnick—Wall Street billionaire, “MAGA” believer and head-hunter-in-chief to Trump. “Me, Elon Musk and Trump are going to figure it out,” Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, proclaimed to a podcaster shortly before Trump won. By “it” Lutnick was likely referring to the $2 trillion US deficit, among other things. He and Musk say they’re ready to gut federal agencies, disband entire departments and fire government experts in favor of a tide of Trump loyalists. Congress, however, rules the roost when it comes to many of their plans, not to mention government funding priorities and entitlement programs—the keys to any substantial budget cuts. And if there’s one thing Congress is full of, it’s people who see cutting Social Security or Medicare as political suicide.

Warren Buffett created Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B shares almost 30 years ago to stymie money managers who sought to split the high-priced conglomerate’s stock. One of South Korea’s largest retail brokerages now plans to package the Class B shares into an exchange-traded fund turbocharged with derivatives, another move that Buffett might not like. Kiwoom Securities teamed up with Milwaukee-based Tidal Investments to form an ETF designed to provide 200% of the daily performance of Berkshire.

The Biden administration sidestepped its own 30-day deadline for Israel to provide significantly more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip or face a weapons cutoff, despite aid groups warning of famine for 1.8 million people the United Nations says are already experiencing “extremely critical” levels of hunger. On Tuesday, eight groups including Oxfam and Save the Children said Israel has failed to address the specific criteria laid out by the US, and that Israel’s actions actually have “dramatically worsened” the situation in Gaza, where more than 43,000 have been killed in its war with Hamas, including at least 33 in the past 24 hours, according to the Associated Press. In Lebanon, where Israeli attacks on residential areas have reportedly killed more than 3,000 people, strikes overnight reportedly killed 33. Trump has indicated he’s not inclined to pressure Israel over the war, begun by the Hamas attack in October 2023 that killed 1,200 Israelis, and on Tuesday announced he will nominate former Arizona Governor Mike Huckabee, a pro-Israel hardliner, to be ambassador to Israel.

President Joe Biden is setting out plans for the US to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050, with demand climbing for the technology as a round-the-clock source of carbon-free power. And it’s possible that his successor may not seek to torpedo it. Under a roadmap unveiled Tuesday, the US would deploy an additional 200 gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity by mid-century through the construction of new reactors, plant restarts and upgrades to existing facilities. In the short term, the White House aims to have 35 gigawatts of new capacity operating in just over a decade.

But any policy bonhomie between the two US administrations is likely to be limited. In the realm of transportation, for example, the change in priorities is likely to be stark. Over the last four years, Biden has distributed billions of dollars through two of his landmark legislative victories, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, while pursuing high-profile policy goals like building high-speed rail, reducing traffic deaths, cutting transportation-generated emissions and helping transit agencies recover from Covid. Project 2025, the far-right handbook widely seen as the Trump 2.0 bible, describes eliminating funding for biking and walking paths, ending support for transit expansions and replacing many federal programs with block grants to the states.

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