Daybreak Weekend: AI's Job Impact, NATO Summit, China Eyes New Eco Data

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This is Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend, our global look at the
top stories in the coming week from our Daybreak anchors
all around the world. Straight Ahead on the program, a
look at the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor force.
I'm Nathan Hager in Washington.
I'm Caroline hetgehere in London, where we're looking ahead to
a key NATO summit in Turkey.
Nathan, I'm Doug Christner, looking at whether price pressures in
China's economy are sustainable.
That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend on Bloomberg
eleven three yoh New York, Bloomberg ninety nine to one, Washington, DC,
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Good day to you. I'm Nathan Hager. We begin today's
program with a look at the impact of artificial intelligence
in the US labor force. And it's still early days
in the debate over how much this rapidly developing technology
will disrupt the job market. But we are starting to
see the impact in the economic data. Bloomberg's Maya Prakash
has been following this and is here with me now,
so great to speak with you, Maya on the Daybreak
Weekend program. So where are we seeing AI show up
in the data.
Well, we're starting to see the effects in finance and information,
which continue to be a drag of around twenty five
thousand jobs on total hiring growth in the US. The
financial activities sector is a concerning week spot. It's still
down around eighty two thousand jobs over the last six months,
while information posted another week month as well at sixty
eight thousand jobs decline over six months. This month's jobs
are showed a weaker labor market for a variety of reasons,
including a downturn in leisure and hospitality, But the underlying
story in finance and tech remains unchanged, which is that
they're two sectors that will be particularly affected by AI
because of their workforce composition and the nature of their tasks.
Yeah, it's really interesting to hear this start to show
up when we've heard from so many bank CEOs talking
about using artificial intelligence to sort of get rid of
some of those as they well at least one CEO
put it lower level human capital. So is this the
start of a trend? Can we say that at this
point you.
Could say that. I think you can say this, particularly
in the finance sector, which is about three times of
the information sector and a workforce that comprises a lot
of low paid and routine administrative work. We found that
around twenty five percent of roles in financial activities are
administrative ones, from service representatives, insurance claims processors, loans processing
and that sort of thing. These are exactly the kinds
of jobs that the BLS expects AI to automate first.
So we're expecting a broader trend line over the years.
And does this sort of feed into what we saw
in the latest non farm payrolls report in terms of
the downward revisions to the prior months. Is that what's
showing up in financials and it as well?
Absolutely so. The revision story was more in other sectors,
especially in leisure and hospitality. Our financial activities and information
chart didn't change much. The revisions weren't a particularly large
factor in the underlying trend of job losses.
So what's the trend line? Can we talk about a
trend line at this point about where AI disruption could
go from here.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Well there's a real question, right and we have
to sort of break it down by sector. In the
information sector, you have jobs like software engineers and computer
programmers that make up around fifteen percent of employment and
are on the higher paid side at around one hundred
and sixty dollars one hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually.
These are jobs that might actually be augmented by AI,
while you might have sort of lower level layoffs. It
remains a little bit unclear and difficult to measure whether
these kinds of roles will be augmented and made more
valuable and more productive because of advancements in AI, or
whether they'll be automated away. Where we actually are expecting
to see a larger trend is in these sort of
administrative and office roles. Insurance within the financial activities category
posted a large decline in May. We're expecting sort of
more lower level and administrative jobs in the financial activity
sector to see a decline, and then of course in
entry level jobs as well.
One of the big promises of artificial intelligence from the
technologies boosters is that for all the jobs that might
be disrupted by the technology. There are going to be
new ones to take their places. Are we starting to
see that in the data at this point or is
it still too early at It's.
A little early to tell. And one thing I would
also add is that in terms of these overall headcount reductions,
it's also hard to tell whether the headcount reductions are
a result of jobs themselves being automated or a result
of sort of a reallocation of resources. What I mean
by that is, you know, companies invest across finance and technology,
investing in AI and making capex investments at huge rates
and so having to cut labor costs as a result.
That's not necessarily the same thing as these jobs being
automated away. So I think that there's an important distinction
to be made there. And then in terms of you know,
new job creations, the best place to see that is
ongoing gains in non residential construction. Other data out this
week showed construction spending on data centers continues to be strong.
In the information sector, you might see a variety of
AI adjacent roles start to pop up, but overall, it's
still a little early to tell, and technology and models
are changing so fast that really the trend line could
change quite significantly.
All Right, So we've been talking about the disruption to
particularly financial services and it what other sectors are you
looking for going forward for potential vulnerabilities.
We're seeing a little bit of decline in professional and
business services, particularly in subcategories like accounting, consulting, and advertising.
We saw strength this month in professional and business services,
but economists say that this is primarily due to an
increase in tempiring rather than an overall increase in demand
for labor. So these sorts of automatable white collar jobs
in these various subcategories are a potential next week spot.
Okay, well, thank you for this, Maya, great having you
on with us. That is Bloomberg's Maya Prakash, part of
our economic team in Washington, DC. Let's take a look now,
add some stocks on the move in the week ahead.
I'm Nathan Hager, joined by Bloomberg News Cross asset reporter
Avalon Pernell. I think we all know where we're going
to start this conversation, Avalon, The countdown is on for
SpaceX to join the Nasdaq one hundred. What can we expect?
You're absolutely correct, SpaceX is slated to join Nasdaq one
hundred index on Tuesday, and that inclusion will trigger some
mandatory buying for all funds that track this key index,
notably the QQQ ETF, which is very popular passive investment
vehicle for retail investors especially. We'll also have to buy
in and as a two trillion dollar company, SpaceX woude
rank among one of the largest on the Nasdaq Historically speaking, though,
seasoning rules have delayed IPO entry into these major benchmarks
for at least a couple of months. As we know,
SpaceX just launched, so it's very much been fast tracked
out of that given the fact that it is such
a big company and it also had a record breaking
IPO that raised eighty six billion dollars. However, worth noting
that while Nasdaq did fast track SpaceX's entry, their rival
SMP Dow Jones said it's still going to keep their
existing eligibility requirements right.
So, I like what you did there with saying that
SpaceX just launched. I mean, the stock itself has kind
of acted like one of Elon Musk's rockets, a big
up after the IPO settling kind of back down since then,
do you see this stock kind of settling at a
level anytime soon or are we expecting even more volatility.
Well, we can't predict that. However, what I do find
really interesting is that along with the entry, we're also
expecting the quiet period for those IPO underwriters to also
next week, so investors will be able to expect to
get analysis from banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and
JP Morgan City as well as they initiate coverage of
the company. So it will be really interesting to see
how their price targets and analysis of the company stacks
up as well.
Absolutely, Yeah, lots more to come when it comes to
SpaceX and hard to believe, but we're already starting to
think about second quarter earning season as well. We're going
to start to hear from the first few companies before
the big banks open their books, including PepsiCo on Thursday.
Going to get a pretty decent look at the consumer
from this one, I guess absolutely.
As you mentioned, Pepsi Co has been facing a very
challenging season this year. Those shares not even up a
one percent year to date. However, shoppers remain very cautious
about their spending and also GLP ones are pushing some
consumers to seek out healthier options, which if you know
some of the brands that Pepsi is a parent company of,
like Cheetos, Dorito's, and Gatorade, and maybe sometimes hard to
come by. That being said, Barclays is writing that Pepsi
shares have underperformed other staple stocks in recent months as
investors remain very skeptical about how exactly the durability of
their turnaround in North America is. And also worth noting
that looking at options data at the moment, it's currently
implying about a three percent move after those results.
Okay, so not a whole lot of a move one
way or the other. But I mean, it's not just
changing tastes to think about with PepsiCo. They've been affected
as well by some of the commodity moves around the
war in the Middle East as well aluminum prices. You
got to think about as well, how can we see
that start to play in some of the results here.
That's a really great point as well. Bloomberg Intelligence had
a really great note out talking about how the company's
growth plan and also their full year outlook are going
to be really in play in a significant focus on
the call, especially for that cost inflation piece. As we
already said, like the consumers are very much stretched at
this moment, and for companies like Pepsi Co that is
kind of problematic, So it will be very interesting to
see how exactly they're also planning to handle these uncertain times,
to say the least, with the Iran war and other factors.
And not to be outdone. On Friday, we're going to
get earnings from Delta Airlines and an update I would
guess on how travel demand is holding up, not just
after all the geopolitics, but I mean we're right in
the heart of summer travel season here Avalon.
Yes, hopefully you have some travel planned Delta Definitely, as
you can expect, will be very interesting to see exactly
what they're going to be saying about those fuel costs
and also their full year guidance will be top of
mind for everyone going into that print options data already
showing that they're beginning to price a potential move of
about five point eight percent, So definitely, investors will be
very excited to see what exactly is happening at Delta
Tdcowan expecting a company to report very strong demand across
all products and geographies. They also note that a recent
drop in fuel prices with strong peak season pricing from
this summer travel should enable the company to produce margins
that beat expectations, especially into the third quarter, which I
know we're on the second quarter right now, but people
are also looking into the future as well, And also
worth noting that at least for these analysts, they've actually
already boosted their price target on Delta ahead of the
print to one hundred and six dollars from ninety two dollars.
Amazing considering when you look at a chart for Delta Airlines,
I mean, it's been on a pretty steady trajectory upward
so far this year. I mean it sounds like analysts
expect that to continue, even with some of the headwinds
we've seen for travel so far this year.
Yes, although I must say that definitely analysts are a
bit mixed. Even Bloomberg Intelligence had a great note out
saying that Delta's EBITDA and margins will likely be significantly
lower as the spike and fuel prices continues to eat
into profits. So while you do have some people who
are slightly more bullish, like TD Cowan, there are definitely
others who are slightly more cautious about what exactly the
future looks like for airlines, especially like Delta.
All Right, Bloomberg Cross asset reporter Avalon Purnell, lots of
stocks to keep an eye on as we head into
a new week. Here, Avalon, thank you for this, And
coming up on Bloomberg Daybreak weekend, we'll look ahead to
a key NATO summit happening in Turkey this week. I'm
Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Daybreak weekend,
our global look ahead at the top stories for investors
in the coming week. I'm Nathan Hager in Washington. Up
later in the program, we'll look to some key inflation
data coming out this week in China. But first, NATO's
thirty two member states meet in Uncorra, Turkey on July
seventh and eighth. NATO's Secretary General Mark Ruta has been
pressing allies to commit to higher defense spending, with President
Trump pushing for five percent of GDP as a benchmark
for more. Let's get to Bloomberg Daybreak. You're a banker,
Caroline Hepger in London.
Nathan, President Trump is expected to gather with other leaders
and also representatives from Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Australia and
New Zealand. European allies are racing to demonstrate credibility on
spending and beef up capacity as the US has proved
increasingly erratic, threatening to draw down troops from Germany, which
has the second largest US deployment outside of Japan. Former
NATO Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg said in early June that
US European tensions within the Alliance are more difficult to
manage now than when he left in twenty twenty four,
adding that the situation has moved in an even worse direction.
This is the UK and others are shifting towards drone technology,
AI enabled capabilities and autonomous platforms now. The International Monetary
Fund warned, though in April, that the global defense spending
surge risks widening fiscal deficits over the media in term,
as most outlays are being financed through higher borrowing. The
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter, the current one, met with
President Champ in the Oval Office ahead of this NATO summit.
Here he is speaking to Bloomberg's Joe Matthew and Kaylie Larns.
The United States has to take care of multiple theaters,
not only Europe, also for example in the Pacific, and
if a situation would occur where they have to defend
both sides of the equation, both in the Pacific and Europe,
they have to avoid the situation in which they have
spread their resources too thinly. This is why Europeans have
to step up. This is NATO three point zero. Stronger
Europe and a stronger NATO. That means that the US
will stay involved when it comes to the nuclear umbrella,
but also when it comes to the conventional But over time,
what you now will see, and this is a structured process,
is that the Europeans are taking over more and more
of that leadership rule. For example, when it comes to
the three combatant commands, they will over the next eighteen
to twenty four months move from American generals and admirals
to European generals and admirals. So that's also an example
of European stepping up. But also when it comes to Ukraine,
the fact that US is still providing all the support
but paid for by Europeans in Canada, which is only fair,
So europe stepping up the US staying heavily involved when
it comes to the conventional nuclear detterns in Europe.
So that was NATO's Mark Rutter speaking to Bloomberg there well.
Joining us now to discuss the upcoming summit are Bloomberg's
EU Defense and Foreign policy reporter Andre Paalaciano and Bloomberg's
European Government editor Rich Bravo. Welcome to both of you.
Thanks for speaking to me.
Rich.
How fraught is the relationship between NATO's European members and
the United States right now?
It's really hard to overstate how delicate this relationship is
between Europe and the European allies in NATO and the US.
I mean currently you have a very contentious trade relationship
which is undergoing of certain negotiations. The EU eventually agreed
to accept a very what they think is an unfair
trade agreement in which they're paying fifteen or there is
a fifteen percent levy on all European exports to the US,
and Europe has removed all tariffs on US products. So
the underlying theme here is that when they approach NATO
and they approach defense issues, they approach this understanding that
every issue with Trump is related, trade, defense, security, geopolitics.
Everything is in the same bag. So when you look
at a deteriorating relationship with the US, you can just
look at the defense angle or the trade angle, because
all of these things are related. And when the US
becomes unhappy about the trade situation, then Trump will bring
up the threat of removing security for the continent. So
things have gotten really contentious and fraud with the European
allies in NATO.
Yeah, so it's all interlaced, intertwined, and President Trump will
be there in person, So you have to add on
to that that sometimes things can pivot on a social
media post. Andrea, how quickly is the United States withdrawing
troops from Europe? How do the Europeans see this?
Well, it's very much an ongoing, unfolding process. There has been, indeed,
the social media post announcement, as you just mentioned, that
the US would be with drowing five thousand troops from
from Europe. That hasn't happened yet. It is expected to
happen soon, but it hasn't happened yet. However, that was
kind of the tip of the iceberg. Really, when when
we think about the US disengaging from the European continent.
That was the one social media, very visible announcement that
that Trump made. But what's much more serious is that
the US has reviewed it's so called NATO force model.
What does that mean. It's the it's the assets and
the troops that the US would send to Europe if
there was a war or a major crisis in Europe,
and that has been slashed massively. And because these troops
are not technically in Europe yet, but they would be deployed,
these changes are effective immediately. Basically, so if there is
a war in Europe tomorrow, these changes would already apply.
And on top of that, when Hexseth came to Brussels
a few days ago, he all so delivered another shaker
two allies in the name of a six month forest
Pasture review, which means that in the next six months,
the US will be looking at all of its forces,
all of its assets that are currently in Europe and
will be deciding whether they're all necessary there and there
we can expect the really serious stratauns to happen from
the assets currently in Europe.
Yeah, and so you can sort of feel the tectonic
plates can't do shifting. I mean the e five countries,
So these are the most important, perhaps European countries. They
met ahead of the NATO summit Andrea, and they have
said that they're trying to make NATO more European. What
has changed in terms of defense spending? You just heard
earlier from Mark Rutta, who is there with the kind
of gold embossed bar shots in the White House, and
this idea of pledging and increasing defense spending in Europe?
What is moving? How are we thinking about this?
So indeed Mark Rote went to the White House, showcased
big numbers, praised allies for spending so much more, and
indeed that's you know, that's it is true countries in
Europe have been spending a lot more than they were
a few years ago. But as these things go, some
of the countries of NATO took this more seriously than others.
So we have countries like Germany who have really been
doling out the billion dollar contracts procuring buying weapons and
really ramping up. Others haven't really done. So we have
a number of countries that are still hovering about around
two percent, which used to be the previous target, and
don't seem to be on a path on a credible
path to reach these three point five plus one point
five for defense related spending, so five in total anytime soon.
So yes, across the science it's not very consistent. But
also there is a real difference between pledging money, announcing spending,
announcing contracts, and having those actual capabilities. And so because
as we were saying, a lot of the US pivot
is effective immediately. And also we have been giving this
six months timeline for the US Force Pasture review, we
are talking about timelines that Europe simply cannot match. So
this is exactly the scenario, the nightmare scenario for Europe,
basically that the US will withdraw too quickly without giving
them the time to actually ramp up and have the
actual weapons and men to replace them.
In terms of the threat assessment, though, now, how do
we think about the biggest threats to Europe? What do
we think about the Russian threat to Europe? Is that
the still the main one, which.
Well, that's obviously a massive concern in Europe, particularly in
the Baltic States. But obviously the Russia's war in Ukraine
has depleted its economy and military quite significantly. So the
concerns about a near term threat are not very high.
But we've also seen an increase in drone incursions and
an increase in hybrid attacks, which show that Moscow is
testing NATO's waters and they want to see what NATO's
reaction is to these incursions.
Okay, theoretical, Well, let's think about the next few days. Then,
do you think there's going to be a sting in
the tail over Iran? Trump, heg Seth, Rubio have all
been critical about the lack of European support for this
US war.
Yes, you've hit on a very good point there. The
role that Europe has played, well, more specifically, the role
that Europe has not played in the Iran war has
really upset Trump and and hag Seth in the in
the American administration, obviously, Italy and Spain did not allow
the US to use certain of its bases under certain circumstances,
and this is something that Trump has returned to repeatedly.
They're not happy with the fact that that that Germany,
Germany's Merits and other European leaders, particularly Pedro Sanchez in Spain,
have been critical of the war. The Pope was critical
and Trump got into a social media battle of source
with Prime Minister Maloney over over those comments. But this
is a big issue between Europe and the US, and
Europe has been trying more recently to sort of paper
over those and give as much support as they can.
So you saw France and the UK launch a joint
expeditionary mission that would clear minds in the Strait of
horror moves once fighting had ended. This is again all
on paper and whether it ever comes to pass remains
to be seen. But Europe is really bending over backwards
to try and play Kate Trump on the issue of Iran.
Why Thanks to Bloomberg's EU Defense and Foreign policy reporter
Andrea Palashiano and to Bloomberg's European Government editor Rich Bravo.
Really great to speak to both of you. We will
have full coverage of everything from anchor across Bloomberg platforms.
I'm Caline Hebge here in London. You can catch us
every weekday morning here for Bloomberg Daybreak Europe. That begins
at six am in London, one am on Wall Street.
Nathan, Thanks Caroline and coming up on Bloomberg Daybreak weekend.
Key inflation data out of China in the coming week.
We'll get a preview of what to expect. I'm Nathan Hager,
and this is Bloomberg. I'm Nathan Hager in Washington with
your global look ahead of the top stories for investors
in the coming week, when we'll get the latest readings
on inflation in China. For a closer look, let's get
to Doug Krisner, host of the Bloomberg Daybreak Asia podcast.
Thanks Nathan. As we know, after years of deflation, especially
at the wholesale level, China has upward momentum now in prices.
We'll get the official numbers for June in the week ahead. Now,
the May readings on inflation showed producer prices rising for
a third straight month to the highest level since July
twenty twenty two, and at the consumer level, prices rose
at an annual rate of one point two percent, mainly
because of higher gasoline along with gold, jewelry, and services.
So the big question now is will these trends remain intact.
Let's bring in Bloomberg's Out Wong. He is the leader
of the news team that covers China's government and economy,
and Alan joins from our studios in Hong Kong. Thank
you for being here. I want to begin if we
can by looking at what happened in the last week
with the official PMI data on the factory side, improved
manufacturing activity and then the non manufacturing came in at
a positive reading. Give me a sense of what's happening
in the big picture right now with the Chinese economy.
The big picture still shows that there's still broadly speaking,
very weak consumption appetite from the many millions of people
in China, whereas the export market and demand for China's
factory output has remained relatively strong, and so that was
a story of the PMI as well. We're seeing that
global demand for good helped China's activity accelerate from what
economists expected based on a PMI number from last week.
So if we.
Try to understand what we may see in terms of
the inflation for the week ahead, does the PMI kind
of give us any guidance in some way?
Absolutely. The story to watch is the divergence in the
Chinese economy, and then the PMI just shows that the
export orders have been stronger than domestic subgauges. And we
expected to see some of that also with the price data,
because we've been seeing that consumer prices have been hovering
just above zero, while factory gay prices have swung sharply
from years of deflation into positive territory earlier this year.
So the kind of divergence we saw in May might
well continue in June, where the prices for producers rose
a lot more than consumer prices. That's just a very
long way to say that. Well, domestic demand remains very weak,
but export demands is just helping out here and there.
We are three months into war in Iran and we
have seen crude oil prices come down from the high.
They do remain elevated at the moment, whether you're looking
at WTI or Brent. And I'm wondering whether the story
on oil, given the moderation that we have seen in
oil prices, is going to show up in a way
that may kind of undermine some of the positive momentum
that we have had in inflation in China.
Yeah, certainly, I think it's a double s sore. First
of all, China has seen its price inflation improved to
a more healthy level because of the war, but then
those increases were quite contained in sectors that were exposed
to higher oil prices. And also, of course the global
AI boom. So even if oil prices return to lower level,
that just means that those sectors closely linked to oil
prices will see a falling prices and the broader economy
hasn't really been touched by all this conflict in terms
of prices. So the glass half Foovill is that when
prices come down, the consumers might feel more secure to spend.
Companies might well, most companies might feel less pressure to
on their profit margins, but the in terms of headline numbers,
we might see a lower number, and that just the
reminder to policymakers that there might be there's expectation for
them to do more to improve a domestic demand and
to support the prices.
So when you talk about weak domestic demand, two things
come to my mind. One is the property market, which
still seems to be I'm going to use the term
lackluster and that's probably an understatement. And the other thing
happens to be food prices. Can you give me a
sense of what's happening in those markets food and property?
Of course, yeah, the home price story hasn't really changed
in the last few years. China's properly market remains in
a downturn, and then there's been some signs of an
upswing that were turned out to be quite short lived,
and with the most recent months data, we see actually
an unexpected resumption of a decline in home prices, both
for new and used homes. In terms of food prices,
pork has been a persistent drag on the CPI. There's
been a sustained decline in pop prices and keeping food
inflation in the negative territory. UH, but that reflects mostly
oversupply in the hawks sector. That had to do with
the fact that there was UH African swine fever spreading
across the country which affected the supply of live hawks,
and then in the aftermath of that, hawk producers they
just overbuilt. And UH, now that we're seeing an oversupply,
So we've seen the pendulum swinging the other way now,
pot prices being one of the biggest CPI components in
the food category, so it's now dragging prices down.
You and I have talked in the past about the
excess capacity issue, particularly where electric vehicles are showing up,
and I'm wondering whether or not prices have come down
in a meaningful way for the big EV manufacturers and
how that's showing up in domestic demand or whether these
big car companies in China are still looking to markets
offshore to find a place for their goods.
The intense domestic competition is still keeping car makers very well,
giving them very limited space to raise prices. In fact,
prices still remain at a very low level, and they
naturally they're looking to export their cars overseas where they
can find high profit margins. So that story hasn't really changed,
and we're seeing that in export prices. We're categories for
things that are associated with global AI investment boom have
seen higher prices, but then for sectors that are in
traditional manufacturing, for example of for toys, the prices remain deflated,
which just goes to show that China's problem of destructive
over competition remains.
So we've talked about some of the hard data, let's
talk about some of the soft data, particularly when you're
measuring consumer sentiment. Yeah, you could make the case that
PMI is a sentiment indicator as well, but give me
a sense of how people are feeling right now in China.
Just about the overall performance of the economy.
We're seeing higher youth unemployment rate in fact, I released
a couple of months ago was the highest since they
revammed that indicator two years ago. And the overall employment
stays at a reasonably low level for China around five percent.
But then in terms of consumer sentiment, it really the
macro numbers tell the story better than than a trip
to China, because we're just seeing that retail sales were
at one of its weakest in the latest release, and
it just shows that people don't feel secure enough to
open their wallets. There are many reasons for that. I
think global turmoil in the oil market, geopolical to conflict,
and also and an uncertain outlook for people's income in China.
They all wait on the sentiments to spend.
So where does that leave policy makers allen, whether we're
talking on the monetary side, the central bank and the
impact of monetary policy on the currency, or whether we're
talking about the central government and fiscal policy, what are regulators?
What are policy makers trying to do at the moment
to maybe improve the outlook a bit.
The PBOC, this Chinese central Bank, has been maintaining an
accommodative monetary policy to support growth, which a lot of
economistsy is not enough to improve domestic demand, and there
are no obvious signs that they want to change that.
And then it's it shows in the credit data that
the demand in China for borrowing money to invest remains
extraordinarily weak. And then previous previously lowered rates market rates
did not really stimulate a loan demand, so that that
plus the inflationary environment might just give the central bank
some reason to moderate any attempt to carry out easing.
And overall, I mean the bank has been very cautious
to maintain that policy stance, and having driven this message
home repeatedly, I think the market has well understood that
the bank isn't likely to carry out any drastic step
in the meat in a short term. And we did
a survey actually just a couple of weeks ago showing
that economists now forecast no policy rate cut this year,
according to the median estimate, and that was pushedback from
the estimate of one cut for the remainder.
Of the year.
Alan Willie bit there, thank you so very much. That
is Bloomberg's Alan Wong. He is the leader of our
news team covering China's economy and government, joining from our
studios in Hong Kong in New York City, we had
the chance to speak with NBA Hall of Famer Yao Ming.
Ming discussed the global expansion of the NBA and the
popularity of basketball around the world. Here he is speaking
with Bloomberg's Romain Bostik and Katie Greifeld.
Your old life story, certainly your professional story is kind
of rooted in that connection between Shanghai and the US,
and obviously you're coming into the NBA being the first
Chinese player to be drafted number one in the NBA draft,
and you became a cultural icon not only for the
Chinese people back home, but also for the NBA fan
base here, an NBA that was really trying to expand
its reach globally. When you look at the business ties
between these two nations and the two cities for that matter,
is it still strong today as it was back then?
Of course, of course basketball is the most popular sports
in the WARLD. I know this, you know, fifth World
Cup now is probably the top the headline for the
only newspaper today. But I have to say that the
basketball is shoulder to shoulder in China to the compared
to football or soccer what you call and that influences
so many of a young generation that they play on
the basketball field every day after school. Uh, sometimes they
skipped school for that and uh and after me, there's
many young young fellows who joined the NBA.
Uh.
You know, the last year we have a young young
player called Young Hanson who Hanson Young who joined the
Portland Trailer Blazers. I'm sure there's a many young player
like him that ego to to reach their you know,
reach their sky hopefully here in that few years. So
basketball really really connecting us together on the same few
and that's the magic of it.
Well, to follow up on that, I mean, what do
you think the key is to getting more young Chinese
players into the NBA Because that push internationally continues and
you are still seeing.
That that take place. But how do you think that
sort of expands I think.
There's no secret I know what a basketball world what
NBA did for a last a couple of decades, you know,
since the last commissioner, David Stan and Adam Silver. Today
they are did the incredible job to expand the sports
not only in China, but it is across the world too.
That was NBA Hall of Famer Yao Ming speaking to
Bloomberg's Romaine Bostic and Katie Greifeld. I'm Doug Christner. You
can catch us weekdays for the Daybreak as your podcast.
It's available wherever you get your podcast.
Nathan, Thanks Doug. And that does it for this edition
of Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend. Join us again Monday morning at
five am Wall Street Time for the latest don markets, overseas,
and the news you need to start your day. I'm
Nathan Hager. Stay with us. Top stories and global business
headlines are coming up right now.