Carney Wins In Canada, Spain Blackout Latest, Trump's First 100 Days
17:49 Share

When you have bars in the sky, onboard showers and award-winning in-flight entertainment, it's no surprise that Emirates was recently named the best airline in the world. We fly you to over 140 destinations and with partners across the globe, we connect you to another 1,700 cities across six continents. So when we say we're also the largest international airline, what we really mean is...

If you're going there, so are we. Book now on Emirates.com. Fly Emirates. Fly better. When you're with Amex Business Platinum, going the extra mile for your business pays off.

With five times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked through amxtravel.com, you can earn more points to help grow your business. And with access to more than 1,400 lounges globally through the American Express Global Lounge Collection, including the Centurion Lounge. Can I get you a refill? You can stay fresh wherever your business travel takes you. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply. Learn more at americanexpress.com slash amxbusiness.

Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.

This is the Bloomberg Daybreak Hour podcast, available every morning on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen. It's Tuesday the 29th of April in London. I'm Caroline Hepke. And I'm Stephen Carroll. Coming up today, Mark Carney's liberals secure a narrow victory in a Canadian election dominated by US relations. The cause of a massive blackout across Spain and Portugal remains a mystery as power slowly returns. Plus Trump's

Second, first 100 days the US President looks to tout his successes as polling shows ebbing support for his economic policies. Let's start with a round-up of our top stories. In Canada, Mark Carney's Liberal Party is projected to win a fourth consecutive election, marking a major turnaround for the party. Despite the victory, it's likely they'll fall short of the 172 seats needed for an outright majority in the House of Commons.

The narrow margin means the former central banker will need to work with other parties to pass legislation as he navigates trade hostilities with the Trump administration. Here's Bloomberg's David Goura. This is a moment that was inconceivable just a few short months ago when Justin Trudeau was in the end of his term.

10-year-long prime ministership here in Canada. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of this country, with the economy. Justin Trudeau represented that, and the Liberal Party represented that. And then we saw this change where Mark Carney won that Liberal leadership election, and Donald Trump returned to the White House in Washington. And that changed everything. It changed the entire dialogue around the political landscape here in Canada. So yes, it continued to be about the state of the Canadian economy, about debts and deficits, and a housing shortage in this country.

But what was really resonant were the threats from Donald Trump that came over and over again. New Briggs, David Gourer reporting there from Vancouver. The former head of Canada and Britain's central banks, Mark Carney, became Liberal Party leader on the 9th of March and called an election just two weeks later, campaigning as a tough opponent to a US president who's repeatedly suggested that Canada should become a US state.

after steering two G7 central banks through the 2008 financial crash and Brexit. Carney must now prove to voters that his reputation as a crisis manager can extend into the political arena. Power has been almost fully restored in Spain and Portugal after the two countries were hit by a sweeping power cut on Monday. Millions of people were caught up in the chaos after the mass blackout brought

many areas of life to a standstill from train stations stopping, planes being grounded, internet and mobile phone services cut, traffic lights and ATMs were down across the Iberian Peninsula. The cause of the blackout remains unknown though with the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying that experts have not yet been able to determine the cause.

We still have no conclusive information about the reasons for this outage. The power supply has already been restored in several territories in the north and south of the peninsula, thanks to the interconnections with France and Morocco.

The words of Pedro Sanchez there, spoken by a translator. A blackout of this scale is rare in Europe and highlights the fragility of the grid as the region shifts to renewable energy. Spain will also face scrutiny over plans to decommission nuclear power plants, which supply 20% of its power, and the closure of its last coal plant this year in favour of renewables backed by gas.

HSBC is to buy back another $3 billion of shares as profits come in well ahead of estimates. Bloomberg's Ewan Potts has the details. It's a big beat for HSBC. Europe's largest bank has reported a pre-tax profit of $9.48 billion for the first quarter, well ahead of estimates for $7.8 billion.

The London-based lender is to buy back another $3 billion of shares after what it called the strong results and momentum in earnings. As to the outlook, watch this space. HSBC is the largest non-US clearer of dollars, so is highly exposed to the growing rift between Washington and Beijing. In London, I'm Ewan Potts, Bloomberg Radio.

Now, turning to key earning stories this morning from Deutsche Bank. The German lender reported profits and revenues that beat estimates for the first three months of the year. Pre-tax profits came in at 2.8 billion euros in the first quarter. That's more than 200 million higher than estimates. Fixed income sales and trading revenues also beat at 2.9 billion euros. The bank says that its first quarter results put them on

track to deliver their goals for 2025. US President Donald Trump is on track to ease some tariffs on car manufacturers. Some levies on importing foreign parts will be lifted and there'll be a reprieve to prevent steel and car tariffs overlapping. Two days ago, Trump had doubled down on his trade policy, saying it would reduce taxes.

lot of money from tariffs. We were losing a lot before I got here. We were losing billions of dollars a day and now we're doing great and we haven't even kicked in yet. And eventually we'll be reducing taxes very substantially for the people of our country because the money is so great coming in from tariffs that I'll be able to reduce taxes to a very large extent and maybe almost completely.

The US president could sign off on the shift as soon as today ahead of a speech he's giving in car-making state Michigan. The latest evolution of Trump's trade policy comes as the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index posted its worst reading since 2020, with executives using words like chaos and insanity to describe the fallout of tariffs.

China's top diplomat says that appeasing a bully will only make America bolder. Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged countries around the world to stand up to the United States as his office released a video saying China won't kneel down. The EU's economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, says that they are still engaging with America, but that he has a message for China too.

It's important also that China shows restraint, that it does not put all this now, all capacity of goods to other markets including EU, because then we will have to react, we will have to close our market to protect our economy, our companies, and that will lead even to further global economic fragmentation.

Valdis Dombrovskis speaking to Bloomberg there. Washington has insisted that the ball is in China's court to de-escalate the trade war, but Beijing has demanded a cancellation of all tariffs before any negotiations begin. CEOs from firms including Nvidia, Eli Lilly and SoftBank will visit the White House tomorrow to highlight their US investments as the president celebrates 100 days in office.

The event will come after Trump attends a Michigan rally today to mark the milestone where he is expected to tout his administration's estimated $2 trillion in corporate commitments.

But amidst the White House festivities are warnings from Wall Street lenders about the price increases and fallout from a U.S.-led trade war. Laurie Calvacina, head of U.S. equity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, says firms are facing uncertainty. I think it was an intellectually honest conversation we got from companies saying, you know, look, we're not changing our guidance because we think we can manage this too. We're not going to do annual guidance anymore. We're going to do quarterly guidance instead to...

We can't give you anything right now. We'll give you an answer when we have one, and we're not going to give you one until we're comfortable. RBC's Laurie Calvasina speaking there. Donald Trump's also facing sinking popularity with a flurry of polls showing voter disapproval of the president's economics. Steward Chip, gauges from CNN and NBC show just 39% of Americans agree with the White House tariff rollout.

And those are our top stories for you this morning. Let's look at the markets. So in the Asian session overnight, some gains relief for car makers like Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, all trading higher this morning on the possibility of a reprieve on auto tariffs from President Trump. The loonie has been retreating this morning against the dollar on the Canadian election result. It's not, um,

a majority win. It's not such a decisive win. So that's potentially the reason there. U.S. stocks, though, are on a five-day winning streak. And in terms of stock futures this morning, U.S. stock futures higher, two-tenths on the S&P 500. U.S. stock futures also up by about a tenth of 1%. Yesterday also saw U.S. Treasuries rally across the curve after softer manufacturing data. Two-year yields fell 6%.

basis points. And we've also had lots of earnings out this morning. So, we'll be looking to those results and their impact in markets.

And we'll have more on those results in just a moment, plus more on the Canadian election results and Donald Trump's 100 days in office. But another story that I think we've been glued to over the past 24 hours, the massive blackout in Spain and Portugal. Power, we're told this morning by the electricity grid operator, almost entirely restored now across the two countries that have been affected by this and parts of France as well, of course, too.

But such a massive moment. It was a moment. But the issue is that it's a complete mystery as to how it happened. I mean, it's chaos for 60 million people, basically, across the Iberian Peninsula. I mean, no internet, no lights, no trains, no planes. Yes, you know, that did mean that...

people could perhaps have an afternoon off in the sunshine if they fancied it. Our colleague Ben Sills in Madrid was writing about this. He went out and about to some of our colleagues in our Madrid office did as well to meet some of the people affected. And there were some students who were very glad they couldn't access their online learning tools to do any study for the afternoon as well. My favourite commentary on this, though, comes from our opinion columnist, Javier Blas, who was

posting online all through the afternoon yesterday as details were emerging of this as well. But he did make me laugh with his post from his father in Spain who said that his armchair was electric and he couldn't recline so he couldn't enjoy his siesta as a result. I just love that. I absolutely love it.

But yes, we've also and also the weird kind of wording around this, the red electric talking about the blackout being the result of oscillation. There were lots of jokes about, you know, what that means. But yes, the serious point, though, is that this huge blackout and we still don't know the reason.

Well, let's bring you the latest now on the Canadian election results in a fourth consecutive term for the Liberal Party, it looks like, but only a narrow margin of victory. We've got our Vancouver Bureau Chief Thomas Seal with us for more this morning. Tom, what do, at this stage, the results look like? Who will the Liberals have to work with and will this be a stable government? It's

not impossible that the Liberals form the most razor-thin majority government, but right now it's

they are not quite there and they are the largest party but unable to form a majority by themselves as things are tracking votes still coming in and so if they were to form a coalition or a supply and confidence agreement arrangements that are just like the ones in the UK parliamentary system it would possibly be with the new democratic party which is basically the left wing party here in Canada that's what Trudeau did in his last few years in power it dragged

It dragged the government maybe further to the left than voters wanted. The New Democratic Party has been punished. They've lost a lot of seats. But that is the easiest way for them to make up the arithmetic. How did Mark Carney win over voters, though, versus rival Pierre Poilievre, who's also been speaking this morning? How did the sort of messages land with voters in Canada?

Yeah, I would say it was a Donald Trump election in the words of one politics professor I spoke to about a couple of hours ago. You know, six months ago,

Polyev was as much as 20 points ahead of Justin Trudeau. The Liberals looked like they were on course for a wipeout. And then all changed. Donald Trump enters the White House, starts making these threats which nobody predicted about Canada becoming the 51st state. Now, that has been received as a bit of a joke by some in the U.S. or outside of North America. But here in Canada, they took it deadly seriously and it turned politics completely upside down.

And really, quite literally, when it comes to the polling. So Mark Carney swept in to replace Justin Trudeau and wrapped himself in the flag, said he'd be the best person to fight Donald Trump and stand up for Canada and form a coalition of like-minded liberal countries or people to work with.

other than the US. And that seems to have had a profound effect. At the same time, Pierre Polyev, you mentioned the conservative leader, he was a bit too Trumpish for some people. He said he'd make Canada, you know, he didn't say make Canada great again, but he said we'd put Canada first. He has a spiky relationship with the media. He talks about woke culture. And so that

was not what people wanted right at this moment, even though he was laser focused on some of the bread and butter pocketbook issues that Canadians are annoyed about as a consequence of the Trudeau government.

And in terms of the challenges facing the next prime minister now, you know, obviously trade key among them, but also a weak economic outlook. Yes, it's quite possible the Canadian economy tips into recession. So this was another reason why Carney was able to gather many more votes than people thought the Liberals could get.

He's got a gilded economic CV. Now, whether you agree with his prescriptions or not is another matter. But 13 years at Goldman Sachs, governor of the Bank of Canada, then Bank of England, only foreigner to ever be recruited to run the Bank of England. Then Brookfield Investment, massive investment firm here in Canada. And so people trust him clearly in some degree to invest.

Increase internal trade in Canada. This is a problem. Provinces find it easier to trade down to the U.S. than east to west with each other. It's such a big country. But also with other parts of the world, you know, selling more to Asia, buying more from the EU than previously, you know, the very chained at the hip relationship to the U.S. in the past.

Okay, Thomas, thank you so much for being with us this morning, taking us through the Canadian election results with Pierre Poiliev congratulating Mark Carney on the election as Canadian Prime Minister. That is Bloomberg's Vancouver Bureau Chief, Thomas Seale.

When you have bars in the sky, onboard showers and award-winning in-flight entertainment, it's no surprise that Emirates was recently named the best airline in the world. We fly you to over 140 destinations and with partners across the globe, we connect you to another 1,700 cities across six continents. So when we say we're also the largest international airline, what we really mean is...

If you're going there, so are we. Book now on emirates.com. Fly Emirates. Fly better.

Thrivent can help you plan your finances for the people, causes, and community you love. What makes Thrivent different? A combination of financial services and generosity programs. Thrivent offers advice, investments, insurance, banking, and generosity, as well as resources to fund service projects or direct dollars to causes you care about. With more than 120 years serving clients, you can plan your finances with confidence. Visit Thrivent.com to learn more. Thrivent.

where money means more.

I mean, their very business model is under attack right now, right? This is a bank that has a storied history of facilitating global trade, and we're in a trade war right now. And so these results are strong. Management talked about the strength of those results. I think you see that in that buyback.

And so many of their shareholders really wanted this buyback. And so this is going to ease maybe some concerns, not just about the prior quarter, but about the year ahead. And I think this is something that analysts are really focused on in all of the earnings across the season is what is that forward guidance looking like?

And notably, yes, HSBC, they had a great quarter. They got a boost from wealth, from FX, from debt and equity markets. But what's really interesting here, and I think the takeaway is they left their targets and guidance unchanged for the year despite this deteriorating backdrop. So that's quite a takeaway. Okay. And Deutsche Bank, meanwhile?

Interesting. So, you know, they had a solid set of results as well. A lot of these banks, we've been talking about equity trading and how that could get a boost in the first quarter. Interestingly, Deutsche Bank doesn't have that huge equity trading team. Good thing they've got a big fixed income trading team, though, because that gave them a significant boost as well. So a very solid set of results. And interestingly, and this kind of links it back to what I was just talking about with HSBC, management,

talking at Deutsche Bank about being on track for delivery of all of their 2025 targets as well. So kind of looking to navigate the difficulty right now from a position of strength. Lots of other, of course, earnings to be watching for today and this week. What are the sort of key things that you'll be keeping an eye out for? So the trade war, of course, in focus, the tariffs that are subject.

the auto sector. So we're going to get a number of auto companies reporting across Europe, and that industry is so important across the continent. And I think something that I'm paying attention to, and I think a lot of investors will start paying attention to as well, is these indirect effects of the tariffs. Not just, say, 25% on imported autos to the United States, but

What happens if this trade war continues and, say, the consumer starts feeling less interested in buying a vehicle? And actually, we have some estimates on vehicle sales in Europe actually looking to flatline this year. And so, that's a kind of other headache for these firms as they start to report. How does management address how they will handle those issues?

This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your morning brief on the stories making news from London to Wall Street and beyond. Look for us on your podcast feed every morning on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also listen live each morning on London DAB Radio, the Bloomberg Business App and Bloomberg.com.

Our flagship New York station is also available on your Amazon Alexa devices. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. I'm Caroline Hepke. And I'm Stephen Carroll. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day, right here on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe. There are presentations.

And then there are Canva presentations. With Canva, you can use AI to take your presentation to the next level. You can generate dynamic slides and text with a simple prompt. You can drag and drop graphics and charts from Canva's media library and add interactive elements to plus up your deck.

And with collaboration tools built in, the whole team can work together better. You'll love the presentations you can easily design with Canva. Your clients and coworkers will too. Love your work with Canva presentations at Canva.com. When you're making financial decisions for a company, growth is great.

Until manual work slows you down. Enter Intuit Enterprise Suite. This next level solution integrates and streamlines all business management tools, improving effectiveness while cutting costs and overhead. So your business keeps growing. Learn more at Intuit.com slash enterprise.