Trump, Putin Talk Ukraine; Treasury Secretary Calls Stock Slump 'Healthy'
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Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Good morning, I'm Nathan Hager. And I'm Karen Moscow. Here are the stories we're following today. Karen, we begin with the latest on the war in Ukraine. President Trump says he will speak to Russia's President Vladimir Putin tomorrow. The talks come as European nations rush to bolster their support for Kiev. Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One. I'll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday.

of work's been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but I think we have a very good chance.

President Trump says his discussions with Russia's president will focus on territory, power plants, and dividing up certain assets. Nathan Oil is on the rise this morning. It's trading at $67.77 a barrel. Brent is at $71. That's as Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth warns of unrelenting strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen until the group stops attacking ships in the Red Sea. President Trump ordered a new wave of airstrikes over the weekend. Hagseth says, sends a clear message.

The president said it in his truth. Your support of the Houthis needs to end immediately. We will hold you accountable as the sponsor of this proxy. And I echo his statement. We will not be nice about it. This is not the Biden administration. The message is clear. We will come after the Houthis until they stop shooting at our ships and the Iranians better stay out of it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also tells Fox News the strikes are a warning to Iran, which backs the Houthis. And over the weekend, Karen, the Trump administration said it arrested and expelled hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members. The U.S. is paying El Salvador to hold them, despite a federal judge ordering a 14-day hold on some deportations. President Trump defended the move last night on Air Force One. We are a bad group.

When you look at them and you look at the crimes that they've committed, you take a look. You don't get any tougher. You don't get worse than that. But you'd have to ask the lawyers. The president moved to accelerate deportations under seldom-used powers in the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The federal judge ordered any deportation flights carried out under Trump's order to be returned mid-flight. But the White House says this flight did not conflict with that ruling because it had already left the country.

Well, Nathan, President Trump may be opening the door to new investigations of the committee that investigated the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. In a Truth Social post overnight, the president declared former President Joe Biden's pardons for the committee members void because he says Biden signed them with an auto pen. Still, the president admits the move might face legal action. It's not my decision. That'll be up to a court.

But I would say that they're not, because I'm sure Biden didn't have any idea that it was taking place.

The president spoke on board Air Force One last night. Pardon power has long been considered one of the most absolute powers a president has. Last year, a federal appeals court found a pardon doesn't even have to be in writing. Let's turn to markets now, Karen. Futures are lower to start a new trading week. Despite Friday's rally on Wall Street, the S&P 500 has now dropped for four straight weeks. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessence, he says he's not concerned about the recent market downturn.

I'm not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says corrections are healthy and normal. He spoke on NBC's Meet the Press, which can be heard Sundays on Bloomberg Radio. Well, Nathan, all three major indexes hit six-month lows during the last trading week. Matt Mailey, chief market strategist at Miller-Tabak, believes stocks are heading even lower.

I do think that the correction we've seen so far probably has further to run. I mean, we called for a correction at the very beginning of the year and saying we thought it would be something, a deep one in the 15 to 20 percent range. And we have to remember right now is what's going on with these tariffs and what's going on with the Doge committee. I mean, that's certainly having a big impact in terms of uncertainty.

Miller Tabak's Matt Maley thinks the S&P 500 may fall as low as 5,000, about 10% lower than current levels. In Asia, Karen, consumption, investment, and industrial production in China all exceeded estimates to start the year. Retail sales increased 4% in the first two months from a year earlier. Industrial output rose 5.9%. Growth in fixed asset investment picked up to 4.1%.

Economists say the data point to resilience for a Chinese economy that is still in need of more stimulus as U.S. tariffs threaten growth. Well, Nathan, Warren Buffett is bullish on Japan. His Berkshire Hathaway is increasing its stake in Japan's biggest trading houses, which include Mitsubishi and Sumitomo. Last month, Buffett told shareholders in his annual letter that Berkshire was looking to increase ownership

in the trading houses. And back here in the U.S., Karen, fashion retailer Forever 21 is filing for bankruptcy. The brand once attracted droves of young women and girls to shop for cheap, trendy clothing. This is Forever 21's second stint with bankruptcy. At its height, it had more than 500 locations in the U.S. It's down to about 350 now.

Finally, Nathan, those two astronauts who have been stuck in space since this summer may be home as early as tomorrow night. SpaceX's Dragon capsule successfully docked at the International Space Station last night. The vessel carried a new crew, allowing marooned astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams to return home after around 10 months. One member of the arriving crew 10 said the journey ran smoothly.

Crew 10 has had a great journey up here, about 28 hours to get back up to the space station. And I cannot tell you the immense joy of our crew when we looked out the window and we saw the space station. The two stranded astronauts aboard a capsule already docked at the station and head back to Earth after a roughly two-day handover period.

Time now for a look at some of the other stories making news in New York and around the world. And for that, we're joined by Bloomberg's Michael Barr. Michael, good morning. Good morning, Karen. A dynamic storm spawned tornadoes, dust storms, and wildfires that killed more than three dozen people in the South and Midwest. Hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves. Weather prognosticators...

Indicated a tough weekend. Unfortunately, they were accurate. In Alabama, Anita Owen's mother died when a twister tore up her mobile home in Plantersville early Sunday morning. To be honest, you wouldn't think just a wind and tornadoes would do this much devastation. But my mom...

They actually found her around 4 o'clock this morning about 350 yards that way.

The weather system is moving east with forecasters warning of dangerous winds from Florida to New Jersey today, while heavy rain hits New York and New England. More protests were held over the weekend after Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil was taken into custody and is being held in the state of Louisiana. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says more student visas and green cards will be revoked as the federal government makes the case to remove Khalil.

The Columbia University grad student's attorney, Brad Parker, says the only basis for the removal action is the determination solely by the Secretary of State. That's it. There's no criminal charges. There's no unlawful activity that's even alleged by the government at this point. Attorney Brad Parker says they are challenging the basis for his detention, insisting again that he does not support Hamas.

St. Patrick's Day is being marked in cities across the country with boisterous parades and celebrations. New York City hosts one of the largest and oldest parades in the U.S. It steps off later this morning along Manhattan's Fifth Avenue with about 150,000 participants and 2 million spectators expected. Global news 24 hours a day and whenever you're up with Bloomberg News Now, I'm Michael Barr and this is Bloomberg. Karen. All right, Michael Barr, thank you.

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Time now for the Bloomberg Sports Update brought to you by Tri-State Audi. Here's John Stashower. John, good morning. Good morning, Karen. 38 years ago, Rick Pitino coached Providence to the NCAA Final Four. Pitino is now heading to Providence where Thursday night he'll coach St. John's in its first round game against Omaha.

First, I have to study Omaha. I don't know much about them. They probably don't know a whole lot about us, but we'll study them, they'll study us, and we'll see who comes out on top. Comments made on SNY. Patino taking a record six different schools of the NCAAs. The Red Storm, the two seed in the West after 30 wins, Big East regular season, and tourney champs. The one seeds are Duke, Houston, Florida, and Auburn, who's still got the top overall seed despite three losses in the last four games. At the Garden,

Edmonton's Victor Arvidsson scored six minutes into the third period. Connor McDavid had an empty netter. Oilers beat the Rangers 3-1. Islanders at UBS 4-2 win over Florida. The Nets of Barclays beat Atlanta 122-114. Lakers ended a four-game losing streak. They beat Phoenix Lucid Donsets.

Scored 33. The Players' Championship not over yet. Rory McIlroy started yesterday four shots behind, then led by two, finished tied with J.J. Spahn. And because they had had a weather delay, they couldn't play the three-hole aggregate playoff. They'll do that this morning. McIlroy and Spahn are close in age, but Spahn has one career victory. Rory has 42. I'd like to think that I can fall back on my experience and maybe have a little bit more than J.J., but then at the same time,

Tomorrow is all just about execution and getting up there and, as I said, making five good swings.

Coast to coast on Bloomberg Radio. Nationwide on Sirius XM. And around the world on Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg Business App. This is Bloomberg Daybreak. Good morning, I'm Nathan Hager. President Donald Trump says he will have a lot to discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin when he speaks with him tomorrow about the prospect for a ceasefire with Ukraine. We'll be talking about land, we'll be talking about power plants. That's a big question.

But I think we have a lot of it already discussed. President Trump spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One last night. Joining us this morning is Bloomberg News senior editor Bill Ferrys. And Bill, one thing we did not hear the president say he plans to discuss with Russia's Vladimir Putin is security guarantees for Ukraine. How significant is that? Good morning.

Good morning, Nathan. Well, that's from Ukraine's perspective and from the perspective of most of U.S.'s traditional European allies. That's the big question. Donald Trump saying he will speak with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

And European allies have been kind of scrambling to present something to Trump that would perhaps get his buy-in for a security guarantee. This process has obviously been moving very quickly, and there's a lot of questions, a lot of angst, I think, in European capitals about what President Trump might promise or agree to on that call when European allies and the Ukrainian government itself are not

also taking part in the negotiation. Certainly, there's been a question about what kind of concessions the president might try to extract from Vladimir Putin. Have we gotten a sense of whether he plans to go that far to try to get any concessions from the Russian side?

He made some vague comments about the situation on the ground, how the territory has shifted hands, and there will be some dividing up of a territory, he suggested, but no one has any kind of specific details. We do know that Vladimir Putin has pushed back

on the idea of an immediate ceasefire. He wants more guarantees that Ukraine will be a neutral country, that there will not be NATO troops based in the country during or after a ceasefire agreement.

And he just, he basically wants to see what he says is a threat that prompted his invasion to be removed. That's basically in complete conflict with what particularly Kiev and European powers are trying to organize now. And while we see this extended push for a quick ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we're seeing this

New operation that the president has ordered against the Houthi militants in Yemen. Could this be an extended campaign against this group that's really been going after Red Sea shipping for quite some time?

Yeah, they've been going after the Red Sea shipping basically since Israel counterattacked against Hamas in Gaza. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying on Fox News on Sunday that this is going to be an unrelenting campaign against Hamas.

the Houthi rebels until they stop firing at civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea. We've already seen the Houthis saying that they are not going to back down, that they claim to have made separate attacks on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the last 24 hours.

It's a very divided fight. You've got a major military power in the U.S. trying to go after a smaller, more mobile rebel group, essentially, that is very hard to target. In the past, the U.S. has had a hard time finding enough targets in Yemen to hit. So we'll have to see how this plays out. But it does sound like the administration is in this for the longer haul. I mean, how could this play out for the ceasefire that's really a tenuous situation between Israel and Hamas?

It is. What the Houthi rebels are saying is that they basically have restarted their attacks in the Red Sea because Israel has blocked the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza. If there can be a breakthrough perhaps in the Israel-Hamas disagreement over aid flows and the return of hostages and other parts of that conflict, the Houthis are suggesting that they would stop

their attacks on the Red Sea. But of course, no ships have been going through there really by and large. It's a big risk for global trade. And until there's a longer term peace, I think it's going to be hard to see the Suez and the Red Sea being used again. Apart from all these geopolitical developments, Bill, we got this pretty remarkable Truth Social post from the president overnight declaring former President Joe Biden's pardons for the January 6th committee void and vacant. Can he do that?

There's really no precedent for that. He's saying that these pardons are void because he believes that Joe Biden used an auto pen to sign the pardons. That's something we've, that's an argument we've seen previously from the Heritage Foundation. Obviously, if, first of all, nobody knows if an auto pen was used or not. Judges have ruled in the past that you don't need to have a written pardon for a pardon to be effective.

But more broadly, if auto pens weren't allowed, there would be a whole lot of legislation and every letter from Congress back to a constituent that would be void. It's just a widely used tool. I think this is probably going to be seen as a distraction. But Donald Trump, if he has the Justice Department behind it, may try to pursue these this this claim.

This is Bloomberg Daybreak, your morning podcast on the stories making news from Wall Street to Washington and beyond. Look for us on your podcast feed by 6 a.m. Eastern each morning on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. You can also listen live each morning starting at 5 a.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg 1130 in New York, Bloomberg 99.1 in Washington, Bloomberg 92.9 in Boston, and nationwide on Sirius XM Channel 121.

Plus, listen coast to coast on the Bloomberg Business app now with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto interfaces. And don't forget to subscribe to Bloomberg News Now. It's the latest news whenever you want it, in five minutes or less. Search Bloomberg News Now on your favorite podcast platform to stay informed all day long. I'm Karen Moscow. And I'm Nathan Hager. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day right here on Bloomberg Daybreak.