Obama Tries to Get Men On Board With Harris
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Barack Obama hits the campaign trail with Kamala Harris, plus worries about China's economy fuel a quarter trillion dollar exodus. Moving money out of China is difficult, right? It has very tight capital controls. So what people are doing is kind of risky. The more modern ways of doing it are through things like cryptocurrency. One of the other favorite ways of doing it is through art. And if you're planning a holiday in Europe next year, you're in luck as airlines add seats to destinations old and new.

It's Friday, October 25th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin with a busy night on the campaign trail. ♪♪

Barack Obama appeared alongside Kamala Harris last night for a rally in Battleground State, Georgia. The latest in what has been an all-out push by the former president to talk up the current vice president and attack her opponent. We do not need four years of a wannabe king, a wannabe dictator running around trying to punish his enemies. That's not what you need in your life. America's ready to turn the page.

We are ready for a better story. Georgia, we're ready for a President Kamala Harris. Democrats pulling for a Harris victory are hoping that her campaign can take lessons from Obama's winning efforts in 2008 and 2012. And Journal-White House reporter Catherine Lucey told me that includes trying to convince voters that their economic struggles aren't going unnoticed.

You see some lessons learned from Harris there. She has really leaned into a message about how she is a fighter for the middle class, that she wants to help people with things like prices, like housing. I mean, another thing you see that's a similarity is a really aggressive push to go everywhere and to try to pitch to folks in the

middle, he felt really strongly this was never going to be just a base turnout effort. And that's definitely what she's trying to do. Pitching moderate Republicans who might be uncomfortable with Trump, independents, trying to pull some of those folks along with her in this final stretch. And one more similarity is she's not really directly talking herself about the historical nature of her campaign, the fact that she would be the first woman president, the sort of history-making moment that

And you didn't see him do that a lot either. And I think the belief with her campaign, as with his in 2008, was that these things were evident. Other people could talk about them, that they really need to focus on talking about the job they're going to do and how they're going to work for voters. Right, Catherine. So Harris there implementing, it sounds like, some of what Obama got right. And yet, as you report, there's anxiety within the campaign around an issue that your colleague Tarini Party mentioned on the PM edition of the podcast earlier this week, that Harris hasn't

quite stitched together the coalition of voters that got behind Obama. The big thing they're trying to do and that she is struggling with and was a little different for Obama is she is struggling with men across the board. She's doing incredibly well with women, but she is just not matching Biden's numbers with men. And that cuts across a lot of different ages and demographics.

And so part of what they're hoping with Obama, obviously doing this rally in Atlanta, he'll be in Philadelphia on Monday with Bruce Springsteen. They really want him to keep pitching to men. He's talking a lot about strength and what real strength is. And he's arguing that Donald Trump doesn't actually convey strength. And that's clearly an argument that they're making to men. That was Journal White House reporter Catherine Lucey.

Well, outreach to male voters could be on Trump's mind today when he sits down with podcaster Joe Rogan in Austin, Texas. Both Trump and Harris have tried to arrange appearances on Rogan's show, which regularly draws 15 million listeners, including a lot of young men. But we report that Harris's attempt to also do an interview today didn't work out because of timing. Instead, she's scheduled to speak with podcaster Brene Brown, whose show is popular with older women.

Volkswagen is betting that America's obsession with big cars extends to EVs. Its Scout Motors brand yesterday unveiled its first vehicles, an electric pickup and an SUV, each priced around $60,000. While the launch comes amid reduced EV demand, VW is trying to tap into rising hybrid sales as well, with plans to add gasoline-electric hybrids to the Scout's lineup.

Speaking of new launches, Microsoft's $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard and its bet on video game streaming will face a major test today with the release of the latest installment of popular shooter Call of Duty. For the first time, the game will be available at launch for streaming or downloading via Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service, with the company hoping for a surge in signups.

Microsoft, which is trailing rivals Sony and Nintendo in console sales, has also so far struggled to convert gamers to a subscription-based model. And in news moving markets today, shares of Michael Kors' owner Capri are down more than 40 percent off hours after a federal court blocked its acquisition by rival Tapestry, whose brands include Coach and Kate Spade, on the grounds that it would reduce competition and raise prices.

Tapestry and Capri said they would appeal the ruling. And shares of Spirit Airlines are continuing their turbulent ride, soaring in off-hours trading after dropping more than 21 percent yesterday. The discount carrier said after the bell that it will cut jobs and sell some of its planes to reduce costs as it explores a bankruptcy filing.

And elsewhere in the world of air travel, America's biggest carriers are riding post-pandemic tailwinds as international travel rebounds. The number of Americans who flew to Europe so far this year is 16 percent higher compared with the same period in 2019, a trend that Delta, United and American Airlines expect to continue next year. And to

And to capitalize on that, journal reporter Roshan Fernandez said they're adding more flights on key routes while also introducing new locations, including Edinburgh, Sicily, and even Greenland. As we see European spots get more and more crowded, travelers are always looking for new places to go.

And so United in particular was on the hunt for new destinations and new locations. You saw that with their flight to Greenland coming next summer. So it's a combination of how do we service the people who weren't able to get to Europe the past summer or even two summers ago because it was too expensive or too busy or all the flights were full? And also, how do we service the people who did get to Europe last summer or two summers ago and don't want to go back to the same place? They want to find a new place to go.

But from the American air carrier perspective, what they're saying is that while people are still telling us that they want to go and they're buying the flights and filling up the flights, we're going to keep adding flights. Coming up, what Moscow achieved at this week's BRICS summit and how China's wealthy are illicitly moving hundreds of billions overseas. Those stories after the break. This message comes from Wall Street Journal sponsor C3.ai.

C3 Generative AI enables rapid access to secure, traceable, hallucination-free insights from enterprise systems, all while using any LLM, helping enterprises turn the invisible into the obvious. Learn more at c3.ai. This is Enterprise AI. Leaders and representatives from 36 countries, including Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, gathered this week for the BRICS Summit, hosted by Russia.

It was a push by Vladimir Putin to show his country isn't as isolated as world leaders say. And it also marked the first meeting in years between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a sign that both countries are looking to ease tensions stemming from a deadly clash over their Himalayan border so they can focus on other geopolitical and economic challenges.

Journal reporter Thomas Grove was keeping an eye on the event. What was interesting in the discussions was a real split between those who would like BRICS to become more of a geopolitical instrument in terms of defining a position of the global south and an anti-American global

Globally speaking, that's certainly the aim of Russia here, but there's a lot of caution there from other countries. And I think Modi was one of the more interesting exceptions where he said that this should not be a bloc meant to oppose a Western order. And so the U.S. and its Western allies see that split as well. But I think ultimately it will understand that the long-term political impact that this organization has going forward will remain limited.

And finally, as officials in China work to get the country's economy back on track, many people are looking for an exit route for their wealth. According to a journal tally, as much as $250 billion might have been moved out of the country in the four quarters through the end of June. And while it's hard to get a precise estimate, the size of that capital flight seems to eclipse the outflows that took place in 2015 and 2016 during an earlier property crisis.

Journal reporter Jason Douglas says that to circumvent China's strict capital controls, which cap individual purchases of foreign exchange at $50,000 a year, people are getting creative. This is particularly true for people who have companies. You can set up a subsidiary overseas and transfer some money over there effectively or sell some products to that and then transfer some money either through debt or through payments to that company and that basically debts the money overseas.

You can bill people for imports slightly higher than the goods that you're importing actually cost. And that also then leaves money in a bank account somewhere overseas. And then the more modern ways of doing it are through things like cryptocurrency, where although cryptocurrency is illegal in China, it's not illegal to actually open an account, strangely. So people are able to open crypto accounts, travel to somewhere like Singapore. And if they've managed to get some crypto in their wallet, then they can

change that in another jurisdiction for hard currency and then that's one way of getting cash out. One of the other favorite ways of doing it is through art. So you can get a fancy piece of art or other valuables, take it to somewhere like Hong Kong, sell it,

and then don't bring the money back. Though these outflows look smaller than those of the mid-2010s as a share of the Chinese economy, Jason says they still represent a worrisome trend for policymakers. It's a worry for the authorities because it shows that people who have the wherewithal to do it or the resources to do it might not be that enthusiastic about the direction of the Chinese economy. Things may change now that the government is making an effort to stimulate the economy and get growth back on track.

And so it's entirely possible that some of these outflows that we've been seeing do start to slow down and money might start flowing back into China in search of better opportunities, particularly in China's stock market, which has been doing very well recently. And that's it for What's News for Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivant and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend. Thanks for listening. ♪

This message comes from Wall Street Journal sponsor C3.ai. C3 generative AI enables rapid access to secure, traceable, hallucination-free insights from enterprise systems, all while using any LLM, helping enterprises turn the invisible into the obvious. Learn more at C3.ai. This is Enterprise AI.