RFK Jr. Tapped To Head HHS, Trump & Government Bonds, Biden Meets Xi In Peru
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President like trump wants Robert f. Kennedy, junior, to lead the department of health and human services.

Kennedy, as a vaccine skeptic, push conspiracy theory. So how would he handle on department overseeing public?

I'm Steven cape with ml market. This is at first from npr news. Stocks climbed up to the election, while bond markets sent a different signal. Bond Prices suggest investor cy higher inflation and higher death in president electronics economic plans. How might that affect .

your economic situation and in with china, I gen. Ping, in the for the last meeting before the leaves office.

there is actual work to do in critical to ensure that we don't want in tense problems.

Biden is focus on keeping relations steady during a delicate transition of power. Will their meeting help maintain stabilities stay with us will give you the news you you need to start your day.

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Robert f. Kennedy, junior will be nominated by president electron p to run the department of health and .

human services. The invented and vaccine skeptic made many claims during the presidential campaign. He said he will drastically reduce rates of chronic in just two years.

He also spread several conspiracy theories while chatting with the podcast host joe rogan. r. fk. Junior said, wifi causes cancer while talking on x with you on mosk y claimed that school shootings are linked to and to the presence and elsewhere. I F, K question the link between aides and HIV, which is the virus that causes IT giving .

us a little small black canadians backup and what his confirmation could mean for the agency as M, P, R health policy in a Simons fan, a good morning. this. So obviously .

many people have .

heard of Kennedy. He's part of a very famous democratic political family that includes a former president, johnnie knee. But tell us more about him as a public figure.

Well, most recently, he ran for president as an independent before dropping out in August and endorsement trump, who has been enthusiastically using his make amErica healthy again line. Kennedy isn't attorney. He went to harvard in the seventies and got his laud agree at uva.

He struggled with drug diction. And IT was actually an arrest for heroin possession in the eighties that LED to volunteering with the natural resources defense council to fully community service hours that LED to a whole career in environmental advocate. And around twenty years ago, he got interested in vaccine conspiracy theory, especially in the disprove and link between vaccines and autism. That has been a huge focus of his work and life since then. okay.

So what about the agency he would be in charge of? Give us a tour of the department of healthy human services.

So H H H is enormous. It's got one of the biggest budgets in the federal government, one point seven trillion dollars. That's trillion with a tea that's about the GDP of australia.

And within A H S are a lot of health agencies, medicare and medicare or under H. H S. So is the food drug administration, the national institutes of health, the center for disease control and prevention.

Those are probably the health agencies people hear the most about. But there are all these other agencies, like one that runs community health centers across the country. There's another for mental health in all H.

H. S. Employees, about ninety thousand people across these agencies. Trump has promised to let Kennedy, quote, go wild on health and dramatically shake things up.

Do we have any idea of what Kennedy going wild on health might look like?

Well, he recently said he'd like to fire six hundred N. I. H. employees. He's talked a lot about rooting out corruption.

Some of his ideas are pretty mainstream, like promoting nutritious foods and addressing chronic disease. He said he wants to ban prescription drug advertisements. He rightly points out that american life expectancy is really pretty bad and lags behind other wealthy countries by a lord. But he has some fears that are really far out of the mainstream. We've talked about vaccine scepticism. Current cdc director Mandy coon wrote to empty yesterday quote, I don't want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work and so i'm concerned and quote, the idea of someone who's actively sold misinformation about vaccines. Being in charge of the government's scientific research and public healthy agencies really horrifies a lot of people in those fields.

This is a senate confirmed position. Do we have a sense of whether he will have the votes to be confirmed?

Well, we will have to see. Some republican senators have responded enthusiastically to his nomination, others won't say yet. Interestingly, his campaign websites says he supports abortion access. He wrote quote and four choice and medical freedom. We will see how that position plays out among republicans who are eager to curtailed abortion access federally .

once they take power in washington. That is stuff .

and a thank you.

Stocks surge following down trumps real election. But the bond market is a different story. They've been selling off in a big way, and that affects everything from interest rates to inflation yeah.

a bond investors say they are alarmed about parts of the president elect economic agenda, which is important because the bond market matters so much for business and governing. If interest strates are low, your company and your government can borrow lots of money cheap. And if interest rates climb, life gets more expensive fast.

For more than this, we are joined by empire senior business editor rafael nm. rafael? Good morning.

So just briefly give us the basics of what what are bonds and why do they matter? We've said a little bit about that. Just what are a day?

Good question. A lot of people don't get bounds, but is actually pretty simple. The way works is that the government sales bounds, investors were talking banks, other countries, individual people think of IT as alone.

The government needs to borrow money to function and to afford of its spending. These investors are the bank, and they're lending their money to uncle sam. Then ano sm promises to pay back these investors with interest. And when one investors gets boot, they demand more interest from the government. And that's exactly what's happening now.

So why the sell up?

Well, there are two critical things to the economy that could get worse under a new trip, administration inflation and the government finances. Polestar le inflation. First, although trump has promised to lower inflation, many bond investors believe he could actually do the opposite.

And take terrorist. Trump s. Proposing a wide range of terrorists, and the U.

S. imports. A lot of things close. Toys choose, take jutes, unit terrorists obviously make those things more expensive.

Trump also wants to cut taxes, for example. He wants to example workers in restaurants and other places from paying taxes and tips. All of that could make the country's finances a lot words. And they are already pretty bad. The budget deficit in the last fiscal year was one twenty trillion dollars, the third highest on record.

So you heard to see if that earlier say that bonds wield a lot of power. How do bond investors wheel their power?

Because they can essentially tell the government we won't be lending you any more money, and that would put the government in a pinch. Now if the interest the U. S.

Pays on its sponsor, ges. And they can also create a lot of paying to the country's finances, and these fears in bond markets can spread to other markets like stocks. Fear is pretty contained, after all.

And IT has happened before around the world. About two years ago in the united kingdom, bond investors revoted IT helped create a financial storm, and he took down the prime minister in a matter of weeks. There's even a term for bond investors that real their power.

This way, bond B, G, lantis. These investors could stop buy bonds is effectively the government, like I was telling you, were not going to end any more money unless you reconsider some of your policies. Now the us.

Is obviously much bigger than the U. K. And we also don't know what trump hs is actually going to do. But things could get rocky very quickly if he does. All the things is promised.

So very briefly, how would this affect regular people?

Yes, because the bound U S. Bar market influence all kinds of interest payments from credit cards to other loans to mortgages. So when there's painting, the bum market is not just a trump administration that will feel the impact IT could be people like you and me.

That is amperes. Well.

thank you. Thank you.

President biden is in a lima, peru, where he's meeting with leaders from the asia pacific region, including china's president.

Changing pain will sit down tomorrow, and what is expected to be their final summit before biden leaves office here have the president's national security advise. Just solve an described IT.

So it's an important meeting. IT will not be just a valid diction. Although there will be an element of reflecting over the course of their long relationship, there is actual work to do in this critical moment between the U. S. And china to ensure that we don't run intending problems in the next two months in this transition of power.

P, R, one, whose correspondant asmodeus t is in lima with the president and he is with us now.

Good morning. Good night show.

So as of course we all know, present by is at the end of his time in office, what can he actually get done at this meeting tomorrow?

I mean, there are two main missions for this meeting. One is that bidin wants to cement the policy CoOperation, for he feels he's been able to achieve in this relationship over the course last four years, work to stop the flow affect coordination on climate issues and discussions around the chAllenges of artificial intelligence.

But was the most importantly, the other main mission here is to emphasize that IT is important to keep the lines of communication open, particularly the lines of military to military CoOperation. You might recall those stopped for a bit because of tinge ons over spying. And biden wants to make this point clear during this transition period where one administration is handing off to the next because they believe this administration believes that IT is a delicate moment. Here's how bide international security vice, R. G.

So of exploiting that transitions are uniquely consequential moments in geo politics. There are time when competitors and adversity can see possibly opportunity, because you have this, this change in government here. And so part of what president, by will communicators that we need to maintain stability, clarity, predictability through this transition.

But how can he credibly make that point about predict, baby, given the president elect trump wants to roll back and change much of what president biden has done.

that is a fair understanding, given how much disagree there is in washington over policy. But one rare area of bipartisanship is china policy. There's been a degree of continuity. For example, in his first term, puts sweeping tabs on imports of chinese goods. And biden, for the most part, has kept those in place.

And one thing that called my ear is that by international security adviser told reporters that he sees some continue in china policy based on who trump has selected a for national security adviser that congressman mike walls and also has picked for a secretary of state, senator mark rubio. Both of these men have been really focused on the chAllenges with china, and this White house feels that competition with china is going to be the defining issue for what the world looks like in the coming decades. And so in order for the us.

To succeed over the long run, they will feel that us china relationships really need to have bipartisan support to that point. One thing that by administration really aggressively went after during its time in office was something called export controls. And this is the regulating the sale of certain technology to china. And experts think that, that may continue in a trumpet administration.

trump, but he wants to hike terms on china. That is something he promised in the campaign. Do we know whether biden is going to talk about?

That was iden is expected to talk about unfair trade practices. But what that looks like isn't clear. I mean, one person I spoke to before this trip, DMi rusal, he was a top state department official during the obama years.

He told me he thinks spitting could use this meeting to try to underscore that china needs to shift its ways, rather than just threatened to escalate and retaliate. And president SHE, though, I should point out, has his own relationship with the former in our future president trump. They had meetings during proms the first term, and trade was always frighten center. So i'm not sure that SHE or trump will be looking .

for advice there. That is mp, thank you, my pleasure. And that's at first for friday, november fifth. I mishel Martin .

and i'm Steven k, but first comes you away on the weekend too. I should rosa and Scott Simon have the news in this wherever you get your podcast.

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