Marketplace

With President Trump abroad this week, the business news agenda was set early this week by Ford. The American car maker announced over the weekend that CEO Mark Fields will be replaced by Jim Hackett, who most recently headed the company anonymous car division. We'll talk with executive chairman Bill Ford about it, plus we'll get some perspective from the Wall Street Journal's car critic. Then: Trump's clubs and resorts are exclusive and pricey, but if you're a hacker it's easy to get in and that could create a big national security problem. Plus, could you name the only bank in this country indicted for mortgage fraud after the financial crisis? You've probably never heard of them, because they weren't too big to fail.

Honestly, what's there to say at this point? There was even more news related to President Trump, Russia and ousted FBI Director James Comey this afternoon, to cap off a relentless week of compounding scoops and scandals. We'll do our best to figure out the economic effects of it all during the Weekly Wrap. Then: Trump was on his way to Saudi Arabia this week, the first stop in a nine-day trip abroad. He'll be bringing with him a $100 billion deal with the Saudis to buy American planes, ships and munitions, and they're not the only ones. We'll talk about the delicate balance between arms deals and diplomacy. Plus: Uber for trucks and the lay of the land for this summer's movie season with The New York Times' Wesley Morris.

On the eve of his first trip abroad since taking office, President Trump took the first formal steps of renegotiating NAFTA. But is it the right time? And what will the U.S. get out of it? That's what we're talking about today before turning to Saudi Arabia. It's Trump's first stop on a whirlwind nine-day trip, and he's bringing a lot of CEOs with him. Plus: Roger Ailes, the founder and former CEO of Fox News, died today at 77. Ailes was, according to more than a dozen women, a serial sexual harasser who enabled others to do the same. But he was also a man who changed the United States and propelled Trump to the White House. We'll talk with Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman. Plus: We covered stocks and currency under Trump already this week. So why not try to predict the future and complete the trifecta with a look at the bond market?

Leaving aside some late-breaking special (counsel) announcements, stocks seemed pretty immune to the chaos in Washington until today. But the dollar? Different story; it's at a seven month low, in fact. That's not to say currency traders are more on the ball than the folks in equities but... if the shoe fits? We'll talk about it, and today's big sell-off. Then: TV upfronts are wrapping up this week. All the networks are showing off their fall schedules which look... a lot like stuff we've seen before. Finally, we follow a cancer patient who's devoting his life to making drugs more affordable.

In the past week, the president of the United States shared highly classified information with the Russians after he fired the director of the FBI. That whole affair was still roiling as we taped this show. Before that, Congress pulled a major piece of legislation affecting almost 20 percent of the American economy off the House floor before a vote, then passed it by the thinnest of margins. In different times, all this chaos would have spooked traders, shaken up markets and maybe Washington in the process. So it's worth hitting pause and asking: What did the markets know? And when did they know it? Then: What you need to know about Ford's plan to cut 10 percent of its global workforce, and the U.S. Postal Service's bid for millennials. Plus, as the WannaCry cyberattack fades, a new story is emerging: Hollywood films held by hackers for ransom. What would it take for studios to pay up? Should they?

Here's the thing about WannaCry, the ransomware attack much of the planet was dealing with today: it's been remarkably unprofitable for the perpetrators. Hackers asked for as much as $300 worth of bitcoin per infected user, and they've only netted about $55,000 for their efforts. Why use bitcoin as ransom payments? We'll talk about it. Then: 2017 is gonna be written about in the history books for a whole lotta reasons, one of which might be as a tipping point in the global economy. Following China's big infrastructure summit we'll sort through the state of negotiations around the world. Plus: why it's a good time to be a restaurant worker in Nashville. 

We have a lot to talk about on the Weekly Wrap this week: We'll cover the economic impacts of Comey's firing, the interview President Trump gave about his own economic policies and that letter about Trump's Russian business interests or lack thereof. Then: State governments submitted more than 500 infrastructure projects to the White House for consideration as Trump puts together his spending plan. We're tracking what's on each state's wishlist along with APM Reports. Plus: What the Justice Department's new action on drug offenses means for the private prison business.

As we await tonight’s already-a-bombshell conversation with NBC News, there’s another Trump interview we’ve been unpacking today. The president and two of his key economic advisers sat down with The Economist to talk health care, trade and more. We're going to zoom in on one part, where Trump said he'll "prime the pump" of the economy while claiming he invented the term. He didn't, but we'll talk about what it means and why that policy matters. Then: The Senate has confirmed Robert Lighthizer as the U.S. trade representative, and he's going to have his hands very full (see above). Plus, we'll look at a grim but hidden dimension of this country's opioid epidemic: morgues and medical examiners are overwhelmed.

Kellyanne Conway went on CNN this morning to talk about President Trump's bombshell firing of FBI director James Comey and said this: "You want to question the timing of when he hires, when he fires. It’s inappropriate. He’ll do it when he wants to." Um, asking questions is exactly what a free press in a representative democracy is supposed to do, and we still have a lot of them. Questions like: what's gonna happen with health care? Tax reform? Trump's trillion-dollar infrastructure package? And there's a broader question that's unique to this president: Is this how you run a business? Is it how you run the government like a business? We'll talk about it. Plus: the state of schools in Erie County, Pennsylvania and the second part of our interview with Susan Burton.

President Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey, the White House said, for the way he handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. We'll talk with Politico's Sudeep Reddy about whether that reasoning passes the sniff test and what this news means for Republicans' congressional goals. Then: The Trump administration has put off a decision about staying in the Paris climate agreement as coal production is up. The long term for coal is trickier though. Plus: "American Idol" is back from the dead.

Emmanuel Macron easily won France's presidential election over the weekend, but he has a rough road ahead. Parliamentary elections are next month, and the rest of Europe will be watching. We'll look at what comes next, then turn to Mexico, where U.S. President Trump's plans for a border wall and continued uncertainty over NAFTA have triggered a national conversation there about the American border and economic freedom not seen in years. Plus: a whopping fourth of Starbucks' sales come through its mobile app, but that app could be vulnerable to fraud. 

It's jobs day, and a strong showing for April wrapped up a pretty packed week for business and economic news. We'll talk about health care, the Fed and unemployment all on the Weekly Wrap. Then, we'll dig into why wage growth isn't keeping pace with jobs and bring you the latest on the French election. Plus, the view on Trump's first 100 days from a breakfast table in Erie, Pennsylvania, as part of our series The Big Promise

After several false starts and a few amendments, Republicans in the House finally passed their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. The bill is on its way to the Senate and still without scoring from the Congressional Budget Office. That means we don't really know what the bill could cost or who could lose coverage, and Congress doesn't really know what they voted for. We talked with Doug Elmendorf, who was running the CBO when Obamacare was under debate, and he called the vote "a terrible mistake." Then, we'll talk about the latest from Brexit and Puerto Rico's debt crisis. Plus: President Trump is heading back to New York for the first time since he took office, and his old neighborhood on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan might look a little different.

There's a lot of arm twisting and horse trading going on between the House and the White House this week, trying to push a new health care bill through. But there's a fundamental economic reality going on here: Lawmakers are trying to change the health care market and ignoring market forces. Then: The news out of the Federal Reserve was no news, but looking ahead, you can expect a hike and President Trump to fill as many as five vacancies on the Board of Governors. We'll talk about it. Plus: NAFTA's effect on Texas cattle and reappearing chicken nuggets in Los Angeles schools. 

The current mantra with President Trump seems to be look at what he does and not what he says. But words (and facts) matter, and this morning the president tweeted that America needs "a good 'shutdown' in September to fix mess!" The mess being, it's clear from the context, the trouble the White House is having getting its agenda through Congress. We can argue about how a shutdown might help or hurt the president's agenda, but there's no question it would be bad for the economy. Plus, we'll talk about #vanlife and the string of bad earnings reports for American car companies (they aren't related).