Trump Signals Deportation Strategy Shift After Minnesota Outcry

0:00Carol Massar:They told us to expect change. They warned us about the transition. But honestly, they forgot the best part. This is the chapter where we finally focus on us. LifeMD delivers expert menopause and midlife care right from your home. From hormone health to holistic wellness, LifeMD helps you feel your best for the best years of your life. LifeMD, it's just getting good. Visit LifeMD.com slash goodlife.

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1:01Carol Massar:I'm sure by now you know that President Trump is sending U.S. border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis amid a growing outcry over his immigration crackdown that was inflamed last weekend when federal agents fatally shot a U.S. citizen. Now, this is happening as a growing number of Republicans called for a full investigation after federal agents shot and killed that protester in Minneapolis. It's really, Tim, and you really stressed this on our call this morning about we're seeing some tensions within the GOP. Yeah, it's a sign of unease within the party about the administration's aggressive immigration tactics.

1:34We're seeing some members of Congress talking away right now that they don't typically talk about and going against what the president says. Remember, we're in a different political environment now than I think it's fair to say we've ever been in.

1:44Carol Massar:And CEO starting to speak out. And we're going to dig into that over the next 60 minutes as well. We want to bring in Wendy Schiller, certainly well known to the Bloomberg audience, professor of political science at Brown University. She joins us from Providence, Rhode Island. Wendy, good to have you here. President Trump was out on social at 1139 a.m. Eastern saying he had a very good call with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, expects to speak to him again in the near future. He said that Walz called the president to request to work together. A lot going on. What's your read on all of this? The president sending Tom Homan, if Governor Walz indeed did call the president.

2:22Carol Massar:What's this say all to you, someone who studies presidents, studies administration, studies the core and foundation of America? Well, I mean, I think what you're seeing are two different political actors with very different incentives. Walz is not running for reelection in Minnesota, but he's the governor. He's responsible. And he's got this huge federal presence that is basically spinning out of control on the streets of his own state. And he wants to reassert authority in the sense of calming things down, not necessarily disobeying the federal government, but calming things down. President Trump has other things he thinks he wants to get done.

3:00It's not just it's a midterm election year. This is freezing up his presidency. Basically, this sort of spin out of control for the Department of Homeland Security and their tactics, not their aims or goals. President Obama deported more than 2.4 million people. his eight years as president. So I think the American public has patience for the effort to sort of say, OK, if you're not here legally, then you have to leave. But, you know, he's underwater in the 60s, meaning more than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of ICE tactics. So it's spilled out not just from ICE, but certainly to his entire presidency.

3:38Now the Congress is saying we don't think we will fund the Department of Homeland Security. So by the end of the week. You could have some agencies funded, but you could also have a partial shutdown because of Homeland Security. And so that is sort of throttling up all of President Trump's energy and agenda. And he's got to clear the decks. Wendy, on the company side of this, I think this got a lot of our attention when this happened, because this is sort of like, you know, we're watching at Bloomberg what these these companies that are based in Minnesota, what they're saying. And I was surprised to hear over the weekend that Target, UnitedHealth, 3M, Best Buy, among others, addressing immigration actions in Minnesota, some calling for peaceful de-escalation, emphasizing compassion.

4:18The NBA issued a statement saying it must defend the right to freedom of speech, and they stand in solidarity with the people of Minnesota protesting. Is this a turning point that has any effect on the president and his policies? Tim and Carol, I think this is exactly the question mark. And it'll be deep. If it's an inflection point right now, it says, is this the America we want to be? We've had two U.S. citizens shot by federal law enforcement under circumstances that have not been clarified by the federal government. And there's calls for investigations. But this you could ask most Americans and they say that's not the way we want this to go.

4:58So that's affecting not just the Republicans, but the Democrats as well. It's government exercise of government power. So I do think there is a turning point in the sense of expressing, you know, real opposition to this particular tactic. And we know that CEOs and business owners have also been unhappy with the Trump administration with these raids on businesses all over the country, anywhere from Idaho to Iowa, all over. And Trump said, oh, I'll pull back on some of these raids because I know it's hurting business. You know, so I think it's the culmination of unhappiness. And now there's there is a sort of flashpoint where I think corporate America can safely come into the fray and say this isn't just about business anymore.

5:41This is about loss of life. And, you know, there's got to be a better way of doing it.

5:45Carol Massar:And yet, you know, Wendy, and we're going to dig deeper into this letter of CEOs in Minneapolis, but it's been largely an environment where the corporate community has sat by and just worked out deals, it seems, with the White House to get what they need done, but kind of turned away from some of the other injustices that have been going on. or the ignoring of the rule of law in this country, which has really been so much a foundation for this country. So I'm just trying to understand, you know, what has really been a kind of a silence that we have seen largely, whether it's the corporate community and just other leaders in our world, especially in the U.S.

6:29Well, Carol, I think this is a really important observation that you're making. And what we see at the sort of lowest levels is a rejection in some cases of what you might call an abuse of executive authority. For example, presidential attempts, Trump's attempts to go after his quote unquote enemies. Grand juries, which are made up of your average everyday American who is doing their civic duty, have said no, we don't find any cause here. We're not giving you a bill of indictment. And that's a very important democratic mechanism at the lowest level, which is saying no to overreach of power. So I think when businesses start to see that the average American is standing up and saying no, whether it's in a grand jury room or it's on the streets in Minneapolis, I think it gives them more backbone, really, to step up and say, OK, enough is enough.

7:19Carol Massar:Wendy, though, let me just counter. Is it really backbone or is it just, well, OK, midterms coming up. It's not looking really good. I can start shifting around. Same thing for members of the GOP. Well, I mean, for practical effects, do we do those of us who are concerned about overreach of power care what the motivation is? I think once it becomes safer to venture into this space, I don't see them retreating. So I think their voices, you may argue, I may argue, have been too silent thus far. But now they do have that backup of midterm elections. But that backup rests with consumers. So we saw a lot of this in the reverse when we had DEI and boycotts of places that weren't really paying attention to DEI.

8:01Then we had a reversal under Trump. But especially with Target as a company, for example, that had to really pivot again. But now we're seeing the power of the consumer, maybe not expressed so far in retail, but certainly that same person who's objecting in polls or on the street is somebody who may be buying your product. So it does make sense, if we want to say it, to jump on this bandwagon.

8:23Carol Massar:Wendy, I do want to be fair because, you know, we all talk to, and I'm sure you do too, talk to a lot of leaders. And whether it's China, a position that President Trump took in his first administration, that President Biden continued a lot of the pushback in his administration. When it comes to immigration, you mentioned what President Obama did in terms of deportations. So to be fair, what some say too is there are these problems and President Trump has brought them to light in a big way. And so they don't necessarily disagree, but the methods kind of get messy and in the way of what maybe this country stands for.

8:59Right. So what you want to ask yourself is this is self-inflicted political wound. If the president used different rhetoric, I mean, this is the great I mean, this is a frustration in the Trump administration, I think, because if you look at the Obama administration, they say, wait a minute. He deported more people than we've managed to deport in our five years in office combined. But it's the rhetoric. It's the demonization. It's sort of the dismissal of people's concerns. I think that is self-inflicted. And we have seen this president be able to pivot. You know, this phone call with Waltz should not be discounted.

9:29This is very important for settling things down in Minneapolis, but also giving Trump an off ramp. Can he make home in the acting department secretary, for example, if Kristi Noem, for example, were to depart from that position? Does it give an opening for Trump to make changes at the top there? And that may, you know, get his presidency back on track and appease Democrats enough, theoretically, that they'd be willing to support funding at the end of the week. So I think there's an opportunity for a president who does pivot quite frequently to tamp down the rhetoric. We know Trump can do it. Whether he's willing to right now, we just don't know.

10:05Carol Massar:All right. Love getting time with you always. Wendy Schiller, professor of political science at Brown University, joining us from Rhode Island. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

10:19Carol Massar:They told us to expect change. They warned us about the transition. But honestly, they forgot the best part. This is the chapter where we finally focus on us. LifeMD delivers expert menopause and midlife care right from your home. From hormone health to holistic wellness, LifeMD helps you feel your best for the best years of your life. LifeMD, it's just getting good. Visit LifeMD.com slash goodlife. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.

11:03Carol Massar:All right, let's get to the trade today. This has demand for exchange-traded products focused on European equities. It was so strong last year in 2025 that they attracted a decade in a year of inflows. That's according to BlackRock's Ursula Marchione, Head of Investment and Portfolio Solutions for EMEA at the world's largest asset manager. She caught up an interview with Bloomberg TV this morning over with our European colleagues. Check it out. From investors with historical own bias towards Europe, that has to be rectified. But then on the flip side, from a more tactical perspective, there is this desire to diversify and remain exposed to the AI trade and to the U.S., but with some form of protection.

11:45Carol Massar:And so we've seen last year the great repatriation trade with nearly 92 billion of flows going back into European equities ETPs. If you compare it to the period 2014 to 2024, that was 94. So it's basically a decade in a year. It's pretty remarkable. A decade in a year. That was BlackRock's Ursula Marchione, head of investment portfolio solutions for EMEA. Let's get to the trade and today's trade and what she's seeing on the Robinhood platform. Stephanie Guild is with us, chief investment officer at Robinhood Markets. Did that resonate with what you're seeing on the Robinhood platform? or is that completely different than what you're seeing on the platform?

12:25Carol Massar:We, yeah, we haven't actually seen a ton of international take up, at least here in the US. You've seen a little bit in the Chinese tech aspect, like in names like Baba, but largely it's been a very US focused, you know, AI and lots of other investing themes focused over the last year. Why do you think that is? I think our customers take sort of a long term view and they like to invest in things that they know and understand really no different than, you know, past generations. And I think they feel that they know and understand, you know, tech and can understand kind of the long term secular growth trends that can come from parts of tech and are willing to take that risk.

13:10You know, even if it's in the space like quantum computing, which is still, you know, in sort of discovery phase.

13:17Carol Massar:Do you think that has to do with some of who are actually on your platform? In other words, the demographics that I think, you know, I don't know. Maybe they've only seen U.S. equities outperform, right? Like exactly. That's not the world that you lived in for much. Yeah. Right. It could be absolutely part of it. I mean, it's the same kind of thing is like, you know, has a generation ever seen value outperform growth here in the US? It's so funny that you say that. On Friday, I was at a big dinner and was talking with someone who has started companies, sold them, now investing their own money, and just talked about some of the big wealth managers who come to him and say, you should be buying the market and paying me a fee for doing that and so on and so forth.

13:56Carol Massar:And he's like, you know what? I haven't bought the market. I've actually doubled down on those big tech names and have outperformed the market, even though if you think about the last few years, people keep saying, oh, back off some of these. It's time to diversify. You know what? If you didn't, you did really well. And especially if you played on those mag seven names. Yeah, I think I do think it's shifting now. Like I I'm sort of a student of looking at the market and saying that once you had sort of a post covid world, I do think the fact that we have interest rates has has shifted what is possible and can outperform.

14:32Carol Massar:And there is, you know, covid kind of brought tech right into front and center and the need for it. But I think as more time goes on, and especially with some of the incentives from the one big, beautiful bill and other, that I think it's possible that you can start to see other things do well. And yet the net buys on your platform, right? Meta, Microsoft. I'm thinking about we're going to have, what, for the Mag7 reporting this week alone, including these two names, NetSales, NVIDIA AMD, and CoreWeave, which is interesting because CoreWeave rallying in today's session. But that's what you've seen in the last - Thanks to it, NVIDIA.

15:08investment.

15:09Carol Massar:Right. Right. Yeah. And that's over the last week. So it does shift. What was also interesting over the last week is that I saw and you kind of saw this news all across the X platform, but you saw below those top names, a number of software companies starting to come into the net buy side. So taking advantage of the pretty deep sell off in that space. And then more recently, just like in the last day, we've seen some Netflix buying as well. Was that because of the Alex Honnold stunt over the weekend? Just 30 seconds? Might be. You know, obviously, there's a lot of drama with Netflix right now.

15:50Yeah, there is. You know, it's been it's been beat up ever since the announcement that they're going after Warner Brothers Discovery's assets. So investors don't love it, but they keep they keep steady when, hey, we want those assets and we'll pay. They still have

16:02Carol Massar:a solid business underneath it. It's pretty, yeah, that's a good point. Stephanie, good to see you as always. Appreciate your time. Come back soon. Come back soon. Love talking with her. She is chief investment officer over at Robin Hood Markets. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. More than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies called for an immediate de-escalation of tensions, their words, between state, local, and federal authorities as the state reels from another fatal shooting of an American by immigration agents.

16:47Carol Massar:And Tim, what's interesting is, remember we noted last week, our team on the ground in Davos, what they said Wall Street chiefs were kind of up to? Yeah, they want to lay low at the World Economic Forum. don't really want to draw the attention of the president. We've asked this question a lot, like why aren't companies more speaking out more about how, you know, it's kind of obvious why there's limited upside. There's really no upside is what some observers have told us. Like, what do you have to gain? You have nothing to gain. They don't want to be mentioned maybe at a press conference at the White House.

17:18Carol Massar:That's, I think, a safe thing to say. So we wanted to get a good deep dive into this, continue kind of what we've been doing this hour. It's great to have back with us Rebecca Humkiss. She's faculty at the London Business School and at Duke Corporate Executive Education, also author of Survive, Reset, Thrive, Leading Breakthrough, Growth Strategy, and Volatile Times. She joins us from London. Rebecca, great to have you back with Tim and me. CEOs have had to navigate a lot of tricky times, the great financial crisis, COVID, the murder of George Floyd, President Trump's immigration crackdown across the U.S., most recently Minneapolis, that has resulted in the killing of two Americans.

17:54Carol Massar:CEOs have largely been quiet up until now. What are you hearing from the global leadership community about this moment in time and those specifically in the United States? Yeah, I think, Carol and Tim, the discussion you've been having today and in Davos last week, a couple of things are going on. One, let's say the fact that we have always run and tried to grow and lead companies through uncertainty. Uncertainty is not new. Like, it is the new certainty. You know, there is an element of geopolitical volatility that we have now that is kind of changing the expectation, as well as the current administration's involvement in the private sector.

18:31One thing that we saw in 2020 with George Floyd was that companies really weren't prepared of how to handle social issues. They didn't have policies. They hadn't had meetings. It was a pretty tough time. What we've seen since then is most companies have now have something agreed and signed off with the board of how they are going to address social issues. You can agree or disagree with the fact that they have policies where we're seeing perhaps a delayed response is that companies now have policies in place where they did not in 2020. And some feel that they might have reacted to knee jerk, kind of not getting the right consensus, not doing it appropriately.

19:04We're seeing a bit of that.

19:06Carol Massar:Can I just say, to be fair, it sounds like the response that they've agreed is to say nothing. You know, Carol, that is partly what we're seeing. We are also seeing an administration - Up until now, perhaps. Yeah, up until now, up until today, we are seeing an administration who is very quick to jump. We've seen that from Venezuela, from Iran, from Chair Powell. We saw it last week with Jamie Dimon. This is an administration who is not afraid to call out CEOs by name if they say something that might contradict their policies. And this is the new norm that executives are operating within. And you can disagree with their processes.

19:37What we're seeing the difference is, is there is a process in place and they are trying to lay low. There is very much a sentiment of just put your head down, create value for your shareholders and stakeholders, and frankly, try to stay out of the way of the administration. Is that the right move? No, every CEO needs to decide with his or her team and board team on what's best for them and their company and their employees. And you're going to see different responses because of that. And that's the great thing about employees and teams having a choice. They're going to choose to align themselves with organizations that might meet their mission or purpose are those that don't.

20:09We are really, for the first time over the last week, a bit of what we saw towards the tail end of Davos today, what we're seeing from Minnesota. We are seeing more of a response. And again, we get to align ourselves as an investor, as an employee, as a team with those companies that you want to align your values with.

20:24Carol Massar:And to be fair, like you made that good point that, you know, you just take a look at last week, like the different things that maybe came out of the White House or from the president's social posts. And it's a lot of things that maybe go nowhere, right? So as a CEO, you've got to think about as a leader of any institution, the longer term, right? And things that are ultimately going to impact you longer term. So I kind of get that. Having said that, I do think about the impact though, on society at large, where it feels like a lot of anger, a lot of hate, a lot of division. We've had division before in this country.