Trump Sues JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon for 'Debanking' Him

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0:18Alex Ossola:President Trump is suing J.P. Morgan for closing his accounts. Plus, colorectal cancer is now the top cause of death from cancer among younger Americans. and why Elon Musk decided SpaceX should go public after more than two decades as a private company. There is this sense of urgency right now. Our reporting shows that he's become a bit obsessed with the idea of being the first to put these data centers in space. It's Thursday, January 22nd. I'm Alex Osula for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

1:01Alex Ossola:Today, President Trump sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon for$5 billion, alleging that the bank closed his accounts for political reasons after the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The lawsuit, which was filed in Florida, says the bank closed the accounts that year and that JPMorgan has blacklisted Trump since then. The president has said the country's biggest banks discriminate against him, his followers and conservatives broadly. And he's ordered regulators to launch investigations into banks over allegations of what's known as debanking. J.P. Morgan has said it doesn't discriminate based on politics, and a spokeswoman today said the suit has no merit.

1:45Alex Ossola:More younger Americans are dying from colorectal cancer than any other kind of cancer. The American Cancer Society said today that more than 3 ,900 adults under the age of 50 died of cancer of the colon or rectum in 2023. That compares with just over 3 ,800 who died of breast cancer, the number two cause of deaths from cancer for that year. Colorectal cancer cases have been on the rise in younger adults for years, and the fact that it's now the top cancer killer means the disease is often diagnosed when it's already at an advanced stage. Medical groups have lowered the recommended age for colonoscopies that can detect the disease early on, but doctors say not enough people under 50 are getting the screenings.

2:28Alex Ossola:SpaceX, one of the most valuable private companies in the U.S., has long resisted going public. In fact, it got so valuable in part because it could develop risky space businesses outside the scrutiny of public investors. Its executives like to say the company wouldn't IPO until its rockets were regularly flying to Mars. Now, though, the stock market debut may be coming soon. People familiar with the matter say CEO Elon Musk is racing towards an IPO in the next few months. Journal reporter Corey Dreebush is here to tell us more about Musk's change of heart. Corey Musk has complained loudly and often about the challenges of running his existing public company Tesla.

3:05Alex Ossola:Tesla. He's repeatedly tangled with regulators and courts over issues like his compensation, which is the kind of thing that is less of an issue when a company is private. So what's pushing Musk to make SpaceX public? SpaceX has been a private company for over two decades. And what really has sparked it all ties back to this boom in AI. There's been this rush to build lots of data centers for AI computing. For several years, there's been some talk in certain circles about what if we just put these data centers into space? That way we don't have to worry about licensing or land or the pollution that might happen on Earth.

3:46So that idea prompted, as you can imagine, a lot of skepticism from engineers given the technical challenges. But it has continued to gain traction. And in the past year, SpaceX was able to make some progress in figuring out the logistical and technical workings. So that sort of sparked this idea, we should go public sooner. This is going to be very expensive. The easiest way to do this is to raise a lot of money in a public stock offering.

4:19Alex Ossola:Musk has told people that he wants to complete this IPO by July. Are they in a rush to get this done? They started interviewing banks to underwrite this public offering starting in December. So we know that they have been setting up the groundwork to launch an offering. There is this sense of urgency right now. Not only do we have SpaceX that is looking at a 2026 stock offering, we've also hearing that OpenAI and Anthropic, two large AI companies, are eyeing potential late 2026 IPOs. You think about how much money all these companies are going to be raising, bankers have told us. There is a first mover advantage that if you're out first, you kind of get the first pick of all of the cash out there.

5:10Alex Ossola:Is there a sense yet of how investors could respond to a SpaceX IPO? Obviously, past performance does not guarantee future results. But SpaceX has done regular tender offers, which means it allows insiders and employees to sell their stakes. So there is a price that goes up significantly, and yet they seem to always be fulfilled. So it suggests that there is a lot of demand. On the other hand, SpaceX, not many people see their full financial results. And I think a lot of these investors also are going to be very curious what's going on under the hood. So there's always a chance that when the formal paperwork that they're going to file with the SEC becomes public, that we could learn something surprising.

5:59Alex Ossola:That was WSJ reporter Cori Driebusch. Thanks, Cori. Thanks so much for having me.

6:07Alex Ossola:In markets, investors pushed up major U.S. indexes after President Trump backed off tariffs on Europe yesterday. The Nasdaq led the gains, adding 0.9 percent. In earnings today, Intel swung to a loss in the fourth quarter and said there would be more losses in the first quarter. The company is spending heavily to ramp up production of its latest chips. The spices and seasonings maker McCormick is raising prices to offset tariffs and higher costs for commodities. The company issued an outlook that disappointed Wall Street, and its stock closed down 8.1%. And at Procter & Gamble, higher prices helped boost revenue in the latest quarter, offsetting a decline in sales volume.

6:46Alex Ossola:The maker of Crest Toothpaste and Pantene Shampoo also cut its earnings outlook for its fiscal year ending in June. Its share price closed up 2.7 percent. Coming up, what the Saks bankruptcy tells us about luxury retail and the movie that just beat the record for the most Oscar nominations ever. That's after the break.

7:15What's driving the markets this week? What's on investors' minds as they look ahead? Find out on the Markets Podcast from Goldman Sachs. A breakdown of market moves and macro signals in 10 minutes or less. The Markets Podcast from Goldman Sachs. Listen now.

7:46Alex Ossola:When luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue filed for bankruptcy last week, most people were not surprised. Its 2024 acquisition of competitor Neiman Marcus didn't make the company into the luxury juggernaut its leadership had hoped. But it's not the only luxury company that's felt some strain. Suzanne Kapner covers retail for the journal and joins me now. So Suzanne, some of what was going on with Saks was specific to that company. But how has the overall luxury industry been doing? Coming out of the pandemic, sales across the industry slowed around 2023. You saw some of the biggest names like LVMH and Kering, which owns Gucci.

8:24Sales were falling in negative territory for some of these brands for a while. You still had players like Hermes putting up positive sales. So there were bright spots. But even like a Chanel, which was untouchable for years, their sales were hurt. There's a couple of reasons for that. One, people stocked up on luxury goods during the pandemic. They didn't need to buy a lot of stuff in the years following. But these brands also were raising prices at an unprecedented rate. Luxury goods weren't worth the money anymore. The quality was slipping. The prices were going up. And it turned off a lot of shoppers, especially those Gen Z customers who were new to buying these brands.

9:03They thought it's just not worth the money. I'd rather spend my money on something else. There's been a rebound now. LVMH, I think in their last quarter, sales were in positive territory again.

9:14Alex Ossola:How is the luxury sector evolving and how do you think it's going to do in the next few years? So if you look at this giant store that Louis Vuitton just opened in the shape of a cruise ship in Shanghai, I think that is a glimpse into the future of luxury goods. The brands are going to be more and more dominant and they want to control their destiny. And the ones who are successful are opening bigger stores, more showmanship, special perks for their wealthiest customers, private shopping. The designers will do private events at their homes sometimes for top customers. However they can make the experience more and more special for their biggest spenders, I think that's one thing we're going to see going forward.

9:58Alex Ossola:So doubling down on the big spenders, what about everybody else? For a brand like Louis Vuitton, which is quite large, they also need to go beyond that very top tier and appeal to the affluent aspirational customers. With that Shanghai store, it is massive. There's a museum in there. It's really designed not just for that 1 percent slice, but for a wider swath of the shopping public. That was Wall Street Journal reporter Suzanne Kappner. Thank you, Suzanne. Thanks for having me.

10:32Alex Ossola:Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is preparing a run for governor. She filed necessary paperwork today, and a person close to her says she's expected to make a formal announcement soon. Klobuchar, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, enjoys strong favorability ratings among Minnesota voters. No major Democratic candidates have said they're running for governor since Tim Walz announced earlier this month that he wouldn't seek a third term. Meanwhile, roughly a dozen Republicans are in the competition ahead of an August primary. The GOP hasn't won statewide office in Minnesota since 2006.

11:06Alex Ossola:And we're exclusively reporting that Washington is considering a complete withdrawal of the roughly 1 ,000 American troops from Syria. The move would end an American operation in the country that began in 2014. Their primary mission is to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State, or ISIS. But a near collapse of Kurdish allies in the region has led the Pentagon to question the benefits of keeping U.S. troops in Syria. And the Syrian government has ordered the Kurdish-led militia to disband. The Pentagon declined to comment.

11:38Alex Ossola:And finally... The vampires is different. Maybe the worst kind. The soul gets stuck in the body. That's the horror-slash-drama film Sinners, a sleeper hit that came out last April. It's just broken the record for the most Oscar nominations received by a single movie, with 16, breaking the previous record of 14 held jointly by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. Its nominations include a new category for Achievement in Casting, as well as Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Other Best Picture nominees include One Battle After Another, which got 13 total nominations, as well as Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, and Sentimental Value, which each got nine nominations.

12:22Alex Ossola:Shamefully, I've seen zero of this year's Best Picture nominees, but I think I know what I'll be watching this weekend. But probably not all ten. If you want to see the full list of nominees, we'll leave a link to the story on WSJ.com in our show notes. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé with supervising producer Tali Arbel. I'm Alex Osula for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

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