Thats in the next 50 minutes. Julie hyman is with us. We are halfway into the trading day. Julie its been a steady day. All averages are higher, not by much. The dow has been leading gains today. Any gains of any size would mean a record close for all three averages. To 2000, which has been taking pace. Some of the reasons the dow is up today is one of its components is doing well. We are talking about walmart are in its easy to forget there are competitors to walmart amazon that are fighting back rid they will acquire parcel, a new york based delivery service. Walmart tries to compete more and more with amazon in the Online Business and the delivery business. The details are not disclosed. Walmart shares are up on this. Its interesting the overall market has been rallying despite their weakness. We are taking look at Telecom Shares as well. We have level three centurylink on the rise as they win antitrust approval for their deal with the telecom assets. Sprint and tmobile are up as well. Maybe this means you have a better chance at hitting a deal done as well. Vonnie thank you. Fascinating. President trump is arriving in puerto rico today confront the fallout from a Natural Disaster that raised russians about how he handled the crisis. We are live from san juan. Thats great to have you with us. He is taking an entourage of security details. What is the situation like on the ground . Can the infrastructure support him . Area,the san juan metro things of been improving dramatically. Most of the debris has and cleared from the roads. There is not a single stoplight to my knowledge working on the entire island. The governor said this morning vonnie we are going to break in. We thought he could rest for a couple of days. Rest, he hadt any florida. Hit very hard also. Then he came to florida. Then we gave that another a plus. There is another one heading to puerto rico. It wasnt one, it was too. Day of the second hurricane. He has been unbelievable. This has been the toughest one. Aw people have ever heard of category five hitting land. I want to thank elaine. Thank you very much. Thomas here someplace where it great job. , general my people buchanan got here a few days ago. There is a reason you are a general. I said it give me a general, i dont want to have a general that plays games. The whole team has been amazing. The governor has been i heard very good things about him. He is not even from my party. And he started immediately appreciating all that we do. He knew the level of problems. We know about the terrible storms. This from the beginning, governor did not play politics. He was saying it like it was. He was giving us the highest praise. I want to thank you. I want to thank you. He was giving us the highest praise. Congresswoman jennifer gonzalez, who i watched the other day. Nice thingsng such about the people who have worked so hard rid of if you could say what you said the other day. Its not about me. Ive never seen people work so hard in my life. Before we were hit by maria, we were hit i irma. Before the hurricane, fema was acting together. More than 4000 people were here. All the staff was working together before the hurricane hit. During,e here before, and after. Got the leveler of communication from the local government. Its unheard of. Time, we are doing the job for the people here. They are sending more people, truck drivers. Thank you, mr. President. I want to thank you. You are really generous. We really appreciate it. Important when you have men and women who of work so hard so long. Many of them came from two other catastrophic hurricanes. Nights rest did you get . We are going to keep them for another couple of weeks. I also in addition to tom, i want to thank Linda Mcmahon it. Shes in charge of small business. Small business is massive does this when you add it all up. She runs a Great Company with her husband vince mcmahon. To build as how company like this woman. She has been amazing in business. We want to thank you very much. Mick mulvaney is here. He is in charge of the budget. You, you have thrown our budget a little out of whack rid we spend a lot of money on order rico. We have saved a lot of lives. At a real disaster like katrina and you look at the hundreds and hundreds of people that died and you look at what it was totally overpowering. What is your death count . 16 people certified. It was in the thousands. You can be very proud. People versus literally thousands of people. Everybody watching can be very proud. You a very to tell special thanks to the navy. Who is here from the navy . What a job. You have ships all over the place. Done gettingave through, there are no docs. They were just devastated. The way you got this, i want to thank the navy. Would you like to Say Something . [indiscernible] thank you very much. I dont have to mention the marines. Where is general kelly . Look at him sitting in the back. Come up. He is a fourstar general. , we also mentioned some people i really got to know and thats the coast guard. What a job the coast guard has done. They will go right into the middle. I wouldnt want to be doing it. I want to thank the coast guard. A lot of people are got to see the coast guard during this. I think a lot of people here and in texas, its in runnable what they did. We really appreciate it. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] that we have hundreds of millions of dollars of dollars to the air force. Fight . They do in we do very well. You literally cant see it. Thats an expensive plane you cant see. Substantial,very something other administrations would never have done. Where is the coast guard . Who can speak on behalf of the coast guard . Where is the coast guard representative . Come here. Vonnie youre listening to President Trump and his entourage and order rico getting an update on hurricane murray at relief efforts. Theto rico has thrown budget out of whack. Said you can be very proud. Shary it was interesting to hear him praising everybody involved in the process from the chief of staff being great, he is always in the background. Also the puerto rican governor saying he didnt politicize the issue. Lets bring back jonathan louvain and talk about what the president just said. He just emphasized how much progress has been made in puerto rico. Tell us what you have seen about the progress made by fema when it comes to reestablishing the city . Still a tale of two different stories. Areaan juan metropolitan and the important highways, there is some debris cleared. The central part of the island remains cut off from the very next town. They are suffering. Its been a legit the goal get the aid they need. Island remains without power. For 3. 4no small matter Million People that are part of the united states. Vonnie how difficult does it make it that the president is visiting today western mark doesnt lend a some authority . He did they get puerto rico a little bit, saying they were throwing the budget out of whack. Its going to need a lot of money from congress in the way of an eight package. Its going to need a lot of private donations. What the government has expressed has been virtually nothing that gratitude to the president for this visit. I think they are glad to have the attention on this humanitarian crisis. The feel despite some of challenges of having a u. S. President touchdown here in the midst of all this, they feel it is worth it. Shary thank you so much for joining us out of san juan, puerto rico. Vonnie President Trump will continue on to las vegas tomorrow. They are still investigating the shootings that left 59 people dead and more than 500 wounded. For more, lets bring in kevin cirilli. They are both joining us from washington ec. The president had to rein himself in a little bit right then it. You heard his remarks. The quality of the sound was quite poor. He mentioned order rico had thrown the budget out of whack. He was accompanied by Top Administration officials including Linda Mcmahon as well as rick perry and general kelly. His wife was also accompanying him. He was greeted by the puerto rico governor. We should also note that the san juan they are was also in attendance at the airport. That is where the president is receiving a briefing. After surveying the damage, he will meet with British Virgin islands governor. He is trying to keep the focus on the Recovery Efforts in puerto rico, praising the local government response to that. This is a defining moment for this president as tomorrow he heads to las vegas. Shary we have to talk about tax reform. That is on the back runner with these disasters happening. We have heard from orrin hatch, analysis thatthe the planet would decrease taxes for the middle class. Have we heard anything else from congressman . Its not an issue right now that the president can focus on that he is in puerto rico today, trying to convey how engaged he is. That was a lot of what we heard in that speech, praising the coast guard. Tomorrow, he goes to las vegas to survey and learn more about the damage caused by the massacre. Not able to spend a lot of time on tax reform this week. Members of congress are on it. One big question is whether this tax framework will increase taxes for some in the middle class by eliminating the deductibility of personal exemptions. The fear is large families in high tax states could see taxes go up. This is something republicans want to avoid doing. This is why the proposal is hitting snags. The idea to and the deduction is why they can pay for other parts of the plan and of point it from lloyd a huge hole in the deficit area. Vonnie those are some thorny issues. And. Hanks shary coming up on the program, the former high 32 puerto rico joins us on how the u. S. Territory can itself backup after Hurricane Maria. This is bloomberg. Vonnie this is Bloomberg Markets. He is one of the architects of aigs restructuring and. Architect principal of aigs restructuring back in the day. We have, some way since then. To idea that puerto rico had declare bankruptcy, that that deter getting a . For example, that have been done . It makes it more expensive. Its really weston of will, who is sending the ships . They are coming from the navy. The federal government is now on the ground. The president is now there sticking his personal reputation on this recovery being lamented. Day, this is the going to cost a lot of money. Thats going to be up to congress. Now, it seems like its not going to be enough. There are concerns a were helping the recovery effort that ps bondholders yet paid with the Oversight Board was create Budgetary Authority to spend an incremental 1 billion on the relief effort they are probably going to need to be spending multiples to get through this crisis. Of puerto rico doesnt have the cash the federal government is going to have to put the bill to make sure aid is given on a timely basis and the electrical grid is restored and the Water Systems are restored and the roads are cleared and bridges reconstructed so the island can luncheon. How does the government function . It functions from tax revenue and dropping property taxes. Vonnie right now, its an unviable waste a live in do you make it viable again . How much can they aid order rico to mark puerto rico . Its going to be in the tens of billions of dollars were wired to record this to functioning. The longer it ails the function, the greater the emigration off the island. It could cause permanent loss of economic it to the and revenue to the government. Vonnie the miami herald is reporting 150,000 students are coming to miami schools. That does not surprise me. That is reflective of the crisis and the impact on the economy. Shary not only on the running of the puerto rico, but what happens to the u. S. Economy . If they come here, they will be homeless and need aid from the government and there are more order regions living in the mainland and there are on the island. There is a vast network of family and friends up here that im sure will step up and take care of those refugees. Doeseal issue longterm is is this a permanent loss of population and economic it 70 . Will the government help rebuild the territory . Vonnie what do creditors do . It was already a difficult spot to be in. Do they mean more money . There are a number of different offered. Vonnie theyve offered terms. Nonetheless, they recognize theextent of the crisis and government has very little cash to fund its own operation at his point. They have offered to provide financing. We have to talk about aig. Regulators are the writing they will not pose a threat to the Financial System did system. We have doesnt nation to shins of this size and complexity. Failure their threatening to the system as a whole. Aig since the Financial Rescue is 40 the size it was when it first knocked on the doors of the Federal Reserve seeking help. Its a much smaller company. Its still a big company. But in the grand scheme of things, its only a percentage efa. Morgan and complexity, size, it doesnt have a huge derivative operation, its a license and propertycasualty insurer now. It doesnt have the air trapped leasing. Of an interconnect this point of view, the Balance Sheet is not like today. It doesnt have the ending risk that a big has. Vonnie janet yellen basically explained the decision. Regulators are going to do this on a case by taste aces. Shary doesnt impact their proposal western mark it will. I think ultimately. Vonnie jim im not spending time with those guys. Vonnie that is jim milstein. Shery lets not get a check of the markets. We are seeing the markets fluctuating between gains and losses when it comes to the s p 500, still near record highs. Of 1 and rising for a fifth consecutive session while the nasdaq is up 1 10 of 1 . Are weighing the prospect of tax reform and Everything Else that comes with it. Vonnie lets get to the first word news now. Here is mark crumpton. Mark at least 45 people remained in Critical Condition in Las Vegas Area hospitals, which were overwhelmed following that mass shooting the other night. Several Officials Say that every bed was full. Authorities say that Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 before taking his own life. President trump and First Lady Melania Trump are in puerto rico , which sustained massive damage from Hurricane Maria. The president said perrigo can be proud of the federal governments response to the despite sharp criticism the past few days from the mayor of san juan. The president and first lady met with local and federal officials working to restore power and deliver food and supplies to puerto ricos 3. 4 million residents. In mexico city, three more people have been confirmed dead, bringing the death toll from last months magnitude 7. 1 earthquake to 366. Nearly two thirds of the deaths were in the capital city. The quake occurred exactly 32 years on the day that a 8. 0 earthquake killed thousands of people. Lawmakers slammed wells fargo at a Senate BankingCommittee Hearing today for allowing a rocky sales culture to rip off customers. Toldor Elizabeth Warren ceo Timothy Sloan that wells fargo needs to get rid of people like him. , you say you have been making changes that wells fargo for 30 years, but you enabled this fake account scam. You got rich off it and then you try to cover it up. At best you are incompetent. At worst, you are complicit in either way you should be fired. Mark senator warren added that sloan was exactly what was wrong with the bank. Global news 24 hours a day powered by 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. I am mark crumpton. This is bloomberg. Vonnie thanks, mark. President trump campaigned as a friend of the business community. Ninemonth income how do they think hes doing . Talked with larry fink about the prospect of tax reform and the future of Federal Reserve leadership among other things. Larry i think it will have to be amended and it has to be amended quite importantly. I am not a big believer in the reduction or the elimination of state and local taxes. I think that is quite harmful to some of the major states today. Erik this one right here. Larry including new york and new jersey. I believe one of the greatest problems in the world we have today, especially in this country, is a lack of savings for retirement and the liabilities that some of these major states have in terms of retirement. We stretched the state economically through the automatio elimination of deducty when people move. It creates bad behaviors within our own country. Getting back to the specifics, there are a lot of merits and what was being proposed, but lets be clear. What is being proposed is a pretty large expansion of our deficits. Cbo, our to the deficits are going to grow to 25 trillion in next 10 years before whatever this tax reform is or tax cut is. Whether this tax reform adds another 1. 5 trillion or 5 trillion, we can all debate and we all have our own scoring. In 10 yearsorry is for a country that is so dependent on Foreign Ownership of our debt. We have the chinese and the japanese owning as much as 25 to 30 of u. S. Treasury debt. If you look at them a graphically the domestic needs of china and japan, they will need a lot of that money. Haveink that we could Foreign Ownership of 30 out 10 years is probably about assumption. Are we growing our deficits in front of a very big demographic wall . Erik we are and we have been. Larry it only works if we can successfully bring our economy tofrom this 2. 5 range 3 three. 5 . Erik that is what the president says he wants to do and gary cohn says this tax reform proposal is designed to do. That happened with the tax reform during the reagan administration. It has not happened ever since. It brings growth forward and it decays forward in the future. Erik are you saying the tax reform proposal needs to be under control . Larry know, but it has to be dodful of what we need to related to our deficit. Im what would you change . Not larry im not a tax expert. I did not believe we will get tax reform if there is the illumination of deductibility of state and local taxes. We are going to have to find it somewhere else. Obviously one of the ways of doing it is by raising Corporate Tax rates from 20 to something close to 25 or 27 . That is still a net positive versus what we paid today and i think by and large most investors, most corporations would welcome that. Erik you would be fine with that . Larry we would be fine with that. We pay about a 31 tax rate worldwide so its fine for us. That we areake sure fair and just across all the different sectors. I do believe what the president s proposal related to partnerships that will help the small and medium businesses quite a bit by having thats what if i percent tax rate. Erik is also change coming up the fed. Whether or not janet yellen is replaced as chair of the Federal Reserve, there are a lot of vacancies that the Trump Administration needs to fill. Stanleyhat fischer is leaving the fed in less than two weeks. Will a more republican lets call that in quotation marks and more republican fed change Monetary Policy . What will that be like . Larry i dont ascribe any Political Party to the fed. I think the members of the Federal Reserve believe that they have to be independent. I dont believe you are going to see any real change. Historically you would say republican oriented or fiscal conservatives would be much more hawkish. We have a fed that has been historically more dovish. Believe when you think about all the names of be antial candidates to potential replacement for chairwoman yellen or it may still be her, i would say they are more moderate. Erik whether its gary cohn or kevin wars . Larry i say they will be more moderate than i would think historically the candidate from a republican president would be. Mind you that ben bernanke was selected by a republican and he turned out to be i would say fiscally prudent, but he was also very aggressive in terms of problems. Erik how what i interpret what you say . Do not think the fed is going to be too much different regardless . Larry exactly, you said it. I actually believe a successful fed is a Federal Reserve that we dont have to talk about that often. The fed obviously played a major 200920112011,8 but if we cap a normalized back to a go normalized economy, we will not have to worry about the Federal Reserve much. I think the Federal Reserve played a significant role in stabilizing our economy, but if we have a normalized economy, i think the debate and conversation about what the fed is going to do is less important. It will be much more important about how are we driving innovation, how are we driving jobs in our economy . Eriks and that was interview with black rock chairman ceo larry fink. At 6 00 a. M. Note in new york, politicians and Business Leaders gather in moscow for Russian Energy weak 2017. The highlight this president Vladimir Putin speaking during a Panel Discussion moderated by bloomberg. Tdo not miss that important conversation. Shery amazons price cuts at whole foods is learning a new shoppers and almost a quarter of first time visitors came from walmart. We will bring you the details next. This is bloomberg. Shery welcome back. This is Bloomberg Markets. Im shery ahn. Vonnie i am vonnie quinn. Time now for stock of the hour and trading at a wide range and some big news today shares of tesla. This after the companys model three production numbers in this forecast. Lets find out more about this from abigail doolittle. It was beat for the other cars, just not the model three. Abigail its Pretty Amazing actually. The stock is all over the map and it seems to be par for the course for tesla. You have a miss and then as the trading day goes on, investors see the shares go up. Not a surprise in terms of this miss. They did make 260 model threes that were an affordable card to bring the electric vehicle to the massmarket. The forecast had been for 1500. You can so come investors seem to be giving them a little bit of a pass. Lets go into the bloomberg and look at the chart g btv three total fo 3241. Over the last several quarters, really tapering off around 25,000. The model s and model x are above the numbers. The model three is below, but since is the first quarter, investors looking past. Elon musk known for his extraordinarily ambitious goals. Thats according to arc Investment Management as we were talking about before this report. I think investors looking past it toward the future that these model threes will get back on track. Shery it seems to be a pattern though. They keep missing numbers and still they get a pass. Is there any reason to think this will change . Abigail its actually amazing to me because of any Major Company actually they have met and beat numbers, but when they do miss, theres always this pattern but the stock goes down and then back at. This isg something to look at with the Financial Analysis on tesla. These are the revenue estimates. This is the Second Quarter that they have put up 2. 8 billion. This is the third quarter. Look of this huge growth of the fourth quarter. That takes into account the model threes where numbers are supposed the pop higher. Up more than 20 on a sequential basis. If they miss those numbers, i think that could be pretty dramatic. Vonnie abigail doolittle, thank you with our stock of the hour. Shery amazons takeover of whole foods has rocked the American Grocery business and rose foods food traffic 33 in the first week after the acquisition. Walmart x customers accounted for a large number of the shares. Amazon cut a lot of the prices, but some of those prices are still higher than those at walmart. Joining us now is olivia celestin who joins us from san francisco. Houses hurting other Major Grocery players like trader joes and Sprouts Farmers Market . From thehis new report group that looked at 30 million mobile phones and looked at the locations of these phones and track them over two years shows and wholef amazons foods new customers are coming from walmart. About 10 of trader joes regular customers did defect to whole foods that first week of price cuts, which is a really significant number for a small chainlike trader joes. Sprouts is also a pretty small chain and they saw about 8 of its customers that were regular to the store for the two years prior the fact that same week. Im sure that a lot of these grocery chains are having conversations internally on how to be defensive and handle the situation. Vonnie the numbers are really fascinating in this study. There is much greater for certain demographics then you would have anticipated, but low and very low income families did not migrate out of their neighborhood, right . Olivia that the most fascinating part about this report. We saw that really the top level of walmart customers, costco customers and kroger customers all went to whole foods. Whole foods did not attract that lower demographic that everybody was expecting when amazon acquired whole foods. It really says that amazon has a lot farther to go. It has more price cutting to the to really learn those people. The reason is that whole foods is predominantly located in wealthy neighborhoods. To incentivize people to drive distances and go to a wealthier neighborhood, the prices have to be much lower to get that demographic. Shery until we see more price cuts coming from amazon, probably foot traffic i has peaked . Olivia i would say for traffic has definitely the. Peaked. It was 33 new customers that week and that sort of tapered down. Its about a 4 increase in new customers now so it has peaked and they will have to make significant price cuts to learn more people in. Vonnie any way to know whether it was just the one time visit out of curiosity because of the massive price cut on certain things and why not . Olivia we think absolutely that there was this fascination with whats going on. There was a lot of media buzz and people were excited. Certainly the first week saw larger numbers, but whats interesting to us is that trader joes and sprouts continued to show defection rates above 5 . That is concerning for those stores. Shery olivia, thank you so much for joining us at a san francisco. Vonnie President Trump is in puerto rico right now. He made comments earlier this hour addressing the crisis there after Hurricane Maria and how its impacting the u. S. Budget. Have a listen. President trump i hate to tell you, puerto rico, but you thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we spent a lot of money on puerto rico, but its fine as w because we saved a lot of lives. Vonnie he tweeted out earlier on that puerto rico wasnt helping itself, but he walked it back a little bit talking about how many lives the money saved. Shery the compared those lives lost to the hundreds that could of been lost. To mention that he talks about the budget. When he comes to congress, they will just need to release another supplemental spending bill. What does that mean . That does not affect the budget in itself, but he did not dig deeper into what those comments could actually mean. People will be out there try to scratch their heads, going what does this mean when he says that this could throw the budget out of whack . Vonnie and if it really means the budget or did he just literally mean like a household budget. Jim milstein how much congress will approve and he said theres no way of putting estimate on that. Congressional republicans will not want to be overly generous. Lets of people in puerto rico talking about tens of billions needed. How three georgetown student started your favorite lunch place and attracted the attention of steve k. How sweet cream took off next. This is bloomberg. Vonnie 10 years ago, three classmates from Georgetown University opened the first sweet green restaurant in washington, d. C. Thriving chain with locations in eight major u. S. Cities and the same three founding friends still share ceo duties. A member of the treio tells the company is growth story on the latest edition of small to big. At sweet grain, we make every single thing from scratch in the store everyday. The three of us were like what if we open up this restaurant . We saw the problem that we had in our own life. Resolve the problem of eating something healthy, affordable, convenient and really stood for something we believed in. We started the company by going out to anyone we could ask and we raised about 300,000. 40 people contributed to that very first restaurant. The average check was somewhere between 5,000 in 2000. And 10,000. The place we opened was tiny and it forced us to simple five. That really stuck with us throughout the whole company. It was not that sales took off in a crazy way right away. It was like the people who knew about us loved us. Very soon after we opened the first one, we started exploring the idea of a second and a third one. Our first seven restaurants, we stayed in the d. C. Area. We had huge ambitions, but we knew we had to get things right before we scale the. D it. We never really took on any sort of institutional funding or any big investors. Was about four years ago when one of our customers friends approached us about investing a lot more money. Was a guy named steve case. He really believed in our mission. That kind of funding allowed us to invest in people, the community, the systems and infrastructure. We invested in mobile technology and also rebuilt our restaurants in a responsive way. You can pick up your phone and go online and in just a few clerks order it and have it on a shelf ready to come pick it up and be out of there. That was really hard. It was more than just building a map. Rything had to be redone the way we operate, our kitchen systems, everything we did had to be rethought. All of a sudden we went from one restaurant and one engine to two. It took about two years to build that technology. I think sometimes the easy way is not the right way. Resisting, embrace it and figure out a way to do it the right way and not the cheap and easy way. Today we are open across the country in eight cities. We are in d. C. , philadelphia, baltimore, new york, boston, chicago, l. A. , and the bay area. In 2017, we will end the year with 85 restaurants. We are focused on not only building restaurants but Building Technology that can make it easier for customers to interact. We always say we want to meet customers where they are. Vonnie that was our small to big segment on jonathan niemann, ceo of sweet green. Shery light tempos head of Public Policy is telling investors why they cant be sure to see tax reform this year. She will be joining Bloomberg Markets. Vonnie and a quick reminder that you can catch all of our interviews on bloomberg with the function tv. Youll get functionality, charts, interviews, and you will be able to ask our guests questions. Its all available on tv. This is bloomberg. David it 1 00 in washington and 6 00 in london. Im david gura. Shery im shery ahn. Welcome to Bloomberg Markets balance of power. With a on intersection of politics and the economy. David here the top stories were watching at this hour with President Trump and the first lady and puerto rico grappling with the heman tearing crisis in the wake of Hurricane Maria two weeks ago. President trump said th puerto rico is throwing the budget a little out of whack. Tomorrow, he will travel to las vegas to face the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in modern u. S. History. What we can expect from a visit and what it means for President Trumps legislative agenda. We speak with Libby Cantrell and why shes telling investors why they cant be sure there will be tax reform this year. David President Trump continues his trip to puerto rico today to confront the devastation from Hurricane Maria head on. Have the islands population is still about water, supplies, or electricity two weeks after the