carol: welcome to business -- bloomberg businessweek. jason: we're here inside headquarters in new york. home, 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis, a learned -- look at the long-term political effects. carol: we are going to start with the nafta showdown.

turns, talks between the united states, canada and mexico. jason: this is your brain on nafta. here is editor matthew philips on what really went down behind the scenes. a major television moment but the president, which he very much wanted to have. he brought the press into the oval office. he thought he would win a bilateral deal with mexico. the canadians were not included. it was a big moment for trump and he happy press there. he was going to get the mexican president on the speakerphone, with communication issues, awkward for a moment. it seemed as if the mexican president was not on the line. staff scrambled to fix the

connection. it was a microcosm of the past year of negotiations. ta had been not well coordinated, wildly oversold, written by a president who just wants to win. the optics for trump seems to be what is most important. jason: while president trump nafta and heavily on the renegotiation of the united states, the dissolution of this treaty, he was not personally involved along the way. who were the primary architects across the board and how did they play together among the countries? atthew: the guy representing the united states is bob lighthizer. in an administration filled with

not very experienced people when it comes to government work, this guy is a 40 year veteran, a trade lawyer. he was a deputy trade representative for presidents reagan in the mid-80's. he has been leading this. what's been interesting is how he has been able to operate, given that trump has been hands off. bob lighthizer has been able to make inbounds. think we have a concept of what it takes to renegotiate a complicated trade agreement. a year is not a long time for this to drag on, considering how long it takes to get nafta to be a deal. matthew: a trillion dollars of trade happens under this deal.

the idea of putting this into hyper-drive was never realistic. lighthizer's plan was to browbeat canadians into submission one year ago. intohas gotten bogged down something like trench warfare. even though all three parties wanted a deal, it was for different reasons. the canadians and mexicans wanted to modernize nafta to cut through the red tape and whereass more trade, the u.s. simply wanted to get a better deal for the united states. all three parties came to the table with different objectives. bob lighthizer has had a certain amount of autonomy, given his experience -- he came less able maybe the mexican

and canadian counterpart dead. -- did. they started in a different way. matthew: they started off unified. kind of locked arms and saw it in their common interest to against thed front united states. they were able to block a good bit of the progress. we had only done a third of the actual provisions in nafta. forget the traveling roadshow of this thing. every month they go to a different city and hunker down into a hotel in mexico city or in ottawa or a dingy hotel in arlington and lock eyes and get into -- what we forget is the mind-numbing details that come thing,e same -- this

haggling over the definitions of "or". or for the details of washing chicken -- or the details of washing chicken. our writer, josh, gives us a nice scene of what it has been like to witness on the front lines. we just heard a lot about the nafta negotiations. negotiatehose to solely with mexico from the outset. cars may have something to do with it. tell us more. taylor: what i have is a chart of the u.s. imports, the auto sector relative to u.s. imports from mexico into canada. this has increased over time.

imports of canadian auto sectors have been falling. this might have been white was the trump administration's focus. china is sidelined by president trump, but will china ever become a real superpower? what does that look like? the end of a is at german automaker spending spree ceo.h opal finding a new jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

carol: welcome back.

jason: you can find us on businessweek.com. carol: and our mobile app. jason: china continues to expand its global influence. its demographics and middle income trap stand in the way of it becoming a real superpower? jason: our reporter chose to begin the story in antarctica. we asked him to explain. talking to beijing, one of the heads of state, fairly loyal to the regime. he was talking about how he had been to antarctica. it is no small trick to make from beijing. -- trip to make from beijing. he was looking to see whether

china's interest as a new global power was being taken care of. he decided it wasn't. antarctica, there is an agreement in place between -- you can't dig up fossil fuels or iron. arctic, you have more at play. this white paper was being sent from a think tank to president xi for his to comment on, was china's reach is sufficient in antarctica for the kind of global power it's now is? -- almost ais of

question of what china wants to be, being a superpower and vis-a-vis the u.s. definition of a superpower. what happens next and why does china have this push and pull internally over the position? marc: the other thing that came out of this antarctica trip, a real dilemma for the chinese. they don't want to be the united states. they don't want to be the next global hegemony. they don't want to replace the united states. they talk about how the united solve too -- tries to many problems militarily. china wants to do things differently through economics, and so on. there is only one yardstick at the moment to measure yourself as a great power and that is the

united states. they find themselves doing it anyhow. in antarctica, you look at how many research stations the americans have. "we ought to have something similar." they find themselves in this title,. -- in this dilemma. they understand the cost of being a superpower is pretty large. is strugglingtes cap of the u.s. is $60,000 and in china it is $9,000. jason: the economic backdrop for china is quite different. if this is a superpower in the ne,ing, it may be a fragile o which owes largely to the demographics. the demographics pose the

most fundamental challenge for china. great, natural resource, on which its success have been based is its people. the number of people living in the countryside, moving into cities, becoming more productive, has determined to be of china to grow the way it has. -- the ability of china to grow the way it has. population has already begun to age. the working age population has already begun to shrink. the lower age population will begin to shrink as early as 2023. the median projection of what happens to the population is

backed by 2050 it loses around 400 million people, relative to its current size. circumstance, no superpower has ever developed when that was happening. jason: the stunning turnaround of opal -- call them the anti-musk, a frugal, camera shy ceo who has brought his company back to profitability. twol: this was after decades of being within the red, and profit was achieved within only one year. opal in europe used to be one of the biggest european car manufacturers. since then, there has been a

very germanic decline in market share. matic decline in market share. they got crushed by the competition for many years. ago, generalear motors took the step to sell opal. a french car manufacturer took over the company. results of the first half of the year has been very strong. this has been the first profitable half of the year at opal in 20 years. psc is the owner of pujo and citron. i want to read this line -- the been how tos profitably produce low-margin cars in a high cross-country. that is quite difficult to

navigate. the new ceo seems to be making bold, but ultimately effective decisions. tell us about him and what he has done. the ceo has emerged in recent years as one of the most high profile ceos in the industry. there is a lot to talk about and may be going private and abandoning the plan. --many ways, the ceo of opel psa is the complete opposite of elon musk. extremely reserved, disciplined. strong track record of meeting all his financial targets. driver behindkey the turnaround at the french manufacturer it self -- itself.

he took over as coo of psa. expectations were skeptical at the beginning. cost based in a high country like france, with a strong focus on europe, and he repeated that restructuring at opel, even though the industry is facing difficult times. he imposed a lot of discipline to make this work. #metoo movement has evolved into something bigger. carol: a group of employees are allegedly suing -- are suing it over a legend gender discrimination. this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back. carol: you can also was -- listen to us on the radio at sirius xm, and new york, boston, washington dc, and in the bay area. jason: and in london. carol: sexual harassment claims at nike followed a similar path in the #metoo era. claims, executives left. former employees are suing the athletic apparel discriminationer and limiting the opportunities for women to advance in the company. carol: here is our editor. tory,the typical #metoo s somebody abused somebody else or

a number of people. a few people are fired and that is it. what is happening at nike is four former employees have filed suit, saying this is an issue about whether the company polici after 11ill here were gotten rid of earlier this year for bullying and harassment. let us dealing, with this systemic issues that often go hand-in-hand with harassment. : i think a lot of states are looking at this policy. one of the often overlooked reasons for why women in the workforce are often paid less than men is that they often start being paid less than men. base theirmpanies

pay on what you made at a previous job. if you worked at a job that undervalued you before. -- that undervalued you before, you are already starting out a lap to behind your male counterparts. people we talked to for this story has gone to a competitor, she says that when she was working at nike, she was paid a 20,008 all ye -- $20,000 a year less than guys in her same department doing the exact same job. some states have decided that is an issue they want to get rid of. say that youtates cannot base starting pay on previous pay. this is a way to try to give women and equal shake. nike says it plans to get rid of this practice. have look at

companies across the spectrum for a long time. why is this happening at nike? what is it about that place? one of the reasons we were so interested in this story, and this is the second one we have it is knownng nike, as a place where they try to value employees and have been they haveaying that almost reached pay parity for women in comparable jobs. expected this not to be the company where this happens. this happens at even the best companies. this is much more of a difficult and institutionalized problem, how pay is set and how that affects people of different genders and probably people of

different races, backgrounds and ages. it is much trickier -- you can say i want to do the right place but policies are in where promotions gets sent by a group of people who often may not want to promote certain .ypes then you've got a problem. i am assuming all of corporate america is watching by four former employees very closely. the ultimate goal is to prevent this from becoming a class -- is to make this into a class action lawsuit. for the people suing the company. damages could go to a larger group of women and a address the issues for a larger group of women instead of these individual clients. that is difficult. it is difficult to get class-action status and it is

difficult when you are talking about sexual harassment. harassment is often thought of as a one-on-one case. very few companies have a policy that says, we will harass women. carol: right. say, -- companies will say, this is an individual case by an individual person, so you cannot sue us as a company. there is the issue of pay discrimination -- it is easier to prove that because you start looking at numbers and data, and data is much harder for a company to say, don't look at that, as opposed to one-on-one. jason: what tim geithner feared in a moment of the 20 -- 2008 financial crisis jim.

carol: and we explain how blackrock won the decade. this is bloomberg businessweek. retail.

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simple. easy. awesome. stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and two-hour appointment windows. click, call or visit a store today. jason: welcome back. twitter, going to be in the news this coming week. isn't biased against conservatives -- is it biased against conservatives? and david westin's conversation with warren buffett. a look back at the

2008 financial crisis. weber spoke with us about the impact of the crash on politics 10 years on. date.september 15 is the 10 years from the lien are someptcy -- what other stories we can talk about 10 years later? one of them is the opening drawingfrom josh green, lines from the 2008 financial crisis to where we are in the world right now. it starts with an anecdote from timothy geithner. it is a moment in time with him trying to right the world and foreshadowing the political ramifications of the financial crisis would be out of his control.

2010, you would have thought that tim geithner was going to change the world. yet he had his doubts. joel: you hang on the occupy wall street, right? more of the left. the right side got the tea party. the tea party led to steve trump. than two donald -- than en to donald trump. the outrage over the bailouts, simmering, has manifested itself in trump. jason: who ultimately came out a winner? there is a clear one. blackrock. over the past ten years, there is a shift from the sell side,

bankers, to the buy side, investors. that's encapsulated with firms like blackrock, but also private equity. this is one of the legacies of the financial crisis. what is interesting to me and the small ways they have been able to do that. one of the most ingenious blackrockons was ishares, at the time a barclays property. carol: you talk about having the money to make that acquisition. joel: not having the regulatory oversight the banks had so they were able to do these chess moves that everyone could look back on in hindsight and go,

they a stick -- aced it. crises, theyancial are as much about politics as economics. tim geithner helped halt another great depression, but the effects of the disruption never really went away. green knows what goes on behind the scenes. sinceover the 10 years the crisis and how it has affected politics, i kept returning to an interview i had with tim geithner. i had been wallowing him throughout 2009 to do a magazine profile. the final interview i had with office,his treasury this was in january at 2010. it was clear that obama's economic team was looking to stop the contagion and the stock market was backed up.

and tim geithner was almost unhappy because this was the moment when he was realizing that while the rescue had helped economically, there was going to be a political price. look at american politics over the subsequent 10 years, i would to submit -- submit the recourse was the financial crisis and the government's reaction. this leads directly to where we are today politically. i want to take you back to another thing we point out. there was a choice that the obama administration made, that set us on this course. it gives rise on the left to one thing and the right to another. talk about that choice of growth

over everything else. josh: the crux of my profile of tim geithner back in 2010 was trying to understand how he was approaching the crisis. what's geithner and obama did was make a decision -- they said, we have this terrible financial crisis. the quickest and cheapest way to recover is to get the economy growing again. we will focus on growth above all else. moral choice the not to punish bankers or put them in jail and nationalize banks. from a strictly economic standpoint, tim geithner and obama has been vindicated. the u.s. has spared much better in the recovery than it was back in 2010. but by declining to satisfy what geithner derisively referred to clamor to hold

wall street bankers accountable for the damage they caused, this created a political backlash. -- you could see that as long ago as january 2010, when 10 kennedy has just died, and was replaced unexpectedly by a republican. that was the first sign of the backlash. when you look at the subsequent energies in our politics, from occupy wall street to the tea arty, what you see is backlash to the political choices made in the wake of the crisis. we have had wonderful macroeconomic headlines and job growth and a record bull market, the recovery still has not reached the growing middle class. wages has been stagnant. is a distressed with

political leaders that manifested itself on the withratic side -- distrust political leaders that manifested itself on the democratic side and republican side. defeattrump managed to 16 qualified republicans to get himself elected president. that was a backlash to the financial crisis. crisishow the financial destroyed a number of wall street firms, but provided an opening for others. and david westin's conversation with warren buffett. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back. carol: you can also find us online at businessweek.com. jason: and on her mobile app.

carol: some firms did not make it through the crisis. can trace blackrock much of its growth back to the meltdown and the way the financial industry globally has changed in the last 10 years. carol: we have more from our reporter. blackrock has a couple of reasons it came out a winner in the crisis. they made an important acquisition during that time , a business that included the etf business they came to owner. it was a big deal in size. there are a few could do it. it came at a time before everyone else was convinced etf's and passive investing for the wave of the future. it was a huge deal.

can buildconcluded we this business by ourselves but it would be great to be in this arena. when the ishares business was up for sale, they were able to take it. business has really paid off for them. today they are the global leader in etf's, 1.8 trillion. and that was the big push back against excessive fees and passive investing. timing could not be better. annie: what we have seen is a huge explosion in passive investing that has allowed blackrock to really profit. it has not slowed down. fink is a guy who was well-known known for a want of reasons, not the least of which is, he knows risk. that goes back to the 1980's.

fired for a big bet that goes the wrong way and goes into the comfortable arms of blackstone. but the risk is always so much in the back of his mind and never was that more important than over the last 10 years. fink is a process of over risk. he had his own major loss when he was at first boston. in the 10 years of the financial crisis, the firm has become more cognizant and read about financial risk and looking at to their portfolios for white -- what they might not be seeing. risk analytics to other businesses, including insurers, tension funds, rival asset managers, and that

business has taken off for them. it is called aladdin. buts not as big as etf's, the size of the assets that this platform overseas was somewhere around the $7 trillion in 2000 eight. now it is responsible for $18 trillion worth of assets. it is enormous in terms of the scope and power of that platform. carol: when every warren buffett shares insights on the state of markets and the economy, it is definitely news. he shares them with our colleague, david westin. jason: here is some of his interview. 1960, the percentage of gdp taxes has gone from 4% to 2 %. you are now involved in a joint

venture with jpmorgan. to are going -- you going bid on that cost curve as a practical matter? warren: get the smartest people we can working on this. and basically give them free reign. something ist going to happen next year or the year after. every dollar has a constituency. you cannot just chip a little bit here and there. we are not in a hurry as we would like to be, but we are not going to try and move something faster than it could be done. david: what is being done? n: hiring people. there is a focus on looking at the system and saying, can the percentage ofhis

gdp growing higher than any other country and can it be done to deliver a better product for patients? david: when you try to bend the cost curve, you either spend less than what you are getting less.y or you get lt how much of this will be striking monopoly rents out of the system? how much of this will be saying, you cannot have the health care service you expect? warre we will not do itn: a must -- awarren: we will not do it a muslim -- unless a majoirtrity f people feel that way. impossible to think smarter about something. you get rigidity's built in.

it is hard to rearrange. it is like a rubik's cube. challenge. there have been locations. we have been disrupting farming ever since we had 80% of people on farms. this variation would not be so bad. the people are more productive than 80% were a couple hundred years ago. jason: politicians love twitter, until they don't. the debate over free speech could be costly for the company. about and more transportation transformation. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

carol: welcome back. jason: you can also listen to us york, radio, in new washington in the d.c. and bay areas. carol: and in london. jason: some people are facing pressures over free speech policies. of pressuretype should be allowed on social media platforms and are these rules being enforced fairly? jason: twitter has a lot riding on this debate. twitter does not have the resources to deal with this issue and employee used to deal with the same type of content

moderation. but jack dorsey has made this point before. it is held to the same standards as a you tube or facebook, but it does not have the same resources to back it up. twitter is at this precarious point in this lifetime. it has been on the cusp of the turnaround over the past several months. showing that it is able to generate sustainable growth and survive as this independent company, but it is undercut between this -- with this political debate that threatens to derail some of its growth. perception of -- if the perception of its anti-conservative bias continues, it could face the loss of many users. infowarsck dorsey and

has been at the center of this debate for all of the social media platforms. started when larger platforms like facebook and apple and youtube decided to remove most of alex jones' content from their platforms. this has been ongoing for several years. jones is a notorious right-wing conspiracy theorist, and some of his most egregious theories include claiming the sandy hook shooting was an elaborate hoax. critics say those types of conspiracies are abusive and is spreading hateful content, as well as claiming people involved in these tragedies are crisis actors. when these platforms decided to remove this content, they said, we're continuing to do business.

there was an outpouring of criticism for jack dorsey -- think more about the ethical implications, rather than wanting to appear as an apolitical platform. twitter went back and deleted flagged tweets -- then twitter banned him for a week. it is this back and forth. carol: wait until you hear about uber's latest venture. jason: it plans to expand with bikes and scooters. two-w we look into this heeled future. uber is also building its own

scooter, the same way it is working on self driving cars and flying taxis. jason: uber was at the forefront of ridesharing. it has had its share of --troversies, but scooters we have seen mini-protests flare up and people breaking them in san francisco. how are they navigating this? er has realized in a place like san francisco, a lot of trips are kind of a drag to do in a car. having something like an electric bicycle or a scooter is faster and more pleasant to go a mile or three miles. earlier in the spring, a couple started startups putting scooters out on the

street in san francisco. you could unlock them with an app and leave them where ever you wanted. it caused a bit of chaos, similar to what happened when uber came in with ridesharing. uber has been around for a decade now. they have played conservatively. they have not gone in without getting permission from cities. applied for permits in san francisco and santa monica to launch a scooter-sharing service. : you mentioned the smaller footprint of a bike or a scooter. it feels like over the past few people are embracing almost philosophically this idea of hopping on a bike and going a few miles. have we hit that to point where consumers are willing to do this, that the kids are more willing to do this? d use a old guy an

city bike. we are seeing a lot of discussion about this. everyone knows there was controversy in san francisco. not that many scooters out in the street. what we are seeing is the beginning of a conversation on cities thathave have a lot of transportation modes that are not cars, or only walking around? things will need to be done differently. inconvenience coming from these new modes of transportation, everyone is aware of. ek, we take into several cities around the world. what they are doing and what citizens are expecting. carol: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now.

our mobileonline and app. what was were favorite story this week? arol: what kind of superpower china wants to be. we forget china is making long-range steps in terms of developing its role in the future when it comes to war and peace and technology. a must read. jason: and how the united states .s fashioning itself green, i admire how he is able to unpack the politics and economics of today and where we are going from here. more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪ ♪

emily: i am emily chang and this is "best of bloomberg technology." coming up, our exclusive conversation with keith block. has first interview since being named ceo. president trump's campaign against what he is calling unfair search and social media. what are his next steps and our technology companies responding? a dramaticas made u-turn on his controversial attempt to take tesl pi