carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar inside bloomberg headquarters in new york. this week, the escalating trade and currency war between the u.s. and china. president trump and xi are making big bets that could

backfire. plus, the massacres in el paso and dayton that left at least 31 people dead and dozens injured. can a weakened nra lead to gun laws? hiding from silicon valley. here is joel weber on tech lash. >> there in the zeitgeist right now, tech lash, one of the words of the week. -- the year. there is this overarching theme of people outraged at tech and the privacy issues. when we thought about that, this image resonated more than any other with us. it was this image that a company, joel stein's story, he experimented with how to take back privacy in his own life and disable tech from encroaching in his world. he found a mask. the cover image is creepy. it is for facial recognition technology. it speaks to a larger thing. there is tech lash, in d.c. especially. that is a theme. antitrust is a theme. those things feel out of your domain as an individual. this cover is an attempt for us to say, you as an individual,

what can you do in your daily life that will still have a modest consequence? carol: as joel's story shows us, it is not so easy. as those masses story. -- as does max's story. >> he has been on gmail for 15 years. the thing that is so part of his life. it's where he communicated and started flirting with his wife years ago. he decided to leave it because of the privacy issue. as he did that, it opened up this whole new can of worms. to have a private email server now, and there have been other private email servers that made headlines, all of these emails he sends around go to your spam folder. carol: it is not so easy to get gmail. i love felix's story. i feel like, how did we get here? that's where he goes. >> section 230, which has come

in the crosshairs in d.c. it enables tech platforms in particular to scale and grow, but not always be responsible for the content on their platforms. carol: right. >> lawmakers in d.c. have seized on these 26 words and this will be a topic of conversation going forward for sure. felix basically does an anatomy of how that section 230 and those 26 words came to be. carol: and created a safe harbor for technology companies. >> exactly. carol: not a lot safe harbors this week for investors. that were so many big macro stories everywhere. >> news, news. never ends. carol: u.s.-china trade. >> we can't not take into account the news this week. what happened this weekend and to walk into the trade war and the escalation. what started as a trade war and now appears to be becoming a currency war and what the consequences of that are. we have peter mccoy who wrote a fabulous essay about this. michael shuman writing about what the trade war looks like

now. and then also, the market consequences when you have people like xi and trump battling, then also trump and powell battling it out. all of those forces come to bear, not only in the markets, but in the pages of "businessweek." carol: it's fascinating to hear what he says and how he played it into this mosh pit. >> it is a mosh pit and you have three people more powerful than anybody else in the world and all three of them are moving in an opposite direction. carol: a great way to stay informed, but also the privacy issue, it's a great summary. a scary summary. >> zeitgeist, right. all of the stuff that is creating angst in the world right now. we tried to distill that down into something you can make sense of. carol: great stuff. thank you. president trump visited el paso, texas on thursday. here is national correspondent for "businessweek" on how the shootings, a plummeting stock market, and trump's trade war with china may hurt his reelection bid.

>> if you look at the events of this past week, it hits three key demographic voting groups, all of which are critical to trump's reelection. the first one are suburbanites who have been outraged by gun violence, by congress' lack of willingness, trump's lack of willingness to pursue meaningful gun control measures. if you go to last fall and look at where democrats won in a rout, it tended to be former suburban republican areas. areas like orange county and the suburbs of new jersey. these are places where trump needs to win in order to get a second term in 2020. collectively, if you look at the way poll numbers have been moving, gun control is an increasingly important issue. you can almost see the shift happening for democrats.

carol: and that is a bit of a change. it has certainly been an issue in other political races. but it feels like there is a lot more momentum here. >> that's right. in the past, gun control was a very important issue for people who were against it. the nra rose to power by famously being able to turn out single issue gun voters who tended to be more loyal and enthusiastic voters than people who support gun control. however, that has changed markedly over the past few years, especially since the parkland shooting. gun control is now a motivating issue for democrats, which is why i think you saw all of the democratic presidential candidates, one of the reasons , the -- be so critical on trump and the senate for not passing gun control legislation. carol: let's talk about another group that has been key to president trump, and that is the farm group. talk to us about that and the farm states.

>> well, of course, one of the things china did last week in retaliation for trump's saying he will impose additional tariffs on china was to announce that they are cutting off agricultural purchases. there is probably no group that has suffered more under trump's presidency than farmers, because they have borne the brunt of china's retaliatory tariff. i did a lot of reporting on this in the last couple of years. agricultural areas in the midwest have been especially impacted. what is interesting, however, is that this has not really hurt republicans at the ballot box yet. i did a big story looking at which congressional districts that rely on the most on soybeans, which of course have been a target of tariffs. all 30 of the top districts that voted for trump, 25 of them had republican members in the house. i looked after the midterm elections and there was a grand turnover of one. farmers are looking like they will have to bear more economic pain.

these areas tend to be so deep red that it may not cost trump quite as badly in electoral terms as some of the other groups he is losing. carol: staying with politics, how the nra responded to the pair of tragic shootings in the u.s., or rather how it did not, speaks to the turmoil within the gun rights group. >> this is the first incidents where the nra is dealing with a mass shooting without their very long time, very established pr firm. that pr firm really kind of helped to build the nra we know today. the organization that said the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, that whole image has been a result of their work with the pr firm. carol: i want to get back to what happened a week ago. take us back to what happened in february of 2018. we had another shooting at that

florida high school. tell us about the nra reaction after. >> one of the big things that happened after that is that a lot of corporate america very quickly chose to cut ties with the nra. that was very unique. the nra had a number of different corporate sponsorships. for example, if you were an nra member, you could get a discount on a flight or car rental. almost all of those relationships were severed. that was a huge difference in what we have seen before. it was a huge difference from what the nra had seen before. they were very used to staying quiet. may be issuing a week on. by the time they were going to issue a statement, all of these companies had already said we are done with this group, we do not want to have anything to do with them. carol: what is also interesting is, didn't the former nra chief lobbyist, right, longtime powerbroker when it came to the nra and dealing with washington, he actually went to the white house and met with the president? >> that's right. about two weeks after the

attack, the president sat down with the different lawmakers and said to one of them, you are afraid of the nra. he advocated for different kinds of gun control during that televised meeting. the next day, chris cox was at the white house in the oval office with president trump and tweeted that president trump has no interest in gun control. trump went on to tweet he had a wonderful meeting with the nra. in this case, chris cox is no longer with the nra. carol: very different. just about a year in terms of, unfortunately, several mass shootings, but a very different reaction from the nra. let's talk about what's going on at the nra. why is chris cox not there? there has been a lot of turmoil within the organization. >> that's right. turmoil is the perfect word for what is going on here. we are seeing basically a consolidation of power at the nra with the longtime leader of the group. chris cox led all of the nra,

everything from local efforts, to state efforts, to federal efforts, chris cox was the guy. if there was a senator who needed a meeting, they were going to see chris cox. carol: right. >> because of this power struggle at the top, chris cox is ousted. lapierre felt he had been disloyal and cox was gone. another person we saw leave was oliver north. he was the head of the board, and for similar reasons, he was basically outed. he felt there was a power struggle with wayne lapierre. lapierre did not want him to retain control. now you have two powerhouses gone from the nra and the person who is left is lapierre. carol: michael bloomberg, the owner of bloomberg lp, the parent company of bloomberg news, is a founder of fund every town for gun safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun violence prevention. and other gun safety measures. coming up, also in the headlines this week, the escalating u.s.-china trade war.

why a weak yuan is a strong weapon against the u.s. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. in this week's remarks, making sense of the u.s. and china confrontation. it has turned dramatically and not to president trump's advantage. peter coy explains how trump's tariffs lose strength in the face of a currency shift. >> what happened this past week is that china allowed the value of its currency to depreciate to weaker than 7 yuan to the dollar. it makes chinese products potentially cheaper in the u.s., +and therefore, it actually does -- cheaper in the u.s., and therefore, it actually does

cause china to absorb the impact of the tariffs rather than the american consumers. but trump is furious about it. carol: china is a currency manipulator. that happened this week. >> the day after he tweeted that china was manipulating its currency, the trade department declared china a currency manipulator. the irony is that up until then, china had been manipulating to keep its currency up. carol: right, stronger. >> we briefly removed that manipulation, that's precisely when it was labeled a currency manipulator. carol: what i find interesting and we got to talk about this earlier in the week, and this line stays with me. you say the president does not seem to have a clear idea of how foreign trade works or ultimately what his objective is and how to achieve it. that is a pretty big deal for a president in the midst of very important trade negotiations.

>> that seems to be the case. does he want china to absorb the cost of tariffs or not? the only way that u.s. companies are going to regain market share from china is if the price of chinese products in fact does go up, which inevitably means some pain during the interim for american consumers. he is trying to shield them from that. there is a little bit of cognitive dissonance there. carol: you also remind us, and in terms for investors, watching what china did with the yuan, we have to continue to watch that yuan-u.s. exchange rate. that is key. >> it is. because it is yuan to the dollar, when the yuan gets weaker, that means it is more. the number goes above seven and that's what happened. china does an official fixing everyday. it just edged this week above seven for the first time in many years. so china is not manipulating it

to weaker, but withholding some of the support it provides. china does not have an easy situation here. its economy is softening. the trade war is harming china. it would benefit to some degree from a weaker currency, but it also is vulnerable to capital flight if investors, both chinese and foreign, conclude china is taking away some of the support for the currency. there could be a mad dash for the exits. while there are currency controls in place, people desperate enough will find ways to evade them. china will have to use its stock of dollars to try to buy it up and support it. carol: the escalation of u.s.-china trade tensions played out in financial markets this week. in the finance section, senior editor mike regan calls it the chaos cycle.

>> i don't ever remember a time when the three individuals, specifically president trump, jerome powell, and xi jinping, for these three people to have this much influence on the markets on a day-to-day basis is very unusual. we see conflicting interests, not just between president trump and the president of china, but also jerome powell has his own mandate to do what's best for the u.s. economy. obviously, president trump has made it clear that he does not agree with what he is doing and wants more aggressive rate cuts. it is this very strange dynamic that is very unique. carol: what's fascinating to you, mike, in the last week and a half or so, and it kind of started with the fed meeting and

some comments jay powell made. >> he cut interest rates, as expected. he mentioned, he called it a midcycle adjustment, which kind of shocked people. they were hoping he would sort of do a mario draghi and say we will do whatever it takes to keep the expansion going. he tempered that. he is keeping those cards close to the vest saying it is a midcycle adjustment, which the markets signal, maybe it is just one interest rate cut, maybe two, not this full on aggressive easing president trump was hoping for. carol: there was so much debate going into that fed meeting about, could we possibly see an aggressive fed and can we possibly see 50 basis points? >> there was some conflicting messaging coming out of the various speakers from the federal reserve leading up to that. there was this notion that a big shock and awe 50 point basis cut might be enough to kickstart the economy. that was always priced in as kind of long odds.

the market did not really expect that, but enough people expected that. it is not that this would be a very whatever it takes type of reaction to what's going on in markets. they did not get that. that's really what set the ball rolling. carol: one day after -- >> president trump comes out and threatens tariffs on the remainder of imports from china. that was like throwing gasoline on the fire in this market. markets up in double-digit percents. article we have pulled back substantially. >> if you stretch the chart out further, we are below where we were at the beginning of 2018. that is when the market, everyone was very excited about the prospect of tax cuts. over the last 18 or 19 months, we have basically got nowhere. carol: i love this line in your story.

you say each collision in the mosh pit involving these three individuals exposes the fragility of the global market. each time we chip away, we realize kind of how vulnerable we might be. >> this is coming to a head at a time when markets are really craving sort of peace in the trade war. carol: some certainty. >> some certainty. one thing everyone looks at closely are the purchasing managers indexes for the manufacturing sector of the economy and services sector. manufacturing is very weak. services is kind of following in its wake. they are both getting close to that level that signals contraction rather than a continued expansion of the economy. remember, the trade war ostensibly was to bolster the domestic manufacturing industry. these gauges of those industries

are nearing sort of recession levels. they are not there yet but they are starting to point to basically grind to a halt in growth. if they keep going at this trajectory, we will be seeing declines, shrinkage in those sectors of the economy, which is very alarming. carol: still to come, u.s. companies are borrowing billions but it's not helping the economy. we will look at why. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119 and a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, am 960 in the bay area, in london on dab digital, and of course on the bloomberg

business app. when the fed cuts interest rates, it is supposed to deliver a direct boost to the economy. one key part of that machinery has broken down. here is liz mccormick with borrowing billions. >> if you took out your economics textbook, which we all used to look at, it would be lower rates help companies borrow, just like it helps you and i borrow, because it is cheaper, and they should invest more. we should see that come through in the numbers and investment and economic growth. the recovery has not been great. investment has been going down. it is a little mindbending what is happening. we looked into it, ben holland and i, and there is a lot of theory that says there were some changes and companies were just plowing this money back into their shares by buybacks and dividends to help the shareholders feel better. carol: we know this.

i feel like coming off of the crisis and because money was so cheap, we constantly talk about how much borrowing. we applauded companies saying how great, this is good for your balance sheets. ultimately, they were not putting that money back to work on plants. >> exactly, borrowing is good when you do it for the right reason. they are spending more by borrowing, but then they were kind of dug in the weeds of, what are they doing with that borrowing? we are leery of companies that are borrowing and plowing it back to shareholders and not expanding capacity and doing things. it is interesting. they said in a downturn, the companies that have expanded can easily cut back a little. if you just use that debt to funnel more stock-price growth, you are a little bit more in a bind. they were saying that's a problem. carol: in the past, we have always seen this correlation

between how much is borrowed versus how much is spent on capex. there has been a pretty close correlation, right? >> right. some economists have done studies and said since the 1980's since the fcc changed the rules that made buybacks possible for companies, they have been plowing it to shareholder wealth. it is kind of like a corporate governance thing. they have had a mindset change. companies like to invest in stocks that go up. if we plow it back into earnings and dividends, that will help. that broke that correlation. you saw these lower rates, borrowing, and you see investment not go higher. carol: are we on track for another record year of buybacks? >> yes, goldman sachs says about a trillion this year, which is higher than last year. this is the year when the tax cuts -- it's not the first year, right? so we already have that in place. carol: still ahead on "bloomberg businessweek," a word that has caught on this year, tech lash. a series of stories on how we got here and how to take back your privacy in today's digital

world. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ ♪

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"bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. still ahead, a look back at how android, not the iphone, led the smartphone revolution. plus, angling for some fishing fun? our pursuits fishing guide. but first up, our cover story with a striking and creepy image. how to hide from silicon valley. it is a series of stories on this week's feature section on taking back your privacy.

here's editor jeff muskus. jeff: if you have been paying attention in the past couple months, you have probably already gotten sick of the buzzword contraction "techlash," but it is used to describe a general surge against what is perceived as too much power the biggest tech companies have to either decide what information we are all seeing or how much market power they have. there is a growing push amongst a wider range of groups that have been active to challenge these companies recently on antitrust grounds. carol: one story that is really fascinating is a first-person story by max chafkin. it is about setting up his own private server, a la hillary clinton. it's not easy to do. jeff: when max came to me with his pitch for setting up his own private email server.

i was one of the people he describes in the story who stared blankly. carol: how would you do that? jeff: exactly. i am a privacy hawk myself. so i have thought more than once about trying to get off of gmail's grid. but unless you are incredibly technically inclined, which it is fair to say i am not, it is pretty difficult. but folks like helm, the folks max talked to in the story, will suddenly package for a server they will run for 100 bucks a year. they made it kind of alarmingly easy to get off the email grid, per se, and make it so only maxchafkin.com has access. carol: but it is not so easy, right? you had some problems with emailed getting out or coming in? it's not a perfect world when you try to get off the gmail grid. jeff: that's true.

the big downside he found -- and it is a big downside -- that if the messages were delivered, they would be marked, by gmail particularly, as spam and sent to the addressee's spam folder. so it takes a fair amount of work to warm up your inbox so that other, more established clients will trust it. and max was forced to admit that for the most important emails, he was still using gmail, by and large. carol: and he found out he was censoring when he was using google and gmail, that he was either kind of censoring his searches or what he wrote in emails because he had an awareness this all went back to google. jeff: of course. that is a big revelation of reporting a story and trying this out, recognizing the many ways, big and small, in which he was controlling his behavior, based on the knowledge that it was being read by the company. carol: i have to say, all of the stories are must reads. and let's get to the cover story. joel stein really trying to protect his privacy. he went in search of gadgets but

he also had to become a private before he could search for privacy gadgets. jeff: joel really took this concept to 11. we asked him to build a list of all the gadgets available to try to take back your privacy. and he did it all at once. carol: and for the face behind the mask on this week's cover story, reporter joel stein in l.a. he geared up to go dark to show what it takes to keep others from spying on you. joel: the cover is creepy, and unfortunately, that is me. that mask on the cover is designed by an artist who works at brown university to foil facial recognition machines by having his face be everyone's face. so he would get in trouble for all the nefarious things that i do that facial recognition software spots before. carol: it kind of messes up the facial recognition software. wait, he is there again, here is

there that he is there again. and that is the whole mission of what you are setting out to do, to hide from silicon valley. correct? joel: yeah. the idea was that you can't just opt out, more or less, of leaving kind of a digital imprint. but i am too lazy to do that. give up all my tech. so instead i tried to purchase tech, because i am a consumerist, to foil the tech that is stealing my privacy. in i tried to do it only by going to companies that weren't out of silicon valley. so places in boston and scandinavia and salt lake city who were making devices that i could use that were not mining my data. carol: you say step one is to start hiding from silicon valley, stop typing your cell phone number and email into every conceivable internet phone. stop doing it. joel: yeah. your cell phone is worth more on the black market than your social security number.

it is more data-rich, an easier way to get into all of your systems. so yeah, it is really easy if you go to a company like mypsudo, just get yourself a burner, the app, get yourself some fake phone numbers, fake email addresses. just use those. just for the ease of your life in case you do get hacked. your main email address can still be your main email. you do not have to change everything. same with credit card numbers. there are these companies, the ones i just mentioned, that will give you a one-time or ten-time credit card uses, so with your credit card gets hacked, you do not have to change every subscription you have. what i learned in the end was that, much like environmental issues, climate change, privacy is something you can't really solve for yourself. unless you really become a hermit.

it is something we, as a society have to negotiate and change. carol: up next, more about taking back your privacy and what got us here. plus, how android, not the first iphone, led the smartphone revolution. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. join us for bloomberg businessweek everyday on the radio from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up by checking out our podcast on itunes, soundcloud, or bloomberg.com, and find us online at businessweek.com and on our mobile app. back to our cover story, we look at the 26 words that have created a world where big tech has so much and is accountable for so little. here is reporter felix gillette on how we got into this mess.

felix: it is this kind of fascinating law, called section 230 of the communications decency act. carol: it sounds boring. felix: it sounds boring, it is boring, and yet it is this statute that goes all the way back to the early days of the internet, passed in 1995. and it has proven incredibly important to how the web evolved. carol: why? felix: the most important section is this 26 word section says that internet service providers cannot be held liable for the speech of their users, with some exceptions. essentially, supporters of this law say you would not have social media without this, you would not have the sharing economy, there would be no peer-to-peer services because it would be too risky for anybody to host any web service that relies on users to contribute content.

carol: who would want the liability or responsibility for what everyone else says? felix: youtube to wikipedia to twitter to facebook, it's all predicated on the legal framework which was conceived in 1995. carol: a different environment? felix: totally different. so on the one hand, at the time, it had broad support from both parties in congress when initially passed, and now, as part of this broader backlash to big tech, it is suddenly under siege. carol: what is interesting, too, and you said it had bipartisan support in 1995. i feel like now big tech is under siege from both sides of the aisle. felix: yeah, yeah. so you have conservatives and liberals both now questioning whether or not this law makes sense in 2019, but for very different reasons. carol: as we said, 1995 with very different. you write, the leading internet companies were underdogs. now they are overlords of the economy. a lot has changed.

felix: it is that conversion of power that has really unsettled a lot of people. initially, when they carved out this immunity for these companies, they were tiny. the idea was that oh, they are going to get crushed by unfair litigation or whatever, and now, when you see section 230 invoked in lawsuits, it's always a big company, facebook, twitter, google, kind of using this safe harbor to brush aside the complaints of typically small companies. and so it is that dynamic that has made it somewhat controversial. conservatives say, well, these platforms are being unfair to conservatives. they are stifling conservative viewpoints, and this law was predicated, initially, on a certain neutrality. we would not treat them as publishers, but they would have to stay neutral. and democrats have said, well, that's actually not the case. that is not the correct interpretation of how the law

was passed. but at the same time, they have their own criticisms. essentially, when the law was passed, it was done so with the idea that these companies would do a better job of regulating their communities than the federal government would. and a lot of democrats are now saying well, you aren't doing enough. you have the shield, but behind the shield you are meant to be cleaning up your communities, proactively self-regulating, and you have been proven incapable of doing that and you see all of this harassment and abuse online. and if you are not capable of cleaning that up your cells, then the federal government needs to step in. carol: section 230 created a safe harbor for big tech. meantime, google's operating system, android, was largely responsible for the creation of the smartphone revolution. let's take a look at how android came to rule the world. >> steve jobs considered it a

ripoff and he vowed to spend apple's last penny to destroy it. we're talking about android, the system that brought smartphones to the masses. in 2018, 1.4 billion smartphones were sold around the world. google bought android, offered it for free, and added services. samsung came out with the first major android phone and became the world's largest smartphone maker. and china's stunning economic rise created a massive new market for the gadget. the question is, what's next? last year, the eu claimed offering android for free but with strings attached violated antitrust laws. meanwhile, it is estimated smartphone sales will decline for the third year in a row. and tech companies are betting on specialist computing devices running on closed platforms. for better or worse, the future may not look like android.

carol: bloomberg opinion tech columnist shira ovide writes more about android's impact. she joins us from san francisco. shira: a decade ago, after the iphone came out, everybody that was not apple was scared. google give them a solution, a way to enter the market with some google-y strings attached. right? that was a big help to everybody that did not have an answer to the iphone. that meant mobile phone companies, that meant handset makers like samsung and motorola and htc, and that meant all of the app makers who no longer had to make a zillion different versions of their apps or ring tones or other kinds of software for -- if you remember, the proliferation of mostly crummy and terrible cell phone operating systems, pre-iphone. boone carol: talk more about samsung. they were crucial when they came out with their galaxy.

how they really just kind of took it to a whole other level. shira: they really did. and again, it's easy to forget this in the fog of history, but samsung was one of these companies that got caught a little bit flat-footed by the introduction of the iphone and the surge in popularity of smartphones in general. and they laid back a little bit, and once it was clear android was starting to get some traction, they basically put their foot on the gas. and again, it's hard to imagine the modern smartphone without samsung, which is now the biggest seller of smartphones in the world. what they did, basically, was come out with every conceivable variety of android smartphone with every conceivable feature, every conceivable price point, they sold to just about every country in the world. and on top of that, they introduced some of these innovations that are now a fixture of modern smartphones. notably, the larger screens the iphone was playing catch-up to. but it was those larger screens that really made the smartphone

this must-have device. it suddenly became more appealing to have a smartphone as your primary computing device, to read on it, to look at google maps, to do all these things we now associate with smartphones. carol: throw in one more factor, you point out in your story china, and the economic rise and their increased demand, wanting all kinds of smartphones. shira: china is a huge part of the story here, both as consumers of smartphones and related technologies, and now as an sort of innovators in smartphone technologies. what happened in the last decade plus was the chinese government, as part of the economic development program, decided to spread fast, wireless internet all over the country. into every -- not just cities, but every rural part of the country. and smartphones came along with that. carol: coming up, the world's largest airport. plus, we have gone fishing and come up with a guide for top shelf angling. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, and on am 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 fm in washington, d.c. am 960 in the bay area, london on dab digital, and of course, through the bloomberg businessweek app. this week, a special solutions section. from beijing to singapore, governments are pouring billions of dollars into new airports. here is what is projected to be the hottest aviation market. >> the region is really becoming a very busy air travel region. i think over the course of the next 10-20 years, it is looking to surpass the u.s. and europe combined for just the volume of

travelers passing through there. carol: that is an amazing statistic. >> and there are more amazing statistics in the story. you see big, ambitious projects where the idea of the airport is not just for air travelers, but a destination for locals, people in the area. it will be shopping, we have seen a lot of that happening in airports all over the world. but in asia, as they often do, they are on a whole other level. it is driven by the need and driven by the number of air travelers, but it is also driven by an idea that they can really vary significantly affect the local economies. carol: that's what i love, it is becoming this economic zone, the airport. talk more about that. first of all, it is very different from the business model, thinking about airlines in western countries. that's not where they make their money. >> exactly. if you look at -- we have some

statistics in the story that look at airports in asia and how the percentage, for example, of revenue that is coming in from just retail in those airports, which is much higher than what you see in the u.s., i think that's the idea. they are these economic zones, they are not only the airlines operating in and out of the airport and travelers and other things, but other businesses operating there and creating jobs, and also creating the need for transportation to and from the airport. and it really is kind of spurring something on a much grander scale. we see it -- of course, the project that is coming up most recently that we will see in september, i think, is the new beijing airport. carol: the world's biggest, right, when it opens? >> yes. and we are seeing more projects in singapore and hong kong, all across asia, india, china, the asia-pacific region, so it is kind of an exciting time.

and it's fascinating to see how airports are being set up in some ways, in terms of their being satellite terminal buildings from the main concourse building and how that is also something you see happening with airports in the u.s. for example, at lax, they are thinking about creating something like that, where you can add more terminals doing it that way and create more dates for airplanes. carol: we are struggling in the u.s., we have aging, old infrastructure. you have seen the stories about particularly the new york metro area airports, how bad they are. what's tough is they have to deal with in the united states, deal with the existing infrastructure. in asia, they can to start from the ground up. >> its ground zero. and it is not struggling with existing infrastructure and i think there is even the question of, you have more real estate available to you to spread this thing out and grow it bigger. if you think about la guardia or

kennedy, where do you go? you have to fix what's there and that's about it. there's not much more spreading out that is going to happen or adding on. it is really tricky, but in asia, that's why we are seeing that. it is really cool to see what is happening. carol: and we wrap up this week in pursuit of the perfect fishing trip. so if you are angling for some fishing fun, check out this chat with pursuits editor chris rouser. chris: our audience is actually very fishing-heavy. we have done fishing coverage here and there, but we have never done a whole section takeover. so we consulted some of the expert fishing team members like erik schatzker. carol: i did not know he was a big fishermen. chris: yeah, a lot of fishing diehards here at bloomberg steered us through the section. carol: you lay out a bunch of places to go. this isn't just -- i mean, these are some pretty posh places.

chris: what we did was, we talked to a bunch of different guys all over the world, people who are based in certain places, people who travel around, and got their recommendations for where they like to go, where they like to stay, and who they like to fish with. so we got recommendations from patagonia, the amazon, martha's vineyard. where to stay, there are some luxury places in the places now, which is where we come in to cover it, and also who to go fishing with. the guides. carol: but that is a big part of it, the guides? chris: yeah. you want someone who will take you to the spots, the inlets, the eddies, and two, really is going to know how to make sure you have a good time. carol: so where should we go? did you do 10 places? chris: yeah. the place i would go is martha's vineyard, especially because there is this woman, abby schuster, she is a guide, 29 years old, one of the only women guides we talked to. she is one of the new trend of instagram-savvy guides.

if you aren't getting many bites, she will do an impromptu yoga class. it sounded really cool. and then there are these live aboard boats that we learned about. like in the everglades, florida bay, you can go on a boat, drive around and fishing the whole time. the same thing in the amazon. very cool experiences. carol: that's what's interesting. martha's vineyard is going to be very different from the amazon, and also the type of fish you are going after. chris: that's right. i grew up fishing, but in new england. i did not know about some of these fish, actually. i did not know about this huge, silvery fish you fish for in the seychelles, or some in belize. there are fun, giant, really aggressive fish. carol: i am curious, has it gotten crowded? i think about some of the sports and activities and leisure pursuits that you cover in pursuits, golfing and so forth -- are more people fishing than ever before? chris: more people are fishing in traditional areas. so the good thing about right now is that every part of the world is accessible.

and so if you want to go to a peninsula in russia, you can go. you know, that kind of place is accessible, but climate change is changing where some of the more traditional spots have been. so it can kind of narrow down where you can go and build up people there. carol: bloomberg businessweek is available at newsstands now, also online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. you can find more from this week's issue, including santiago's fleet of electric buses. 400 vehicles will hit the street by october to cut costs and clean the air. plus, vietnam's trade war fuel boom makes it a tariff target. and like the odyssey, but for drones. a robot cell the just returned from antarctica with some troubling climate clues. and do check out our daily businessweek podcasts, available at itunes, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

scarlet: this is bloomberg etf iq where we focus on the access, risks, and rewards offered by they traded funds. -- state traded funds. scarlet: going for the gold. the precious metal topped $1500. investors seek refuge from the trade war. -- war, global growth slowdown, and a world of easy money. in search of healthy returns. the team of rutgers business schools comes out on top with the millennial fitness index. and, seeking shelter for millennials who cannot afford to buy a home. maybe they hedge rising rental costs by investing in a housing etf instead.