good morning, everybody. welcome. you're watching "street signs." i'm louisa bojesen. >> i'm carolin roth. these are your headlines. the richmond fed president, jeffrey lacker, resigns after admitting he may have leaked market sensitive data as former policymaker dennis lockhart tells cnbc communication between fed presidents has become more compl complex. >> the presidents can say whatever they want, and that creates conflicting views, it's hard for market participants to

figure out what the message. uk prime minister theresa may says free movement of uk citizens could continue for a period of britain leaves the eu. the french presidential candidate, emmanuel macron accuses marine le pen of waging economic war, but it is france's far-left leader, jean-luc melenchon who is tipped to win the second debate. investors in bovis homes cheers that the deal to end embattled bovis has ended. good morning. it's wednesday, let's kick things off with a bit of economic data in the form of market. eurozone march final composite pmi at 56.4. a bit lower than the flash indication of 56.7. still better than the february

number of 56. this print, 56.4, is the highest since february of 2011.release, saying eurozone businesses enjoyed the best quarter since the start of 2017. we have companies raising prices, and the concern is at what point will this put a dent into consumer spending. euro/dollar at 1.0674. largely unchanged on the day. we did have a reaction earlier this morning on the back of better than expected numbers out of the likes of france. france is interesting. pmis at six-year highs despite the uncertainty around the election. >> it is. the uk car registrations, new car registrations for march rising by 8.4%.

it's interesting because we had some weaker than expected car data the day before yesterday t out of the u.s. so despite brexit, political uncertainty, a new record quarter for car registrations in the uk. >> resiliency is the name of the game. european equity markets, resilient? not sure we can call them resilient, but at least flat on the european equity markets. completely unchanged on the stoxx 600. maybe that is resilience since we have this super important meeting between trump and his counterpart on thursday and friday this week. that could get interesting politically. they will be talking about trade, security issues, and the non-farm payrolls data wrapping us up on friday. right now, markets similar to yesterday at this point in time. mixed with the xetra dax and

ftse mib pulling a bit lower on the sector side of things. to the down side, autos, healthcare and media. autos in there, despite we're looking at new car registrations rising to a record figure in the uk. basic resources pulling higher along with oil, gas and banks. richmond federal president jeffrey lacker has resigned over his role in a leak from the central bank. lacker, who was due to step down at the end of october, confirmed confidential information to an analyst in a phone call in october 20612. lacker disclosed the full details in 2015 after failing to do so in an initial probe after the 2012 leak. former atlanta fed president, dennis lockhart told cnbc lacker's leak could have been unintentional. >> could have been inadvertent. something that is a mind lapse at a moment where you're not

thinking about the timing, this was a few days before the minutes were to come out. so the leak, as i recall the details, involved disclosing information in advance of the minutes which, of course, is a no-no. you know, jeff has been a -- for me, a valued colleague for many years. i just think this is a regrettable set of circumstances. >> is it in part the communication function of the federal reserve has changed over the years? under alan greenspan it seemed to be confusion was the object of the game. very much after the financial crisis, it was about steering markets in a clear path. is that part of the issue? >> ben bernanke stressed transparency. he felt that the fed, the central bank of the united states could become much more transparent. and so he took direct action to make that happen.

press conferences, years ago we did not do press conferences. the communication is much less coordinated than people believe sometimes. the president has hads have had deal of precedence of saying whatever they want. then it's sometimes hard for market participants to figure out what the message is coming from the fed because it's not always -- seldom is it a coordinated message. >> the volcker rule is harming banks and damaging market making activities according to federal reserve governor turullo. in a speech he defended a broader range of banking regulations saying the crash should not be forgotten adding that the strong capital regime should remain in place. mr. tarullo joins cnbc at 14:15 live from washington.

let's look at how the euro/dollar pair is trading. currently at 1.076. seeing broad based dollar weakness across the board. this could be ahead of the meeting between trump and mr. xi. also another missile test in north korea, that adds a bit to the yen buying. seeing dollar/yen at 110.63. let's get out to joe pendergast from credit suisse what do you do with the dollar since we are in a consolidation phase. where else do you look? >> i think the dollar has been in a consolidation phase for quite some time now. the early stages of the fed tightening, which began over a year ago slowly. this taking its time to have any big impact. we think the dollar are be generally strong as the fed continues to tighten. this is the second wave of dollar strength. it will be expressed versus euro and swiss frank, but really big

exceptions, too. particularly to the yen and pound sterling also could outperform. >> let me get this straight. you're still pretty constructive on the u.s. dollar. not necessarily because of trump's policies, and not necessarily because you think that his infrastructure push, his tax reform will be massive and kite consequential for the markets. you think it's because of the fed? >> yeah. i think it's actually really because of the growth back drop. what we have is a situation where growth has been increasing. not just in the u.s., but actually now on a global basis, a synchronized upswing. that growth is rooted actually well before the u.s. election back to last summer, when the leading indicators began to rise significantly. they certainly accelerated post election with some of the policy expectations. but in my view it doesn't depend upon them. as long as the growth story is good, the fed will be the one leading monetary tightening.

at this stage of the cycle, this is classically dollar bullish. we expect this to follow through in the coming year. >> joe, good morning. i think a lot of people would understand that. i'm looking at your comments on how you are also still bullish on the yen as well as the great british pound. some people might be a bit puzzled by the pound call at this point in time given brexit and all the other political scenarios. talk us through that one. >> sure. i think the two exceptions of yen and sterling have really particular circumstances. on the pound, i think there's so much priced in in terms of negativity on brexit, and on the uk, in the last year that we really just feel it's at exceptionally cheap levels. that doesn't mean it has to recover. but any good news at this poent would be good. we notice that expectations for uk gdp are going up over time.

economists are revising rapidly expectations for uk growth going forward. and secondly, there is, of course, possibly good news from the brexit negotiations relative to what is feared. we saw just in the last day theresa may talking about the possibility that freedom of movement would have to be sustained for a while. this is all beginning to shift towards a compromised type position. no compromise on certain issues, but those things that could affected the economy, i think these are going to be avoided most likely. we have some indication of that. the pound could respond given that it's been so heavily sold in the last year. >> in this search for yield, what do you make of the commodity currencies? how much elasticity to the upside is there potentially there? >> well, i think the commodity currencies will benefit at least in our view from a firmer general environment for commodities in general. so we're actually quite optimistic that the commodity

complex will do reasonably well as growth is picking up. the problem is we're talking about commodity prices increasing fairly moderately. if you look at australia and canada, the local central banks are not in a position to be competing or not even anywhere close to leading what's going on with the fed. because interest rates are so important from a currency point of view, we think they're not going to inform that impressively. we think they do just fine, probably about neutral versus the dollar, as the dollar is genuinely strong versus euro, but we don't pick those as stand-out performers. we would rather trade the commodities themselves and in particular the energy sector rather than the commodity currencies. >> joe, let's talk about the french presidential elections. only a few weeks left really. a lot of people thought that trading the euro would be the main sort of catalyst or the main sort of means to trade

around the french presidential election. if i look at what euro/dollar did over the course of march, it did pretty well given all the concerns. now we're still at levels of 106.74. you would think with the concerns it would be trading lower. why do you think there is all this resilience and lack of volatility in some sense? >> yeah. there's an extreme lack of volatility in markets. this is rooted in this very clear driving force of better economic growth. this is something also that one can think politically, you know, if you think about the probabilities of what happens in the election, will there be a vote for a candidate that markets would view as perhaps market unfriendly or extreme, i think that this -- these forces are really an offset by the growth factor. what that means is if we get a shock politically like we did for brexit last year, that shock may not translate into global markets particularly badly.

the second point is that in france especially, you can see that there is -- in the opinion polls, a discounting obviously that the likely outcome will not be such a surprise. now, if that's wrong, i think the euro will be the thing to s suffer. that's reflected that the euro is holding at the bottom of the range. because it's still regarded as an outside chance, it's not fully expressed in prices. the bigger, much clearer fact that growth has been upswinging for some time, this has been driving low volatility in markets as they go into the event risks. that's the balance we have now. >> joe, when looking through your research, one of the red threads is real estate. real estate is popping out everywhere. you say rotation from consumer staples into real estate. you talk about uk reits to outperform as well. why so optimistic on real estate

now? >> well, i guess the big issue with real estate that is so attractive in our view is if you look at what's happening with yields around the world, as we all know the thirst for yield is a driving force. you've been seeing dividend yields being on downward pressure, especially on a forward basis in the ekquity market. bond yields still keep going up that means capital losses. with falling dividend yields and rising bond yields, there needs to be an alternative. if the alternative is that the yields are holding up and moving with the bond yields but didn't necessarily suffer those same capital losses because they also contain this equity growth aspect. that's what makes the real estate equities so attractive to us. they have the equity character but the yield is matching closely the movements in bond yield. this balance just makes real

estate stand out in the equity market at least as a very interesting yield play for us at this time. and there are particular markets you mentioned, the uk, for example, where real estate equities are trading cheap to the underlying net asset value. that makes it quite attractive from our point of view. >> joe, thank you very much. get involved. e-mail the show as always. nice to hear from you, the address is streetsignseurope@cnbc.com. see some of your comments trickling in. we're on twitter as well. you can find us @louisabojesen. >> and @carolincnbc. did you see the french presidential debate yesterday? >> i saw parts of it. it was four hours long. >> was three this time. >> 11 candidates. 11 candidates. >> insane. >> one winner. it wasn't macron or le pen. we'll talk plenty more about this. >> it's a surprise. that's coming up on the show.

also we'll still talk about brexit. britain will one day return to the eu. find out who thinks europe hasn't seen the last of britain. we'll be back in two.

welcome back. let's get you caught up on some corporate news. chemchina won u.s. approval of its takeover of syngenta. american antitrust regulators have given the go-ahead for the $43 billion deal on the suggestion that chemchina diverges of three products.

galliford try said they will no longer try to make a bid for bovis. galliford is the sick tecond to abandon takeover hopes of bovis. frankfurt is reportedly winning the post-brexit battle of the banks. according to the "wall street journal" around 15 major banks are in talks with german officials about relocating to frankfurt. russia's second largest lender announced plans for a new headquarter in frankfurt. deutsche bank and goldman sachs said they could relocate staff to the german city. i guess that won't go down too well with paris, dublin, who else was vying for it? amsterdam. >> exactly. they have a lot to say. >> luxembourg. we want to mention that you

are watching some live pictures here of the european parliament debating the conditions and priorities for europe's upcoming brexit negotiations with the uk. mps will be voting later today on a resolution stating their approach to tackling the talks. speaking earlier, the european parliament's chief brexit negotiator gave his opening statement. >> perhaps let's recognize between us it was impossible maybe to reunite great britain with the content. perhaps it was never meant to be. but -- that's important. i hope the applaud is also. our predecessor should never be blamed for having tried to. never, i think, because it is important in politics as it is in life to try new partnership,

new things, to reach out to the other, at the other side of the channel. as i am also convinced and 100% sure about one thing -- that there will be one day or another, dear colleagues, there will be a young man or woman who will try again. who will lead britain again into the european family once again. and a young generation -- a young generation that will see brexit for what it really is, a cat fight in the conservative party that got out of hand. aloss loss of time, a waste of energy and i think stupidity. >> henry newman is with us. what do you make with some of those comments? >> i don't think brexit was a cat fight in the conservative

party. it's a democratic decision with a record turnout. which with the debate that it engaged the population on both sides. it's important to remember the european parliament is one actor of many amongst the brussels institutions. it's not that important of an actor. it will be the european council, the heads of government and state that set the negotiating mandate for the european commission, which is brussels' civil service. they will negotiate with britain. the parliament has a yes or no -- a veto power but they don't direct the negotiations themselves. >> how do you think theresa may has been doing so far? how do you foresee she'll do in terms of the negotiations over the course of the next two years? >> i think she's been playing her hand well. she kept a lot of her cards close to her chest. we saw more of her plans outlined when she triggered article 50 last year and wrote to the president of the european council. broadly britain is -- the british government is handling

this well. and the european council in brussels responded in a good way also. so they've taken a sensible and constructive tone. there was a lot of discussion about whether we could negotiate our divorce settlement or our brexit in parallel with discussions around our future arrangements, our trading deal that we might get once we leave. actually i think theresa may was largely vindicated. as long as broad principles are agreed early on, we can start discussing trade in the future. >> henry, isn't she already cre ceding some grounds to the eu? seems like she's softening her stance somewhat. >> i think it's a negotiation. you have to be careful not to take positions that you sub

squept su subsubsequently have to cleem down fr climb down from. when she spoke in january, she used in phrasing. you're right. it's important that we don't close off avenues. she has three broad red lines that she will seek to obtain from these negotiations. and getting back control of immigration is one of her red lines. it's a red line for a future arrangement rather than transition. >> what do you think will dominate the talks over the uk and eu over the next couple years? some people say for the first 12, 18 months it will be the settling of the brexit bill worth 60 billion euros. that could eat up a lot of the time. what do you think will take priority? >> i would reject the 60 billion euro figure, but it's bandied around by the european commission. it's interesting that the european guidelines didn't mention a figure. if brussels insists on britain signing a blank check, we will get nowhere.

but if there's a desire among heads of government and state to get an agreement, we'll get an agreement. if there isn't, it will be difficult. >> how do you think it will be ultimately? >> i'm optimistic in terms of getting the deal. in terms of the exit bill that will depend on many things. i think less than 60. >> what's your best guess? >> i'll say more than 60. >> okay. i'll say 60. henry, thank you very much for that. henry newman. we need to take a short break. check out our blog, world markets live. it runs throughout the european trading day. we have loads more coming up. we'll talk about trump among other things. u.s. politics. >> again. >> exactly. stay tuned.

. hello. welcome. yes, you're still watching "street signs." i'm carolin roth. >> i'm louisa bojesen. your headlines. the richmond fed president, jeffrey lacker, resigns after admitting he may have leaked market sensitive data as former policymaker dennis lockhart tells cnbc communication between fed presidents has become more complex. >> the presidents have a great deal of independence, saying whatever they want. that creates, of course, conflicting views out there. and it's hard sometimes for market participants to figure out what the message is. uk prime minister theresa may signals that free movement

of eu citizens could continue for a period after britain leaves the eu, thus while admitting a trade deal with the union could come after 2019. the french presidential candidate, emmanuel macron, accuses marine le pen of waging economic war, but it is france's far-left leader, jean-luc melenchon who is tipped to win the second election debate. and investors in bovis homes and galliford try and cheer the news as deal talks have ended. as greg fitzgerald takes the helm of embattled bovis. good morning, everybody. welcome back to "street signs." seeing a pop in sterling on the back of data just hitting the wires indicating that the uk march services pmi hit a level of 55 versus a reading of 53.3 back in february. it's quite a bit stronger than the reuters poll of 53.3 as well, which means we're at a three-month high. services pmi prices charge 54.2

versus february 54.1. that's the highest since september of 2008. the pmi, the uk pmi is consistent with first quarter economic growth of 0.4% quarter on quarter versus 2016's 0.7%. quite a bit stronger than anticipated. the uk economy probably slowing after a strong end to 2016, also according to this survey being published this morning. you're seeing a pop in cable against the green back. chris williamson, chief business economist from ihs market. a lot stronger than anticipated on this pm irk dai data for the. >> indeed. stronger than any poll. it shows how strong this pop is. but it's tainted somewhat because you have that weakening trend in manufacturing.

in construction. it rounds off a fairly weak quarter. 0.4% gdp signaled from the pmis. that's up from 0.5 run rate in march. but significantly weaker than late last year. when you delve down into the service sector, you can see where the weakness lies. that's in consumer oriented sectors. so hotels, restaurants, they she should be doing well because of the weakness of sterling, because they're not. more consumer services like gyms, all these leisure activities, they've been the weakest performing sector so far this year. a lot of that is linked to prices being hiked. we saw the weakest area of manufacturing was consumer goods. so it's playing through and slowing growth. >> given we are seeing the prices rising at the strongest pace since 2008, does that mean inflation will overshoot the 3%

level? >> it certainly looks like it will be hitting 3%. whether it overshoots that or not remains finally balanced. we had some pullback in the manufacturing input cost indices while they're still rising sharply, the rate of inflation dipped slightly. seeing some cooling of some commodity prices globally. that's coming through here. so, hopes that maybe 3% will be a peak, not much above that. but certainly indicates that cpi has a long way to go from the current 2.3%. >> do you think that in general on the street here in the uk, also among economists, there is an underestimation of how bad the rising inflation numbers will be for the uk consumer? do you think that's being underappreciated now? >> i think most people aare pin pencilling in quite a hit within

the next year. 2% growth subjects not mu s 2% growth subjects not muuggest wrong, but there's a slowing trend. that bank of england forecast looks peaky here, if the pmi is right, and it comes out 0.4%, they will be downgrading that forecast quite soon. >> you say the boe and other economists are not behind the curve what does it mean for the boe then? would they have to factor in more easing to contend that trend of slowing consumer growth? >> at the moment. if you look at what the pmi is saying against boe decisions, we're bang-on neutral at the moment. no tightening. no further easing. last month we slipped into the easing territory. it's saying the bank of england is likely to hold the course. keep stimulus in place for perhaps the rest of the year. that's what we're seeing. we're not expecting any big moves there the bank of england or the ecb this year.

>> the pound and where the pound is heading in the near-term future. you're coming at this from an economist perspective. from was you are he what you ar there reason to fear faur theur weakening? >> we suspect so, yes. perhaps parody against the dollar as we go towards the end of this year, there is, we think, more bad news that will come in in terms of brexit negotiations. they will be tough as we've seen. there is going to be an increasing hit on the consumer side. the labor market is softening. we've seen that in the pmi numbers. it's nothing like the rates of growth in 2014 and 2015. that will hit consumers as well as the business uncertainty ratcheting through. i think there is more bad news to be pencilled in for sterling over the course of the next year. >> chris, thank you very much. chris williamson, chief business economist from ihs markets. a quick look at markets.

particularly the u.s. futures. we are looking mixed. the s&p 500 seen off by two. the dow jones set to add 5 1/2. nasdaq seen off by one point after the main u.s. indices erased losses at the close. in europe, it's a fairly benign picture. the ftse 100, up 0.2%. oil and gas stocks and basic resources doing better. oil prices close to one-month highs. seems inventory levels are slowly but surely falling. this after the dax is under pressure, off by 0.3%. we're in wait and see made ahead of that trump/xi meeting which happens late their week. that brings us to fx. ahead of that meeting, the dollar is more subdued. maybe getting a bit of support from the pmi numbers at the top of the hour. speaking of pmis, the services

pm i pmis were stronger than expected. that is leading to that nice surge in cable. in france, all 11 presidential candidates clashed in a live tv debate that lasted almost four hours. anyone who watched the full 3 1/2 hours, i don't know. in an exercise, each candidate was given the same amount of time to speak regardless of their standing in the polls. according to some, the far-left candidate, melenchon was the winner, with macron coming in second, and le pen coming in third. he will pen clashed with macron when she said france should put in clever protectionism. >> translator: we need an economic patriotism. we need our businesses to have an advantage in opening for public contracts, it's true for businesses, industries and

agriculture. we need to put in place clever protectionism, we cannot accept our production be put in competition to those that do not respect the same norms. >> macron hit back at le pen suggesting her policies could lead to a conflict in europe. >> translator: what you are proposing is nationalism. i come from a region where conflicts between european countries, and jean lasalle reminded us of this, you have to know where you come from and where separation would take us. nationalism is war. i come from a region filled with war cemeteries, i don't want to go on that side of the black line. >> i wonder whether there was a bit too many heated exchanges between centrist macron and between far-right le pen. each accusing each other of economic warfare, not wanting to be one with the people, standing out too much. instead you saw this completely separate candidate running off with the victory of the night,

mr. melenchon out of the 1 1 candida candidates. >> he won't be able to catch up to the other two. he will pen came in fourth. that's poor showing for someone who wants to win the presidential election. this is the second poor performance by her in a debate. the problem is, you know, the difficulty about forecasting this outcome of the presidential elections in france, you have 40% of voters undecided. talking to a guest on this show, he says it doesn't mean these people will not go to the polls, no. voter turnout could be pretty high. but you don't know what will happen until the very day. even if you have macron leading in the first -- both being tied in the first round, macron leading in the second round. everything is up in the air if you have 40% of people undecided. >> look at what happens in the course of the week, for example, with the investigations into fillon's personal affairs.

whether or not he was engaged for illegally paying for work they did not do. that changed how much supporters were supporting him. things like that could happen again. people may be sitting back seeing what happens with these candidates. >> i also wonder whether we will see the u.s. effect, where we pu polled people from each coast, but pollsters forgot about the middle of the u.s. pollsters, also the media. do we look enough at the french person, the french farmer living in central france? >> claire has been making the rounds for us, talking to people in all corners of france trying to get to grips with that question. first round of voting, april 23rd. second round on may 7th, unless somebody runs off with 50% of the vote. coming up, we find out how a new missile launch from north

carolina is setti north korea is setting off talks between president trump and his counterpart starting tomorrow. we'll be right back.

hi everybody. welcome back. the u.n. security council plans to hold emergency talks in the wake of a suspected chemical attack in syria which left at least 83 people dead and hundreds injured. nbc's richard engel hat details on the suspected chemical attack and we do want to warn you this report does contain graphic images. >> reporter: the images that have come out are horrific. bodies strewn on the ground no obvious signs of injuries, just dead and injured people motionless in some cases,

struggling to breathe. the hallmark of a chemical weapon attack. that's what syrian activists say happened. around 6:37 in the morning, there was an explosion in this town of, a small town in syria. people immediately started to feel ill. they were sweating profusely, having trouble breathing. they were rushed to nearby clinics. inside the clinics, medical officials said this was a nerve agent attack. they said they believed that because the victims had tiny pinpoint pupils, and that there was a mass number of casualties. though some of the death toll -- the latest death toll figures puts it around 60 killed, including quite a few children. there are not medical facilities in this area. the syrian war has been going on for a long time. some medical facilities are

makeshift. in one of these clinics, as victims were being treated, there was another explosion. even as first responders and medics were trying to give life-saving aid. the syrian government has said it was not responsible. the syrian army said it never used chemical weapons. russia, which backs the government of bashar al assad said its aircraft were not in the area at the time of the attack. activists say this was the result of bashar al assad, and unless he's stopped there will be more attacks like this and more of an escalation. >> incredibly difficult report to watch. it's important to note, as well, that since the report was filed, the death toll from the attack has been revised up. at least 83 people are now thought to have died according to the latest figures from nbc news. north korea fired a ballistic missile from sinpo.

the missile threw for about nine minutes before falling into the sea of japan. the launch comes one day ahead of the u.s./xhin thchina summit florida where president trump and xi will discuss tackling the nuclear program. in a brief statement rex tillerson said the u.s. has spoken enough about north korea and has no former comment. good morning, ben. thank you for getting up early for us. this renewed missile test raises the stakes for the upcoming meeting between the two presidents. do you think the countries will be abilile to find common grounn north korea? china only wants to get tougher on north korea if the u.s. stops the joint drills.

>> yeah. it will be a difficult summit both on the north korea front and on trade. president trump during the campaign said some tough things about china, particularly raping the u.s. talked about imposing a 45% tariff. on north korea he will press the chinese and president xi to use their economic muscle with north korea to put sanctions on them, to try to squeeze the north korean regime, but president xi does not like to be told what to do by the united states. the united states engaging in things that china does not like. there was the dust-up over the one-china policy at the beginning of the administration, where they broached that long-standing view of one china. they since backtracked on that. i don't think we'll see great breakthroughs in the summit. the main goal for the white house is to pull off a relatively seamless meeting with no embarrassing moments.

president xi and the chinese side are very keen to not seem bullied by the trump administration. so, i'd set expectations low for this meeting. i think the key for both sides will be to pull it off without any diplomatic dust-ups. i wouldn't look for a great break through on trade or north korea. >> i guess the bar is low when it comes to expectations. maybe about building that personal rapport. we also know president xi of china doesn't really play golf. that's something president trump is keen to do when he has foreign leaders visiting him in mar-a-lago . what kind of diploma sigh shocye get from the two leaders going forward? >> president xi was critical of golf, it was involved in various scandals in china. i think what you're likely to see is cordial meetings between the two, photo opportunities in

which they're shaking hands, not getting the situation like we got with merkel in germany where trump refused to share her hand during that photo opportunity. i think both sides would be satisfied if it came off with friendly exchanges. perhaps the chinese side giving a small concession on trade. that's typical of some of these meetings where the chinese are willing to make a symbolic gesture that president can talk about, saying he is getting tough on trade. nothing major on that front. if the headlines are xi and trump develop a personal rapport, have a meeting where there are no significant arguments or public embarrassments, they would be satisfied with that. it would be surprising if they did come out with something, a joint statement on north korea or something major on trade, on the tariffs front that would be a big win for the trump administration. but i think what they're looking for is simply we get along with

xi. we can work with him, but we'll take a tough stance on trade. he campaigned on china hurting the u.s. manufacturing sector. so there may be some statements to that effect. really they just want to get along well. >> ben, nine hours ago you tweeted, white house on syrian gas attack, obama's fault. tillerson on gas attack, don't want to talk about it. both difficult to watch with regard to how the white house has chosen to respond to both events. how do you view it? how should the white house responded? why are they responding like this? >> it was a remarkable day with those two responses to major international geopolitical crises. it's typical for presidents sometimes in their commentary to refer to previous administrations, perhaps their missteps. but to come out after this horrific attack in syria and

launch a partisan attack on the previous administration was shocking to a lot of people. that's not what presidents typically do in their formal public statements. this comes after trump, prior to the campaign as a private citizen, repeatedly said the u.s. should not be deeply involved in syria. should focus on the u.s. only. to accuse president obama of inaction is not in keeping with president trump's previous statements. on north korea, a terse statement like that sounds like we're tired of dealing with this. we don't want to talk about it. why say anything at all at that point if you're going to be flippant and dismissive of a troubling situation on the korean peninsula. it was not heartening to those looking for a more sober, a more serious, a more far-reaching response from the trump administration on some of these issues. both syria and north korea. it was not particularly welcomed to a lot of those who followed these issues that they would

respond in this way. perhaps they'll take lessons learned from this and not do it this way in the future. >> what is the current u.s. administration's policy vision? i ask wondering whether or not we'll see such a divide from within the gop and the republican party, and that's one of the reasons why we're seeing responses like this to these really, really, really serious matters. >> yeah. there is obviously divide within the republican party on both issues, domestic, taxes, healthcare, other issues and international. those who would like to see, like john mccain, a more robust military response in syria. president trump has talked about cracking down hard on isis and becoming more involved in the middle east. during the campaign he talked about not having the u.s. extended in foreign involvements and wars. there's not a clear trump doctrine or republican foreign

policy doctrine right now that people can latch to and say this is our path forward it will take time to work that out. right now it's a bit of a mrudde and mess how they'll address these things. whether we will be more involved in syria, generally more involved in the middle east or pull back. it's just hard to follow at this point. i think it gives a lot of people pause about what the true nature of the republican approach to a lot of these issues is. it's going to take time to work those things out. right now it's just not clear. >> ben, thank you very much. ben white, chief economic correspondent at politico and cnbc contributor. democrats are holding the floor voicing opposition to neil gorsuch's appointment to the supreme court. senator jeff merkley began speaking to the chamber in the early hours of the morning in washington. mitch mcconnell said he has enough votes to approve a rule change allowing a simple majority vote on gorsuch's

nomination. the republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the senate. so you're looking at a filibuster happening. the democrats-induced fe filibuster. i believe it's in their seventh hour. >> i wonder how long it will keep going. >> some have been 24, 48 hours. >> at least more than a day. u.s. futures indicating a slightly mixed open. flat to mixed open 4 1/2 hours from now. the implied open on the right hand side of your screen. that's as we look at europe today. european equity markets remaining slightly mixed. the longest filibuster ever, 24 hours and 18 minutes. there you go. i'm carolin roth. >> i'm louisa bojesen. >> "worldwide exchange" is up next. we'll see you tomorrow. so you're having a party?

how nice. i'll be right there. and the butchery begins. what am i gonna wear? this party is super fancy. let's go. i'm ready. are you my uber? [ horn honks ] [ tires screech ] hold on. [ upbeat music ] the biggest week in tv is back. [ doorbell rings ] who's that? show me watchathon. xfinity watchathon week! now until april 9. get unlimited access to all of netflix and more, free with xfinity on demand.

. good morning. data in focus. three key economic reports dominate the agenda and could move the markets. lacker stepping down. richmond fed president resigning over his involvement over the leak of market-sensitive information. and the xi/trump summit. a live report from beijing ahead of this week's crucial meeting. it's april 5, 2017. "worldwide exchange" begins right now. ♪ good morning. welcome to "worldwide exchange." i'm sara eisen. >> i'm w