Bloomberg Daybreak: US Edition

Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes.
On today's podcast:
1) President Trump vowed to keep US troops in the Persian Gulf ahead of talks with Iran that are planned to firm up a fragile truce, while Tehran warned there may be mines in a strategic waterway Washington wants reopened. Both sides accused each other of violating the truce that was announced Tuesday after six weeks of fighting, with a disagreement over whether the ceasefire extends to Lebanon emerging as a key flashpoint that could unravel the accord. Despite the escalating rhetoric, there were signs the ceasefire was largely holding, with a notable decline in attacks across Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Vice President JD Vance said Washington never suggested that fighting between Israel and Tehran-aligned Hezbollah in Lebanon would cease. But Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said continued attacks on Hezbollah — along with what Tehran described as an Israeli drone strike on its territory overnight — amounted to clear violations of the agreement.
2) President Trump lashed out at NATO after meeting with the military alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, making clear that his anger over the organization’s stance on the Iran war remained acute. “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” the president wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday evening. Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, was in the US on a mission to temper Trump’s public displeasure after NATO allies refused to help him protect commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz or let the US use some of their bases to attack Iran during the war that began on Feb. 28. Trump has also revived his grievance that NATO countries wouldn’t give him Greenland, a Danish territory.
3) A growing number of Federal Reserve officials worried the Iran war could further stoke inflation and wanted to make clear following their March meeting that the central bank may have to consider raising interest rates. Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s March 17-18 meeting, released Wednesday in Washington, showed policymakers wrestled with starkly differing scenarios for the US economy following the outbreak of the Iran war, and the policy reactions that might follow. Most officials worried a protracted war could hurt the labor market and warrant lower interest rates. At the same time, many policymakers highlighted the risk to inflation that might ultimately warrant rate increases.
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Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes.
On today's podcast:
1) The US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire in exchange for Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a last-ditch deal that averted President Trump’s threatened escalation of the war. Trump announced the agreement on social media Tuesday, hours after mediator Pakistan implored him to back off his deadline to unleash massive devastation on Iran if it didn’t meet his demands. The deal buys time for the two sides to reach a longer agreement to end the six-week conflict, which has killed thousands of people and sparked a global energy crisis.
2) Oil and gas prices both plummeted after the US and Iran's announced ceasefire. Brent fell as much as 16% before trading around $95 a barrel, while European natural gas futures posted their biggest decline in more than two years, shedding as much as 20%. Prices of refined fuels such as diesel and jet fuel — which had been the biggest threats to global inflation — also tumbled. Much will now depend on how quickly transit through Hormuz can resume. It’s the route for about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, and the near-halt of traffic has pushed prices for real-world crude to a record. Faced with an unprecedented disruption to flows, the world is rapidly running down supply buffers to offset the loss.
3) Republican Clay Fuller is projected to win a US House seat in a deeply conservative Georgia district even as Democratic gains serve as an early warning for Republican lawmakers navigating President Trump’s threats of a widening war in Iran and voters’ growing economic unease. With 83% of the votes counted, Fuller had 57% compared to 43% for the Democratic candidate, Shawn Harris, according to Decision Desk HQ. That would keep the seat vacated by conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene in Republican hands, but by a narrower margin than in recent elections. Trump had carried the district by 37 percentage points in 2024.
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The US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that’s expected to halt the American-Israeli military campaign in exchange for Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

President Donald Trump announced the agreement Tuesday on social media hours after Pakistan, a mediator in talks, implored the US leader to back off his deadline to unleash massive devastation on Iran if it did not meet his demands. The deal buys time for the two sides to reach a longer agreement to end the six-week-old war, which has killed thousands of people and sparked a global energy crisis.
Trump said he had agreed “to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks” as long as Iran agrees to “the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.”

For instant reaction and analysis, Bloomberg Radio host Doug Krizner speaks with:

Bloomberg State Department and Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin
Bloomberg This Weekend co-host Christina Ruffini
Bloomberg White House and Washington correspondent Jeff Mason
Terry Haines, founder of Pangea Policy
Daniel Byman, Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center
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Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes.
On today's podcast:
1) President Trump’s latest deadline for Iran to agree to a deal is just hours away, and investors are once again finding themselves forced to prepare for a range of possible outcomes. Trump insisted that freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz be part of any deal to end the Middle East war and escalated threats to obliterate key Iranian infrastructure if his terms aren’t met before a Tuesday deadline. Trump said Monday that talks with Iran are “going well” and that reopening the strait is “a very big priority.” The president in recent weeks has said an agreement on the strait wasn’t among his core prerequisites for ending the conflict. Trump laid bare the consequences Iran would face if it doesn’t reach a deal by his Tuesday 8 p.m. Eastern Time cut-off, saying the US military could destroy “every bridge in Iran by 12 o’clock tomorrow night.” Power plants would be rendered “burning, exploding and never to be used again,” he said. Attacking civilian infrastructure is barred by the Geneva Conventions, but Trump said he was “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes.
2) NASA’s four Artemis astronauts swung behind the moon and are headed home, in a journey that shattered space travel distance records and brought people the closest they’ve been to the lunar surface in more than 50 years. At their nearest distance to the moon, the Artemis II’s Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Orion capsule came within an estimated 4,067 miles of the lunar surface, according to calculations by NASA. From the crew’s point of view, the moon would have appeared roughly the size of a basketball in someone’s outstretched hand. The spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth minutes later, reaching 252,756 miles, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post on X. The astronauts earlier broke the distance record for space travel. Shortly before 2 p.m. New York time on Monday, they surpassed the distance the Apollo 13 crew traveled in 1970 of 248,655 miles (400,170 kilometers) from Earth, NASA said.
3) The University of Michigan Wolverines basketball team its second national title in men's basketball and first since 1989, beating the UConn Huskies by a score of 69-63. Michigan shot just two three-pointers all game, but relied on defense, holding UConn to under 31% shooting. Final Four Most Outstanding Player Elliot Cadeau led with 19 points. UConn’s bid for a third title in four seasons fell short, despite 22 offensive rebounds in the championship match.
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Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes.
On today's podcast:
1) President Trump issued increasingly aggressive threats to destroy Iran’s power plants starting Tuesday and bring “Hell” to the country following the rescue of a US airman more than a day after his fighter jet was shot down. Iran rejected Trump’s latest ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying it would only fully resume operations when war damage is compensated. Tehran continued striking energy targets in Gulf neighbors, including Kuwait’s oil headquarters. Trump, in renewing his threats to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, used an expletive in a social media post and told Axios he would be “blowing up everything over there” if Iran doesn’t make a deal. He said he plans a news conference at 1 p.m. on Monday and posted about a Tuesday 8 p.m. deadline, without offering details.

2) Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said she is looking to hold talks with Iran’s leader and possibly also a separate call with President Trump, as the clock ticks on the US president’s latest threat to bomb key Iranian infrastructure. “We are currently making preparations for leadership level talks,” Japan’s Takaichi said of talks with Iran during a parliamentary session Monday. “We will continue to do everything in our power to find an off-ramp to this situation and return to peace.” Takaichi’s comments came with Trump warning Tehran that the US will bomb Iranian power plants unless it opens up the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point through which Japan secures over 90% of its oil. Takaichi said that Japan would do what it can ahead of the Tuesday ultimatum set by Trump, suggesting that she was also seeking a phone call with Trump, though nothing has been finalized yet. Whether Japan can help defuse tensions or even play a mediation role remains unclear, but the nation has a key interest in maintaining a working relationship with a country that currently controls passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

3) Saudi Arabia has raised the price of its main oil grade to Asia to a record high premium, as a widening conflict in the Persian Gulf and Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz convulse energy markets. State oil producer Saudi Aramco will increase flagship Arab Light crude prices for May sales to a premium of $19.50 over regional benchmarks for refiners in Asia, according to a price list seen by Bloomberg. Still, the level is less than the $40 a barrel premium anticipated by traders and refiners in a Bloomberg survey. The gap with market expectations is in part because of a volatile market, and as prices of some Middle Eastern grades dipped in the last week of March, according to traders. Aramco’s oil is also priced for loading in the Persian Gulf port of Ras Tanura, though all of the company’s exports are currently being shipped from the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast. Buyers typically incur additional costs to collect those barrels.
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