Money & Politics --- Peter (slow)
NYSE --- Deb (fast)
>> i’m peter cook. welcome back to “money & politics.” despite president bush’s efforts to try to tamp down what he called wild speculation in the media about the possibility of u.s. military strike on iraq, traders say concerns about rising tensions between the two countries and the possibility that iran’s oil production could be affected having an effect on the oil market today. crude for may delivery ending the day at $68.74, the highest close since september 1. in london today, brent crude hit a record. checking other energy movers this monday, unleaded gasoline higher on the day. natural gas higher, as well. more than 2%. heating oil up more than 3% on the day. checking the major market averages, u.s. stocks little changed, the dow jones industrial average, s&p 500 higher on the day, the nasdaq down .25%. deborah kostroun has been following the action, trading action today. she joins us from the big board with more on how oil impacted stocks today. deb?
>> thanks a lot, peter. it was really the consumer-related stocks that got hit the hardest today because now we’re talking about gasoline really being hit with a double whammy right now. we have the summer driving season, less than two months away. now you have the geopolitical situation heating up and analysts are already saying get ready for $3 a gallon for gasoline. the last time we got above $3 a gallon for gasoline, it was back in september just after hurricane katrina. some of the concern about gasoline coming into the stock market today. stocks little changed because we did see the record crude oil prices, really a turning point for stocks because as crude oil closed out at its highest level of the day, that’s when stocks hit our lowest level and we were climbing up from there. retail stocks lower all day today on gasoline concerns and companies reporting first-quarter results. alcoa saying first-quarter profit more than doubled to a record $608 million as metal prices surged and alcoa ended today’s session at the highest since december 2004 and likely to go higher tomorrow because early earlier in the after hours trading, alcoa was up as much as 5.7%. in today’s session, alcoa, one of the biggest gainers in the dow along with boeing. many of the industrials performing well, boeing also at a record in today’s session, outperforming the s&p 500. returning to the metals, metals have been doing well with copper rising to a record, leading a rally in the metals. zinc at a record today. nickel at its highest since 1989 so you had the metal and mining stocks all doing well but once again, the biggest drag in today’s session was the retail names because there’s a lot of concern that consumers will be spending more at the gas pump and less at the retail stores. peter, back to you.
>> thank you, deborah kostroun at the big board. a jury has begun deliberating whether merck should pay punitive damages to a man already awarded $4.5 million in a lawsuit involving vioxx. the same jury awarded compensatory damages to the the man who blamed his heart attack on the painkiller. jurors decided the drugmaker failed to warn doctors well the risks vikings posed. now the jurors must decide if the drugmaker was involved in level and wanton conduct. merck facing 10,000 vioxx lawsuit after a study showed 18 months of use doubles the risk of heart attacks. protestors across the country marching for immigrants’ rights. we’ll talk about one of the lead supporters of a bill in the the house they’re rallying against. congressman tom tancredo joins us when we return.
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Listen Interview: Colorado Representative
>> congress is on string recess but the immigration marchs o.tens of thousands of protestors gathering across the country today rallying more immigrant rights. they’re protesting one of the proposed immigration bills in congress, at least some of the folks participating say they are. that is a proposal that congressman tom tancredo endorses,. he joins us. thank you for your time today. we’ve seen more protests in washington, around the country. are these impacting the overall debate?
>> i don’t know. i can’t tell to what extent that they are having an impact on many of my colleagues. i will tell you that from the telephone calls we get in our office, most americans who look out on the streets and see millions of people protesting and i guess over time it has been in the millions, protest ing, essentially flaunting the fact that many of them are here illegally, demanding they be given special privileges, at first waving mexican flags and now they’ve been equipped with american flags but i think when people see that, frankly, i don’t think it sells that well in peoria. i don’t believe it’s helping their cause.
>> are you surprised, if nothing else, at the size of these protests? do they give you a sense of the opposition you’re facing with the legislation in the house?
>> if you were to consider that all of the people who were out there were american citizens who were going to be voting in the next election, and represented, after millions of other people who were not in the streets, sure you would be concerned that we could ever get that bill out. but as a matter of fact, let’s be realistic about this. most of the people out there in the streets are not here legally and unless there’s massive voter fraud, which there often is, they cannot vote. and most americans looking at this, including hispanic americans who are citizens, who have been here for years, look at this and i don’t think they’re excited about it. they don’t vote monolithically. i believe that there are millions―and i mean millions―of mexican american citizens in this country who want an end to illegal immigration, who want us to clamp down on the borders and who know that oftentimes the people on the lowest end of the economic ladder are the ones hurt most by massive numbers of illegal aliens coming into this country taking jobs for less than the person who is presently employed is doing it for. so so i would tell my colleagues, don’t run away, don’t get scared and run away on this issue because you see a lot of people in the streets. this is not the way we should make laws in this republic, by mobs. make it by good dlberation and don’t think the people in the streets represent all of america. they don’t.
>> i have to imagine that some of your colleagues are looking at these protests and doing some of the political math here with regard to hispanics and the hispanic vote. the president made great progress with hispanic voters in the last two elections. aren’t republicans running a risk of losing support with some of the house over this issue?
>> it’s amazing. we had prop 200 in arizona that passes with 66% of the vote in the last election saying that nobody in arizona could get social service benefits unless they were there legally and you had to prove you were a citizen in order to vote. two radical things, right? it passed with 66% of the vote and 47% of the hispanic vote. two democrat governors, arizona and new mexico, have both declared states of emergency. one governor sent the national guard down to the border. please believe me when i say that this is not just a republican or democratic issue. it is an issue as to whether or not the country is going to be balkanized, whether we will be split up into language areas and unable to communicate with each other. there’s issues of culture that we have to talk about. there are certainly issues of jobs. all of these things are important to all americans, including hispanic americans. we should not think that just because some organizations, like laraza and others, who claim to be the leaders in the his hispanic movement, just because they’re out there screaming in the streets, don’t think most hispanics are following them, it’s not true.
>> let me ask you about the legislative process from here. as we all know, an immigration proposal in the senate failed to move forward before this spring recess. have you received assurances from the house leadership, the republican leadership, that if that bill does, in fact, work its way through the process and head to the house for a conference, that the house republican leadership will oppose any guest worker program?
>> the only thing that i can recall being sort of promised by the speaker of the house was that he would not bring a bill forward that did not have a majority of the republican members of the conference. now, let me tell you, that no bill that includes the amnesties in all of these senate bills, has a chance of getting a majority of the republicans in the house. so if the speaker holds true to his word and he’s also always done so in the past, we will not see a bill with amnesty in it.
>> colorado representative tom tancredo, we appreciate your time today. look forward to following this issue and talking with you again soon. here tomorrow in washington, chinese vice premier wu yi will meet with top u.s. officials to discuss copyright enforcement and china’s ban on beef imports. the meeting is an opportunity for the two countries to ramp down tensions before next week’s visit by chinese prime minister hu jintao. joining me to discuss this, bloomberg’s mark drajan who covers trade issues. what should we expect tomorrow?
>> this is a major meeting. every year that u.s. and china have these meetings to go over the different trade tensions and obviously with the record trade deficit between u.s. and china, they’ve become more important over the last couple of years. the major thing i’m hearing right now is the issues on intellectual property enforcement, chachina needs to do to cramp down on illegal piracy that you see on the streets of beijing. that’s where the u.s. is putting the focus and where i’m hearing the results will be tomorrow.
>> we’ll have a news conference tomorrow afternoon to announce any deals in the offing. we’ve heard some news about boeing being involved in at least one agreement going forward.
>> exactly, in addition to the different policy issues, there will be specific business deals and one is with boeing. there’s been an announcement of 80 planes worth $5 billion. this this is a corn firmation of―confirmation of earlier pledges but the stock is up as you noted earlier on the news this is not a forum to discuss the currency issue. it may come up in the course of the news conference but that is not an issue on the table for these officials?
>> it is not although you heard president bush make comments about the currency and ask president hu to do something about the currency before he comes here next week so obviously currency is figuring into the trade talks and debates in washington.
>> this meeting is greasing the skids for president hu’s visit next week. is it possible we could get more substantive news tomorrow in advance of the president’s trip here on april 20?
>> well, what i heard from commerce today is you’re not going to get the bombshell announcements tomorrow because president hu will the to do that. but you’ll see the small things that u.s. businesses and lawmakers are complaining about because the broader story behind all of this is that the bush administration is trying to get congress off its back when it comes to china and congress is looking at legislation, now, that gould do something that the bush administration and economists say being hurt our overall economy by cramping down on imports from china.
>> and intellectual property, an area where china could take greater steps as opposed to currency right now and satisfy american critics?
>> absolutely, one that’s under its control and as the number two commerce person noted in testimony to congress earlier this year, when it comes to the china olympics logo, the chinese have protected that. on other issues such as u.s. movies, there haven’t been those protections.
>> mark drajem, we know you’ll cover tomorrow’s talks, thank you very much. coming up next on “money & politics,” howard dean, can his party take advantage of republican missteps to take back congress? we’ll ask him next.
