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--:-- Caitlin McCabe: At Constellation, we bring the energy, powering America's growing economy every minute, every day. As the nation's largest producer of clean and reliable America-made energy, Constellation is wherever you are. From families to corner stores to manufacturers to the biggest data centers, we meet the nation's energy needs by generating emissions-free electricity today and for our future.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The government is one step closer to reopening after some Democrats break rank and vote to advance a spending measure. Plus, we unpack what President Trump's $2,000 tariff dividend would look like. And why your favorite pasta might be disappearing from the store.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: If there really is a 107 percent tariff imposed on Italian pasta makers, many of these Italian pasta companies will pull out of the U.S. market.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: It's Monday, November 10th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal. And here's the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The Senate took the first step last night toward ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history after eight members of the Democratic caucus joined Republicans in voting to advance a spending measure aimed at reopening the government.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The vote was 60-40 with Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania among those that voted with the GOP.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The Senate's next big step is to amend the measure and send it back to the Republican-led House of Representatives before being signed by President Trump, a process that could take several days.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The timing of the next steps in the Senate was unclear, but what is clear is that this bill has the support to eventually sail through the Senate.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That's Journal-Congressional reporter Siobhan Hughes, who was following the vote late last night.
--:-- Siobhan Hughes: As part of the deal, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised to give a vote to Democrats on extending certain expiring ACA subsidies by the end of the second week in December.
--:-- Siobhan Hughes: The fate of those subsidies had been the main sticking point to reopening the government.
--:-- Siobhan Hughes: As I explain, Affordable Care Act subsidies have been a point of contention during the shutdown, with Democrats pressuring Republicans to extend the subsidies in exchange for their votes.
--:-- Siobhan Hughes: But a key development to ease the stalemate came when Senate Republicans proposed that some health care funding be provided directly to households instead.
--:-- Siobhan Hughes: The GOP proposal involves sending money into flexible spending accounts, which could be used to cover deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.
--:-- Siobhan Hughes: But there are still questions about how it would work and when it would be rolled out.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Some Democrats were quick to dismiss the idea as insufficient, with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut calling it nonsensical.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: But those Democrats who voted for the measure, including New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, said the bill would get key government operations back on track after days of painful air travel and ongoing confusion over when some 42 million Americans would receive food assistance benefits.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: This agreement funds SNAP and food assistance programs, ensures that law enforcement, air traffic controllers and other federal workers get paid reverses the president recent reckless layoffs and prevents them from happening in the future and crucially gives Congress a clear path forward to protecting people's health care.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The bill would also ensure back pay for federal workers after the White House last month questioned whether the money was guaranteed.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Last night's measure would fund most federal agencies through January.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: A federal appeals court has denied the Trump administration's bid to avoid fully funding federal food assistance benefits for this month.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The ruling came in just before midnight last night and means the government will have to make the payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, within 48 hours, unless the Supreme Court intervenes.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Court proceedings may not factor in if the shutdown ends and funding for SNAP comes back.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The program typically costs the government $8 billion a month.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: But while there may be an end in sight for the government shutdown, don't expect air travel chaos to ease straight away.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke to Fox News Sunday ahead of the Senate vote and said capacity will remain reduced until air traffic controllers can come safely back to work.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That trend line is getting worse, right? More controllers aren't coming to work day by day.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The further they go without a paycheck because Democrats refuse to pay them.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered traffic to be reduced at 40 major airports.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Yesterday, aviation data provider Sirium said almost 8 percent of scheduled flights across the country were canceled Sunday, up from six and a half percent of flights on Saturday.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That's likely to be exacerbated today, with the FAA overnight restricting private flights at 12 major airports, including Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, and Chicago's O'Hare.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Turning to trade now, and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has suggested that President Trump's idea of a $2,000 so-called tariff dividend for most Americans could come through the administration's existing tax cuts.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Besant was asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's this week about a Trump social media post that promised the payout while criticizing opponents of tariffs.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: I haven't spoken to the president about this yet, but, you know, it could the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms and lots of ways, George.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: You know, it could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax and social security, deductibility of auto loans.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: So, you know, those are substantial deductions that are being financed in the tax bill.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Trump didn't offer further details in his post about the payouts or who would qualify for them.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The White House said Sunday that the tariffs were safeguarding the country's security and raising billions in revenue for the government.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: In arguments before the Supreme Court last week, justices expressed doubt that the president has unilateral authority to impose tariffs under a 1970s emergency powers law, which Trump has used to levy many of the global tariffs without Congress's approval.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: But those questions around the legality of Trump's tariffs are not stopping the administration's push to tax certain imports, including your favorite pasta.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: New anti-measures combined with tariffs on European imports mean leading Italian pasta makers facing a 107 percent tariff on everything from spaghetti to lasagna sheets.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Our reporter in Rome Margarita Stancati says that means your favorite type of pasta may no longer be available.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Of course, it doesn't mean that pasta will completely disappear from U.S. supermarkets.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: There's a lot of pasta that is produced in the United States, including by, for example, Barilla, which has factories in the U.S.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: But it does mean that the selection of the pastas available will become much smaller and that many of the brands affected include La Molisana, Rummo, Pastificio Liguori.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Pasta made by these companies may no longer be available.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And as Margarita explains, it's also a significant blow for Italy, with pasta exports totaling around $770 million annually.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Italian pasta companies have filed briefs to the Department of Commerce to ask them to change their decision, as has the Italian government.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The Italian government is also getting involved.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The earliest that we could see these tariffs come into force is January, although it's possible it will be delayed by a few months.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: But the hope of Italian pasta companies and indeed of the Italian government is that the Department of Commerce will amend its findings.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Coming up, Nike has a lot working against it. Its stock price is down, its tariff costs are up, and it's lost considerable ground to upstart rivals.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That isn't stopping its CEO from mounting a comeback for the ages.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That story, after the break.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: 300 sensors. Over a million data points per second. How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time? AWS is how.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: From fastest laps to strategy calls, AWS puts fans in the pit.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: It's not just racing. It's data-driven innovation at 200 miles per hour.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: AWS is how leading businesses power next-level innovation.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: On his first day as CEO of Nike last October, Elliott Hill told a roomful of employees that the company was in a tough spot.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: The sneaker giant had fallen behind on innovation, while competitors like New Balance and Hoka were catching up.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Elliott wanted the sportswear giant to move faster.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: In the years since, the company has unveiled new innovations.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And as the journal's Inti Pacheco writes, some of its recent results suggest that its string of quarterly sales declines has stopped.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Inti, walk us through what has happened at Nike since Elliott Hill took over as CEO.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: Well, you know, in 2024, there was a big round of layoffs at Nike.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: There was also this perception of, the company all of a sudden became a fashion company and not a sportswear athlete-focused, sport-focused company.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: And what Elliot Hill has been saying is that he wants to put the athlete at the center of everything and that has brought some direction and clarity as to what the mission for Nike is.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: But yeah the main thing is that he wants Nike to move faster because it takes too long to produce a shoe it usually takes like 18 months because once you have the final product you can just scale it and get it ready.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: And by traveling to Asia to work with factory partners Nike realized that they could reduce that timeline.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Inti, can you walk us through what some of the new innovations have been?
--:-- Inti Pacheco: Yeah so they just put out four platforms as they call them because it more than just one product.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: They are releasing an inflatable jacket that basically modulates temperature when it's inflated.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: They released a new kind of sweat wicking fabric that they say is like better than anything that has been done before.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: There is this like robotic apparatus that you connect to a shoe and boosts your walking or running.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: They're calling it an e-bike for your shoes.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: And the last thing they unveiled recently is this, you know, like a shoe base because it's not just a midsole.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: It's the midsole, the strobel, and the sole all together.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: And it's this like foam slab with a bunch of holes that each one has a node in it that moves independently.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: And supposedly that allows you to focus more, up to 10% more, because of the sensory signals that you get from your feet.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: So why has there been this push to innovate in all of these interesting ways?
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Obviously Nike is most famous for, or at least very well known for, its classics.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Yeah, I think there was a perception that the company leaned too heavily on their fashion side.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: They were making a lot of money by selling Air Jordan 1s and Air Force 1s and the Nike Dunk.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And there is this feeling that because they focused too much on that, they stopped innovating in the running space.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And that's why you saw like companies like Hoka or On that rose like so fast in the running space.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And so Nike is basically trying to recapture that.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And these innovations are their way to say, like, no, we're still here.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And how much have those companies like Hoka or On, how much have they overtaken Nike or how much market share do they have?
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Those two companies make about three to four billion dollars a year.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: In comparison to Nike, that's not a lot.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: But then you think about other brands like Adidas, which makes like 25 billion or so.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And then there's New Balance making 10 billion or so.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: So when you put them all together, it's close to how big Nike is, which wasn't the case five years ago.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Nike had been reporting declining sales for five consecutive quarters.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Some investors think it's like too late to try to get that market share back.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: So it's a bit divided, but it appears that the CEO has a lot of support from Wall Street.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: That's The Journal's Inti Pacheco.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Inti, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Inti Pacheco: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And that's it for What's News for this Monday morning.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Our supervising producer was Sondra Kilhoff.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: And I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: We'll be back tonight with a new show.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Until then, thanks for listening.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: I want your shortcut. to smart work.
--:-- Caitlin McCabe: Learn more at paycom.com.
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