| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a premium service of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here. With customer service like this, how could Walmart not have a blockbuster holiday season??? Thanks to real ones like Fatima, Andrea Felsted says the big box retailer “delivered a blowout quarter” this morning, with US same-store sales excluding fuel up 5.3% — well ahead of analyst expectations. “That Walmart, which takes more than $1 out of every $5 spent on in-home food and drink in the US, has produced such a blockbuster performance should bode well for the coming holiday,” she writes. After the festive season, though, all bets are off: Tariffs could put a major damper on retail if Trump follows through with his plans to raise levies on goods imported from China and other countries. “We never want to raise prices,” Walmart’s CFO John David Rainey told CNBC earlier today. “Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers.” Shoppers aren’t the only ones at the mercy of the incoming president. Marcus Ashworth says gold could also stumble during his second tenure: “‘America First’ trades have seen a flight away from haven assets into riskier ones, and predominantly those denominated in dollars,” he explains. In stark contrast, John Authers says Corporate America is still reveling in the “America First” limelight, as he pointed out in his latest newsletter: He calls the recent US dominance “awe-inspiring,” but also notes how the looming trade war could be a potential blind spot for investors: Tariffs were mentioned in 1,969 earnings calls in the latest quarter, more than at any time since the eve of the pandemic, he writes. Still, that’s paltry in comparison to Trump’s first-go round with tariffs in 2019, when 6,000 CEOs wanted to talk about their impact. If tariffs do end up raising prices next year, pour one out for Walmart’s chat representatives. Bonus Economy Reading: I’ll preface this paragraph by saying you don’t need to watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to enjoy what I’m about to tell you. On last week’s episode, one of the housewives — Lisa Barlow — had a complete conniption upon learning she was flying home from Palm Springs on a commercial plane in coach — 17C, baby! — like a plebeian. “I don’t carry Coach, and I don’t fly coach,” she told the cameras. Although her entertaining tirade is by all means ridiculous — it was for a 47-minute flight — I think we can all agree that there are some things we’d rather not do while flying! Me, personally? I’d rather not sit next to someone who yaps the whole flight. I’d rather not be in the middle seat. And I’d rather not fly on Spirit Airlines because I don’t wanna swipe my credit card between every other pretzel rod I eat. Others feel the same way, if this Thomas Black column is any guide. “The pandemic shifted consumer taste toward so-called premium services,” he writes. “And then there’s the self-inflicted wounds, such as Spirit’s reputation for poor service, which has made it the go-to airline punch line for late-night comics. Another is the lack of scale that reduces destinations and the frequency of nonstop flights.” Case in point? This glib tweet: Now that the low-cost air carrier has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Thomas says “the most likely scenario is for Spirit to restructure its debt and then merge with Frontier.” But even then, I don’t think the Lisa Barlows of this world will be coming on board anytime soon. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that “war is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly,” so it feels fitting that this year’s International Men’s Day landed on the 1,000th day of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. Bloomberg News says Ukraine used the occasion to launch its first attack on Russian soil with its newly-granted US ballistic missiles. Russia, meanwhile, “stepped up its threat of a nuclear response.” But Marc Champion says it may be too little, too late: “Taken alone, allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS inside Russia” can’t force Putin to negotiate with Zelenskiy, he writes. “Nor can an extra $5 billion or more of US arms rushed to the front over the next few months. Nor the Scandinavian initiative to fund Ukraine’s expanding domestic arms production, from munitions to missiles. Nor even a timely, tactical withdrawal of troops from Kursk to bolster the frontlines within Ukraine, or the better training and more efficient deployment of newly mobilized Ukrainian forces.” Taken all together, though, Marc says a coherent strategy emerges. “No matter how galling politically, the Biden administration and other NATO allies should be doing all they can to prepare for and, in reality, help Trump. They need to change the dynamics on the battlefield sufficiently that the next US president is dealt the hand he needs to win a genuine peace.” Read the whole thing. Does the Republican Party’s focus on “family values” actually help American families? Considering many of MAGA’s frontmen — Donald Trump, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk and Matt Gaetz — are on their third marriage or third divorce or are allegedly using their “adopted” son’s PayPal to buy sex, the answer would be seem to be no. Yet Trump has expressed a desire to lower housing costs for Americans — a family-friendly policy that Bloomberg’s editors say can’t come soon enough: “For more than a decade, housing construction has failed to keep up with US population growth and household formation,” they write. “The income required to afford a new single-family home is now almost twice what it was five years ago, and nearly half of renting households spend more than 30% of their income on rent.” Hopefully this chart looks different in 2028, otherwise the GOP might want to get a divorce from its slogan... Last week, a disgruntled 62-year-old man in Zhuhai, China rammed his four-wheeler into a crowd, killing at least 35 pedestrians and injuring dozens more. The week prior, another disgruntled man — this one only 21 years old — killed eight people in a stabbing attack in Jiangsu. And just this morning, CBS reported a “small white SUV drove into a crowd of children and adults” at an elementary school in Hunan. Although Karishma Vaswani says the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to preach “keep calm and carry on,” it’s impossible to ignore deadly acts of civilian violence. “Authoritarian regimes use inordinate levels of control as a way to justify their hold on power. We keep you safe, the unsaid promise says, and in return you give us ownership over every aspect of your lives... When that starts to fray, people feel increasingly disaffected with their leaders and will complain. And some brave citizens do protest,” she writes. Gavin Newsom is too elitist to lead states’ fight against Trump. — Erika D. Smith Trump’s energy chief wants to live with climate change, not fix it. — Liam Denning On China, Trump should seek more continuity than change. — Minxin Pei Insider trading at the Fed is obviously illegal, but it is also bad supervision. — Matt Levine Singapore’s landlords are losing their advantage as vacancies rise. — Andy Mukherjee With Jimmy Lai, the UK is making free speech an issue again in Hong Kong. — Matthew Brooker Andrew Tate | 
