美国威胁制裁伊朗贸易伙伴，或与华冲突；英首相访乌谈军援

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This is the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast. Good morning. It's Tuesday, the 25th of August. I'm Caroline Hepker in London.

And I'm Stephen Carroll in Brussels. Coming up today, the US threatens economic punishment against any country doing business in Iran, but risks putting Washington on a collision course with Beijing.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham tells Bloomberg European leaders plan to lobby President Trump to give Ukraine more weapons.

Plus job hunting in the age of AI. Employers bring back traditional techniques to sift through candidates as technology upends the hiring landscape.

Let's start with a roundup of our top stories.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bass has threatened economic punishment against any country doing business with Iran. The warning comes part of what he called an economic D-Day campaign to isolate the Islamic Republic and ends the nearly six months of war. Speaking during a press conference, Bass outlined the scope of the plans.

We want to make clear to hear today that no one is above the reach of US sanctions. That if they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bass has threats could place the United States on a collision course with China, which buys around 90% of Iran's oil. Meanwhile, Washington is trying to maintain a fragile trade truce with Beijing.

Andy Burnham says that European leaders plan to lobby President Donald Trump to give Ukraine more air interceptor missiles. In an exclusive interview in Kyiv, the UK Prime Minister told Bloomberg that he will make the case at the United Nations General Assembly next month. Burnham says that he'll continue to support Ukraine despite what he calls outrageous threats from Russia.

I've only been in office a short time, but already in that time, Russia has threatened the UK for its support for the Ukraine, and I know other countries here have faced similar threats. It just shows that what we are doing is having an impact, and we should stand firm together.

The UK Prime Minister there on his first visit to Kyiv since taking office in the UK, President Trump has backed away from providing more of the US-made Patriot systems as the war in Iran has eaten into global supplies.

Well, while in Kyiv, Burnham also shared classified blueprints for a cruise missile in exchange for Ukraine's combat data. At a meeting between the two leaders, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he deeply respects Britain and its help.

You have helped us a lot. And it's not about just military and financial everything is important in your war. The clear, strong support from the very beginning of this war.

Zelenskyy's deal with Burnham comes as the Kremlin escalates its war, attacking energy and railway infrastructure as well as residential areas. Britain hopes it will be able to use Ukraine's data to train military AI models.

Now to the trade war between the US and Canada, which erupted in an exchange of insults between President Trump and Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario. It follows the White House's decision to impose 50% tariffs on Canadian goods after trade talks collapsed last week. Ford backed Prime Minister Mark Carney's vow to retaliate, suggesting that Trump was like a schoolyard bully who would quote steal your lunch money. In response, the US president dismissed Ford as a quote flunky of Carney.

The war of words comes as Canada prepares to announce business support measures later today. Here is Canada's US trade minister, Dominic LeBlanc.

The Prime Minister will take his responsibility to protect the Canadian economy, obviously in a very in a very thoughtful way. I think you'll see over the next coming days the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister and others announcing those measures. I'm not going to prejudge what decisions they're going to make, but people need to know that our response will be firm, but it will be calibrated in a way that protects the Canadian economy and Canadian workers.

That was Canada's US trade minister, Dominic LeBlanc. Bloomberg understands that the talks collapsed due to late pressure from the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who viewed the framework deal as too generous to Canada.

US Treasury Secretary, Scott Brison, refrained from any further signals on revamping US debt management. It follows a report that his department could draw on some of its cash pile to fund buybacks of higher yielding older securities. Speaking to reporters, Brison was asked whether he had any plans to increase bond buybacks.

We haven't bought a single bond yet. The The The next uh The The The next time we have an operation is September 9th.

That's US Treasury Secretary, Scott Brison. It comes as the billionaire investor, Stanley Druckenmiller, who once mentored Brison, suggested he was making a mistake by wading into the bond market. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he said, "Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose." Meanwhile, Germany's finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, lays the blame for surging bond yields on the Trump administration's war in Iran.

And lastly, Saudi Arabia plans to build a theme park complex near Paris, investing 6 billion euros over several years and creating 22,000 jobs, according to a statement. One condition of the deal is that it must include at least one area dedicated to Japanese comic books. Bloomberg understands that the investment was sparked by President Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman's shared love of manga. Those are our top stories.

Let's have a look at the markets this hour. So, European and US stock futures are in the green. US stock 50 futures were up by a quarter of 1%. We did see earlier though the continued sell-off in the Kospi [clears throat] which had plunged by as much as 4.3%. Now though the Kospi is only down 2/10 of 1%. The debasement trade also seems to be back on the minds of investors who have seen Bitcoin topping $80,000. But in fact this morning the dollar on the Bloomberg dollar spot index is a little bit firmer.

We have seen very low trading volumes. So remember yesterday for example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stopping short of new bonds measures was interesting to note yesterday. This morning 10-year US Treasury yields tick higher about 1 and 1/2 basis points at 4.71. Those are the markets.

In a moment more on Scott Bessent's threat of action against Iran's trading partners plus how AI is transforming how people are getting jobs. Plus another story that we've been reading this morning on indulging yourself Japanese style. Bloomberg Opinion's Grozdana has been writing about the new trend of guilty consumption where people buy calorific, sugar-dense, fatty foods in the full knowledge that it's bad for you but you deserve it.

And this is a huge marketing strategy. It's The trend is also referred to as immoral foods with one aspect finding that the market has grown to surpass that for health foods and supplements. So Grozdana says the key to understanding this trend is that it's Of course the idea of a treat is nothing new but this is the admission that what you're doing is wrong and it creates a permission structure for a generation that counts both calories and yen when making their spending decisions.

So, making reference to the the uptick in inflation in Japan, as well. So, the idea is that essentially is that if you're going to if when you're out you're out, you might you know, if you're going to indulge yourself, you might as well do it properly.

Yeah, I love this story. Um I don't know, is this is this particularly uh you know, the zeitgeists in Japan right now? I feel like this kind of guilty consumption is always what is advertised also in the UK, maybe. Um but yeah, what was your favorite treat?