万斯称美伊冲突非战争，油价创纪录推高通胀预期

News when you want it with Bloomberg News now. I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Karen Moscow. Karen, we begin with the latest from the Middle East. The war with Iran is now into its sixth months. Military strikes on both sides have intensified in recent days, but Vice President JD Vance is downplaying the scope of the conflict. I wouldn't call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting. I recognize there is. There have been places where this has flared up, uh, major combat operations.

Again, major combat operations lasted for about six weeks. Vice president JD Vance spoke at a white House press briefing. We get more from Bloomberg Middle East correspondent Abeer Abu Omar. The big question here really is how will the American public take these comments? Because you're left with 18 servicemembers that were killed from the United States side. Of course, hundreds others of others are injured. Then you've got 3500 casualties on the Iranian side.

But then the attempts or the remarks by JD Vance, of course, were seen as an effort to to to mow down the situation of this war in the Middle East, effectively, because President Trump has been calling it a war. Uh, and this, of course, comes ahead of those midterm elections. Meantime, Bloomberg's a big Omar says South Korea is reportedly preparing to send troops and a naval support ship to the Strait of Hormuz. That's according to local media reports that say President Trump is ramping up pressure on its Asian ally for not supporting the war.

Well, Nathan, the economic pressure is ramping up on the white House in the form of climbing gas prices. U.S. retail diesel rose to a record, threatening to further spike energy driven inflation as wars in Iran and Russia roiled the market. The fuel climbed to a nationwide average of $5.85 a gallon above the former peak that was set in June 2022. And also on the economic front, Karen stocks and treasuries are steady ahead of the August jobs report.

That could signal the path for interest rates, with odds of a September rate hike roughly even ahead of the numbers. Bloomberg's Michael McKean has a preview. Absent any major surprise, the August employment report will be a predicate for next week's inflation numbers. Fed officials are fairly confident the labor market is, at worst, steady. jobless claims are little changed in surveys of manufacturing and service industries.

Report companies are still hiring while job growth is forecast to remain slow. The drop in the labor force, driven by immigration policy, has lowered the number of jobs that must be created to hold unemployment steady, and unemployment is forecast to have been unchanged last month. Average hourly earnings gains have slowed, and central bankers say that suggests there's no wage pressures on inflation. Michael McKee Bloomberg Radio.

All right, Mike, thanks. We get those August jobs numbers this morning and we will bring you those numbers live with the context behind the data on Bloomberg Surveillance commercial free. Starting at 8:30 a.m., Wall Street time on Bloomberg Radio and the Bloomberg podcast page on YouTube. Well, overseas. Nathan, the yen advanced to a one month high as a rush to unwind the yen fund and carry trade signals. Ramped up bets on further Bank of Japan rate hikes.

The move follows hawkish comments from BOJ governor Kazuo. Later, they could raise rates as three consecutive meetings through December in an extreme scenario where yen weakness persists, according to Nomura Securities. Let's get the latest on US-China relations now, Karen. U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer is striking an optimistic tone ahead of President Trump's meeting with China's XI Jinping later this month.

On Fox News, Greer pointed to a shrinking trade deficit and suggested some Chinese goods could be excluded from tariffs. We're not looking for a giant comprehensive trade agreement with China. We're looking to manage this relationship. Part of this is continuing to get the deficit down. The deficit hasn't been this low with China for many years. Uh, they're no, they're they're no longer our largest deficit. And U.S. trade rep Jamison Greer also says he expects progress on agricultural barriers during the president's meeting with XI, while playing down prospects for a broad new trade agreement.

Nathan, we turn to eye now, and sources told Bloomberg that entropic is set to finalize expanding its revolving credit facility to $15 billion ahead of the firm's public filing for its highly anticipated IPO. Morgan Stanley is leading the process, with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citi also having prominent roles in the offering, and the credit facility would exceed the company's roughly $10 billion target and the CEO of anthropic.

Biggest rival OpenAI. Sam Altman says the industry has done a poor job communicating the benefits of artificial intelligence. Altman tells Bloomberg companies need to show how I can give people more power and enable greater creativity. I think the industry has done a terrible job of this. On the whole, I think we have done a bad job ourselves. Uh, you know, maybe better than some others. Worse than some others. It is difficult, of course, to explain, but this is, uh, the world should, in my opinion, should want us to worry a lot about this technology.

The world should want us to think about all the ways that could go wrong, to talk about what we see coming, but not to sort of, like, stir up doom. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's comments come as research from Bloomberg Economics finds the benefits may already be showing up. It estimates U.S. labor productivity grew 3.1% in the year through the second quarter, compared with the official 2.5% that would be comparable to the late 90s tech boom.

And that's news when you wanted with Bloomberg News now. I'm Karen Moscow. I'm Nathan Hager and this is Bloomberg.