Opinion Today

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the tiny particles of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.

Today’s Agenda

Canada can’t make it rain.
Stagflation will be a strain.
There’s a spoon inside my brain?
Family financial pain.

USA vs. Canada

Something is rotten in Canada, Robert Burgess says. Could it be the measly $30,000 Delta Airlines gave as compensation to passengers aboard the plane that crash-landed in Toronto this week? Or is it Canada’s scheduled hockey game tonight against the US, about which US President Donald Trump is taunting — or, as Clive Crook would argue, bullying — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Truth Social? Perhaps it’s something even more sinister than all that: the economy itself.

On ice, Canada should be able to hold its own against the US just fine. But on solid ground, where trade wars loom and critical minerals stand in the balance, Robert says “Canada is woefully outmatched in this fight, and the proposed response to US tariffs would have catastrophic consequences for an economy that is already on the ropes.”

You wouldn’t know that from the way the US president talks about Canada. He acts as if “our northern neighbor has pulled a fast one, living high on the hog at the expense of hard-working Americans,” Robert writes. “The way Trump puts it, the US is ‘subsidizing’ Canada to the tune of $200 billion a year. As any Econ 101 student knows, that’s not how international trade works.”

Can you blame Canada for wanting to fight back? If my friend-turned-foe was openly provoking me on social media like this, there’d be hell to pay:

I’ll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.

Read between the lines, and Trump — who called himself a king this week — is saying there won’t be a Team Canada for much longer. Both Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre are at their wits’ end. They’re considering taxes on American beer, wine, food and appliances, even if such levies hurt their country’s bottom line. “Such responses are good politics because voters want a government to respond forcefully to threats,” Robert writes, but they make for bad economics. Even without retaliatory tariffs, Canada faces “something between a severe recession and a catastrophic one,” according to FHN Financial.

“If there is a silver lining, it would be that Trump forces Canada to finally confront its structural economic weaknesses. That would be a real trade win — for both countries.” There’s a lot riding on this hockey game, eh?

Stagflation Nation

It’s not as if the US economy is coming up roses, though. Andrea Felsted says Walmart is seeing slower sales growth. The Fed is pressing pause on interest rates. Meanwhile, consumers born before 1990 are still holding out hope for $5 chicken lo mein:

What’s worse, stagflation — a word coined back in 1965 — could stage an ugly revival if the lines in this chart from John Authers continue to twin each other:

John says “there’s good historical precedent for a second inflationary wave,” and Tyler Cowen agrees. “The last time the US economy had both excessively high inflation and unduly high unemployment was in the mid-1970s, with inflation rates reaching 12.2% in 1974 and unemployment at 8.5% in 1975,” he writes.

But it’s no time to panic. While Tyler says you’ll read plenty of bad headlines about rising rents, stalling wages and political uncertainty this year, he also notes that “this is likely to be one of the more gentle stagflations in history.” Gentle stagflation, huh? Gestagflation? Gentaglation? Stagentlation? I dunno. At a certain point, I think we make up these words to give us the illusion of control over a narrative that is out of our hands!

This is only a slice of our opinion coverage. To unlock every story and get full access to all our columnists, become a Bloomberg.com subscriber.
Subscribe now

Brain Melt

At first blush, learning that my brain may contain an entire spoon’s worth of microplastics freaked me out. How could a spoon-sized glob of plastic lodge itself into my prefrontal cortex? What kind of spoon are we talking about — one of those dinky Taco Bell sporks, or a soup one with some heft to it? Can my brain melt the spoon or will the spoon melt my brain?

All these questions faded away once I came to terms with my shared reality — the spoon, myself and I. They say acceptance is the first step, and accept I did. The dog ate my homework?! What a tired, pathetic excuse. But the microplastics ate my brain??? That sounds legit — just don’t tell my editor. With the right outlook, it can be a beautiful partnership:

Agh, I’m mostly just messing with you. Despite the hair-raising plastic spoon study, F.D. Flam says “you probably don’t have quite that much of the stuff in your brain.” But the rate humans at which are ingesting and absorbing invisible plastic particles — via bottles, food wrappers and even the air we breathe — is nonetheless still alarming. “In the most extreme case, the researchers estimated the brain was 0.48% plastic, meaning the particles added up to a couple of grams — the weight of a typical plastic spoon. The average brain studied showed about a tenth of that amount,” she writes.

But here comes the fascinating part: “The process isn’t necessarily a one-way street: These tiny particles can get out of the brain and in. But in some cases, the particles enter faster than the brain can clear them. … Once scientists understand the most prevalent routes of nanoplastic exposure, we might be able to avoid more buildup or even speed up the clearing process.” Maybe then, the spoons in our brain will be like snowmen — here for a good time, not a long time. Don’t grow too emotionally attached, I guess.

Telltale Charts

If you Google the words “succession drama billionaire family,” you’ll see the Murdoch media empire, Howard Lutnick’s sons and the fictional Roy siblings. But you’ll also find Hong Kong’s Cheng family, which Shuli Ren says has all the drama of an HBO plot. The family’s real estate developer, New World Development, is running out of cash — no thanks to Adrian Cheng, a Harvard-educated third-generation heir. Cheng boasts a resume of failed side projects (a glorified airport mall and a sports park) and appears to be bringing down the family’s sister company, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery, with him.

“Same-store sales have been on the decline, while the company is rushing to close shops in the mainland,” Shuli writes. Meanwhile, competition is getting steep: “Laopu Gold Co., with only 38 retail outlets in Greater China, has almost doubled its share price this year. Laopu now boasts a higher market cap than Chow Tai Fook, which has over 7,000 stores in the mainland.”

Mark Gongloff always has the best ledes, so I’ll just let him do the talking here: “Imagine you’re the ruler of a realm that is routinely attacked by dragons, but only in certain neighborhoods whose matchstick buildings get razed to the ground. After every attack, you could tell the people in those neighborhoods to either build stronger, more dragon-resistant buildings or move to a place that’s somehow less infuriating to dragons. What you probably wouldn’t do is tell those people to just rebuild those matchstick buildings while also demanding that everybody in the kingdom pretend dragons don’t exist and ending all dragon-related research. Unless, that is, you are President Donald Trump.” Ugh. It’s like Fourth Wing, but for people who can’t afford flood insurance.