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Your Evening Briefing

Your Evening Briefing

(Bloomberg) --

President Donald Trump tweeted five minutes after markets opened in New York that the U.S. and China were very close to a trade deal, which predictably sent stocks skyward as Wall Streeters bet Dec. 15 tariffs on $160 billion in consumer goods would be tabled. They were right: Trump later signed off on a so-called phase-one accord

It’s down to the wire with Brexit: To keep up with the latest news now that the U.K. election is over, sign up for our daily newsletter, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our podcast.

Here are today’s top stories

A key exit poll after Thursday’s U.K. election projected that Boris Johnson will likely retain the office of prime minister, allowing him to continue his effort to remove the country from the European Union.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said the euro zone’s economic slowdown is showing signs of bottoming out, suggesting further interest-rate cuts are unlikely any time soon.

Justin Trudeau’s main rival is stepping down as Conservative Party leader after failing to unseat the Canadian prime minister in October.

Senator Bernie Sanders is rising in the polls once again as Democratic voters warm to his consistency on policy, especially Medicare for All, while rivals seek to modulate their positions. He’s either tied for the lead or in second place in early presidential nominating states.

Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, got $1 million from an account in Russia a month before he was charged with conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. campaigns, prosecutors said as they asked a judge to jail him.

Another party drug is showing signs of going legit as magic mushrooms cleared the first hurdle to become a treatment for depression.

What’s Joe Wesienthal thinking? The Bloomberg news director opines that the most interesting thing that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at his press conference Wednesday was in response to the question of what it would take for him to characterize the labor market as “hot.” Powell said it all came down to wages, and that he wasn’t comfortable calling it hot because employers still aren’t paying workers more despite low unemployment. Powell’s answer made Joe think of former Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, who recently told Bloomberg that one reason the Fed tightened rates in 2018 was an obsession with “normalizing” policy.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Pursuits

Every week in Bloomberg Businessweek, editors test a wide range of products, whether the latest gadgets or high-performance sports equipment. Those luxury products that measure up the best eventually go into a page called “The One,” and so in time for the holidays, we’ve collected a few of our favorites from 2019.

Your Evening Briefing

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