The 2020 White House Race is Already Getting Ugly

(Bloomberg) --

All the president’s “hatchet men” are coming under fire from Joe Biden.

The Democratic presidential candidate lodged a searing counter-attack against Donald Trump last night that offered a window into what a potential one-on-one face-off could look like as the House’s impeachment inquiry reshapes the contours of the 2020 race.

“You’re not going to destroy me,” Biden said during a rally in Reno, Nevada, as the president and his surrogates continue to promote discredited allegations that the former vice president tried to thwart a Ukrainian investigation into his son. “And you’re not going to destroy my family.”

Biden, who once said that if he’d met Trump in high school, he’d have taken “him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him” for his treatment of women, has a history of colorful rhetoric that would make for a potentially hot-tempered showdown with Trump if Democrats choose him as their nominee.

But with rival Elizabeth Warren threatening to eclipse Biden as the front-runner (she’s statistically tied in several recent key state and national polls), there’s a question of whether the cloud Trump’s trying to cast over Biden could ultimately help deny them both a fight they’re itching for.

Global Headlines

Rare rule | Hong Kong will tomorrow enact an emergency ordinance for the first time in more than 50 years, forbidding face masks at public gatherings, local media report. It comes after a protester was shot in violent demonstrations this week, with some pro-China lawmakers calling for the mask ban to stop protesters hiding their identity from police. It could also mean they can’t withstand the effects of tear gas.

Brexit Plan | Boris Johnson’s much-anticipated proposal to take the U.K. out of the European Union by Oct. 31 has been unveiled and, while it probably gets Conservative party euroskeptics on board, it falls short of what Brussels is willing to accept. The prospect of yet another extension rears its head, but Johnson seems dead set on the departure date. Does he have another option?

New trade front | Prices for Scotch whisky and French cheese are set to rise in the U.S. with fresh tariffs slapped on billions of dollars of EU products. Trump got the go-ahead from the World Trade Organization to retaliate for illegal EU aid to plane-maker Airbus. The U.S. is already in a trade war with China, and a wider flareup of tit-for-tat levies with Europe could threaten a fragile global economy.

• Airbus was spared the full impact of U.S. import tariffs as Trump took steps to exempt planes built at its Alabama plant. Read more here

Staying the course | Indonesian President Joko Widodo says protests sweeping the country over his controversial legislative agenda won’t derail reforms aimed at bolstering growth. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait yesterday, Jokowi, as he is known, said he has the authority to push through changes to labor rules by the end of the year and open up more sectors of the economy to foreign investment.

Meeting the general | Pakistan’s already powerful military is taking an even greater role in running the country as the economy slows. Since early this year, army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa has privately met at least three top business leaders at heavily guarded military offices. The move appears to have the blessing of Prime Minister Imran Khan, Faseeh Mangi reports.

What to Watch

• European officials are increasingly grim about the outlook for Iran after failed efforts at the UN General Assembly last week to ease tensions between the U.S. and Tehran.
• Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has halted his grueling campaign schedule “until further notice” after receiving medical care for a blocked artery.
• Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi met a Taliban delegation today in a bid to revive peace talks in Afghanistan with the U.S. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Special envoy for Afghanistan, plans to hold talks with Pakistani counterparts in Islamabad this week.

Tell us how we’re doing or what we’re missing at balancepower@bloomberg.net.

And finally ... President Emmanuel Macron’s government is poised to make France the first European country to use facial recognition technology to give citizens a secure digital identity whether they want it or not. France will join nations around the world rushing to provide secure access to everything from taxes to utility bills. But as Helene Fouquet reports, the program, dubbed Alicem, is facing a challenge in the nation’s highest administrative court, and the data regulator says it breaches the rule of consent.

--With assistance from Muneeza Naqvi, Flavia Krause-Jackson and Ruth Pollard.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Karl Maier

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