Democrats and Republicans resume talks today for the next U.S. stimulus package. Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi and Alexis Christoforous discuss what to expect with Raymond James Washington Policy Analyst Ed Mills.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: It's back to the negotiating table this morning for the Trump administration and congressional Democrats trying to work out a new stimulus deal. Both sides reported progress over the weekend, but they say they still remain far apart on key issues. Those extra unemployment benefits appear to be one of the main sticking points just days after that $600 unemployment boost expired.

Let's bring in Ed Mills, Washington Policy Analyst at Raymond James. Good to see you here, Ed. With President Trump seemingly pushing for a deal, does it surprise you that it is taking this long or that the Republicans seem to have ceded these negotiations to the White House?

ED MILLS: You know, I think that's a great question, Alexis. What I'm trying to figure out is exactly what is the position of the Trump administration? What is the position of Senate Republicans? Democrats made their position known by having a bill passed a couple months ago. We got the introduction of the HEALS Act last week. But what we saw all week long was rank-and-file members, especially on the Senate side, either saying they oppose what was in the HEALS Act or proposing different new provisions themselves, such as Senator Romney, Senator McSally, Senator Collins introducing a bill that calls for a $500 a week extension of the unemployment benefits.

So there are negotiations. The negotiations do not include Senate Republicans. They are between the administration and Speaker Pelosi. In those negotiations, you do have Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who kind of is not someone who has a long history of dealmaking. Quite the contrary. He has a long history of kind of producing some of these cliffs when he was a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a lot of those fiscal cliffs we dealt with under the Obama administration. He and his colleagues in the Freedom Caucus were pushing us up to the brink.

So, you know, from my perspective, this is playing out very much how we'd expect. We still think there is a deal, but these deals have to fall apart before we put them back together.

BRIAN SOZZI: Ed, I did want to focus in on the unemployment checks. There are now millions of Americans that have now seen their income essentially fall off a cliff. Is there any talk of, when there is new stimulus, making those checks retroactive?

ED MILLS: Yeah, I think that's a great question because we are here the Monday after the deadline. There are 30 million Americans who are unemployed who are relying upon that extra income who don't know when that next check is going to come. I do think when a final deal is struck that it will be retroactive starting on August 1. If you remember back to the CARES Act, because it took time to implement the CARES Act, especially some of these really old systems at the state level, what that bill said is that it was retroactive to the day you applied. So I do think if we cut a deal, whatever it is, there is going to be back pay for these unemployed Americans.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to switch gears for a moment to talk about Joe Biden because he was supposed to announce his VP pick on August 1. Now that's been pushed back. Some are saying he could make that announcement by August 10. What does that tell you about where his campaign is at, where his head is at right now as we move closer to the Democratic convention?

ED MILLS: Yeah, great question, Alexis. You know, what the Biden campaign would tell you is that they said they would release it the first week in August or August 1. There's been a debate about the exact date.

I think what we're seeing out of the Biden campaign is that they are in no kind of rush to do much. They think that they want to take all the time it takes to ensure they get the right pick on the vice-presidential ticket. And, you know, they just need to have this announced probably with at least a few days before the convention, which is midmonth. So I do think, you know, we're in the window where we'll get someone, but it is not a surprise that we're past that August 1 deadline without an exact pick. It shows that they are taking a thorough process and wanting to understand exactly what that pick means to the ticket in the fall.

BRIAN SOZZI: Ed, we know you're closely watching the back and forth on the hill regarding TikTok and Microsoft and the Trump administration. How do you think Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was able to potentially convince President Trump to sign off on this deal?

ED MILLS: Yeah, so the way I've been looking at this is, first of all, TikTok came zooming onto Trump's radar screen after the Tulsa rally where there was the TikTok army that requested all those tickets, and it was something that was far different than expectations. But in reality, I think the real issue here is under US law, the US government had the ability to do a national-security review under what's known as CFIUS, and that CFIUS legislation gives broad authority.

And with that, ByteDance or TikTok really could have severe restrictions in the United States. And so what we're seeing is with that as a looming national-security review, that can be a total hammer. There is a huge incentive for them to look for strategic alternatives, and that's exactly what they're doing now.

I think TikTok is too valuable of an asset to just have it shut down, and therefore kind of seeking alternatives seems like the best alternative given the potential kind of hammer that could come down from a national-security perspective.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, Ed, it seems like TikTok has become this sort of political football in an election year. Do you think part of what's happening there in the White House is that the Trump administration wants to try to keep this app alive safely because there are potential young voters there who could be going to the polls for the first time voting for a president in November?

ED MILLS: Yeah, there is a component of kind of the engagement and kind of how we are going to see TikTok be used kind of from a political perspective. But I do see kind of a real concern in this administration about the national-security aspects of this, especially its ties to China. What we've seen through the CFIUS process, that national-security review, is that access to personal identifiable information, access to kind of online information is a real concern.

And so this also fits in nicely with the kind of-- kind of that drumbeat we're seeing of anti-China. And if we are kind of signing up a bunch of teenagers and handing over their information to China or giving them access to something that we do not want them to have access to, that kind of goes squarely kind of within the agenda this administration is pursuing. So from that perspective alone, I think that this is, you know, a very foreseeable step by this administration.